WEB DESK

US President Donald Trump on saturday abruptly ended a news conference after a reporter challenged him on a lie about veterans health care he has told more than 150 times.

Trump, speaking at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, had claimed again that he is the one who got the Veterans Choice program passed — adding, “They’ve been trying to get that passed for decades and decades and decades and no president’s ever been able to do it, and we got it done.”

According to CNN, former President Barack Obama signed the Choice program into law in 2014. The law, which allowed eligible veterans to be covered by the government for care provided by doctors outside the VA system, was a bipartisan initiative spearheaded by two senators Trump has repeatedly criticized, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and the late John McCain of Arizona.

What Trump signed was a 2018 law, the VA MISSION Act, that modified and expanded the eligibility criteria from the Choice program. Rather than tout that bill, Trump has claimed over and over that he created Veterans Choice itself — after others had failed for “50 years.”