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America ‘waking up to walking catastrophe’ of President Trump

Sunday, 26 March 2017 6:13 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 26 March 2017 6:21 AM ]

US President Donald Trump sits in the driver's seat of a semi-truck as he welcomes truckers and CEOs to the White House in Washington, DC, March 23, 2017, to discuss healthcare. (Photo by AFP)

The United States is “waking up to walking catastrophe” of President Donald Trump after his first major legislative push to overhaul the US healthcare system ended in failure, says former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.

“Apart from his most ardent supporters, most of America is now waking up to the walking catastrophe who is now our president,” Reich said in a Twitter post on Saturday.

The former labor secretary further called Trump “incompetent” and “a liar,” adding the president “may well be a traitor” over his possible links to Russia.

Reich, who headed the Labor Department under former president Bill Clinton and is now a professor at Berkeley University, pointed to three failures of the Trump administration to back up his claims.

He said the president was incompetent as he failed to secure the support of enough lawmakers to replace the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare.

Robert Reich was labor secretary under former president Bill Clinton, and also served in the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. (file photo)

In a humiliating setback for the new president, his proposed healthcare legislation was pulled off the House floor on Friday after Republican leaders failed to achieve a consensus on the bill.

Trump blamed Democrats and said he wanted to move on, but many characterized the defeat as a clear indication that the billionaire businessman who proclaims to be the dealmaker in chief is beginning to see his limitations.

Repealing former president Barack Obama's signature healthcare law was one of Trump’s key campaign pledges.

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“It was not just a bad week for Trump,” Reich said. “It also was an ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ week. Trump’s braggadocio has now been revealed as a total sham.”

Reich doubled down on the claim that Trump was a “liar” over his “trumped-up charge” that Obama had him wiretapped during the election.

It was rather Trump who was “the subject of an FBI investigation into possible collusion with Russian operatives to win the 2016 presidential campaign,” he stressed.

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