It’s been amply established that Donald Trump is a slow learner. But this weekend gave us a revealing idea of just how behind the curve the Donald really is. After seeing not one, not two, but three attempts to repeal Obamacare fail and fail bigly, Trump demanded that the Senate try again–and everything else be hanged.
You may recall that after the last attempt to undo Obamacare went down in flames early Friday morning, Mitch McConnell said that it was time for the Senate to “move on” to other priorities.
But Trump wasn’t satisfied. He took to Twitter on Saturday afternoon to demand that the Senate push all other business aside and repeal Obamacare.
Unless the Republican Senators are total quitters, Repeal & Replace is not dead! Demand another vote before voting on any other bill!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2017
Wait a minute. Just 24 hours earlier, Trump declared that he was content to “let Obamacare implode” after all efforts to repeal it–replace it with Trumpcare, a straight repeal, and “skinny repeal”–all failed. Now he wants McConnell to make a fool of himself again?
On Sunday morning, White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney dropped by CNN’s “State of the Union” and revealed the answer to that question is a resounding yes. Watch here.
Host Jake Tapper asked if it was now “official White House policy” that repealing Obamacare should take precedence over everything else–including raising the debt ceiling. Mulvaney didn’t hesitate in answering that it was. He claimed that Trump was simply “reflecting the mood of the people.”
Mulvaney added that poll after poll showed health care was the issue that mattered the most to Americans. For that reason, he said, the White House believed that “they can’t move on” from health care, and the Senate needed to “stay and figure out a way to solve this problem.”
Mulvaney added that the GOP has spent a long time promising to repeal Obamacare. He should know. He was a member of the Republican House freshman class of 2011, representing most of the South Carolina side of the Charlotte area. Like many Republicans in that group, he cursed Obamacare to the heavens. To his mind, it was time for the GOP to make good on those boasts.
“Keep in mind, you’re talking about something they promised to do for seven years. You can’t promise folks you’re going to do something for seven years, and then not do it.”
He went on to say that “the national attitude” demanded repeal. Au contraire, said Tapper. He noted that the polls he’d reviewed indicated a plurality of Americans supported Obamacare. So where did Mulvaney get his figures? The best guess comes from Public Policy Polling, which found that a whopping 68 percent of Trump voters wanted Obamacare repealed. But that same poll also showed 58 percent of all Americans wanted to fix Obamacare, not repeal it.
But even without that to consider, no matter how much Trump and Mulvaney want to keep pushing for repeal, he has to face this sobering reality.
In case you weren’t paying attention, Mick, the vote to start debate deadlocked, and Mike Pence needed to rush in to break the tie. The three repeal attempts all failed 57-43, 55-45, and 51-49. Can it be any clearer that the votes just aren’t there for repeal of any sort?
And that’s before we even discuss your boss’ demand to push for repeal above all else, even raising the debt ceiling. In case you weren’t paying attention, Congress faces a hard deadline of mid-October to raise the debt ceiling. So Trump is willing to hurl the country into default in order to get rid of Obamacare. That’s rather fitting, considering he’s filed for bankruptcy six times.
The most benign assumption we can make about Trump’s demand is that he’s under the delusion that his word is the law, just like it more or less was with his real estate empire. That’s to be expected for a guy who has never worked for a non-relative before. News flash, Donald. Last week should have been a warning for you to get out of your echo chamber. Stop demanding repeal, engage the Democrats who want to fix Obamacare–then we’ll talk.
(featured image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
