Trump Takes On Democrats and Health Law in New Twitter Blitz
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump lashed out at Democrats early Thursday over their efforts to preserve President Obama’s health care coverage law, insulting their top legislative leader and denouncing the measure as a “lie” as he called for a less expensive and more effective system.
“The Democrats, lead by head clown Chuck Schumer, know how bad ObamaCare is and what a mess they are in,” Mr. Trump wrote in the first of three early morning posts on Twitter.
The posts arrived the day after Mr. Obama huddled with Democrats on Capitol Hill to strategize over protecting the Affordable Care Act and Vice President-elect Mike Pence met with Republicans about how to gut it.
“Instead of working to fix it, they do the typical political thing and BLAME,” Mr. Trump continued on Twitter. “The fact is ObamaCare was a lie from the beginning. ‘Keep you doctor, keep your plan!’”
He said it was time for Republicans and Democrats to work together on a “plan that really works — much less expensive & FAR BETTER!”
The messages could be seen as Mr. Trump’s latest attempt to seize the narrative of the day and deflect attention from a story line less favorable to him. Senate Republicans are holding a hearing on Thursday to examine intelligence that the Russians engaged in computer hacking to affect the outcome of the presidential campaign. Mr. Trump has disputed that the Russians were to blame, and he has criticized American intelligence agencies for their work.
Mr. Trump also used the social media platform to push back against criticism he attracted on Wednesday for siding with Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, over United States intelligence officials in rejecting Russian responsibility for the hacking.
“The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange — wrong,” Mr. Trump said in a pair of posts on Thursday. “I simply state what he states, it is for the people to make up their own minds as to the truth.”
He accused news organizations that have reported his own words of “lies” intended to make it look like he is “against ‘Intelligence’ when in fact I am a big fan!” Yet Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked the intelligence community in recent weeks, charging that their conclusions on the cyberattacks are no more reliable than their faulty finding on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and suggesting this week that officials were withholding information on the hackings because they did not yet have conclusive proof.
Mr. Trump’s latest Twitter salvo also appeared to be an attempt to mount a political defense of his bid to scrap the law that has provided health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans, as Democrats work to make that effort politically toxic. On Wednesday, the president-elect appeared to acknowledge the challenges of doing so without being saddled by voters with a share of blame for the shortcomings of the measure.
“Republicans must be careful in that the Dems own the failed ObamaCare disaster, with its poor coverage and massive premium increases,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Wednesday, adding in a separate post: “Don’t let the Schumer clowns out of this web.”
His comments on Thursday came as Mr. Obama took a subtle swipe at the president-elect in a farewell letter, without naming him, writing that Americans never voted for rolling back the health care measure.
“What won’t help is taking health care away from 30 million Americans, most of them white and working class; denying overtime pay to workers, most of whom have more than earned it; or privatizing Medicare and Social Security and letting Wall Street regulate itself again — none of which middle-class Americans voted for,” Mr. Obama said in the 1,800-word letter.
P.C: http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/us/politics/trump-takes-on-democrats-and-health-care-law-in-a-new-twitter-blitz.html
Post a Comment