Obama and Biden achievements that Trump claims for himself

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Trump claims credit for a law capping insulin at $35 a month that was approved under the Biden-Harris administration.

Analysis by Glenn Kessler

We’ve documented many times the false claims that former president Donald Trump has made about his achievements during his presidency. But there are also instances when Trump claims credit for something that either former president Barack Obama or President Joe Biden did. Here’s a recent sampling.

Capped insulin at $35 a month

“Low INSULIN PRICING was gotten for millions of Americans by me, and the Trump Administration, not by Crooked Joe Biden. He had NOTHING to do with it. It was all done long before he so sadly entered office. All he does is try to take credit for things done by others, in this case, ME!”

— Trump, in a social media post, June 8

“And Kamala and Crooked Joe, they try and take credit for $35 insulin. But I was the one that did the $35 insulin, not them.”

— Trump, in a rally speech in Wilkes-Barre, Penn., Aug. 17

“I got insulin down, and they took credit for it, but I got it down to $35. And I said, ‘I hope I win because somebody’s going to take credit.’ It takes a period of time before it kicks in statutorily. And I got it down to $35, which was a very low price, and they took credit for it, which is, you know, now, I’m taking credit because I’m talking to you.”

— Trump, in an interview with comedian Theo Von, Aug. 20


In a constant refrain, Trump accuses Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris of claiming credit for imposing a $35-per-month cap on insulin; in one speech, he denounced it as “a lie.” But this is highly misleading, especially when he says Biden and Harris had nothing to do with a $35 cap.

Trump did establish a voluntary, time-limited model for a $35 monthly cap on insulin that was available only to some seniors enrolled in certain insurance plans. Fewer than half of Medicare Part D prescription drug plans chose to participate, and they were able to select which insulin products would be available at $35. Medicare estimated that the two-year model was made available to about 800,000 Medicare enrollees who used insulin.

Naturally, when Trump ran for reelection in 2020, he falsely claimed that the $35 cap was available to every senior. When he announced the temporary program in 2020, he jabbed, “Sleepy Joe can’t do this.”

Even today, notice how Trump, in one interview, said the program took a “period of time before it kicks in statutorily.” That misleadingly suggests he passed a law, not just authorized a temporary pilot program.

A law is what Biden achieved. Over the opposition of the pharmaceutical industry, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (passed with a tiebreaking vote in the Senate by Harris) permanently required all Part D plans to charge no more than $35 per month for all insulin products; it also limited cost sharing for insulin covered under Part B (Medicare medical insurance) to $35 per month. KFF, a nonprofit health-policy organization, estimated that nearly 3.3 million Americans would benefit from this provision of the law. That’s four times more than people who were covered under Trump’s temporary measure.

Trump announced a small pilot program for a group of seniors with an expiration date; Biden passed a law that benefited every senior. There’s no comparison.

Lowest Black unemployment rate

“Achieved the lowest African American unemployment rate, the lowest ever.”

— Trump, in remarks to Black American business leaders, June 26

The current Black unemployment statistic has been in existence for about 50 years. It fell to 5.3 percent for two months in 2019 during Trump’s presidency before rising to 6.1 percent in February 2020 — and then of course soared above 15 percent during the pandemic.

Trump keeps talking about this “lowest ever” achievement but the Biden-Harris administration topped his brief record. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the Black unemployment rate reached a new low of 4.8 percent in April 2023. The unemployment rate was lower or matched Trump’s 5.3 percent for a total of five months under Biden. As of August, the rate is 6.1 percent.

Passed VA Choice

“In my first term, I gave the VA Choice and made it permanent. You know, VA Choice, when you don’t have a doctor, you go, and you go outside. I mean, people were waiting for four months, for five months. You people probably know it. You have friends that know it very well. They go in for something that was not a big deal, and they’d end up being terminally ill because they couldn’t get to see a doctor. So, I created and have VA Choice. They’d been wanting to do it for 57 years. I got it done, passed in Congress.”

— Trump, remarks to National Guard Association Conference in Detroit, Aug. 26

This was a favorite claim during Trump’s presidency — he said it more than 200 times, according to our database of Trump’s false and misleading claims — but he actually signed the MISSION Act, which was a modest update of the VA Choice law passed by Obama in 2014. The Obama legislation expanded veterans’ ability to go to private doctors.

In 2020, our colleague Ashley Parker documented how this falsehood took root, using it as an example of Trump’s method. “The president’s handling of the VA Choice legislation offers a crystalline window into the anatomy of a Trump lie: the initial false claim, the subsequent embellishment and gilding, the incessant repetition and the clear evidence that he knows the truth but chooses to keep telling the falsehood — all enabled by aides either unwilling or unable to rein him in,” she wrote.

It’s four years later, and Trump is still trying to claim credit for Obama’s achievement.

Saved the auto industry

“When I came into office, the auto industry was on its knees, gasping its last breaths after eight long years of Obama and Biden … It is no exaggeration to state the Trump presidency and the deftly used and applied Trump tariffs and taxes saved the American auto industry from extinction time and time again.”

— Trump, remarks at a campaign rally in Clinton Township, Mich., Sept. 27, 2023

Yet another false claim. During the 2008-2009 Great Recession, Obama (and George W. Bush before him) saved the auto industry with significant interventions. Obama’s Treasury Department, for instance, organized taxpayer-financed reorganizations of General Motors and Chrysler. The auto industry was in good shape when Trump took office in 2017.

Auto retail jobs under Trump declined 77,000 from February 2017 to February 2021, according to the BLS. Auto and auto parts manufacturing jobs saw a slight increase — 2,500 jobs — in the same period. If one looks at job creation before the pandemic tanked the economy, there were 61,000 new auto manufacturing jobs and 38,000 auto retail jobs under Trump though February 2020.

But compare that to Obama’s record: a gain of 238,000 auto manufacturing jobs and 332,000 auto retail jobs. That’s a total of 570,000 jobs — more than five times more than Trump’s pre-pandemic number. Under Biden, auto manufacturing jobs have risen 125,000 and auto retail jobs 146,000 — almost three times more than Trump’s pre-pandemic number. (In a speech on Tuesday in Savannah, Ga., Trump falsely said “our auto industry has been decimated.”)

As for Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum helping the auto industry, that’s wrong too. Automakers reported that Trump’s tariffs cost hundreds of millions of dollars in profits and led to job losses and plant closings.