While
the president strategized with Republican lawmakers at the White House over
steak, two senators were finalizing their statements tanking the current
proposal.
By JOSH DAWSEY
07/18/2017
12:31 AM EDT
President Trump
convened a strategy session over steak and succotash at the White House with
senators Monday night, trying to plot an uphill path to repealing Obamacare and
replacing it with a GOP alternative.
He made an
impassioned pitch on why Republicans needed to do it now – and the political
peril they could face if they didn’t “repeal and replace” after promising to do
it for years. He also vented about Democrats and the legislative process. “He
basically said, if we don’t do this, we’re in trouble,” said one person briefed
on the meeting. “That we have the Senate, House and White House and we have to
do it or we’re going to look terrible.”
Meanwhile, two
senators – neither invited to the dinner – were simultaneously drafting
statements saying how they couldn’t support the current bill, which they
released just after Trump’s White House meal concluded.
Trump had no idea the
statements were coming, according to several White House and congressional
officials. His top aides were taken aback, and the White House was soon on the
phone with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The abrupt collapse
of the current plan blew up what the White House wanted for months, and
undoubtedly set back Republicans in their goal to overhaul President Obama’s
legislation. It certainly frustrated a number of the president’s top aides, who
have negotiated to-the-letter certain packages for certain senators for a
summer solution.
But Trump, who has
not fretted over the details of the proposed legislation, seemed ready to try
something else – trading ribeye negotiations for his favorite pastime.
Within an hour, Trump
was back on Twitter, where he put forward a different idea – one he has posited
privately for months – after talking to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
and top aides.
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“Republicans should
just REPEAL failing ObamaCare now & work on a new Healthcare Plan that will
start from a clean slate. Dems will join in!” he wrote on Twitter.
Trump is fine doing
it that way, said one White House aide – as “long as something gets done.”
To Trump, the
Obamacare fight has always been about scoring a win. He doesn’t care nearly as
much about the specifics, people close to him say, and hasn’t understood why
legislators just won’t make deals and bring something, anything to his desk.
He has said publicly
and privately he didn’t understand it would take this long. “Nobody knew health
care could be so complicated,” Trump said in February. At a different point, he
said only Middle East peace would be harder.
Along the way, Trump
has weighed various options, from not paying cost-sharing subsidies and letting
the law implode to repealing it without a replacement – which he veered back to
on Twitter Monday night.
“He told us months
ago, we could just let it blow up and blame the Democrats,” said one activist
who met with Trump at the White House.
He praised the
conservative version of the law passed through the House in a Rose Garden fête
before trashing it as “mean” in a meeting with moderate senators.
Earlier Monday
evening, just after Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) announced
their opposition, a White House official said that the team would go back to
working with individual members on the bill. There was no desire, this person
said, to start negotiations over from scratch.
White House officials
said they purposefully picked veteran lawmakers who they saw as allies to
attend the dinner with Trump, not legislators they thought were on the fence.
But the bill was already on a knife edge, with a vote delayed this week due to
the absence of Arizona Sen. John McCain due to a medical procedure.
Trump has privately
wondered why legislators don’t seem to listen to him, and the blow from Moran
and Lee illustrated the limits of the president’s capacity to master the art of
the Washington deal.
“None of the people
at the dinner were the ones they should have been worried about,” said one
person involved in the discussions.
Trump allies have
sometimes attacked Republicans the White House needs to support the bill. He
has alienated some senators with his unorthodox tweets and his inattention to
policy details, even as they have praised others on his staff. He has sometimes
expressed a view that Democrats would like to work with Republicans like he did
Monday night, even though his staff harbors skepticism.
“Why would Trump call
McCain crusty Monday afternoon?” one White House official asked. “Because
that’s the word that came to his brain.”
According to several
people briefed on the matter, Trump and McConnell were prepared to make similar
statements Monday evening. But Trump pre-empted the Senate majority leader –
sending a quick tweet that took even some of his staff by surprise. “There it
is,” one aide said, two minutes after promising news within “an hour.”
“Regretfully, it is
now apparent that the effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of
Obamacare will not be successful,” McConnell said, in a missive from Don
Stewart, his spokesman.
A White House
official said, per usual policy, that Trump’s tweet would speak for itself.
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