AM Joy featured a spirited discussion over Trump's latest actions to blow up Obamacare.
"This is extortion. He's pushing it over the edge. Essentially, go back to congress with hostages," Joy Reid said.
"That's right. He's been clear about this all along. He says if it fails, it will be easier to force Congress to do something," Joy Rovner said.
"He basically wants to trash it and make the Democrats sue for peace. When he says the Republicans won't be accountable, every public opinion poll suggests that the public now thinks Republicans are responsible for what happens with the health care system, so I think he may be miscalculating on that point. If he obviously makes it fail, it's not the Democrats who are going to get blamed and it's unclear whether the Democrats are going to come back to the table and do anything that the Republicans would like to do to replace it."
"Why should they? This is Trumpcare. As of yesterday, it's Trumpcare," Reid said.
"There's no incentive," Jason Johnson said. "This is an abusive boss who says, 'Hey, if I move your desk and cut your salary and kick you out of the guest room, you'll go out on a date with me.' Democrats have no reason to work with him. This president -- here's the issue. The legal argument that Sarah Huckabee Sanders made --which is, these were illegal payments, no. This was actually being appealed in the courts right now. The government still had an obligation to let this case make its way up to the Supreme Court and they are just backing out of it. It's spiteful and foolish. Democrats will watch this circular firing squad all the way into 2018."
Catherine Rampell noted there was "a bipartisan effort to deal with this problem, with this ambiguous legality of how to fund these cost-sharing reductions, these subsidies. It's basically falling apart. There was an effort by senators Murray and Alexander, right, a Republican and a Democrat to deal with this, to come up with a funding solution so that there would be no ambiguity so the court case would be moot and what incentive do they have to pursue that now?""
"Especially since Mitch McConnell won't bring anything to the floor with the Democrats' name on it," Reid reminded us.
