The AHCA Has Failed! Betting on Universal Trumpcare with Ray…

AHCA has failed! But what does this mean for Donald Trump? My suspicion is that this is what Trump and Bannon wanted all along. My roommate Ray disagrees with me strongly. We’ve decided to bet on the outcome. I think some kind of broader coverage Trumpcare plan will come out within the next six months. Ray disagrees. The loser will be forced to endure some form of social media shaming. What do you think that should be?

If you’d like to earn my undying gratitude, please click here to support this project through Patreon. Please do reach out to us through Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or our e-mail newsletter.

Video Transcript after the jump…


Hey there… this is Rob. This is my roommate Ray.

Hello.

And today we’re both really fucking psyched.

Pumped.

Pumped.

…Because the Republicans kind of got made a fool of, but we kind of disagree.

So what happened to day was the AHCA failed, the sort of Republican Health plan bombed… it went over like a lead balloon. But… And I think we can agree on that, we’re happy…

Yes, the failure was amazing.

Exactly. It’s a fun thing to watch. It’s good to watch people who really deserve it get screwed over. Right, Ray?

I agree 100%

However, we disagree strongly on one aspect of it. I think it’s mostly a failure for the Republican party and, as much as it disturbs me, I think it might provide opportunities for Trump. Whereas Ray…

I believe that it was an abject failure for Trump and the Republican party as a whole. However the caveat Rob is that you believe this was a strategy that Trump had. He wanted this to fail… that was the point of… that I objected.

Yes! I believe that Trump wanted this to fail, because Trump, or possibly Bannon, who does more of the actual thinking, or someone else who is strategically minded in the Trump camp, wanted this to fail because it was quite transparently and obviously going to hurt a lot of Trump’s base.

You see, there’s two problems I have with that. One, that Trump actually cares about his base. Two, that he’s smart enough to actually implement this strategy, in which he demands a vote, then has that vote get pulled and blow up in his face, and then proceed to throw a tantrum like he does about most other things, How that could be good for him. And the long game, which Rob tried to point out, is that somehow he believes that this is going to lead to Trump not only going after a universal healthcare law with Democratic support somehow. To which I respond, no Republican’s going to support that. So there is no possible way that this is a strategy by Trump. I think he’s just not that bright.

I think it’s very possible. Now they won’t call it Single Payer, they’ll call it like Medicaid expansion or something like that, but I think Trump consciously… once again, Trump or his handlers… consciously wanted this to fail, so they can possible come out with something else. That uh… well it would take essentially nothing to be better than the AHCA, but…

But this also… This also means that you believe that the Freedom Caucus, which also is a point of my opinion… is that the Freedom Caucus can’t be controlled. They were unleashed, essentially the Tea Party, to obstruct this original bill, but they are now obstructing everything the GOP wants to do, and there is zero way, if they can’t get behind this bill, that they’re going to get behind a universal healthcare? Call it whatever you want, these cats are not going to support that.

But what you call it is very important.

Sure.

They’re gonna come up with some… obviously they’re not going to call it Single payer, they’re not going to call it socialized medicine, they’re not going to…

Sure… But they don’t like Medicaid or Medicare, because it’s a social program. It’s a socialized program.

But these things… these things like the Freedom Caucus, like the reason that they were able to screw with the Republican Establishment so hard over the past number of years is because they had something that seemed like, to the establishment to the Republican establishment, that just doesn’t have it… popular support. I would argue that Trump has that. Like Trump, Like the Freedom Caucus used to have this thing that they could hold over the Republican Establishment. Trump owns that now.

How can Trump have popular support when he did not win the majority of voters, his approval rating is very bad, and frankly he represents about twenty to thirty percent of the populace when it comes to his party affiliation.

Well sure, but that’s exactly it. The thing… we’ve had many strong conversations about the electoral college, but we won’t go in that direction…

It’s a failure.

…we won’t go in that direction with our discussion today but…

It needs to evolve.

But you acknowledge that the electoral college and congress have very similar set ups right?

OK. Meaning arcane rules that actually can be manipulated to produce results that the minority party wants.

Exactly, like you look at the Republicans right? And the freedom caucus specifically… a lot of those guys… like, you know, you look at the house Republican Freedom caucus member… like, these numbers aren’t accurate but one of those…

There’s like 30 right? Roughly 30 or so Freedom caucus members or something like that.

I’m not as up on it as I should be.

Something like that.

But you gotta figure most of these folks are from red states.

100% all of them.

And the way that that works, and the way that the popular vote isn’t necessarily important is like… your average red state house member is elected by, I don’t know 30,000 people

Thousands

Yeah, thousands of people vs. like the representative

Hundreds of thousands or millions.

Versus the representative the San Diego representative, who’s sitting here in San Diego probably has like a million people in his district right. So it’s the same set up. Those freedom caucus people. Just because Trump is incredibly unpopular… just because he lost by like three million votes

3 million plus.

Those freedom caucus people are from a completely different electoral college type set up.

Correct. But I guess what I’m saying is: Number one, I don’t believe he’s smart enough to strategize to have a bill that he has touted as saying has to happen, we have to repeal Obamacare but I really secretly Bannon and I want this to fail. He’s just not that smart. And frankly if he can make the Freedom Caucus fall in line they would have passed this bill.

Exactly!

So he can’t make them fall in line.

No. no. no. That’s exactly it. He didn’t want to. Because this, and this is something I’ve been talking about

He has a funny way of showing it.

This is something I’ve been talking about for a while. I did a video a couple months… yeah a couple months back about the smug Republicans and how they are so excited that “Oh they’ve got congress, and they’ve got the presidency, they’re going to do everything they wanted.” I think that we learned today that they’re not. Because, specifically the President is not on board with the old school Republican stuff. Stuff that I to some degree, in it’s best form, believed in.

Well, I think that the writing has been on the wall longer than just now because they’ve had control of Congress for longer than just these few couple months.

Sure. For Sure.

And this majority, small minority of their party, the Freedom Caucus has been obstructing them since they came into power.

Sure, Sure, Sure.

Essentially for a good half of the Obama administration. So I think they created this devil, that they have to deal with. And I honestly believe Trump thought he could bully them, like he bullies everyone, into voting for this, and it was an abject failure.

But I think here, and you have to be careful here with the Freedom Caucus, there are certain parts of it, certain people like Justin Amash and Rand Paul who have come out as like more or less sort of anti-Trump in ways, and there’s a lot of them, a lot of them that are just sort of drawing from the same well of sort of like you know, forgotten

The donors…

No, well the donors are terrified.

I guess what I mean

No but like drawing from the same well as sort of like I’m trying to be friendly and charitable here… you might call them toothless yokels, but I’d call them like the forgotten voter. Rust belt…

I think the forgotten voter is the voter who doesn’t vote that’s the forgotten voter.

Well that’s a larger issue Ray.

That’s a larger issue.

But with that said, at the end of the day, I don’t believe Trump is smart enough to strategize in the way that you’re suggesting to go after a full universal healthcare bill. Because one, it would never pass his own party.

You see, I think he has a lot more control over the Republicans and the Republican base than even the Republicans or the Republican funding class realizes.

And this is where we disagree. You believe that Trump has more control over not only his party but his own actions than I believe he does. I believe he literally from moment to moment doesn’t even know what’s going to come out of his mouth, let alone whether he can cajole and manipulate his party into doing what he wants.

I think, if we’re talking about Trump personally I agree completely. The amount of just complete Twitter own goals that he’s gotten into.

Yeah, this wiretapping thing. This random thing, and he’s going to stick by it until the end, even though every shed of evidence out there…

Yeah, I’m not like “Oh, Trump is playing three dimensional chess”

Can we tangent just for a second on this wiretapping thing, just one quick tangent. One quick tangent?

Ok.

How is it that this entire time with the wiretapping and surveillance we find out that there actually was some surveillance going on at Trump Tower because, a nefarious Russian gangster, living in Trump Tower and doing money laundering to the tune of millions of dollars for the Russian mob. And all of a sudden that’s being touted as “proof” that they were being surveilled. How is that proof you were being surveilled when you lease space to a Russian Gangster.

It’s like Look it’s true, I should be under investigation!

I don’t know, the whole Russia issue just makes me I feel like it’s just an insane….

I’m sorry to tangent.

Insane distraction. But yeah, so as I was saying, It’s not like Trump, Trump’s a genius, but I do think he has people who are thinking about this a little harder. My like sort of Trump’s an idiot default position went out the window when I saw the election. Because for like nine months they’re like what’s he doing in Michigan, what’s he doing there, he’s never gonna win, and like somebody knows something around here you know.

I just don’t think there was a lot of strategic deep thinking that went into that, I thin there were some other things at play. Underlying things within our own culture and society that came to the forefront and that he just happened to be the lightening rod for it. I don’t know that his strategy of pulling out of states and whatever, I just don’t believe, I can’t give him that much credit.

I never, ever want to be seen as giving Trump credit, but like some of the people, call it Bannon, call it I mean, they’re tapping into something…

There’s other individuals influencing his strategy…

And I just don’t think the Trump administration wanted AHCA to succeed.

So to go full circle, we are doing this video, because I want to bet Rob…

Yes

… That there will be no universal healthcare bill that comes out in the next six months because that would have been part of this elaborate strategy to have this fail, is that Rob believes that a Universal Healthcare law is going to come out, and get Democratic support and somehow get enough support to on the Republicans and pass.

Oh I didn’t say pass! I didn’t say pass! But be proposed.

Ok It won’t be proposed.

I do believe, now it won’t be called universal healthcare, it won’t be called socialized medicine, it won’t be called… It’ll be called something like Medicaid expansion, or like…

The Freedom Caucus would have a field day with that. A field day.

I think… I think something like that, some kind of Trumpcare is quite possibly going to come out and is going to be… it’s going to be moving further towards universal coverage.

So the bet is that will not happen in the next six months, from my perspective, Rob believes it will happen, and therefore, we wanted to get this on record…

On record…

For posterity…

For posterity…

Yes.

Yeah.

And I believe that the winner shall, we have a prize that is to be determined… to be determined… but it will be significant, and it will usually involve some sort of ridicule and humiliation on a social media level.

Yeah… Yeah.

So be on the lookout for that in six months Rob will basically have to grovel a little bit.

Yeah, yeah. Honestly I think the thing that Ray would find the most satisfying is would be me admitting that I am wrong and he is right.

Yes, that would be glorious. Glorious.

Yeah, you’ve been waiting for something like that for what? 20 years?

Well that’s another argument I think we can have right now.. but we wont’ do that today.

Alright, but I think we can agree that it’s fricking fantastic…

It’s a great day.

It’s a great day.

It’s a great day for the American people.

It’s a great day and also let me just briefly pitch I’ve got two videos on this topic: the Republican party is Dead, and Smug Republicans and the French Revolution, that I think are probably worth checking out, because when I made them, people were like “Oh, no it’s this Republican monolith that’s coming to destroy the country”. It’s like actually well no like.. The Democrats are a mess right now, but the Republicans, despite what the … the positions they hold, they’re in just as much of a mess.

Agreed.

We’re going to see more of that.

It’s a complete shit show right now.

It sure is.

Stay tuned.

It sure is.

Thanks for watching, please subscribe, and I’ve got some non YouTube stuff coming up in the next couple weeks, and a great way to hear about that would be to sign up for my e-mail newsletter. Thanks very much.

Go Blue.

Ah. Yes. Go Blue.