A Louisiana senator on Sunday said the country needs to ignore President Trump’s tweets and focus more on the real worries faced by Americans’ families when discussing healthcare.
“Our focus cannot be on the tweet. Our focus has to be on that kitchen table family paying $20,000, $30,000 and $40,000 for their premiums, wondering how they’re going to make ends meet,” Sen. Bill Cassidy said on “Meet The Press.”
“I get so frustrated when we get focused on tweets,” the Republican senator said. “We need to think about these families with this incredible human need.”
Pressed that Trump’s rantings on Twitter sabotage the Republican agenda on healthcare and tax reform, Cassidy said “the president doesn’t make my life.”
“I wake up in the morning and I read about the LSU Tigers. I don’t read about the president’s tweets. And I think we need to have more of a focus on that family, not on a president’s tweets,” he said, adding, “The president, if you think about what he’s saying on healthcare, he actually wants something better.”
Cassidy’s appearance on NBC came shortly before Trump tweeted a video of him decking Vince McMahon, the World Wrestling Entertainment chairman, during a WrestleMania stunt in 2007. In the video, Trump body-slammed McMahon – whose face was replaced by a logo of CNN, which the president has labeled as “Fake News Network.”
But Democratic Sen. Tom Carper said the president’s lashing out at people on Twitter is making it harder for him and his administration to govern.
“Leaders don’t build themselves up by pushing other people down,” Carper said on “Meet the Press.” “Everything I was trained as a leader, this man is none of those things.”
Cassidy, a medical doctor, ​compared ​getting distracted by the tweets to not caring for a​ grievously ​ill patient.
“I liken it to when I have a patient in the intensive care unit. I’m focused on that patient. I walk around all day long thinking about what I can do better,” he said. “If I focus on the president, which those Tweets were not good. They’re reprehensible.”
“On the other hand, if I focus on the patient, the patient’s got a better likelihood of getting better.”
The senator, who has said a healthcare bill has to pass the “Jimmy Kimmel test,” which comes from the late-night comedian’s plea for​ continued treatment of pre-existing conditions ​after his son was born with a heart defect, claims that while Trump’s tweets overwhelm the day’s news cycle he doesn’t read them first thing in the morning.
Last week, a day after Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell delayed a vote on repealing and replacing ObamaCare after numerous defections from GOP senators until after the July Fourth recess, Trump tweeted that the Senate should just ditch former President Obama’s healthcare plan.
“If Republican Senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately REPEAL, and then REPLACE at a later date!,” the president wrote.
Trump also set off a firestorm of criticism as the Senate was negotiating the GOP-backed Better Care Reconciliation Act last Thursday when he tweeted that Mika Brzezinski, a co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” during a visit to the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in January.