The real reason Trump is back to wanting to repeal Obamacare

It's the Racism.

Donald Trump—taking a short break from channeling dangerous dictators of the past—has suddenly focused his 2024 campaign on repealing “Obamacare,” aka The Affordable Care Act (ACA). This has stunned many political pundits, especially Republican strategists who fear this approach will hurt the GOP in 2024 given the near record popularity of the ACA. But the reality is Trump has made Obamacare a target for a few reasons—most notably, because Trump knows his base loves it when he attacks the nation’s only Black President and his signature achievement. And Trump—being the racist he is—loves it as well.

As a reminder, Trump unexpectedly raised the issue of repealing Obamacare with a post Thanksgiving weekend on social media--and has since repeated his goal of “repealing” it with something “better.” In fact, Saturday in Iowa, Trump again reiterated this point stating, “Obamacare is a disaster. And I said we’re going to we’re going to do something about it.”

Trump then bizarrely told the crowd, “I saved Obamacare when we got John McCain’s negative vote,” referring to the late GOP Senator’s famous no vote to repeal the ACA in July 2017. In reality, Trump trashed McCain—even after his death--for that vote which prevented Trump from repealing the ACA, saying in 2019: “I’m very unhappy that he didn’t repeal and replace Obamacare,” adding, “I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be.”  (The question this comment raises is was Trump simply lying in his speech Saturday about getting McCain to vote no or is this another example of Trump’s apparent cognitive decline?!)

We all know Trump has no "fantastic" healthcare plan to replace Obamacare.  He made that exact pledge throughout the 2016 campaign. And as President, Trump repeatedly promised that he would deliver within “two weeks” a “phenomenal health care” right through the closing months of his first term.

The truth is Trump’s new vow to repeal Obamacare is not about policy. Trump is doing this for a few other reasons. First, he believes going after the greatest achievement of President Obama plays great with his base. Second, Trump has long been obsessed with attacking and smearing Obama. And third, the more the media talks Obamacare, the less press there is on Trump’s 91 criminal charges which helps normalize a man who should never be normalized.

For starters, while Obamacare is popular with nearly 60% of Americans now approving of it, Obama was very unpopular with the GOP base. When Obama left office in January 2017, a CNN poll showed him with a 60 percent approval rating, landing him near the top of the list of  presidential approval ratings upon leaving office. (In contrast, Trump left office with a 34 percent approval rating—the lowest of his term.) Yet among Republicans, only 18 percent approved of how Obama handled his two terms in the White House.

Trump’s use of “Obamacare” as opposed to the ACA is apparently intended to invoke Obama for his supporters. And as well know, there’s a racial component at play as well. Trump understands his base better than any of us and he gets that many of them love him because he’s viewed as the defender of white power.

We saw that with Trump’s history of refusing to denounce white supremacists until shamed into it, his repeated attacks on prominent Black figures, his demonization of the Black Lives Matter movement as a “symbol of hate,” re-sharing of open white supremacists on social media, seeking immigrants to the United States from Norway and not “shithole countries” like Africa or Haiti and on and on.  Trump vowing to erase the signature achievement of America’s first and only Black president feeds that chunk of his base.

Then there’s the personal aspect to this. Trump has long sought to undermine President Obama starting with his 2011 racist “birther campaign” where he sought to cast Obama as an illegitimate president. Some of Trump’s lies at the time that Obama was not born in the United States conjure up his lies the 2020 election was stolen as he tried to couch both with an air of credibility. For example, this Trump comment in April 2011 on NBC’s Today show: “I have people that have been studying [Obama’s birth certificate] and they cannot believe what they’re finding…” He added, “If he wasn’t born in this country, which is a real possibility…then he has pulled one of the great cons in the history of politics.”

Trump even claimed in 2011--with zero evidence--that Obama was a “terrible student” and questioned how he could have been accepted at Columbia University or Harvard Law, both schools from which Obama graduated. He then demanded Obama release his school records.

And we can’t forget how at the 2011 White House Correspondent’s Dinner, Obama—along with comedian Seth Meyers—comically embarrassed Trump. Some have opined that this comedic smackdown fueled Trump’s run for the White House.

Finally, Trump—who truly understands how to manipulate the media—gets that the more stories about him discussing policy, the less about Trump’s 91 felony charges ranging from his numerous alleged violations of the Espionage Act to attempting to overturn the 2020 election. And the more the media covers policy debates involving Trump, the more it helps him seem like a normal political candidate and not the “clear and present danger to American democracy” that he is.

Try as he may, Trump will never be in the same galaxy as President Obama when it comes to success, intelligence and class. Trump knows that which is why he continually smeared him with lies and now has pivoted back to repealing the ACA.

Trump targeting Obamacare is not about helping Americans by providing better healthcare. After all, Trump had four years in the White House to do that yet he never delivered his "terrific" healthcare plan. Rather, it’s all about helping one person: Donald Trump. In fact, that is the only person Trump ever cares about helping.

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