MAGA backfire has made 'cruel intentions' more obvious than intended: Nobel Prize winner

When Donald Trump was running against Democrats in the United States' 2024 presidential race he focused on the economy relentlessly, especially inflation, and promised to lower prices "on Day 1."

But Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, during that race, repeatedly warned that Trump was not sincere about helping the working class. Now, in a Friday column published on his Substack page, Krugman argued that the current partial shutdown of the United States' federal government is inspiring Republicans to show their "cruel intensions" much sooner than planned.

"Federal funding for SNAP, the nutritional aid program still often referred to as food stamps, ends tonight," Krugman said. "This will have catastrophic impacts on 42 million Americans, the great majority of them children, elderly or disabled. Millions more Americans are about to discover that health insurance has become vastly more expensive, in many cases unaffordable. Why are these terrible things happening? At a basic level, they're happening because Republicans want them to happen."

The former New York Times columnist continued, "Drastic cuts in food stamps and health care programs were central planks in Project 2025, which is indeed the Trump Administration’s policy platform, and were written into legislation in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed last summer. But the consequences of these cruel intentions weren't supposed to be this obvious this early."

Harris and other Democrats were vehement critics of the Heritage Foundation's far-right Project 2025 proposals, and Krugman believes that Trump was being totally disingenuous when he claimed to know nothing about Project 2025.

However the GOP, according to Krugman, didn't want its attacks on safety-net programs to become obvious before the 2026 midterms.

"Why the backloading?" Krugman argues. "Presumably, Republicans believed that by the time Americans woke up to what was happening, the GOP would have effectively consolidated one-party rule, making future elections irrelevant. Instead, however, the mask is being ripped off right now, well ahead of schedule."