IT’S HIS FAULT!
Trump forgets his poll promise and points f inger at Republican ally over healthcare disaster
DONALD TRUMP has denied that reforming US healthcare immediately was one of his key election pledges – as the blame game began over the failure to pass his bill.
The US President’ s officials started briefing against his Republican allies over the bill, which collapsed on Friday after failing to secure enough support to pass through Congress.
A source told CNN that Mr Trump felt he had been ‘talked into’ making the bill his first as President by House Speaker Paul Ryan.
The President tried to save face by claiming he had never vowed to immediately replace Barack Obama’s healthcare law, dubbed Obamacare, even though footage from his campaign showed he had.
The failure is a massive blow for Mr Trump, who wrote a book called The Art Of The Deal and boasted about his negotiating skills.
It puts tax- reform plans at risk as Republicans had hoped on $1 trillion (£802 billion) of tax cuts from repealing Obamacare. When the vote was called off, Mr Trump told the Washington Post: ‘We couldn’t get one Democratic vote… so we pulled it.’
But, with the Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, the vote could have passed without any support from the Democrats.
In reality, the bill failed because it did not secure the backing of the Freedom Caucus of Right- wing congressmen, which said the plan did not cut enough benefits, and moderate Republicans, who said that it would cut too many.
CNN quoted an official saying Mr Trump was becoming ‘frustrated with his staff’s inability to get this done’ and felt he had been misled.
A source said: ‘He was talked into doing this bill first. It was not negotiated well on his behalf. He’s relied on his staff to give him good information and they haven’t. And that’s the problem.’
Among those likely to be in the firing line are Mr Ryan, health secretary Tom Price and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.
After the bill’s collapse, Mr Trump said that he ‘never said repeal and replace Obamacare’ by the 64th day of his presidency, which was Friday. He said: ‘I have a long time.’
In fact, it had been one of his key campaign pledges, along with a Mexican border wall.
Among his Twitter posts on Obamacare, one said: ‘We will immediately repeal and replace Obamacare – and nobody can do that like me.’
Another read: ‘On day one of the Trump Administration, we will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of Obamacare’.
Yesterday, the President went to Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, the eighth weekend in a row he has visited one of his properties. Apparently while on his way there, he tweeted: ‘ObamaCare will explode and we will all get together and piece together a great healthcare plan for THE PEOPLE. Do not worry!’
The American Health Care Act, which would have slashed welfare payments, became politically toxic when analysis found 24 million people would lose health coverage within ten years if it passed.
In the weeks before the vote, Mr Trump – who bragged about his deal-making while host of reality TV show The Apprentice – had invited dozens of representatives for photographs in the Oval Office and even flew Mark Meadows, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida for the weekend.
Mr Trump’s aides had said that his negotiating skills were ‘ total natural talent’, while his press secretary, Sean Spicer, said: ‘He is the closer.’
On Thursday, Mr Trump apparently lost patience and issued an ultimatum t hat representatives either back the bill or he would dump it – but they refused to be bullied.
One told political website Axios: ‘You know, the last time someone ordered me to something, I was 18 years old. And it was my daddy. And I didn’t listen to him, either.’
‘He was talked into doing this bill first’