Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance on Tuesday night claimed — in contradiction of history — that his running mate, former President Donald Trump, “salvaged Obamacare,” the health insurance program that Trump tried to kill.
During the vice presidential debate on CBS against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Ohio senator echoed Trump’s own recent revisionism. But the assertion also served to remind voters that Democrats ultimately won the yearslong political fight over expanding access to health insurance: The Republican ticket no longer wants to repeal the 2010 law.
But when Trump was president, repeal was a centerpiece of his agenda. In a dramatic Senate vote in 2017, Democrats and a handful of Republicans rejected his plan to repeal Obamacare. Then-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., cast the deciding vote by turning his thumb down with a theatrical flourish. A critic of Obamacare, McCain nonetheless concluded that the “skinny repeal” measure would leave Americans worse off than if Obamacare remained in place.
Walz noted that episode Tuesday night.
Trump “would have repealed [Obamacare] had it not been for the courage of John McCain,” Walz said.
It was Trump who first started trying to spin his own role in pushing for a repeal. In an ABC News debate this month, Trump said he “saved” Obamacare.
“Obamacare was lousy health care. Always was. It’s not very good today,” Trump said last month. “I had a choice to make when I was president: Do I save it and make it as good as it can be? Never going to be great. Or do I let it rot? And I felt I had an obligation, even though politically it would have been good to just let it rot and let it go away.”
But after six years of GOP calls to repeal the law, Trump promised during his 2016 campaign that he would kill the law “very, very quickly.” When he won the White House, he tried and failed to do that.
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