President slams leader McConnell for Senate crash of health repeal
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump scolded his own party’s Senate leader Wednesday for the crash of the Republican drive to repeal and rewrite the Affordable Care Act, using Twitter to demand of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, “Why not done?”
Trump fired back at the Kentucky Republican for telling a home-state audience this week the president had “not been in this line of work before, and I think had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the democratic process.”
The exchange came less than two weeks after Senate rejection of the GOP effort to scuttle President Barack Obama’s health care law, probably McConnell’s most jolting defeat as leader and Trump’s worst legislative loss. The House approved its version in May, but its Senate failure — thanks to defecting GOP senators — marked the collapse of the party’s attempt to deliver on vows to erase Obama’s statute it’s showcased since the law’s 2010 enactment.
“Senator Mitch McConnell said I had ‘excessive expectations,’ but I don’t think so,” Trump tweeted. “After 7 years of hearing Repeal & Replace, why not done?”
Trump had repeatedly used Twitter to pressure McConnell to find the votes to approve the health care bill, even saying hours after its failure that GOP senators “look like fools.”
But his tweet Wednesday was an unusually personal reproach of the 33-year Senate veteran, who is deeply respected by GOP lawmakers.
Trump will need him to guide the next major Republican priority, a tax system overhaul, through the chamber. And he might be a useful White House ally as investigations progress into collusion between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign.
For his part, McConnell’s statement was surprising because he is typically among the capital’s most guarded politicians. When it comes to criticizing Trump, he’s seldom gone further than saying he wishes he would stop tweeting, and often refused to chime in when Trump made widely condemned comments during last year’s campaign.
McConnell told the Rotary Club of Florence, Ky., on Monday that people think Congress is underperforming partly because “artificial deadlines, unrelated to the reality of the complexity of legislating, may not have been fully understood.”
He added that 52 is “a challenging number,” a reference to the GOP’s scant 52-48 Senate majority. “You saw that on full display a couple of weeks ago,” when McConnell failed to muster a majority to push three different Republican health care plans through the chamber.
McConnell’s Kentucky remarks also drew a tweet from Dan Scavino Jr., the White House social media director.
“More excuses,” wrote Scavino, one of Trump’s more outspoken loyalists. “SenateMajLdr must have needed another 4 years in addition to the 7 years - to repeal and replace Obamacare.”
Also joining the fray was Fox News host Sean Hannity, a close Trump ally.
“SenateMajLdr No Senator, YOU are a WEAK, SPINELESS leader who does not keep his word and you need to Retire!” Hannity tweeted.
Hard-right conservatives have long assailed McConnell for being insufficiently ideological.