Squawking Heads: Chronicling the Failure of the Republican Health Care Plan on Sunday Morning TV

This week on Squawking Heads, the White House is sick and goddamn tired of your behavior and is turning this car around; Jeanine Pirro doesn’t seem to understand that when you’re wearing a lapel mic you DO NOT HAVE TO PROJECT QUITE SO FORCEFULLY FROM YOUR DIAPHRAGM; and when regulations have clearly made the world a better place you should obviously get rid of every last one of them. Wanna know where the buck stops in this administration? LITERALLY NOWHERE. ALLONS-Y MY FRIENDS!

It’s Everyone’s Fault But Ours

On Fox News Sunday, perpetually sweaty unchill hack Reince Priebus started his discussion of the failed health care bill with Chris Wallace over a chyron blaring “TRUMP BLAMES DEMOCRATS FOR DEFEAT.” While a timeworn tale on the network, the two were actually discussing Trump’s typical early morning tweet where he blamed conservative Republicans for the bill’s demise.

Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 26, 2017

And thus, a perfect summary of the entire morning was born. The buck, in this administration, stops nowhere. Conservative Republicans blamed Paul Ryan, Trump’s crony’s blamed Conservative Republicans, Democrats high-fived each other and poured champagne into their mouths. It was anarchy.

Priebus and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, while shit talking every person they could think of other than Paul Ryan, behaved like sanctimonious parents who had warned their van-full of pre-teens that if they acted up one more time they’d have to go home. Both foretold a time when Obamacare finally implodes—or explodes, or implodes and explodes as Priebus posited—and everyone comes crawling back to the administration begging them to fix healthcare.

It’s an incredibly vindictive way to govern but isn’t surprising at all from an administration lead by Donald Trump. The man can’t focus on anything longer than a tweet.

“Obamacare, from start to finish, was 187 legislative days. Medicare Part D, the big Bush initiative, 166. Welfare reform was 56. ‘86 tax reform was 323 days,” Chuck Todd pressed Mulvaney on Meet the Press. “From start to finish on health care it was 17 days. 17 days. And you guys are waving the white flag?”

Because he is a lazy, lazy man, Chuck. That’s why.

The only true noteworthy thing that came out of these conversations was Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK) finally dismissing Paul Ryan’s blatant lie that Obamacare was passed in secret and the entire government was bamboozled.

“When the Democrats came to power in 2009, for 60 years, at least, they had been pursuing a national health care system, yet they didn’t introduce legislation for eight months,” Cotton said. “They didn’t pass it for over a year of Barack Obama’s first term. So it went through very public hearings and took testimony, developed a fact-based foundation of knowledge.”

FINALLY, I yelled at my computer, because I am a dweeb.

There was some additional palace intrigue over a Trump Tweet (ugh) regarding Jeanine Pirro’s new Fox News show. Trump urged his followers to watch Pirro’s show that night, a show she started off with a lengthy (shouted, extremely grating, loud) rant about how Paul Ryan should step down. Each and every White House surrogate said that Trump had no idea what Pirro was to say that night and that the President continues to be best bros with Ryan. Much more likely is that Pirro was trying to get a message to Trump, but that’s just wild speculation on my part.

Other Highlights

On This Week’s homepage there is a link to an excerpt from Roger Stone’s book “The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution.” Instead of a pull quote on the cover from a review of the text, Stone’s book bears the brand “‘Roger Stone is one tough cookie….We appreciate him.’ —President DONALD J. TRUMP.” Sorry I can’t think of a joke, I’m trying to dig my eyeballs out of my skull where they landed when I rolled them after seeing that.

Roger Stone somehow shows all his upper teeth when he speaks and now I shan’t ever know a night of peaceful sleep again. Please also do yourself a favor and check out @spookperson’s complete and total owning of Roger Stone on Twitter. It’s a masterclass.

Understatement of the Week

“‘Well, there is a difference between being an opposition party and a majority party.’ Duh.” — Tom Brokaw on Paul Ryan.

Cliché Watch

Chuck Schumer has the same problem as Nancy Pelosi—they’re playing a game no one is interested in anymore. Namely, these two cannot stop trying to create alliterative taglines. Schumer this week seemed very pleased with himself when he threw out that Trump was “being petulant not a president.” Kill me.

What’s the Next Thing We Should Be Afraid Of?

Scott Pruitt, EPA Administrator, is just pleased as punch to have the chance to roll back every single regulation that has ever existed regarding the environment. How is he justifying this batshit insanity, you ask? Well because the regulations have worked, see, so we don’t need them anymore!

“George, we’re actually at pre-1994 levels right now with respect to our CO2 footprint,” Pruitt said on This Week. “Now, why is that? Largely it’s because of innovation and technology both in the coal sector and the natural gas sector.”

Some people might say this innovation occurred because regulations forced these companies to find creative solutions to energy problems, thus arguing for the regulations’ continued existence. Those people would be stupid sheeple blindly following Big Mother Earth. Get rid of the regulations, I’m sure everything will be fine!

Next week on Squawking Heads…