President Donald Trump took a jab at CBS White House correspondent Weijia Jiang on Tuesday after she asked him to clarify a statement he made about immigrants and health care.
The tense exchange followed the president and his top health advisers announcing a deal with drug manufacturer Pfizer to lower prescription drug prices, but turned into him blaming Democrats for the possibility of a government shutdown.
“I don’t know, we’ll probably have a shutdown, because one of the things they want to do is they want to give incredible Medicare — Cadillac, the Cadillac Medicare — to illegal immigrants,” Trump inaccurately claimed. “And what that does is it keeps them coming into our country. Like they do in California, and no country can afford that, no country.”
Democrats and Republicans are arguing in Congress over health spending, with Democrats attempting to roll back cuts to Medicaid and extend expiring health insurance subsidies for those on Obamacare. However, they are not suggesting health care benefits for undocumented immigrants.
Jiang corrected Trump, saying, “undocumented immigrants are not eligible for the health care subsidies the Democrats are demanding.”
She then asked, “So, can you clarify? What are you talking about when you say Democrats want to protect their health care?”
Trump did not clarify. He continued, “So, when an illegal person comes in, a person who came into our country illegally, therefore breaking the law — and look, we all have big hearts. I have a bigger heart than you do,” Trump told Jiang.
“Uh, they’re all breaking the law and they’re coming into our country, and we, just as a country, cannot afford to take care of millions of people who have broken the law coming in,” he concluded.
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He went on to pivot to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and border czar Tom Homan’s immigration enforcement.
“I say 25 million people. You’re saying less, but I say 25 million people came in illegally. And no system can take care of the health care of all of those people that came in.”
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