Well, it’s not really clear what Donald Trump’s position is with regard to the “short-term deal” on healthcare we got Tuesday from Sen. Lamar Alexander and Sen. Patty Murray.
On one hand, he couldn’t exactly disavow it, because that would suggest people are getting things done without him, but he can’t really support it either because after all, it safeguards the very same subsidies that he tried to do away with just last week.
So instead he said this:
It’s a short-term solution for about a year or two and it’ll get us over this intermediate hump.
That is all kinds of funny. Because he’s already 10 months into his presidency, so if “a year or two” indeed turns out to be “two,” well then that will be two years plus ten months equals almost three years out of a four-year term. So it’s safe to say that “repeal and replace” on “day one” is one campaign promise he didn’t keep.
“OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, asked to interpret President Trump’s warm remarks earlier today about senators’ deal on stabilizing Obamacare insurance markets, says Trump indicated support for some type of short-term deal,” Bloomberg reports, noting that “Mulvaney also says Trump wasn’t interested in earlier plans to just extend insurance subsidies the president had declined to renew.”
Whatever, right? Bottom line: he tried to do away with those subsidies, everyone freaked out over the weekend, and now he’s having to undo what he just did. There is just no other way to interpret this. Even Matt Drudge gets it:
That brings us to Tuesday evening and Trump’s Twitter feed where the President is hanging out literally as we write these words. Here’s what he’s said so far:
So what he’s doing there – clearly – is trying to respond to the math which shows that getting rid of those subsidies was going to increase premiums for some Americans. The idea is to concede that without conceding it. That is, “well, we wouldn’t be in this position in the first place if it weren’t for…” etc. etc. If you need a refresher on exactly how cutting those subsidies increases premiums and thereby costs the government money, see here.
And there was this one:
Now, apparently, there’s “so much fake news” being printed that he can’t even keep up with it all, so he’s just going to lump it all together under “dying magazines and newspapers.”
The best part, though, is that he wanted to name one especially egregious offender against which to compare the unidentified “dying magazines” but, unable to name just one “place” (singular) he instead listed every, single major network in America – except of course Fox.
Nothing further.
