President Donald Trump appeared far from his usual blustery self during a White House press conference Thursday, where his energy seemed to dip and his attention wandered as officials discussed new health initiatives.
Sitting beside his appointees rather than standing behind the podium — a rare sight for Trump at press conferences — the president looked unusually fatigued as Dr. Mehmet Oz, now serving as Trump’s administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, detailed new policies on fertility drugs.
Video of Trump fighting and losing to keep his eyes open as Dr. Oz blathered on spread through social media in record time, including scathing comments about Trump’s health, which has been front and center in the news for weeks, and his cognitive fitness.
“This old fat orange adderall addict is unfit for the job!” X user Proud Papa declared.
X user Meliza shared a hilarious post showing four different photos of Trump appearing to fall asleep at public events, captioning the post “From the man who called Biden ‘Sleepy Joe’ Let me introduce…DOZING DON.”
But some people took pity on Trump, “Dr. Oz is boring. I dozed off and I wasn’t even there,” X user John Valentine stated.
But Trump snapped awake a few minutes later after Oz fact-checked him in real time on lowering the price of weight loss drugs.
Trump was asked by a reporter to clarify what he said about a $1,300 drug that was mentioned earlier in the press conference and whether he was referring to extremely pricy weight loss drugs.
“Yeah I was referring to Ozempic or the fat loss drugs.”
“So, those are going to be $150 out-of-pocket for Americans?” the reporter asked.
“Well, they’ll be much lower. They’ll be much lower,” Trump said before Oz quickly interrupted him by tapping Trump on the shoulder and shaking his head.
“Yeah, go ahead,” Trump responded as Oz stepped up to fact check him.
“We have not negotiated those yet. We’re going to be rolling these out over time, ah the GLP category of drugs, which includes Ozempic, have not been negotiated yet,” Oz bravely corrected his commander in chief.
Social media called Trump out on his tendency to just say anything that comes to mind.
“The guy lies about almost everything. He doesn’t know anything,” X user Tejas Prakash Wakade observed.
Another X user agreed, “This dude stays lying!”
“Shout out to Dr Oz. They finna fire his ass though,” this social media poster pointed out.
“That -sshole just be talking sh-t. Don’t even know what he saying, whole administration is hell,” Tara aka Mikki J proclaimed.
Trump doesn’t take well to being upstaged, even if, as in this case, someone is just trying to relay the correct information.
But critics say the real outrage is Trump and Oz are trying to take credit for something former President Joe Biden did before leaving office earlier this year.
The Biden administration announced in January that negotiations were already underway to lower the price of Ozempic for Medicare recipients as part of the Inflation Reduction Act and a more cost-effective price is expected in 2027.
In April of 2023 Biden announced lower prices for 64 prescription drugs for Medicare enrollees, including treatments for cancer, osteoporosis, and substance use disorder, among others. He also lowered the cost of insulin, capping the price at $35, down hundreds of dollars from pervious costs.
One of the first things Trump did on day one of his new administration was to reverse Biden’s policies on drug costs and the Affordable Care Act, but he left the lower cost of insulin and Medicare drug price negotiations alone.
