‘A Little Unusual’: Trump Opens Up About Meeting With RFK Jr., Dr. Oz, And Drug Company Execs

In a new interview, President-elect Donald Trump shared how he is taking an open-minded approach to health care after meeting with drug company executives last week.

Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker about what he did with his pick to lead the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Dr. Mehmet Oz, his nominee to become Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator, ahead of his second term.

President Trump: We have to get our chronic disease epidemic under control and make our country HEALTHY again pic.twitter.com/5o8XCCA8Vc

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“I did something the other night that was a little unusual at Mar-a-Lago,” Trump said during the “Meet The Press” interview that aired on Sunday. “I called the drug companies. The top drug companies. And I called RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz and some of his people and I said, ‘Let’s all get together and figure out where we’re going, because we’re going to do a lot of things.'”

He said the recent meeting, which reportedly included executives from Pfizer and Eli Lilly, entailed discussions about a wide range of issues.

“We met for a long time and we talked about pricing and we talked about vaccines, you know, in terms of what happens. We talked about pesticides. We talked about everything,” Trump said. He added, in an apparent reference to Kennedy: “And I think a lot of good things are going to come from him. And he’s not going to upset any system. … He’s not looking to, you know, reinvent the wheel, totally. But, when you look at the numbers, we really don’t have a very healthy country.”

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Tackling expenses in the pharmaceutical industry is a top priority, Trump indicated.

“We’re going to reduce prices because the middleman makes more money than the drug companies, in all fairness to the drug companies,” Trump said. “There’s a middleman that nobody even knows who they are. And you look at our prices, they’re much higher than the prices for the same medicine, for the same stuff.”

Trump also dismissed the notion that he opposes all vaccines. He expressed support for Kennedy’s stated position for placing them under increased scrutiny, particularly when it comes to protecting children, and pointed out how autism diagnoses have spiked in recent decades.

“I’m not against vaccines,” Trump said. “The Polio vaccine is the greatest thing. If somebody told me to get rid of the Polio vaccine, they’re going to have to work real hard to convince me. I think … certain vaccines are incredible, but maybe some aren’t. And if they aren’t, we have to find out.”