Transcription
From office would be invoked for anyone other than Donald Trump after his hallucinated conversation with Emmanuel Macron today, which was also completely wrong on the policy point Donald Trump was trying and failing to make with that hallucination.
It began with this. "Under my most favored nation policy for drug prices, the cost of prescription drugs is coming down by up to 90 percent, depending on the way you calculate it. You could also say five, six, seven, eight hundred percent."
No, you cannot say that. It is impossible for a price to come down more than 100 a hundred percent. When the price comes down a hundred percent, Donald, we're going to say this again, the price becomes zero. There is no price below zero, Donald. Imagine how many times his teachers tried to tell him that. But Donald Trump alone in that room today is the only person there who doesn't know that. He doesn't know that arithmetic, that basic arithmetic. Donald Trump is the only graduate of the University of Pennsylvania who does not know that a price cannot come down more than 100%. Everyone at the University of Pennsylvania knew that. In 1749, when Benjamin Franklin established the University of Pennsylvania.
"So one of the biggest things that I've done is the fact that we have now most favored nation. We will pay whatever the lowest price is in the entire world. So our drug prices are going to be coming down by staggering 90%. Again, you could say 1,000%, 2,000%."
Fails an intelligence test every time he speaks publicly, every single time. And he did again today. There is no most favored nation plan for American drug prices. Donald Trump claims there is and issued an announcement, just an announcement last year, claiming he has agreements, secret agreements with pharmaceutical companies to charge Americans whatever is the lowest paid price in the world for any drug. Not one word of that agreement has been made public and not one drug price has declined in America because of it.
Donald Trump then proved that he doesn't understand how most favored nation pricing would work if it did exist for American pharmaceutical consumers. Donald Trump stupidly believes that the way for the United States to pay the lowest price in the world for drugs is for other countries to raise the price of their drugs. That is not how it's supposed to work. The only thing that is supposed to happen is that the high price is supposed to go down to the lowest price, which is supposed to stay where it is.
But Donald Trump isn't even pretending that he can even understand what his plan is supposed to do. Because he doesn't understand what his non-plan is supposed to do, he made up a conversation with the president of France in which he forced the president of France to raise drug prices in France, something no politician would ever do. And oh, by the way, something that is impossible for the president of France to do. But Donald Trump, in his publicly disintegrating brain today, believed that he found the way.
"So when I called up Emmanuel Macron, I watched him yesterday with those beautiful sunglasses. What the hell happened? But I watched him sort of be tough, but he was at ten dollars for a pill and I said, Emmanuel, and I have the all the big pharmaceutical companies are in total agreement. It wasn't easy, by the way. They're tough, smart. They've been getting away with this scam for a long time. But they said they gave it up. But they said, you'll never get the countries to approve it. I said, why is that? Because they won't. They always said, we're not paying anymore. Get the rest for the United States. Over the years, they stayed the same. We just went up, up, up, up. And I said, we would pay 13, 14, 15 times more than certain countries would. So I said, no, they'll approve it. 100 percent, sir. You'll never get them to approve it. I guarantee."
"Okay, pardon me. I really don't want to interrupt him in mid-hallucination. But Donald Trump has no idea that socialists like Bernie Sanders have been trying to control the price of prescription drugs in America for all of Donald Trump's lifetime, and Republicans have said, absolutely not, must not do that. Donald Trump doesn't know that the more socialistic countries of Europe and virtually every country in the world controls drug prices. Their governments control the price. They set the price and control it. And that's why the drug prices are low in those countries. Democrats have done everything they can over decades in legislation to try to control drug prices and have been opposed by Republicans every single step of the way. Joe Biden managed to have a major breakthrough on prescription drug prices for Medicare, forcing the pharmaceutical companies to negotiate their prices down by law. That's in law. But most drug prices still in this country don't come close to being regulated. And other Democratic presidents have also tried and mostly failed to get price regulation on drugs in this country, and every Republican in Congress and every Republican president has opposed that."
"And I said, Emmanuel, you're gonna have to lift the price of that pill to $20, maybe $30. Think of that. That means it's a doubling, a doubling of prescription drugs. Might be a tripling, might be a quadrupling. It's not easy."
"No, no, no, Donald, I will not do that."
"I said, yes, you will. 100 percent."
"He said, no, no, no, you're asking me to double."
"I said, Emmanuel, you've been taking advantage of the United States for 30 years with prescription drugs. You really should do it, and you will do it. I have no doubt. In fact, I am 100, 100 percent sure you're going to do it."
"No, no, no, I will not do it."
Everyone in that audience knows that he was hallucinating and hallucinating a lie. So back to Donald Trump claiming he told the president of France that he would have to increase the French price of pharmaceuticals. Imagine, just imagine telling a politician anywhere, "Hey, I want you to raise the price of drugs in your country." That is an insane political proposition on its face. Here's the Trump version: "I said, Emmanuel, you're gonna be doubling or tripling."
"No, no, no."
"He said, here's the story, Emmanuel, the answer is, you're gonna do it. You're gonna do it fast. And if you don't, I'm putting a 25% tariff on everything that you sell into the United States and a 100% tariff when your wines and champagnes, and that's about ten times more than what I'm requesting. And you're gonna do it. I don't want to go public with it, but you may make me do that."
"No, no, Donald, I will do it. I will do it."
"It took me on average three minutes a country saying the same thing. You will do it. They all said, no, no, no, I will not do it. You're asking me to double the cost of prescription."
"I said, that's right, because you've been screwing us for 30 years."
"And they said, we will not do it."
"I said, that's all right. On Monday morning, we're putting a 25, 30, 50. I gave different numbers. Different numbers."
Donald Trump claims he wants the United States to have the lowest drug prices in the world, but at the same time, he claims he wants to raise the lowest drug price in the world. He wants France and other countries to raise their lower drug prices so that the United States only has to match a much higher lowest drug price. The man had absolutely no idea what he was saying, one second of that lying hallucination. Had no idea what was coming out of his mouth. Those three-minute deals he claims he made, just describing that one hallucination with the president of France took him more than three minutes. His ignorance is getting bigger. Knowledge is actually the antidote to ignorance. Ignorance gets reduced through knowledge. But Donald Trump is uneducable.
Donald Trump hears the phrase "most favored nation" has no idea what it is. Donald Trump hears the phrase "most favored nation," has no idea what it means, throws it into a hallucination about drug prices, has no idea how they work, and thinks he's somehow doing Americans a favor by convincing the French president to raise the cost of drugs, which would in effect raise the cost of drugs around the world and raise the cost of drugs from what would have been a lower price for Americans.
The French government actually, the President actually put out a statement, complete with Donald Trump's favorite phrase, "fake news." The statement says, quote, "It's been claimed that President Emmanuel Macron increased the price of medicines. He does not set their prices. They are regulated by the Social Security system and have, in fact, remained stable. Anyone who has set foot in a French pharmacy knows this."
In the middle of Donald Trump's dazed and confused incoherence today, he said one of his favorite phrases. He said, "I'll be honest with you." He throws that in from time to time. That's something you've never heard me say on this program. As someone who cares about words and their meaning, to me, it would mean that whenever I don't say it, that I'm not being honest with you. And whenever Donald Trump says, "to be honest with you," what he says next is never honest. The impulse to say, "I'll be honest with you," comes from his pathological lying. It is a trademark line of lying salesmen like Donald Trump.
Imagine, imagine a president of France having to respond to the hallucinations of a madman. Imagine leaders of countries around the world having to deal with that madman in one way or another for the next three years. It was Republican President Gerald Ford who used the phrase "long national nightmare" to describe the corrupt presidency of Richard Nixon, who chose Gerald Ford as vice president after Nixon's first vice president pleaded no contest to tax evasion. The presidency of Richard Nixon was a long national nightmare, but the presidency of Donald Trump is worse, much worse. He is the world's nightmare now.