When it comes to insulin, Donald Trump hasn’t always shown great judgment. At an event four years ago, for example, the then-Republican president said, “I don’t use insulin. Should I be? Huh? I never thought about it. But I know a lot of people are very badly affected, right? Unbelievable.”
To this day, I still don’t know what point he was trying to communicate, but the issue has returned to the fore in an unexpected way.
Last week, a Fox News personality noted that American consumers are benefiting from a policy that caps the cost of insulin at $35. That wouldn’t have been especially notable were it not for the fact that Fox’s John Roberts argued that Trump deserved credit for the good news, which didn’t make any sense at all.
The conservative host’s comments, however, apparently gave the former president an idea. On Saturday morning, the presumptive GOP nominee published this item to his social media platform.
“Low INSULIN PRICING was gotten for millions of Americans by me, and the Trump Administration, not by Crooked Joe Biden. He had NOTHING to do with it. It was all done long before he so sadly entered office. All he does is try to take credit for things done by others, in this case, ME!”
So, a few things.
First, Trump’s creative use of passive voice notwithstanding, the reason consumers are currently benefiting is because the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act included the policy on insulin costs. Biden, not Trump, signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. For the former president to say the current president has “nothing to do with” the lower prices is utterly bonkers.
Second, it’s true that Trump said he’d tackle this issue while in office, but he didn’t. For him to claim credit for his Democratic successor’s breakthrough, while simultaneously accusing Biden of taking credit for Trump’s work, is also stark raving mad. Third, Trump isn’t just claiming credit for one of Biden’s accomplishments, he’s also planning to undo the Inflation Reduction Act, which would necessarily mean the end of the price caps that the Republican is falsely attributing to himself. Finally, it’s worth pausing to appreciate the familiarity of the circumstances. During his White House tenure, Trump had an unnerving habit of claiming credit for Barack Obama’s successes, including countless instances in which the Republican pretended he was responsible for Obama-era policies related to veterans health care. Now that he’s out of the White House, Trump appears eager to take credit for Biden’s accomplishments, too.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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