Trump’s candidate fails in Alabama Senate primary
OUTSIDER WINS Roy Moore’s 9point victory an embarrassment for president
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump was forced to delete tweets posted in support of a candidate for the Republican ticket for the Senate, who lost despite the US president’s backing.
He also got word his party was giving up on the latest move to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Trump recovered enough by Wednesday to post a tweet congratulating the candidate who won, Roy Moore, a former judge backed by the party’s extreme conservatives, including former White House aide Steve Bannon. Moore is running for Alabama seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
This couldn’t have been easy for the president, who had endorsed Luther Strange, the sitting senator nominated to succeed Sessions, and had boasted that the candidate’s poll numbers had shot up because of and after Trump’s endorsement. The poll bump, if at all, wasn’t so.
The president deleted at least three posts on Twitter pertaining to this senate race, raising concerns among ethics watchdog bodies that contend the tweets be treated as presidential communications and thus be archived as part of official records as all other White House messages and documents.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Republican leadership in the senate announced they will not bring to a vote a legislation proposed by two of its members to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law.
President Trump had thrown his full weight behind the new attempt in the hope of delivering on a key election promise he had expected to get done easily, given hisparty’s single-mindedpursuit of its withdrawal from the day it was signed into law by President Obama in 2010.
Trump has vented his frustration publicly, calling senate Republicans to change voting rules if necessary to pass it, having failed twice before. “We will have the votes for Healthcare but not for the reconciliation deadline of Friday, after which we need 60. Get rid of Filibuster Rule!” he tweeted on Wednesday.
The president conceded, forced by the Republican leadership, there was no way they could pass the proposed legislation — called the Graham-Cassidy bill after its chief sponsors — this week. And that’s one more attempt ending in failure, adding to Trump’s list of legislative nonachievements.