[COMMENTARY] Pics Reveal Trump’s “Healthcare Plan” Is Nothing But Blank Pages
If Donald Trump’s “60 Minutes” interview with Lesley Stahl ever actually sees the light of day, it promises to contain plenty of moments he’d rather people not see, which explains his tweetstorm threatening to release the footage himself. Not only did Trump storm out of the interview well before it was scheduled to end, but he also refused to do a planned segment with Mike Pence.
One moment Trump seemed to be proud of was when he had White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who recently recovered from her own bout with the coronavirus, bring out a huge binder that he claimed held his full healthcare plan. However, upon closer inspection, it appears as if Trump’s experience staging photo ops has once again come into play, because the binder looks to be comprised of nothing but blank pages.
Trump himself tweeted screenshots from the interview, but sharp-eyed Twitter immediately users picked up on the obviously staged moment.
i mean pic.twitter.com/jxezcSF8RK
— Philip Bump (@pbump) October 21, 2020
Anyone who’s followed Trump’s tenure knows he loves a good photo op, so it’s not surprising that he tried to impress Stahl with a great big heavy book. However, it’s fairly obvious no one on Team Trump thought Stahl–a multiple-Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist–would actually open it to inspect it for herself.
Did the White House really hand Leslie Stahl a 2,500 page binder of blank pages that they said was Trump’s health care plan ?
— Sam Stein (@samstein) October 21, 2020
Trump just loves to make it look like he’s busy working or has a lot of things to sign. Who can forget the famously staged shot of him signing his “taxes”.
And this staged moment from his brief stay at Walter Reed, where he once again appears to be signing a blank page.
It’s probably also safe to say that there just isn’t a Trump Healthcare Plan.
These blank pages are way better than Trump's actual plan, which is to ask the Supreme Court to set fire to the 1000 pp Affordable Care Act and strike it all down, including its protections for those w/preexisting conditions. Gimme blank paper any day over that. https://t.co/n3jKLBDXma
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) October 21, 2020