President Donald Trump spoke to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday morning after a solid month of making moves that the crowd has been anxiously awaiting, but there were whiffs of moderation in his trademark tough talk.
While offering standard fare about his vow to repeal and replace Obamacare, he also said:
“We’re going to make it much better.”
In the president’s speech, he said he told Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price the best thing the Trump administration could do would be to let Obamacare implode completely and do nothing, suggesting that Democrats would beg for improvements.
Trump quickly said that wouldn’t be the right thing to do, but it may leave him some wiggle room. The commentary comes as some Republican lawmakers begin to soften their mission to repeal and replace the law. Former House Speaker John Boehner pronounced the repeal effort dead on Thursday and said simply that Republicans would fix what is already in place.
And after a tirade against regulations, including this line — “We’re going to put regulation industry out of work and out of business” — Trump promptly told his audience several times he favors strong regulations that protect the environment and the safety of American workers.
The president opened with a characteristic sustained attack on his favorite target: the press.
He launched into a critique of the press using unnamed sources for information, and he said it’s only “fake news” that is the enemy of the American people, not the media in general. His original attack line, however, did equate fake news with a number of mainstream media outlets.
Trump filled his remarks with reminders that with just one month on the job under his belt, he’s keeping his promises. He ticked off opening up the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines, starting the process to build a wall along the country’s southern border, and pursuing a package of tax cuts.
He did not mention the Justice Department’s potential review of enforcing federal law when it comes to recreational marijuana, and he did not mention this week’s decision to remove guidance that allows transgender students to choose which restroom they would prefer to use in schools across the country.
He closed his speech with a couple of guideposts on how the Republican Party should be known and his governing theory of “America First.”
“Global cooperation is good,” he said, “but there is no such thing as a global anthem, a global currency, or a global flag. I’m not representing the globe. I’m representing your country.”
And the GOP, he said, should be characterized from now on as the party of the American worker. He noted that, under him, the party grew considerably, and that the CPAC crowd in particular could celebrate that they finally have a president responsive to them.