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

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.

"My sources are sharing memos that have gone out," Reickhoff posted, in social media activity highlighted by Maddow in the segment. "Job offers to new employees that have a start date after Feb 8 are now being rescinded. This includes some folks who have already moved to new cities with their families. Doctors, nurses, counselors. Recruiting is also stopping and open job postings are being pulled from USAJOBS."

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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."

"Whatever the country thought they were voting for when they voted for Donald Trump for president, I think it's safe to say that screwing over veterans and messing with their health care ... was probably not part of the sales pitch, right?" Maddow added. "But Trump did try instituting an across-the-board hiring freeze at the V.A. So people who want to work for veterans in that system were being told, no, we're being shown the door. Only outrage and public pushback backed them off that."

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