Elizabeth Warren Trashes Trump For Not Understanding How Paychecks Work

Last updated on January 26th, 2019 at 01:03 pm

Read the biggest developments from Michael Cohen's testimony.

Democratic presidential candidate and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren calmly tore into Donald Trump on Thursday for being completely out of touch with workers struggling through the government shutdown.

In an interview with MSNBC‘s Chris Hayes, Warren pointed to remarks made by Trump and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross earlier in the day that suggest they care very little about the hundreds of thousands of Americans struggling to get by without pay.

“This is the kind of thing that just reminds you these folks have never lived paycheck to paycheck,” she said.

Video:

Warren said:

This is the kind of thing that just reminds you these folks have never lived paycheck to paycheck and they have no understanding of what the lives are like for people who expect to get a paycheck regularly, go out, work for it and build their whole budgets around that, build their whole lives around that. And instead, for Donald Trump, for Wilbur Ross, 800,000 federal workers are just pawns in a political game for them. That is fundamentally wrong. It’s wrong in human terms and it’s the kind of thing that just makes us realize these are not the guys who should be running our government.

Trump has no idea how paychecks work

Earlier on Thursday, Donald Trump suggested that people will still be able to get groceries without money because stores will simply give them food on credit. As PoliticusUSA‘s Jason Easley wrote, this is the latest proof that Trump “isn’t just out of touch with working people. He is out of touch with reality.”

To make matters worse, Trump‘s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross openly wondered why workers were struggling to feed their families. He suggested that it would be easy to get loans to hold them over until the government opens back up.

“True, the people might have to pay a little bit of interest,” he said. “But the idea that it’s ‘paycheck or zero’ is not a really valid idea.”

Ultimately, It’s no surprise that Trump or key members of his administration are fine with a years-long government shutdown, no matter how many workers miss paychecks. After all, none of them seems to understand how paychecks actually work.

Follow Sean Colarossi on Facebook and Twitter

Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.