The hosts of “The Weeknight” called out Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins after she suggested Medicaid recipients could replace the millions of migrant farm workers at risk under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan.
“There’s been a lot of noise in the last few days and a lot of questions about where the president stands and his vision for farm labor,” Rollins said at a news conference Tuesday, adding: “When you think about [it], there are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program. There are plenty of workers in America.”
“The Weeknight” co-host Alicia Menendez was stunned by Rollins’ remarks and the suggestion that farm workers could be so easily replaced, noting what these migrants do is “highly skilled labor” and “not easy.”
Menendez also acknowledged that Rollins is working against the competing interests of the agriculture industry and Trump’s indiscriminate deportation policy.
In Menendez’s view, on one hand, Rollins “has the agriculture industry — who she represents in the United States government — saying, ‘Ma’am, please understand we are not going to be able to get people their fruits and their vegetables at the prices they are accustomed to if you deport 3 million people, half of our workforce.’” On the other hand, Menendez said, the agriculture secretary has to appease her boss, who “has made a promise to deport all these folks.”
“The needs of her base constituency and the needs of the president, who demands absolute fealty, are in direct competition,” Menendez observed.
Menendez said that in the process of pleasing the president, Rollins is hurting some of the most vulnerable, undocumented migrants and Medicaid recipients: “It is really something to take out two disenfranchised groups with one stone, but she has done it now.”
Co-host Symone Sanders-Townsend called Rollins’ remarks “despicable” and said she had never “seen so much disdain for poor and working people from the government.” Sanders-Townsend also took aim at another Trump administration official: Vice President JD Vance. “If anybody in the room around that table should know better, it should be Vice President JD Vance,” Sanders-Townsend said, noting Vance’s Appalachian experiences growing up. “Where I come from, we used to say, never forget the community that raised you. It looks to me that JD Vance did,” Sanders-Townsend added. You can watch “The Weeknight” co-hosts’ reactions to Rollins’ comments in the clip at the top.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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