Trump on health care: 'Let Obamacare implode,' then 'we'll get it done' The president made his first public comments about the failed 'skinny' repeal in a speech otherwise devoted to crime and immigration.

President Donald Trump on Friday reiterated that he wants to “let Obamacare implode” following his party’s failed last-ditch attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act, and to then pursue health care legislation, insisting that “we’re going to get it done.”

“Congress is actually opening up and really doing a job. They should have approved health care last night, but you can't have everything,” Trump said in an afternoon speech on Long Island, referring to the overnight failure of the GOP’s “skinny” Obamacare repeal proposal. “Boy, oh boy. They've been working on that one for seven years. Can you believe that? The swamp.”


“But we'll get it done,” he added. “We’re going to get it done. You know, I said from the beginning, let Obamacare implode and then do it. I turned out to be right. Let Obamacare implode.”

Responding to shouted questions a few minutes earlier as he exited Air Force One, Trump told reporters that “it’s going to be fine.”

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The individual insurance markets are fragile in some states, and experts say the Trump administration could further destabilize them by refusing to make certain monthly payments that are necessary to their functioning.

Trump addressed health care in a speech otherwise devoted to the gang MS-13 and immigration policy, and in it he called for stepping up law enforcement efforts and harshly condemned violent crime.

In rhetoric similar to how he discussed crime on the campaign trail, Trump pledged that the government would fight the gang, which he described as made up of “animals” and “thugs,” sometimes in graphic language. At one point he claimed that MS-13 had turned neighborhoods into “blood-stained killing fields.”

At another, he seemed to advocate rougher treatment of suspects by police.

“Now, we're getting them out anyway, but we'd like to get them out a lot faster,” Trump said.

“When you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in. Rough, I said. Please don't be too nice. Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you're protecting their head, you know? The way you put their hand over. Like, don't hit their head, and they've just killed somebody? Don't hit their head? I said, ‘You can take the hand away, OK?’”

The speech, at Suffolk Community College, meandered at times. Among his digressions, Trump indirectly criticized New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel over the level of violent crime in their cities; referenced his win in last year’s presidential election and bragged about the size of motorcycle brigades that he said lined up for him as a candidate; defended the wealth of his treasury and commerce secretaries on the grounds that it’s better for someone with a track record of making lots of money to serve in government; and pledged to build a “real” wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.