Does Trump Support Senate's Obamacare Deal? Yes. Maybe? Yes. No?

(Bloomberg) -- Trying to figure out whether President Donald Trump will throw his weight behind the Senate’s bipartisan deal to patch up Obamacare? So is a lot of Washington.

“The president keeps zigging and zagging so it’s impossible to govern,” Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday morning.

Since senators said Tuesday they had a deal, the comments from the Trump administration and lawmakers working with it on the package have indicated support, maybe opposition, support and back to opposition. Here’s a rundown:

• Over the weekend: Trump calls Republican Senator Lamar Alexander and urges him to find a deal. Alexander says Trump told him, “I don’t want people to suffer.”
• Trump Tuesday at a news conference after the Senate deal is announced: “It is a short-term solution so that we don’t have this very dangerous little period, including dangerous period for insurance companies, by the way. For a period of one year, two years we will have a very good solution.”
• Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, after Trump’s comments at the news conference: “I think it is support for some type of deal.”
• Wednesday morning, Alexander says Trump called him with support, giving Trump credit for engineering the agreement with Democratic Senator Patty Murray: “He called me to say that No. 1 he wanted to be encouraging about the bipartisan agreement that Senator Murray and I announced yesterday. No. 2 he intends to review it carefully to see if he wants to add anything to it.”
• Trump on Wednesday at 9:41 a.m. in a tweet: “I am supportive of Lamar as a person & also of the process, but I can never support bailing out ins co’s who have made a fortune w/ O’Care.”

--With assistance from Anna Edney and Laura Litvan

To contact the reporter on this story: Drew Armstrong in New York at darmstrong17@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Drew Armstrong at darmstrong17@bloomberg.net, Timothy Annett