Donald Trump crowed for months he would strike a "terrific" deal on health care. His ambitions ended in a brief phone call Friday afternoon, in which Speaker Paul Ryan told him the truth: He was nowhere close. 
 
 The businessman president, who sold himself to tens of millions of disillusioned voters last year as the only outsider who could tame a broken capital, ended his first confrontation with lawmakers overmatched, outmaneuvered and ultimately empty-handed. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 “We learned a lot about some very arcane rules,” Trump said in the Oval Office soon after the defeat of his effort to undo President Obama’s health care law. 
 
 It was actually the most basic fact of Congress that set Trump back: the majority rules. And despite a 22-seat margin for error in the House, Trump had proved unable to corral support for a plan to repeal the law, one of Trump’s key campaign pledges. 
 
 His failure to advance legislation through a single chamber of Congress controlled by members of his own party — despite it being a cornerstone of the Republican agenda for more than half-decade — casts doubt both on Trump’s much-bragged-about dealmaking skills and the GOP’s path forward. 
 
 “It's a black eye for the speaker and the president,” said Scott Reed, the top strategist of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which supported the measure. 
 
 The setback, described in interviews with multiple senior administration and congressional officials, was especially humiliating because Trump was sunk not by Democrats but by his inability to ride herd over the same rebellious element of the Republican conference that previously bucked Speaker Paul Ryan’s predecessor John Boehner out of his job. Most House Republicans have never served in the majority under a Republican president and it’s unclear how in the future they will cobble together a governing coalition. 
 
 “The Republican Party is still operating as an opposition party,” said Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who added, “If they can't break the fever…it says an enormous amount about the prospects of tax reform, infrastructure and some sort of immigration proposal.” 
 
 Trump himself seemed almost relieved to move on from the health care fight, even as other White House officials were fretting about the long-term implications of what one senior White House official called a "clear embarrassment for us." 
 
 The president himself wasn’t nearly as upset about the health care defeat as he was about the size of his inauguration crowds, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election or the repeated legal setbacks on his travel-ban executive order, which has been blocked by multiple courts. “No bullshit, I think he's actually pretty comfortable with the outcome. He wants to move ahead and do taxes,” another senior White House official said. 
 
 But tax reform — which no president or Congress has been able to tackle successfully for more than three decades — is no easy task, especially as Republicans had banked on deficit-cutting from any health package to give them a financial cushion in that endeavor. “Yes,” Ryan conceded Friday, “this does make tax reform more difficult.” 
 
 For weeks Trump had seemed disinterested and disengaged from the specifics of the health care fight, both behind closed doors with his aides and at public rallies. Trump “just wanted to get something he could sign,” said one adviser who talks to him frequently. “He was over it.” He would often interrupt conversations on the law to talk about other issues, advisers and aides said. 
 
 In one phone call with Ryan earlier this month, Trump told the House speaker that he had a problem with the bill. It wasn’t over Medicaid expansion, maternity coverage, deductibles or insurance premiums. Rather, it was that he didn’t like the word “buckets”—which Ryan had been using to describe the parts of their plan. 
 
 “I don't like that word buckets. You throw trash in buckets. I don't like that word,” Trump said, according to two people familiar with the call. Trump preferred “phases.” Ryan agreed and adopted the term. 
 
 It was the kind of messaging detail Trump focused on during the campaign, when he described his plan as “repeal and replace — with something terrific.” But by February, Trump confided to a group of the nation’s governors visiting Washington D.C. that undoing Obamacare would be more involved. “Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated,” he said. 
 
 In the closing days of negotiations, Trump found himself stuck in the middle of an ideological tug-of-war between the two factions at the extremes of a deeply fissured House Republican conference — with every concession offered to the hardline House Freedom Caucus driving away votes from the moderate Tuesday Group, and vice versa. 
 
 The arguments for the legislation from the White House were political. “This is your chance,” press secretary Sean Spicer urged lawmakers on Friday hours before the bill died. The arguments against it were based in policy, where Trump was less comfortable. 
 
 When Trump trekked to Capitol Hill to make his case in person on Tuesday, lawmakers were mostly nonplussed. “Not a whole lot about health care, except to vote for it,” Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., said afterward. He remained opposed. 
 
 Other lawmakers said Trump wasn’t at all conversant in the specifics and mainly wanted to talk about his popularity in their districts – or how voting against the proposed bill could hurt them politically. But the proposed law ended up polling below 20 percent – and the president's approval rating dropped below 40 percent. 
 
 Short the votes, Trump trotted out one of his favorite deal-making tactics late Thursday to seal the deal: the ultimatum. All House Republicans were told by Trump’s top lieutenants that the bill was take-it-or-leave-it proposition, and their only chance to get rid of Obamacare. 
 
 In the days and hours leading up to a vote that looked bleak, the White House did little to tamp down expectations. “He is the closer,” Spicer labeled Trump. 
 
 Trump pushed hard for a floor vote up until the final minute. Senior administration officials maintained deep into Friday afternoon that they wanted the roll call "to make them vote against the president on live TV,” in the words of a third senior White House official. 
 
 “We are voting,” this person said, 45 minutes before it was called off. 
 
 It was straight out of Trump’s The Art of the Deal playbook, where he wrote simultaneously about boldness and maintaining a willingness to retreat. “I never get too attached to one deal or one approach,” Trump wrote. “For starters, I keep a lot of balls in the air because most deals fall out.” 
 
 That might work in the real estate business, where there’s always another property to develop, or another contractor to hire. But it backfired in Congress, where time and political capital are not unlimited, where the last deal impacts the next and where there is no alternative set of lawmakers to whom Trump can pitch his next demands. 
 
 The setback could also shake up the internal dynamics of a White House, where infighting among rival factions has become the norm. Some pointedly noted that Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, spent the run-up to the vote in Aspen. Some pinned blame on chief of staff Reince Priebus, who is close to Ryan and had been expected to help Trump navigate the complexities of Capitol Hill. Others faulted chief strategist Steve Bannon for failing to mobilize his former company, Breitbart News, on behalf of the bill, or to corral hardliners on the Hill. 
 
 Breaking News Alerts Get breaking news when it happens — in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. 
 
 Indeed, the blame game began even before the vote was called off. “This is 100 percent a Ryan failure,” said the third White House official. While Trump wasn’t upset with Ryan, multiple senior officials said, a number of his advisers and aides were trashing the speaker before the vote – and Ryan told others he expected to get the brunt of the blame. 
 
 By midday Friday, the health care bill was hemorrhaging support, as the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee came out against the bill. Ryan came to the White House to brief Trump on the bleak outlook. 
 
 But even as Trump and his top advisers wanted to forge ahead, they were showing sign of worry. Spicer no longer embraced the term “the closer.” GOP leadership pushed to drop what was now seen as a kamikaze mission. And a little after 3 p.m., Trump talked to Ryan again — the two had a 45-minute conversation late Thursday night about the law. 
 
 “He talked to Paul Ryan for a few minutes, who said he was at least 10 and 15 votes short,” one of the senior White House officials said. Ryan said he planned to pull the vote unless Trump objected, and Trump said he was OK with that. 
 
 Ryan explained soon after what it meant to a national television audience: “We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.” 
 
 Trump got off the phone, scribbled down some notes and dialed up reporters to give his side before the full White House staff was even briefed. The president was most focused on the news coverage and how it reflected on him, as he had been throughout, telling advisers how much the criticism of the law on TV bothered him. 
 
 In the Capitol basement after the vote was cancelled, Republican lawmakers were gathered to hear what came next. The Rolling Stones refrain Trump often played at his rallies was playing in the background: “You can’t always get what you want.” 
 
 Tara Palmeri and Jake Sherman contributed reporting. ||||| Donald Trump suffered a major legislative reversal on Friday as Republicans were forced to pull their repeal of the Affordable Care Act from the House floor. 
 
 After weeks of contentious negotiations over the American Health Care Act (AHCA), Republicans had to admit defeat as they could not gain sufficient support from their own side for the plan to overhaul US health insurance. 
 
 Why the Republican healthcare bill was doomed: a failed political balancing act Read more 
 
 Speaking afterward in the Oval Office, Trump blamed Democrats for the failure of a bill to repeal the signature achievement of Barack Obama. “If [Democrats] got together with us, and got us a real healthcare bill, I’d be totally OK with that. The losers are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, because they own Obamacare. They 100% own it,” he said. 
 
 Trump refused to bash the House speaker, Paul Ryan, but declined to answer a question about policy changes he would like to see in health reform. Instead, he said he was ready to move on to tax reform, saying: “We’re probably going to start going very strongly on big tax cuts. Tax reform that will be next.” 
 
 He added: “We all learned a lot. We learned a lot about loyalty.” 
 
 
 
 Earlier on Friday, as it became clear that Republican resistance to the bill was hardening, Ryan went to the White House to tell Trump in person that he did not have the votes to pass the bill. 
 
 The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, had insisted the vote would go ahead at 3.30pm ET. “Has the team put everything out there, have we left everything on the field? Absolutely,” he told reporters at his daily briefing. “But at the end of the day this isn’t a dictatorship and we’ve got to expect members to ultimately vote how they will according to what they think.” 
 
 However, Spicer’s imagined 3.30pm deadline slid by, ignored by Republicans on Capitol Hill, and the first reports emerged that Trump had asked for the vote to be pulled. Minutes later House Republicans, short of votes, had withdrawn the health bill. 
 
 At a press conference soon afterward, Ryan admitted: “Moving from an opposition party to a governing party comes with growing pains and, well, we’re feeling those growing pains today. I will not sugarcoat this: this is a disappointing day for us.” 
 
 He said “doing big things is hard” and conceded that after almost a decade of saying no to everything in opposition, the Republicans had failed to come together and agree on something they have opposed for seven years. “We are going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future,” he said. 
 
 Ryan said he had recommended the bill be pulled when he realized the votes were lacking. But he praised Trump’s role in the negotiations, adding: “The president gave his all in this effort; he’s really been fantastic. Still, we’ve got to do better and we will.” 
 
 Asked how Republican members could now go back to their constituents having failed to keep their promise, Ryan replied: “That’s a really good question. I wish I had a better answer for you.” 
 
 
 
 Trump tried to burn down Obamacare. He set his hair on fire instead | Ross Barkan Read more 
 
 Separately, a Washington Post reporter described a call with Trump in which he said the bill would not return any time soon. 
 
 
 
 Ryan also conceded that Republicans would now move on to other priorities – securing the border, rebuilding the military and tax reform. “Now we’re going on to move on with the rest of our agenda because we have big, ambitious plans to improve people’s lives in this country.” 
 
 Although speculation had grown on Friday afternoon that the bill would be pulled, the announcement came as a surprise to Republican members. 
 
 
 
 An emergency meeting of the House Republican Caucus was called shortly before the scheduled vote. As it was announced, the House went to recess, with Democrats shouting in a taunting manner, “Vote, vote, vote”, daring Republicans to bring the bill up. They did not. 
 
 In a short meeting, Ryan announced that the bill was being pulled from the floor in a terse statement to members. 
 
 Many moderates in swing districts were wary of supporting the legislation, which included major cuts to Medicaid and was estimated by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office to lead to 24 million fewer Americans having health insurance over the next 10 years. 
 
 Conservatives also objected to the legislation for keeping too much of the architecture of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), frequently referred to as Obamacare. Although the Republican leadership made a major concession to them on Thursday by removing the federal mandate that health insurance plans cover “essential health benefits” such as maternity care and mental healthcare, this was not enough to win them over. 
 
 As the Nevada Republican Mark Amodei put it, the GOP caucus “didn’t spend a lot talking about a unified Republican vision for what we should do with healthcare in the House”. Paul Gosar, a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, which was instrumental in this setback, pointed a finger at White House staff. 
 
 The result is a major political blow to Paul Ryan, a healthcare policy specialist who led the effort in pushing the AHCA. It also leaves Trump in a vulnerable position. The president ran on a platform of repealing the “disaster” of Obamacare and replacing it with “something terrific”. However, Trump, co-author of The Art of the Deal, failed to accomplish that goal in his first major attempt to negotiate on Capitol Hill. 
 
 Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, called Friday “a great day for our country”, adding: “What happened on the floor was a victory for the American people.” 
 
 
 
 The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a statement: “Ultimately, the Trumpcare bill failed because of two traits that have plagued the Trump presidency since he took office: incompetence and broken promises. In my life, I have never seen an administration as incompetent as the one occupying the White House today. 
 
 “They can’t write policy that actually makes sense, they can’t implement the policies they do manage to write, they can’t get their stories straight, and today we’ve learned that they can’t close a deal, and they can’t count votes. 
 
 “So much for The Art of the Deal.” 
 
 Members of the Republican caucus took different lessons from the failure to even bring the AHCA to the vote. 
 
 Louie Gohmert of Texas, an arch-conservative who was opposed to the bill, pointed fingers at House leadership, which he implied had left both rank and file and Trump boxed in with no alternative. 
 
 “The president didn’t really get involved until after they created this bill and he was fighting for it,” Gohmert said. 
 
 Bradley Byrne, a loyal Republican from southern Alabama, expressed his readiness to still vote for the AHCA after it was pulled. He mourned the fact that House Republicans fell just short, in his opinion. “There were 200 plus ... ready to do whatever it takes and ... with that group of people we can do a lot,” said Byrne. He didn’t blame anyone for the setback, praising both Ryan and Trump, who he described as doing a “great job”. 
 
 Republicans wondered whether this doomed any hope of healthcare reform. Gohmert seemed to sympathize with Trump’s desire to move on to tax reform, adding: “If I were president, I wouldn’t deal with healthcare any more, but as a legislator it is a problem and we should pick it back up and do it right.” 
 
 Speaking before the bill was pulled, the North Carolina congressman Mark Walker, chair of the Republican Study Committee, told reporters: “I can’t pretend that this is a win for us. I’m sure our friends on the left, this is a good moment for them. In fact, probably that champagne that wasn’t popped back in November may be utilized this evening.” ||||| President Donald Trump about the health care overhaul bill, Friday, March 24, 2017, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. rump says he would be willing to reopen negotiations for a health... (Associated Press) 
 
 President Donald Trump about the health care overhaul bill, Friday, March 24, 2017, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. rump says he would be willing to reopen negotiations for a health... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — Just two months in, Donald Trump's presidency is perilously adrift. 
 
 His first major foray into legislating imploded Friday when House Republicans abandoned a White House-backed health care bill, resisting days of cajoling and arm-twisting from Trump himself. Aides who had confidently touted Trump as the deal's "closer" were left bemoaning the limits of the presidency. 
 
 "At the end of the day, you can't force somebody to do something," White House spokesman Sean Spicer said. 
 
 On its own, the health care bill's collapse was a stunning rejection of a new president by his own party. And for Trump, the defeat comes with an especially strong sting. The president who campaigned by promising "so much winning," has so far been beset by a steady parade of the opposite. With each setback and sidetrack, comes more concern about whether Trump, the outsider turned president, is capable of governing. 
 
 "You can't just come in and steamroll everybody," said Bruce Miroff, a professor of American politics and the presidency at the State University of New York at Albany. "Most people have a modest understanding of how complicated the presidency is. They think leadership is giving orders and being bold. But the federal government is much more complicated, above all because the Constitution set it up that way." 
 
 The ambitious agenda Trump vowed to quickly muscle through has now been blocked by both Congress and the courts. Whole weeks of his presidency have been consumed by crises that are often self-inflicted, including his explosive and unverified claim that President Barack Obama wiretapped his New York skyscraper. Earlier this week, the FBI director confirmed that Trump's campaign is being investigated for possible coordination with Russia during the election, an investigation that could hang over the White House for years. 
 
 Trump's advisers say some of the churn is to be expected from a president with an unconventional style and little regard for Washington convention. They counter the notion of a White House in crisis by pointing to Trump's well-received nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. They appeal for patience, noting that the administration is indeed in its early days. 
 
 But early missteps can be difficult to overcome, particularly for a president like Trump, who took office with historically low favorability ratings and has continued to lose support since his inauguration. According to Friday's Gallup daily tracking poll, 54 percent of Americans disapprove of his performance on the job. 
 
 James Thurber, who founded the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, blamed Trump for an apparent "misunderstanding or ignorance of how the separation of powers works" that is hurting him at a time "where he should have much more success." 
 
 Trump is hardly the first president to stumble through his early days in arguably one of the hardest jobs in the world. Bill Clinton's presidency got off to a chaotic start and was quickly shrouded by an ethics controversy involving the firing of employees at the White House travel office. Jimmy Carter, another Washington outsider, clashed with his own party. Richard Nixon struggled to unite a deeply divided nation. 
 
 "There have been moments like this in history in terms of where the country is, in terms of the president kind of having a chaotic couple of months," said David Greenberg, a historian at Rutgers University. Still, he said Trump's challenges are exacerbated by his "complete inexperience in the political arena, his personality and style." 
 
 Indeed, many of Trump's early struggles have been clearly avoidable. His courting of chaos undercuts his campaign promises to bring business efficiency to Washington. Infighting and gamesmanship among top White House aides, sometimes egged on by the president himself, consume a striking amount of attention in the West Wing. His wiretapping allegations against Obama put his advisers in the untenable position of trying to justify an allegation for which there is no evidence. 
 
 His first, hastily written ban on travel to the U.S. from several countries was blocked by the courts, as was a rewrite, and judges cited his own campaign rhetoric in their rulings. 
 
 The president's advisers had hoped the health care measure would give the White House a much-needed burst of momentum and prove to wary Republicans that it was worth sticking with Trump in order to accomplish something the party had sought for seven years. 
 
 Hardly a policy wonk, Trump embraced the plan put forth by House Speaker Paul Ryan and promised Republican leaders he would invest his own political capital into rounding up votes. He did, spending hours working the phones with lawmakers, often early in the morning and late at night. His advisers held bowling and pizza nights for GOP lawmakers at the White House. 
 
 But Ryan's decision to pull the bill Friday underscored Trump's limitations. His powers of persuasion couldn't overcome the ideological concerns of conservatives who are more popular in their home districts than Trump or the political fears of moderates worried about attaching themselves to an unpopular president. 
 
 Trump, who has privately lashed out at his staff and publicly berated the media during other rough patches in his young presidency, was surprisingly sanguine in defeat. 
 
 "We learned a lot about the vote-getting processes," Trump said. "For me, it's been a very interesting experience." 
 
 ___ 
 
 EDITOR'S NOTE: Julie Pace has covered the White House and politics for The Associated Press since 2007. Follow her at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC 
 
 ___ 
 
 This story has been corrected to change Wednesday to Friday in 2nd paragraph. ||||| A week of high drama in Washington reached a stunning climax on Friday: President Trump Donald John TrumpTrump advisers urging tougher action toward Russia: report Eric Holder says he'll decide on a 2020 run by early next year Trump wrote back to 8-year-old seeking kidney for dad MORE and Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanThe time for radical centrism has come House conservatives to air grievances in new 'Swamp' docu-series Trump 'Putingate' pardons could be criminal and would be impeachable MORE (R-Wis.) decided to pull the Republican bill that had sought to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act rather than watch it go down to certain defeat. 
 
 There will be no second attempt anytime soon. Ryan said at a Capitol Hill news conference on Friday afternoon that the nation will “be living with ObamaCare for the foreseeable future.” 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 It’s an astonishing conclusion to one of the main fights that Republicans — including Trump — have sought for years. 
 
 As the dust settles, who are the biggest winners and losers? 
 
 LOSERS 
 
 President Trump 
 
 Make no mistake, this was a humiliating defeat for a president who campaigned as the ultimate dealmaker who could shake up a moribund Washington and get things done. 
 
 His big legislative push has fallen at the first hurdle. Trump himself was deeply engaged in trying to win over reluctant Republican lawmakers — and it didn’t work. 
 
 There are many unknowns: How will this affect other items on Trump’s agenda? How much frustration among grassroots Republican voters will be focused on him rather than Ryan or the GOP lawmakers who refused to get on board? 
 
 In remarks on Friday afternoon, Trump sought to put a brave face on the situation, avoiding lashing out at any Republicans and arguing that the Democrats would continue to “own” ObamaCare, to their political detriment. 
 
 But when Trump said, “There’s not much you can do about it,” referring to ObamaCare, it seemed an oddly impotent remark for a sitting president with majorities in both houses of Congress. 
 
 This is a very big setback for Trump. Just how big will become clear only after more time has passed. 
 
 Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) 
 
 Friday’s developments were at least as damaging for Ryan as they were for the president. 
 
 Whether the American Health Care Act would ultimately have been signed into law or not, the fact that Ryan could not get it through the House is deeply embarrassing for the Speaker. 
 
 Ryan’s fingerprints were all over the legislation, which faced immediate and fierce pushback from conservative members of his own conference as well as several important interest groups. 
 
 Some Trump loyalists contend that Ryan erred by focusing on healthcare rather than tax reform out of the gate. And conservative media commentators are openly questioning his leadership. 
 
 Trump publicly insists that he retains confidence in Ryan. But the Speaker went down to a big defeat that revealed an inability to muscle his members into line. 
 
 Vice President Pence, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Office of Management And Budget Director Mick Mulvaney 
 
 Pence, Price and Mulvaney were all once House members — in the case of the latter two, right up until they joined the Trump administration. 
 
 As such, the White House had suggested they would be especially effective in winning over members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus and other lawmakers. Mulvaney was a founding member of the group. 
 
 When all’s said and done, the trio failed to round up the required votes. That’s a political black eye for all three men. 
 
 MIXED 
 
 The House Freedom Caucus 
 
 The conservative group won the battle — but the outcome of the broader war has yet to be decided. 
 
 The caucus, led by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), held the line in opposition to the bill, despite the urging of Trump himself. More than any other Republican group, they were responsible for the failure of the legislation. 
 
 The whole episode showed the power of the Freedom Caucus, but its members will have to deal with the consequences too. 
 
 They defied a president of their own party who — for all his broader struggles with popularity — is fervently supported by many grassroots Republicans. 
 
 They sank an effort to replace a law that many of those grassroots voters detest. 
 
 And the realpolitik argument for their position — that they could force Trump and the House leadership to come back to the table with a proposal that was more attentive to their concerns, appears to have proven untrue. 
 
 WINNERS 
 
 Former President Barack Obama Barack Hussein ObamaUnderstanding the underdog factor, from Loyola to Obama Judge dismisses Exxon’s ‘implausible’ attempt to stop climate investigations Judge rejects Saudi Arabia's bid to dismiss 9/11 lawsuits MORE 
 
 The bottom line is simple: Obama’s signature domestic achievement has survived — and at a moment when the White House, the Senate and the House are all controlled by people who have repeatedly pledged to destroy it. 
 
 Trump, speaking from the White House on Friday afternoon, insisted that the Affordable Care Act would explode under its own weight. But the current president did not make any pledge to renew his efforts to undo it, instead suggesting he would be open to some more incremental repairs in tandem with congressional Democrats. 
 
 Obama’s big law dodged a bullet here. And that strengthens his legacy as a president of considerable historical significance. 
 
 House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) 
 
 Pelosi displayed the kind of grip on her party colleagues that Ryan so signally failed to exhibit. 
 
 Not a single Democrat broke ranks to support the Republican proposal. The position may not have been that surprising. But it did ensure that Republicans faced the steepest possible gradient. 
 
 Pelosi, who loves the hand-to-hand political combat of Capitol Hill, clearly took some pleasure in the Republicans’ disarray. 
 
 When the vote was first postponed on Thursday, she told reporters, “Rookie’s error, Donald Trump.” 
 
 Jared Kushner 
 
 Trump’s son-in-law, among his most trusted advisers, was reportedly against the decision to move on healthcare from the get-go. But he was also out of Washington for much of the week, on a ski trip with his family in Aspen. 
 
 CNN reported that the president was displeased that Kushner was out of town. 
 
 But as someone who was physically and politically distant from the week’s messy horse-trading, he emerges relatively unscathed from the debacle. 
 
 Governors 
 
 Several GOP governors were critical of the replacement plan put forward by their colleagues in the House. 
 
 Ohio’s John Kasich, Nevada’s Brian Sandoval, Arkansas’s Asa Hutchinson and Michigan’s Rick Snyder wrote an open letter last week to Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellThe omnibus is just the latest fiscal bomb to throw us off balance Trump 'Putingate' pardons could be criminal and would be impeachable Dems face difficult choices on resources in battle for Senate MORE (R-Ky.) stating that they could not support the legislation. 
 
 Their argument, in essence, was that the bill would have hit Medicaid too hard. 
 
 They gave political cover to lawmakers from their states who were also leaning against the legislation. 
 
 The AARP 
 
 The organization for older Americans lobbied vigorously against the law. 
 
 It attacked one proposed change as “an age tax,” emphasized that 24 million fewer people were projected to have health insurance after a decade and declared the issue to be an “accountability vote” — in other words, one where it would use its muscle against lawmakers who voted against its wishes. 
 
 The association’s efforts were a reminder that it is not to be underestimated. 
 
 The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage, primarily focused on Donald Trump’s presidency. ||||| The demise of the American Health Care Act played out in a tense 24 hours that White House and congressional officials said proved a political education for Mr. Trump and his top advisers on the promise and peril of governing, even with unified Republican control. This account is based on government officials who were present during the last-minute negotiations and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. 
 
 “We all learned a lot,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Friday afternoon. “We learned a lot about loyalty, and we learned a lot about the vote-getting process.” 
 
 “Certainly for me, it was a very interesting experience,” he added. 
 
 Mr. Trump, who initially had little involvement in crafting the health care bill, became more deeply engaged in recent weeks, promoting it at rallies outside Washington and holding meetings in the West Wing with conservative and moderate coalitions whose support was crucial to its passage. 
 
 But he made little secret of his ambivalence about addressing the issue — “I would have loved to have put it first, I’ll be honest,” Mr. Trump said of tax reform in Nashville last week — yet he told aides he believed the measure could not pass without a push from him. 
 
 By Thursday afternoon, just hours before a scheduled vote, it had become clear that his efforts — along with those of Vice President Mike Pence and other senior White House officials — had fallen short. At a meeting in Mr. Ryan’s office in the Capitol with members of the recalcitrant Freedom Caucus, top White House officials laid out the changes they had made at the group’s behest, including stripping it of federal standards for benefits that must be provided in health insurance policies, including maternity and wellness care. 
 
 Caucus members began outlining still more changes they needed to see before they could support the bill, angering Mr. Ryan and Mr. Trump’s aides. Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, and Mick Mulvaney, his budget director, told the group that the White House was finished negotiating and that the president wanted to know its position on the bill — yes or no. 
 
 Called on in turn to state their positions, several members refused. As tensions rose, Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina said that he spoke for the group and that they were not ready to commit. That meant the votes would not be there. ||||| President Trump addressed his plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, saying he will let Obamacare "explode," before taking questions from the media on March 24 at the White House. (The Washington Post) 
 
 Donald Trump was elected in large part on one, loud promise: I know how to make deals these normal politicians don't. 
 
 Part of that mystique — as outlined in his best-selling book “The Art of the Deal” — is the willingness to call his rival's bluff, to put his cards on the table and ask everyone else to do the same. 
 
 That's what Trump did Thursday night after a postponement of the planned vote to begin the process of reforming the Affordable Care Act. House Republicans needed to put up or shut up, Trump insisted. Despite being told the votes simply weren't there, Trump pushed forward — arguing that it was now or never. 
 
 It was vintage Trump, taking a gamble no other typical politician would take: Force a vote on a massive part of your legislative agenda with an uncertain outcome. 
 
 Then Trump blinked. 
 
 Hours after Trump huddled with Speaker Paul D. Ryan at the White House, he told The Post's Bob Costa that he had decided congressional Republicans should pull the legislation. The votes simply weren't there, and the possibility of real embarrassment on the House floor existed. 
 
 Sure. But, Trump was elected as an outsider — someone who ran against the system. Why not force that system to go on the record with either their support or opposition? 
 
 I regret that @POTUS @realDonaldTrump and @SpeakerRyan agreed to pull the bill. Accountability for both sides of argument useful. — Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) March 24, 2017 
 
 Now begins the blame game. And there's plenty to go around. The White House was already starting to point the finger at Ryan for making health-care reform the first legislative priority of the new Republican-controlled Washington. Rank and file members were suggesting that simply not enough time was given to thinking about what was in the bill before it was offered. Establishment Republicans blamed the House Freedom Caucus for their refusal to compromise. 
 
 House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) spoke about the decision to withdraw the GOP health-care plan on March 24. "We're going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future," he said. (The Washington Post) 
 
 The House Freedom Caucus just single-handedly saved #Obamacare. — Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) March 24, 2017 
 
 All true! But Trump is the president of the United States. Trump ran as the only person who could solve the major problems facing the country. Trump was the one who billed himself as the dealmaker extraordinaire, the guy who had faced down people in corporate boardrooms all over the country and all over the world — and won. 
 
 But when the time came to push all his chips to the middle of the table, Trump folded. Period. Beyond the spin, that is what happened here. If Trump had continued to insist that the bill be put to a vote, trust me that Ryan would have done it despite his reservations. 
 
 What you are likely to hear over the next few hours and days is that Trump did so because no deal is better than a bad deal. The problem with that argument is Trump's Twitter paper trail. Friday, as the House prepared to vote, Trump tweeted that this legislation was a great chance for Republicans to make good on their campaign promises — calling the legislation a “great plan.” 
 
 After seven horrible years of ObamaCare (skyrocketing premiums & deductibles, bad healthcare), this is finally your chance for a great plan! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 24, 2017 
 
 Trump will, as he always does, somehow declare victory and move on. “The beauty,” Trump told Costa, “is that they [Democrats] own Obamacare. So when it explodes, they come to us, and we make one beautiful deal for the people.” 
 
 The simple fact, however, is that Trump wanted this deal, pushed for this deal, called his own party's bluff on this deal and then walked away when it appeared as though the deal wouldn't come together. 
 
 Dealmaker Donald played chicken. But he lost his nerve at the last minute. ||||| House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., announces that he is abruptly pulling the troubled Republican health care overhaul bill off the House floor, short of votes and eager to avoid a humiliating defeat for... (Associated Press) 
 
 House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., announces that he is abruptly pulling the troubled Republican health care overhaul bill off the House floor, short of votes and eager to avoid a humiliating defeat for President Donald Trump and GOP leaders, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, March 24, 2017. (AP Photo/J.... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans passed roughly 60 bills over the past six years dismembering President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. Other than minor tweaks, they knew the measures would go nowhere because the Democrat still lived in the White House. 
 
 With a bill that counted Friday, they choked. It was an epic, damaging, self-inflicted collapse that smothered the GOP effort. 
 
 "We're going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future," a flustered Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters after abruptly yanking the legislation off the House floor to avert a certain defeat. "I don't know how long it's going to take us to repeal this law." 
 
 The measure would have erased much of Obama's 2010 law, eliminating its unpopular requirement that people buy coverage, ending its Medicaid expansion and trimming federal assistance to people to help pay medical bills. It represented the culmination of seven years of unsuccessful GOP attempts to craft a replacement bill the party could rally behind — a unity that ended up eluding them. 
 
 With President Donald Trump serving alongside a Congress controlled by the GOP, the bill was the party's first genuine opportunity to repeal Obama's statute. Ryan shelved it amid defections from centrist Republicans who thought it went too far and conservatives who considered it too weak, plus solid Democratic opposition. 
 
 Its rejection was fueled by nonpartisan congressional analysts concluding it would cause 24 million people to lose coverage in a decade and drive up costs for poorer and older people. There was also opposition from doctors, hospitals, consumer groups and AARP. 
 
 One problem facing the GOP is repercussions from the party's voters. For nearly a decade, they've heard countless Republican congressional candidates promise to repeal Obama's statute, a pledge that became a centerpiece of Trump's presidential campaign. 
 
 "It's a really good question," Ryan said, asked how Republicans could face constituents after failing to deliver on years of promises. "I wish I had a better answer for you." 
 
 Democrats, loyal defenders of Obama's law, were literally jumping for joy. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., removed her shoes and took a victory leap while meeting activists outside the Capitol. 
 
 Obama's statute has spread coverage to 20 million people and required insurers to cover numerous services and barred them from refusing policies to the very sick. 
 
 Top congressional Republicans conceded the measure's demise meant it was time to move onto other issues. 
 
 Among them was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has spoken repeatedly about how unraveling Obama's law was a top priority for his chamber. In a statement, he expressed only gloom about the effort's future. 
 
 "Obamacare is failing the American people and I deeply appreciate the efforts of the speaker and the president to keep our promise to repeal and replace it, "McConnell said. "I share their disappointment that this effort came up short." 
 
 Two chief House authors expressed no taste for diving back into the issue. 
 
 "D-O-N-E done. This bill is dead," said Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee. 
 
 House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said Republicans "are moving full speed ahead with President Trump on the first pro-growth tax reform in a generation." 
 
 Conveying some hope was Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, proposed health care legislation that would let states decide to continue Obama's programs. 
 
 "Mr. President, Cassidy-Collins is still an option to fulfill your promise to repeal and replace #Obamacare," Cassidy tweeted Friday. 
 
 But there was no easy path ahead. Retooling America's health care system — it comprises one-sixth of the nation's economy — is a multi-tiered puzzle. 
 
 On the economic side, it involves refashioning how providers, patients and federal programs should interact. And a political balance must be struck between conservatives eager to erase Obama's law and push the system toward a free-market approach, and GOP moderates wary that would strip coverage from some voters and drive up out-of-pocket costs for others. 
 
 Earlier this month, Ryan thought he would find that balance. 
 
 "We'll have 218 (votes) when this thing comes to the floor, I can guarantee you that," he said, referring to the House majority usually needed to pass legislation. 
 
 Ironically, the outcome hewed more closely to a prediction by Ryan's predecessor, former Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Boehner was forced out of office in 2015 largely by the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, the same group whose opposition was largely responsible for the crumpling of the GOP bill on Friday. 
 
 Boehner said last month that while Republicans would fix some problems of Obama's law, a repeal and replacement is "not going to happen." 
 
 He added, "Republicans never ever agree on health care." ||||| Donald Trump had heard enough about policy and process. It was Thursday afternoon and members of the House Freedom Caucus were peppering the president with wonkish concerns about the American Health Care Act—the language that would leave Obamacare’s “essential health benefits” in place, the community rating provision that limited what insurers could charge certain patients, and whether the next two steps of Speaker Paul Ryan’s master plan were even feasible—when Trump decided to cut them off. 
 
 "Forget about the little shit," Trump said, according to multiple sources in the room. "Let's focus on the big picture here." 
 
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 The group of roughly 30 House conservatives, gathered around a mammoth, oval-shaped conference table in the Cabinet Room of the White House, exchanged disapproving looks. Trump wanted to emphasize the political ramifications of the bill's defeat; specifically, he said, it would derail his first-term agenda and imperil his prospects for reelection in 2020. The lawmakers nodded and said they understood. And yet they were disturbed by his dismissiveness. For many of the members, the "little shit" meant the policy details that could make or break their support for the bill—and have far-reaching implications for their constituents and the country. 
 
 "We’re talking about one-fifth of our economy," a member told me afterward. 
 
 Ultimately, the meeting failed to move any votes. Two Freedom Caucus members—Brian Babin and Ted Poe, both of Texas—told the president that they had switched to yes, but their decisions had already been registered with White House vote-counters prior to sitting down with Trump. (Their colleagues didn't appreciate the gesture, feeling that Babin and Poe were trying to score points with the president at their expense.) Upon returning to Capitol Hill, the Freedom Caucus gathered in a meeting room inside the Rayburn office building, discussed Trump's admonitions to them and took another vote. The tally had not changed: Of the group’s roughly three dozen members, two-thirds remained opposed, with only five or six of those saying they were "soft" in that stance. 
 
 The president had been working on many of them individually in recent days, typically with what members described as "colorful" phone calls, littered with exaggerations and foul language and hilariously off-topic anecdotes. In some cases, the pressure worked. Jim Bridenstine, a Freedom Caucus member and longtime problem for the Republican leadership, agreed to back the bill after conversations with Trump and other administration officials. (It wasn't necessary to remind Bridenstine that he was a leading candidate to become NASA administrator, and would likely hurt his chances by voting against the president.) 
 
 But by and large, Trump's first attempt to corral the Republican-controlled Congress—and particularly the Freedom Caucus, a rambunctious, ideologically charged collection of GOP legislators who have long refused to fall in line behind the party's leadership—failed miserably. That failure played a major role in the collapse of the American Health Care Act almost exactly 24 hours after their meeting at the White House, and now, as Trump warned, threatens to paralyze the president's first-year policy agenda and send Republicans into a damaging cycle of intra-party recrimination. 
 
 
 
 By and large, Trump’s first attempt to corral the GOP Congress failed miserably and threatens to paralyze his first-year policy agenda. 
 
 
 
 There will be sufficient blame to go around in the days ahead, and indeed, some Trump loyalists are already pointing the finger at Ryan and his leadership team. The speaker, without question, was clumsy in his strategic rollout and far too presumptuous about the legislation's infallibility. But for a president who pledged to break through the gridlock in Washington—and who promoted himself as a peerless dealmaker—the defeat of Trump's first major policy initiative undermines his take-charge image and emboldens his enemies in both parties. 
 
 Tom Price, the new Health and Human Services secretary who previously served 12 years in Congress, had assured nervous allies recently that the difference between Ryan's speakership and that of Speaker John Boehner—who was driven from office by the intransigence of the Freedom Caucus—was that unlike his predecessor, Ryan had the backing of a strong Republican president. Mick Mulvaney, Trump's budget director and a former Freedom Caucus member himself, made similar arguments. But faced with his first major test, the president failed—on multiple occasions and on many levels. 
 
 For starters, Trump kept the GOP health care bill at arm's length for more than a week, offering a smattering of favorable remarks but failing to embrace it in convincing fashion. Ryan's rivals on Capitol Hill got the message: The president was lukewarm about the legislation. According to interviews with officials in all three camps—the White House, the Republican leadership and the Freedom Caucus—conservatives saw a schism between Trump and Ryan, and seized on the perceived opening. 
 
 Early last week, during a budgetary meeting at the White House, the two leaders of the Freedom Caucus—chairman Mark Meadows and former chairman Jim Jordan—kept diverting the discussion to health care, much to the annoyance of Budget Committee chairwoman Diane Black. When the meeting broke, Meadows and Jordan swiftly sought an audience with the president to discuss Ryan's bill. Trump granted them the meeting, during which the conservatives complained that Ryan was presenting them with a "binary choice"—either vote for the bill that had been introduced, or vote to preserve Obamacare—that was doing the president a disservice. Trump replied that he was open to negotiation and new ideas, and Meadows and Jordan left the White House thinking they had a powerful ally. Ryan’s team was less than thrilled at the narrative of a good cop, bad cop routine. 
 
 Things went downhill quickly from there. After Meadows visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida retreat, that weekend to push for conservative changes—capping a week of futile discussions about significantly altering the House bill—Freedom Caucus members were eager to hear from Trump on Tuesday when he arrived at the Capitol. But when he rose to address the GOP conference, the president made it clear there would be no further modifications, and said he expected Republicans to rally around Ryan's bill. 
 
 Then Trump made a mistake. After singling out Meadows and asking him to stand up in front of his colleagues, Trump joked that he might "come after" the Freedom Caucus boss if he didn't vote yes, and then added, with a more serious tone: "I think Mark Meadows will get on board." 
 
 It was a crucial misreading of Meadows, who has been determined to please both the White House and his conservatives colleagues on the Hill. Upon assuming the chairmanship of the Freedom Caucus earlier this year, Meadows was viewed suspiciously by some of his members who worried that the North Carolina congressman is too cozy with Trump and would hesitate to defy him. Meadows campaigned extensively with Trump last fall and struck up a relationship with White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who communicates with him almost daily by text. Meadows knew the health care fight would be viewed as a test of his independence from Trump, and the moment the president called him out, he was boxed in. 
 
 "That was the biggest mistake the president could have made," one Freedom Caucus member told me. "Mark desperately wanted to get to yes, and Trump made it impossible for him. If he flipped after that he would look incredibly weak." 
 
 
 
 That was the biggest mistake the president could have made. Mark desperately wanted to get to yes, and Trump made it impossible for him.” 
 
 
 
 Disappointed with the episode, and with the president's apparent inflexibility, Meadows and other Freedom Caucus members back-channeled with the administration and landed what they thought was an invitation to the White House on Wednesday morning. They hoped for a meeting with Trump and an opportunity to negotiate some major policy changes directly with him. Instead, they found themselves hauled into the less-than-inspiring Executive Office Building for a pep rally with Vice President Mike Pence, chief of staff Reince Priebus, Bannon, and other members of Trump's inner circle—but not the president himself. (As an aside, it’s impossible to ignore the failure of Pence, Price and Mulvaney, three former conservative darlings while in the Congress, to sell more of their ideological brethren on this bill.) 
 
 Members of the Freedom Caucus realized right away that there would be no negotiating. Pence tried to pump up the conservatives, telling them the fight was theirs to win and that they needed to help Trump and Ryan score a victory for the new administration. The plea landed on deaf ears. "Take one for the team" was a phrase repeatedly deployed; at one point, after Bannon used it, Joe Barton, a white-haired conservative from Texas, snapped back in response that Bannon was talking to them like children and he didn't appreciate it. The room filled with uncomfortable silence; Bannon backed down and the meeting went on. (Barton eventually announced his support for the legislation—one of only a few who would eventually switch positions.) After several hours, the members returned to the Capitol feeling frustrated, calling the meeting "a waste of time" and wondering if they had missed their only window for cutting a deal with Trump. 
 
 That night, however, allies in the White House sent word to the Freedom Caucus that one thing they wanted—reforms to the “essential health benefits” provision under Title I of the Affordable Care Act—could be done. Excitement spread in the group, but there was also confusion; some members felt that would be a big enough concession to win their vote, while others felt it was only a step in the right direction. As they sought to clarify their internal disagreements, there was another meeting scheduled for the next morning, Thursday—this one at the White House and with the president himself. 
 
 Filled with hope once again, Freedom Caucus members were once again promptly disappointed. This meeting was yet another "take one for the team" seminar. The atmosphere was friendly, and the president had the group laughing with irrelevant riffs and stories of negotiations past, but it became clear, as soon as he made the "little shit" comment, that no serious changes were going to be made, because the president didn't have sufficient command of the policy details to negotiate what would or would not be realistic for Ryan to shepherd through the House. 
 
 Through charm, force of personality and sheer intimidation, Trump did move some votes into the yes column. But GOP leaders were left wondering why he didn't do more—why he didn't send tweets, travel to congressional districts, put his famed dealmaking skills to work. The answer, to Republicans on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, is obvious: Because he lacked familiarity with the legislation itself, and thought it was Ryan’s job to sell the specifics. 
 
 “Trump is a business executive. When he tells his lieutenants to get something done, he's used to it getting done,” one senior House GOP aide told me. “He’s really not used to getting involved himself.” 
 
 
 
 *** 
 
 If the bill failed because Trump is a great salesman with a poor grasp of policy, it also failed because Ryan is a poor salesman with a great grasp of policy. 
 
 The speaker has spent decades straddling the worlds of politics and policy, and is infinitely more comfortable operating in the latter. He has dozens of friends around town in the constellation of conservative think tanks, lobby shops, activist groups and media outlets. Knowing that health care was batting leadoff for the new, unified Republican government, it would seem a no-brainer for the speaker to spend a few days, if not a few weeks, meeting with leading voices on the right to introduce the American Health Care Act, answer their questions, accept their criticisms and, most important, preempt any attacks on the legislation itself. After all, as Democrats love to point out, Ryan had seven years to plan for this moment—first as Budget chairman, then as Ways and Means chairman, then as speaker—and if anyone on the right was ready, it ought to have been him. 
 
 But Ryan didn’t feel such preventative measures were necessary. After days of drafting the bill in secretive locations at the Capitol—and Sen. Rand Paul, a hard-core Obamacare critic, exposing the absurdity by bringing reporters along as he hunted door-to-door for a copy—the text was leaked, and then unceremoniously released, without any clearly coordinated media strategy between the speaker's office and the White House. Conservatives around Washington, including some of Ryan’s longtime friends, were stunned. “The bill has had the worst rollout of any major piece of legislation in memory,” Rich Lowry, editor of National Review and a longtime Ryan ally, wrote in his Politico Magazine column on March 15. 
 
 Back in 2013, when the so-called Gang of Eight had authored its comprehensive immigration reform bill, Sen. Marco Rubio spent weeks making the rounds and meeting with top influencers on the right, taking unlimited time to answer every question and consider every criticism. He talked to journalists, grassroots leaders and academics; he offered himself as a human sacrifice to every prominent voice in conservative talk radio, attempting to neutralize opposition to the bill before it materialized. It never became law, but Rubio did everything he could. It passed the Senate, at least, before dying a quick death in the House—and that was in large measure thanks to having a media-savvy Tea Party darling take the lead and work conservative journalists and opinion leaders. 
 
 There was no such effort on Ryan’s part, and it showed. (Several allies argued he had done some outreach, but they failed to provide any specific examples.) After he unveiled the bill, leading health care experts on the right like Yuval Levin and Avik Roy trashed it as a poorly conceived mess; conservative pressure groups and their media allies immediately branded it as “Obamacare Lite.” Only then did Ryan move aggressively to mitigate the damage. He convened a group of conservative journalists in his office in mid-March and his team began tracking, and publicizing, every media appearance he made, especially promoting his interviews with conservative critics such as Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. But it was too little, too late. Loathing of the legislation had already reached a fever pitch and Ryan was powerless to steady the situation. The only thing he could have done to appease the far right—a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act—was not only legislatively impossible but would never pass the lower chamber of Congress. The vast majority of Republicans would have refused to eliminate Obamacare without knowing exactly what would replace it until months or years later. 
 
 In dissecting Ryan's lackluster marketing of the health care initiative, both his allies and adversaries in the Republican conference reached the same conclusion: He had taken support for granted. After all, this was essentially the same bill written by Price when he was in Congress; it became the de facto proposal of the House GOP in its “Better Way” agenda, which Ryan argued throughout 2016 was a governing document that his colleagues universally supported. "We all ran on this," Ryan said repeatedly over the past several weeks. 
 
 Except that many House Republicans never saw it that way. In fact, some conservatives spent the past year using "Better Way" as a punch line to tease the speaker for convening wonky groups to dream up big policy proposals—but never hold votes on any of them. If there had been committee hearings and floor votes, some conservatives argue, these differences would have surfaced much sooner. "We ran on these principles, but not on this bill," Meadows told me last week. (Meadows was, however, once a co-sponsor of Price’s bill in Congress.) 
 
 
 
 By Friday morning, there were questions about why Trump had kept a distance from the bill for such a lengthy period of time—and how different the whip count might look if he hadn’t. 
 
 
 
 As the reality of the bill’s likely defeat set in Thursday, and some members of Trump’s team began to assign blame to Ryan—most notably in a New York Times story—the speaker’s allies didn’t stand pat. They began subtly, first by calling Trump “the closer,” and then by emphasizing that the White House felt confident it would deliver the Freedom Caucus. By Friday morning, there were more overt questions about why Trump had kept a distance from the bill for such a lengthy period of time—and how different the whip count might look if he hadn’t. 
 
 Of course, leadership officials also were eager to blame the Freedom Caucus, claiming the group simply has no interest in voting yes. But the fact is, after Thursday night's impromptu conference meeting—in which Mulvaney delivered Trump's ultimatum that he would move on from health care after Friday's vote—the number of conservatives still opposed to the bill had dwindled significantly. There were 27 Freedom Caucus members voting no at the beginning of the week; by late Thursday, that number appeared to drop below 20. Jordan, worried that conservative opposition might be crumbling, spent Thursday night and Friday morning whipping his comrades to prevent further defections, members said. 
 
 Trump’s attempt to cajole the group into submission—tweeting Friday morning about the "irony" of its members opposing abortion but voting against a bill that removed Planned Parenthood funding—didn’t work, and probably backfired, just like his singling out of Meadows. I was told the members were slightly irritated but mostly laughed it off as "Trump being Trump," and expressed surprise that he hadn't tried to publicly pressure them ever sooner. 
 
 
 
 *** 
 
 All this obscures an uncomfortable question for Republicans as they ponder how it is that they control both houses of Congress and the presidency, and yet were unable to get rid of a hated law they spent seven years attempting to destroy. Perhaps the problem isn’t who deserves the blame, so much as how to solve the puzzle that is the fractious GOP majority—the same impossible physics problem that bedeviled and ultimately doomed John Boehner. 
 
 After all, it wasn’t just conservatives who sank the AHCA. The Freedom Caucus remains a stubborn problem for GOP leadership, but blaming—or crediting—its members for Friday’s defeat ignores the fact that some two dozen moderate and centrist members were also opposed. "There's no natural constituency for this bill," Raul Labrador, a Freedom Caucus co-founder, said throughout the week. He was right. Members care about policy and process, and between the two, there was no clear upside for many of Ryan's members: It left too many people without coverage and failed to drive down premiums; it also was re-written hastily to accommodate changes and felt rushed for no good reason. Ultimately, every concession made to win conservatives, like the amendment that left regulating essential health benefits up to states, was destined to result in the loss of moderates. 
 
 
 
 Perhaps the problem isn’t who deserves the blame, so much as how to solve the puzzle that is the fractious GOP majority. 
 
 
 
 In the corridors surrounding the House chamber, the death knell was felt just before 11 a.m. That's when Rodney Frelinghuysen, chairman of the all-powerful Appropriations Committee, announced he wouldn't be supporting the bill. Republican lawmakers buzzed with disbelief as the news spread across the floor. Losing a committee chairman is never a good sign for leadership; the defection of the Appropriations chairman felt like a nail in the American Health Care Act's coffin. 
 
 An hour later, two sources—one in the House leadership, one in the Trump administration—confirmed that the whip count was moving in the wrong direction. One of them told me that Ryan was considering pulling the bill from the floor altogether, to prevent a lopsided defeat that would only serve to hand ammunition to Democrats running against Republicans who had been bold enough to vote for the bill anyway. 
 
 As I processed this, news broke that Ryan was headed the White House. He wanted to show Trump the numbers and consult him before yanking the bill from consideration. Soon enough the decision was made, and Ryan headed back to the Capitol, calling an all-conference meeting in the House basement. 
 
 Walking toward the tunnel that connects the House office buildings to the Capitol itself, I ran into Mark Walker, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a large caucus that was once home to the conservative movement in Congress before being eclipsed in recent years by the more ideologically pure Freedom Caucus. Walker had initially been against the bill, but came on board quickly after some changes, and in doing so validated the critiques of his group by those further to the right. A former minister, Walker is by nature relaxed and genteel, but his face was burning red and his voice trembled as we discussed the bill's defeat. 
 
 “I’m very bothered. I'm disappointed,” he said, measuring his words. “This was a chance to repeal all the Obamacare taxes. It was a chance to take off the burdensome mandate we've stuck on our employers and individuals who have begged for help. It [has] additional pro-life provisions. It destroys the chance to do the biggest Medicaid revision that we've had in what, 51, 52 years? Yeah, I'm bothered by it.” 
 
 On the opposite end of the spectrum were Meadows, Jordan, Labrador and Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, arguably the four core members of the Freedom Caucus. Moments before I talked to Walker, I had intercepted the four of them walking toward the meeting room. They hadn't heard the news; when I told them Ryan had pulled the bill, they exchanged glances and tried to suppress grins. Only Meadows looked upset; a southern gentleman and successful businessman, he wants to be liked by everyone, and the episode clearly took an emotional toll on him. He declined to provide a comment. So did Labrador and Amash. But Jordan, the godfather of the House conservatives—he arrived four years prior to the tea party wave of 2010—made clear that he wouldn't go along with Trump's decree that Republicans would abandon health care and move on to tax reform. 
 
 “We want to see Obamacare repealed,” Jordan told me. “That hasn’t changed.” 
 
 Ryan, for his part, told reporters in a somber press conference a short while later that he stood with Trump. Obamacare, that great white whale Republicans had long hunted—and hoped to harpoon on its seven-year anniversary Thursday—would remain “the law of the land” due to the GOP's inability to function as a “governing body,” the speaker of the House announced. They had failed at fixing the health-care system; next they would try to overhaul the tax code. 
 
 
 
 If you couldn’t get health care done, how can you get tax reform done?” 
 
 
 
 The improbability of this sequence was not lost on anyone. Earlier, as Ryan's motorcade was zipping toward the White House, I spoke with Kevin Brady, the Ways and Means chairman whose committee sits at the intersection of health care and taxes. I’ve known Brady, one of Congress’s truly decent people and a reliably cheerful spirit, for years; never had I seen him looking so despondent and defeated. Positing that health care was about to die, I asked Brady if re-writing the tax code would be any easier. “Tax reform is the hardest lift in a generation,” he told me, shaking his head. “So that would be a big challenge.” 
 
 “If you couldn’t get health care done,” I ask him, “how can you get tax reform done?” 
 
 Brady thought for a moment. “Every Republican is all-in on tax reform. We still have a lot of work. But it’s just a natural issue for us in a very positive way.” 
 
 But every Republican was all-in on repealing and replacing Obamacare, too, I told him. “Won't the devil be in the details?” 
 
 Brady stared back at me. “It always is,” he said. “It always is.” 
 
 Tim Alberta is national political reporter at Politico Magazine.
– It was a stinging defeat by any measure: The ObamaCare "repeal and replace" bill that President Trump championed was declared DOA Friday after a House vote was canceled at the last minute. Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan had been unable to persuade enough House Republicans to change their minds on the American Health Care Act. The AP reports that the demise of the American Health Care Act, and the damage to Trump's presidency, had Democrats "literally jumping for joy," with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi doing a victory leap outside the Capitol. A roundup of coverage: The White House has been blaming Democrats and Ryan for the defeat, but the buck stops with Trump, who promised during his campaign that his skill as a dealmaker would change Washington, but then played chicken with House Republicans and blinked at the last minute, writes Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post. "Trump wanted this deal, pushed for this deal, called his own party's bluff on this deal and then walked away when it appeared as though the deal wouldn't come together," he writes. Politico looks back at mistakes made on the road to the failure of the AHCA, including Trump's lukewarm attitude to the legislation after it was first introduced. The New York Times reports that Trump was furious at lunchtime Friday when Ryan arrived at the White House to tell him the AHCA could not pass. Trump demanded the vote go ahead, broadcast live on TV, but Ryan argued that broadcasting the bill's defeat would damage Republicans who supported the bill as well as opponents. By midafternoon, Trump agreed to pull the bill, insiders say—and though he remained furious at the House Freedom Caucus, he did not criticize them publicly. The Hill lists winners and losers from the AHCA battle, with Trump and Ryan topping the list of losers. The winners include Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, while the verdict is mixed for the House Freedom Caucus: The hardline conservatives demonstrated their power, but they also defied a Republican president popular with grassroots voters, and preserved a law those voters hate. Politico describes Trump as "overmatched, outmaneuvered, and empty-handed" after his first confrontation with rebellious lawmakers. His ability to work with congressional Republicans to implement other parts of his agenda is now in doubt. The GOP "is still operating as an opposition party," says Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. "If they can't break the fever ... it says an enormous amount about the prospects of tax reform, infrastructure and some sort of immigration proposal," he says. The Guardian looks at the GOP's failure to build a consensus on healthcare after conservatives decided the AHCA didn't go far enough and moderates were alarmed by predictions that 24 million people would lose coverage. The House GOP didn't spend much time "talking about a unified Republican vision for what we should do with healthcare in the House," admits Rep. Mark Amodei. Plenty of other presidents have gotten off to rocky starts, though analysts say Trump is being hurt by an apparent lack of understanding of exactly how government works, the AP reports. "You can't just come in and steamroll everybody," says Bruce Miroff, a politics professor at the State University of New York at Albany. "Most people have a modest understanding of how complicated the presidency is. They think leadership is giving orders and being bold. But the federal government is much more complicated, above all because the Constitution set it up that way."