‘Democrats will start calling me’ if turmoil hits insurance markets, President Donald Trump tells The Wall Street Journal
In suggesting that he isn’t willing to proceed with changes to the tax code until health care was addressed, Mr. Trump sent a strong signal to members of his own party.. He didn’t rule out the possibility of a tax bill passing before the congressional recess in August, though many White House officials and lawmakers believe that timeline is unrealistic... Mr. Trump said he had mixed feelings about creating turmoil in the insurance markets… A federal judge in 2016 ruled the government payments were improper but let them continue while Mr. Obama’s administration pursued an appeal. After Mr. Trump’s election, Republicans requested and received an initial delay in the case.
.. “Obamacare is dead next month if it doesn’t get that money,” Mr. Trump said. “I haven’t made my viewpoint clear yet. I don’t want people to get hurt….What I think should happen and will happen is the Democrats will start calling me and negotiating.”
.. House Speaker, Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) has said he would prefer to see the administration continue to fund the payments.
.. Mr. Trump said Mr. Schumer “should be calling me and begging me to help him save Obamacare, along with Nancy Pelosi.”
.. Mr. Schumer said the president was “threatening to hold hostage health care for millions of Americans…to achieve a political goal of repeal that would take health care away from millions more. This cynical strategy will fail.”
Can Trump Take Health Care Hostage?
Mr. Trump, as you may have noticed, isn’t big on accepting responsibility for his failures. Instead, he has decided to blame Democrats for not cooperating in the destruction of their proudest achievement in decades.
.. in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he openly threatened to sabotage health care for millions if the opposition party doesn’t give him what he wants.
In that interview, the president of the United States sounded just like a mobster trying to extort protection payments from a shopkeeper.
.. Mr. Trump is trying to bully Democrats by threatening to hurt millions of innocent bystanders — ordinary American families who have gained coverage thanks to health reform.
.. remember, we’re talking about a man who once cut off health benefits to his nephew’s seriously ill 18-month-old son to gain the upper hand in a family dispute.
.. Implicitly, he’s saying that hurting innocent people doesn’t bother him as much as it bothers his opponents.
.. So the Trump health care threat is, as I said, stupid as well as nasty.
.. he may already have done much of the threatened damage. Insurers are deciding right now whether to participate in the 2018 Obamacare exchanges. Mr. Trump’s tough talk is creating a lot of uncertainty, which in itself may undermine coverage for many Americans.
In Domestic Abuse, a Gauge of Words and Deeds
Husbands are five times more likely to kill wives than vice versa
.. How can you tell when words signal impending danger?
.. She found that threats mattered. Her study’s title, “If I Can’t Have You, Nobody Will,” comes from a typical threat used by men to achieve coercive control. Others include “I will mess you up” and “You will just disappear.”
.. The men in the worst cases were also busy threatening others—family and friends of the victim, children, even pets.
.. women are at highest risk from their abusers when trying to get away from them.
.. threats of harm or death went down dramatically under the protective orders, from 83% of women experiencing them before the orders to 19% after.
Like Obama before him, Trump struggles to deport some foreign-born criminals
Yintang Cao, a Chinese national who served time for hawking counterfeit designer purses, was freed from immigration detention last week after the United States failed to win permission from China to deport him. Emil Al Seryani, a Jordanian citizen convicted of burglary and drug dealing, was released March 7, again after deportation efforts failed.
Their quiet return to their lives in the United States contradicts one of President Trump’s signature campaign promises: to deport criminals, even to countries that do not want them back.
.. A former immigration official said it is ironic that Trump and his GOP supporters are stymied by the same issues they insisted could be solved quickly.
.. Deporting someone can take years, especially for foreigners who no longer have up-to-date citizenship papers. Countries are supposed to accept their citizens under international law, but they have to issue travel documents, such as a passport, before the United States can put a deportee on an airplane.
.. Threats may work. But they’re not going to work on everybody, because some countries are going to refuse to do it,” said Ames Holbrook, a former immigration agent who wrote a book about the release of foreign criminals in the United States.
“And then if we don’t answer those countries that still refuse, then the countries that bought the threat are going to realize that it’s not a threat.”