Trump Calls WaPo - is full of BS

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President Trump called me on my cellphone on Friday afternoon at 3:31 p.m. At first I thought it was a reader with a complaint since it was a blocked number. Instead, it was the president calling from the Oval Office. His voice was even, his tone muted. He did not bury the lede. “Hello, Bob,” Trump began. “So, we just pulled it.”

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Before I could ask a question, Trump plunged into his explanation of the politics of his decision to call off a vote on the bill he had been touting. The Democrats, he said, were to blame. “We couldn’t get one Democratic vote and we were a little bit shy, very little, but it was still a little bit shy, so we pulled it,” Trump said.

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“As you know, I’ve been saying for years that the best thing is to let Obamacare explode and then go make a deal with the Democrats and have one unified deal. And they will come to us, we won’t have to come to them,” he said. “After Obamacare explodes.”

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“Sure,” Trump said. “I never said I was going to repeal and replace in the first 61 days” — contradicting his own statements and that of his own adviser, Kellyanne Conway

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Trump brought up the vote count. “We were close,” he said. How close? “I would say within anywhere from five to 12 votes,” Trump said — contradicting widespread reports that at least three dozen Republicans were opposed to the measure. [There were at least three dozen Republicans opposed to the health-care bill I said that must have hurt after all of his efforts. He made calls, had people over to the White House, invited House members on Air Force One. He may not have loved the bill but he embraced the push for passage.

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Trump returned to the theme of blaming the Democrats. “Hey, we could have done this,” he said. “But we couldn’t get one Democrat vote, not one. So that means they own Obamacare and when that explodes, they will come to us wanting to save whatever is left and we’ll make a real deal.” There was little evidence that either Trump or House Republicans made a serious effort to reach out to Democrats.

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