Trump has made a priority of trying to lower drug prices. But many of his most ardent supporters don’t know it
MANCHESTER, N.H. — The contrast between the two Trump rallies was striking: At one event here in the first primary state in 2016, President Trump railed against the pharmaceutical industry for more than two full minutes — an eternity for one topic in a campaign speech.
Forcefully vowing to reject their donations and pledging to empower Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices to save both voters and the federal government billions, Trump declared: “We’re going to save so much money and those drug companies are going to hate me so much.”
But when he came back to Manchester last week as president, Trump devoted just 25 seconds to drug prices in a speech that ran an hour and a half, parroting a debunked claim that his policies have caused the largest decline in drug prices in over 50 years.
The president wasn’t alone in his apparent newfound lack of zeal for the issue. In 2016, the cheers that went up for his pledges to lower drug prices were among the loudest at the rally for any of his proposals. This year, the applause
