Spin, hyperbole and deception: How Trump claimed credit for an Obama veterans achievement

[Zorro]

President Trump has told mistruths about the 2014 VA Choice Act more than 156 times, seeking to deny the contributions of rivals including Barack Obama and John McCain.

The first time President Trump claimed false credit for the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act — which President Barack Obama signed into law in 2014 — was on June 6, 2018. That day, as Trump signed the Mission Act, a modest update to the bipartisan VA Choice legislation, he seemed to conflate the two.

“So it’s now my great honor to sign the VA Mission Act, or as we all know it, the Choice Act, and to make Veterans Choice the permanent law of our great country,” the president said, standing in the Rose Garden. “And nobody deserves it more than our veterans.”

In the coming weeks, Trump began systematically erasing from the legislation’s history not just Obama but also the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), who not only co-sponsored the VA Choice Act but also was so instrumental in passing the Mission Act that he is one of three senators for whom the act is officially named.

That didn’t stop Trump from falsely claiming — as he did at a tank factory in Lima, Ohio, in March 2019 — that McCain, his frequent political rival, failed to make any progress on the VA Choice Act.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/23/trump-obama-veterans-choice-act/