WASHINGTON (CN) – Lashing out at the Senate majority leader via Twitter on Wednesday, President Donald Trump questioned Sen. Mitch McConnell’s inability to repeal the federal health care law.
“Senator Mitch McConnell said I had ‘excessive expectations,’ but I don’t think so,” Trump tweeted just after 2 p.m., three days into what he has dubbed a working vacation. “After 7 years of hearing Repeal & Replace, why not done?”
The president’s comments come after McConnell’s appearance at a rotary club gathering in his home state of Kentucky.
McConnell reportedly told guests at the meeting that the president’s lack of political experience was partially to blame for the slow-going around health care and other policies his administration has prioritized.
“Part of the reason I think that the storyline is that we haven’t done much is because, in part, the president and others have set these early timelines about things need to be done by a certain point,” McConnell said on Tuesday night.
McConnell also told the crowd that the president, being new to the Beltway, may have “excessive expectations” about how fast legislation can snake its way through the democratic process.
“So, part of the reason I think people feel we’re underperforming is because too many artificial deadlines – unrelated to the reality of the complexity of legislating – may not have been fully understood,” McConnell added.
The president, who often takes to Twitter to unload on members of Congress, offered a similar criticism of the stalled repeal on July 29, just a weekend after the Senate failed to repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
“Republicans in the Senate will NEVER win if they don’t go to a 51 vote majority NOW,” Trump tweeted. “They look like fools and are just wasting time.”
Trump’s critique could be seen as underscoring McConnell’s appraisal, a basic lack of knowledge about the tedious bureaucratic process.
When Trump issued the tweet last month, Republican senators were already operating under a budget-reconciliation procedure that allowed them to pass their repeal with a 51-vote majority. If all Republican senators voted together, the bill would have passed. Only three Republican senators defected, Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
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