Despite frequently touting his intelligence, Donald Trump continues to make wildly inaccurate claims at odds with basic maths, most recently insisting that prescription drug prices have been slashed by up to 1500%.
“You know, we’ve cut drug prices by 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500%. I don’t mean 50%, I mean 1400, 1500%,” Trump told reporters on Sunday, moments before boarding Air Force One after another weekend at his New Jersey golf resort.
This was not a one-off. Just two weeks ago, he had made a nearly identical statement during a gathering with Republican lawmakers: “We’re going to get the drug prices down – not 30 or 40%, which would be great, not 50 or 60. No, we’re going to get them down 1000%, 600%, 500%, 1500%.”
The numbers defy logic. A 100% price reduction would render a drug free of charge. Claims of reductions exceeding that, let alone by over a thousand percent, would suggest patients are not only receiving the medication at no cost but are being paid to take it. Under the US president’s 1500% assertion, a $100 drug would be accompanied by a $1,400 payout to the consumer.
The White House press team did not respond to media requests for clarification on what Trump may have intended.
Charles Leerhsen, who co-wrote Trump’s 1990 book Surviving at the Top, has long raised concerns about the president’s understanding of basic concepts, including mathematics. “He’s beyond unusual. And that I’ve never met a person so intellectually and emotionally – because there is no compensation – limited,” Leerhsen told HuffPost.
He added, “And that’s why some people mistake his idiocy for ‘chess on three levels,’ because, being unable to understand him, and feeling that nobody could be as dumb as he seems, they arrive at the conclusion that he is actually smarter than they are.”