Video of former President Donald Trump vowing to terminate the Affordable Care Act (ACA) went viral on social media on Friday after he reversed his position on the issue last month.
Trump, the presumed 2024 GOP presidential nominee, is set to face off against President Joe Biden later this year in a likely rematch of the 2020 election, as each candidate has won enough delegates to secure their party’s presidential nomination.
Trump has repeatedly vowed to repeal the ACA, which was developed under former President Barack Obama and is more commonly known as “Obamacare,” since launching his political career with a successful 2016 presidential bid. He attempted to kill the program shortly after taking office, but was blocked by Republicans who resisted the move in the Senate.
However, in a late March Truth Social post, Trump seemingly reversed his position by endorsing the ACA, while promising to keep the program in place, but make it “much, much, much better” during a potential second term.
Thanks to George W. Bush, the idea that a politician could change their mind based on new information got popularized as being a “flip flopper”, and discourse was shut off thanks to the juvenile repetition of the term, along with “stay the course” and “you wouldn’t change horses mid-stream” phrases that W was noted for.
So changing your mind as a politician is always a difficult thing because opponents will attack you for it, and of course it’s bad in the US thanks to the grade-school level of discourse in congress choosing things like “flip flopper”, “snowflake”, or claiming earthquakes and floods are punishment from god.