After U.S. President Donald Trump‘s health care reform bill didn’t see the light of day on Friday — despite months of his boasting about its superiority to Obamacare (a.k.a. the Affordable Care Act) — you would think this would be the perfect opportunity for Democrats to celebrate.
Indeed, some were, as Twitter was alight on Friday with gleeful jokes and comments about Trump’s perceived failure on the health-care front. But documentary filmmaker and noted Democrat Michael Moore, who has been very active during Trump’s first 60 days in office and in the years leading up to his election, says that now is not the time to “gloat.”
Appearing on MSNBC, Moore said to journalist Chris Hayes that “this is not the time for the Democrats to gloat or throw some kind of party.”
Instead, Moore thinks that Democrats should be steeling themselves for the fight to come; it’s not even close to being over. He argues that the Republican leadership made the bill “meaner” to placate conservatives, but it’ll probably be readjusted and brought to a new vote. He tells all Democrats to “double down.”
“We do need to fix these parts of Obamacare that did cost us votes in November,” said Moore. “Democrats, you have to get this fixed.”
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Moore, 62, asserts that when Trump said he was waiting for Obamacare to “explode,” it really means he will “actively make sure that it happens,” so Democrats need to be alert and aware and “not sit around.”
President Trump shifted blame to Democrats for the failure of the GOP majority to take up legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare, predicting that they would come to the table for future legislation when they see that the current health law fails.
House Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the repeal-and-replace legislation from the floor on Friday after it became clear that it did not have enough Republican support to move it forward. No Democrats were expected to vote for the bill.
“We were very close,” Trump told reporters from the Oval Office. “The best thing we can do, politically speaking, is let Obamacare explode.”
He suggested that more Democrats would be willing to negotiate as the current law falters, and that “some day in the not-too-distant future,” there would be new health reform legislation that draws bipartisan support.
After the defeat, Ryan said that the failure was a “setback, no two ways about it.”
Trump said that they would now move on to tax reform. Ryan said that the failure of the health-care bill would make GOP plans to do tax reform “more difficult, but not impossible.”
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Last week, Moore called on Democrats to declare a national state of emergency while Trump and his team are investigated by the FBI for potential connections to Russia during the 2016 election.
Moore calls the espionage investigation “a shock to our democracy,” and requests that Democrats “bring a halt to all business being done in the name of this potential felony suspect, Donald J. Trump.”
You can watch the clip of Moore’s interview on MSNBC, above.
(Watch Moore’s entire appearance on MSNBC)
— With files from Reuters