GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina pushed back Wednesday against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s accusation that President Donald Trump set unattainable expectations for Obamacare repeal.
“I like Mitch, but for eight years, we’ve been saying we’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare. It’s not like we made this up overnight. We have been working on repealing Obamacare all year,” Graham told Fox News Radio’s “The Brian Kilmeade Show.” “The idea put forward didn’t pass. It was in many ways an ill-conceived idea. I’m not moving on … I’m not giving up. President Trump’s not giving up,” Graham added.
“There is no way to sugarcoat this. The Republican Party promised for eight years to repeal and replace Obamacare, we failed, and if we give up, shame on us,” he said.
McConnell attributed Trump’s frustration with the stagnant Obamacare repeal effort to his political inexperience during a Tuesday speech to a rotary group in northern Kentucky.
“Our new president, of course, has not been in this line of work before,” McConnell said. “I think he had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the democratic process.”
McConnell further argued that public frustration over the delay is the result of a lack of understanding of the legislative process and added that he would prefer Trump Tweet less to facilitate consistent messaging.
“I’ve been and I will be again today, not a fan of tweeting and I’ve said that to him privately,” McConnell said. “I think it would be helpful if the president would be a little more on message.”
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