Trump lies about health care…a lot. According to the Washington Post, he has lied about preexisting conditions 73 times. He’s told lies about the Veterans Affairs Mission Act 113 times. He’s lied about Medicare 56 times. Overall, there are 901 documented instances of Trump bullshit pertaining to health care since he was inaugurated in 2017.
This is a subset of the “the more than 16,200 false or misleading claims he has made in his three years since taking the oath of office.” And his rate of lying has been increasing:
Now the database shows Trump made 8,155 suspect claims in 2019, up from 5,689 claims in 2018 and 1,999 claims in the first year of his presidency.
“In a single year, the president said more than the total number of false or misleading claims he had made in the previous two years,” our colleagues Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly write. “Put another way: He averaged six such claims a day in 2017, nearly 16 a day in 2018 and more than 22 a day in 2019.”
Numerous polling outfits, including Gallup, are finding health care as the top concern of American voters going into the 2020 election. In that context, the cost of prescription drugs is the most important. And, yet, the president lies about health care constantly, and that very much includes the subject of prescription drugs.
Obviously, it will be important to educate the American voters about the truth if the Democrats want to win the presidency. And, as we know, that is much easier said than done.
At least now the Republicans have zero cover and credibility. Back in 2016, they could hide behind Trump saying he had a big, beautiful plan that costs less than Obamacare. In 2017, they could say they were working on it while they tried to repeal Obamacare. The music stopped in 2018, and they had nothing to show for two years of complete control except taking away now very popular reforms. Thus the shellacking they took up and down the ballot.
Now in 2020, the Democratic House has passed lots of reforms to the healthcare system that have languished in the Senate. The House Democrats can point to all that and truthfully say that Trump and his Republicans have zero interest in helping the average American with healthcare. Most on our team are smart, and know details when it comes up at a town hall.
So Trump can say whatever he wants. A good chunk of the population automatically assumes he is lying, and others who pinned their healthcare hopes on him in 2016 now know he is lying. Not a good look heading into this year.
Trump has no concept of truth in the sense that the word is usually understood. For him, the only consideration is effectiveness. If it works, it’s true. But he also has a very limited concept of how to judge whether something “works”. That’s because for him, everything he does is both morally good and technically effective. Forget about evil, few people in his position would ever have thought of doing anything as STUPID as what he’s trying to pull with Ukraine and Russia. And he was caught! Most people would then have stopped. But not Trump, he just keeps going.
So when he says “I have done nothing wrong,” he means it — he’s incapable of seeing anything he does as wrong. Then why stop doing it? As far as he’s concerned, everything he thinks is right and everything he does works. That’s also why he is continually self-incriminating. Why should he hide what he’s thinking or doing? It’s all “perfect.” If you don’t agree, YOU’RE the one that’s wrong.
You will not understand Trump until you realize that he is a freak, a mutant. His brain is not wired like normal people. His credo is simply to do what ever the hell he wants, based on his own reptilian impulses, and he will continue until somebody or something stops him. Kind of like Chucky in Child’s Play.