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WATCH: Paul Ryan Lies to Former ‘Life Long Republican’ Who Hated Obamacare – Until It Saved His Life

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‘I Want to Thank President Obama From the Bottom of My Heart, Because I Would Be Dead if It Weren’t for Him’ Former Cancer Patient Says

Paul Ryan held a town hall, hosted by CNN Thursday night. One man stood up to ask the Republican Speaker of the House a question. What followed was an embarrassing moment, not only for Ryan, currently the most powerful elected Republican in the nation, but for all Americans, and our Democracy.

“I was a Republican and I worked for the Reagan and Bush campaigns,” Jeff Jeans of Sedona, Arizona, told Speaker Ryan. “Just like you, I was opposed to the Affordable Care Act.”

“When it was passed, I told my wife we would close our business before I complied with this law. Then, at 49, I was given six weeks to live with a very curable type of cancer. We offered three times the cost of my treatments, which was rejected. They required an insurance card. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, I’m standing here today alive,” Jeans shared with the Speaker and the audience. 

“Being both a small business person and someone with pre-existing conditions, I rely on the Affordable Care Act to be able to purchase my own insurance. Why would you repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement?” he asked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mek64Teo3w

Why indeed?

According to Ryan, there’s a replacement plan and it’s going to be terrific. 

“Oh, we — we wouldn’t do that,” Ryan told Jeans. “We want to replace it with something better. First of all, I’m glad you’re standing here. I mean, really — seriously,” Ryan added. The audience applauded.

Jeans had another comment, interrupting Ryan to make sure he could get it out: “I want to thank President Obama from the bottom of my heart, because I would be dead if it weren’t for him.”

Ryan went on to spout off a few states that, according to him, people are seeing double-digit increases in their premiums.

Now, first of all, what Ruyan didn’t mention: these are all states with Republican governors or states that had GOP governors when the Obamacare exchanges were being set up. They refused to support Obamacare, forcing the federal government to take over. States where governors embraced Obamacare aren’t seeing huge increases.

Secondly, Obamacare is not responsible for increased premiums, the insurance companies are. So why are Republicans insisting Obamacare is at fault? And why don’t they intervene to fix it?

Because they, more than anything else, want Obamacare to die.

Claiming Obamacare is “collapsing,” which is a lie, Ryan went on to tell another, on national television, misinforming hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.

“The problem with Obamacare — the actuary is called a ‘death spiral,'” Ryan lied to Jeans and the public. “It’s a really kind of ugly, gruesome term, but a death spiral is a mathematical term. They say when the insurance gets so expensive, healthy people won’t buy it because they — it’s just a trade-off. The penalty to not buy is a lot cheaper than buying the insurance, so healthy people won’t buy it; therefore, they won’t go and participate in the insurance pool to cover the losses that sicker people, who have to have insurance, buy it.”

“That’s what’s happening to Obamacare now.”

Again, that’s a lie.

That’s what’s happening to Obamacare now?

“No, it’s not,” responds Steve Benen at MSNBC’s The MaddowBlog. “This isn’t a matter of opinion; it’s a matter of reality. If the Speaker of the House is going to hold forums like these, and speak to national audiences about the state of the health care system, it’s important that he tell the public the truth.” 

And the truth is, if the ACA were in “death spiral,” we’d see declining enrollment numbers, with consumers withdrawing from the system because they can’t afford the premiums and would rather pay the penalty than buy insurance they can’t afford.

Enrollment totals, however, are going up, not down.

Despite higher premiums in parts of the country, and against a political backdrop in which Republicans are desperate to destroy the existing system, Americans are getting health care coverage through the ACA in growing numbers: we learned just this week that 11.5 million consumers bought marketplace plans in 2016, an increase of nearly 300,000 over the comparable period last year.

Just to prove his point, Benen points to a Huffington Post interview this week with Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, who said: “It seems to me that enrollment holding steady amidst tremendous uncertainty about the future of the law and big premium increases is a positive sign. There is no evidence of a market collapse or insurance death spiral.”

So, again, Paul Ryan is lying.

One last point.

The Senate at 1:25 AM (yes, AM) Thursday morning passed a resolution paving the way for the complete and total repeal of Obamacare, with zero replacement plan. Republicans also voted down saving some of the most popular parts of Obamacare, like banning insurance companies from refusing to provide insurance to people like Jeff Jeans who have a pre-existing condition. Also voted down were amendments allowing parents to keep their children on their policies until they are 26.

Right now, as we speak, House Republicans are debating the same Senate resolution to allow them to repeal Obamacare. I say House Republican are debating because the Democrats are fighting like hell to save it.

But on his website Paul Ryan promises this: “there’s going to clearly be a transition period until you can get a new and better system up and running so that people will not have that rug pulled out from under them,” Ryan claims, which frankly can be interpreted two ways. A “transition period” sounds like it could mean a period of time (days, weeks, months, years) where people will not have coverage.

Ryan goes on to say, “we’re advancing . . . legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare at the same time. And it will take time to put all of that into place . . . to get us to a better system to arrest the collapse of this system. And in that meantime, there will be transitions so that you don’t wake up one morning, you know, this year, and you lose your health insurance—that’s not going to happen.”

Paul Ryan and the GOP have been lying about Obamacare for seven years.

Why should we believe them now?

 

 

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News

‘Lied Through His Teeth’: Senator Warns RFK Jr. Undermining Vaccine Will ‘Kill’ Kids

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1 day ago

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May 16, 2025

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U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) is accusing Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of lying during his Senate testimony this week, and warning that the HHS chief’s efforts to destroy faith in the measles vaccine will lead to children dying.

“It’s not a small thing that Trump’s Cabinet thinks Congress and the American people are so dumb that they can tell brazen lies over and over. We can’t normalize this,” Senator Murphy urged.

“The way in which Trump and Trump’s cabinet lie through their teeth, unapologetically and brazenly, to Congress and the American people, is outrageous,” Murphy said in video (below) he posted online Friday. “And I really worry that we risk normalizing it by not calling it out when it happens.”

He called the exchange he had with RFK Jr. “maddening” and “heartbreaking,” and said the HHS Secretary “essentially says that he’s no longer recommending that families get the measles vaccine. That’s going to kill hundreds, if not thousands of kids in this country.”

Murphy then played a clip from Kennedy’s testimony (which NCRM covered earlier this week), and, he said, caught Kennedy in a lie.

RELATED: ‘None of That Is True’: RFK Jr. Fact-Checked Repeatedly in Heated Senate Hearing

“By the way,” Kennedy told Murphy, “I said at the [House] hearing this morning that I was recommending the measles vaccine,” and told him to “look at the transcript.”

“So guess what I did?” Murphy says. “I went and checked the House transcript. It’s hours of testimony. I and my staff watched all of it, and guess what? Nowhere, nowhere in that transcript does he say he recommends the measles vaccine.”

“He lied through his teeth, and he did it because all of these MAGA sycophants have gotten used to lying. Donald Trump does it all the time, so they think they can do it as well. But we can’t normalize this because you can’t run a country if your leaders are lying to you every single day,” the Connecticut Democrat warned.

“RFK Jr. doesn’t support the measles vaccine, and he shouldn’t pretend that he does. He undermines the vaccine on a daily basis and whether we like his conspiracy theory positions or not, he should just be honest with the American people. They should all be honest with the American people, and none of us should normalize or get used to this amount of lying.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘It Meant Assassination’: Trump Blasts ‘Dirty Cop’ Comey for ‘8647’

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‘It Meant Assassination’: Trump Blasts ‘Dirty Cop’ Comey for ‘8647’

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2 days ago

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May 16, 2025

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President Donald Trump is attacking the FBI Director he fired, Jim Comey, who is reportedly under investigation  over a photo of sea shells formed into the numbers 8647. Top Trump law enforcement and intelligence officials claim it is a call for the assassination of the 47th President, although “86” is generally understood to mean “reject” or “eject,” and, since the 1930s, in restaurant parlance, has meant a menu item is unavailable.

“He knew exactly what that meant,” President Trump told Fox News’ Bret Baier in an interview that will air Friday evening. “A child knows what that meant.”

“If you’re the FBI Director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant ‘assassination.’ And it says it loud and clear,” Trump alleged.

READ MORE: GOP Plan Redefines Dependent Child as ‘Under 7’—But Adds Loophole for Married Couples

“Now, he wasn’t very competent, but he was competent enough to know what that meant, and he did it for a reason, and he was hit so hard because people like me, and they like what’s happening with our country. Our country’s become respected again,” the President claimed. “And he’s calling for the assassination of the president.”

Baier interjected, saying: “Obviously, he apologized and said he —”

“Well, he apologized because he was hit,” Trump also claimed. “Look, he’s a very bad —”

When asked what he wants to see happen to the former Director of the FBI, Trump said he did not want to weigh in, and would let his Attorney General handle it.

“I don’t want to take a position on it because that’s gonna be up to Pam [Bondi] and all of the great people, but I will say this. I think it’s a terrible thing. And when you add his history to that, if he had a clean history, he doesn’t.”

“He’s a dirty cop. He’s a dirty cop. And if he had a clean history, I could understand if there was a leniency. But I’m going to let them make that decision.”

READ MORE: ‘Mad King’: Trump Teases ‘Fourth’ Term to U.S. Troops Overseas

Trump Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Fox News on Thursday night she thinks Comey should go to prison for posting the “8647” photo.

Asked, “Do you believe Comey should be in jail?” Gabbard replied, “I do.”

“Any other person with the position of influence that he has,” she added, “people who take very seriously what what a guy of his stature, his experience, and what the propaganda media has built him up to be?”

“I’m very concerned for the president’s life. We’ve already seen assassination attempts,” she continued. “I’m very concerned for his life, and James Comey, in my view, should be held accountable and put behind bars for this.”

But others commenting via social media were quick to point to a number of “86” posts apparently made by right wing influencers and even a former member of Congress, as well as T-shirts for sale during the Biden years.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Significant Damage’: Walmart’s ‘Magnitude’ Warning to Consumers Spurs Trump Tariff Critics

 

Image via Reuters

 

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News

‘Mad King’: Trump Teases ‘Fourth’ Term to U.S. Troops Overseas

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2 days ago

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May 15, 2025

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During a rally-style appearance before uniformed U.S. troops in Qatar on Thursday, President Donald Trump—serving as their Commander-in-Chief—floated the idea of a “fourth” term and falsely claimed victory in the 2020 election he lost. The appearance drew swift criticism for blurring the line between military service and political theater.

“As you know, we won three elections, okay?” Trump told the largely silent troops (video below). “And some people want us to do a fourth. I don’t know—I’ll have to think about that.”

“You saw the new, the new hat. The hottest hat is, it says, ‘Trump 2028: We’re driving the left crazy.'”

“When you see that. We didn’t need that hat, but, uh, it was it’s been an amazing period of time,” he concluded.

READ MORE: ‘Significant Damage’: Walmart’s ‘Magnitude’ Warning to Consumers Spurs Trump Tariff Critics

Noting that Trump was speaking “at the largest U.S. military installation in the Middle East,” CNN reported that the President “thanked the U.S. troops for political support.”

“There’s – nobody been stronger than the military in terms of backing us, nobody,” Trump said. “So, I just want to thank you all very much. Great honor. Thank you very much.”

CBS News national security coordinating producer Jim LaPorta, who has reported extensively on the military, wrote: “If this was a rally, the president’s remarks would be fine. But in front of service members who are expected to be apolitical, many Defense Department officials would find these remarks inappropriate.”

READ MORE: ‘Deeply Fascist’: Massive Banner of Trump on Government Building Sparks ‘North Korea’ Vibes

The Bulwark’s Sam Stein observed: “Treating the troops like they’re at a campaign rally and sowing doubt about the past and future of American elections — all in one soundbite.”

Democratic pollster and strategist Luke Martin called it “especially jarring to see Trump flirting with blowing a hole in the Constitution in front of an entire crowd of people who literally swore an oath to protect it with their life.”

Independent journalist Mike Rothschild noted: “Making a statement like this in front of active duty troops would have generated months of scandal, hearings, and resignations in years gone by. Now it’s just another Thursday with the Mad King.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: GOP Plan Redefines Dependent Child as ‘Under 7’—But Adds Loophole for Married Couples

 

Image via Reuters

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