Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick faced a tough interview on Fox News, attempting to defend President Donald Trump's recent assertion that he had negotiated drug price reductions of up to 600%—a claim widely ridiculed as mathematically nonsensical.
Fox News Host Challenges 'Impossible' Figures
The awkward exchange occurred on Thursday, 18 December 2025, following President Trump's primetime address to the nation the previous night. During that speech, Trump pushed a series of mistruths and exaggerations, stating he had secured deals with pharmaceutical companies to lower prices by "as much as 400, 500 and even 600 percent."
Fox News host John Roberts confronted Lutnick with the basic arithmetic problem. "Well, if you cut something by 100 percent, the cost goes down to zero," Roberts stated. "If you cut it by four or five or 600 percent, the drug companies are actually paying you to take their product. So it raises the question, how much of last night's speech was hyperbole and how much was fact?"
Lutnick's Rambling Defence
Lutnick initially responded with a laugh and a "no" before launching into a confusing explanation. He argued that the percentage "depends on when you look at it." Using a hypothetical example of a drug price falling from $100 to $13, Lutnick claimed this could be viewed as an 87% reduction or, conversely, that the lower price would need to rise by 700% to return to the original.
"It's 700 percent higher [than] before, it's down 700 percent now, right?" Lutnick said, conflating percentage points and mathematical logic. He concluded, "But basically what he's saying, and we all know what he's saying, is we are hammering the price of drugs down."
Wider Fact-Check of Trump's Address
The 600% claim was just one of several false statements in Trump's 18-minute address that were fact-checked extensively across multiple news networks. CNN's fact-checker Daniel Dale accused the President of "repeating the same core batch of lies."
Other debunked assertions from the speech included blaming former President Joe Biden for current economic troubles, lamenting a "colossal border invasion," and falsely claiming inflation was "the worst in 48 years" when he took office in January 2025. The address was significant enough that several major networks cleared their schedules to broadcast it live.
The incident highlights the ongoing tension between the Trump administration's penchant for dramatic, numerically dubious claims and the media's attempts to hold them to account, even on traditionally friendly outlets like Fox News.
