President Donald Trump hosts an event to celebrate passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act with Republican members of the House and Senate on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 20, 2017. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Turns out that nestled inside that handout to the rich known as the tax bill was a sleeping hand grenade that the president believes effectively blew up the remaining parts of Obamacare as we know it.




And you know how we know this? Because the president couldn’t contain his excitement to gloat over the fact that the bill “hid” provisions to dismantle portions of the Affordable Care Act, so he just told on himself because that’s what assholes do.

Before a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday morning, Donald Trump just couldn’t hold it in. Here’s the president detailing how he casually slipped his hand off the pin, according to CNN:

“The individual mandate is being repealed. When the individual mandate is being repealed, that means Obamacare is repealed. Because they get their money from the individual mandate. So the individual mandate is being repealed. So in this bill, not only do we have massive tax cuts and tax reform, we have essentially repealed Obamacare and will come up with something that will be much better, whether it’s block grants or whether it’s taking what we have and doing something terrific. But Obamacare has been repealed in this bill. We didn’t want to bring it up. I told people specifically ‘be quiet with the fake news media because I don’t want them talking too much about it. Because I didn’t know how people would - but now that it’s approved, I can say the individual mandate on health care, where you had to pay not to have insurance, okay, think of that one. You pay not to have insurance. The individual mandate has been repealed.”


Not only is the president proud that he believes he slipped one past the Democrats, but he’s highlighting the fact that he couldn’t get Obamacare destroyed by producing a better health care bill. And he openly admits that while he’s effectively pushing to dismantle Obamacare piece by piece through sneaky tactics, he has no effective plan to replace it.

The funny part is that didn’t “repeal” anything. Here’s how Politico explains what took place:

The individual mandate is only part of Obamacare. It wasn’t even included in the original health care plan that Barack Obama unveiled during the 2008 campaign. The mandate did become an important element of Obamacare, and the only specific element that a majority of the public opposed. But the more generous elements of the program—like a major expansion of Medicaid, significant government subsidies for private insurance premiums, and strict protections for pre-existing conditions—are still popular, and still the law of the land. “The death of Obamacare has been exaggerated,” says Larry Levitt, who oversees health reform studies at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Eliminating the mandate creates uncertainty, but all the benefits for people remain in place.”

This is what happens when you become obsessed with destroying someone’s legacy. Trump essentially ran on a platform full of America’s worst traits: racism, xenophobia and an inherent distrust of the black former president. This move, sneaking wording into bills, isn’t unlike politicians, but it is very weird for a president to highlight said sneakiness shortly after the bill has passed. Let’s also be clear that this tax cut kickback for the rich received no Democratic support.

The president’s failed attempts to pass an effective replacement for the ACA fell short even of Republican standards, at a time when bills can be passed without any Democratic support That is, the proposed health care bills were so bad that even Republicans, who control Congress, couldn’t support them. So basically, Trump believes that he’s destroyed Obamacare without an effective replacement and he’s gloating about that, because isn’t that just like an asshole?


And let’s be clear about this: It isn’t that Democrats weren’t aware that abolishing the individual mandate was part of this tax cut bill balloon payout to the top 1 percent—they just couldn’t do anything to stop the deplorable train that currently runs through Congress. So the president didn’t pull a fast one over on anybody, but don’t tell him that.

Read more at CNN and Politico.