Part of the answer came in White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s briefing on Friday afternoon. He said it again and again: President Trump feels as if he has done everything he can to move the bill forward, so it’s time for an up-or-down vote.

“The president has been working the phones and having in-person meetings since the American Health Care Act was introduced,” Spicer said at the beginning of the briefing, before taking any questions. “He’s left everything on the field when it comes to this bill.” Then he hit that talking point over and over.

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“We’ve done everything,” he added. “The reason that he asked Speaker Ryan and leader McCarthy is that we’ve done everything.”

The implication in Spicer’s statement is that Republicans in Congress are making too many demands, and it’s impossible to satisfy them all. Ryan’s leadership team has made several changes to the proposed bill over the last few weeks, including removing most of the mandates that require health-care plans to provide “essential benefits” as part of every available plan.

“At some point, you’ve listened to everybody, you’ve gotten all of their ideas,” Spicer said. “You’ve gone back and forth, you’ve incorporated them, you’ve assuaged them in some way, shape or form. You’ve updated the bill. And a lot of times it’s the same people coming back over and over again ... At some point, we either have a deal or we don’t.”

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Perhaps that is our best clue to Trump’s thinking here. The president felt that he was out of things to negotiate on, or maybe he was impatient. Or maybe he thought that forcing a vote would result in some Republicans in Congress relenting, and voting for the bill. Either way, he was tired of haggling with different congressional constituencies.

But it’s also a strategy to deflect blame. The bill’s failure is a huge blow to one of Trump’s top legislative priorities, one that congressional Republicans have championed for seven years. It prompts questions about whether Trump can accomplish any of his other legislative goals, or work with Congress to get them done.