'Furious' public pushback forced Trump to walk back bid to stiff vets: Rachel Maddow [View all]

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https://www.rawstory.com/trump-va-care/

'Furious' public pushback forced Trump to walk back bid to stiff vets: Rachel Maddow

Matthew Chapman
January 23, 2025 9:59PM ET

President Donald Trump was forced to back down from one of his most unpopular policies this week, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow said Thursday night: an underhanded move to sabotage health care at the Veterans Administration.

"U.S. veterans, including the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Paul Rieckhoff, started reporting publicly on what appears to be Trump's new hiring freeze at the V.A.," said Maddow.

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"This is throwing a massive hand grenade into the largest healthcare system in America that serves millions of vets," he continued. "It’s already hurting morale and retention — and will impact recruiting at V.A. forever. It’s reckless and stupid. And intentional."

The good news, Maddow added, is that "turns out sounding the alarm and pushing back sometimes stops them from doing some of the worst things they want to do today."

"After the outcry from veterans and members of Congress, including Republicans, V.A. backtracked on this," said Maddow. "They decided after it was a full freeze from the beginning, they decided instead now they'll exempt about 300,000 health care specific jobs from this freeze. And that, apparently, is something they had not intended to do until they got a furious and very public pushback against what they had otherwise tried to get away with. A salutary moment. Stick a pin in that."

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