“Mean” is when you make fun of someone’s shirt. This bill isn’t “mean.”

There’s this thing people are saying here recently and it needs to stop. Now. The thing they’re saying? The GOP “healthcare” bill is mean.

These were President Donald’s words on Tuesday.

“Mean” is reportedly the word President Donald Trump used Tuesday to describe the House GOP’s American Health Care Act, which passed Congress’ lower chamber last month. Per the Associated Press, “One source said Trump called the House bill ‘mean, mean, mean’ and said, ‘We need to be more generous, more kind.’ The other source said Trump used a vulgarity to describe the House bill and told the senators, ‘We need to be more generous.'”

Now everybody is saying it. I see Trump’s words quoted and adopted in the media and by critics, and I hear it from my friends on social media, as well. We all seem to agree that the Republican plan is “mean.”

There are two problems with this. First, we should never let Donald Trump dictate our vocabulary on general principle. For a lot of reasons. I mean, have you decided that we should just take whatever comes out of his mouth as factual and reliable and good faith? If so, and I mean no offense here, you may be the stupidest person who ever lived.

Second, the GOP plan isn’t mean. It’s homicidal. It seeks to kick millions of people off insurance, it slashes funding left and right, it opens the door to allowing insurance carriers to start denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, and on and on and on. Make no mistake – people are going to die. Some who don’t die will get sicker and others will survive only after having a lifetime of hard work and savings wiped out by medical bankruptcy so the richest among us can reap another tax break.

“Mean” is when you make fun of somebody’s new shirt. When you kill people, that’s “murder.” When you take all their money, that’s “theft.”

When you use Donald’s words – and I can’t help suspecting this is a calculated bit of rhetorical engineering on the part of someone at Breitbart – you let the GOP off the hook. “Mean” isn’t a good thing, but it’s trivial compared to “murderous.” We all went to high school and while there we dealt with mean people. Horrid little hateful bitchy people, for sure, but we survived. Some the worse for wear, to be sure, but that mean girl junior year didn’t steal your meds and leave you to die alone in the parking lot out behind the gym.

When you use Donald’s words, you reduce the charge from a felony to a petty misdemeanor. Instead of 20 to life, you’ve let Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell skate with a slap on the wrist.

The GOP isn’t being mean. They’re killing people, they’re bankrupting people, they’re destroying families.

Stop it. Stop it now. Call the Republican health plan what it is: attempted murder with millions and millions of counts of felony larceny.