??? WTF?

Trump just went there

By Jane Greenway Carr

It was a week of extremes for President Trump. First he raised his arms in victory after his attorney general laid out his summary of the Mueller report Sunday -- then he promptly sent his team to court to try to throw out the Affordable Care Act.

Even though cries of Republicans-gutting-your-health-care were instrumental to Democrats winning the House in last year's midterm elections, there was the President touting "no collusion" in one breath and in the next handing the Democrats more fresh, hot ammunition.

On Monday evening, the Trump Justice Department notified the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals of its support for a complete invalidation of the Affordable Care Act. "What is especially galling about the move is that it was apparently ordered by the White House over the objections of Attorney General William Barr, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone," marveled Stephen Vladeck. "If Barr cares at all about the long-term institutional credibility of the Justice Department, he should resign in protest."

President Trump made an egregious political miscalculation, wrote senior CNN political commentator David Axelrod. "Every American knows someone, and perhaps loves someone, with a chronic illness," Axelrod emphasized. "Now Trump has ensured that the threat to people with pre-existing conditions will be front and center in yet another campaign." This certainly isn't what most Trump voters were signing up for in 2016, asserted Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times.

Jill Filipovic saw an immoral decision that put ego and Trump's desire to erase Barack Obama's legacy first, and Americans' lives second. "Make America Great Again? This administration wants to make us sick again," observed Filipovic, "and it's no exaggeration to say that if they succeed, a great many Americans will go bankrupt; some will die."

The most important arbiter of the ACA's fate -- should it end up back in the Supreme Court, as is likely -- won't be Donald Trump at all. In his analysis of Joan Biskupic's recent biography of Chief Justice John Roberts, Bloomberg Opinion's Ramesh Ponnuru noted that Roberts' vote to save Obamacare seven years ago suggests that he "is reluctant to move against Obamacare even when considering a case he thinks has real merit."