WASHINGTON — It was wonderful news: Researchers reported this past week the largest-ever one-year decline in the U.S. cancer death rate during 2017. And President Donald Trump didn’t miss the chance to take a bow.
Trump tweeted: “U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History! A lot of good news coming out of this Administration.”
While many presidents have acted as the cheerleader in chief for the good things that happened on their watch, the cancer tweet showed how the president has taken the art of self-marketing to a whole new level.
From foreign policy initiatives to the choice of music at White House events, from the prevalence of “Merry Christmas” greetings to the title of the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal (USMCA), Trump is happy to give himself a public pat on the back — repeatedly — for his great ideas.
As for cancer, the record drop occurred during Trump’s first year in office and was part of a long-running drop that began nearly three decades ago as declining smoking rates and advances in treatment have led to falling rates of lung cancer illnesses and deaths.
But for the president, it was another message well received by his throngs of Twitter followers, with more than 161,000 people liking his tweet and another 25,000 retweeting it as of Friday.
It was all a bit much for Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a breast cancer survivor.
“Cancer rates dropped before you took office. Hopefully they keep dropping because Congress rejected your cruel research budgets, which sought billions in CUTS to @NIH and the National Cancer Institute. This is good news despite you – not because of you,” she tweeted.
The president has supported cutting funding for the agency that oversees health research, although Congress has rejected his recommendations.
Trump also extended credit-taking this past week to international affairs.
At a rally Thursday, Trump said he had a hand in the latest Nobel Peace Prize, which went to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
“I made a deal, I saved a country,” Trump said without mentioning the country by name. “And I just heard the head of that country is now getting the Nobel Peace Prize for saving the country. … Did I have something to do with it? Yeah. But that’s the way it is.”
Ahmed accepted the prize in December for making peace with longtime rival Eritrea and other reforms.
A senior Ethiopian official told The Associated Press the remarks referred to a different issue — preventing further tensions between Ethiopia and Egypt over a massive dam that Ethiopia is completing on the Nile river. Egypt says the dam threatens its water supply. Ethiopia says it’s needed for development.
The official asserted that Egypt’s president lobbied Trump over the disputed dam project, leading to the U.S. taking a role in the discussions. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media on the matter.
“President Trump really believes he avoided a war as such … but that was not the case,” the official said.