While some of Kamala Harris‘ attacks on Donald Trump and JD Vance have taken an unexpected turn, calling the Republican pair “weird,” a more traditional ad released this week warned voters what Democrats think Trump will do to the Affordable Care Act.
In the new ad, “fearless” Harris’ record as a prosecutor, attorney general, and vice president is narrated in praising detail before the vice president describes what she believes a 2024 Trump election victory could mean.
Harris says during the ad that Donald Trump “wants to take our country backward,” provide tax cuts for corporations and billionaires, and end the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare.
Harris has been repeating the ACA attack throughout her early campaign, including at her first rally in Wisconsin last week.
Donald Trump has denied that he wants to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, despite years of campaigning against the policy.
When previously asked about this, Harris for President spokesperson Joseph Costello told Newsweek that it was “indisputable” that Trump had tried to end the ACA and if elected “there would be nothing stopping Trump from trying again to cut critical benefits and succeeding.”
While Costello’s comment highlighted Trump’s record, it did not substantively address Harris’ campaign’s claim that her opponent would end the ACA if elected.
Even though Trump has said he wouldn’t end the ACA, Harris’ supporters have argued that Trump’s pledges should not be trusted. Recently, transport secretary and potential VP nominee Pete Buttigieg told Fox News that he doubted Trump’s promises, as he discussed the likelihood of Trump instating a national abortion ban.
“He’s disavowed a lot of things. I don’t believe him because he lies all the time.”
Nonetheless, earlier this year Trump emphatically denied that he would end the policy in a post on Truth Social.
“I’m not running to terminate the ACA, AS CROOKED JOE BUDEN DISINFORMATES AND MISINFORMATES ALL THE TIME, I’m running to CLOSE THE BORDER, STOP INFLATION, MAKE OUR ECONOMY GREAT, STRENGTHEN OUR MILITARY, AND MAKE THE ACA, or OBAMACARE, AS IT IS KNOWN, MUCH BETTER, STRONGER, AND FAR LESS EXPENSIVE,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social in March.
He went on: “IN OTHER WORDS, MAKE THE ACA MUCH, MUCH, MUCH BETTER FOR FAR LESS MONEY (OR COST) TO OUR GREST [sic] AMERICAN CITIZENS, WHO HAVE BEEN DECIMATED BY BIDEN, HIS RECORD INFLATION, BAD ECONOMY, AFGHANISTAN CATASTROPHE, AND JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE.”
These comments, however, sit beside years and years of resistance to and attempts to end the ACA as we know it.
Trump made it a talking point of his presidential administration from its start, prematurely calling the policy “dead” in October 2017, despite the Senate voting against an attempt it made to repeal and replace the legislation in July of the same year.
In 2021, the Supreme Court rejected a Republican appeal backed by the Trump administration to invalidate Obamacare.
The Biden-Harris campaign put together a compilation in April of occasions since 2016 when Trump said he would terminate Obamacare, the most recent of those being December 2023, when he vowed to replace Obamacare with his own system, calling the ACA too expensive.
In a post on Truth Social, he said: “Obamacare is too expensive, and otherwise, not good health care,” he said on Monday.
“I will come up with a much better, and less expensive, alternative! People will be happy, not sad!”
He had spoken out against ACA again only a month before saying that he was “seriously looking at alternatives.”
“We had a couple of Republican Senators who campaigned for 6 years against it and then raised their hands not to terminate it,” Trump wrote.
“It was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up!”
The issue has cooled somewhat within the Republican Party after the dozens upon dozens of attempts it made since the policy was incepted in 2010.
However, following years of attempts by conservatives to end it, polling suggests that the policy is popular among voters.
Polling by KFF Health Tracking in May 2023 found 59 percent of U.S. adults have a favorable opinion about the policy when it is described as the “Affordable Care Act or Obamacare,” while 40 percent view the act unfavorably, which suggests Trump may fail to drum up support by attacking it.
Whether Trump would end or replace the ACA if elected is a matter of speculation. The Democrats appear to believe that it will happen based on his record and previous comments, outweighing those occasions where he has said he won’t.
However, while the Democrats may wish to use Trump’s record as a magic mirror for future policy decisions, including pledges they believe he may break, the notion that he will end the ACA is still speculative.
Harris’ campaign may have strength in its conviction but any suggestion these plans are uniform goals of the Republican campaign is, evidently, not correct. Even if the Republican Party is keeping the issue quiet to see itself through the election, Trump’s public denial that he would end the ACA if elected makes Harris and the Democrats’ argument an educated guess.
Newsweek has contacted Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s media representatives via email for comment.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
