Last weekend
It was unclear exactly what Donald Trump hoped to achieve when he decided to cut a key element of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – subsidies to insurance companies to help them cover those on low incomes – except perhaps a sense of pure destructive joy in damaging something his predecessor built that Republicans in Congress seemed unable to dismantle. On Saturday, he, crowed that he had ended a “Dems windfall” for insurance companies.
Steve Bannon, meanwhile, seemed to explain Trump’s strategy at the Values Voter Summit: “Not gonna make the CSR [cost-sharing reduction] payments, gonna blow that thing up, gonna blow those [insurance] exchanges up, right?”
Monday
Trump echoed Bannon in his own way, telling reporters the ACA was “dead”. “You shouldn’t even mention it,” the president said. “It’s gone. There is no such thing as Obamacare any more.” Simultaneously, though, he began to float the line that he had cut the subsidies in order to force Democrats and Republicans to work together.
“Republicans are meeting with Democrats because of what I did with the CSRs, because I cut off the gravy train,” Trump said. “If I didn’t cut the CSRs, they wouldn’t be meeting. They’d be having lunch and enjoying themselves, all right?”
A new controversy was just around the corner. As Trump staged a Rose Garden press conference with Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell that sought to project unity between the two men, the president was asked if he had written to the families of four American soldiers killed in Niger. Trump said he had and made an inflammatory and incorrect claim: “If you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn’t make calls.” That prompted an immediate and ferocious response from former Obama aides.
Tuesday
Trump dragged his chief of staff John Kelly – whose son was killed in Afghanistan – into the row, saying: “I think I’ve called every family of someone who’s died” and adding: “As far as other representatives, I don’t know. You could ask General Kelly, did he get a call from Obama?”
Meanwhile, senators announced they had reached a deal to save the healthcare subsidies. At first Trump said he approved but the next day he announced that he could “never support bailing out ins co’s who have made a fortune w/ O’Care”. The president also lost his nominee for drug czar, Tom Marino.
Wednesday
As news organisations interviewed military families who had indeed been called by Obama and drew up lists of those who Trump had actually not contacted, it emerged that the president’s call to the wife of Sgt La David Johnson, who was killed in Niger two weeks ago, caused offence to the mother of the deceased. Trump, Cowanda Jones-Johnson said, had told Myeshia Johnson her husband “knew what he signed up for”.
“President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband,” Jones-Johnson said.
The president’s comments were revealed by Florida congresswoman Frederica Wilson, who heard the call on speakerphone. Trump responded by claiming he had “proof” he hadn’t said it.
Thursday
The White House attempted to neutralise the issue by sending Kelly out to address the press. The chief of staff gave an emotional defence of his boss, but his furious attack on Wilson belied the fact that he was essentially confirming that the president did in fact tell the widow her husband “knew what he signed up for”.
Kelly also undermined Trump’s criticism of Obama. The former president, Kelly said, did not call him when his son died. But he said: “I don’t believe any president, particularly when the casualty rates are very, very high, that presidents call. But I believe they all write … That was not a criticism ... That’s not a negative thing.”
Elsewhere, at a press conference with the governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rosselló, Trump was asked to rate on a scale of one to 10 the federal government’s hurricane relief effort, where hundreds of thousands of Americans are still without running water and more than 80% of electricity consumers remain without power.
“I give ourselves a 10,” the president replied.
In a coincidence of timing, Obama and George W Bush both gave speeches – and both slammed the political culture created by their successor.
Friday
The president started his day with a tweet renewing his accusation that Wilson had told “a total lie”. Wilson was unbowed, restating her case that Trump’s comments were “not a good message to say to anyone who has lost a child at war”. She also accused Kelly of lying about her role in the funding of an FBI field office.
Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of Puerto Rican capital San Juan, popped up to respond to his 10 out of 10 rating for handling the crisis.
“If it is a 10 out of a scale of 100, of course,” she said. “It is still a failing grade.”
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