The Megyn Kelly Show
Trump Takes On Big Pharma with Historic Drug Prices Exec Order, and Michelle Obama's Bitterness, with Walter Kirn | Ep. 1070
Mon, 12 May 2025
Megyn Kelly is joined by Walter Kirn, editor-at-large for "County Highway," to discuss Trump’s historic executive order challenging Big Pharma and outrageous prescription drug prices, how Trump and Bernie Sanders are on the same page based on Bernie's past comments, why other countries in the world are paying reasonable drug prices but the United States has huge upcharges, Big Pharma whining while making billions in profit, why the rest of the world and other countries need to step up now and pay more, how Big Pharma owns so much of the media and political elite, Trump's new potential Air Force One “gift” from Qatar, how the leftist media is using it as a "chew toy" to stay distracted from bigger stories, the market spiking after the Trump administration announced a major temporary trade deal with China, the details of the deal and what it means in the future, Michelle Obama talking about the joys of divorce, her constant negativity about her husband and marriage generally, Halle Berry's inappropriate videos, and more.More from Walter Kirn - https://countyhighway.com/Everglades Foundation: Learn more about President Trump’s Everglades support project at https://www.EvergladesFoundation.orgSimpliSafe: Visit https://simplisafe.com/MEGYN to claim 50% off & your first month free!Hungryroot: https://Hungryroot.com/MK | Get 40% off your first box PLUS a free item in every box for life!Cozy Earth: Visit https://www.CozyEarth.com/MEGYN & Use code MEGYN for up to 40% offFollow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow
Chapter 1: What is President Trump's historic executive order on drug prices?
Great to be here.
OK, so let's start with this prescription drug thing, because this is huge. Like this one's actually really big. Just as a way of history for those who haven't been following this, Trump in his first term tried to take this on. The 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.
Trump tried to do it and got sued. He tried to do it just with respect to Medicare. He got sued by Big Pharma and he lost because technically it's Congress's job to negotiate these prices. And so it's a question of constitutional authority. So Big Pharma sued saying you don't have the authority as president to do an end around Congress. And they won because of separations of powers.
Big Pharma doesn't give a shit about separation of powers. Big Pharma wants to charge us a lot of money. But they used the Constitution to shut down Trump's effort in term one. Then comes Joe Biden. OK, so now there was an attempt and this one was successful to make us negotiate on. I think it was first eight and then it was 10 drugs for Medicare only.
So the government could negotiate with Big Pharma on these now 10 drugs. That's it out of the universe of drugs. It's not a lot and it's only under Medicare. And now Trump comes in. And by the way, this has always been more of like a Democrat thing and Republicans have bought. Well, I mean, they've both been in the pocket of big pharma, to be honest.
Both sides are totally in the damn pocket of big pharma. And we don't hate big pharma. Big pharma comes up with drugs that can help us, you know, not die. And they come up with miracle drugs like Ozempic, which is helping a lot of very, very obese people get down to much more healthy weights. So it's not to demonize big pharma. But they're also disgusting. They're disgusting in so many ways.
They're absolute pigs when it comes to exploiting, especially the American consumer. And 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. She's the one who first got my attention on it, trying to say, what the F? Why aren't we doing this?
Why aren't we, as a government, more protective of our own people? And 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? So 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. And do we have Anna Cutt?
She was going off on this. Okay, in any event, she was showing the bullet points in particular on Ozempic. And 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. And it's bullshit. She played a soundbite of Bernie Sanders.
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Chapter 2: Why are drug prices so high in the United States compared to other countries?
She 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. Watch.
Why does Nova Nordis, in your opinion, charge so much more for Americans to get this drug?
I know exactly why, and so does everybody else. Throughout the entire world, there are national health programs, which by the way, in most cases, guarantee healthcare to all of their people. And they sit down and they negotiate with the drug companies. And they say, you know what, you can't charge us any price you want. Let's sit down and talk about a reasonable price.
Here 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, second of all. Let's not kid ourselves. The pharmaceutical industry is enormously powerful. They have over 1,800 well-paid lobbyists in Washington, D.C. Right now, former leaders of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, they're very nonpartisan.
They will give money to anybody.
Okay. And here's just to put some more meat on those bones, Walter. Uh, she was showing a map that she, that was from the MSNBC segment with Bernie on this, just for the example, Ozempic. Um, That costs about $1,000 per month in the United States before insurance. In Canada, it goes for $147. $59 in Germany. $96 in Sweden. $103 in the Netherlands. $144 in Switzerland. $83 in France.
Why do the Americans have to pay $1,000 for the exact same drug that she points out that can be manufactured for less than $5 a month per a study performed by Yale and King's College Hospital in London. This is what Trump is trying to get at with this extraordinary executive order. He now says on all drugs, not just Medicare, we're going to start negotiating.
We'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. And that he says this could save people up to 80% on their drug costs and Number one, there's likely to be another lawsuit by Big Pharma saying this is an inappropriate end around Congress.
And 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. There you go. You take it, Walter.
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Chapter 3: How do Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump align on pharmaceutical pricing?
The fact is that drugs like Zempik, and this one in particular, are not that complex. It's a peptide called semaglutide. It can be bought cheaply as the peptide itself. In its patented drug form, it's made more expensive. But 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. But it has been the fig leaf, the massive fig leaf that they have used to cover their profiteering for decades.
Really, under Obamacare, there was a real conspicuous omission because the supposed aim of the bill, of the legislation, was to lower prices for American healthcare, but it did not include negotiation with drug companies for lower prices. Everybody noticed that at the time, that carve-out, as it were, and now Trump's ending it, and 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.
Mm hmm. Yes. So it's what's been happening in Congress is they're bought and paid for. I mean, that's really the bottom line. Big Pharma, as the audience knows and experienced firsthand during covid with Pfizer, is it owns the U.S. Congress. They make tons of money and then they buy congressmen and women so that they won't do anything to change the piggy bank system. And they don't.
Neither side is innocent. Right.
Megan, you and I both attended the RFK Jr. confirmation hearings, I happen to know. I was only one row away from you. And 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, from the effectiveness of their drugs to testing drugs like the vaccines and so on and prices.
And they were acting like they were lawyers for Pfizer. Well, everybody's a lawyer for Pfizer if they're getting paid by them. And I'm afraid Bernie, you know, he makes it a little complicated. He gets a lot of money from them. He gets it from their employees, and he claims that he gets it one little bit at a time, and it doesn't represent management contributing to his cause.
But it's a massive set of donations to him and to the Democrats. He can prove his independence, if you'd like, by coming together with Trump. And if they think there are some problems with this executive order, the particular way that it's going to happen, that's fine. But the principle has been agreed on, as you say, by the horseshoe for a while.
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Chapter 4: What legal challenges could Trump's executive order face regarding Big Pharma?
Yeah. Yeah. So so Bernie is there. You know, he's in Congress, obviously, is a sitting U.S. senator. But good luck convincing your fellow congressmen to actually do this once and for all.
And 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. But today, Trump spoke to that. At the end, he had a presser at 9.30 talking about this and the Chinese deal.
And 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. Obviously, he's going to be involved in this, too. And I think Marty McCary was there of FDA. So Trump got up there and said— Basically, I dare you, I dare you now, Democrats in Congress, to defy me on this.
So Trump seems pretty clear, I'm sure he's been told. You tried this in Trump 1.0 and you got sued successfully as you don't have this executive power. Because 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. But 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 gonna raise taxes or lower taxes or whatever, they're working it out.
Because he said, how are you gonna 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, and you refused to do it, which is very clever to put this in the big, beautiful bill and frame it that way.
Well, it's not only clever, it's absolutely essential in a time of budget cutting, particularly to do something like this, because the biggest client, the biggest patient in the United States, so to speak, is the United States government. It's the taxpayer who pays for these drugs in so many cases, you know, through all kinds of programs.
And it's going to save us collectively a lot of money and individually, but you know, untold amount of money in family budgets. I 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. And I think it's a masterstroke. I did a little reporting on it last night. They've kept it very close.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of the proposed $400 million Air Force One gift from Qatar?
This 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 USA. The US has for too long turned its back on Americans who unwittingly sponsor both drug manufacturers and other countries.
These 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 health care programs. Drug 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 US to negotiate the best prices for patients. The inflated prices in the US fuel global innovation while foreign health systems get a free ride. This abuse of Americans' generosity, who deserve low-cost pharmaceuticals on the same terms as other developed nations, must end.
Americans will no longer be forced to pay almost three times more for the exact same medications often made in the exact same factories. As the largest purchaser of pharmaceuticals, Americans should get the best deal. And while I need to pore 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 company saying, you better give us, you know, like if you're going to, again, just to stay on the Ozempic because it's easy to understand. Okay, you're charging Germans $59 for that drug because this is by Novo Nordisk, which is a company from Denmark.
Okay, Novo, you're charging Germans $59 for this medication and you're charging Americans $1,000. It's a no. And to start the negotiation with them directly, like we are not going to allow you to pay, to charge that in the United States. And 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.
That's what his executive order says. Like, we'll try to work it out with you. If you don't want to strike a deal, we'll just do it. So it's in your interest to strike a deal with us. Again, this will be subject to a legal challenge. Go ahead, Walter.
Well, 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. Why is that?
It's because they're not poor and developing. They've got plenty of money.
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Chapter 6: How does the media's relationship with Big Pharma affect public discourse?
Chapter 7: What role do Megyn Kelly's children play in the show's Mother's Day special?
Wow. Frankly, I have tears in my eyes, not this moment, but I did, because I'll tell you why. The 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. You say $1,000 a prescription. Let's talk $200,000.
I mean, there are drugs for things like hepatitis and for various cancers and so on that are shocking. There are Rolls Royce. And we're going to change lives here. We're going to prevent families from going into bankruptcy. We're going to cut the budget. And. Lastly, there has been talk about pharma ads on TV. It is not just Congress that pharma controls, Megan.
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. Now, that influence totally deformed our COVID response and maybe guided it to some extent, if you really want to be.
serious about it that influence is gone you can't advertise if you don't have the money and that money that big giant pot of profits that was on a five dollar drug uh you know 995 dollars it goes 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 to come to pass
Mm-hmm, that's right. So the executive order, I'll just read a bit from the beginning of it. It says purpose. The U.S. has less than 5% of the world's population and yet funds around three quarters of global pharmaceutical profits.
This 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 USA. The US has for too long turned its back on Americans who unwittingly sponsor both drug manufacturers and other countries.
These 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 health care programs. Drug 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 US to negotiate the best prices for patients. The inflated prices in the US fuel global innovation while foreign health systems get a free ride. This abuse of Americans' generosity, who deserve low-cost pharmaceuticals on the same terms as other developed nations, must end.
Americans will no longer be forced to pay almost three times more for the exact same medications often made in the exact same factories. As the largest purchaser of pharmaceuticals, Americans should get the best deal. And while I need to pore over this thing more closely because it's several pages long, single-spaced, and pretty dense, he's saying that he's addressing Kennedy
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Chapter 8: What other key political and global issues are discussed in this episode?
Isn't there something called economies of scale? The more you sell, the cheaper and the more you have to make, the cheaper it is to manufacture each unit.
Yes. So here's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya talking about how they're not anti-drug company. You 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.
What we're going to do is make sure that those prices become much closer to equal, like a competitive market you'd expect. Right now what's happening is the American people are subsidizing in large fraction the research and development efforts for drug companies around the world by the higher prices that we pay. With this new order, Europe will share the burden of that.
And in fact, if you may think of it as somehow it's going after drug companies, actually it's helping drug companies.
Because 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, look, 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.
And that, I think, Walter, is why the pharma stocks went up after Trump's presser. Dr. Bhattacharya explained that and Trump explained it too, which was if these foreign countries continue, that can afford these drugs at a higher level, continue to act like they're paupers and not pay at least the American drug companies a fair price for the drugs, then I don't know what Trump's going to do.
Tear off them? He's going to do something to try to exact a penalty on these Americans countries that have deep pockets, but have been grifting off of us for too long. And that's why I was watching CNBC this morning, something I very rarely do. And the big pharma stocks were down.
Then Trump held his presser and immediately they all started to climb because I think they heard that there is some measure of comfort being built in there, at least for the American big pharma companies.
Let me launch a rather elaborate metaphor, but a colorful one. The United States is like a member of a family who hits it big in Hollywood and they suddenly become rich and they have a big house and, you know, money coming in. And all of a sudden, all the relatives say, hey, man, can you help me? Help me with my car payment. Hey. My son just got sick. Can you help with his hospital bills?
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