'Please stop and let me finish my question': Town hall questioner reacts to Trump interrupting her
A Pennsylvania voter told Donald Trump during a Tuesday night town hall to “stop” interrupting her so she could ask him how he would use a second term to protect people like her who have a pre-existing medical condition.
“Please stop and let me finish my question, sir,” Ellesia Blaque, a professor at Kutztown University, said as the president tried to talk over her question during an ABC News town hall in Philadelphia. Mr Trump immediately stopped his retort, but did not directly answer her question after she disclosed a serious medical condition she has had since birth.
"You've been trying to strike down pre-existing conditions."
In a @ABC2020 town hall, @GStephanopoulos presses Pres. Trump on claim he's preserving pre-existing conditions—as his administration argues in court against Obamacare, which protects them. Watch the full exchange. pic.twitter.com/GuOyqUKhen— ABC News (@ABC) September 16, 2020
Instead, the president claimed to be close to rolling out a healthcare plan that would replace the law known as Obamacare.
He has been making that claim for three years, but has failed to produce a package that would pass both chambers of Congress. Last month, he said a new GOP plan would be unveiled in just a few weeks. But his White House has yet to produce such a blueprint, and no Republican lawmakers are running on a new health plan or talking about them in the halls of the Capitol.
The emotional moment was among a handful of times undecided voters pressed him during the Philadelphia event, his seventh stop in Pennsylvania this year alone. He and Democratic nominee Joe Biden are jousting for the key swing state’s 20 electoral votes.
Mr Trump rejected the notion during the town hall that a lawsuit his administration is pushing through the court system would terminate the 2011 Affordable Care Act even though experts say it would do just that.
Healthcare is typically among the top two or three issues for voters when they are asked as part of election polling.
Mr Biden wants to try improving the ACA while building in some sort of public option.
It is unclear whether either major party candidate can put a plan in front of lawmakers that could one day become law.
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