President Donald Trump is in the midst of promoting what he says are commonsense policies that will usher in the ‘golden age’ for America, with his platform bolstered by a handful of traditional Democratic platforms, Fox News Digital found.
‘In everything we do, we’re putting America first, because the Republican Party is now known as the party of common sense. It’s the party of common sense. Very important. I think it’s a very important phrase for you to use. It’s all about common sense. We’re conservative, and, you know, we’re a lot of things, but most important thing is we have to use common sense,’ Trump said in February while addressing a conference of the nation’s Republican governors.
As liberals and media talking heads bashed Trump on the campaign trail as a ‘threat to democracy’ and compared him to Adolf Hitler, roughly four months into his administration, Trump has rolled out policies or made favorable remarks toward issues that Democrats have long rallied around during campaign events or in the chambers of Congress.
Trump held a press conference flanked by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other health officials on Monday morning to sign an executive order to lower drug prices by up to 80%. The executive order specifically ‘directs the U.S. Trade Representative and Secretary of Commerce to take action to ensure foreign countries are not engaged in practices that purposefully and unfairly undercut market prices and drive price hikes in the United States.’
‘The principle is simple – whatever the lowest price paid for a drug in other developed countries, that is the price that Americans will pay,’ Trump said at the White House during the executive order signing ceremony. ‘Some prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices will be reduced almost immediately by 50 to 80 to 90%.’
‘Starting today, the United States will no longer subsidize the healthcare of foreign countries, which is what we were doing. We’re subsidizing others’ healthcare, the countries where they paid a small fraction of what for the same drug that what we pay many, many times more for and will no longer tolerate profiteering and price-gouging from Big Pharma,’ he added.
Fox News Digital reported earlier this week that Trump’s executive order effectively amounts to price controls on pharmaceuticals.
‘We see price caps after natural disasters,’ he argued. ‘We call them anti-gouging laws, and they produce shortages. And so that’s what we can expect price controls to produce when it comes to pharmaceuticals as well — that’s if you have a binding price ceiling, you’re going to get a shortage, and I think it’s totally a wrong-headed thing.’
Lowering prescription drug prices through control measures and government intervention has been a cornerstone of Democratic platforms, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders vowing during his 2020 presidential campaign to lower such prices by 50% if elected and then-Vice President Kamala Harris issuing a tie-breaking vote in the Senate in 2022 to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which empowered the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to negotiate prices for certain pharmaceuticals covered by Medicare.
Trump celebrated during the executive order signing that he was taking on ‘price gouging’ from ‘Big pharma,’ which he argued is an industry that had been protected by Democrats until his administration.
Kennedy, the son of Democratic Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew to former Democratic President John F. Kennedy, celebrated that the Trump administration came through on the promise of lowering drug prices after decades of Democrats vowing they would enact such a plan.
‘This is an extraordinary day,’ he said from the White House. ‘… I grew up in the Democratic Party and every major Democratic leader for 20 years has been making this promise to the American people. This was the fulcrum of Bernie Sanders’ runs for the presidency, that he was going to eliminate this discrepancy between Europe and the United States. As it turns out, none of them were doing it. And it’s one of these promises that politicians make to their constituents, knowing that they’ll never have to do it. And the reason they’ll never do it is because they know that Congress is controlled in so many ways by the pharmaceutical industry.’
Sanders issued a statement following Trump’s executive order, declaring, ‘I agree with President Trump’ regarding how Americans pay ‘the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs,’ before warning that the executive order would likely be thrown out by the courts and that Trump should support his upcoming legislation to tackle drug prices.
When asked about Trump promoting policies typically touted by Democrats, the White House celebrated how Trump has transformed the GOP ‘to again become the party of the working class.’
‘President Trump oversaw a historic transformation of the GOP to again become the party of the working class. While Democrats spent decades talking about helping everyday Americans, President Trump is actually delivering – revealing Democrats’ incompetence and corruption in the process,’ White House spokesman Kush Desai said.
House Republicans released a portion of Trump’s tax agenda late on Friday evening, as Trump continues rallying lawmakers to pass his ‘big, beautiful bill’ that will fund his agenda. Included in the proposal is an expansion of the child tax credit – which has long been featured on Democrats’ policy platforms.
While on the campaign trail, the Trump team said the president would consider a ‘significant expansion of the child tax credit that applies to American families,’ FOX Business reported in August.
While then-Ohio Sen. JD Vance said during the campaign that he would ‘love to see a child tax credit that’s $5,000 per child,’ he added, ‘but you, of course, have to work with Congress to see how possible and viable that is.’
A portion of the legislation released by the House Ways & Means Committee last week would increase the current maximum child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,500.
Top Democrats from Harris to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have promoted massive expansions of the child tax credit, including Harris campaigning on a proposal to provide a $6,000 tax credit for parents of newborns.
‘That is a vital, vital year of critical development of a child,’ Harris said during her presidential campaign. ‘And the cost can really add up, especially for young parents who need to buy diapers and clothes and a car seat and so much else.’
Trump also broke with the traditional Republican ideology of not increasing taxes, saying he would ‘love’ to tax wealthier Americans as part of a ‘redistribution’ effort.
‘People would love to do it. Rich people. I would love to do it, frankly. Giving us something up top in order to make people in the middle income and the lower income brackets [have] more. So, it’s really a redistribution,’ Trump said last week.
Trump added on Truth Social last Friday that such a tax increase on the wealthy would spark outrage from Democrats and likely comparisons to former President George H.W. Bush increasing taxes during his administration. Trump, however, added that he is open to the move if that is what Republican lawmakers approve.
‘The problem with even a ‘TINY’ tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming, ‘Read my lips,’ the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election. NO, Ross Perot cost him the Election!’ Trump wrote.
‘In any event, Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do!!!’ he added.
Swaths of the Democratic Party have touted raising taxes on the wealthy out of an effort to reduce income inequality, including Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
Slogans of ‘tax the rich’ and calls for the wealthy to ‘pay their fair share’ were also a hallmark of the 2020 federal and down-ballot elections, including for former President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
‘Corporations need to pay their fair share in taxes,’ Biden posted on social media in November 2019. ‘I’ll reverse Trump’s giveaway to the super-wealthy and corporations because it’s time we reward work, not just wealth.’
‘As president, I’ll make sure giant corporations and the super-wealthy pay their fair share in taxes — and then invest that money in growing a stronger, more inclusive middle class,’ he wrote weeks later in December 2019.
Trump, himself, was a registered Democrat for periods of his life, including during the early 2000s, before he switched back to the Republican Party in 2009, New York City election board data show.
He has also found support from a handful of former Democrats, such as Kennedy and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, with Kennedy registering as an Independent last year during his own presidential campaign and Gabbard registering as a Republican and endorsing Trump during the campaign cycle. Gabbard herself briefly ran for president as a Democrat in the 2020 cycle before dropping out to endorse Biden.
While longtime Democrat voter and tech billionaire Elon Musk also broke with the party and endorsed Trump over the summer before becoming a fixture at rallies and ultimately serving as the public leader of the Department of Government Efficiency as a special government employee.
‘We actually got a lot of great Democratic support, we just got RFK [Jr.], of course, Tulsi Gabbard, who endorsed the president in just the last couple of days,’ Vance said while on the campaign trail in August.
Trump has touted that the Republican Party has become the ‘common sense’ party and that his policies are ‘all about common sense.’
‘In everything we do, we’re putting America first, because the Republican Party is now known as the party of common sense. It’s the party of common sense. Very important. I think it’s a very important phrase for you to use. It’s all about common sense. We’re conservative, and, you know, we’re a lot of things, but most important thing is we have to use common sense,’ Trump said in February while addressing a conference of the nation’s Republican governors.
Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind, Megan Henney, Diana Stancy and Chad Pergram contributed to this report.