Mark Halperin tells Charlie Kirk what he thinks is ‘arguably’ media’s ‘biggest mistake’ in covering Trump

Political analyst Mark Halperin told Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on Wednesday that he believes the media makes a significant error by consistently portraying President Donald Trump’s policies “as red meat for the extreme MAGA base.”

Trump has backed policies with widespread support, such as barring biological males from participating in female sports, deporting illegal immigrants, cutting government waste, and lowering the costs of prescription drugs. Halperin argued on “The Charlie Kirk Show” that if former President Barack Obama had taken similar action against the pharmaceutical industry, the press would have celebrated him as “a hero.”

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“I think that this is arguably the biggest mistake the media makes about covering Donald Trump, because they’re constantly characterizing the things he’s for as red meat for the extreme MAGA base. He’s generally for popular things, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Halperin told Kirk. “In fact, you could argue that’s what presidents and people in public office should be. Presidents in the past have known that American people think they pay way too much for prescription drugs, sometimes a shocking price tag, but always higher than people pay in other countries.”

“And so President Trump, again, the details are not fleshed out. It may not work, but President Trump has had the courage, unlike his predecessors, to say to ‘Big Pharma, sorry, time’s up.’ Time’s up for you to charge Americans way more than anybody else,” he continued. “Time’s up for you to use lobbying and campaign donations and negative ads to intimidate politicians. If this were Barack Obama, that story would have been covered like he was a hero, and it wasn’t, but it’s dramatic change.”

The president signed a Monday executive order that he asserted will reduce drug prices by approximately 59% or more and terminate worldwide freeloading off of American investments in pharmaceutical research and development.

“For the first time in many years, we’ll slash the cost of prescription drugs and we will bring fairness to America,” Trump said at the White House. “What’s been happening is we’ve been subsidizing countries around the world.”

The pharmaceutical industry may strongly fight the executive order as Americans generate roughly 64% to 78% of its profits, according to a 2018 white paper published by the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Institute for Public Policy & Government Service.

Major legacy media outlets did not frame the executive order as a positive development.

The New York Times’ Monday headline on Trump’s executive order was “With No Real Policy, Trump Asks Drugmakers to Lower U.S. Prices.” NPR’s headline the same day was “Trump signs an order to reduce drug prices, but it’s unclear how it would work.”

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