It took them seven years. Seven years. But on Friday, House Speaker Paul Ryan and the Republicans, despite holding a huge congressional majority, failed to pass their problematic Obamacare replacement bill. After it became readily apparent that the health care bill would not get enough votes to pass, President Trump reportedly rang Speaker Ryan up and told him to pull the bill to avoid the public embarrassment.
And on Friday night, Real Time host Bill Maher teed off on the news. “Isn’t this amazing?” he asked during the monologue. “I mean, for seven years, this is all that Republicans lived to do, was repeal and replace Obamacare. It’s all that they talked about, it’s all that they voted on. It’s like the girl of your dreams finally saying, ‘Okay, take me to bed,’ and then you get her there and…” Maher then raised his fingers, mimicking a limp dick.
“Oh, this looks bad for Trump. It does,” the HBO host added. “You know how Putin feels about failure!”
Trumpcare failed after news emerged that, should the bill pass, 24 million more Americans would go uninsured.
“Paul Ryan wrote a health care bill that somehow covered fewer people than just repealing Obamacare, and replaced it with nothing, and it still wasn’t good enough for the Freedom Caucus. It’s like if you wrote a highway bill that made all the bridges fall down and they said, ‘Yeah, but that only kills drivers. What about the people at home?” joked Maher. He added: “In the last version they had cut hospitalization, doctor visits, maternity, mental health, lab tests, prescriptions, emergency room visits. Their version of health care was: if you like your doctor, go fuck yourself.”
On Friday evening, Speaker Ryan even seemed to get philosophical about the defeat, letting slip that, yes, it’s a heck of a lot harder to craft legislation than merely critique it.
“We were a 10-year opposition party, where being against things was easy to do,” Ryan said. “You just had to be against it. Now, in three months’ time, we tried to go to a governing party where we actually had to get 216 people to agree with each other on how we do things.” Cue Maher: “Republicans just have to admit: crafting legislation is just not your thing. Calling in to talk radio and screaming about Mexicans, yes! Posting Photoshops of Hillary with devil horns, yes! Naming buildings after Reagan, of course! Secret gay sex at highway rest stops, yes! But not legislation.”
