Alyssa Farah Griffin has joined a growing chorus claiming Sen. JD Vance (R-Oh.) “straight up” lied onstage Tuesday at the vice presidential debate against Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) and, as an aide to former President Donald Trump, would certainly know if he hadn’t.
The “View” co-host and former Trump White House communications director took particular issue with Vance claiming that Trump “salvaged” the Affordable Care Act, the health care policy signed into law by former President Barack Obama in 2010.
“When Obamacare was crushing under the weight of its own regulatory burden and health care costs, Donald Trump could have destroyed the program,” Vance said Tuesday. “Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.”
“I think you can make a really good argument that it salvaged Obamacare,” he added.
The claim was particularly egregious as repealing Obamacare was a central talking point of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The former president even signed an executive order upon taking office in 2017 to launch the process of rolling the landmark policy back.
“When he said Trump tried to save Obamacare, I was on Capitol Hill — we were trying to repeal Obamacare,” Griffin said Wednesday on “The View,” per Mediaite: “I’m willing to admit what we were trying to do as Republicans. He just straight up lied about that.”
Trump naturally repeated the lie during his own debate last month against Vice President Kamala Harris. His plan to repeal it is well documented, though: Trump vowed to do so on his campaign website in 2016 and frequently promised it at his rallies.
The effort would have drastically reduced government spending on health care and left millions without coverage. While Trump was unsuccessful in convincing Congress to do away with the law, he continued to undermine it by cutting funding for outreach and enrollment counselors during his term.
Fellow “View” co-host Joy Behar put it succinctly Wednesday in calling both Trump and Vance “pathological liars,” which Griffin agreed with — but not before suggesting that Trump is infuriated about his running mate being a better debater than he is.
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“He can make it through 90 minutes without melting down about rallies and crowd sizes,” said Griffin. “Not Donald Trump. I suspect how glowing the reviews from the right are about JD Vance is going to ultimately irk Donald Trump because he cannot debate the way JD Vance does.”
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