The tit-for-tat between Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over the chamber’s failure to repeal Obamacare opens a politically perilous schism within a party already riven by tensions over its lack of accomplishments this year.
Trump’s punch at McConnell Wednesday came less than 48 hours after the Kentucky Republican suggested during an appearance in his home state that the president’s inexperience gave him “excessive expectations” for the time frame required to rip up Obamacare. In fact, GOP leaders had projected days after Trump’s inauguration that they would repeal the health care law and pass a tax bill by this month, neither of which has happened.
“Senator Mitch McConnell said I had ‘excessive expectations,’ but I don’t think so,” the president tweeted Wednesday afternoon. “After 7 years of hearing Repeal & Replace, why not done?”
Frustration at the White House with McConnell’s comments spilled into the open earlier Wednesday when Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino, quipped on Twitter that the Senate GOP leader “must have needed another 4 years” to repeal and replace Obamacare “in addition to the 7 years” since it became law.
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