Twitter Mocks Trump, Paul Ryan After Obamacare Repeal Fails Bigly

“Hey Republicans, don’t worry, that burn is covered under the Affordable Care Act,” said New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez

paul ryan donald trump
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In an embarrassing setback, House Republicans abandoned a health care bill on Friday that would have repealed and replaced the Affordable Care Act. It happened after GOP Speaker of the House Paul Ryan informed President Trump that he was unable to whip up the number of Republican votes necessary for the bill to pass.

The bill’s extreme unpopularity (it was polling at 17 percent on Friday morning) was bad enough, but the failure to get it passed exposed deep divisions within the Republican party. As a result, detractors of the repeal-and-replace strategy are having a field day on Twitter, mocking both Trump and Ryan for failing utterly to achieve a goal Republicans have considered a top priority since 2010.

In the world of politics, Democrats and their allies were ecstatic. Like New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, who came at Trump and Ryan with an oldie but goodie burn unit joke.

Planned Parenthood was similarly thrilled. After all, the GOP bill was designed in part to gut the organization’s funding (and deny women affordable coverage for everything from mammograms to maternity leave).

Meanwhile, Pete Souza, White House photographer under Barack Obama, posted this photo, taken during the effort to pass the Affordable Care Act in 2010, to his Instagram account.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BSCN22IF-DQ/?hl=en

But of course, many, many people laughed and laughed.

https://twitter.com/LizzyShaps/status/845323536906436609

https://twitter.com/barry/status/845357995185881088

https://twitter.com/PiercedSkull/status/845367534962466816

https://twitter.com/dickfundy/status/845363074374676480

Naturally, Netflix’s “House of Cards,” which has had a lot of fun at Trump’s expense over the last year, joined in the fun.

But it wasn’t all mockery of course. Democratic Presidential candidate and popular vote winner Hillary Clinton, for example, celebrated the defeat of Trumpcare, calling it “a victory for all Americans.”

Some, like actor Mark Ruffalo, congratulated those who worked to defeat the GOP bill.

Other well meaning people thanked members of the GOP who opted to oppose it, even if in doing so, they politely ignored that GOP opposition stemmed largely from thinking the bill didn’t go far enough in reversing Obamacare.

As for Republicans — Ana Navarro aside — let’s just say many of them were open about being disappointed that 24 million people didn’t lose access to health care.

Ross A. Lincoln

Ross joined TheWrap as a news editor in 2017; he was previously associate editor at Deadline from 2015-2017, and before that comics editor at The Escapist, and features editor at Game Front. As a writer, in addition to TheWrap his bylines can be found at Deadline, Box Office, The Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, The…

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