On prescription drug costs, Trump flunks arithmetic in embarrassing fashion
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
July 23, 2025, 11:30 AM EDT
By Steve Benen
In Donald Trump's first term, the president routinely talked about his efforts to lower the costs of prescription medications, but he failed, and drug costs continued to climb. The Republican's second term, however, was supposed to be different.
In fact, just a couple of months ago Trump appeared on Fox News, claimed he'd been "studying" the pharmaceutical industry — he's quite the policy wonk, you know — and declared, "I figured it out." Around the same time, the president signed an executive order ostensibly about lowering drug costs, though the directive didn't do much.
Two months later, however, Trump is still talking about his ambitions on the issue.
At a White House event, the president boasted to a group of Republican allies, "We're gonna get the drug prices down — not 30% or 40%, which would be great. Not 50% or 60%. No, we're gonna get them down 1,000%, 600%, 500%, 1,500%."
Trump added that this is "something that nobody else can do," concluding that he intends to produce "numbers that are not even thought to be achievable."
Oddly enough, he had a point — but not the one he was trying to make.
I can appreciate why some people struggle with math, but as the president really ought to understand, his claims were at odds with how arithmetic works.
If you go to a store and find a product that's 50% off, that means the cost has been cut in half. If the product is 100% off, that means it's free.
Trump, however, apparently intends to lower the cost of prescription drugs by up to 1,500% , which means that the medications wouldn't just be free, it would also mean that pharmaceutical companies would be paying consumers quite a bit of money to take their products.
Or put another way, when the president said these are "numbers that are not even thought to be achievable," he was correct, but not in the way he intended.
The rhetoric was certainly embarrassing, but there's also a larger significance to this. For one thing, Trump appears to be so confident in his mathematical expertise that he's come up with international trade tariff rates based on formulas that only exist in his head. That's obviously unwise, but it appears worse in light of how unfamiliar he seems to be with how numbers work.
Complicating matters, when it comes to his administration's and his party's approach to the underlying issue (i.e., making prescription drugs more affordable), Trump conveniently overlooked some relevant details. The New York Times reported earlier this month:
The sweeping Republican policy bill that awaits President Trump's signature on Friday includes a little-noticed victory for the drug industry. The legislation allows more medications to be exempt from Medicare's price negotiation program, which was created to lower the government's drug spending. Now, manufacturers will be able to keep those prices higher.
The Times cited an estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that found the Republican-imposed change will save the industry — the one the president claims to have "studied" — nearly $5 billion over the next decade.
Trump didn't mention any of this as part of his discussion of medication costs. Imagine that.
Steve Benen
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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So, if you have a prescription, Big Pharma will be paying you to take their drugs. Noice!
Yeah, but only by insufferable liberals who understand how basic math works.
Sadly, his base eats up his ignorance. They prefer broad strokes of ignorant rhetoric to detailed reality, that way they can cheer him for "having their backs" by saying he'll bring down drug prices, while at the same time pissing off his opponents who are sitting their stunned at the just open abject stupidity he is displaying. It's a win/win for his sycophants.
It seems Trumps plan all along has been to drag his opponents down to his level and then reveal how truly unmatched his level of stupidity really is. And sadly, progressives have yet to come up with a defensive strategy that keeps them from stooping to his level. Hopefully they'll be able to figure it out before the Felon-in-Chief fucks the nation so badly we're all left with political PTSD.
Ya know...I wouldn't mind wrestling with a pig. I'm not afraid to get dirty
Trump could give you some pointers
I think I could take him
With all of the serious enemies he makes I am amazed how Trump is still alive.
You could. With one hand tied behind your back.
no problem, he's a gutless coward ...
Yeah but it sounds good.
I would like for the makers of Nexium to give me back 50 bucks every time I refill. But it ain't gonna happen
My math skills are not what one would call top notch but when I saw that brag to day I'm like....you mean Big Pharma is gonna pay us to take their drugs?
If you think about it that would be one way of testing new drugs....
good one TG
I can be bought.
How much to rent?
As long as he does it "strongly".
I am increasingly in favor of a minimum basic skills test as a prerequisite for both running for office and voting.
We have a minimum age requirement to be POTUS, there should be a maximum also.
Maybe.
I think there is a "fighting medical science" issue there. We have people working and living active lives much longer than we used to, and that trend has been increasing for centuries. Any age limit on the upper end would likely be obsolete in a few decades.
at least be able to calculate percentages
I’d be satisfied with them just knowing what they mean.
Nah. I want people making decisions about this country to be intelligent and educated.
Under no circumstances should we have elected officials who say stupid shit like "1500% reduction" or "is Guam going to capsize if we put more tanks on it" or "you just pay for it" or fucking "Jewish space lasers".
We have people like that because we let really, really stupid people vote.
I'm also not talking about people having a HS diploma or college degree. God knows they aren't worth what they used to be. I'm talking about a standardized test of minimum basic skills in English, math, science, history, and civics. Especially math.
I think every adult American citizen should be allowed to cast a vote for President but before the vote is cast there is a quick 20 question random civics quiz you have to take before it lets you vote. Now, you won't ever know how you did, they don't give you your score, it just lets you vote no matter what score you received so you have no idea how it went. However, only those votes that scored at least 50% on the very basic easy civics test would have their votes counted. No one would know if their vote counted or not, but our elections would at least start to be decided by the top 50% of Americans who at least know a smidgen about our system of government. If you're an adult American citizen and you have no interest in how our system of government works, why are you voting anyway?
If nothing else, it would likely spark an interest in Americans taking a civics class at their local community college.
The election results would show total number of votes cast and total number of votes counted showing what percent of Americans couldn't even get an "F" (50%) on a basic civics test. Sadly, I know religious conservatives would never agree to something like this, it would likely eliminate some 30% of their voting base.
"We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated." - Donald J Trump
Lol. you must not know who actually votes for Democrats.
n 2024, fewer than 1 in 3 CPS students in third through eighth grades were reading at grade level.
Harris got 77% of the votes in Chicago.
Only a small percentage of Baltimore City students, both in fourth and eighth grades, reach the "proficient" level on standardized reading tests like the NAEP
Harris got 85% of the votes in Baltimore.
Voters struggle to read in the areas Democrats run up their biggest margins. But not surprisingly many democrats don't even understand their own voting base.
I think it needs to be multiple subjects, especially math.
The number of angry liberals eliminated by a math test would similarly significant, if not moreso.
In theory, we're all supposed to go through this at some point, right? Doesn't pretty much every state government require a student pass a civics or government class before graduating from high school?
That's the beauty of my plan, they'd never know if they were eliminated or not. And I would expect both math and civics tests to weed out a large portion of American voters on both sides of the aisle which is fine by me.
In theory.
But you're seeing the problem in our educational system. The standards are so low that "passing a class" has become meaningless.
I wasn't aware that students between third and eighth grade were allowed to vote. Perhaps the voting age will be on one of the civics tests. /s
Its truly amazing how shameless people can be when they are protecting the democratic party. By all means, tell us how the city schools in the large urban areas that democrats require large margins in to remain competitive haven't been struggling for decades.
I like the testing at the poll. It's like one of those breathalyzers they have do drunks can't start their car.
It seems a little unfair to not tell people if they passed or failed. It seems only fair to tell them whether or not they're too stupid to participate. It at least gives them a chance to go learn something before the next vote.
It also occurs to me this needs to happen in primaries. If you weed out all the stupid people at that level, the general election ends up with two decent options instead of two "are you kidding me" options.
Gotta hate those 3rd through 8th Grade voters./s
I don't suppose there was any other study done or evidence that attributed these two disparate facts as anything but coincidental?
The sun (Apparently) rises, travels across the sky and sets, every day. I go poop every day. Does the sun coming up cause me to go poop?
pose there was any other study done or evidence that attributed these two disparate facts as anything but coincidental?
While it boggles the mind that any one could believe it's coincidence, it doesn't matter..
The point is the areas where democrats do best and keeps them viable are where the most voters struggle to read.
That’s the truth. I still remember my high school government class. I loved that class because I was super interested in the subject, but I have a hard time believing that any more than 20% of that class deserved to pass.
Well, we kinda lost on trump eh?
So?
Yes, it does matter, because you go on to state:
Which very much just basically passes on any type of rigorous examination and just accepts as fact your assertion.
If your assertion were in fact true, there should be a direct correlation between literacy rates and who voted for whom. In addition, the contrapositive should also hold and we should see areas where there is a higher literacy rate voted more for Donald Trump.
Looking at this in map form is an excellent way to gain insight into your assertions validity. There exists an interactive map on a county-by-county basis that describes the literacy rate, and it is here . There are also several maps, some of them interactive, that give county-by-county breakdown of results percentage wise of the 2024 election results.
Looking at both of these, one can see that in some areas your assertion would hold, but in other areas, the exact opposite of your assertion (Less literate=More Trump Votes and More Literate=More Harris votes) holds.
Therefore, your assertion as stated is incorrect.
Correct. Biden too.
Not to mention AOC, MTG, Bobert, Tlaib, Hank "Islands Can Capsize"Johnson, Katie "Math Errors on a Whiteboard" Porter, and about 3 dozen other morons.
Well I asked that exact question of Google's AI and this was the response:
The same was probably more true of most of your high school math classes.
I never had a civics class
never learned much geography or history either, as the classes I were in were geared more towards critical thinking skills, and many are, critical, of my thinking skills
I was involved in student gov't and part of a group that produced an alternative school newspaper. the school district didn't like our stories or advertisers and tried to ban our paper. we took them to court over the 1st amendment and won. we negotiated a lucrative settlement that paid for our paper, gave us a voice in the revamped school paper, and english credits for all of us involved in it. all because of a planned parenthood story and a head shop advertisement.
good to see justice prevailed
the 1st is pretty black and white on freedom of speech and the press. either there is or there isn't ...
LOL. I hear ya brother, same here!
Not ethics?
Are we really presuming these people behave unethically because they don't know any better?
You couldn't be more wrong. Blue states are where folk are more educated and red states are where most folk are less educated and more likely to be on welfare.
You should really look things like this up before you post untruths.
Why not 1,000,000%?
Morning...well that's a classic by Trumpet...
He is going to slap a 200% tariff on Australian pharmaceuticals into the US because he is not happy with our PBS system..
Doesn't like it we either pay nothing or very little here for tablets etc, where as you mob are ripped off big time...
So go for it Trumpet, we will stick to our system and stuff yours..
none the sharks or crocs around oz would eat him ...
Morning... you are dead right there..our crocs and sharks are most particular when it comes to snack time...
I doubt even a Tassie Devil would take a bite out of him..😁
he's the proverbial shit sandwich ...
happy to see my scottish cousins give him the amount of respect he deserves ...
"trump is a jobby!"
Trump's professor at Wharton did say that Trump was "the dumbest goddamn student" he ever had.
I find it hard to believe that trump ever attended a college class.
I spent about 8 years teaching young nurses and doctors....There are dumb students... and I have no doubt that trump is a moron....
BTW: I know you love me...
Have a great day.. LOL
there are highly educated people in my family that I would never get into a car with if they were driving ...
Trump, if a drug costs $50 and you lower the price by 50% that means it now costs $25.
If instead you lower the price by 100%, the drug now costs $0.
What do you even think lowering a price by anything greater than 100% means?
You are a moron.
Maybe he meant $1500
Trump just talks. He bullshits. He does not think things through. When he makes claims he typically states several claims in a single sentence. It is incoherent and extemporaneous.
That the drug companies and pharmacies will now be paying us to take our meds?
Mathematically that is correct. A price reduction is a unidirectional vector pointing downward (from positive to negative) with a particular magnitude. If the magnitude is the same as the current price that is a 100% price reduction and will represent a price of $0. If we increase the magnitude, the vector will continue in its negative direction, past $0 and into negative $0. That, semantically, means the sellers will be paying for consumers to take their products.
Trump just talks ... he tosses out numbers and notions without even bothering to think through what he is saying. Probably because his whole existence is based on lying, and he never seems to care how outrageous his lies are.
The biggest lie that he has put forth in 2025 is that foreign nations pay the tariffs. It is truly sickening that anyone believes that crap. Or even believe tariffs 'somehow' will work out well for the USA in the end. Those who believe Trump represent the key reason why politicians lie ... because it works on enough people to make a difference in an election.
But it explains a hell of a lot.