U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson went out of his way to attack male gamers on CNN this morning while defending plans to cut Medicaid funding.

The criticism came on the heels of the US House of Representatives voting to advance a bill Tuesday night that could cut up to $880 billion from Medicaid.

While being challenged by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on whether vulnerable people would be kicked off Medicaid under the newly approved budget, Johnson denied this would happen.

Though he admitted people would likely be removed from the program if the bill is passed in the senate and signed into law by President Trump, Johnson declared that no one who deserved the program would have to worry.

Low-income single mothers would stay on the program, according to Johnson. But “29-year-old males sitting on their couch playing video games” are undeserving of government assistance and will have their funds revoked under the new plan.

Johnson then declared that if you’re a man playing games, “we’re going to find those guys and put them back to work!” Removing government assistance from men who play games would then incentivize them to get a job, according to Johnson.

While many conservatives in the comment section agreed with Speaker Johnson’s comments – one person even professed a belief that male gamers are the “bums of society” – others were more critical. For example, one user wrote in a viral response:

“Medicaid isn’t some all-you-can-eat buffet for lazy bums. It covers kids, seniors, disabled folks, and yes, plenty of working adults who still can’t afford healthcare because their wages are stuck in 1995 while rent and insulin prices skyrocket. But Johnson doesn’t want you thinking about that. He wants you angry at some imaginary guy in his underwear playing Call of Duty so you don’t notice where the real money is going. Because while he’s busy wagging his finger at the poor, he’s got the other hand in the cookie jar, shoveling Medicaid dollars into tax breaks for billionaires. His own budget plan slashes $880 billion from Medicaid while handing $4.5 trillion in cuts to the people who already own half the country. That’s the real con…let’s be honest, if he was really hunting fraud, he’d start with the tax loopholes big corporations use to dodge (DOGE) their fair share. He’d be kicking down doors at hedge funds, not hospital waiting rooms. But that’s not the game he’s playing.”

Speaker Johnson’s comments on male gamers is just another escalation in attacks on gamers in recent months.

Last year, conservative pundit Glenn Beck declared he was banning his daughters from dating gamers, while Daily Wire pundit Matt Walsh declared that men who game and watch anime are morbidly obese on top of being satanic losers.

What they all forget is that an extremely large percentage of gamers are women. Unfortunately, the anti-gamer hysteria of the 90s has returned.