On Thursday's The Ed Show, Ed Schultz warned all the senior citizens in his audience to not be charmed by Republican Senator Marco Rubio saving Nancy Reagan from a fall because, according to Schultz, the policies of the "pretty boy" will be "downright ugly."
Teasing his Psycho Talk segment, Schultz told viewers that even though Rubio "got some good press this week for saving Nancy Reagan from a fall" to be wary of him because "when it comes to the rest of the American senior citizens, Rubio wants to leave them high and dry."
The following is a complete transcript of the segment as it was aired on the August 25 edition of MSNBC's The Ed Show:
ED SCHULTZ,TEASING SEGMENT: Florida Senator Marco Rubio got some good press this week for saving Nancy Reagan from a fall at a Reagan Library event. But when it comes to the rest of the American senior citizens, Rubio wants to leave them high and dry. He's coming up in Psycho Talk. Stay with us.
...
SCHULTZ: And in Psycho Talk tonight, Florida Senator Marco Rubio. He's on the attack against the Big Three. Now Rubio is an early favorite to take the number two spot on the Republican presidential ticket next year thanks to his Tea Party ideology and his pretty boy looks. But his policies are downright ugly.
During a speech at the Reagan Library this week, Rubio had this to say about programs like Social Security and Medicare.
(Begin video clip)
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), FLORIDA: These programs actually weakened us as a people. You see, almost forever it was institutions and society that assumed the role of taking care of one another. If someone was sick in your family, you took care of them. If a neighbor met misfortune, you took care of them. You saved for your retirement and for your future because you had to. But all of that changed when the government began to assume those responsibilities. And as government crowded out the institutions in our society that did these things traditionally, it weakened our people.
(End video clip)
SCHULTZ: I'll tell you what's weakening our people, political hacks like Marco Rubio, who want to get rid of social safety nets. Before Medicare - check this out - half of American seniors didn't have hospital insurance. Almost a third of Americans lived in poverty. But after Medicare was signed into law, the poverty rate among senior citizens plummeted from 30 percent to around 10 percent in just 30 years. And it's the same story with Social Security. According to the Census Bureau data, 20 million more Americans would live below the poverty line if Social Security did not exist. Forty five percent of senior citizens would be poorer. And in Rubio's state of Florida alone, Social Security lifts more than - count it - a million people out of poverty.
But these right wingers remain determined to dismantle the Big Three, no matter how many Americans suffer. For Marco Rubio to say programs like Medicare and Social Security weaken Americans is flat out Psycho Talk.
- Geoffrey Dickens is the Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Click here [1] to follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter.