Dem
47
GOP
53
Yesterday, the Trump administration did something that pretty much everyone should agree is a good thing. To wit, it announced that it's arranged for GLP-1 drugs (used for weight loss and diabetes) to be much more affordable. The drugs will be available for $150/month to everyone, and $50/month to some Medicare patients.
The problem with Trump is that—after 60 years of his business career, and 10+ years of his political career—you know you always, always, always have to ask: "OK, what's the catch?" Here are a handful of the questions that we have to ask, even if answers are not currently available:
A big part of our extreme caution here is—again—that Donald Trump is a living version of Lucy Van Pelt, and has pulled the football away at the last minute so many times, that everything has to be taken with more grains of salt than are in one of those Big Macs he chows down on every day.
There is also a particular cause for leeriness in this case. When the drugs do come available at the reduced price, they will be sold through a website. And what is the URL of that website? Why, it's www.trumprx.gov. At very least, that's self-aggrandizing and tacky. At worst, it suggests all kinds of potential shadiness. Is he expecting this name to be permanent, and thus to be some sort of monument to his greatness? Is he skimming right now? Or, if he's not skimming right now, will the .gov website eventually become a .com website, so he can retain control even after he's out of office? It's just never simple or easy with him.
What persuaded us to use this story for this space, however, was yet another indication that, in the end, he really doesn't care about the health of people not named Trump. In a bit of very bad luck, during the photo-op/press conference announcing the new initiative, one of the people who was there as background/scenery passed out. To his credit, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Mehmet Oz leapt to the man's rescue and he's reportedly OK.
Other folks in the room, by contrast, did not exactly clothe themselves in glory. The relevant portion is only 20 seconds or so; you can see for yourself, if you wish:
There are two different camera angles floating around, but you have to watch this one to get the full picture. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy reminded everyone he doesn't give a damn about H or HS, and headed for the hills as soon as the man fell ill (and that is what REALLY pushed this item into the schadenfreude section). Meanwhile, Donald Trump stood there like a deer in the headlights, his apparent total lack of concern evident on his face, and in his eyes. His reaction was so wooden, so soulless, it's already become a meme, with tens of millions of shares:
A talented method actor could spend weeks on that "scene" and not have so much success conveying a total lack of concern. Trump really ought to stage a revival of Albert Camus' The Stranger. It would probably be possible to talk him into it; after all, the main character gets to kill an Arab.
We really hope that the cheap medicine thing is for real, even if Trump's motives are not exactly pure. As to him, we simply can't ignore the evidence that he's fundamentally uncaring and rather cruel. The world got another reminder of that, in meme form, yesterday. (Z)