reporter: i need you to call me immediately, your mom is in the hospital with a gunshot wound. and i m like, i m sorry, what? we look at each other, michael and i, and say we can t make this up. reporter: our story begins in august 2012. can you believe it? 100 degrees again this afternoon. reporter: it was the kind of heat that melts asphalt and has everyone searching the sky for some sign of mercy. but in carrollton, 52-year-old frank howard wasn t sweating it. frank was an accountant. his life was good and getting better by the day. i took on a new client probably in 2009. reporter: a wealthy client? yes. reporter: what did those come along with, those perks? he had his ownary planes. for the first time flying around in private planes and going to cowboy games.
sara murray is out front at the white house. the president has always called himself the ultimate deal maker. he couldn t get this one done. what is the white house saying tonight? reporter: i think the white house is trying to shift a lilt bit of the blame here. you re absolutely right, he campaigned on this, he insisted that he was the man who could fwetd things done in washington that other people could not. and we know that behind the scenes there was a lot of frustration among the president and his top aides about being unable to coax republicans into agreeing to this deal, but we saw a very disciplined president today not blaming members of his own party. listen to what he said. i think the losers are nancy pelosi and chuck schumer because now they own obamacare, they own it, 100% own it, and this is not a republican health care. this is not anything but a democrat health care. reporter: the reality is, and this was a political defeat for this white house in a week where
why wasn t there freelancing today? he didn t blame anyone in the republican party. right. he was shocked. i mean, i think that he thought is that a compliment, though, a testament to him, though, that maybe he s just letting it roll off and he s like i got many more battles to go? but he also sounded like a bystander president, right? i mean, it sounds like he s going to be fine with premiums going up and fine to blame the democrats as people might lose their health care, and that s bizarre. he s not going to take responsibility. i really think he believes, okay, this is collapse on its own weight, let the democrats get the are you comfortable with the president saying i believe the president believes that obamacare is horrible and it s hurting americans, you re okay with the president and the party saying it s hurting you and we re going to let it we have the other side saying this is a huge suck says, so okay. let s see. the other side is saying it
kentucky even in those speeches it wasn t eve an full speech about health care. there was a line in there or two about health care, but he never was really all in on this, didn t take obama s sort of advice in terms of how he approached it, eight-month period, lots of speech, lots of long interviews about health care and making the sale. so if president trump could have done more, doug, in your opinion the house of representatives how many times that they worked to repeal and replace or repeal obamacare. how much blame does paul ryan deserve? well, i think the lion s share goes to two different spots, one the president, because he is the only new dynamic in this. we had republicans who were passing bill, sometimes not passing bills. we were pushing for a senate shgt finally got a senate. that wasn t enough. we needed a president. we ve got a president who s the great negotiator. that s part of it. the other is we talk about seven years of trying to replace this. president it s
left it all on the field. there were lots of meetings, yes, at the white house. the president went over the capitol. but when it came to the public push, changing public opinion on this, those two big campaign rallies that he had, we tallied it up. he spent 7 out of 42 minutes talking about health care one. five out of 37 minutes at the other. do you think the white house will regret that? if they don t now, they should regret it because it all goes back to casting forward and how are they going to operate when they re trying to get other very difficult things done. you know, we talk about tax reform and how easy that s going to be. that s going to be extremely difficult to do. and, you know, if there is a positive for president trump to take away from this, if there is one, he learned a lesson early on about legislating in washington and working with 535 free agents is a lot different than trying to negotiate a deal with one person over real