Jeffrey Lord, the CNN political commentator and in-house Trump surrogate, said Wednesday that Republicans should abandon the American Health Care Act and let Obamacare “crash.”
Lord’s comments came after Ana Navarro, another CNN commentator, said that her own congresswoman, Rep. Ileana Ros-lehtinen (R-FL), had announced Tuesday that she would vote against the Republican plan to replace Obamacare.
“Listening to Ana here, I’m beginning to think that that might be the thing to do,” Lord said, asked if President Trump should “wash his hands of this, let the Ryan plan, as he calls it, fail.”
“I mean, Obamacare is failing. It is in fact imploding. Insurance companies are backing out. I’m beginning to think, with all of these problems here with the Ryan plan, et cetera, the best thing is to just step back and let it crash,” Lord continued. “And then when it crashes, there will be incentive to do something else, a free market replacement for it. But if we’re going to have this kind of problem here, then step back and let Obamacare follow its course. And that’s not good for people, but if that’s what they want, there they go.”
JUST NOW: Tea Leaves? Big ones? @realJeffreyLord tells me maybe its time for POTUS to abandon #AHCA https://t.co/aar9av2ubX
— John Berman (@JohnBerman) March 15, 2017
Lord doesn’t have any official position in the White House, but for months represented the Trump campaign’s perspective on television.
The Republican health care plan has encountered an increasingly bumpy road since its introduction, especially after the Congressional Budget Office estimated Monday that 24 million people would lose health insurance cover by 2026 if it were passed into law, relative to Obamacare.
