'The closer'? The inside story of how Trump tried - and failed - to make a deal on health care
By Robert Costa, Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker March 24 at 9:19 PM
Shortly after House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) unveiled the Republican health-care plan on March 6, President Trump sat in the Oval Office and queried his advisers: “Is this really a good bill?”
And over the next 18 days, until the bill collapsed in the House on Friday afternoon in a humiliating defeat — the sharpest rebuke yet of Trump’s young presidency and his negotiating skills — the question continued to nag at the president.
Even as he thrust himself and the trappings of his office into selling the health-care bill, Trump peppered his aides again and again with the same concern, usually after watching cable news reports chronicling the setbacks, according to two of his advisers: “Is this really a good bill?”
In the end, the answer was no — in part because the president himself seemed to doubt it.
“We were a little bit shy — very little, but it was still a little bit shy, so we pulled it,” Trump said Friday afternoon in an interview with The Washington Post.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-closer-the-inside-story-of-how-trump-tried--and-failed--to-make-a-deal-on-health-care/2017/03/24/3e6353d6-0fdc-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html?utm_term=.7c4c53583c31&wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
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