Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick served a heaping bowl of rationalization during an appearance on Fox News while attempting to explain President Donald Trump’s ongoing insistence that he single-handedly brought pharmaceutical drug prices down by mathematically impossible amounts.
During his nationally televised screaming address Wednesday night, Trump insisted he had cut drug prices by “400, 500, and even 600 percent.”
Even Fox News host John Roberts wasn’t buying it.
“If you cut something by 100%, the cost goes down to zero,” Roberts noted, pointing out that Trump's claims would imply drug companies are paying Americans to take their medications, and not the other way around.
But Lutnick jumped to defend his math genius of a boss.
No, what he's saying is you bring it–if a, if a drug was $100 and you bring the drug down to $13 right, if you're looking at it from $13, it's, it's down seven times. It's down. Well, but it's 700% higher price before. It's down 700% now, right? So $13 would–to go up 700% to get back to the old one. So it all depends on when you look at it. You could say it's down 87% or you could say it's, it would have to go up 700% to be the same one. So it just depends on what you look at. But basically what he's saying—and we all know what he's saying—is we are hammering the price of drugs down. That's what's happening and he's announcing it all the time. He's got more announcements even between now and the end of the year.
It all depends on how you look at it, indeed. To the average person, Trump is spewing nonsense. But seen through the lens of his Cabinet of vultures, it simply becomes a big bowl of word salad.
Walter Einenkel December 19, 2025 at 12:25AM From Daily Kos
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