Bill Rendle

Jesse Watters Presses Abdul El-Sayed on His $4 Trillion Healthcare Plan — The Debate Gets Heated Jesse Watters: You want socialized healthcare. Abdul, how much is that going to cost? Abdul El-Sayed: It’s going to cost the average Michigander a whole lot less than they pay right now. But let me remind you, the guy who voted to raise prescription drug prices 19 times, 19 times, is now asking about healthcare costs. I’m saying I want to bring your costs down. The price of this program would be substantially less for everyday people who can’t afford healthcare and are worried about losing their coverage when they lose their jobs. Jesse Watters: Give me the total number. Abdul El-Sayed: While you’re talking about the broader national budget, I’m more interested in the everyday budgets Michiganders are dealing with. That’s exactly the budget Donald Trump and Mike Rogers are blowing up right now. I don’t understand why you’re on the side of billionaires, Jesse, rather than everyday Michiganders. Jesse Watters: No, because I don’t want you guys to blow the country up. Do you know how much the federal budget is right now? Abdul El-Sayed: Neither do I. But if you want to talk about budgets, let’s talk about them. Someone who used to work on your channel, one of the hosts on The Five, wanted to raise the military budget to $1.5 trillion, and you don’t seem upset about that. What, so we can fight a war we don’t know how to get out of, while gas prices rise to $5 a gallon? That doesn’t make sense to me, Jesse. I want to talk about the things that actually matter to people. To me, that’s healthcare and childcare. Jesse Watters: I have a feeling you don’t even know how much money the government spends every year. Do you? Abdul El-Sayed: The question, Jesse, is that I know what Michiganders are dealing with. Jesse Watters: All right, so you don’t know. Let me tell you what it is: $7 trillion a year. And your plan to take over the healthcare system costs $4 trillion. Here’s the problem with that. To your point, I’m not very good at math, and I don’t think you’re very good at math either. Abdul El-Sayed: Clearly, you don’t seem to care about the numbers either. I don’t think most Americans want to spend that much money on military escapades while the people stranded on the USS Abraham Lincoln can’t even get a sausage for breakfast. I think we could do a lot better with our money, Jesse. That’s where you and I disagree. Jesse Watters: Mike Rogers disagrees with you. I think if you spend $4 trillion, everything else is going to get really expensive. You’ll look back at Bidenflation and wish you were back there. But you brought up foreign policy— Abdul El-Sayed: We can talk about inflation. Everywhere I go in Michigan, people tell me they’ve never had to worry so much about life being unaffordable. I get it. Donald Trump likes to blame everything on his predecessor. But let’s be clear: this is Donald Trump’s economy, and he’s about to make things much worse because he’s engaged in a vanity war with the prime minister of Canada. I’m from Michigan, and you’re from New York, so you know Canadians. They’re the only people I know who apologize before they’ve even done anything! Now they’re raising tariffs to 50 percent. What’s that going to do to inflation? Jesse Watters: Yeah, what is spending $4 trillion going to do? I think it’s going to make things a lot worse. But you brought up the war. Are you glad the Ayatollah is dead?