Rachel Maddow on Monday took aim at a press release from the Trump administration that tried to backtrack on plans to shut down dozens of Social Security offices across the country. The MSNBC host didn’t hold back, slamming Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s actions in her opening monologue.
Maddow spent the first half of her show talking about the growing protests against Trump administration policies, including cuts to government staff and programs. She explained that these protests were putting pressure on the administration to change course.
“Now that there has been pushback they can’t handle, they’re just pretending they weren’t attacking Social Security at all,” Maddow said. “Nice try.”
As a sharp critic of President Trump, and Elon Musk’s DOGE, Maddow seemed especially upset by the administration’s attempt to weaken the Social Security Administration. She emphasized that the cuts would harm vulnerable Americans.
“It’s profoundly dangerous what they are doing,” Maddow explained. that’s why you’re seeing not only old people and disabled people who get Social Security revolting, you’re seeing every American with a drop of empathy in their soul revolting over that.”
She added, “Because to do something that irresponsible and cruel to a population to whom we owe so much, and that is by definition in need of what that agency provides them, and potentially frail or unable to advocate for themselves when they are hurt by what this administration is doing, yeah, there’s going to be pushback with you guys messing with Social Security.”
Maddow ended by mocking the administration’s response: “We definitely never published this very detailed list of dozens of Social Security offices that we were going to close, and then, oh, when the blowback and the pushback against us doing that knocked us on our butts, we definitely just didn’t decide to pretend that it wasn’t us and that we’d never said that.”
Watch the clip below from MSNBC:
