Donald Trump has heard Trumpite Republicans’ call to “move on.”
And he has. Sort of. Fresh off his perhaps-too-soon victory lap following Attorney General Bill Barr’s index-card-like summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report, Trump took acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s advice to forge ahead in dismantling Obamacare – the health program real Americans have learned to love.
He has ordered the Justice Department to ask an appellate court to fully invalidate the Affordable Care Act as part of the lawsuit brought by Republicans in some states, and he wants Republicans to pass a bill before his reelection effort that would do what Obamacare does – provide coverage to millions of Americans. If Republicans refuse, Trump is ready to force them by trying to create a “crisis moment” in the courts, one lawmaker in close contact with the White House but who spoke on the condition of anonymity told The Washington Post.
Trump, ignoring the advice of Vice President Mike Pence and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, is off to the races: “The Republican Party will soon be known as the party of health care,” he enthused. “[i]f the Supreme Court rules that Obamacare is out, we’ll have a plan that is far better than Obamacare.”
Never mind that the GOP Congress members were caught off guard and have no replacement. Even the replacements they’ve pretended to cobble together in the past failed when it came to vote time.
Please remember, that primarily because of Trump’s and the GOP’s previous blind rush to take the ACA’s health protections away from Americans, Republicans last year lost control of the House in the midterms. Now with the 2020 presidential election and plenty of Senate seats up for grabs, by all means, Mr. President, scare Americans again into voting for more Democrats. Yes!
But vanquishing his predecessor’s health care legislation isn’t all with which Trump is “moving on.”
He’s also hot to trot with “retribution.”
First, his tweets are ablaze with “fake news” insults and threats.
Then there was his 45-minute call to Fox News’ Sean Hannity show Wednesday – most of it spent denigrating the Mueller investigation. He repeatedly bashed the FBI as “dirty cops”and called former FBI Director James B. Comey “a terrible guy.” He labeled former CIA Director John Brennan a “sick person.” Then he called AG Bill Barr “a great gentleman” and said ‘had he been there initially, this all wouldn’t have happened.”
He repeated – as he often does – a proven false statement that Russia preferred Hillary Clinton over him in 2016. For goodness sake, we all watched the Helsinki news conference of this same sad president with Vladimir Putin when Putin said he wanted Trump to win. Now we ask you: Where’s the fake news?
A real president would, after a nearly two-year investigation seemingly found no collusion or clear obstruction of justice by him and his aides, despite very damming evidence, seize the moment to call for healing and national unity. But no. Instead he and his White House and 2020 campaign have quickly launched a fierce counterattack against Democrats and the media.
“Democrats simply can’t be trusted,” former Trump White House official Steven Cheung said.
“Democrats lied to the American people continually, hoping to undo the legitimate election of President Trump,” a Sunday statement from Trump’s re-election campaign declared.
Now let’s talk about Trump’s “moving on” with his proposed budget which, for the third year in a row, would cut funding for education.
This year, the Department of Education faces an overall budget reduction of 10 percent, and to meet it, Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had zeroed out, among other things, funding for Special Olympics, a program that promotes inclusion and prevents bullying of people with intellectual disabilities. The decades-old program has reached nearly 6,500 schools across the country.
In Trumpworld, funding “the wall” on our Southern border with Mexico is a greater priority.
DeVos defended cutting Special Olympics by saying that the nonprofit organization is also funded by private donations.
That’s true, but the $17.6 million that the Education Department gave to the program – 10 percent of Special Olympics’ overall revenue – is in part what gives private donors the confidence to make their donations. Hearing the outrage, Trump on Thursday said he’d instructed that Special Olympics would be funded in this budget.
Doesn’t it make you wonder where Trump and his ham-handed henchmen will “move on” to next?