President Donald Trump is preparing to make health care a central focus of his midterm sales pitch, despite weak polling and misgivings among some of his own advisers about elevating an issue that’s long proved disastrous for the Republican Party.
The approach developed by Trump and his senior aides aims to spotlight key priorities that they believe carry broad voter appeal, like lower drug prices, while seeking to preempt an expected barrage of Democratic attacks over rising health costs, according to more than a half-dozen administration officials and others familiar with the matter.
“We’ve done a bad job over the years in that we don’t talk about health care, and when we do, it’s only when we’re forced to,” said a Trump adviser involved in the discussions. “There’s good stuff that Trump’s trying to do, and we need to get more aggressive on it.”
The strategy has already created some headaches.
Trump officials in recent weeks have pitched GOP lawmakers on mounting a longshot bid to pass major health legislation ahead of November’s midterm elections, despite little congressional appetite to do so. And inside the administration, White House aides are orchestrating an extraordinary shakeup of Trump’s health department in an attempt to remedy concerns about its messaging operation and move its focus away from more divisive topics like vaccines.
The intensifying emphasis on health care marks the White House’s latest bid to solve the cost-of-living woes dragging down Trump’s a
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