Trump strikes a deal with China, Mar-A- a deal to release the last American hostage in Gaza, an Air Force One gift, and a new executive order on prescription drug prices. Plus, toxic algae threatens Florida's clean water supply.
00:01:13.580It's another day of deals for President Trump.
00:01:16.140I mean, it's really insane what just happened at the White House, truly.
00:01:20.520Like, what just happened with the prescription drugs is, it is earth-shattering.
00:01:26.120We're going to talk about it in just a minute.
00:01:29.320Also, a sort of trade deal with China.
00:01:33.240We're going to pause the retaliatory tariffs on one another for 90 days while we work it out.
00:01:37.180But it seems like they have the framework for a deal.
00:01:40.420And, you know, people like Charles Gasparino, who's been defensive of President Trump, saying,
00:01:45.660look, he had to do this because of the bond markets, because of what was happening.
00:01:51.280There's just a trade war with China is not winnable, is what he was saying, given our economic status right now.
00:01:59.400Our debt and how much we need to service it and so on.
00:02:04.060And so his take on why we have this pause with China was we had to.
00:02:09.260That smart people went to Trump and said, you've got to stop this.
00:02:13.500The United States economy cannot handle it.
00:02:16.080We need them as badly as they need us.
00:02:18.780And so the White House is sort of saying, see, I'm playing chess and I'm winning.
00:02:23.480And smart guys like Charles, who doesn't have TDS, he's a Trump fan, actually, are saying, look, the reality is this was not a winnable war.
00:02:32.040So whatever, it's good that it's paused.
00:03:29.540You may have heard of red tide or blue green algae.
00:03:32.560It can be dangerous and it can be gross.
00:03:34.900In his first term, President Trump signed a law to solve the problem with a new reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee to keep clean, fresh water flowing constantly to South Florida.
00:03:45.920President Trump said, after years of rebuilding other nations, we are finally rebuilding our nation.
00:03:51.900Washington can finish the job in next year's budget and keep President Trump's promise.
00:03:57.020The Everglades Foundation, our advertiser, says that would be very good for Florida and good for the Everglades.
00:04:04.160Learn more about President Trump's Everglades support project at evergladesfoundation.org.
00:04:22.520Just as a way of history, for those who haven't been following this, Trump, in his first term, tried to take this on.
00:04:31.900The fact that Big Pharma won't negotiate with our government, our government won't negotiate with Big Pharma to protect us on the prices that we have to pay.
00:06:10.180They're absolute pigs when it comes to exploiting especially the American consumer.
00:06:14.140And Anna Kasparian, who's with the Young Turks, she's a Democrat, she's a liberal, she's great, she's very reasonable, she's been on this program a number of times, and this has been one of her main issues.
00:06:27.420She's the one who first got my attention on it, trying to say, what the F?
00:06:33.100Why aren't we, as a government, more protective of our own people?
00:06:36.940And why are we allowing Big Pharma to charge Americans $1,000 a month for some drugs that the same manufacturers charge people in Denmark $50 a month for?
00:06:52.120So the same drug, you could be paying $50 for it if you live in Denmark, and you could pay $1,000 for it if you live in the United States.
00:07:08.500In any event, she was showing the bullet points in particular on Ozempic.
00:07:14.760And I realize that's a very popular drug, but you could do this with a lot of other drugs where you go around the world, and we, the suckers in America, are subsidizing the world's cheap use of these drugs.
00:07:30.300She played a soundbite of Bernie Sanders, and as you know, Bernie and Trump kind of are at the horseshoe ends of the same ideological spectrum.
00:07:38.520You know, Trump got there from the right, Bernie got there from the left, and they wound up kind of close to each other in a number of issues.
00:07:44.460And the crossover amongst fans is kind of interesting with those two.
00:07:48.720She played this Bernie soundbite where he was asked, because he's been pushing for the ability for us to negotiate on drug costs for a while, where he was asked by an MSNBC anchor about it.
00:08:00.520Why does Nova Nordis, in your opinion, charge so much more for Americans to get this drug?
00:08:07.480I know exactly why, and so does everybody else.
00:08:11.160Throughout the entire world, there are national health programs, which, by the way, in most cases, guarantee health care to all of their people.
00:08:20.120And they sit down and they negotiate with the drug companies.
00:08:24.700And they say, you know what, you can't charge us any price you want.
00:08:27.820Let's sit down and talk about a reasonable price.
00:08:31.080Here in the United States, until last year, you had the insane situation where the drug companies could charge any price they wanted for any reason.
00:08:42.120Second of all, let's not kid ourselves.
00:08:45.420The pharmaceutical industry is enormously powerful.
00:08:49.080They have over 1,800 well-paid lobbyists in Washington, D.C. right now, former leaders of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party.
00:09:03.040Okay, and here's just to put some more meat on those bones, Walter.
00:09:08.960She was showing a map that was from the MSNBC segment with Bernie on this, just for the example, Ozempic.
00:09:16.100That costs about $1,000 per month in the United States before insurance.
00:09:21.840In Canada, it goes for $147, $59 in Germany, $96 in Sweden, $103 in the Netherlands, $144 in Switzerland, $83 in France.
00:09:33.800Why did the Americans have to pay $1,000 for the exact same drug that she points out can be manufactured for less than $5 a month per a study performed by Yale and King's College Hospital in London?
00:09:53.280This is what Trump is trying to get at with this extraordinary executive order.
00:09:57.880He now says, on all drugs, not just Medicare, we're going to start negotiating.
00:10:03.960We're not going to be the world's piggy bank where they make all their money in the United States and then sell it cheaply to everybody else.
00:10:11.180And that he says this could save people up to 80% on their drug costs.
00:10:17.980Number one, there's likely to be another lawsuit by Big Pharma saying this is an inappropriate end around Congress.
00:10:23.500And number two, it'll be really interesting to see how the Democrats react to Donald Trump pushing this kind of Bernie-blessed program when it comes to pharmaceuticals.
00:10:38.140Is this a country of politics or a country of issues?
00:10:41.480Because in this case, Bernie and Trump agree.
00:10:44.380And Bernie has been loud on this matter for a long time.
00:10:48.420He should get his butt over to the White House and show some solidarity on this because they're going to need it against the greatest lobby in American life next to the, I suppose, military-industrial complex.
00:11:00.980The fact is that drugs like Zempic, and this one in particular, are not that complex.
00:11:09.020It can be bought cheaply as the peptide itself.
00:11:13.020In its patented drug form, it's made more expensive.
00:11:16.040But the excuse that the U.S. has to pay higher prices, vastly higher prices, in order to subsidize the research and development of these drugs so that the rest of the world can benefit from lower prices is ridiculous.
00:11:31.260But it has been the fig leaf, the massive fig leaf that they have used to cover their profiteering for decades.
00:11:37.620Really, under Obamacare, there was a real conspicuous omission because the supposed aim of the bill, of the legislation, was to lower prices for American health care.
00:11:52.700But it did not include negotiation with drug companies for, you know, lower prices.
00:11:59.440Everybody noticed that at the time, that carve-out, as it were.
00:12:04.360And frankly, this is a demolition job on mere partisanship because, just as you quoted the Young Turks person, if we can't get together on this, then we can't get together on anything.
00:12:57.080And I think we saw there both Bernie and Elizabeth Warren, hectoring the man who wanted to pressure Big Pharma and challenge them on all sorts of fronts,
00:13:09.480from the effectiveness of their drugs to testing drugs like the vaccines and so on, and prices.
00:13:15.560And they were acting like they were lawyers for Pfizer.
00:13:19.840Well, everybody's a lawyer for Pfizer if they're getting paid by them.
00:13:23.540And I'm afraid Bernie, you know, he, you know, makes it a little complicated.
00:13:29.880He gets it from their employees, and he claims that he gets it, you know, one little bit at a time, and it doesn't represent management contributing to his cause.
00:13:38.620But he, he, it's a massive set of donations to him and to the Democrats.
00:13:44.940And he can prove his independence, if you'd like, by coming together with Trump.
00:13:50.800And if they think there are some problems with this executive order, the particular way that it's going to happen, that's fine.
00:13:57.960But the principle has been agreed on, as you say, by the horseshoe for a while.
00:14:02.800So it's time to do something for the American people.
00:14:05.440And we must transcend TDS in certain cases.
00:14:12.760But if we can't do it here, I don't know where we're going to start.
00:14:16.100Yeah, yeah, so, so Bernie is there, you know, he's in Congress, obviously, he's a sitting U.S. senator.
00:14:24.040But good luck convincing your fellow congressmen to actually do this once and for all.
00:14:29.120And that's the reason why Trump tried to do an end around the do-nothing Congress, because he's, he isn't bought and paid for by Big Pharma, but failed because the court said, sorry, sir, this is not within your remit.
00:14:40.940But today, Trump spoke to that at the end, he had a presser at 930 talking about this and the Chinese deal.
00:14:48.720And it was at this presser that he signed the executive order and he had his health team with him, Jay Bhattacharya of NIH, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of HHS, Mehmet Oz of Medicare.
00:14:59.500Obviously, he's going to be involved in this, too.
00:15:01.140And I think Marty McCary was there of FDA.
00:15:04.320So Trump got up there and said, basically, I dare you, I dare you now, Democrats in Congress, to defy me on this.
00:15:17.060You tried this in Trump 1.0 and you got sued successfully as, you know, you don't have this executive power.
00:15:22.820Because, once again, he's using executive power, which is probably going to get stopped by a court just as soon as Big Pharma files a lawsuit.
00:15:29.000But Trump's already baking that in, saying, I dare the Democrats in Congress to not pass this in the big, beautiful bill that they're working on right now, the big money bill that's going to raise taxes or lower taxes or whatever.
00:15:45.560Because he said, how are you going to look at your constituents and say, you finally had the chance in legislation that would have Republican support in the Congress and the support of the sitting president ready to sign it to finally give the government this power to negotiate on the drug prices.
00:16:04.640And you refused to do it, which is very clever to put this in the big, beautiful bill and frame it that way.
00:16:14.980It's absolutely essential in a time of budget cutting, particularly, to do something like this.
00:16:22.260Because the biggest client, the biggest patient in the United States, so to speak, is the United States government.
00:16:28.400It's the taxpayer who pays for these drugs in so many cases, you know, through all kinds of programs.
00:16:35.360And it's going to save us collectively a lot of money and individually, you know, untold amount of money in family budgets.
00:16:45.240I just think that it was time that Trump really held their feet to the fire on the social issues and the populist programs that they claim to support.
00:16:57.800And I think it's a it's a masterstroke.
00:17:00.520I did a little reporting on it last night.
00:17:09.700And pharma's counterattack is going to be interesting because it will be somewhat deceptive.
00:17:15.160Already, they're trying to argue that somehow this is a blow against the third world, which will no longer, you know, have the benefit of our subsidized drug research.
00:17:26.220And I've even seen people say, well, they're trying to solve immigration by killing all the people that would immigrate here.
00:17:32.620I mean, it's going to be hysterical like you haven't seen.
00:17:39.360Meanwhile, it's like the Democrats are the ones who claim that they've been for this.
00:19:06.400Frankly, I have tears in my eyes, not this moment, but I did, because I'll tell you why.
00:19:11.360The price of drugs, especially drugs that are for limited or sort of small diseases that don't create a big market, you know, where the cost can't be spread across a lot of patients, can be absolutely ruinous.
00:19:49.400And lastly, there has been talk about pharma ads on TV.
00:19:55.500It is not just Congress that pharma controls, Megan.
00:19:58.320And it's MSNBC and CNN and Fox and the other cable news networks that we're all familiar with through carrying about 70% of the weight with their advertising in some cases.
00:20:11.540Now, that influence totally deformed our COVID response and maybe guided it to some extent if you really want to be serious about it.
00:20:23.640You can't advertise if you don't have the money and that money, that big giant pot of profits that was on a $5 drug, you know, $995 a dose or whatever is not going to be poured into these influence operations going forward, except in the short term, because there's no way they want this to come to pass.
00:20:57.580The U.S. has less than 5% of the world's population and yet funds around three quarters of global pharmaceutical profits.
00:21:06.460This egregious imbalance is orchestrated through a purposeful scheme in which drug manufacturers deeply discount their products to access foreign markets and subsidize that decrease through enormously high prices in the U.S.A.
00:21:20.480The U.S. has for too long turned its back on Americans who unwittingly sponsor both drug manufacturers and other countries.
00:21:27.480These entities today rely on price markups on American consumers, generous public subsidies for research and development primarily through the NIH, and robust public financing of prescription drug consumption through the federal and state healthcare programs.
00:21:44.680Drug manufacturers, rather than seeking to equalize evident price discrimination, agree to other countries' demands for low prices and simultaneously fight against the ability for public and private payers in the U.S. to negotiate the best prices for patients.
00:21:57.740The inflated prices in the U.S. fuel global innovation while foreign health systems get a free ride.
00:22:05.140This abuse of Americans' generosity, who deserve low-cost pharmaceuticals on the same terms as other developed nations, must end.
00:22:12.980Americans will no longer be forced to pay almost three times more for the exact same medications often made in the exact same factories.
00:22:21.580As the largest purchaser of pharmaceuticals, Americans should get the best deal.
00:22:26.580And while I need to pour over this thing more closely because it's several pages long, single-spaced and pretty dense, he's saying that he's addressing Kennedy and Medicare, which would be Dr. Oz, to negotiate with the drug companies saying, you better give us.
00:22:48.260You know, like, if you're going to, again, just to stay on the Ozempic, because it's easy to understand.
00:22:52.720Okay, you're charging Germans $59 for that drug, because this is by Novo Nordisk, which is a company from Denmark.
00:23:02.200Okay, Novo, you're charging Germans $59 for this medication and you're charging Americans $1,000.
00:23:12.520And to start the negotiation with them directly, like, we are not going to allow you to pay, to charge that in the United States.
00:23:19.760And then this thing also says, and if you cannot reach a new agreement, then there's going to be basically a price set by the United States without your buy-in.
00:23:42.380Well, here's a case of a non-American company, a Danish company, that's stiffing the United States, but not the country next door, Germany.
00:24:16.300In other words, and in so many ways, we've been doing that.
00:24:20.080Our military payments and our undue support of NATO has allowed them to not have militaries of their own and pour money into social programs.
00:24:30.780The social programs themselves have been subsidized in ways like this, where they negotiate, they get good prices from companies, and we don't.
00:24:40.560In other words, we're carrying the weight for the world.
00:24:43.580And this, in this case, has nothing to do with development.
00:24:48.160The recent certain development isn't going on in the United States.
00:24:53.000Now, how they got that deal and through what influence is, you know, something we should investigate later, but that it should go on is something we need to deal with yesterday.
00:25:12.620So the defense by Big Pharma is always, we spend so much money on research and development.
00:25:18.600You know, like, you can't start pinching us on the profits because they go not only to just, you know, our bottom line, but they are a reward for the billions in R&D that went into developing these drugs.
00:25:43.080So here's what they say, that Novo Nordisk, they declined to provide production costs for Ozempic and its weight loss drug counterpart, Wegovi.
00:25:52.300But the Danish drug maker noted that it spent almost $5 billion on R&D last year and will spend more than $6 billion on a recent deal to boost manufacturing to meet the demand for these drugs.
00:26:06.320So they're crying that they have to manufacture.
00:26:08.540It's in such demand that they have to pay $6 billion to develop even more of it.
00:26:13.620No one's crying any tears for you over that.
00:26:15.700But they're crying about the $5 billion that it took to develop it.
00:26:19.500However, their profits for 2023 and 2024 equal, no, for one year, it's one year, one year operating profit.
00:26:30.100I think it was either 2023 or 2024, was equivalent to $15 billion U.S. dollars, their largest profit since 1989.
00:26:42.740So they profited in one year, $15 billion, largely off of that drug.
00:26:48.100And they want us to cry and pay $1,000 a month because it cost them $5 billion to develop it.
00:26:54.580It all has to fall on the Americans, and we're supposed to feel sorry for the drug company that's only going to net, what, like $8 billion instead of $15 billion if they charge us a fair price versus everybody else?
00:27:07.980Listen, I don't understand why they're still paying development costs and research costs on a drug that they've already developed and, frankly, which is a rather simple substance compound.
00:27:19.360And as far as manufacturing and gearing up to make more of it because of overwhelming demand, well, what other industry tells you that in order for us to gear up to meet the demand, we need crazy, almost unlimited ability to charge you?
00:27:39.640You know, if Ford had a hit car and it said, we've got to build new factories to turn out the number of cars that people want to buy, and we've got to keep those prices really high in order to do that, that's the opposite of what I just heard.
00:27:56.780Isn't there something called economies of scale?
00:27:58.920The more you sell, the cheaper and the more you have to make, the cheaper it is to manufacture each unit?
00:28:06.900Yes. So here's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya talking about how they're not anti-drug company.
00:28:14.120You know, they understand it's an important industry in the United States and to the American people, and he runs NIH. Here's what he had to say.
00:28:22.520What we're going to do is make sure that those prices become much closer to equal, like a competitive market you'd expect.
00:28:30.880Right now what's happening is the American people are subsidizing at a large fraction the research and development efforts for drug companies around the world by the higher prices that we pay.
00:28:42.400With this new order, Europe will share the burden of that.
00:28:48.340And in fact, if you may think of it as like somehow it's going after drug companies, actually it's helping drug companies.
00:28:55.700Because what we're also going to do with this order, what President Trump has done with this order, is he's said to European governments,
00:29:03.180look, if you are taking advantage of the drug companies by forcing them to charge very, very low prices, we're going to defend American drug companies.
00:29:10.180And that, I think, Walter, is why the pharma stocks went up after Trump's presser.
00:29:20.400Dr. Bhattacharya explained that, and Trump explained it too, which was,
00:29:24.440if these foreign countries continue, that can afford these drugs at a higher level,
00:29:29.780continue to act like they're paupers and not pay at least the American drug companies a fair price for the drugs,
00:29:37.020then I don't know what Trump's going to do, tear off them.
00:29:40.540He's going to do something to try to exact a penalty on these countries that have deep pockets,
00:29:47.440but have been grifting off of us for too long.
00:29:50.700And that's why I was watching CNBC this morning, something I very rarely do.
00:39:18.460And we decided for people who listened to it and loved it because the feedback's been so fun online.
00:39:24.700Thank you all for commenting that it might be fun to play some of the outtakes, some of the some of the bloopers, including the moment you will hear it here where a bee invaded the studio and there was an errant attempt to kill it while it was still flying, which, you know, never really works out.
00:39:42.400But take a listen to some of the outtakes here.
00:45:58.120Because I should say, sorry, one other thing.
00:46:00.040I should say a lot of conservative blowback against the president, even from non-Trump derangement syndrome people saying, this is not good.
00:46:07.280We should not be taking gifts from the Qataris who are not the best people.
00:46:28.200It allows them to sit by the fire and bite, lick, slobber at some non-issue, which causes total distraction while he does something like end a war.
00:46:42.200Now, we'll be talking about this Qatari plane all week, I can tell you.
00:46:47.400And by the end of the week, we'll find out that the Ukraine-Russia war ended or something while we were on our, you know, slobbering over our chew toy.
00:46:55.260But, you know, so in a way, it doesn't matter the specifics because they're always outrageous.
00:47:01.820To be a chew toy, it has to sort of be borderline bad taste and is it legal and is it constitutional?
00:47:08.500And in some ways, it has to be gauche, too, because it's Donald Trump, right?
00:47:12.620I mean, the plane has to be over the top.
00:47:15.620People will be looking at, oh, my Lord, you know, solid gold toilet paper holders.
00:47:22.500First of all, he's going to guarantee more attendance at his library if he gets that thing parked in back than any other president in history.
00:47:32.020He may also not have to build a whole wing on it.
00:47:40.900But it gets us talking about issues that, in a weird way, in the same way – remember how he did an AI or somebody did of him dressed as the pope a week before we got an American pope?
00:47:53.220And it got us talking about the pope and thinking about it in all sorts of ways.
00:47:57.640And just because that was the chew toy that week, it was that AI of the pope.
00:48:02.140And then it gets us ready for the main course.
00:48:04.960Now, Gutter, whose name I can never pronounce.
00:48:59.540You know, my main concern would be, can we please make sure that there are absolutely no listening devices or other things left on board that plane?
00:49:08.700Because this is our president, our national security officials in the air.
00:49:12.860Like, we definitely don't trust Qatar.
01:30:01.300I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megyn Kelly Show on Sirius XM.
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01:30:21.960Great people like Dr. Laura, Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly.
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01:32:14.560But this weird video that Holly Berry posts from her bed in Cannes, France, with her boyfriend, Van Hunt, advertising her Let's Spin Intimacy Gel in travel size.
01:32:34.480For the listening audience, they're in bed, apparently naked.