New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker slammed President Donald Trump for declaring he would let Obamacare fail Tuesday, saying “that’s not just cynical, it’s actually sinister.”
In an interview on “CNN Tonight,” Booker told CNN’s Don Lemon that during the 2016 election, Trump promised voters that only he could fix health care in America, but he outsourced responsibility to the Republican leadership.
“The great deal maker failed to make a deal,” Booker said. “And so now he’s just saying I am going to imperil 30 million Americans … you will see very devastating things happen. That’s just not a cynical way that’s violating his promises, that’s sinister. It’s evil to plot against Americans like that.”
Earlier Tuesday, Trump told reporters at the White House that he and his party would bear no responsibility for the failure of Obamacare.
“We’re not going to own it. I’m not going to own it. I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it. We’ll let Obamacare fail and then the Democrats are going to come to us,” Trump said. “It would be nice to have Democrats support but really they’re obstructionists. They have no ideas. They have no thought process. All they want to do is obstruct government and obstruct, period.”
Booker called Trump’s remarks a “transparent lie.”
“Democrats were not invited to the table,” Booker told Lemon. “They were not allowed into the secret meetings. We had no hearings. He didn’t call us up to the White House to have conversations to listen to our ideas.”
Booker continued to argue that the President is actively trying to undermine Obamacare.
“He’s trying to sabotage Obamacare by threatening not to enforce the individual mandate, by threatening not to make the resources for so-called cost-sharing available and he’s even stop advertising for healthy people to enroll, which is essential to have healthy folks enrolled.”