Beyond Charlottesville - Terry McAuliffe Page 0,16
executive order that sought to undermine the ACA and he took shots at it whenever he could. The problem was, as with so many other issues, he didn’t seem to have much of an idea what he was talking about once the discussion moved past slogans. Everybody had been telling him for months that this was a very complex, difficult issue and he never listened.
When he spoke to the National Governors Association soon after he became president, he actually told us, “Now I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.”
Are you kidding me? We all knew. The whole nation had been grappling with the complexities of health care for decades, and on the campaign trail Trump tried to come off as the expert of all experts. He was going to simplify it for us all. Now he was saying this to a room full of governors who had all administered complex health-care programs in their states? We’d all been trying to get through to him how complex this was. The governors just looked at each other and shook their heads in bewilderment over that one.
That July, President Trump came to Norfolk, Virginia, for the commissioning ceremony for the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier. I was there for the occasion along with many Ford administration notables, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld. Trump and I sat next to each other on the dais. I had the president sitting next to me for an hour. I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to speak up. He was creating chaos in our health-care delivery system and we were already feeling the impact of that.
“Mr. President, you ran on fixing health care,” I told him. “You said more people would get access, it would be better care, and it would be cheaper. You ran on that, but you’re doing the opposite.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I’m not making any progress with the Republicans. I need to do it. I think I can do a deal with the Democrats on this.”
“Good, let’s get it going,” I said.
“Why don’t you come up and have lunch with me on Wednesday at the White House?” he said. “We’ve got a great chef. And we’ll talk about it.”
“Great,” I said.
What else do you tell the president of the United States when he says he wants to have lunch and make a deal? That was Saturday. I called up the Democratic leadership in Congress to brief them. I said I had no idea if Trump was serious about wanting to make a deal with Democrats, but it seemed worth following up. I was going to call back before Wednesday to confirm the meeting, but before I could do that Trump blew the whole thing up.
He took to Twitter on Tuesday morning for one of his typical early-morning rants, rambling on about how it was a “Big day for HealthCare. After 7 years of talking, we will soon see whether or not Republicans are willing to step up to the plate!” Then another one: “ObamaCare is torturing the American People. The Democrats have fooled the people long enough. Repeal or Repeal & Replace! I have pen in hand.” And: “It is time to end the Obamacare Nightmare!”
He also announced he was heading to Ohio that night for one of his bizarre rallies to stir up his core supporters. It was clear he’d rather attack Democrats wildly on health care than make a deal and get something done. No way was I going up to the White House to have lunch with him that week. Once again, Donald Trump had chosen to veer back toward pitting one side against the other, building up resentment rather than looking for a way to bring people together and to make progress.
CHAPTER 4
The Robert E. Lee Statue
We knew early in 2017 that we might have a problem on our hands in Charlottesville. It started on February 6, 2017, when the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove a statue of General Robert E. Lee from its spot in the middle of Lee Park not far from the University of Virginia. The Charlottesville Circuit Court later blocked any action to remove or sell the statue, delaying action for six months, but that didn’t stop white nationalists from using the planned move as a rallying cry.
The whole issue of Confederate ideology had been percolating in the South for generations,