Donald Trump issued what many are calling a threat earlier this week when he told Republican members of Congress that they will lose their seats if they don’t support the disastrous healthcare policy that they’ve created. On the other hand, they’re likely to lose their seats if they support the bill, so there are no winners in this scenario. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Transcript of the above video:
In a meeting with Republicans from the House of Representatives on Tuesday, Donald Trump told the crowd, ‘I really do believe you will lose your seats if you do not get this done.’ By get this done, Donald Trump means pass their disastrous healthcare replacement plan for Obamacare, but it’s unclear at the moment whether or not Donald Trump was threatening them or simply warning them about the political repercussions of what will happen if they don’t pass this horrible healthcare bill. Knowing Donald Trump, seeing how he’s operated over the last two years, it is more than likely that he was threatening them, because I do not think that Donald Trump believes that if Republicans don’t pass this bill, voters are going to somehow revolt against them. What he’s saying basically is that this thing has my name on it. It’s being labeled as Trumpcare even though it really should be Ryancare. And if this fails, then I fail. And if I fail, you’re going down with me.
I think that is what Donald Trump meant by this thinly veiled threat that he issued to the House Republicans. But what is funny about this is that if these House Republicans do pass this legislation, they are also likely to lose their seats in 2018, when 14 million people by that time will have lost their health insurance coverage under the Republican plan. The wealthy will get their tax breaks, and the voters will lose their health insurance and won’t get a single penny in tax breaks unless they make over half a million dollars a year.
So at this point, it really is a lose, lose situation for Republicans in the House of Representatives. Either they let this bill die and Donald Trump retaliates against them in some way, or they pass it and the voters retaliate against them. At this point though, if I were a House Republican, I would go ahead and take the wrath of Donald Trump over the wrath of the voters any day. After all, the voters currently hate Donald Trump. 37% approval rating at this point in his presidency, the lowest we have ever seen in the history of presidential polling. So I would take Donald Trump’s threat over the threat of voters revolting against me any day of the week at this point.
In fact, Donald Trump himself said recently, ‘Maybe we should just let Obamacare keep going and just wait ’til it implodes, and then blame it on the Democrats.’ That would actually be a better plan for the Republicans at this point because Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, was not imploding. If they leave it in place, not perfect. Premiums might go up, but again, that’s a factor of the private industry, not the government. So yeah, just leave it and see what happens. I think everybody would be in favor of that at this point. But what’s more disgusting is the fact that Donald Trump feels that he has the power, that he has some kind of authority to pull these Republicans together and threaten them with losing their seats if they don’t play along with what Donald Trump wants to do. The only question is, are these Republicans so spineless that they will do Trump’s bidding for fear of what he might do to them? I’m betting they’re just as spineless as we think they are.
