As Republicans grappled with the latest setback in their effort to repeal Obamacare on Tuesday, “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade distilled the reaction of the pro-Trump media.
“You cannot take this personal if you’re the president. You can be let down,” said Brian Kilmeade. “You can be disappointed. But this is not you.”
After seeing their health care bill go up in flames, Senate Republicans have faced no shortage of finger-pointing from news outlets most sympathetic to President Trump.
On Tuesday’s edition of “Fox & Friends,” Trump’s favorite morning show, Kilmeade even said that the Republican senators who objected to the bill were “maybe not true to their country.”
Getting rid of the health care law passed by Democrats more than seven years ago has been a longstanding promise among congressional Republicans. And Trump himself pledged repeatedly during last year’s campaign that repealing Obamacare would be perhaps his top priority in office.
But six months into Trump’s presidency, much of the conservative media is holding only one side accountable for the failure to get it done.
The home page of the Drudge Report on Tuesday featured a photo of House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell coupled with the headline, “Most Unproductive Congress In 164 Years.”
Breitbart News, the Trump-friendly website previously run by White House strategist Steve Bannon, lamented that “Republicans in Congress wasted nearly seven months of the Trump administration … fiddling around with repeal and replace at the same time.” The White House urged the Senate to repeal Obamacare and pass a replacement at a later date.
When the repeal-only plan fizzled on Tuesday, The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump website, mocked the Senate GOP. Bill Mitchell, a Twitter personality who gained a following during last year’s campaign for his Trump fandom, similarly took McConnell to task.
“C’mon McConnell, your legacy depends on making this work,” Mitchell tweeted.
Fox News host Sean Hannity, another unabashed Trump supporter, said that Republicans’ jobs might also depend on health care reform.
On his show Monday night, Hannity presented a checklist for GOP lawmakers to get done ahead of next year’s midterms. The second item on the list: repeal and replace Obamacare “immediately.”