Trump Brags, ‘No Other President Can Do Some of the Sh*t I’m Doing’
President Donald Trump boasted to congressional Republicans on Monday, “No other president can do some of the sh*t I’m doing.”
The line came as Trump rattled off a series of his accomplishments to lawmakers during their annual retreat, the Republican Issues Conference, at his golf club in Doral, Florida.
Trump specifically touted his Most-Favored-Nation drug pricing deals with more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies, meant to slash the cost of popular prescription drugs in the U.S.
“What we’ve done is we paid the highest price for drugs anywhere in the world, and now we pay the lowest price for drugs anywhere in the world,” he said. “We are tied for the lowest price. Whoever has the lowest price, that’s what we pay. And I did that through tariffs.”
The Supreme Court struck down those tariffs on Feb. 20 in a 6-3 decision.
Nonetheless, in his speech to congressional Republicans, Trump assured them he had other means to achieve the same end.
“I have lots of other ways of doing the same thing,” he said. “I just have to work a little harder. They want me to work harder.”
Among his other tactics, Trump noted his success in convincing French President Emmanuel Macron and other world leaders to pay more for prescription drugs so that Americans could have access to those drugs at fairer prices.
The trade-off is possible because the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services lump countries like France into a group of nations that set benchmark prices for prescription drugs in the U.S.
“I said, Emmanuel, you have to cut your good friends from America a reasonable deal,” Trump recounted of his conversation with Macron. “What’s happening is you are paying a tiny fraction for drugs. He said, ‘No, no, Donald. I can’t do anything about that.’ I said, ‘You can, you can.’ He said no, ‘I will not do it. I will not do it.'”
Trump claimed he threatened to raise countries’ tariffs by 150 or 200 percent if they would not agree to raise their drug prices.
He continued, “I said, well, here’s the story. If you don’t do it, I’m going to put, in the case of Emmanuel, 100 percent tariffs on all wines and champagnes coming into the U.S. ‘No, no, Donald! You cannot do that!’ I said, ‘I already have the legislation. It’s right in front of my desk. I’m going to sign it, Emanuel!’ And he said, Donald, ‘I will agree to this.’ So, he agreed. Everybody agreed!”
That unanimous agreement, Trump said, is what proves he has accomplished what “no other President could have done.”
“I don’t want to brag, but they said this about a lot of things: No other president could do some of the sh*t I’m doing,” he said. “The things I’m doing, no one else was going to do it. They say it all the time: Sir, could you do this? You’re the only one who can do it.”
Back in January, following a similar claim from Trump that he pressured Macron to raise drug prices, the French Presidency fired back on X with a gif of Trump overlayed with the words “Fake News.”
“It’s being claimed that President @EmmanuelMacron increased the price of medicines,” the post reads. “He does not set their prices. They are regulated by the social security system and have, in fact, remained stable. Anyone who has set foot in a French pharmacy knows this.”
Watch the video above via C-SPAN.
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