Trevor Noah tries to explain just how crazy and reckless the Senate GOP's DIY health-care legislating really is

Trevor Noah talks GOP health-care repeal madness
(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/The Daily Show)

President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell managed to bring TrumpCare back from the dead, getting 50 Republicans senators and Vice President Mike Pence to agree to start debate on ... well, some sort of health-care bill, Trevor Noah marveled on Tuesday's Daily Show. McConnell couldn't get 50 votes on any of the many GOP plans to repeal and/or replace ObamaCare, even his own, Noah said, so "then, I guess, Mitch McConnell smoked some weed and was like, 'You can't vote for a bill if you don't have a bill.'"

Now, the Senate is in the midst of a bizarro legislative process to revamp one-fifth of the U.S. economy, and everybody's health-care options, on the fly this week. "The new GOP plan is to reinvent the national health-care system by Thursday? I admire their optimism," Noah said. "And by the way, this isn't three real days, it's technically 20 hours of actual working time. Twenty hours, that's all they have. And 20 hours is not a lot of time to build a new health-care system — hell, I can't even build an Ikea bookshelf in 20 hours."

He tried to explain to Republican senators (and anyone else who's both confused and interested) what they are doing. Instead of trying to repeal and replace ObamaCare the normal way, through committee markups and hearings — "because you knew your ideas would die of exposure," he said — the Senate GOP "tried to write the bill in a 13-dude chamber of secrets," and when that failed, McConnell's "new plan is to throw the entire national health-care system out on the Senate floor, let everyone randomly spitball on what it should be, and then you hope that 51 of them agree by the end of the week."

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"No one knows how that will turn out — nobody knows," Noah said. "The one thing we do know is Mitch McConnell is determined to pass something. How determined?" He imagined the conversation McConnell had to get John McCain, fighting brain cancer, to return to Washington to vote. Watch below. Peter Weber

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Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.