Spicer: Trump ‘had some fun’ with Mark Meadows comment

President Donald Trump was “having fun” when he told the leader of the House Freedom Caucus that he would come after him for not supporting the Obamacare replacement plan, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday.

“Mark Meadows is a longtime, early supporter of the president,” Spicer told reporters at Tuesday’s briefing. “He had some fun at his expense this morning during the conference meeting.”


During a rare trip to the Capitol, Trump singled out Meadows, who chairs the House Freedom Caucus, a conservative group with enough votes to potentially sink the GOP proposal.

“Mark, I’m gonna come after you” if you keep up the opposition, Trump said, according to multiple sources, one of whom cautioned that Trump was “half joking.”

In Spicer’s telling, Trump simply “continued to express hope that Congressman Meadows … would continue to see the efforts that have been made to make this better and address a lot of the concerns out there.”

“But he has made it very clear that he was having fun with him,” Spicer claimed. “The president’s committed to making sure that this gets passed.”

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With a Thursday floor vote looming, Trump warned Republicans behind closed doors that many of them could lose their seats in the 2018 midterm elections if they fail to support the Obamacare repeal and replacement plan — a statement Spicer characterized as not a threat but rather the “political reality.”

“If we go out there and make these pledges to the American people and don’t do what we said we’ve done on these big things, then I don’t think they’re gonna continue to wanna see us in the majority and they’re gonna look for an alternative,” Spicer said.

Asked if Trump would take names of the dissenters, Spicer wouldn’t say.

He laughed. “We’ll see,” he said.