Despite the Trump administration’s lawsuit attacking protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, Fox & Friends helped Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pretend Trump is trying to protect them.
Last night, Axios published a video showing that Donald Trump claimed not to know that his own Department of Justice was supporting a lawsuit designed to throw out protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions getting health insurance.
It wouldn’t matter” if those ACA provisions are struck down, Trump said, “because pre-existing conditions, on anything we do, will be put into it.”
- “I support terminating Obamacare, but if we terminate it, we will reinstitute pre-existing conditions in whatever we do,” he said.
Trump has said this throughout the midterm campaign season. But in the eight years since the ACA passed, Republicans have never proposed an alternative that would offer the same level of protection.
In fact, Trump has brought back junk health insurance plans that are cheaper but are not required to provide basic benefits, can cap coverage and can discriminate against those with pre-existing conditions.
But instead of pointing out the truth, cohost Brian Kilmeade referenced Trump’s comments to Axios and asked, “Is the Justice Department acting without the president’s knowledge?” Then he allowed Sanders to lie and weasel.
SANDERS: Look, they have to do some things that are independent. However, the president’s been clear. Whatever policy he puts forth on health care, it will protect pre-existing conditions. There are some people out there in the country that want to tell you a different story but at the end of the day, the president’s going to do what is necessary to protect people with pre-existing conditions, but also create a health care system that actually works, that actually functions, that has competition, that creates an environment where people get the type of health care that they need not just a card that says that they have health insurance. Those are two very different things and this president wants to make sure that people have actual health care, not just health insurance.
Instead of challenging that mound of BS, cohost Steve Doocy nodded and said, “Sure.”
Kilmeade helped further the lie by dissembling: “Obamacare wasn’t working to the point where President Obama didn’t even run for re-election on Obamacare, not even in the midterms. Are you astounded that now people are running on Obamacare? It was one of the most unpopular pieces of legislation ever introduced!”
Kilmeade “forgot” to mention that Fox’s own poll found a 51% approval rating for Obamacare in August. That made Obamacare 10 points more popular than Trump.
But Sanders responded with another unchallenged falsehood: “I think it goes back to the fact that Democrats literally have no message, they have no solutions.” FACT CHECK: Democrats have lots of solutions in their platform called, “A Better Deal.”
Sanders closed by saying of Obama’s presidency, “I can’t think of one thing that they had that was successful in those eight years that you would want to go and brag about.”
FACT CHECK: We easily found 50 of President Obama’s accomplishments.
But nobody challenged that falsehood either.
Watch the lies and sycophancy below, from the November 5, 2018 Fox & Friends.
To be specific, there is NO “Donald Trump Healthcare Plan” nor is there ever going to be one. The Pence White House has absolutely no intention of offering ANY program whatsoever. The actual intention of the Right Wing, as voiced by Rand Paul last year, is to simply get rid of the ACA and bury it. And then if anyone wants to propose a new program, they’re free to do so – except that the Hard Right members of Congress will never support it, so it won’t go anywhere. The Right Wing never had a problem with the idea that lower income people have very few healthcare options. As they see it, that’s your problem, not mine. And this is consistent with Libertarian thinking – that everyone is on their own in a vicious cruel world.
This is similar to the lies these guys are spreading about how the Dems want to “get rid of Medicare”. That’s beyond nonsensical. In reality, the Dems are trying to help fund and expand Medicare while the Right Wing are sharpening their knives to drastically reduce Medicare and essentially eliminate it for everyone under 57. It’s a similar story for Social Security. The Heritage Foundation published a detailed proposal a few years ago for how to do “entitlement reform”, which is almost certainly the blueprint the Pence White House will follow. This proposal includes reducing Medicare to a small voucher supplement and reducing SS to a flat handout of $1200 per month – and both programs would be severely means-tested, so the only people receiving any benefit would be those with low incomes and no retirement savings. (I would have thought people would have taken a hint from the vicious budget proposals put forth by Pence’s staff over the past 2 years, including the cancellation of Meals on Wheels.)
And it’s rich to hear this bunch chuckling about President Obama having accomplished “nothing” over his two terms. Because they’ve spent their first 2 years doing nothing but eliminating and erasing every single program, treaty and proposal made by the Obama White House. I’ve long expected that Fox News would do a “retrospective” on the “failed” Obama presidency, but only after they complete the repeal of the ACA next year.
Finally, I’m going to wait to see if the Dems really are able to overcome all the gerrymandering tomorrow. The numbers I’m seeing indicate the races are mostly very close – which gives the GOP candidates an 8-10 point buffer each time. Which is the whole point of gerrymanders.