ABC Panelist Off the Rails, ‘Lives Will Be Lost’ After Obamacare Repeal

Nicholas Fondacaro | February 12, 2017
Font Size

During a rather rowdy edition of ABC’s This Week on Sunday, publisher of The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel went off the rails several times with radical predictions and unhinged proclamations. At the end of a conversation about how President Donald Trump and the Republican Party can ease the public fear of repealing Obamacare vanden Heuvel declared, “The very communities which elected Trump in West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, are ravaged by an opioid epidemic, they will be the first hit. Lives will be lost! Lives are in the balance!

Her wild ranting of people dying in the streets was in response to the National Reviews Rich Lowry who was explaining that the GOP should start “doubling down and being more committed on replacement.” He elaborated, arguing that Republican Congress members don’t want the Congressional Budget Office to claim that millions of American would lose their health insurance.

Something so simple brought such a dire prediction out of vanden Heuvel. It did seem as though it was Lowry who was drawing the ridiculousness out of her.

Earlier in the conversation, the panel was discussing how it appeared that the White House is rewriting their controversial travel ban executive order so it could pass legal challenges. “I think that's exactly what they should do,” Lowery stated at one point. “You know this is a week the president has discovered the limits of his power. No president is above the law,” vanden Heuvel responded before claiming Trump is trying to undermine the people that will hold his feet to the fire:

There was a calculated strategy to delegitimize the institutions which should hold this administration accountable. The judiciary obviously is one. And the media. And the media. A media that will not just be self-interested but a media that would hold power accountable. And a media that will expose this administration for failing to fulfill its campaign promises to hold Wall Street accountable and stand with working people.

Not long after, the discussion shifted to the massive protests GOP lawmakers are facing at town hall meetings back home. The liberal members of the panel were overjoyed by the idea that the left would have their own Tea Party movement (they seemed to have forgotten that they had such a movement in Occupy Wall Street, but it has long since died out).

This included vanden Heuvel who swooned saying, “Listen, we're seeing resistance in the streets. And as a Progressive, I believe the people are leading the politicians right now. But I also think you need the resistance to go from protests to politics.” She didn’t like the comparison to the Tea Party but argued for “a Tea Party of values.” She took a disturbing turn when she asserted that Trump would be their rallying cause, “There’s nothing like a Trump to concentrate the mind. Hanging concentrates the mind.

Juxtapositioning “hanging concentrated the mind” with the president of the United States is quite alarming and irresponsible. But then again, this is the person who has defended Russian President Vladimir Putin time and time again. 

donate