Republicans will 'pay a price' if they give in to Trump demand: ex-GOP lawmaker

Republican lawmakers will be putting themselves in a "vulnerable position" if they go all-in to hand Donald Trump the big win he is demanding which, in the long run, could cost many of them their jobs.

During an appearance on MSNBC's "Way Too Early," ex-Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) warned his former colleagues that whenever reconciliation is used to force through a budget bill, particularly one with unpopular cuts, the party in power faces a wipe-out in the next election.

Speaking with fill-in host Katty Kay, Curbelo claimed the GOP is in a bad spot if they bow to Trump's will on his "big beautiful" budget bill that he is demanding be passed by July 4th.

With Kay noting that Democrats see the bill, as written now, as a big win for them in the next election, Curbelo responded, "Katty, any time a party uses reconciliation they pay a price in the next election. It's happened to Republicans to Democrats over the last two decades."

"This is an ambitious bill; there's a lot in it that Republicans and Democrats agree on," he added. "But of course, that's not what people are going to focus on come campaign season. It's going to be the cuts, right? What is being cut? What is being taken away? And without question, you're seeing some senators now trying to scale back those cuts or at least delay them so that they don't have such a big impact in the '26 election."

"The calculation that the Republicans seem to have made was that you don't cut Medicare because older people vote, but you can get away with cutting Medicaid because those people don't vote. Is that actually going to pan out, do you think for them?" Kay asked.

"Well look, and going back to these coalitions, Republicans now have a lot of lower-income voters," he replied which led Kay to interject, "Rural voters who could be hit."

"So a lot of these people who say don't vote yes, they actually do vote, and they're voting for you," he continued. "And now you're threatening to depress those voters. Maybe they come out and vote against you, maybe they don't turn out at all and you leave a lot of these swing district Republicans in a very vulnerable position."

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