Trump’s Inaccurate Claims Draw Scrutiny During White House Drug Price Event

President Donald Trump made a series of mathematically impossible and factually inaccurate statements during a White House event Thursday where he announced reduced prices for common fertility drugs through a new direct-to-consumer platform.

The president claimed prescription drug prices are “coming down 400%, 200%, 600%, numbers that nobody’s ever seen before,” later adding figures as high as “800%, in some cases even more than that.” These figures are mathematically impossible, as a 100% reduction would mean drugs cost nothing, while Trump’s claimed reductions would mean Americans would be paid to acquire medications.

At the same event, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Trump’s administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, cited a more realistic example – a fertility drug price dropping from $242 to $10, representing a 95.9% reduction.

The president twice asserted he secured “over $17 trillion” in investment in the United States this year alone, calling it “one of the great numbers that I’ve ever heard.” However, the White House’s own website lists a significantly lower figure of “$8.8 trillion” in “major investment announcements” during Trump’s term.

A CNN review of the White House’s investment claims found that even the $8.8 trillion figure represents a substantial exaggeration. The administration’s calculations include trillions in vague investment pledges, commitments related to “bilateral trade” rather than direct U.S. investment, and statements that don’t constitute firm commitments.

Trump also claimed to have “ended eight” wars, a figure that doesn’t withstand scrutiny. The White House’s count reportedly includes a diplomatic dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over a dam project, which was not an actual war. Similarly, the administration counts a supposed conflict between Serbia and Kosovo that didn’t occur during Trump’s presidency.

Additionally, Trump includes in his tally a purported success in ending a war involving the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, but that conflict has continued despite a Trump-brokered peace agreement that was never signed by the primary rebel coalition.

In comments about the ongoing government shutdown, the president alleged Democrats “want to spend $1.5 trillion on illegal immigrants and they want to destroy health care for everyone else.” This claim mischaracterizes Democratic proposals, as undocumented immigrants are ineligible for either Obamacare subsidies or federal Medicaid coverage.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that Democratic spending proposals would add $1.5 trillion to the debt over the next decade, but this figure encompasses all spending, not just immigration-related expenditures. The White House itself has claimed Democrats propose spending about $193 billion on health care for “illegal immigrants and other non-citizens,” with the majority directed toward legally present non-citizens.

Trump also significantly exaggerated the historical prevalence of autism, claiming it “used to be 1 in 20,000 – and that was not that long ago, 20 years ago or so.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the known prevalence of autism among children was approximately 1 in 125 in 2004 and 1 in 110 in 2006 – far more common than Trump suggested.

While autism diagnoses have indeed increased over recent decades, experts attribute this primarily to greater awareness of symptoms and improved diagnostic practices rather than an actual increase in cases at the scale Trump described. The CDC’s most recent published prevalence from 2022 is 1 in 31 children.

The series of inaccurate claims comes as the White House focuses on healthcare initiatives ahead of the upcoming election, with prescription drug pricing remaining a key concern for many American voters.