House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer took on President Trump Tuesday over his claim that he would have won the popular vote if more than 3 million illegal votes had not been counted, which he repeated during a meeting with congressional leaders Monday night.
The Maryland Democrat said Trump’s claim about illegal votes is one of the “alternative facts” that he believes. That term was coined by Kellyanne Conway on Sunday while discussing Trump and press secretary Sean Spicer’s Saturday claims about crowd size at the inauguration.
“Well, at some point in the meeting he indicated that he won the popular vote, and that upwards of 3-5 million people voted illegally. He offered no proof of that,” Hoyer said during his weekly meeting with reporters. “I don’t remember any member around the table saying that they agreed with that, and I certainly don’t agree with it. I believe that Hillary Clinton got 3 million more citizen votes, eligible voters voting for her than voting for Donald Trump. That’s a fact that Donald Trump wants to deny.”
“His alternative facts are not that he lost 65 [million] to 62 [million], but that illegal people who are not authorized to vote voted and therefore he actually won the majority of those authorized to vote,” Hoyer said.
Hoyer said that the group, which included Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, discussed the future of the Affordable Care Act.
“He had an interesting response,” Hoyer said of Trump. “He said, ‘Well, the Affordable Care Act is going to self-destruct.’ And then he turned to Paul Ryan and he said ‘Paul, what I told you is we could leave it in place for two years and it would self-destruct and we would all look good, but that wouldn’t be a good thing to do,'” Hoyer said. “He said we need to replace it now.”
According to Hoyer, Trump told the group that President Obama defended the ACA in a letter to Trump just before he left. However, he said if Trump came up with a better plan for healthcare than the ACA or a bill that improves upon the ACA, he would be open to supporting it.
“No Democrat’s saying that [the ACA] is perfect, but it is far, far, far better than any of the alternatives that have been discussed by the president,” Hoyer said.
