Today, Donald Trump spoke to the National Governor’s Association. While he was talking about how his team was working on a plan that would replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), he said this:

“Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.”

Are you *&$% kidding me?  For a century before the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, multiple Presidents – including no less than Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Nixon – worked to find a way to provision healthcare to all U.S. citizens.  It was through Nixon’s efforts that the HMO was introduced to the country.  Hillary Clinton formulated a comprehensive plan almost a quarter of a century ago but was unable to implement it.

But Trump’s ego requires a belief that everyone else must be stupid, and only HE can resolve the problem.  And now he’s finding it “complicated”.  What a piece of work this guy is.

Because Donald Trump holds everyone, including his predecessors, in such profoundly low esteem, he is the man who continually shot his mouth off during his presidential campaign by promising that he would repeal Obamacare and replace it with “something terrific” that would provide coverage for everyone.  He must have believed that this was relatively simple and that every administration that had tried to do so was either incompetent, lazy or corrupt (snarkily, I have to add here that he is only two out of three).

Something terrific.  That will cover everyone.

This isn’t something he said once; it’s something he said repeatedly.

And now we know he said it having done zero homework or even the vaguest sort of due diligence.

Yeah, Don, healthcare is “complicated”. But you know who did know that?

Barack Obama knew it. Hillary Clinton knew it. Hillary knew it by virtue of working to produce a comprehensive healthcare provisioning bill called the Health Security Act nearly twenty-five years ago. Obama and Hillary and their teams probably understand the complexities of this matter better than anyone remotely associated with U.S. politics today.  Nixon knew it.  Roosevelt knew it.  Bill Clinton knew it.  FDR knew it.  These people actually gave it serious consideration and did their homework.

I’ve written before about how the GOP willfully and quite consciously have worked for decades against legislation that helps provision healthcare to the maximum number of U.S. citizens possible.

Now we know that despite voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act more than five dozen times over the last six years, the GOP has never had any plan to replace it. Hell, they never even looked into it or tried to understand it in any meaningful way.  And their failure to do so is nothing less than unconscionable and grossly negligent.  If a politician could be sued for political malpractice, every single GOP member of the House between 2010 and now should get served … by every citizen in his or her district … individually.

Because it’s “so complicated”.

Wait until Trump learns about concepts like global supply chains when he’s economically harming the U.S. through his protectionist trade actions. He, Steve Bannon, and the Trumpkins might be nationalists who will shove “America First” down our throats, but the rest of the world has moved past the 20^th century to which Trump and Co. would like to return.  Oh, wait, I forget that he’s a (bankrupt four times) business genius.   [I really need to find some snarky music or something to use]

For a guy who insists on telling us that he’s very smart, comprehends things really well, and that he alone can fix the ills of this country, it’s pretty disconcerting to learn that he is now finding that healthcare can be “so complicated”.

And his ego mandates that since he didn’t know that, then NOBODY did.

Be vigilant, fellow citizens. Be very vigilant. We haven’t even hit Day 40 yet in this debacle of an administration.