ArcaMax

Maybe Donald Trump really believes his hype about the "lying media." That might explain why his effort to produce a commentary longer than a tweet contains enough falsehoods to have fact checkers working overtime.

His op-ed published Wednesday by USA Today mostly recycles old conservative attacks against government-run health care, spiced with a few new insults to slam proposals by some Democrats to expand Medicare to cover all Americans, not just seniors.

Trump and his fellow Republican leaders have tried to do the opposite. As Trump put it during his presidential campaign, he'd like to "repeal Obamacare and replace it with something terrific."

Unfortunately, Republican lawmakers have not produced anything terrific enough to persuade even a consensus of fellow Republican lawmakers.

But the president doesn't let a lack of facts, accuracy or new ideas get in the way of his effort to bash whatever the Dems have in mind.

His message: Be afraid.

"The Democrats' plan ... would mean the end of choice for seniors over their own health-care decisions," Trump says at one point. "Instead, Democrats would give total power and control over seniors' health care decisions to the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C."

That logic reminds me of the often-quoted senior at a South Carolina town hall meeting in 2009 who reportedly told then-Republican Rep. Bob Inglis to "keep your government hands off my Medicare." Sorry, sir, but the government's hands are all over this popular government health insurance program.

But that's about how silly Trump sounds as he unearths tired anti-commie cliches and scary scenarios of Medicare being snatched away from hard-working seniors by "radical" Democrats promoting "open-borders socialism" as they "model America's economy after (the socialized medicine in) Venezuela."

I can understand why the president might be a little panicked as the November midterm elections approach. Democrats have embraced health care as a central campaign issue in response to public demand -- and for the special joy of watching Republican candidates twist themselves into knots posing as protectors of programs they have repeatedly tried to shrink or destroy.

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