President Donald Trump rambled off-topic after Rush Limbaugh asked him about health care protections for those with pre-existing conditions.
The president and his Republican allies are keen to undo the Affordable Care Act, which could place health care out of reach for Americans with pre-existing conditions, and the conservative Limbaugh asked Trump to explain his plan.
"This is [from] a woman in Massachusetts named Kathy," Limbaugh said, reading the listener's question. "'I'm glad that you and the lady are recovering from COVID, so happy you're our president thank you for all you do to defend us. Questions about health care and pre-existing conditions are very important to me and a lot of Americans. I believe you said pre-existing conditions will be covered in your health care plan, but please could you explain this a little more because there are a lot of people saying you're not going to cover pre-existing conditions and I wish you need to get your message out since this that the Democrats are trying to malign you on this."
The president didn't spend much time addressing health care or pre-existing conditions.
"The Democrats are vicious and they lie, and what they do, as an example health care and other things," Trump said, "they have me standing at the grave of beautiful soldier at an old cemetery, magnificent cemetery, and nobody respects soldiers more than I do, especially whether you're talking about live soldiers or soldiers that gave their lives, and they have a source say these are suckers and losers. This was for a magazine that's third-rate, you know super-liberal Obama magazine, and it's a quote, they took that quote from one source I have 25 people that verbally, that, you know, on the record, said that was never said. Who would ever say that? Only an animal would say that."
Trump continued complaining about that Atlantic report, which was corroborated by other news organizations, before addressing Kathy's question.
"They do the same thing with health care," Trump said. "They'll make a statement that's so bad. Now pre-existing conditions, I'm totally for, but I'm against Obamacare because Obamacare is too expensive. I already got rid of the individual mandate, which is the worst part of Obamacare, that we had to pay a fortune for the privilege of not paying for bad health insurance. You understand that. So I got rid of it, that was I got rid of it through the law. I got rid of it under our tax decrease, the the biggest tax decrease in the history of our country. We would have never been able to build up the economy if we didn't get that, but one of the things I got in, I got rid of the individual mandate and what I want to do is, and we're fighting to terminate, I sort of have terminated Obamacare, because once you get rid of the individual mandate it's no longer Obamacare, but I had a choice to make. Rush, it was a big choice. Do I maintain Obamacare, the remnants of Obamacare, after that the, you know, the mandate. Do I maintain it well or do I run it badly? I could have done it either way."
The president insisted his Department of Health and Human Services was running the health care exchange well, and better than the Obama administration had, but claimed the coverage was still bad.
"Remember they spent $50 million, $5 billion dollars on the server, if you remember," Trump said. "They couldn't get the server right."
Limbaugh tried to steer the president back on topic, and the president briefly obliged.
"What they do is they love to say that I'm going to get rid of pre-existing conditions," Trump said. "No. I want to terminate Obamacare and then come up with a great, and we have come up with a great health care plan that's much less expensive and does include people with pre-existing conditions. That's what I want to do."