President Barack Obama is determined to leave Washington a bureaucratic mess for President-elect Donald Trump in his remaining weeks in the White House, conservative political pundit Patrick J. Buchanan tells Newsmax TV's "America Talks Live."
The three-time presidential candidate told host Steve Malzberg he was dismayed that Obama reportedly advised Democratic lawmakers in private not to "rescue" the GOP in its plan to scrap the Affordable Care Act and encouraged them to call any proposed replacement "Trumpcare."
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"If that's the accurate report of what he said, here's a guy who really feels he's been rejected and repudiated and I'm astonished that he's letting it show like this," Buchanan said Wednesday.
"As a departing president, I've seen very few who have gone out with the kind of bitterness he has and the kind of sort of, 'let's wreck the place before we get out and let's leave all these landmines in here' … They must be in real despair there in the White House and his behavior betrays him."
Buchanan said he doubts whether the GOP under Trump's leadership will outright scrap the Affordable Care Act, but rather take it apart as part of a "two-step process."
"I don't think they will simply abolish Obamacare and toss it out so that nothing remains on day one. I think there's certain aspects of it that are going to be kept," Buchanan said.
"My guess would be they would schedule a repeal down the road a certain piece at the same time they're working for the replacement law, which goes into place simultaneously. I think that would be the smoothest, most orderly transition."
Aside from his closed-door chat with Democrats, Obama has been issuing a slew of executive orders as he finishes his second term in the White House — edicts that have been criticized by the GOP, including the designation of 1.35 million acres of land in Utah for a new national monument.
Buchanan, a senior advisor to Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, is the author of "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority," published by Crown Forum.
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