Donald Trump Wants NURSING HOME RESIDENTS PICKING CROPS TO "EARN THEIR HEALTHCARE!"

[ihaveaquestion]

[RockCreek]

1. Let him go first

That could take care of him in an Orrexx way.

[catrose]

6. Yeah, so says the man who's never even picked garden vegetables for dinner.

[LisaM]

11. Pick vegetables? Does he even eat them?

Seems to me he's all meat and carbs.

[Harker]

13. Vegetables are "groceries", and who ever says that?

[LisaM]

16. Yes, such a quaint term.

Honestly.

[Harker]

17. I use the word once or twice a week, along with other archaic terms such as "laundry" and "cleaning."

[catrose]

22. Naw. He doesn't.

[sheshe2]

32. Well, ketchup is a veggie, right?

[B.See]

2. more "making America great again"

samf...

[CountAllVotes]

3. I would last for maybe five minutes

at the very most.

What a friggin' awhole!!!!

DUMP tRUMP!!!!!

& recommend !!!

[YoshidaYui]

4. HEY DONALD

GO FUCK YOUR SELF

[CountAllVotes]

8. +350,000,000

A +++++++ for every person in America!

+++ !!!

[brush]

5. How do they get people like Rollins to go before a mic and mouth such stupid shit...

the elderly, pregnant women and kids to pick crops...maybe at gunpoint, which maybe what intimidated her silly behind to chime in with that shit...on national TV too.

[Diamond_Dog]

26. I for one am sick and tired

Of being fed these bizarre lies and of having my humanity insulted. Republicans are truly from another universe in this thinking.

[Henry203]

27. I think you are viewing

The Texas mindset.

[SWBTATTReg]

7. So, nursing home residents, most of whom who have already worked their whole lives, are being snatched w/o

any say so, and hauled off to the fields to pick crops. Sounds like Slave labor to me, and ignores the lifetime contributions of all of these older workers.

Absolutely despicable.

[FakeNoose]

10. Many are in wheelchairs, and many more have dementia

It's an absurd suggestion ...

[Hornedfrog2000]

12. There is no way they would work even

Ive worked with this population, and half of them would probably just kill themselves. Im not trying to be crass, but a lot of them are passively suicidal to begin with. Plus most of them have to sell every possession, and be completely broke to be accepted by medicaid i believe it is. A lot of them literally have nothing, and nobody left. All of their family and kids are dead a lot of the time. Its ridiculous. This is one of the last safety nets.

[Grim Chieftain]

9. He is absolutely evil

We used to compare him to Hitler, but he's Satan personified.

[GiqueCee]

14. I think...

... Satan crosses the street to avoid him.
We'll have to rely on the Klingon dictionary to adequately describe what an obscene abomination Trump really is. He's the worst thing to happen to this country since the Civil War. Come to think of it, maybe that's why Confederate wannabe's love his fat, pimply ass so much. Wouldn't surprise me.

[Grim Chieftain]

20. And I'm reminded of "the compassionate conservative" who said

People in nursing homes don't need to vote - they're going to be dead soon anyhow. Evil walks among us. Damn.

[atreides1]

29. God would be a better comparison

God has allowed millions of people to die, usually at the hands of his more rabid followers and has done nothing!

Satan doesn't have the power to do what God has done, yet he gets blamed every time one of God's followers commits atrocities!

[Aussie105]

15. It is logical though, isn't it?

I mean, America did away with cheap slave labor way back when people of color were 'imported' to pick the cotton, then when that became impossible, undocumented 'slaves' from south of the border, but they are being 'exported' under Trump.

So we need a new slave class, mmm . . . yep, those freeloading oldies - send them out in the heat to pick crops, yep, Trump logic at work.

Can the man sink any lower? (Yes, he can!)

I guess . . . next, make fieldwork a compulsory part of the school curriculum? 20 hours a week in the classroom, 20 hours in the fresh air?
Get them school busses loaded up and heading for the fields!

[Wiz Imp]

18. Come on people. I thought we were supposed to be a reality based community?

I normally like Jesse Dollemore, but this video was pure fucking garbage. They are not proposing nursing home residents go work the fields. Rollins' number of 34 million able bodied adults was bullshit, but the bill has instituted a work requirement only for those between age 19 and 64 who are not already exempt. People on disability are already exempt as are children and the elderly. They are calling "able bodied adults" those between 19 & 64 who are not on disability. The majority of those people already have jobs (and the majority of those with jobs are employed full time).

I posted in another thread the numbers but here they are again. As of March 2025, 71,258,215 were enrolled in Medicaid. Approximately 42% of Medicaid beneficiaries are adults (19-64), 36% are children, 10% are disabled, and 10% are age 65 or older. The disabled, children & elderly are NOT subject to the work requirements in the bill. So if we remove them from the total, we get just over 31,000,000 "able bodied" adults. But approximately 64% of adult, non disabled Medicaid beneficiaries are already currently employed (most of them with full time jobs). That means at most, 11,000,000 so called "able bodied" adults on Medicare who don't currently have a job. These are the people they would be targeting. Yes, it's still terrible, but they're not requiring "the old and infirm" to work like Jesse Dollemore implied.

Reasons why most of those 11 million are not working include: A significant number of Medicaid recipients are responsible for the care of children or other family members. Many additional individuals are unable to work due to health conditions. Some Medicaid recipients are enrolled in educational programs. Some other individuals may be between jobs or facing other barriers to employment, such as lack of transportation or childcare. So it would be cruel to require all these people to work - but that's where we are.

Again, I'm not defending Trump and his lackeys, I'm just asking that we remain reality based. The people they are attaching the new work requirement to are NOT children, the elderly and the disabled, it's people responsible for the care of children or other family members, people with health conditions that are not serious enough to qualify them for disability, people in school and people who may not be working because they lack transportation or childcare.

[ihaveaquestion]

23. Dollemore is exaggerating for effect.

It's called hyperbole... maybe you've heard of it?

[Wiz Imp]

25. Sorry. That is not hyperbole. It's bullshit.

He's not exaggerating for effect. He's flat out claiming things that are not true. And pretty much every comment on his YouTube video and the vast majority of comments on this thread clearly take everything he says literally. He should be ashamed for such a video. It's disgusting and even more disgusting that people here at DU actually believe they want to make nursing home residents work the fields.

And I don't appreciate the attitude either. Yes I've heard of hyperbole, and this isn't it. Perhaps YOU need to better learn what hyperbole is?

[ihaveaquestion]

31. Yes I do believe that they want nursing home residents to work - in the fields or wherever!

They are the ones who are disgusting - not the people on DU who are appalled by all of this.

Shame on you for defending them!

[PatSeg]

33. It is more likely that they want

nursing home residents to just die and decrease the surplus population, not to mention lower healthcare costs.

[Wiz Imp]

34. So we go from it's hyperbole to he's actually telling the truth

Which is it? Fact is they are both BS and I am not defending the Trump administration at all. Perhaps you missed where I called the Trump administration CRUEL several times over this policy?

However, I understand the numbers. When Rollins said there are 34 million able bodied adults on Medicaid, that is less than half of the total Medicaid recipients. Her number is slightly higher than I get with my calculations, but she is clearly removing the following groups from her "able bodied adults" total - Children 18 and under, Seniors 65 and older and the disabled. Remove those groups from the total of 71 million Medicaid recipients and I get a little over 30 million. That is who she is talking about - the nondisabled between 19 & 64. Children, Seniors & the disabled ARE EXEMPT FROM WORK REQUIREMENTS IN MEDICAID. Their Medicaid is not reliant on working. Medicaid coverage for Non-disabled adults between 19 & 64 IS now reliant on working.

17. Q: What are the new Medicaid work requirements? A: Adults aged 19-64 without disabilities must work, volunteer, or study 80 hours per month (about 20 hours per week). You must report this every 6 months. The final version also requires parents with children over 14 to work.

18. Q: Who is exempt from Medicaid work requirements? A: People with disabilities, pregnant women, caregivers for children under a certain age, students, and people over 64. However, you may need to prove your exemption status regularly.

https://grantsforseniors.org/one-big-beautiful-bill-50-questions-and-answers/

Here's an article from TPM who clearly understood what was being suggested:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-official-suggests-replacing-deported-224436893.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAE-XzkwEQ6a_M6A6c-6dqyGdIMjF3BBlckEx3EcYzCIZvYPzz2kNXerchHpF6wFdtvOvSarI80bJi4bV034wcvPZuAF6q02awOjSkqcgDreM4EdNTzJ2Ns68co4AQMI_jL1gSTUmfSLjlHer0FLvE5Ae9VUa-FOcco_NNUKPr6EX

However, it now appears that at least one Trump administration official — one who is specifically tasked with supporting and regulating America’s farmers — is supportive of the raids on farm workers plowing ahead. Rollins has, she professes, found a solution for those in the industry she oversees: Farmers short on field laborers due to mass deportations could replace the work with some sort of amorphous AI. You know, the kind that picks tomatoes. Alternatively, they could nab some of those purported freeloaders (child-free, able bodied adults between the ages of 19 and 64) on Medicaid who will soon have to complete work requirements (at least 80 hours per month of work, volunteering, education, or training) in order to access health care, thanks to Trump’s disastrous, Medicaid-slashing megabill.

[ihaveaquestion]

36. OMG - why are you going out of your way to defend them?

In the name of fairness? Democrats are more intelligent and fair minded and so they count on us to give them the benefit of the doubt. It's a trap! Their supporters hear them clearly.

DEPORT THEM ALL!

PUT EM TO WORK OR LET THEM STARVE!

Stop letting them bait you into talking this stuff to death. At this point it's a fight to the death not an academic discussion.

[Wiz Imp]

37. Wow. You think calling them CRUEL means I'm defending them?

You see, unlike the MAGA cult, I believe in reality. I believe most people here do too. At least they used to. All the stolen election garbage that gets posted here makes me doubt that sometimes presently. Regardless, when I see people spouting nonsense disconnected from reality, I will speak out. The garbage Jesse Dollemore spouted in that video (after the first couple minutes which were on point about slavery), the outrageous stuff about forcing nursing home residents to work, was total nonsense, totally disconnected from reality. If you want to believe that stuff, fine, go right ahead. However, I expect you might not feel so good about having believed it when it is definitively proven to be completely false.

[Greyhead]

19. I picked cherries for a day.

Back in 65 myself and a friend during summer college break went to Oregon to a job we thought we had. When we arrived the jobs were no longer there.
At 19 we fucked around for a while and soon our money ran out. So we went to job service to find a job, well they didn’t have any except for picking cherries.
We were broke so we went to the orchards and thought this can’t be that hard(remember we were 19). It was fucking hard.
We were the only white people out there, everyone else was an immigrant, some with there with families. They were very friendly and showed use what we needed to do. Ladders up in a tree with a container to catch the cherries. It was scary and our container sounded like bink, bink, bink as the cherries hit the container. Theirs sounds like a machine gun compared to ours.
You are assigned trees and if you didn’t clean the entire tree you had to give up boxes you had picked to the worker that would clean the hard to get parts of your trees. Needless to say we didn’t do a very good job of cleaning the tree.
We only lasted that day and when we left we owed the farmer money. But we sure ate a lot of cherries.

[usaf-vet]

21. If you have never watched a field of experienced crop workers, you have no idea HOW hard and back-breaking it is.

It's essential to recognize that this is a skilled workforce. They have learned through years of on-the-job experience.

These migrant workers know when and where they need to be, and WHO will pay them "well" and treat them with respect for their skills.

If the individuals in and around the White House believe they can substitute untrained workers to pick crops with a short timeline to clean the field of fresh produce and get it to market, they are dumber than the dead fruit left on the vine.

[milestogo]

24. There comes a time when people are no longer able to do physical labor.

You make it to 60 if you're lucky. But the body starts to falter. I've known people who worked at factory jobs for years and at a certain point they just couldn't do it any more.

Working in the fields? For Medicaid recipients? The suggestion shows how out of touch these people are.

[Wiz Imp]

30. Good God. The administration isn't suggesting putting elderly and disabled people to work.

Those people are automatically exempt from the work requirements in Medicaid inn the new bill. There are about 11 million Medicaid recipient between the ages of 19 & 64 who are not disabled and are not currently working - THESE are the people they are talking about. The vast majority of these people have a very good reason for not being able to work and it is in fact cruel (not to mention stupid) to try to force them to work so Trump absolutely deserves criticism for making those people work or take away their Medicaid. But people here need to quit freaking out over something the administration isn't actually doing.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

28. Maddow Blog-Agriculture secretary suggests Medicaid recipients can replace immigrants as farmworkers

If the Trump administration is counting on Americans on Medicaid replacing immigrants on farms, officials should probably start working on a Plan B.

Agriculture secretary suggests Medicaid recipients can replace immigrants as farmworkers.
If the Trump administration is counting on Americans on Medicaid replacing immigrants on farms, officials should probably start working on a Plan B.
www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— hateGOP (@hategop.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T21:36:08.484Z

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/agriculture-secretary-suggests-medicaid-recipients-can-replace-immigra-rcna217572

Soon after, Team Trump reversed course, and then reversed course yet again. As recently as last week, the president talked about developing a temporary pass for immigrants who work on farms, which was the opposite of what his “border czar” said a week earlier.

This week, as Reuters reported, the moving target moved again:

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Tuesday that there will be ‘no amnesty’ for agricultural workers from the Trump administration’s efforts to deport all immigrants in the country illegally. The farm sector has warned that mass deportation of farm workers would disrupt the U.S. food supply.

To be sure, the Cabinet secretary’s comments were newsworthy, though if recent history is any guide, a prominent White House official, including possibly Donald Trump himself, will contradict Rollins very soon.

But of particular interest was something else the agriculture secretary said.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3lthhwchvtw2h

Link to tweet

“I can’t emphasize this enough,” Rollins said. “There will be no amnesty; the mass deportations continue, but in a strategic way; and we move the workforce toward automation and 100% American participation, which with 34 million able-bodied adults on Medicaid, we should be able to do fairly quickly.”

In other words, as the agriculture secretary sees it, there’s no need for concern about farmers losing out on immigrant labor because those workers can be replaced thanks to “automation” and Medicaid beneficiaries......

But what I find myself stuck on is Rollins’ quote in the context of the Republicans’ domestic policy megabill. GOP policymakers approved sweeping and unprecedented cuts to Medicaid, arguing that Americans who lose coverage can simply get jobs that offer health insurance.

It’s against this backdrop that the secretary of agriculture suggested that Medicaid beneficiaries — whose coverage is at risk — can replace immigrants as farmworkers, brushing past the inconvenient fact that farmworkers tend not to get health care coverage.

All of which is to say, if the administration is counting on Americans on Medicaid replacing immigrants on farms, officials should probably start working on a Plan B.

[BoRaGard]

35. How many pecks of pickled peppers will geezers need to pick

to qualify for a prescription?