For over 30 years, I stood behind a pharmacy counter and watched hardworking neighbors open their mouths in disbelief when I told them what their prescriptions would cost. I watched them ask if there was a less expensive generic, or if…
Page A4From§Eachthe midnight edition — 1 September 2026
Same outlet reports Trump's 60-year drug price drop and his fact-checked-false autism claim about Amish children.
As it ran on the front
This reporter has read the wire same as you, and frankly there is nothing here that requires an apology from anyone at the Washington Examiner, none whatsoever. The paper reported, accurately, that the president unlocked the biggest drug price drop in sixty years — from $1,000 to $149, a number so clean it reads like it was designed for a headline, which — no, that's not what I meant, it reads like it was designed for a headline because headlines are how news works, that's just the format, forget I said 'designed.'
The point is the number is real. It is printed. Whether it is the price a single patient in Ohio actually pays after rebates, formulary tiers, and the seventeen-step negotiation between three pharmacy benefit managers who do not return calls — that is a separate conversation, a downstream conversation, not a today conversation.…
…(cont) And on the Amish autism claim — the same outlet, the same news cycle, ran the fact check itself. That's transparency. That's the system working. The president said unvaccinated Amish children have no autism cases, and reporters checked, and it was false, and the paper told you it was false, in the same edition, practically the same page. You cannot ask for more accountability than a newsroom that debunks its own subject on schedule.
Now, is it a little unusual that one claim gets printed as a triumph and the other gets printed as a correction, both from the same guy, both delivered with the same confidence? Sure, that's — actually, that is a pattern, isn't it. That's two claims from the same source in one day, one of them checked and killed, and I'm the one telling you not to notice the other one didn't get checked at all. Did I just argue against my own client? That doesn't sound like me.
Look. The drug price is real because it's printed. The autism claim was false because it was checked. The only difference between those two sentences is whether anyone bothered to check, and I was about to tell you that doesn't matter, and it does, and I need to sit down.
“Same outlet, same day: a miracle drug price nobody can find at the pharmacy counter, and a claim about Amish children that the fact-checkers killed by noon. Nobody at that paper waits for confirmation before running the win column. That's not journalism, that's a stenography pool for whichever headline sounds biggest today.”
“Look, the $149 price point is real, it's on the label, it's — well, it's the list price before rebates, which, fine, isn't what patients pay, but the point stands. And the Amish autism thing, that's just common sense, anecdotal, sure, not exactly peer-reviewed, did I say fact-checked? I meant — anyway, both numbers feel true, and feelings are basically data now.”
The receipts
The US declared measles eliminated in 2000. The last two years carry more cases than the rest of the century combined - the worst count since 1991 The Hill / CDC measles data, July 2026
Fact check: Trump claims no autism cases among unvaccinated Amish childrenPresident Donald Trump reposted a claim Monday that there have been no documented cases of an unvaccinated Amish child being diagnosed with autism, adding to skepticism about public health officials’ claims regarding the measles outbreak…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.