WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump Sunday blamed fellow Republicans and two influential conservative advocacy groups for last week’s failure to pass the GOP health care bill. The president said on …
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump Sunday blamed fellow Republicans and two influential conservative advocacy groups for last week’s failure to pass the GOP health care bill.
The president said on Friday that it was the Democrats’ fault that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., pulled the measure from consideration rather than putting it forth for a floor showdown that the Republican leadership would have lost.
Trump, in a Twitter post Sunday, appeared to shift culpability to the House Freedom Caucus, a conservative group of Republican lawmakers who were key to depriving Trump and his camp of the votes needed for passage.
“Democrats are smiling” over the bill’s failure, Trump said. The Freedom Caucus, he said, had “saved” President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act with the help of Heritage Action and the Club for Growth, two organizations that had opposed the GOP measure.
The chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N. C., declined to spar with the White House, instead predicting that a Trump-led Republican effort to repeal and replace Obama’s signature health care law eventually would move ahead.
“At the end of the day, the most valuable player will be President Trump,” Meadows said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Meadows also insisted there had been “no conversation” about any attempt to force out Ryan, who is being blamed for failing to marshal sufficient support for the bill he had spearheaded.
Trump so far has refrained from public criticism of the speaker, but — again on Twitter — he specifically urged followers to watch a Fox News segment Saturday night, featuring commentator Jeanine Pirro excoriating Ryan and calling for him to be ousted.
That gave rise to speculation that Trump would seek to force the speaker to take the fall for the debacle.
