PRESIDENT TAKES AIM AT FREEDOM CAUCUS
Chairman urges lawmakers to find consensus
WASHINGTON Despite calling Freedom Caucus members friends last week, President Trump seemed to take aim Sunday at the Republican hard-line conservatives and blame them in part for the collapse of the party’s health care repeal plan.
“Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!” Trump tweeted early Sunday.
The tweet came on the heels of a major blow for Republicans when leaders pulled Friday their plan to replace and repeal the Affordable Care Act, because they didn’t have enough GOP support to pass the measure. Several moderate Republicans and members of the Freedom Caucus vowed not to support it.
Freedom Caucus members defended their positions, saying the plan pushed by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., cost too much and didn’t do enough to repeal the law. Rep. Mark Meadows, chairman of the caucus, didn’t directly challenge Trump’s charge, but he said it’s “incumbent upon” moderates and conservatives to come together.
“I can tell you as I’ve looked at all of this, I said, could I have spent a little bit more time, should I have spent more time with the Tuesday Group, more time with Democrats to find some consensus,” Meadows, RN.C., said on ABC’s This Week. “As we look at this today, this is not the end of the debate.”
The Tuesday Group consists of more moderate House Republicans.
Trump said Friday he was surprised there wasn’t more support from the Freedom Caucus, but he didn’t blame them for deciding not to vote on the bill.
“I’m disappointed, but they’re friends of mine,” he said then. “It’s a very hard time for them and very hard vote. But they’re very good people.”
Democrats were quick to jump on the defeat. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called it “a victory for all Americans.”
Meadows said Democrats shouldn’t consider the fight over.
“If they’re applauding, they shouldn’t, because I can tell you that conversations over the last 48 hours are really about how we come together in the Republican conference and try to get this over the finish line,” he said.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Democrats are willing to work with Republicans on an effort to improve the ACA.
“We have ideas. They have ideas, to try to improve Obamacare,” Schumer said on This
Week. “We never said it was perfect. We always said we’d work with them to improve it. We just said repeal was off the table.”
Trump’s anti-Freedom Caucus tweet followed another Twitter burst on Saturday morning, in which he urged his Twitter followers to watch the Saturday night show of Jeanine Pirro, a Fox television host and former prosecutor.
Pirro opened the show by calling on Ryan to step down as speaker, because he failed to deliver the votes on the GOP health care plan “the one he had seven years to work on.”
“This is not on President Trump,” Pirro said.
Trump’s tweet about Pirro and her call to oust Ryan were “coincidental,” said Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff and a close Ryan ally.