President Donald Trump charged Thursday without evidence that the pharmaceutical industry was behind House Democrats' impeachment proceedings, suggesting it was payback for his administration's effort to lower drug costs.

We regret to report that the president of the United States is becoming increasingly unglued, which is a troublesome development when the only glue holding him together in the first place was right wing memes, fake Time magazine covers, and a barely comprehensible text chain with Rudy Giuliani. Never the picture of mental stability, this new Donald Trump has responded to allegations that he withheld aid from Ukraine unless the country investigated his political rival—which he literally did!—with a series of statements, tweets, and conspiracy theories that would concern even Batshit Trump 1.0. Those include but are not limited to: calling for the whistle-blower’s sources to be executed, ranting that Rep. Adam Schiff should be arrested and charged with treason, threatening a Civil War, and something about jockstraps. Which brings us to today, when the president floated the theory that Big Pharma is behind the push to impeach him. Yes.

“We’re lowering the cost of prescription drugs, taking on the pharmaceutical companies. You think that’s easy? It’s not easy,” Trump said at an event in Florida. “They come at you from all different sides. I wouldn’t be surprised if the hoax didn’t come a little bit from some of the people that we’re taking on. They’re very powerful. They spend a lot of money. Spend, I think, more money than any other group in the world, actually, in terms of lobbying and lobbying abilities. And I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the nonsense that we all have to go through—but that I go through—wouldn’t be surprised if it was from some of these industries like pharmaceuticals that we take on.”

Like most of Trump’s conspiracy theories—including the very one about Joe Biden that he’s trying to get Ukraine, and now China, to investigate—there is zero evidence that the pharmaceutical industry is somehow behind his current woes. It’s also not clear if he’s suggesting that drug companies got the whistle-blower to file the complaint, if he’s saying they‘re funding the impeachment inquiry, or some other collection of indecipherable nonsense that can only come from the brain matter of a deeply unhinged individual. (Maybe Purdue, using mind control, made him ask Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on the Bidens! No one is talking about that but maybe they should be!)

Because he’s been engaging in corruption seemingly his entire life, to the point that it’s second nature, Trump still appears to believe that he did nothing wrong, which is why he can’t wrap his head around the fact that Democrats didn’t need to be bought off to launch an impeachment inquiry. And because he’s not very bright, he can’t even come up with an industry that might actually make any sense to be in cahoots with Nancy Pelosi, et al. (Days before the whistle-blower complaint was released, Pelosi unveiled a plan to cut drug prices, which Republicans panned.)

Asked about the suggestion that the drug companies—which are obviously evil and probably would try to fund something like this if they thought it would help their bottom line—are behind all this, a spokeswoman for PhRMA, a trade group for biopharmaceutical research companies, told CNBC that it “is ridiculous you are asking me about it. Of course we are not” pushing for impeachment. That’ll either fuel Trump to run with this crackpot idea, or tweet tomorrow that it’s John McCain from beyond the grave.

senorgrand wrote: Fri Oct 04, 2019 11:42 am he will never drop below 35% or so. too much Koolaid.