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In a display of outright delusion, Trump took to True Social with an announcement of sorts about the midterms. He wrote, quote, "Because I have invoked favored nation status for the United States of America, drug prices are falling at levels never seen before. 500%, 600%, 700%, and more. No other president has been able to do this, but I have." This is also the answer to much less expensive and far better healthcare. Republicans, remember, this was done by us and nobody else. This is a revolution in medicine. The biggest and most important event ever. If this story is properly told, we should win the midterm elections in record numbers. I am the affordability president. Talk loudly and proudly. President DJT.
Okay, so a few things here, but let's start with the dumbest. Trump says that drug prices are falling 500, 600, 700% and more. Let's say that a bottle of Advil is $10. 500% off of that means you would get paid $40 for buying Advil. 600% off of that means you would get paid $50 for buying Advil. As the numbers grow, you get paid more money.
Now admittedly, it's been a moment since I went out and bought Advil. Mostly because the headache that used to be so jarring has, thanks to our disastrous political climate, turned into my new normal, and there is no medicine on the market that is capable of softening the hellscape in which we currently reside. But all of that notwithstanding, I highly doubt that anyone in this country is getting paid to buy drugs. If I'm wrong, I'd love to hear it. I can also say with a high degree of certainty that Donald Trump knows that and the people around him know that. So, it's not that they're too stupid to stop him from repeating this claim. It's that Trump thinks his supporters are that stupid.
So my message to all of you who do support Trump or who voted for this guy, does anyone who has that much contempt for you deserve your support? If my elected officials lied to my face, recognizing that I do not owe any support to anyone and that no one is entitled to my support, I would find someone who actually deserved it. So I'd ask you all to do what Donald Trump refuses to do and treat yourself with some respect.
Now, that aside, Donald Trump says that he invoked favored nations for the US and because of that, drug prices are falling. Small problem, though. What he actually did was sign an executive order allowing drug companies to voluntarily lower their prices. Now, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the pharmaceutical industry in the United States of America, but they have not been raising their prices by predatory criminal amounts for decades, simply waiting for a president to come along who will give them voluntary permission to lower those prices. In fact, on the day Trump signed this executive order, May 12th, drug companies stock prices actually rose. Shares of Gilead rose 7%. Merc climbed 5%. Fizer, Bristol Myers, Squib, and Amjen climbed more than 3% and Eli Lilly rose more than 2%. If drug companies were just forced into submission to lower their prices, you would not see their stock prices surge.
In reality, they likely rose because while the market probably priced in something that wasn't entirely toothless, when they saw that Donald Trump actually put forward something that was, it was a giant sigh of relief that in effect he did pull just nothing more than a PR stunt. If I was a big pharma CEO, I'd have probably been relieved, too. According to CNBC's coverage of Donald Trump's May executive order, Monday's executive order seems to be more of a headline risk than the sweeping shift for the pharmaceutical industry many had feared. capital markets analyst Evan Syigerman said. He pointed to the uncertain path forward for the plan, saying it could be more rhetoric than actual implementable policy. Sigman added that Trump appeared to be somewhat sympathetic to US manufacturers with the president arguing that European nations are not supporting drug research and development due to their lower prices. Anderson said that the pharmaceutical industry may be breathing a sigh of relief today pending further details on what the administration's retaliatory actions could look like. Trump's order suggests that it is ultimately voluntary for drug makers to lower prices and subsequently profits. So, he did not propose something that is mandatory and really has teeth here. In other words, Donald Trump gave himself a PR win. But when it comes to actual discernable policy changes, per usual, nothing for Americans. It's all about optics and window dressing while ensuring that nothing actually changes for his own constituents.
Consider too, Trump and Republicans have been promising their big, beautiful health care plan for a literal decade now. I mean, honestly, how much longer can they string you along by saying stuff like this? >> Have no choice but to absolutely repeal replace Obamacare and we're going to come up with a much better plan. We're going to come up with a great great health plan. And this is a great plan. Wait, do you see the plans we have coming out literally over the next four weeks? We have a plan coming out, an additional plan coming out in a very short period of time. We're going to have fantastic health care and the plan is coming out over the next four weeks. We're signing a health care plan within 2 weeks. >> 9 years after you first started running, do you have a plan? And can you tell us what it is? >> Obamacare was lousy healthcare. >> So, just a yes or no, you still do not have a plan. >> I have concepts of a plan. You really have the concept of a plan and it'll be much better to tell you what the plan is. >> Yeah. Well, we'll be announcing that in about 2 months.
>> In fact, far from delivering better healthcare, Republicans have been unilaterally responsible for efforts to take it away. Remember, they tried 77 times to repeal Obamacare despite having no replacement whatsoever. This year, they've passed the one big beautiful bill, which guts Medicaid for 17 million Americans. And most recently, they shut the government down while battling with Democrats because they were so hellbent on eliminating affordable care act subsidies. Meaning starting in 2026, you'll see healthcare premiums surge 2, 3, four, five times higher than they were this past year. So, I'm sorry, but anybody who truly believes that Republicans give a fraction of a about healthcare for Americans might want to pay attention so that they can better distinguish Republicans words from Republicans actions.
But finally, the most insane claim of all, that Republicans should win the midterms because Trump is the affordability president. Now, look, I get that Trump saw a bunch of Democrats win on November 4th because they ran on actual affordability agendas, but he should know that the only reason those agendas resonated with Americans more broadly was because the country that Donald Trump has presided over is expressly not affordable, which would be bad enough unto itself that a president is presiding over an expensive country. But even worse is considering that Donald Trump quite literally predicated his entire 2024 campaign on affordability. He went on and on and on about how Biden raised the cost of everything and that how he and he alone will bring those prices down. And yet here we are 11 months into his presidency and the cost of everything has surged. Electricity prices are up. Food prices are up. Clothing, electronics, cars, rent, housing, construction, all of it more expensive because Trump doesn't actually care about lowering prices. He just says words that sound good and then helps himself and his rich friends. And he's doing the exact same thing right here. Basically just declaring by fiat that he is the affordability president with no real plan to usher in actual affordability. Again, Trump is marketing. He is window dressing. He's PR. There's no actual governing happening. There is him saying words that he thinks sound nice and then him golfing and painting things in gold. That's it. And frankly, I don't even have to make that case because Americans can already see it. That's why we've seen staggering numbers of Trump 2024 voters defecting to Democrats in these latest elections because they can see the con that they've been sold. And while it may have worked once for Trump, it's not going to work again for him or his party. No matter how many times he demands that you ignore your lying eyes in his desperate posts online.
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