Donald Trump's USA Today op-ed included a link which completely contradicted everything he said

On Wednesday, Donald Trump penned a peculiar open letter for USA Today in which he attempted to discredit the Democrats 'Medicare for All' plan.

The plan, which has been proposed by Bernie Sanders, is aiming to provide health care for the 28 million uninsured people in the United States, and also introduce increased coverage for the 56 million who already have Medicare.

Trump starts his column by branding the initiative "dishonest", claims that the plan would cost "$32.6 trillion during it's first 10 years" and states that he is "fighting so hard against the Democrats' plan that [he] would eviscerate Medicare".

In the third paragraph of the piece Trump writes:

As a candidate, I promised that we would protect coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions and create new health care insurance options that would lower premiums.

I have kept that promise, and we are now seeing health insurance premiums coming down.

According to Mashable, when the article was originally published, this segment included a link to a Washington Post piece about Trump's plans for pre-existing health conditions.

The link has since been removed, but the Post's article finds that Trump is not working to "protect coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions".

The article, which was published on 14 June, says:

With no explanation or warning, the president now supports an effort to nullify the provisions that make it possible for millions of people to purchase affordable insurance.

Thus this new position, directly contradicting his repeated stance as a candidate and as president, qualifies as a flip-flop.

Washington Post has since published a fact-checking article about Trump's op-ed where they claim that almost every sentence contained a "misleading statement or a falsehood".

Besides this, Trump also goes on to label the Democrats as "radical socialists who want to model America's economy after Venezuela".

The truth is that the centrist Democratic Party is dead. The new Democrats are radical socialists who want to model America’s economy after Venezuela.

If Democrats win control of Congress this November, we will come dangerously closer to socialism in America. Government-run health care is just the beginning.

Democrats are also pushing massive government control of education, private-sector businesses and other major sectors of the U.S. economy. 

This controversial line of wording, the embarrassing link to an article which completely shamed Trump and the fact that USA Today decided to publish this so close to the midterms has been heavily criticised on Twitter.

A series of follow-up tweets from USA Today to the original story also makes for interesting reading.

HT Mashable

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