Video of former President Donald Trump vowing to terminate the Affordable Care Act (ACA) went viral on social media on Friday after he reversed his position on the issue last month.
Trump, the presumed 2024 GOP presidential nominee, is set to face off against President Joe Biden later this year in a likely rematch of the 2020 election, as each candidate has won enough delegates to secure their party’s presidential nomination.
Trump has repeatedly vowed to repeal the ACA, which was developed under former President Barack Obama and is more commonly known as “Obamacare,” since launching his political career with a successful 2016 presidential bid. He attempted to kill the program shortly after taking office, but was blocked by Republicans who resisted the move in the Senate.
However, in a late March Truth Social post, Trump seemingly reversed his position by endorsing the ACA, while promising to keep the program in place, but make it “much, much, much better” during a potential second term.
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“I’m not running to terminate the ACA, AS CROOKED JOE BUDEN [sic] DISINFORMATES [sic] AND MISINFORMATES [sic] ALL THE TIME, I’m running to CLOSE THE BORDER, STOP INFLATION, MAKE OUR ECONOMY GREAT, STRENGTHEN OUR MILITARY, AND MAKE THE ACA, or OBAMACARE, AS IT IS KNOWN, MUCH BETTER, STRONGER, AND FAR LESS EXPENSIVE,” Trump wrote.
He added: “IN OTHER WORDS, MAKE THE ACA MUCH, MUCH, MUCH BETTER FOR FAR LESS MONEY (OR COST) TO OUR GREST [sic] AMERICAN CITIZENS, WHO HAVE BEEN DECIMATED BY BIDEN, HIS RECORD INFLATION, BAD ECONOMY, AFGHANISTAN CATASTROPHE, AND JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE.”
In a Friday post on X, formerly Twitter, Biden-Harris HQ shared a video in which MSNBC put together the former president’s remarks about “terminating” Obamacare since 2016, with the most recent comment being made in December 2023.
“MSNBC plays montage of Donald Trump promising to terminate the Affordable Care Act,” Biden’s reelection campaign wrote on X. As of Saturday afternoon, the video has garnered over 225,000 views.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump and Biden’s campaign via email for comment.
Biden responded to Trump’s efforts and comments to strike down the ACA in a post on X last month. The president also claimed that Trump was hoping to make cuts to Social Security and Medicare, although the Trump campaign has previously denied this.
“Donald Trump was just one vote away from repealing the Affordable Care Act,” the president posted. “Now, he’s determined to try again, running to ‘terminate’ it—and cut Medicare and Social Security while he’s at it. I won’t let it happen.”
According to the Biden administration, 45 million people now have coverage through the Obamacare exchanges or Medicaid expansion.
Trump’s comments on Obamacare come after several efforts by Trump and other Republicans to repeal the ACA using the courts have also been unsuccessful, with the conservative-led U.S. Supreme Court having rejected multiple attempts.
Only months ago, Trump called Obamacare “not good healthcare” and vowed to replace it with his own yet-to-be-revealed program, while also recently denouncing Republican senators who “raised their hands not to terminate it” as “a low point for the Republican Party.”
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.