GLENN: I want to get to the Los Angeles times on Donald Trump, which it really is incredible, how the mainstream media just does not see their own hypocrisy. We'll get to that here in just a second.
PAT: Yeah.
GLENN: What is Donald Trump doing with health care? Is he moving our way? Which way is he going?
STU: Maybe we can ask Rand Paul. They played some golf this weekend. Hopefully some good results out of that. Rand has a much better idea on health care than Ryan or Trump.
PAT: We should try to get him on the air. Ask him about it. Wonder if he would be willing to talk about it.
GLENN: Yeas. Of course he would. Of course he would.
Mike, see if we can get him on the air.
STU: Because he's been very solid on this since the election. He's been pushing hard. He has a much better plan than most --
PAT: Yes, he has. He's been maybe the most solid on it.
GLENN: Yeah, yeah.
PAT: Because you got other people defecting from like the Freedom Caucus, like Ted Poe.
GLENN: You can't let that go.
PAT: It just pisses me off. He wrote a big opinion piece on why I left the Freedom Caucus. And it's filled with the same infuriating BS. This is not a perfect bill. There's no such thing as a perfect bill. Hey, we must stop allowing the perfect to be the enemy of good?
No, why don't we focus on being good. And then maybe that can be the enemy of really terrible. How about that?
GLENN: Yeah.
PAT: Just --
GLENN: We're not looking for perfection.
PAT: Right.
GLENN: Just looking for --
PAT: That's the excuse the Democrats used when they crafted this piece of garbage in the first place. Well, it's not a perfect bill. But we had to do something.
GLENN: But we'll get there.
PAT: And we'll get there eventually. No.
GLENN: And we are getting there eventually.
PAT: Yeah.
GLENN: We are. To their goal.
PAT: Yeah.
STU: And I understand you're never going to get perfect. But shouldn't you be able to see perfect from your first proposal? Shouldn't you be able to at least in the distance be able to see perfect from your first beginning negotiating point? Now, I understand you're not going to get everything in there.
PAT: Yes. Yes. If perfect is heaven, this bill is in south hell right now.
GLENN: Yes.
PAT: You can't even see it from there.
STU: On the wrong side of the railroad tracks. It's sad.
PAT: Yes. Yes. I mean, and for them to be okay with it, for them to craft this delicious turd burger and say, "Go ahead. Eat up. Okay. No, it's not steak, but it's better than going hungry." No, it's really not. It's really not.
GLENN: I just can't figure out --
PAT: Especially when we've got good chefs in the kitchen who could be cooking us something delicious.
GLENN: Rand Paul is doing it. Ted Cruz has done it.
PAT: Yeah. Mike Lee.
STU: Mo Brooks.
PAT: Yeah, Ted Cruz's plan is awesome.
GLENN: Yeah, there's some good plans out there. He should pick one and try that. You know what's -- what I can't figure out is he's playing golf with Rand Paul. He's trashing on Twitter the Freedom Caucus. And then he comes out, over the weekend, and says -- the White House does, "No -- you know, I can't believe all this fake news saying that we're arguing with each other and we're at each other's throats."
STU: So weird.
PAT: It is.
GLENN: Fake news? It's your tweets, dude.
STU: You are the one saying -- and not even in another venue. It was on the same account. You're saying that everyone is fake for saying there's differences, when you are promising to primary people in 2018 that disagree with you. That's not a loving relationship.
PAT: Hmm.
STU: That's really incredible. I don't know -- I mean, I just don't think people care, right? We were talking about this off the air. Because there's a new -- there's a professor. His name -- Jonah Goldberg wrote about him. His name is F.H. Buckley. He's the law professor who helped organize Scholars and Writers for Trump.
GLENN: Unbelievable.
STU: Okay. And he wrote an interesting column for the New York Post this weekend. The headline: Why Trump should embrace single-payer health care.
PAT: Oh, my gosh.
STU: And it goes into saying that, well, Ryancare, which, again, is a bit fraudulent -- look, Trump pushed just as hard for this, and now he's saying he's going to primary people who opposed him on the battle. So it's just as much Trumpcare as it is Ryancare. Let's get over that for a second.
But Ryancare was something only an accountant or a right-wing ideologue could love. How could a right-wing ideologue love that?
That was a disastrous plan. It locked in 75 percent of Obamacare with a couple improvements on it.
So it goes in to say, Trump didn't promise that. He promised a plan that would leave no one insured. The SimpliSafe way to do this --
PAT: No one uninsured.
STU: Sure. Sorry. That would be a real weird campaign promise.
PAT: That would be weird.
STU: I promise you will not have insurance.
GLENN: But you'll pay through the nose.
STU: Sorry. The simplest way to do this is with universal health care or on the Canadian model with a right of individuals to purchase a Cadillac plan on top of this, out of pocket.
PAT: Oh, my.
STU: And there are things that might be added like removing the ban on reimporting drugs from Canada.
PAT: Jeez.
STU: And he goes on to say, you know who would support this? The people who elected Trump in 2016.
PAT: Would they?
STU: They weren't right-wing ideologues. They were people who had lost or feared they would lose their jobs. Many -- is this you, in the audience? I mean, certainly some of these things are these people. But a lot of other people voted for him as well.
They were people who had lost or had feared they would lose their jobs. Many were, but a few steps away from the diseases of despair, social isolation, drug and alcohol poisonings, and suicide.
PAT: What?
STU: And it goes on --
PAT: So it was suicidal people who voted for Trump.
STU: Yes. Yes.
PAT: Well, that explains a lot.
(laughter)
GLENN: That's so ridiculous. It's so crazy to say.
(laughter)
STU: As Jonah finished up: This is a problem. His estimation, Buckley -- and a lot of people say this -- that the Trump voter or the people who elected Trump, are one vast undifferentiated mass of down-on-their-luck, on-the-verge-of-suicide alcoholics and opiate-addicted sad sacks. As a mathematical or statistical proposition, it's a bit much to say they were the people who elected Donald Trump. Sure, they may have provided him the margin of victory in a handful of counties in Florida and Michigan, but if they did, it was only because rank-and-file Republicans put those states in play in the first place. About 9 percent of people who identify themselves as Democrats voted for Trump. About 7 percent of those who identified as Republican voted for Clinton.
So there's very little difference there. This whole idea that all these independents rushed one way or the other, it doesn't seem that that's necessarily what happened. The issue here though is, you know, if you did vote for Trump, you know, if he starts going down this road, will you oppose him then? We should get that on record now. Remember it now before he does it. Because people in the groups that supported him, the people he thinks have been loyal to him are going to him to encourage that he go to single-payer health care. At the same time, he's promising to primary the people who want it to be more conservative
PAT: And this is the Bernie Sanders plan, by the way. Keep that in mind. It's the socialist Bernie Sanders plan. So can we get behind that as a Republican Party?
STU: Say, we don't like that. Can we get to that one?
PAT: Can we? Can we say that right now, before Trump does get on board with this? Hopefully, he won't. But if he did, wouldn't that be wrong? Can we get that out of --
STU: It's a mental experiment. Sure, he's not going to do it. We can all agree he's not going to pay for it. But let's just think now how we feel if he did.
What would you say about it? Think about it now, before it happens, before it's a big issue.
Would you support it or oppose it?
STU: Right.
PAT: That's an important thing to remember.
PAT: Yes.
STU: And then write it down somewhere. Write it on like -- you know what, write it on permanent marker somewhere, like on a wall in your home, that you remember that when Donald Trump wasn't proposing single-payer health care, I thought it was a really bad idea. Just write it somewhere, I don't know, on your door. On your mirror, in permanent ink.
GLENN: There's no way -- there's no way -- I will tell you, you said eat your underwear. If the conservatives -- if you would go -- and he's not going to do this. If he would go for a single-payer health care system and the conservatives would go right along with him, I don't -- do I eat the whole underwear factory?
STU: I mean, would you?
GLENN: I don't know -- there's no way.
STU: Think of this scenario for a second.
PAT: If that happens, aren't we fairly lost as a country?
GLENN: Oh, yeah, we're done.
STU: In that crazy scenario, we would be lost, right?
PAT: We're lost.
STU: So -- but think of the scenario where let's say things don't go well the next couple years for Donald Trump as president and he's opposed by the Freedom Caucus and it pisses him off.
JEFFY: It's almost impossible.
STU: And in 2018, maybe the Democrats take control of the House. They only have 52 seats in the Senate. Maybe they take control of the House. And then he's thinking, well, things aren't going well. And these people stood in my way the whole time, and we have these real problems. I can solve them with the Democrats, and enough Republicans would certainly go along with him on this. You wouldn't need the Freedom Caucus on that one. You get the Democrats and you put together the most annoying Republicans in the House. He can absolutely get it done. It would be difficult for a Democrat president to get that done. It would not be difficult for a Donald Trump if he changed views on this or adopted his views from the campaign.
It would not be that difficult.
And, you know, it would be a big change, but, you know, you put --
PAT: Yeah.
STU: Trump supporting it.
PAT: He's done that stuff before though.
STU: He can do that. Trump supporting it. Because you'd get Democrats. You'd only have to get a few Republicans -- or maybe none! Depending on what happens in 2018. It might be none.
PAT: It's not like he's never changed a point of view, is it? In fact, it's quite the opposite.
GLENN: I don't think he's ever changed his view on health care. He has said that that's what he wants. Single-payer universal health care where everyone is covered.
PAT: Yes. And the government pays for it.
GLENN: And the government pays for it.
STU: And it seems like the Ted Poe argument here is to say, well, you should be scared of that. So let's embrace the really terrible policies he's doing right now so he doesn't get mad at us.
PAT: Yeah. Rather than saying, look, we've got a majority in Congress and we have the executive branch. Let's get something really good passed. I don't know why that can't be the mindset for the Republicans. But it just never is.
STU: And he's not making the policies. Put good policies in front of him and make him veto them.
PAT: Right. It's what they did with Obama.
STU: Right.
PAT: But they showed they weren't serious, didn't they? We're not serious.
