Political analyst David Gergen called President Donald Trump’s reaction to the Republican health care bill’s failure, “delusional” on Friday.
Gergen compared Trump to House Speaker Paul Ryan in his remarks, saying “I thought Paul Ryan manned up, he took responsibility,” but that Trump “is a man who just shoves off on other people and describes things in ways that are just misleading.”
While the panelists discussed past presidents who stumbled politically in their first 100 days – John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton for example – Gergen said of Trump’s early aughts:
“When you add up the totality of it, you said this is his worst week of his presidency, I think this might be the worst 100 days we’ve ever seen of a president,” Gergen said.
He lambasted Trump’s showing as president, saying:
"Earlier this week his credibility took a direct hit over the wiretapping, and now his capacity is taking a direct hit. He came to us as the dealmaker, his ultimate promise was he was the dealmaker and he was going to make the system work, and that so clearly has failed."
In the recent days since it became clear the GOP's American Health Care Act would not have enough votes to pass, Trump has attacked the House Freedom Caucus and blamed House Democrats for the bill not passing, saying "We had no Democrat support, no votes from the Democrats," which made the passing "very difficult," despite Republicans holding a House majority.
He also called Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer "the losers" in the failure of the bill "because now they own Obamacare."
In his own press conference Friday afternoon, Ryan took responsibility for the bill's failure, saying, "All of us, all of us - myself included - we will need time to reflect on this moment and what we could have done to do it better."