In a short briefing of reporters in the Oval Office late Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump said he was “disappointed” and “a little surprised, to be honest,” that the American Health Care Act did not have the votes to pass the House of Representatives. Flanked by Vice President Mike Pence and Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price, Trump said that the bill was about “10 to 15” votes short of passage.
Trump said he did not blame House speaker Paul Ryan for the bill’s failure, noting that “he’s got a lot of factions” in the Republican conference. The president said he was disappointed that there was no Democratic support for the AHCA, stating that he’d prefer to have a bipartisan “real health-care bill.”
“I think if we had bipartisan we could have a health-care bill that could be the ultimate,” Trump said.
That’s a different message than what a White House source told me earlier on Friday, shortly after GOP leadership pulled the bill from its scheduled floor vote. “We’re moving on” from health care, said a senior White House aide.
