MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski asked Associated Press reporter Julie Pace a series of questions Tuesday that culminated in her saying that President Donald Trump's lack of leadership on health care made him "look like an idiot."
Pace was speaking to Brzezinski on "Morning Joe" about the reasons why Republicans were unable to unite around an Obamacare replacement and the White House's reaction. Pace said that the White House had people connected on Capitol Hill who knew that the bill was in trouble.
Trump expressed confidence in the bill's passage as late as Monday afternoon, hours before two more GOP defections effectively killed the bill.
"Who's talking to the president before he gets out in front of the cameras at the White House with the vice president behind him saying 'This is going to be good' an hour before this goes down in flames?" Brzezinski asked. "Does the right hand know what the left is doing, at all? Is anybody speaking truth to this president?"
"It's not even truth to power—Are they telling him what's going on so he doesn't look like an idiot?" she added.
Pace pointed out that Trump dined Monday night with several senators who already supported the bill. She implied that meeting with them was a waste of time when Trump could have been "wrangling" the undecided GOP senators, and she answered Brzezinski's questions by saying that Trump is unpredictable regardless of his staff's planning.
"I think that you know this better than anybody," Pace told Brzezinski, in reference to tweets sent by the president at her expense. "You can say anything to the president that you want, you can try to speak truth to power, and he will get up there and say something completely different if he feels that way."