Trump Warns: Failure to Repeal ObamaCare Makes GOP Senators Look Like ‘Dopes’

Repeal and Replace is dead.

With the defections of Republican Senators Jerry Moran and Mike Lee, the GOP’s seven year quest to repeal and replace Obamacare has finally come to a close. While there is still a nuclear option involving a basic repeal with a two year reprieve window, it remains a distant moonshot.

Mere hours before the collapse Monday evening, President Donald Trump held a dinner for Republican Senators to strategize on health care. Per Politico, the tense evening came with a warning from Trump that the party would look foolish and weak if they couldn’t pass repeal and individual Senators would look like “dopes”

At a dinner with GOP senators on Monday evening, Trump said the party would look like “dopes” if they couldn’t pass the bill after passing a repeal bill in 2015.

“If the Republicans have the House, Senate and the presidency and they can’t pass this health care bill they are going to look weak,” Trump said, according to a source familiar with the meeting. “How can we not do this after promising it for years?”

Trump had no idea defections were coming tonight, according to another White House official with knowledge of the meeting. “Why would we have a dinner like that if we knew people were going to drop out?” the official said.

— it seems the party elected the way of “dopes.”

The Lee and Moran defections join with Senators Susan Collins and Rand Paul bringing the final vote count at least two short of what would be needed to pass a bill.