US President Donald Trump has returned home to New York City, as he celebrated the House passage of legislation undoing much of his predecessor Barack Obama’s health law.
US President Donald Trump has returned home to New York City, as he celebrated the House passage of legislation undoing much of his predecessor Barack Obama’s health law.
New York has largely opposed Mr Trump, who received only 18% of the city’s vote in November’s presidential election.
Multiple modest protests were held across the city during his visit, some visible from the presidential motorcade as it roared past Wall Street and Manhattan’s famed skyscrapers.
His visit was shorter than expected so he could commemorate the House vote with a Rose Garden news conference.
Slated to be in Manhattan only a few hours, Mr Trump was not expected to visit his home at Trump Tower and pushed back his first meeting with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull by several hours.
Mr Trump and Mr Turnbull spoke by telephone earlier and were looking forward to meeting, the White House said.
The leaders were still due to speak aboard the USS Intrepid, a decommissioned aircraft carrier, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of a Second World War battle that reinforced the ties between the US and Australia.
Both countries’ warships and fighter planes engaged the Japanese from May 4-8 1942, forcing the Japanese navy to retreat for the first time in the war.
Mr Trump’s appearance aboard the carrier was scheduled just hours after jubilant Republicans travelled from Capitol Hill to the White House for a victory lap. The legislation, which was met with sharp Democratic opposition, passed through the House by a vote of 217-213 and faces an uncertain fate in the Senate.
Mr Trump said he was “so confident” that the measure would pass the Senate and vowed that premiums and deductibles would come down.
“People are suffering so badly with the ravages of Obamacare, ” Mr Trump said.
At one point the president turned to the representatives lined up behind him and, suggesting the victory was especially impressive for a novice politician, exclaimed: “Hey, I’m president! I’m president! Can you believe it!”
House leaders came through with the votes to give Mr Trump a major political win more than a month after Republicans’ first attempt to pass a health care bill went down in a humiliating defeat.
Known as the American Healthcare Act, the bill has yet to receive a price tag from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and is opposed by a number of physician and health care groups, including the American Medical Association, amid concerns it could strip millions of Americans of their coverage, including those with pre-existing medical conditions.
Mr Trump and Mr Turnbull were expected to discuss North Korea’s missile testing and security and economic issues, as well as Mr Turnbull’s deal with Mr Obama for the US to resettle up to 1,250 mostly Muslim refugees from Africa, the Middle East and Asia who are housed in immigration camps on the Pacific island nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
The agreement was a source of friction when Mr Trump and Mr Turnbull spoke by telephone shortly after Mr Trump took office on January. 20. The conversation made headlines, and Mr Trump later tweeted about the “dumb deal”.
But Vice President Mike Pence assured Mr Turnbull during a visit to Australia last month that the Trump administration will honour the deal, but “that doesn’t mean we admire the agreement”.
Manhattan is where Mr Trump made a name by transforming himself from real-estate developer into a celebrity businessman and now president. During the campaign, Mr Trump would fly thousands of miles back to New York to sleep in his own bed, leaving the impression that he would make frequent trips home after he became president.
But he has not set foot in the city since leaving on January 19 for Washington to be inaugurated into office the following day. But now deeply unpopular in his home town, Mr Trump said in an interview last week that he so far has avoided returning to the city because the trips are expensive for the government and would inconvenience New Yorkers.
Mr Trump’s revised schedule was to take him straight from a waterside heliport to the Intrepid, docked on the Hudson River and relatively isolated from the rest of the city. But some protesters lined up along the West Side Highway, confined to pens near the Intrepid while holding up signs saying “Dump Trump” and chanted “Not my president”. Some passing cars honked in support.
“We want him to know the resistance remains, even in his hometown, ” said Ruthie Adler, 30, a Manhattan waitress.
Mr Trump’s wife, Melania, and son Barron live at Trump Tower most of the time while the 11-year-old finishes the school year.
AP
