President Donald Trump is creating a Marie Antoinette-like problem for Republicans by refusing to provide additional funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the government shutdown, even though he used reserve funds to pay military salaries, one of the president's former lawyers argued in a new Substack essay on Sunday.

Michael Cohen, the former lawyer for the Trump Organization, argued in the essay that the decision not to provide additional funding for SNAP creates a situation where "mothers, fathers, seniors, children, are reduced to pawns on the chessboard of partisan brinkmanship."

"Let’s be crystal clear about what’s happening here: politicians are gambling with people’s ability to eat," Cohen wrote. "This isn’t about policy; it’s about cruelty as leverage."

According to estimates, the federal government is about $4 billion short of the money it needs to fully fund SNAP. Trump has said he will not release additional funding for the program, and several high-profile Republicans have called on Democrats to overlook the potential impact of SNAP running out of money to sign on to the president's funding bill.

"There is nothing theoretical about hunger," said Cohen, who added that he went without food for three days while he was in solitary confinement.

"It’s agony," he continued. "It’s humiliation. It’s a slow, gnawing violence that changes you."

"Let’s stop pretending that this is about budgets or debt ceilings or continuing resolutions," he added. "This is about values; or the lack thereof. It’s about a country that once prided itself on feeding the world now failing to feed its own. It’s about children going to bed hungry in the richest nation on earth while lawmakers hold press conferences about 'fiscal restraint.'"

Read the entire essay by clicking here.