The White House on Saturday flooded social media with an image of President Donald Trump flaunting a Washington Post headline declaring that prescription drug prices had fallen by the most in over 60 years, but the article he brandished credits Joe Biden, not him, for that decline.
The photograph, taken during a staged photo opportunity at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, was posted on official White House accounts with the caption: “POV: you bring the receipts.” Press secretary Karoline Leavitt also shared the image.
The photo opportunity took place on Friday, when Trump approached reporters with a printout of the headline and the first five lines of the article. Waving the page around, he urged the press pool to record and photograph it.
“The headline today is exactly that. Did you see it?” Trump said. He then read the good news aloud, held the printout up again for the cameras, and asked, “OK, got it? Everybody have it?” Adding, “I told you that was going to happen.”
Before stepping away, Trump repeated the point, spreading his hands wide as if finishing a magic trick. “Prescription drug prices down more than at any time over 60 years,” he said. “What else do I have to say?”
What Trump did not say was that the Post’s article, published Thursday, reported that while his White House “took credit for” the largest year over year drop in drug prices in more than six decades in July, independent experts said a Biden era policy requiring Medicare to negotiate prices for certain popular prescription drugs is more likely driving down costs.
The Post described the Inflation Reduction Act as a signature accomplishment of former President Joe Biden, a sprawling measure enacted in 2022 aimed at lowering prescription drug prices by having Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly, negotiate the prices it pays drugmakers for an array of popular and costly medications. The first price reductions took effect at the beginning of this year.
Consumer Price Index data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed prescription drug prices dropped 3.1% in July. The bureau’s former head was fired by Trump last year over weaker than expected job numbers that Trump called “fake.”
The Post quoted Richard Frank, a professor emeritus of health economics at Harvard University, expressing doubt that Trump’s policies were behind the decline. “If I was a betting guy on what mattered most, it would be probably stuff around the Inflation Reduction Act,” Frank said, adding that Trump’s efforts “wouldn’t be where I’d place my money.”
Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University, told the Post the law signed by Biden was a more likely explanation than any of Trump’s initiatives. While only 10 drugs have had prices negotiated under the Inflation Reduction Act, she said they are commonly used ones “and their prices would likely be reflected in the prescription drug index.”
White House communications director Steven Cheung posted a screenshot of the Post’s headline on his X account on Thursday with no link to the article, writing: “All thanks to President Trump!”
The president’s display ignored the article’s central caveat: the very evidence he waved in front of cameras pointed to his predecessor’s policies, not his own, as the reason for the price drop.
