A House Republican has aired a laundry list of grievances with his own party, including President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick began by slamming his GOP colleagues for failing to prioritize healthcare and the affordability crisis, which he described as the most pressing issues for constituents.
“If you don’t have a better plan, then get on board with ours,” Fitzpatrick told CNN, encouraging lawmakers to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies before they expire at the end of the year.
“Doing nothing is not an option,” he continued.
Fitzpatrick, 51, has represented a purple district north of Philadelphia since 2019 that includes all of Bucks County. The former FBI agent, who is engaged to Fox News’ White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, was re-elected by 13 points last fall, despite Democrat Kamala Harris narrowly winning his district.
That makes Fitzpatrick just one of three House Republicans leading a district that Harris carried. Now, he is distancing himself from the Trump administration’s failures on affordability, which the president claims is a Democrat-led hoax.
“Affordability is such a crisis in this country right now,” he said. “For everything from childcare, to transportation, to housing, to food, to fuel, and health care. People are squeezed right now.”
Asked by CNN host Manu Raju if Republicans are focusing on affordability enough, Fitzpatrick said, “I don’t think they have.”
Raju followed up, “Because the President himself called affordability a democratic scam this week—”
Fitzpatrick cut the host off.
“I don’t believe that to be true at all,” he said, not hesitating to put himself at odds with Trump. “No, it’s real. Believe me. I hear it every day back home. It’s real.”
Recent surveys, including those conducted by right-wing pollsters, show that Trump, 79, is bleeding support from independents. Trump’s obsession with tariffs has hit Americans in their pocketbooks, and multiple polls cite the economy as the driving factor behind them no longer approving of Trump’s performance.
Fractures in the MAGA coalition, which appeared rock-solid after the 2024 election, have led to internal fighting since the summer, highlighted by the explosive departures of the one-time Trump sycophants Marjorie Taylor Greene and Elon Musk.
Fitzpatrick’s displeasure with MAGA 2.0 goes beyond the economy. While he was not asked about the Epstein files, which have emerged as the other defining controversy of the administration, he criticized Hegseth for ignoring experienced military leaders and Trump for being “too deferential” in negotiations with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
“Vladimir Putin is an unelected dictator,” he said. “Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia has kidnapped close to 20,000 Ukrainian children. It is genocide. It is war crimes, and we have to call that out for what it is. You cannot equivocate between, you know, Zelensky and Putin and say, well, ‘They just need to get along. They need to work it out.’”
Not only would he handle negotiations differently, but Fitzpatrick said he would also run the military differently than the scandal-scarred Hegseth.
“I think it’s really, really important when you lead the United States military, that you do so in a way that’s deferential to the people that have higher rank and people that understand it,” he said. “And I wish that there was more of an approach by the secretary to listen more to the people who have been there a long time.”
Fitzpatrick finished his sit-down with Raju by saying he fears that Republicans are squandering their majorities in the House and Senate.
“You don’t have opportunities in the majority very often, and when you do, you want to be able to get your legislative items that you worked your whole life to the floor,” he said. “And I think a lot of our colleagues are frustrated that their legislation has not been brought to the floor.”
Fitzpatrick said he feels the GOP has its priorities wrong.
“Affordability should be the name of the game,” he said. “Every bill we bring to the floor should be focused on lowering the cost of living for people who need it most, not, you know, voting to condemn the horrors of socialism, not voting for NIL—name, image, and likeness for college sports. Why are we focusing on that? That’s not what our constituents care about.
The post GOP Rep Airs Laundry List of Grievances With His Own Party appeared first on The Daily Beast.
