Donald Trump Bragged About Signing Veterans Choice Act Last Year, A Law Barack Obama Actually Signed In 2014

Donald Trump took to Twitter on Friday night to brag about signing the Veterans Choice Act into law last year, a law that was actually signed by Barack Obama nearly six years ago.

Trump wrote that he signed into law the legislation giving veterans faster access to medical care, but many pointed out that this was signed two years before Trump ran for president. Aaron Rupar of Vox noted on Twitter that the bill was signed by Obama, coming as part of the federal government’s response to the Veterans Health Administration scandal of the same year.

President Trump has taken credit for the Veterans Choice Act a number of times in the last two years. As the New York Times noted, Trump has often bragged about signing the act passed under Obama and misstated reforms that took place under his administration. Trump had passed a law last year that reformed and consolidated the Veterans Choice Program along with other programs into a single Veterans Community Care Program.

As Vox noted, Trump repeated the claim again earlier this year in a slam against then-deceased Arizona Sen. John McCain.

This claim was incorrect as well, with Rupar noting that McCain was the driving force behind the 2014 bill’s passage as a co-sponsor along with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. McCain was praised at the time for his hard work in creating the legislation and bringing the program through to completion.

“I want to thank John McCain, whose idea this was originally…. John is the one who started the movement toward Choice, and he deserves the credit for it,” said Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Republican from Georgia, at the time it was passed.

The Vox report noted that even Trump’s expansion of the program was named after McCain.

Here's Donald Trump yesterday demeaning the late John McCain by taking credit for Veterans Choice legislation & saying, "McCain didn't get the job done for our great vets & the VA, & they knew it."

In fact, McCain was a co-sponsor of the bill — it's actually named after him! pic.twitter.com/QLDTOlBtwm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 21, 2019

This is not the first time that President Trump has taken credit for something that Obama accomplished during his presidency. As CNN reported back in August, Trump took credit for the opening of a Royal Dutch ethane cracker plant near Pittsburgh.

“It was the Trump administration that made it possible. No one else. Without us, you would never have been able to do this,” Trump said.

As the report noted, the decision to build the plant came in 2016, during Obama’s presidency, and came four years after Shell announced its plans to build there. A Trump appointee approved a pipeline that brought ethane into the plant, the report noted.