Trump issues insane announcement about midterms - Brian Tyler Cohen

[TexasTowelie]

Trump declares that Republicans poised to win midterms “by record numbers”.

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.

[Mister Ed]

1. K & R. it's wonderful to have a transcript that accompanies the video. n/t