President Barack Obama's sharp criticism of Republican resistance to the nation's new healthcare law was an attack "in the most personal terms" and only proves "the president is in trouble," Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips said Tuesday.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, Phillips blasted Obama for refusing to negotiate with lawmakers who've challenged the Affordable Care Act, even as he changed aspects of his signature law on his own.
"The president has delayed different aspects of [the law] that weren't working or weren't ready by the deadline coming up Oct. 1," Phillips said. "He's exempted certain people . . . from different provisions of the law. So he's made a lot of changes . . . and yet Republicans in Congress want to make some honest, good faith changes and he said . . . we can't negotiate, I won't be held up . . . that's disingenuous on the president's part."
Story continues below video.
Phillips also charged Obama's rebuke of conservative Republicans will not be well-received by most Americans.
"He attacks them in the most personal terms, accuses them of all sorts of things," Phillips said. "His position remains inflexible and unwilling in any way to compromise and the American people have caught on. Every poll also out there shows that support for Obamacare has been consistently dropping and not just among conservatives . . . but among younger Americans who had been sympathetic to this law and among a lot of kind of more moderate voters in swing states.
"The president's in trouble."
Phillips said his political advocacy group would work "long-term" to "drive down support for Obamacare . . . and also to encourage Americans if . . . they sign up, it's a disaster for them.
"We want to . . . take the politics out, just ask Americans to look at the impact that Obamacare is going to have on their own healthcare or the healthcare of their aging parents or their children or of their loved ones," he said. "If we continue to do that, we're going to see this law repealed."
The message going forward, he said, will be aimed at younger Americans, who have become "cynically targeted" in an enrollment push for Obamacare.
"We know how cynical the approach is from the left," he said. "They've said, look, we need healthy, younger Americans to sign up for Obamacare and pay exorbitant healthcare premiums because we need their money to fund the rest of the Obama bureaucracy. That's wrong, it's cynical, and we've got to fight that.
"[Our] message is, look, Obamacare is bad for your health, it's bad for your wallet, it's not in any way going to help you. Don't sign up for this."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.