President Trump on Saturday said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) “let down” his party, the people of Arizona and “his best friend” by opposing the GOP’s latest attempt to repeal and replace ObamaCare.
In a series of tweets on Saturday morning, Trump criticized McCain’s announced decision from the day before that he could not “in good conscience” vote for the health care legislation that the Trump administration has been lobbying for in the Senate.
Trump alleged that McCain had been influenced in his decision by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in his decision to oppose the bill co-authored by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).
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“Sad,” Trump wrote.
“McCain let his best friend L.G. down!” Trump added. McCain had acknowledged he struggled in his opposition to the health care legislation in part because of its authors.
“The bill’s authors are my dear friends, and I think the world of them. I know they are acting consistently with their beliefs and sense of what is best for the country. So am I,” McCain said in a statement Friday.
Graham, who is one of McCain’s best friends, released a statement immediately following McCain’s announcement that reaffirmed their friendship as “not based on how he votes but respect for how he’s lived his life and the person he is.”
With McCain opposing the Graham-Cassidy legislation, added to Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) previous opposition, the Republican bill looks doomed to defeat. The GOP cannot afford any more defections and several other Republican votes also look unlikely. However, Trump tweeted that he thinks Paul is open to convincing.
“I know Rand Paul and I think he may find a way to get there for the good of the party!” he wrote.
However, Paul on Friday pushed back against Trump’s effort to pressure him over his vote on the bill, saying that he “won’t be bribed or bullied.”
Trump warned Friday that Paul would forever be known as “‘the Republican who saved ObamaCare’” over his opposition to the legislation.
The president also tweeted Saturday about Alaska’s GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, another key vote for the bill. “Lisa M comes through,” he suggested.
Murkowski and McCain both voted against the last Senate Republicans’ bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare in July. They, along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), were the deciding votes in the bill’s defeat on the Senate floor. No Democrats voted for the legislation.
Collins has said she is “leaning against” the current bill.
The remarks on Twitter were harsher than Trump’s condemnation of McCain the previous night at a rally in Alabama.
“John McCain, if you look at his last campaign, it was all about repeal and replace, repeal and replace,” Trump told the crowd. “So he decided to do something different, and that’s fine.”
He also pledged that Republicans would repeal and replace ObamaCare “eventually.”