Fact check: Trump falsely claims he never wanted to end the Affordable Care Act

(CNN) — Calling Vice President Kamala Harris “a liar,” former President Donald Trump claimed that he never wanted to terminate the Affordable Care Act – an accusation Harris has repeatedly levied against him on the campaign trail.

“Lyin’ Kamala is giving a News Conference now, saying that I want to end the Affordable Care Act. I never mentioned doing that, never even thought about such a thing,” the former president posted on X Thursday.

Facts First: Trump is trying to rewrite history. Repealing and replacing the landmark health reform law, popularly known as Obamacare, was among his top campaign promises when he first ran for president in 2016, and he spent the initial months of his term pushing Congress to pass legislation to do just that. Trump revived the idea early in the current campaign before backtracking. At September’s presidential debate with Harris, he called the Affordable Care Act “lousy” and said “we” are working on “things” to replace it.

Even before he ran for office, Trump was crusading on Twitter, now known as X, to repeal the law signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

During his 2016 campaign, he promised supporters that he would quickly dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Within hours of taking office in January 2017, he issued an executive order aimed at rolling back the law.

The former president revived the debate over the law’s fate in November 2023, when he wrote on his Truth Social platform that he’s “seriously looking at alternatives” and that the failure to terminate it “was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up!”

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Related:
GOP Aims To Kill Obamacare Yet Again After Failing 70 Times
Published Jul 29, 2017 at 6:53 PM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/gop-health-care-bill-repeal-and-replace-70-failed-attempts-643832