PENCE TOUTS TRUMP WINS
VP urges Congress: Pass health care bill
Vice President Mike Pence rattled off a laundry list of early term victories for the Trump administration during a speech in Iowa yesterday — including rolling back regulations, naming a Supreme Court justice and reducing illegal immigration — while predicting “better days ahead.”
“In these challenging and divisive times, I know in my heart that there are better days ahead,” Pence said at a fundraiser for Iowa U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst.
“I’m confident because of the strength of our president, because of the support of principled leaders,” Pence said, “because of the courageous men and women who stood in the gap in last fall’s election to give America the leader we needed.”
Pence also called on Congress to bear down and send Trump a bill to repeal Obamacare.
“Iowa’s facing a health care crisis under Obamacare, and it’s high time we take action,” Pence said. “That’s why Congress must come together under the leadership of Donald Trump and relieve Iowa and relieve America, and repeal and replace Obamacare.”
Messages on that major campaign promise to gut the Affordable Care Act have struggled to break through the noise generated by the ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the presidential election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign.
News reports published yesterday suggested Trump will not invoke executive privilege to block former FBI Director James B. Comey from testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee next week.
Press secretary Sean Spicer had said on Friday he didn’t know whether Trump and his lawyers would decide to try to block Comey’s testimony.
Also yesterday, days after Trump announced he would pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, one member of Trump’s team said the president “believes the climate is changing” after numerous administration officials sidestepped the question.
In an interview yesterday, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said Trump “believes the climate is changing and he believes pollutants are part of the equation.”
“That’s where it stands,” Haley said in an interview with CNN that will air this morning. “He knows that it’s changing. He knows the U.S. has to be responsible with it, and that’s what we are going to do. Just because we got out of a club doesn’t mean we don’t care about the environment.”