I Owe Donald Trump an Apology

I have to apologize to Donald Trump. I had the man wrong all this time. I have told you several times on this podcast about how Trump took away health insurance from a family member’s sick baby; a baby who was suffering seizures and developed cerebral palsy. Trump was having a fit over the fact that the baby’s family, that of his brother Fred Jr., was challenging having been cut out of their dad’s will, after Fred Jr. died. Fred Sr. apparently did not think widows and babies deserved to be in his will, and Donald agreed.
I always thought this was cruel, and I’ve used this story to relate why those of us who covered Trump before he got into politics, warned he was a vindictive, awful human being. But as I said at the start, I now realize this has all been a misunderstanding. I realized this after reading the New York Times interview Trump gave to Maggie Haberman, Peter Baker and Michael Schmidt. They were talking about health insurance, and Trump was explaining why it was so tough to take away protection for people with pre-existing conditions, though Americans who are not in Congress were wondering why you would want to do that in the first place. But no matter. So Trump said, and I read from the transcript:
So pre-existing conditions are a tough deal, because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance, you’re 21 years old, you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance, and by the time you’re 70, you get a nice plan.
OK. That was word-for-word. Now I know you may be hearing that, or you read it and you were thinking, what the hell is this man talking about? What does he mean by the time you’re 70, you get a nice plan? Hell, by the time you’re 70, you’ve been on Medicare for five years. Was he talking about life insurance? A 21 year old can get life insurance for $14. It’s a month, not a year, and its only $100,000. That’s also the price for a term policy so at 70 you don’t have a nice plan, unless you managed to die when you were 22.
But he was clearly talking about pre-existing conditions, so he knew he was being asked about and talking about health insurance. So is that true? $12 a year? Well, it turns out that health insurance for a healthy 21 year old runs an average right now of $284 a month. So, that’s $3408 a year. OK, so he’s off by $3,396, but wait, there’s good news. Under Obamacare, half of that would be subsidized by the federal government, so that 21 year old’s out of pocket expense would only be $1,704 a year. But, of course, all the health bills Republicans have proposed would have killed that subsidy, so we’re back to $3408. OK, so that’s not $12 and Trump clearly has no idea what he’s talking about. But, I must be wrong about that because on September 23, 2015 Trump told 60 Minutes, “no one knows health care better than Donald Trump.”
Now, he was speaking in the third person so there’s a possibility he was talking about some other Donald Trump. Maybe a health insurance salesman in Sandusky, Ohio. Actually, it turns out there are a bunch of other Donald Trumps, but only one other Donald J. Trump, an 89 year old resident, according to records of Greenville, Ohio. Weirdly, though his son Roger is registered to vote, I could find no record of Donald being registered, which means at least one Donald J. Trump may not have voted for Donald J. Trump.
But getting back to where this started. Why I owe Trump an apology. Why this has all been a misunderstanding. Even if he’s wrong about this, and pretty much any opinion he has ever had, and he’s had a lot of them, health insurance, I now see how I misjudged the man.
When he took away the health insurance of a baby fighting for its very life, he didn’t think he was being a cruel and vindictive bastard because he thought health insurance cost only $12 a year. See how much better this makes him appear? Yes, he’s still a ninny who has been talking about something for nearly two years and still has zero understanding of it. Yes, you can call him irresponsible for being willing to sign bills he clearly hasn’t read on an issue he has made no effort to understand, but is he the heartless son-of-a-bitch I thought he was? No. Even cut out of dad’s will he figured the family of his brother’s widow could scrape together 12 bucks a year. Not even. I mean if a 21 year old can get health insurance for $12 a year, surely health insurance for a baby has to be mere pennies.
They probably sell it in gumball machines in the lobby of a diner. Put in a quarter and get health insurance for your pre-existing-conditioned seizure, cerebral-palsied-for-life baby, AND a gumball. Maybe one of those temporary tattoos as well. One that says disabled baby. Handle with care. If Trump really thinks a 21 year old can get health insurance for $12 a year from Unicorn Insurance, a division of Minotaur Industries, then obviously his family would not be out much when he cut it off.
Now, I’m not one of those people who get the easy laugh by asking billionaire candidates what’s the price of a gallon of milk. I know they don’t know. They don’t buy their own milk. Hell, I don’t know the price of milk. I don’t drink the stuff. I like my coffee black, hot and bitter, like Pam Grier in the movie Coffy where she played a vigilante. I buy half and half for my wife, though half what and half what else, I’m still not sure, and soy milk, made by putting a stool under tiny beans from the fields of Decatur, Illinois, so I can tell you what those cost, but I know if I ask a billionaire what milk costs, either they won’t know the answer, or just before a campaign stop at a Safeway, some campaign aide told them the price of milk, butter, eggs and ramen because that’s the only thing a campaign aide can afford to buy.
However, if you are demanding that the law be rewritten that will change the price of something drastically, you should acquire a passing knowledge of what that cost is and will be. As for Trump’s comfort with taking away insurance for a pre-existing condition, he already did that for a baby in his own family, so good comfort zone there.
The rest of the interview needs little comment from me. Attorney-General-for-now, Jeff Sessions — who is probably sleeping with his boxes of Attorney General business cards cuddled closely to him at night — found out how far his loyalty to Trump will take him. Sessions was the first politician of any consequence to back Trump, and as a favor to this white Alabaman with a history of racism, Trump is making sure Sessions is thrown under the front of the bus, and not the back, where Ben Carson will be eventually thrown.
Ha! Got you there. You forgot Ben Carson was in the cabinet, didn’t you? I’m thinking he has, as well.
So Sessions, once Trump’s best political buddy, is now awaiting being sent off to the dump with the other toys he no longer plays with. The Rudy Giuliani doll that kisses you where he thinks it will do him the most good, and the Chris Christie beach ball.
In the West Wing, everyone is now realizing that ass kissing and, ‘what can I do for you, Master?’ buys you no loyalty from Trump. That is strictly a one way street, and a one way street that when it thinks you’ve crossed it, will make sure you are run over but good.
This is especially daunting for this particular West Wing, because there have been warring factions from Day One, and now all have their own lawyers who plan on having their client be the one that gets the state’s evidence deal first. Even the lawyers for Trump himself can’t keep any of this straight. Jay Sekulow has a different story for every Sunday show and Marc Kasowitz is busy sending threatening emails to perfect strangers. At what point does sending emails to critics saying, “watch your back bitch,” get you disbarred? Shouldn’t that that least have been watch your back, Mr. Bitch? I mean that was a 65 year old guy he was emailing. Who does Kasowitz think he is? Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad? Anyway, Kasowitz is now a speed bump for the bus about to run over Sessions, and oops…Sean Spicer has now gotten revenge on Melissa McCarthy by quitting and sending Melissa back to work on a Mike & Molly reunion movie. Mean. Sad.
So with that stuff on health insurance, Sessions, that was some interview all right. He pretty much gave Comey’s story of demanding personal loyalty all the cred it needed, changing his story from, ‘I never said that,’ to ‘I don’t remember,’ and making clear he intended to obstruct the Justice Department investigation into Russian election influence if he could by saying that Sessions clearing the way for an investigation is something Trump would have stopped if he could have. Maybe still will.
That was an excellent 45 minutes work.
But now we know you can say a lot of things about Donald Trump, but you can’t say he meant to leave a sick baby in the lurch because: health insurance is just $12 a year.
Dial this number now and get Trump’s low cost health insurance for yourself. Just dial 666. Ask for Donnie. No. Ask for Nikolai. Mar-A-Lago just put in its yearly request to hire immigrants brought here from Romania to staff up, there being no people you can hire as temps who are closer, say…the next town over in Florida.
Nikolai? I’d like that $12 a year health insurance. Shipping and handling? On insurance?
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