President Donald Trump, who has long touted himself as one of the world’s great negotiators, made a final attempt to present his negotiations with Big Pharma to the American people as a triumph, an accomplishment of his presidency that no other president can match. Instead, he spent his time whining about all the people who were mean to him and caused him to lose the election until he remembered that he didn’t really lose and it’s all the Democrats’ fault, anyway.
News Conference on Reduced Drug Prices at 2:30 P.M.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2020
When attempting to negotiate with a company or a group of companies, it’s not advisable to spend time on national television insulting that group. Instead of discussing actual negotiations or policy initiatives, Trump blamed Big Pharma for hurting him during the 2020 presidential elections and said their negative ads against him, ads he’s alleged have been running for quite some time now, were the result of his refusal to back down.
‘Big Pharma ran millions of dollars worth of negative advertisements against me during the campaign, which I won, by the way, but you know, we’ll find that out, um, almost 74 million votes. We had Big Pharma against us, we had the media against us, we had Big Tech against us, we had a lot of dishonesty against us. But Big Pharma alone ran millions and millions of dollars in ads; in fact, I looked at it. They said it was…I’ve never seen anything quite like it because I told them “I’m gonna have to do this, you know, I was put here to do a job.”‘
Trump now claims that Big Pharma and the media conspired against him in the election, and there would not be a vaccine it wasn't for him. Trump also claimed that he won the election, and Democrats "found ballots." pic.twitter.com/knDMzfHHwh
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) November 20, 2020
He also praised himself and ignored the actual accomplishments of infectious disease experts and the pharmaceutical companies who have worked to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, the crisis that will haunt Trump indefinitely. Instead, Trump said the entire vaccine idea was his and that he “forced” the Federal Drug Administration to approve the vaccine well ahead of schedule.
‘You wouldn’t have a vaccine for another four years because the FDA wouldn’t be able to do what they did, what I forced them to do. And Pfizer and others even decided to not assess the results of their vaccine, in other words, not come out with the results of the vaccine until just after the election. That’s because of what I did with favored nations and other elements.’
President Trump accuses Pfizer of delaying the release of its preliminary vaccine data until after the election because he’s announcing rules designed to lower drug prices. “So they waited and waited and waited.” Pfizer’s CEO has said they released it as soon as they knew.
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) November 20, 2020
Trump went on for awhile about all the great things he’s done to lower prescription drug prices but grumbled that “I don’t know if anyone’s gonna appreciate it.” There is no evidence at this point that any policy he’s backed or executive order he’s signed has had any impact on prescription drug prices.
‘It would have probably had an impact, who knows? Maybe it wouldn’t have. I’m sure they would have found the ballots someplace, the Democrats. And the group. These corrupt games will not deter us from doing what is right for the American people.
President Trump ends White House press briefing about drug prices — one of his few public appearances since his election defeat — without taking any questions https://t.co/Nj065CIsxp pic.twitter.com/cVf2Vc7xbN
— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 20, 2020
