Donald Trump is once again being mocked for making a wild and clearly wrong claim about drug prices — saying they’ve been cut by “1500%.”
“You know, we’ve cut drug prices by 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500%. I don’t mean 50%, I mean 1400, 1500%,” Trump told reporters Sunday as he boarded Air Force One after another weekend at his New Jersey golf club.
It wasn’t a one-time slip. Less than two weeks earlier, at a reception for Republican lawmakers, Trump said the same thing: “We’re going to get the drug prices down — not 30 or 40%, which would be great, not 50 or 60. No, we’re going to get them down 1000%, 600%, 500%, 1500%.”
These numbers make no sense. A price can’t be reduced more than 100% — that would mean the product is free. A 1500% cut would mean you’d not only get the drug for free, but the pharmacy would owe you $1,400 for taking it.
Trump’s math has drawn sharp criticism — and mockery.
“He’s beyond unusual. And that I’ve never met a person so intellectually and emotionally — because there is no compensation — limited,” said Charles Leerhsen, who co-wrote Trump’s 1990 book Surviving at the Top. Leerhsen has warned for years that Trump doesn’t understand basic numbers.
“And that’s why some people mistake his idiocy for ‘chess on three levels,’” Leerhsen added. “Because, being unable to understand him, and feeling that nobody could be as dumb as he seems, they arrive at the conclusion that he is actually smarter than they are.”
Trump has long claimed to be a genius, often pointing to his uncle, who taught at MIT. “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” he wrote in 2018.
But Leerhsen says Trump’s lack of understanding about percentages may explain why so many of his business ventures failed — including his overpaid deal for the Plaza Hotel and his bankrupt Atlantic City casinos.
“That’s exactly why those things happened,” Leerhsen said. “He’s not one of those people who compensates for being bad at one thing — say, words — by being good at another — say, numbers.”
Despite his talk of lowering drug prices, Trump has actually reversed some of President Biden’s efforts to make prescriptions more affordable. On his first day in office, Trump threw out a number of Biden’s executive orders — including those aimed at cutting costs for Medicare and Medicaid users.
More recently, Trump posted a letter on social media that he says he sent to drug giant Eli Lilly, demanding that they match the prices they charge in other countries. He followed that up with similar letters to 16 more pharmaceutical companies.
“If you refuse to step up, we will deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices,” Trump wrote.
But even that message was filled with finger-pointing. He accused the industry of “shifting blame and requesting policy changes that would result in billions of dollars in handouts to industry.”
Still, his absurd math is what people are talking about most. Cutting prices “1500%” isn’t just false — it’s impossible. And the fact that he keeps repeating it? That’s what has critics shaking their heads.
Watch the clip below:
Trump: You know, we've cut drug prices by 1200, 1300, 1400, 1,500%. I don't mean 50%. I mean 1400, 1,500% pic.twitter.com/eoHv49DUyX
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 4, 2025
