GOP Candidate Confused, Pimps For Pills
By Sloth
Following the release of a transcript of his interview with the editorial board of The Washington Post on March 21, Donald J. Trump admitted that he had gone off his meds that morning.
The medical mix-up led the Republican front-runner to make long, rambling statements that failed to answer direct questions put to him by the Post’s editorial board members. Yet the candidate saw the interview as another business and political opportunity – this time to solidify his position as a pitchman for the pharmaceuticals industry.
In the hour-long interview given to the newspaper’s editors, opinion page writers and columnists, Trump often seemed unable to stay on topic or even complete full sentences or thoughts. A full, written transcript of the interview, as well as an audio recording of the entire exchange, was posted here:
Rather than clarify his points or apologize for the seeming gaffe that left some Post board members privately questioning whether Trump had been drinking before the meeting, Trump instead tweeted a message to his 7.3 million Twitter followers that simply read, “Keep American Drugs American! Coming soon!”
Later in the day the Trump campaign posted a video on its official website titled, “Keep American Drugs American! Take Your Pills!” As the video begins, the candidate is seen sitting at a large desk aboard his private Boeing 757 aircraft. He addresses the camera:
“Hello, I’m Donald Trump, and this is what I sound like when I go off my meds….” He presses a button on a computer keyboard and listens.
<Audio excerpt of Trump speaking in editorial board interview> “I think we’re all in the same business of trying to make our country better, a better place, so we have something in common. I’ve been treated very, very badly by The Washington Post, but, you know, I guess — and I’m your neighbor, I’m your neighbor right down the road, in fact we’re actually giving a press conference there in a little while, I think your people are going to be there.”
Cutting off the audio feed, Trump chuckles and speaks to the camera again. “What a hoot. I get so loopy when I forget to take my Lithium.”
He then offers the main message of the web video, which is to encourage support of the $374 billion U.S. prescription drug industry.
“Listen, I’m just a regular guy who happens to be tremendously successful at business. And like other regular people, I need some help from the wide range of amazing pharmaceuticals on the market. So I’m here to remind you of something we can all do to make America great again: Take your pills!”
Trump holds up a prescription bottle and says, “Regardless of whether you’re a titan of industry, like me, or a run-of-the-mill patriotic citizen with a tough, ordinary job that Obama and Hillary want to eliminate, we all need to be on top of our game. And that can only happen if we keep U.S. pharmaceutical companies in business by going to our local drug store and buying American.”
Trump laughs and adds, “Obviously, I don’t actually go to a drug store, I have great people for that, but you know what I mean. Unless you’re a loser who’s too stupid to understand what I’m saying, and I know there are a lot of stupid people out there. I could stop taking my Thorazine or Haldol or Thiothixene and stand on 5th Avenue and shoot many, many of those stupid people and people would still love me.”
During the Post interview, Trump makes a disjointed reference to drug maker Pfizer as an example of American jobs moving to foreign soil:
“They’re allowing tremendous people that have worked for the companies for a long time, they’re allowing, if they want to move around and they want to work on incentives within the United States, that’s one thing, but when they take these companies out of the United States. Other countries are outsmarting us by giving them advantages, you know, like in the case of Mexico. In the case of many other countries. Like Ireland is, you’re losing Pfizer to Ireland, a great pharmaceutical company that with many, many jobs and it’s going to move to Ireland.”
In his web video, Trump is shown listening to that comment before nodding and pointing into the camera. “To make America great again,” he says, “we need to keep our pills from going overseas.”
Neither the video nor Trump’s answer in the transcript addresses the original question that was put to him by the editorial board, which dealt with disparities by American law enforcement in the treatment of people of color.
(March 2016)
Sloth Blog 