You might have expected popular vote loser Donald Trump to have a temper tantrum after the failure of Trumpcare, but he seemed pretty calm—albeit seriously deluded—during a brief press conference from the Oval Office.
He led off with the most ludicrous of lies: "We were very close." They weren't very close. They were at least 30 (and as much as 50) votes away. "Very close." Who's fault was this? "We had no Democrat support. We had no votes from the Democrats. They weren't going to give us a single vote, it's a difficult thing to do." So it's the Democrats' fault that the bill failed.
What's going to happen now? "I've been saying for the last year-and-a-half that the best thing we can do politically speaking is let Obamacare explode, it is exploding right now."
I think the losers are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer because now they own Obamacare. They own it, 100 percent own it. This is not a Republican health care, this is not anything but a Democrat health care and they have Obamacare for a little while longer until it ceases to exist, which it will at some point in the near future and just remember this is not our bill.
That reminded him that he has a conspiracy theory about President Obama and Obamacare: "You know, I said the other day when president Obama left, they—17—he knew we were going to be here, 2017 going to be a bad year for Obamacare." Yes, he still apparently believes that Obama left some kind of booby-trap in there to make the law explode on his, Trump's, watch.
He does feel like he learned some things, things that will make you despair that he is the one sitting behind that desk in the oval office.
"We learned a lot about loyalty, we learned a lot about the vote-getting process. We learned a lot about some very arcane rules in obviously both the Senate and in the House. So it's been, certainly for me it's been an interesting experience." Bully for him.
How does he feel about this overall? Vindicated. "I think you know, I was very clear, I think there wasn't a speech I made or very few where I didn't mention that perhaps the best thing that could happen is exactly what happened today." Because in his own mind, Trump can never be a loser.
Now as far as the rest of the nation and world is concerned, well, he's pretty darned damaged. After this fiasco, it might be pretty hard for him to rely even on the Republican-controlled House to protect him from the big black cloud of an FBI investigation into potential treason that’s still forming over his head.