President Donald Trump predicted that the Obamacare repeal he and nearly every Republican in Congress promised will eventually come. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Trump: Republicans 'must keep their promise to America' on health care

Ahead of his scheduled lunch with Republican senators, President Donald Trump wrote online on Wednesday that GOP lawmakers “MUST keep their promise to America” by voting to do away with the Affordable Care Act.

Trump also predicted that his lunchtime meeting would improve the proposal tabled late Monday night by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.


“I will be having lunch at the White House today with Republican Senators concerning healthcare. They MUST keep their promise to America!” Trump wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning. “The Republicans never discuss how good their healthcare bill is, & it will get even better at lunchtime. The Dems scream death as OCare dies!”

The president’s latest push to repeal and replace his predecessor’s signature healthcare legislation, also known by its nickname, Obamacare, collapsed this week when enough Republican senators announced their opposition to a GOP leadership-backed bill that would have undone the controversial law. Republicans struggled in their internal negotiations to find compromise at the ideological edges of their caucus, with moderate Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) joining conservatives like Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) in opposing the measure.

It was Lee and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) whose announcements on Monday that they would oppose the repeal-and-replace proposal forced McConnell (R-Ky.) into tabling it. The two lawmakers’ announcements took Trump, who was having dinner with other GOP senators in the White House at the time, by surprise. The president said Tuesday that he had been taken aback by the announcements from Lee and Moran because he “thought they were in fairly good shape.”

On Twitter Tuesday morning, Trump wrote that “we were let down by all of the Democrats and a few Republicans” on the healthcare bill, but in remarks to reporters later in the day, he said that the four GOP senators who opposed the bill “were not disloyal” and “had their own reasons” for their stances. Still, he predicted that the Obamacare repeal that he and nearly every Republican in Congress promised will eventually come.

“I am disappointed because for so many years I’ve been hearing repeal and replace,” Trump said. “I’m sitting in the Oval Office right next door, pen in hand, waiting to sign something, and I’ll be waiting, and eventually we’re going to get something done and it’s going to be very good.”