Conway: Trump ‘worked the phones’ to whip votes on healthcare

by Nikita Vladimirov - 05/06/17 10:29 PM ET

Senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway on Saturday evening praised President Trump for helping secure support for the GOP legislation aimed at repealing and replacing ObamaCare.

“The president showed patience and vigilance and he worked the phones, he and the Vice President [Pence],” Conway said in an interview with Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro.

“They worked the phones, they held personal meetings. He asked people, ‘What will get you to yes, is there a way for us?’ Because he is always very open to other people’s ideas and inputs,” she added.

{mosads}Conway said it required a “dealmaker” to get various GOP factions behind the healthcare legislation.

“And by the way, there are dozens of members who don’t belong to the Freedom Caucus, don’t belong to the Tuesday Group, they are unaffiliated, if you will. This is a very diverse, ideologically diverse, party,” she said, referring to groups of conservative and moderate House Republicans.

“He got them to come together because he is a dealmaker and he’s really been forging great personal relationship with many of these members.”

The House on Thursday narrowly passed the bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare, with 20 Republicans joining all Democrats in opposing the measure. It now heads to the Senate, where Republicans have vowed to make major changes.

Conway stressed that Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have a “great relationship” and that the Senate “started working on their bill before the House even passed their version.”

The White House counselor further pushed back on the criticism that the House GOP bill will leave patients with pre-existing conditions without healthcare, stressing that the legislation allocates an “extra $8 billion … for those folks who don’t have continuous coverage and who are in states … that opt out.”

Some experts, however, have raised doubts that the allocation is enough to cover everyone who may lose coverage under the Republican plan.

Tags Mitch McConnell