Does President Trump Want Speaker Paul Ryan to Resign?
Speculations are mounting as to whether or not President Donald Trump wants Paul Ryan to step down from his post as House Speaker in light of the failure to repeal Obamacare.
After scrapping the bill Friday in light of their failure to garner enough votes to pass the bill, on Saturday morning President Trump tweeted that everyone should watch Fox News' Judge Jeanine Pirro's show Saturday evening.
Watch @JudgeJeanine on @FoxNews tonight at 9:00 P.M.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 25, 2017 Get Our Latest News for FREE
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Pirro's opening statement on her show that night was a blistering tirade against Speaker Ryan, saying he "needs to step down as speaker of the House."
"Americans elected the one man they believed would [repeal] it, a complete outsider, someone beholden to no one but them. And Speaker Ryan, you come in with all your swagger and experience and you sell 'em a bill of goods which ends up a complete and total failure," Pirro said. "And you allow our President in his first 100 days to come out of the box like that? Based on what? Your legislative expertise? ... how could [you] possibly have misjudged this?"
Ryan has been the legislator who has received arguably the most criticism on this matter from all sides on this health care legislation, particularly from the House Freedom Caucus, the conservative wing of the Republican party who argued that the bill amounted to Obamacare-lite.
But in an interview on Fox News Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus stated that the President does not want Ryan to quit despite Trump's tweet of support to Pirro, chalking the incident up as "more coincidental." The President loves Judge Jeanine and was doing Pirro "a favor," he said.
Priebus noted that while he did not talk to the President specifically about the tweet "there was no pre-planning here" between him and the Pirro and that Trump spoke with Ryan Saturday for about an hour. "He doesn't blame Paul Ryan [for the bill's failure]. In fact, he thought Ryan worked really hard. He enjoys his relationship with Paul Ryan. He thinks Paul Ryan is a great Speaker of the House. So none of that has changed," Priebus said.
Ryan himself has said likewise, according to tweet from FOX's Chad Pergram who noted Sunday afternoon that Ryan's spokeswoman Ashlee Strong said that the president and speaker spoke again Sunday and that Trump reiterated that his tweet promoting Pirro's show "had nothing to do" with Ryan.
Ryan spox AshLee Strong on Ryan/Trump: The two spoke again today and the President was clear his tweet had nothing to do with the Spkr.
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) March 26, 2017
The American Health Care Act was intended to partially repeal the Affordable Care Act, known colloquially as Obamacare, which was passed on strictly partisan lines in 2010 and signed into law by President Obama. While some Americans were able to obtain health insurance for the first time, millions of others complained of skyrocketing costs as premiums in many states rose dramatically.
Scrapping the law was one of Trump's key campaign issues. The Republican platform itself also called for Obamacare's full repeal.
Vice President Mike Pence, speaking at a rally in West Virginia Saturday said that "with 100 percent of House Democrats — every single one — and a handful of Republicans actually standing in the way of President Trump's plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, we're back to the drawing board," according to Yahoo News.
