President Trump shot back at reports that he doesn’t understand legislation in a new interview, boasting that he knows more about “the big bills” in Congress “than any president that’s ever been in office.”
“I know the details of taxes better than anybody,” Trump said in an interview with The New York Times. “Better than the greatest CPA I know the details of health care better than most, better than most.”
Trump gave the interview from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he’s spending the holidays. His comments come a week after he signed the GOP tax bill into law, the first major legislative success of his presidency.
{mosads}Multiple reports in recent months have pointed to Trump officials and lawmakers on Capitol Hill who have expressed concern that Trump hasn’t fully understood recent policy moves.
In September, the Times reported that Trump administration officials worried Trump didn’t fully understand what it meant to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Officials worried that when Trump realized the full details of the decision on DACA, he might change his mind, according to the report.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) ripped Trump in October for his tweets on a bipartisan deal to extend key ObamaCare payments, saying Trump “ought to know what he’s talking about when he tweets about bills, because on this one he has no understand of what it’s about.”
And in June, the Times reported that a Republican senator left a White House meeting on the Senate GOP’s health-care bill with the impression that Trump didn’t fully understand some basic parts of the plan.
Trump pushed back on that report, saying he knows the subject of health care “very well.”
“Some of the Fake News Media likes to say that I am not totally engaged in healthcare. Wrong, I know the subject well & want victory for U.S,” he tweeted at the time.