President Donald Trump bragged on Sunday that he had lowered drug prices by up to 1500 percent—an arithmetical absurdity, even by his standards.
Trump floated the impossible figure just days after he fired a top government statistics official over numbers he didn’t like.
Trump told reporters in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that his administration had brought about a “tremendous drop in drug prices.”
“You know, we’ve cut drug prices by 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500 percent,” Trump said. “I don’t mean 50 percent, I mean 14, 1500 percent.”
He added, “We want the same prices Europe gets, we want the same prices other country gets.”
“So we’ll be dropping drug prices,” he said, before throwing out another confusing set of figures. “It’ll start over the next two to three months. By 1200, 1300, and even 1400 percent. And 500 percent.”
Reducing the price of something by more than 100 percent would mean that not only does it become free—the consumer would be getting paid to take the product.
On Friday, Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, after the agency released monthly jobs data showing a slowdown on jobs growth. Trump accused her of rigging the numbers to make him “look bad.”
The move was likened to one from an authoritarian playbook, and marked another escalation in his crusade against inconvenient facts.
As for the drug price boast, it’s one that Trump has floated before. Trump routinely cites fantastical figures that don’t add up, tossing around unlikely claims about inflation, the price of gas and groceries, and his poll numbers, among other topics.
He was widely mocked on social media over his claim.
“Time and again, he’s shown himself to be utterly innumerate‚” said conservative attorney George Conway.
Political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen wrote on X, “The guy who doesn’t trust the Bureau of Labor statistics jobs numbers thinks that your drug prices were cut by 1,500%.”
