Dr. Mehmet Oz got his math completely wrong while trying to defend President Donald Trump on drug prices.

NBC’s Kristen Welker pointed out in an interview Wednesday night that Trump has repeatedly mentioned cutting drug prices by more than 100 percent, even throwing out mathematically impossible figures such as “1,200; 1,300; 1,400; 1,500 percent.” Welker asked Oz if making cuts of 100 percent or higher would essentially make drugs free.

“Is that a realistic goal from the president?” she asked. The former TV host failed to clear things up.

“The president does the calculation by saying, ‘OK, if a drug was $100 and you reduce it to $50, it’s 100 percent cheaper because you’re taking $50 off and left with only $50, so the amount you took off the price is equal to the amount that’s left. They’re equal so it’s 100 percent,” Oz replied.

Walker reminded Oz that Trump threw out 1,500 percent as one figure, and Oz doubled down in his reply.

“Well, if you take a drug that is $200 or $240, like we did last week, and reduce it to $10, those are the numbers you’re talking about. That stated, the bigger question we should be asking ourselves is why didn’t we do this earlier?” Oz said.

Oz’s explanation does not back up the president’s impossible numbers, nor does it reflect reality. Meanwhile, health care costs stand to go up significantly if Affordable Care Act tax subsidies expire at the end of the year, an issue at the center of the current government shutdown. Will the president offer a coherent solution or keep throwing out numbers that don’t make sense?

Some of America’s largest corporations are backing Donald Trump’s $300 million ballroom.

With no warning, the president razed the White House’s East Wing this week to make way for his lavish project, destroying the portion of the building that has traditionally been the starting point for White House tours and served as the dedicated space for the first lady’s offices.

Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office Wednesday, Trump said the 90,000-square-foot ballroom would be nearly twice the size of the White House, and quietly added $100 million on top of the project’s previously announced price tag. He also swore that the government would not bear the cost of the gathering space, noting that it would be paid “100 percent by me and some friends of mine.”

Those “friends” include the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, according to a list released by the Trump administration of people and companies expected to attend a dinner about the construction project. Other stand-out names include the defense titan Palantir, cell service provider T-Mobile, and the names of some of the country’s wealthiest families.

Read the full list below.

Donations are being managed by the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit that previously oversaw the restoration of the Washington Monument in the wake of the 2011 earthquake. Exactly how Trump will be aggregating the funds, however, is not totally clear. Some of the expected money will come by way of previous arrangements in Trump’s settled lawsuits. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, for instance, agreed to contribute $22 million to the ballroom’s construction as recompense for banning Trump from YouTube in the fallout of the January 6 Capitol riot.

At least one unlisted entity is already roped into the ballroom development plan, according to Trump: the U.S. military.

“We’re also working with the military on it because they want to make sure everything is perfect,” Trump said. “And the military is very much involved in this. They want to make sure everything is absolutely beautiful.”

Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that he’d been personally insulted by Israel’s “very stupid” move to annex the West Bank.

While preparing to depart from Ben Gurion airport after a two-day trip to Israel, Vance was asked about the Israeli Knesset voting in support of a bill that would apply Israeli sovereignty to the occupied Palestinian West Bank, where the Israeli military and settler killings of Palestinians continue.

“When I asked about it, somebody told me that it was a political stunt, that it had no practical significance. It was purely symbolic,” Vance said. “I mean, look, if it was a political stunt, it was a very stupid political stunt and I personally take some insult to it.

“The West Bank is not gonna be annexed by Israel,” he added. “The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel. That will continue to be our policy, and if people want to take symbolic votes, they can do that. But we certainly weren’t happy about it.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar claimed that the opposition had staged the vote to “embarrass the government” during Vance’s visit, adding that the bill did not have the support of the government. Last month, Sa’ar himself publicly floated annexing the West Bank.

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