With his first tweets of the day, Trump is defending himself this morning against claims by the NY Times that he backed off his Obamacare replacement after McConnell told him to do so.
First, here’s briefly what the NY Times wrote yesterday:
President Trump backed off plans to introduce a Republican replacement for the Affordable Care Act after Senator Mitch McConnell privately warned him that the Senate would not revisit health care in a comprehensive way before the November 2020 elections.
Reversing himself in the face of Republican consternation, Mr. Trump said his party would not produce a health care plan of its own, as he had promised, until after the elections, meaning he will only try to fulfill his first-term promise to repeal and replace his predecessor’s signature program if he wins a second term.
But Trump says this is not true, that he never asked McConnell for a vote, nor was he ever planning a vote before the elections:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1113432687757484032
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1113435291472277509
The claims by the NY Times don’t even make sense to me.
Why would Trump want the Senate to vote on a new Obamacare replacement, just to see it fail in the House controlled by Democrats?
It makes more sense that Trump would want to wait on Republicans to win back the House before trying to push this through. Also he’s clearly trying to give people a reason to vote Republicans back in.
As an aside, can you believe that Trump tweeted about fake news from the NY Times without ever mentioning his favorite phrase “Fake News”?