vocal opponent of the bill. he joins me now. governor, thank you so much for joining us. you re welcome, jake. here is how president trump reacted to senate republicans failure. let obamacare fail. it will be a lot easier. and i think we re probably in that position where we ll just let obamacare fail. we re not going to own it. i m not going to own it. i can tell you the republicans are not going to own it. there are, of course, measures that could be passed today to help stabilize obamacare instead of letting it fail, but the president seems to want it to fail. that s the strategy. what do you think? well, i don t quite know. i think if he was able to be delivered a bill, jake, in my opinion, that could begin to solve this situation, in my opinion he would sign it quickly. that s my view. i don t know that. he hasn t told me that. but look, we know that the insurance exchanges need to be fixed. i mean, democrats will tell you that, republicans will tell you that. i suggest
good thing to campaign on. what works for republicans favor i say, not in the short term in terms whether this passes but next year in terms whether this has gone through or not, democrats, their messaging is not great. you re on this. seeing a lot of outside groups very affected. the aarp. a couple typically, you know, against this form of government groups. but democrats have not really done a great job according to a lot of democratic strategists i m speaking with, walking through exactly what this is going to mean. who this hurts. precisely how this hurts. it s getting more sort of swept up in the anti-trump messagery in general. that s a problem. i would say combined with the president s messaging that obamacare is a dead carcass, maybe just let it fail, the democratic messaging is also not helping in terms of the electorate. there s so much fear out there. you go to town halls you hear, a deeply personal issue. worried they ll lose doctors, health care, won t be able to pay for
recess, he s already giving a win to some of the senators that expressed reservations, ron johnson and others who said, we can t have a vote this week. we need more time to look at this. they re already getting a victory now and able to go back to swifconstituents and say tha. so this will give mcconnell some breathing room to try piece this breathing room to try piece this together. captions by vitac www.vitac.com this is an embarrassment by necessity. the idea of going to the floor with a bill that he knew was going to fail after seven years of making this the fundamental core promise of his party to voters, to repeal obamacare, you can t just let it fail, throw your hands up and say, we tried, this is not happening. this has been the organizing
cover pre-existing conditions and some things and obamacare was written for, and i don t think most americans are fine with that. the problem is, we ve spent so much money with implementing this and watching it fail, the projections on what the costs are, if you take that pool of people out that really do need catastrophic coverage and things like this, which is available in the regular health care system, it would be a fraction of the costs. he s going to have a tough time selling the idea of how to do that without burdening the taxpayer when the overwhelming number of people who need health care do not fall in the catastrophic ring. sandra: how did you interpret that? this before it s about ensuring that individuals don t lose their insurance, especially if they do have pre-existing conditions, but there s something bigger as well which is how will you rescue the individual market? how do you stabilize this market? what we re seeing seeing right now is obamacare falling apart.
i think there s a sense that doing something and having it fail is better than simply doing nothing. if they have a majority, they ve been saying for eight years, seven years, they re going to repeal this law and then they do nothing about it. that s potentially more dangerous for that senate majority than taking a vote on thing like this and having it fail. look, i think the overall dynamic here with the president is quickly devolving into a nightmare scenario. i think instead of talking about when this came in, they were talking about infrastructure. chuck schumer was saying, look, we re going to work with republicans on this. now you have the mike pence legislative shop saying we re going to try to do that only with republican votes. in congress, republicans are saying no way, u how do we even do this. i think it s in a very precarious position right now, the entire agenda. willie, there s excitement in the air, not only on capitol hill but across washington, d.c. just a reminde