WASHINGTON: Senator John McCain, who has for now survived a cancerous brain tumour is coming out of his hospital bed to help President Donald Trump repeal the Obamacare health law. The former presidential candidate is a long-time Trump critic and was ridiculed by him for being captured in Vietnam and still being crowned a war hero. The vote for the health plan is extremely tight with several Republican holdouts and no guarantee the Republican-led Senate will take it up.
McCain's support comes at a time for as the US President continues to rage on micro-blogging website Twitter, mostly at his own allies. Last week, he publicly humiliated attorney general Jeff Sessions saying he has “taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes (where are E-mails & DNC server) & Intel leakers!” He also lashed out at Andrew McCabe, acting head of the FBI and person-in-charge of the Hillary probe. Trump alleged McCabe “got $700,000 from H for wife!” He singled out Washington Post and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, “So many stories about me in the @washingtonpost are Fake News. They are as bad as ratings challenged @CNN. Lobbyist for Amazon and taxes?” He also tweeted, “Is Fake News Washington Post being used as a lobbyist weapon against Congress to keep Politicians from looking into Amazon notax monopoly?”
Meanwhile, Trump sacked his chief of staff Reince Priebus and replaced him with homeland security secretary John Kelly in what is high-end White House drama. The Prez has had a long week, as he continued to rant against all the injustice he has to endure, parallelly announcing a ban on transgenders from military. In a series of tweets, Trump opened yet another political firefight. “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US Military.”
“Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.” The move turned around the transgenders' hard-won rights during the previous Obama administration to serve in the military, among the several Obama-era liberal and progressive advances that Trump has rolled back. The move was just as shocking as expected as all through his presidential campaign, the billionaire had showed himself as a friend of the LGBT community and a moderate on the issue.
The announcement was followed by massive backlash. Former vice-president Joe Biden said, “Every patriotic American who is qualified to serve in our military should be able to serve. Full stop.” Several Republican lawmakers were taken aback. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who has transgender son, tweeted, “No American, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity, should be prohibited from honour + privilege of serving our nation #LGBT”.
