RUSH: Now, the Democrats, folks, are freaking out. We’re back to the health care staff, and Democrats are freaking out after Trump has threatened to take away Congress’ special Obamacare carveout. We spent a lot of time talking about what that carveout is. Essentially — here’s the Cliffs Notes version — members of Congress and their staff have their health care costs subsidized 73% by the taxpayers. It’s run through the Office of Personnel Management.

There is a rule that permits Trump to immediately wipe it out. Because it was an Obama-created rule that made it happen. Sort of like an executive action. If Trump wanted to, he could end this arrangement today, and he’s threatening to do so. He began the threat on Saturday to end bailouts for members of Congress and bailouts for insurance companies. The bailouts for insurance companies are illegal. In addition to being unconstitutional, they’re illegal.

So last Saturday Trump threatens to end the bailout for members of Congress — that’s basically canceling their subsidy — if they don’t pass a new health care bill in the near future. Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat, Connecticut, said that Trump’s warning is a clear threat to take away health care from members of Congress and their staff.

What does Chris Murphy think is happening to people out there? People out there are losing their health care. Even some people who have it can’t afford to use it because the deductible costs are so high. These are tools that Trump has, and this discussion was had last night on Fox Business Channel. Lou Dobbs Tonight, David Asman was filling in. Here’s how it began.

ASMAN: This is a terrific plan. Actually Rush Limbaugh brought it up on the radio. He did a great job of describing what happened. Back in 2010, Congress realized that they it looked like hypocrites, which of course they were, that they very often passed laws they don’t have to abide by so they were forced to accept Obamacare. But President Obama then, under part of his own budget, was able to give them this 74% subsidy, which gives them a royal plan so that they don’t have to pay any deductibles at all.

RUSH: Exactly right. Seventy-three percent subsidy on the premium, they don’t have to pay any deductibles, and they’re done. And that’s their exemption from Obamacare. And the way it happened was, members of the staff, congressional staff, who many of them participated in writing Obamacare, immediately began to complain they couldn’t afford it. Some of these people make $120,000 a year, and they began to complain they couldn’t afford it.

So Obama, using his magic pen, simply said, you know what? We’ll put you guys through the Office of Personnel Management and we’ll effectively say that the federal government is your employer, and therefore you’re gonna qualify for subsidies through a special exchange that was set up in D.C. And that’s how they have been getting their health care.

And Congress decided, House and Senate members, decided to piggyback on that. It was originally set up for the staff. They were the ones complaining. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of staff. These are the employees of members of the House and Senate.

So Congress members actually began to piggyback on this thing, and that’s what Trump is threatening to cancel if they don’t get in gear and get back there and get serious about repealing and replacing Obamacare. Now, Asman’s guest on the Fox Business Channel last night was Mollie Hemingway, who is senior editor at The Federalist. And this was her reply to Asman.

HEMINGWAY: The entire Democratic approach to keeping Obamacare is to subsidize it where it has failed. There’s also just major bailouts of insurance companies that federal courts have actually ruled are unconstitutional. President Trump should use all of these means that he has, he actually should have done this the day he came into office, he should have removed some of these subsidies because they are unconstitutional. All of these tools are at their disposal.

RUSH: They are. And we know why Trump didn’t do it. The reason he hired Priebus. He was trying to build a bridge to the establishment. He wanted to create some unity. He wanted to have people who had opposed him in the campaign to get behind him. It was never gonna happen. But he wanted it to happen. And I shared a story with you. I was invited to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago back in February. In fact, it was Priebus that set it up the night before.

He sends me a text that said, “You in town?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Why don’t you come? We’d love to see you, 5:30 to 6:30 tomorrow.” So I drove over there. It was Priebus, it was Steve Bannon, and Trump. It was a nice conversation, lasted for an hour, walking through the place. There was a big charity event that night so all the people are there setting up for it. Uniformed military people are there, Red Cross ball I think it was.

And Trump was being Trump. We walked through Mar-a-Lago and there are gatherings of people, and every time there was a gathering of people he would stop, point to me, “Smartest man in America. Smartest man in America, right here,” and people would applaud because they thought they had to since Trump singled me out.

Then we’d go to a different area of the place, and every place we stopped we had a little conversation. At one point I said, ’cause I love this question, what has surprised you the most? And he said — this is toward the end of February — he said I’m surprised that there isn’t more unity by now.

I don’t know if my mouth fell open in disbelief, shock, or what have you, but I said, “Well, that isn’t gonna happen. Not now.” So I know. That’s why he didn’t do all this. That’s why he didn’t pull the trigger on being Donald Trump right at the get-go because he wanted to build a bridge to the people he’d defeated, which with human nature, it’s totally understandable. But it was never gonna happen.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: All this time the media was caterwauling about what a dictator Trump was gonna be, when in fact he’s actually trying to build bridges to the people he defeated and create some unity. By the way, you know this outfit, Fusion GPS, which put together the Trump dossier? It has been learned, one of the things that we recently discovered is that Fusion GPS was behind that recording of Mitt Romney at a donor conference where he made that comment about 47% of the country would never support him, don’t pay their taxes.

The same outfit that did the Trump dossier had personnel at a Romney fundraiser and recorded that comment and leaked it and released it. So this Fusion GPS outfit, that Trump dossier was the basis of this whole Russia collusion absurdity. Well, we’ve known this all along, but it’s been established now that they are wedded and joined at the hip with the Democrat Party.