President Donald Trump’s documented narcissism took a bizarre turn this week when he appeared to take credit for a declining rate of cancer deaths in the United States. Is there anything that he wouldn’t take credit for? Now, American Cancer Society CEO Gary M. Reedy has issued a statement making it abundantly clear that — no, neither the president in particular nor his administration in general are responsible for the noticeably declining cancer deaths. It’s absolutely ridiculous that the president’s lies have reached the point of needing correction from an organization as normally non-partisan as the American Cancer Society.
Reedy took the opportunity of attention on his organization to advocate for increased health care access in the United States. Down in reality, Trump’s team has consistently worked against key provisions of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), and they even joined a Republican state-led lawsuit seeking to throw the whole law out.
Reedy shared that lower cancer deaths, which include the largest ever drop in 2017 compared to 2016, reflect “prevention, early detection, and treatment advances that occurred in prior years,” meaning — not the president. He added:
‘Since taking office, the president has signed multiple spending bills that have included increases in funding for cancer research at the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute — though the impact of those increases are not reflected in the data contained in this report. The administration has an opportunity to significantly impact future declines in both cancer incidence and mortality by increasing access to comprehensive health care, supporting robust and sustained increases in federal funding for cancer research and passing and implementing evidence-based tobacco control policies.’
The American Cancer Society released a report just on Wednesday indicating that in 2017, the first year of Trump’s presidency, cancer deaths in the United States declined for the 26th year in a row. From 2016 to 2017, overall cancer deaths fell by a record 2.2 percent, which CNN notes was “spurred in part by a sharp fall in lung cancer deaths.”
Also down in reality, CNN notes that Trump has repeatedly sought to slash funding from the National Institutes of Health, which includes the National Cancer Institute, which conducts research into cancer. In line with other responses to the Trump’s team’s often draconian budget proposals, Congress approved more funding for the agency than the president sought.
Trump had tweeted:
‘U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History! A lot of good news coming out of this Administration.’
But there’s just no relationship between that data and his administration whatsoever. He didn’t even seem to attempt to find any link. He just threw it out there, and, basically, seemed to want people to go along with it because he said so. That’s not a good look for a president of the United States!
U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History! A lot of good news coming out of this Administration.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2020
It’s not the first time that he has absolutely fumbled some basic issue like this, and it surely won’t be the last. Just recently, he told a crowd at a Florida conservative convention that he “never understood wind,” and some time before that, he claimed that the noise from windmills causes cancer. There’s not even an apparent physical mechanism that would allow for that to happen!
