POLITICAL FIGURES/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Tensions flared publicly between President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, with the president criticizing his party’s Senate leader for the failure to advance a health-care bill through the Republican-led chamber…
The president’s tweets followed criticism from Dan Scavino Jr., Mr. Trump’s social-media director and a senior aide, who wrote on Twitter earlier Wednesday [8-9-17] that Mr. McConnell ‘must have needed another 4 years—in addition to the 7 years—to repeal and replace Obamacare.’
The president’s remarks came after Mr. McConnell at an event in Kentucky this week critiqued the ‘artificial deadlines’ set by the president in the monthslong debate over health care that were ‘unrelated to the reality of the complexity of legislating.’
The House passed a bill to overhaul the ACA in May. But the health-care repeal push was stymied in the Senate in a dramatic, late-night vote in July, when three Republicans joined with Democrats to vote against the bill. That effectively ended the GOP’s repeal effort and dealt a blow to a longstanding campaign promise of the Republican Party.
It also led to recriminations among Republican lawmakers over the failure to advance the repeal bill—a pillar of the GOP agenda since the ACA was enacted in 2010.”
-Byron Tau, “Trump Criticizes McConnell for Failure to Advance Health-Law Reform,” The Wall Street Journal online, Aug. 10, 2017 11:47am