Trump Brash In The Face Of Defeat: ‘Let Obamacare Fail’

The New York Times: ‘Let Obamacare Fail,’ Trump Says As G.O.P. Health Bill Collapses
Mr. Trump declared that his plan was now to “let Obamacare fail,” and suggested that Democrats would then seek out Republicans to work together on a bill to bury the Affordable Care Act. If he is determined to make good on that pledge, he has plenty of levers to pull, from declining to reimburse insurance companies for reducing low-income customers’ out-of-pocket costs to failing to enforce the mandate that most Americans have health coverage. “It’ll be a lot easier,” Mr. Trump said at the White House. (Kaplan, 7/18)

The Hill: Trump Says He'll 'Let ObamaCare Fail' 
“I think we're probably in that position where we'll let ObamaCare fail,” he told reporters in the Roosevelt Room. “We're not going to own it. I'm not going to own it. I can tell you the Republicans are not going to own it. We'll let ObamaCare fail and then the Democrats are going to come to us.” (Fabian, 7/18)

The Hill: Trump Blames Dems, 'A Few Republicans' For Collapse Of Healthcare Bill 
President Trump on Tuesday put blame on Democrats and "a few Republicans" for the collapse of the Senate GOP's healthcare bill. "We were let down by all of the Democrats and a few Republicans," Trump tweeted. "Most Republicans were loyal, terrific & worked really hard. We will return!" (Savransky, 7/18)

Politico: Trump To Pitch GOP Senators One Last Time To Repeal Obamacare
President Donald Trump is trying to save the GOP's near-dead effort to repeal Obamacare. The president has invited all 52 GOP senators to the White House for lunch on Wednesday to see if he can revive the GOP's moribund plans to repeal and replace the 2010 health law. (Everett, 7/18)

The Associated Press: Trump Making Last-Ditch Effort After Health Bill Collapse
Trump stayed largely on the sidelines as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell struggled unsuccessfully to round up support to make good on the GOP's years of promises to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama's health care law. But with McConnell's third and final effort — on a repeal-only bill — looking like it, too, had collapsed, Trump urged McConnell to delay a make-or-break vote until early next week. (Werner and Fram, 7/19)

The Associated Press: Analysis: Trump Unlikely To Avoid Blame For Health Care Loss
It was a far cry from "The buck stops here." President Donald Trump, dealt a stinging defeat with the failure of the Republican health care bill in the Senate, flipped the script from Harry Truman's famous declaration of presidential responsibility and declared Tuesday, "I am not going to own it." He had tweeted earlier, "We were let down by all of the Democrats and a few Republicans." (Lemire, 7/19)

The Washington Post: Senators Pushed Trump To The Sidelines. He Happily Stayed There. Republicans Are Paying The Price.
In early May, when Senate Republicans began working on health-care legislation, they quickly turned away from two spectacles: the unpopular House bill and the president of the United States’ premature White House Rose Garden celebration of its passage. Instead, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) decided to work up a different bill inside his Capitol office — and left Trump on the sidelines, where he happily stayed. (Kane, 7/18)

The Washington Post: A White House Dinner As A Case Study For Trump’s Inability To Close A Health-Care Deal
As the blame game launches on the Senate health-care bill, there is perhaps no more illustrative example of President Trump's role in the negotiations than this: It's Monday evening. A second version of the Republicans' bill is in danger of flatlining. Two GOP senators are opposed to it, almost a dozen have expressed serious concerns with it, and if just one more Republican opposes it, it's game over for an Obamacare overhaul. Trump is having dinner at the White House with seven Republican senators to talk health care. Of the seven, only Steve Daines (Mont.) had publicly expressed concerns about the bill. (Phillips, 7/18)

The Washington Post: Trump’s Grand Promises To ‘Very, Very Quickly’ Repeal Obamacare Run Into Reality
One week before the election, Donald Trump traveled to the Philadelphia suburbs to deliver a health-care policy speech that was light on details and heavy on grand promises and dramatic warnings. In a hotel ballroom in King of Prussia, his running mate, Mike Pence, introduced him as a dealmaker, fighter and winner “who never quits, who never backs down.” Trump promised to “convene a special session” of Congress as soon as he was sworn in — an idea that confounded many, as Congress was already set to be in session — so that lawmakers could “immediately repeal and replace Obamacare.” All of this would happen “very, very quickly,” he said. (Johnson, 7/18)

The Washington Post: There’s A Trump Tweet For Everything, Failed Obamacare Repeal Edition
President Trump's extensive Twitter history — 35,300 tweets and counting, stretching back to 2009 — virtually guarantees that there's a past tweet to serve as an ironic exclamation point for just about any moment of the Trump presidency. It happens so often that there's a running Internet joke that Trump is actually “a time traveler sent to warn us about himself.” But at no point in Trump's tenure has the president found himself contradicted so much by his own prior tweets as the (perhaps) final implosion of his Obamacare repeal aspirations, which he made a major issue in his campaign. (Ingraham, 7/18)

The Hill: How Trump's Repeal Push Came Up Short 
The Trump administration pushed hard -- and ultimately unsuccessfully -- to convince reluctant senators and governors to support the Senate GOP’s ObamaCare repeal effort. Its two top health officials and Vice President Mike Pence became fixtures in closed-door GOP conference meetings on Capitol Hill, along with other key advisors such as Budget director Mick Mulvaney and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. (Weixel, 7/18)

Bloomberg: Health Care Collapse Could Leave Trump Winless In His First Year
President Donald Trump is now more likely than ever to end his first year in office without a single major legislative accomplishment. His Obamacare repeal collapsed Tuesday. He won’t even release the broad outlines of his tax overhaul plan until September. The last time Washington did a major tax bill, in 1986, it took more than a year. A $1 trillion infrastructure plan is little more than a talking point. Congress ignored his budget proposal. Republicans are as divided on all of these issues as they are on health care. Lawmakers haven’t even given him money to build his border wall. (Sink and Dennis, 7/19)

USA Today: Will Trump's Exercise And Eating Habits Catch Up To Him As Stress Mounts?
He’s 71, holds down an incredibly stressful job, and is overweight. He doesn’t exercise. His eating habits are less than ideal. And to top it all off, he doesn’t get enough sleep. For anyone walking into a doctor’s office with those symptoms, stern warnings to change one's lifestyle are sure to follow. (O'Donnell, 7/17)