For now, it’s unclear if Trump will be able to deliver on his promise to increase prosperity by bringing more manufacturing back to the US. Rhode Island was a hub of industry 100 years ago, and state leaders have struggled for decades to bolster the state’s economy. So is Trump on the right track by trying to wind back globalization or is his approach a recipe for chaos and uncertainty? Does voter discontent with the status quo offer an opening for Rhode Island Republicans? And is Trump’s overall approach good or bad for the state? This week on Political Roundtable, Ian Donnis goes in depth with the Republican leader in the Rhode Island House of Representatives, Mike Chippendale.
TRANSCRIPT
This has been edited for length and clarity
Donnis: We’re going to talk shortly about President Trump and his controversial tariffs, but I want to start with a few other topics. Mike Chippendale, you’re a smart, well spoken guy and respected across the aisle. You know quite a bit about state government from your years in the House of Representatives. Republicans need a candidate for governor next year. Have you given any thought to being that guy?
Chippendale: No, no, I haven’t given any thought to it. You know, I’ve been asked by certain people over the years, but I am very happy in the legislature. It’s the place where I feel the most impact can come to the people we represent.
Donnis: Who do you expect to be the GOP candidate next year? Is it going to be Ashley Kalus?
Chippendale: I have no expectations, because I haven’t really heard anyone commit. Some rumblings in the background, but I’m unaware of anybody who has really gone out there and committed.
Donnis: Anchor Medical Associates announced it’s going to be closing around the start of June or end of June. This will leave about 25,000 Rhode Islanders without a physician. Attorney General Peter Neronha has been warning for years about a worsening health crisis, but I wonder if you think the state has fallen down in responding to this situation?
Chippendale: Absolutely and well before Attorney General Neronha was even in office, I had brought up our anemic Medicaid reimbursement rates and House Oversight Committee over the years, as the leading cause for practitioners of every discipline, from CNAs up to brain surgeons leaving the state. We’re seeing that now being amplified more and more leaving. When Brown [University Health] took over at Rhode Island Hospital, we saw a lot of doctors leaving again. If you can drive 20 minutes into Massachusetts or Connecticut, make 30% more in your salary, you’d be a fool not to do it. And the state of Rhode Island has systemically failed to support our health care system, and the people of our state are paying dearly for it.
Donnis: This is a long-term problem that can not be solved overnight. What do you think the state should be doing to respond?
Chippendale: Well, I think again, initially, the first thing that we can do that will have the most impact is to make our Medicaid reimbursement rates comparative to our neighbors. Because when there’s such a disparity in such a small state, as I pointed out earlier, people will drive that extra 20, 15 minutes to a job that’s going to pay them considerably more. Long-term, and our office of health insurance commissioner has said over the years that we are too heavy in regulations, insurance-wise, and just regulations in general. So we need to pare back on that. We need to let doctors be doctors, rather than processors of paperwork and chasers of insurance money. I have observed in my own life that our Rhode Island healthcare providers have become more like assembly lines, where we are clients, we’re not patients, and it’s led to a deterioration of the quality of care, and for me, it’s led to me migrating to the professionals in Boston, because I feel safer there. And I urge people to do the same.
Donnis: Let’s shift gears to talk about the big national story of the week, President Trump, and how he’s backtracked on tariffs after this caused panic in financial markets and increased talk of a recession. If the president is going to announce these tariffs in an effort to bring more manufacturing or negotiate more favorable deals with other countries and then pull them back when there’s an adverse reaction, what is the point of this?
Chippendale: Well, I think first of all, you’re starting off with a presupposition that he backtracked. I don’t think we know for certain if this was part of his plan, if this was always something that he was potentially looking to happen once there was a reaction. But I do know this — that every single thing he does, as soon as he does, it is met with robust criticism from from the far left, the radicals on the left and and frankly, the media as well. And what we see is, you know, oh my goodness, he’s killing the stock market. Look at its plunging, and then it starts to go up. Oh my goodness, what he’s doing, he’s making all of his friends rich. The guy can’t win for trying. So I ignore that noise and it doesn’t mean anything to me.
Donnis: We’re hearing a lot from the Trump administration about efforts to cut the government. There are four main areas that constitute the great majority of federal spending, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the defense budget. So why do you think there’s this focus on cutting federal agencies and employees when that is a relatively small sliver of federal spending?
Chippendale: Because we are bloated. Our government is bloated. We see it on a state level, we see it on a local level. We certainly see it on a national level. I think trimming fat is good. It’s something that we haven’t seen from the unit party of DC Democrats and Republicans over decades. And this is a man who has a business mind. His acumen is in the business world. And when you are down and you’re not able to generate more funds, you have to either become more efficient or sell your product at a higher rate, and obviously not being in a product selling business, the only thing that we have available to save money is to become more efficient. Our national debt is through the roof. The interest on that debt is climbing, and the only way to really get that under control is to cut spending.
Donnis: Critics say efforts by DOGE to cut the CDC, the FDA, the National Institutes of Health, money that supports education and research is going to cost more than it will save. What do you make of that argument?
Chippendale: Critics are going to criticize? That’s what I make of that. I don’t pay any heed to people like that. This guy hasn’t even been in office for his first 100 days, which is usually when folks start to measure the accomplishment of any newly sworn in president. But yet it’s just constant criticism, as we saw in his first term and throughout the entire time when he was running for a second term, it’s a visceral reaction by people who just don’t like him. And again, we can get caught up in that, and we can go in circles and accomplish nothing, or we can let the guy do the job that he was elected by 80 million Americans to do.
Donnis: You are known as a strong supporter of gun rights. One of the issues being debated at the legislature this year is a possible ban on new sales of what some people call assault-style rifles. Tell us your argument against why this should move forward?
Chippendale: It’s unconstitutional, plain and simple. The courts have already made this determination. It’s unfortunate that folks who have a lack of understanding what the Second Amendment is about and have an irrational guttural hatred of firearms because they make them feel icky or whatever want to try to eliminate a constitutionally protected God-given right. It has been demonstrated that this will have no tangible impact on reduction of crime. Criminals are always going to be criminals. Firearms will not disappear, even quote, unquote, military-style assault rifles or whatever today’s nomenclature is from the left. They won’t disappear, and therefore they will always be out there. Bad people will continue to use them. We as Americans have a birthright and a constitutionally protected right to be able to defend ourselves, our families, our homes and our towns and our nation with firearms. Antonia
Donnis: Antonia Farzan recently reported in the Providence Journal on how a proposal to create a public developer model to create more housing in Rhode Island has attracted support from both the right and the left, and that you support this. Tell us why you support this proposal.
Chippendale: Yeah and this is an interesting little overlap of left and right. I support it in my town. I don’t support it generally in every municipality, because I don’t think it would work in every municipality. In very small towns where the government is run by a small amount of people who are intimately familiar with the town, the public developer model like this can work if it’s framed and put together in the right way. And the plan that I had worked on with professionals in this area of developing affordable housing is catered to the demographics and population of the town of Foster in an attempt to get our affordable housing stock up to at least up to twice what we have now for the immediate future. And that will offer relief to our elderly and disabled residents, keeping them in their community, and allow their homes to free up for our younger residents to purchase.
Donnis: A poll released in February by the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, and conducted by respected pollster Joseph Flemin, found that nearly 50% of Rhode Islanders think the state is on the wrong track. Why has that not translated into more gains for Republicans in the General Assembly?
Chippendale: I’ve written on this extensively. I’ve published, you know, on social media my feelings on this. I categorize it as a Democratic Stockholm Syndrome. It’s an unfortunate dynamic where the people in this state will scream every year, vote them all out, except my guy, because he got me that really low-numbered license plate. That mentality is what’s killing the state.
Donnis: President Trump has been very critical of the media. He calls the media the enemy of the people. He tried unsuccessfully, banishing the AP from White House news conferences. He’s threatened to punish virtually every major TV channel. You during a news conference earlier this session, talked about the important role that the media has in getting information out to the public. Does President Trump need to come up with a different tune on the media?
Chippendale: No, I don’t think so. President Trump has a very different experience than I do with the media. While I don’t find the media coverage always, to be fair, the fourth estate, at least as it once was in the great times of my younger years. played a very important role. From his experience, they have been the tip of the spear, in many cases, to cause his administration’s inability to get things done. So I’m going to let him view the media how he does through his prism, and I’ll view it through mine.
Donnis: Is he being a little thin-skinned considering how he has a broad platform
Chippendale: No, no, I mean, the media has lied and perpetuated lies, perpetuated lies about him from the beginning, from the Russian collusion hoax all the way through his entire first term, and they’re doing it now. I think he’s well founded in his opposition to the folks in the media right now.
Donnis: Well, he also seems to respond sharply to accurate reports about his administration. Finally, the inspector general proposal has been around in Rhode Island for many years. One of your colleagues has introduced a bill this week to try and move that forward. This has not moved forward for many years. At the same time, you and I are both old enough to remember when Rhode Island had had a master lever and that was banished after a multi-year effort. Do supporters of the inspector general need to create a more popular, mass effort to build support for this idea?,
Chippendale: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s what you’re seeing now. This bill has been put in since at least 2002 and over the last couple of years, Representative Nardone has really worked to reach out to inspectors general on a federal level, bringing them into Rhode Island, our neighboring state of Massachusetts, Inspector General Jeff Shapiro, and he’s brought him into Rhode Island. We’ve developed a piece of legislation that is more comprehensive, and we see polling numbers that indicate over 75% of Rhode Islanders support this, despite what my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle might want to tell you about constitutional conventions and all of these other silly and ridiculously transparent attempts to try to squash this initiative. This is something that the state of Rhode Island wants, but regrettably, one or two people stand in the way, and those one or two people are the ones who will have to answer for.
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Advocates have been trying for about 15 years to reduce how payday lenders can charge the equivalent of an annual percentage rate of 260%. A fresh attempt to limit payday lending launched this week. Will it make a difference? You can read more about that in my Friday TGIF politics column posting around 4 this afternoon on X, Bluesky, Threads, Facebook, and at thepublicsradio.org/TGIF.
That’s it for our show. Political Roundtable is a production of The Public’s Radio. Our producer this week is Mareva Lindo. Our editor is Alex Nunes. I’m Ian Donnis, and I’ll see you on the radio.
