Update
Here’s the latest on this from Axios:
President Trump on Saturday morning: “I called Chuck Schumer yesterday to see if the Dems want to do a great HealthCare Bill. ObamaCare is badly broken, big premiums. Who knows!”
Shortly after Trump’s tweet, Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer gave his version of the Friday phone call: “The president wanted to make another run at repeal and replace and I told the president that’s off the table. If he wants to work together to improve the existing health care system, we Democrats are open to his suggestions. A good place to start might be the Alexander-Murray negotiations that would stabilize the system and lower costs.”
A Democratic aide added, in an email: “Particularly after the birth control decision yesterday, the administration has to stop sabotaging the law before anything real can happen.”
Earlier: Less than one month removed from demonstrating his unparalleled, world-renowned deal-making prowess by taking the very first deal offered him by Democrats on the debt ceiling, Donald Trump looks like he’d rather cave on healthcare than give up on the “cause” altogether.
As Axios reports, Trump called Chuck Schumer yesterday in an effort to revive health-care legislation. The President was, to quote one Republican source, “seeking a path forward.”
“Although it’s not known what Trump proposed or how Schumer responded, word traveled fast among Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill,” Axios continues, adding that “the initial reaction among some Republicans was consternation” as it would appear to “codify the Rs’ failure on repeal/replace and shows the President can move without hesitation or ideological impediment to make a deal with the Dems.”
Right.
Of course what’s actually going on here is that Trump has realized the folly in going the toddler route. Recall that after each failed attempt to “repeal and replace,” Trump has trotted out the childish, spiteful “we’ll just let Obamacare collapse” line. The obvious problem there is that when you say “we’ll just let [it] collapse” you have explicitly admitted your own role in killing people. Sure, you can spin it later by saying Obamacare was doomed from the word go, and a lot of people will believe that, but at the same time, by saying “we’ll let it collapse” you have acknowledged your own role.
Think about it this way. If an engineer builds a bridge that a lot of people think is destined to collapse at some point in the future, if I’m a city planner and I fail to craft a workable plan to improve that bridge, the last thing I would want to say is “oh well, I’ll just let it collapse.” Because then when it does collapse and people die, everyone is going to point at me and say “yes, we all knew it was going to collapse, but you quite literally let it happen – and we know that because you said so yourself on television.”
As stupid as he is, Trump surely realizes that and so now, he’s going to go back to his new “bestie” Chuck and try to make something happen so that i) he can say he hasn’t given up, and more importantly ii) when people die he can at least claim that he realized “we’ll just let it collapse” wasn’t a viable “strategy.”
And in case you’re inclined to think Axios was just making that call to Chuck up, here’s Trump from this morning:
Yeah, “who knows!”
Not us, but one thing we do “know” is that this didn’t work out to well:
I’m sorry, say that again Mr. President. How’s this going to work again? You’ll let it fail and then the Democrats are going to “come to you”?...
