Now That Trump Has Failed, Did He Learn Anything?

As you’ve undoubtedly heard by now POTUS 45’s plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act failed, with the U.S. House of Representatives pulling the bill before it could even come to a vote on Friday. Why? Because a block of Republican politicians known as the “Freedom Caucus” had made it clear to Trump that if their views on the bill weren’t heard and negotiations opened to change it, they wouldn’t support the President’s plan. In an act of political brinkmanship straight out of his book “The Art of the Deal,” Trump stopped negotiations and told them “take it or leave it.” Selling a bill to elected representatives isn’t like selling real estate in New York and Atlantic City though, and the Freedom Caucus was not impressed. House Speaker Paul Ryan was forced to admit defeat and declare that the Affordable Care Act (or “Obamacare” as they like to call it) would not be repealed.

It didn’t take long for our Spinmaster in Chief to immediately start putting out his own “fake news,” though of course it’s always real when HE says it. He tried blaming the Democratic party even though he was trying to repeal a signature piece of President Obama’s legislation and few Democrats were going to go along with that. Even if any of them thought the ACA needed to be fixed and would have gone along with “repeal and replace,” the cold shoulder from the White House meant there was no outreach to even TRY to get votes from the opposition. They simply counted on having a Republican majority in the house as being enough without realizing that even in their own party there were factions who would not endorse his plan because it either (1.) went too far or (2.) didn’t go far ENOUGH. No one stopped to consider that Republicans wouldn’t simply march in step behind their Commander in Chief, because in fact they aren’t soldiers – they are elected representatives with their own beliefs AND their own constituents to answer to. Imagine that.

One might think that this humiliating defeat for Trump would be a lesson for him that running the country is not like running a business. In truth no one would have ever wanted him to run the United States like a business anyway given six of his businesses filed for bankruptcy. The reason Trump is such a master of spin is because he’s always managed to market his brand above his failures, and so long as he kept up the image of being a successful brand, there was always another loan to be had and another deal to be made. Even if you don’t respect him as a human being, you can actually (if begrudgingly) admire his ability to survive and even thrive in the business world, even if that was a duplicitous act which served to only enrich himself at the expense of creditors left to foot the bill.

It’s for that reason that I don’t expect Trump to have learned anything from his attempt to repeal the ACA, just as he didn’t learn anything from his first “Muslim Ban” executive order and tried a second time, only to be slapped down by a Federal judge a second time. This means Trump will probably try again to dismantle “Obamacare” and will undoubtedly fail again as well. That’s actually the lesson Trump has learned from six bankruptcies over the years – keep failing over and over again as long as you can spin it to make yourself look good – “bigly” good. Instead of learning that you might want to try working with the opposition instead of running over them, and instead of learning that you can’t run government like a business, the unchecked arrogance of a man who bragged he could do anything he wanted to beautiful women will let him think he can grab government by the privates and take what he wants. It doesn’t work that way. Prepare for 1300+ more days of the same hubris already on display.