'Get back to work': Trump's vacation message to Mitch McConnell

Ben Jacobs
Updated

  • Trump suggests Senate majority leader should quit if he can’t pass reforms

  • ‘Mitch, get back to work and put repeal and replace, tax reform on my desk’

mitch mcconnell
Trump tweeted on Thursday afternoon: ‘Mitch, get back to work and put Repeal & Replace, Tax Reform & Cuts and a great Infrastructure Bill on my desk for signing. You can do it!’ Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

Donald Trump has suggested that Mitch McConnell should step down if the Republican leader in the Senate does not successfully get the president’s agenda passed on Capitol Hill.

Speaking to reporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he is spending a working vacation, Trump was asked if McConnell should stand down. “I’ll tell you what,” the president said, “if he doesn’t get repeal and replace [of the Affordable Care Act] done, if he doesn’t get taxes done, meaning cuts and reform, if he doesn’t get infrastructure done, then you can ask me that the question.”

The remarks came after Trump attacked the Senate majority leader in several statements on Twitter in recent days. After McConnell suggested that Trump had “excessive expectations” about what could be accomplished on Capitol Hill, the president tweeted: “Senator Mitch McConnell said I had ‘excessive expectations’, but I don’t think so. After 7 years of hearing Repeal & Replace, why not done?”

The president followed this with a similar tweet on Thursday morning, and then tweeted on Thursday afternoon: “Mitch, get back to work and put Repeal & Replace, Tax Reform & Cuts and a great Infrastructure Bill on my desk for signing. You can do it!”

Trump’s displeasure with McConnell has been increasingly public since the Senate failed to pass its version of a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act in July.

The compromise bill to undo Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reforms failed by a 51-49 margin, with the Republican senator John McCain casting the deciding vote. Trump reiterated his unhappiness with this result on Thursday, telling reporters: “I say, Mitch, get to work and let’s get it done. They should have had this last one done. They lost by one vote; for a thing like that to happen is a disgrace.”

The president’s attacks on the Senate majority leader come as Congress faces several crucial time-sensitive bills when it returns from its August recess, including votes to raise the debt ceiling and fund the federal government in addition to Trump’s stated priorities of tax reform, infrastructure and another effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.