Watch: Fox News' Eric Bolling slams Paul Ryan for health care bill failure, says he misled Trump

After weeks of turmoil within the Republican Party over the Republican House leadership’s plan to replace Obamacare, the American Health Care Act, accusations are now flying over who to blame for the bill’s failure on Friday. For Fox News host Eric Bolling, the answer is simple: Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) is the most deserving.

On Fox News Channel’s “The Five” on Friday, Bolling claimed Ryan misjudged the situation and misled President Donald Trump.

“And think of how long it took to get Obamacare through,” Bolling said. “It took time, so President Trump has been the commander-in-chief for 60 days, right? Just a couple of days. They pushed that through. … I don’t hate Paul Ryan, so all you people who are saying you hate Paul Ryan; I hate what he did to the president. He led the president to believe that this thing was ready to be passed. It could have passed, but it needed—Dana [Perino] made a very good point—it needed a lot more discussion. It needed a lot more negotiating before they presented it.”

The Trump administration says the bill was less than 20 votes shy of passing, but House Republican leadership and the White House couldn’t manage to get the bill across the finish line after more than a week of haggling over the bill’s details.

On Friday, as many in the media were hurling the blame for the bill’s failures at various groups within the Republican Party, Trump seemed to lay most of the blame at Democrats' doorstep, after House and Senate Democrats repeatedly promised they would not support any of the proposed versions of the Republicans’ plan to replace President Barack Obama’s signature piece of legislation.

“We were very close,” Trump said. “It was a very, very tight margin. We have no Democrat support. We have no votes from the Democrats, they weren’t gonna give us a single vote, so it’s a very difficult thing to do."

“I’ve been saying for the last year and half that the best thing we could do, politically speaking, is let Obamacare explode,” Trump continued. “It is exploding right now. It’s, many states have big problems, almost all states have big problems. So, what would be really good with no Democrat support, if the Democrats, when it explodes, which it will soon, if they got together with us and got a real health care bill. I’d be totally open to it. And I think that’s going to happen.”

[graphiq id="crruRPSMYip" title="Tax Credits by Income under AHCA in 2020" width="600" height="690" url="https://w.graphiq.com/w/crruRPSMYip"]