Spicer On Trump’s Demands For Health Care: ‘He Wants A Good Deal’

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Wednesday that President Donald Trump was pursuing a new deal to repeal and replace Obamacare, but he was vague on details – even on whether the White House would seek Democratic support for the bill.

“The President from the early days of his campaign talked about repealing and replacing,” Spicer said during his daily press briefing. “It’s a commitment that he made. I think he would like to get it done.”

House GOP leadership’s bill to replace Obamacare was pulled unexpectedly on Friday after it failed to earn sufficient support from Republicans.

Spicer added that “we’re not going to create a deal for the sake of creating a deal that ends up not being in the best interests of the American people.”

“You’ve got to know when to walk away from a deal that is going to end up bad,” he continued. “And he wants to have a good deal. And so the deal that he’s looking for; he’s willing to have members come and talk to him and engage on this whole area and figure out what it would take, what their ideas are to get there to grow that vote. If they can do that and get to an area where we will have a majority of the House, we can move it to the Senate, we’re going to engage in that.”

Spicer said working with Democrats to create a health care bill would be “a balancing act” to obtain even “a handful or so, or maybe more” of votes across the aisle.

And, asked about Trump’s comments to a gathering of senators Tuesday night that making a deal on health care would be “an easy one,” Spicer said it was clear that Trump was “joking.”

“It was a light-hearted moment,” he said. “It was on tape. And the idea that there’s this – trying to make it look like he’s being utterly serious all the time is a little bit of a stretch.”

It recalled when Spicer was asked if the public could take Trump’s statements seriously, even after Trump said that employment numbers he called “phony” during the presidential campaign were “very real now.”

“If he’s not joking, of course,” Spicer said.