Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
- Donald Trump said “I won, by the way” during a drug price press briefing on Friday in his first public appearance in a week.
- “We had big pharma against us. We had the media against us. We had big tech against us. We had a lot of dishonesty against us. But big pharma alone ran millions and millions of in ads,” he said.
- Throughout his election campaign, the President said that drug companies would only release a COVID-19 vaccine after the vote.
- However, both Pfizer and Moderna have said that the timing of their announcements have nothing to do with political concerns.
- Yesterday, Pfizer asked the US Food and Drug Administration to review its 95% effective vaccine for emergency authorization.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Donald Trump said, “I won, by the way,” during a drug price press briefing on Friday in his first public appearance in a week.
The outgoing President has repeatedly refused to concede to Joe Biden and has continuously made baseless claims of voter fraud.
Trump called the news conference to announce the implementation of his new drug rules, which could save people thousands of dollars a year but soon got sidetracked and launched an attack on big pharma.
He said at the White House: “Big Pharma ran millions of negative advertising against me during the campaign, which I won, by the way. But you know, we’ll find that out—almost 74 million votes.
“We had the media against us. We had big tech against us. We had a lot of dishonesty against us. But Big Pharma alone ran millions and millions of in ads.”
Trump also attacked the country's largest pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, just hours after his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, took credit for developing its new COVID-19 vaccine.
He added: "Pfizer and others even decided to not assess the results of their vaccine; in other words, not come out with a vaccine until just after the election.
"So they were going to come out in October, but they decided to delay it because of what I'm doing, which is fine with me, because frankly, this is just a very big thing. A very big thing.
"...So they waited and waited and waited. And they thought they'd come out with it a few days after the election."
Both Pfizer and Moderna, which is also developing its own vaccine, have said that the timing of their announcements has nothing to do with political concerns, according to the Independent.
Yesterday, Pfizer asked the US Food and Drug Administration to review its 95% effective vaccine for emergency authorization.
Trump also took credit for this: "Pfizer and others were way ahead on vaccines — you wouldn't have a vaccine if it weren't for me for another four years because FDA would have never been able to do what they did, what I forced them to do."
In September, Trump created a favored-nation policy that requires Medicare to buy drugs at the same rate as other countries rather than having taxpayers pay for research and development costs.
However, pharmaceutical companies say it would give foreign drug manufacturers and governments too much power and will likely lead to court challenges from them, Yahoo News reported.
Trump left the briefing room without taking any questions.
Trump has launched a host of legal challenges across battleground states and not yet won any of them.
After a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday, Republican lawmakers from Michigan said they "have not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election in Michigan."