President Donald Trump celebrates the passage of the American Health Care Act with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in the Rose Garden of the White House. May 4, 2017.
Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
The Associated Press has reported that President Donald Trump believes the American Health Care Act is "mean," and wants the Senate's health care bill to be "more generous."
Trump made the comments during a White House lunch with 15 GOP senators. It is unclear if he was referring to specific aspects of the bill.
His new stance is quite a distance from the comments he made in the Rose Garden of the White House after the bill passed on May 4. “Yes, premiums will be coming down; yes, deductibles will be coming down, but very importantly, it’s a great plan,” Trump said, surrounded by House Republicans he had invited to celebrate with.
“We want to brag about the plan,” he added.
The AHCA remains broadly unpopular; just 8% of Americans want the bill to pass the Senate in its current form, according to CNN.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch MicConnell and the Republicans are currently drafting a new version of the AHCA. It is being written privately, with no public hearings scheduled and no plan to release the bill to the public before it's scored by the Congressional Budget Office.
Update, 6/13, 6:04 p.m: CNN is confirming the report, and ads that Trump also called the AHCA a "son of a bitch."