Donald Trump boasted about having “essentially gutted Obamacare,” without saying a word about what he’ll do to replace it, during his friendly chat with Fox's Jeanine Pirro. She seemed just fine with that, even as the coronavirus continues to ravage the U.S.
In the middle of his boast about deserving the Nobel Peace Prize more than President Barack Obama did, Trump said this:
TRUMP: [Obama] did very little in eight years and much of what he’s done, as you know, I've terminated. I got rid of the individual mandate, which knocked out Obamacare. We took out the individual mandate, which is the single most unpopular aspect of Obamacare, it was a disaster. But that essentially gutted Obamacare.
Most of the things -- many of the things he did, we've taken out. One of the things we're doing right now, I just got a report, 311 miles of wall. That has made such an unbelievable difference on our southern border. We're doing so well with that and immigration.
FACT CHECK: Trump’s “311 miles of wall” is a big, fat lie (six miles is more like it). Not surprisingly, Pirro did not make sure her viewers got the truth.
But her failure to follow up on Obamacare is far more inexcusable. Trump has repeatedly promised to provide Americans with better coverage without doing so. He has even, laughably, claimed he’ll sign an executive order requiring health insurers to cover pre-existing conditions. FACT CHECK: Obamacare already requires that coverage and he’s spending taxpayer dollars trying to undo it.
Given that the U.S. is still in the middle of pandemic, with nearly 700 deaths and nearly 40,000 new cases just yesterday, it is despicable that Pirro would allow that cruel boast, with potentially deadly consequences, to go unchallenged.
You can watch how little regard for life Pirro and Trump have below, from the September 12, 2020 Justice with Judge Jeanine.
The attitude of the Right has been amply demonstrated on multiple occasions. Rush Limbaugh has openly stated that he figures that people with pre-existing conditions are akin to someone trying to get fire insurance for an already burning house. He’s also openly stated that people with less money should make do with lower quality healthcare, just as they make do with lower quality housing, food, etc. Angry pundits like Jason Chaffetz have opined that if people are having issues paying for healthcare, maybe they shouldn’t buy that new iPhone – as though that was the reason someone’s medical bills were overwhelming them.
And the best recent example we have of the Right Wing attitude came from a staffer in Thom Tillis’ office who was called by three-time cancer survivor Bev Weals. She was worried that given her husband’s layoff and the continuing COVID disaster, they might lose their coverage while she continues to need treatment. The Tillis staffer told her that she should think of the health coverage financial side as being akin to not being able to buy an expensive dress shirt if she couldn’t afford it. When she asked what she was supposed to, he told her that she’d have to find a way to pay for it. When she asked how that would happen during a pandemic, he told her that this sounded like something she’d have to figure out. I’ll at least grant him that he was being honest about the Right Wing approach here. They’re taking the technical position – it’s a YP.