Rep. Jamie Raskin was dripping with sarcasm as he responded with a smile on live TV to a personal attack from Donald Trump.
The president had targeted the Maryland Democrat in an unhinged Truth Social post less than two hours earlier, mocking his appearance and intelligence. The tirade came as Trump implored House Republicans to unite behind his mammoth spending bill, which remains stalled amid intraparty squabbling.
“Rep. Jamie Raskin, a third rate Democrat politician, has no idea what is in our fantastic Tax Cut Bill, nor would he understand it if he did,” Trump wrote on Wednesday night. “This DOPE has been consistently losing to me for YEARS, and I love watching his ugly face as he is forced to consistently concede DEFEAT TO TRUMP — And tonight should be another of those nights. Raskin is a bad politician, and a TOTAL LOSER!
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell asked Raskin about the screed on The Last Word. The lawmaker suspects that he “upset” Trump by suggesting that the president doesn’t seem to know what’s in his own bill.
“Apparently it came to his attention, and he just launched into one of his inimitable diatribes,” said Raskin, who serves as ranking member of the powerful House Judiciary committee.
“I suppose I don’t mind being called a loser several times by Donald Trump, given that he’s our only president who has lost the popular vote for president in two different elections,” Raskin added, noting that when Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020, “it upset him so much that he incited an insurrection against the Constitution, against his own vice president, and against the Congress of the United States.”
“I suppose I don’t like being called ugly by Donald Trump, but not everybody can live up to his exquisite levels of handsomeness and personal physical grace,” he went on.
“I would consider myself probably in the large majority of American men who simply can’t live up to the exquisite standards that he set and his extraordinary popularity with American women,” he added.
He threw in a swipe at Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” which extends tax cuts and slashes social safety net programs like Medicaid.
“The real sin is having an ugly bill that throws millions of people off health care, and an ugly soul,” he said. “And people obviously can’t control their looks. So Donald Trump should try to be a little more gentle and public about that.”
The GOP’s Medicaid-busting tax scheme is filled with poison pills antithetical to the values of our people. So I wrote a proper preamble for their big, ugly bill. pic.twitter.com/BoUl0wceRa
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (@RepRaskin) July 2, 2025
In a meeting with Republican lawmakers on Wednesday, Trump seemed confused about what his signature legislative package actually does, NOTUS reported. Trump reportedly told the lawmakers that Republicans should not touch Medicaid if they want to win elections—but the bill would impact millions of Americans who rely on Medicaid coverage.
Raskin may have also gotten on Trump’s nerves with a scathing speech he gave on the House floor about the bill on Wednesday, asking that the “preamble” be added to the congressional record.
He said:
“We the billionaires, and our King, in order to deform and sicken our union, establish injustice, ensure domestic servility, weaken our people’s defenses, undermine the general welfare and reserve for ourselves and our posterity staggering debt servitude for eternity, do hereby instruct the Republicans in Congress to strip 17 million people of their health care, increase copays, deductibles and premiums for everyone else, cut 42 million people off nutritional assistance, increase the national debt by $4 trillion, trash renewable energy systems, increase our electric bills for the carbon kings, all to weaken and destroy the Constitution of the people of these United States of America.”
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