September 12th, 2025Dealing with Mad King a bitter pill to swallow, says Jeff Glorfeld

An item from the news: eagle-eyed members of the “news” media recently noticed something unusual about the physical condition of the US president, Donald J Trump, known to many here as Mad King Donny, or as Dear Leader, in homage to his close friend Kim Jong Un, supreme leader of North Korea.
Two things from the news, actually. In a photograph of the president, who is rarely seen in public without a heavy coating of orange-coloured Spackle, it was observed that the back of one of his hands had been plastered with an almost skin-toned substance in an obvious attempt to hide some kind of wound or abrasion.
In a move that surprised no one, Dear Leader’s media team quickly issued a lie, claiming that the Selleys gap-filler had been applied to the president’s hand to cover up bruising caused by it having received too many manly handshakes from his many manly admirers.
This bit of nonsense led the intrepid “news” media to examine more photographs of Dear Leader, whereby it was decided that either the president was wearing six pairs of heavy woollen socks, or his ankles were showing signs of extreme swelling.
This next bit is what in the “news” media is called doing a “backgrounder”. US president Donald J Trump is 79 years old. He is visibly overweight and has made known his preferred diet of chain-store food and diet Coke.
He does not exercise and his only outdoor activity is golfing; he never walks a course, he drives a cart. And where previous presidents since that nice Richard Nixon in the 1960s underwent medical exams and chose to release the results to the public, Dear Leader’s medics instead issue reports declaring him to be “in very good health”.
Eventually Dear Leader’s media corp were forced to come up with a plausible sounding condition to explain the plastered-over hand scar and the ankles swelling over the tops of his shoes: it’s “chronic venous insufficiency”, and happily it can be written off as “not a serious medical condition,” “treatable”, and “very common in older adults”, according to Dear Leader’s mouthpiece, Karoline Leavitt, who might be the most accomplished teller of tales to hold the position of White House press secretary.
Until CNN’s Jake Tapper, author of the recent non-seller book Original Sin, which blew the lid off the cover-up that former president Joe Biden was old, decides the time is right to publish a new book about Dear Leader’s dirty secret – that he’s old too, and fat – we might never know the truth about his “chronic venous insufficiency”, or CVI. But in the unlikely event that Dear Leader’s media handlers are telling the truth, and all he does have is CVI, one part of its treatment is with blood-thinning medication, and the most common trademarked blood-thinning medication is Eliquis.

Here is where I, the reporter, breaks the fourth wall, turning to you, the audience, and reveals that I too have been diagnosed with a medical condition for which a blood thinner has been prescribed.
I went to a cardiologist here in my northern California hometown, he said I had a condition and needed to take a blood thinner, Eliquis. Now, my father was also on Eliquis so I knew it was expensive. How expensive, you ask? Costs vary but generally it’s more than $US800 for 60 tablets, without insurance. Users can sometimes find discounts that bring the price down to about $480.
I told the cardiologist that I simply could not afford Eliquis. Anticipating my response, he told me not to worry, that he would write my prescription for a pharmacy in Canada, where the medication is available in generic form, apixaban, not controlled under patent by a US-based pharmaceutical company. That way, the cost to me would be about $US160 for 180 tablets.
That relationship has been going along fine for the past two years, until our Dear Leader decided to start a trade war with Canada, with me caught in the crossfire.
My most recent shipment of this seemingly vital medication failed to arrive, and then one day I received a notification from the US Food and Drug Administration telling me that my medication had been “detained” and subject to “administrative destruction”.
I sent back a reply, which attracted this response: “Due to the HHS [Health and Human Services] restructuring, effective April 1, 2025, our response time may vary. Thank you for your patience.”
A series of emails followed, culminating in this:”We understand there may be a cost difference of drugs purchased in another country. However, please be advised that cost is not a factor considered for personal use.”
So, a doctor prescribes a medication that presumably is important for the patient’s wellbeing, and also facilitates a cheaper source of the medication. But according to the US government, the cost of the medication. which is largely determined by government policy, is of no interest. That’s good to know.

OK, here’s that second news item. In early July it was reported that Dear Leader (let’s go with Mad King Donny here) was upset about Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Apparently those same Big Pharma folks who keep my Eliquis incredibly expensive don’t like Australians having access to cheaper medications and want the Mad King to apply his tariffs blowtorch – 200 per cent on pharmaceuticals and 50 per cent on copper, along with his previous hits on steel and aluminium.
The Albanese government has reportedly been negotiating with the US but, really, is there any way to make sense of the Mad King?

A packet of Eliquis, and one tablet of Eliquis, left, and one of generic apixaban

Former Wheatsheaf resident Jeff Glorfeld, and his wife Carol, went back some years ago to California, the land of his birth, where they have survived bushfires, snowstorms and drought. And Trump. And Covid. And Trump again. Jeff is also the voice behind The Down Under Hour broadcast every Wednesday at 1pm, in California, on radio KKRN 88.5FM. The show can be live-streamed at KKRN.org In Victoria that’s 7am Thursday.