Trump touts cutting drug prices, slams fellow Republican Rep. Massie during stops in Ohio, Kentucky

HEBRON, Ky. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday touted lowering prescription drug prices in Ohio and campaigned in the Kentucky district of Rep. Thomas Massie, calling his fellow Republican a “nutjob” he said should lose their party's upcoming primary.

It was a full day on the road as Trump attempted to project economic and political strength even as war in Iran has scrambled financial markets and hurt his poll numbers.

Massie is one of the few remaining Republicans who has dared defy Trump in Congress, and the president took the unusual step of holding a rally in Massie's northern Kentucky district. He gleefully told the crowd, “I just can't stand this guy,” and called him “stupid” and a “disaster.”

“We’ve got to get rid of this loser,” said Trump, who has endorsed Massie’s challenger, Ed Gallrein, in Kentucky's primary on May 19.

The event felt like vintage Trump from his reelection bid in 2024 — so much so that he briefly called Gallrein, a farmer, business owner and retired Navy SEAL, to the stage. There, Gallrein declared, “Tom Massie stands with the ladies of ‘The View.’ Mr. President, we stand with you!”

The trip was a test of Trump’s ability to cleanse his party of those who oppose him, but also to try to stay on an economic message increasingly strained by the military action launched by the U.S. and Israel against Iran.

Polls show that Americans were increasingly wary of Trump’s handling of the economy even before the conflict began, and fighting there has derailed Trump’s messaging, as the low gas prices he once bragged about are now surging and stocks that had set record highs have slipped.

Employers also cut an unexpectedly high 92,000 jobs in February, and revisions trimmed another 69,000 jobs from December and January payrolls — which the White House had previously hailed as “blockbuster.”

Trump's swing began with a tour of Thermo Fisher Scientific in suburban Cincinnati. There, he discussed his administration's efforts to persuade major manufacturers to lower prescription medication prices so that they are closer to what is charged abroad.

“I used some very strong negotiating talent to get every single country to almost immediately approve,” he told reporters.

But the president also told reporters that what was happening in Iran was “an excursion that will keep us out of a war.” He added of Tehran, “for them, it’s a war. For us, it’s turned out to be easier than we thought.”

Later, at the Kentucky rally, Trump suggested the conflict wasn't about to end, saying, “We don’t want to leave early, do we? We’ve got to finish the job.”

He said that Iran was on the verge of rebuilding its nuclear capabilities, saying that fighting needed to continue so, “We don’t want to go back every two years.”

That contradicts many previous Trump claims and justifications for the U.S. and Israel launching strikes on Iran — not the least of which was Trump saying U.S. strikes last summer had obliterated that country's nuclear capabilities.

Also Wednesday, Trump did an interview with Cincinnati’s WKRC-TV CBS and said he planned to tap the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in an effort to bring down gasoline prices.

“Right now, we’ll reduce it a little bit, and that brings the prices down,” Trump said, without providing details.

That interview followed the president acknowledging during the tour of the drug factory that stock markets had been volatile as gas prices have risen, saying, “I figured we’d be hit a little bit. But, we were hit probably less than I thought.”

“We’ll be back on track in a pretty short while,” Trump said. “Prices are coming down very substantially. Oil will be coming down.”

At the rally, the president stressed the importance of Republicans winning the midterms, ticking off his administration’s accomplishments while telling the crowd, “The midterms are going to be very, very important to keep it going.”

But that doesn't extend to Massie, who Trump called “the worst.”

Massie is an outspoken Trump critic who opposed the White House-backed tax and spending measure and bucked Trump by pushing to have files related to the sex trafficking investigations into Jeffrey Epstein released.

He’s also criticized the U.S. strike on Venezuela that toppled then-President Nicolás Maduro and, most recently, the war in Iran.

Massie told The Cincinnati Enquirer that Trump’s endorsement is “all my opponent has going for him.” adding that Gallrein “has promised to be a rubber stamp when he gets to Washington D.C. and I don’t think people here want a rubber stamp.”

Wednesday's swing was part of a tour the White House said would see Trump travel the country and attempt to show that he’s taking kitchen table issues seriously and reassure voters nervous about still-rising prices and economic growth. It followed Democrats pushing the message that the everyday cost of living remained too high and winning the Virginia and New Jersey governors' races in November.

Since then, the president has made stops in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Texas — though his speeches have sometimes been more focused on his own political grievances than on his plans to help lower everyday costs across the country.

Even in Kentucky, Trump spent long stretches mocking his Democratic predecessor, President Joe Biden, and slammed California Gov. Gavin Newsom for publicly talking about his dyslexia, saying “I don’t want the president of the United States to have a cognitive deficiency.”

Then, while flying back to Washington, Trump took to his social media website to again criticize Newsom on dyslexia, which is a learning disability. Trump called the governor “a Cognitive Mess.”

This story has been updated to fix the name of the local Ohio newspaper. It is The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Weissert contributed from Washington. Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed from Washington.

President Donald Trump speaks as he visits Thermo Fisher Scientific, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump poses for a photo during a visit to Thermo Fisher Scientific, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump boards Air Force One, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One, Monday, March 9, 2026, at Miami International Airport in Miami. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

MIAMI (AP) — A close ally of ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was charged Monday with bribing top officials to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from lucrative contracts to import food at a time of widespread hardship in the South American country.

Alex Saab made his initial court appearance after being deported over the weekend by acting President Delcy Rodríguez as part of a purge of insider businessmen who are believed to have enriched themselves through corrupt dealings with Maduro.

Shackled and wearing a beige prison uniform, Saab answered “Yes, ma'am,” in English after being asked by a federal judge in Miami whether he understood the charges against him: a single count of money laundering tied to a decade-old conspiracy to create fake companies, falsify shipping records and skim from government contracts to import food from Colombia and Mexico.

Saab, 54, was previously charged during the first Trump administration in 2019 and then arrested during a refueling stop in Cape Verde on what the Venezuelan government described as a high-level humanitarian mission to Iran.

But President Joe Biden pardoned him in 2023 in exchange for the release of several imprisoned Americans in Venezuela. The deal, part of a failed effort by the Biden White House to lure Maduro into holding a free presidential election, was harshly criticized by Republicans and federal law enforcement officials, who immediately began investigating Saab for other alleged crimes not covered by the narrowly tailored pardon.

U.S. officials have long described Saab as Maduro's “bag man” and could ask him to serve as a valuable character witness against his former protector, who is awaiting trial on drug charges in Manhattan after being captured in a raid by the U.S. military in January.

The new U.S. prosecution of Saab is taking place against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul relations with Venezuela.

Trump and senior administration officials have heaped praise on Rodríguez, who has thrown open Venezuela's oil industry to U.S. investment at a time of surging oil prices tied to the war in Iran. In exchange, the White House has dampened talk of elections, which are required by Venezuela's constitution within 30 days of the president becoming “permanently unavailable.”

But Rodríguez faces enormous domestic pressures from the more radical, ideological wing of the ruling socialist party, some of whom, like Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, wield great influence inside Venezuelan security forces and face criminal charges themselves in the U.S.

Mario Silva, who for years spread pro-government propaganda as the host of a program on state TV before being removed from the airwaves after Maduro's capture, questioned the legality of Saab's removal, saying it violates a constitutional ban on extradition.

“The imperialists don't negotiate. They conquer, test and probe — until our country shatters,” said Silva in a livestream posted Sunday on social media. “Nobody is safe right now.”

Cabello, for his part, expressed support for Saab's deportation, saying he had obtained his Venezuela national ID through illegal means.

Perhaps anticipating blowback, Venezuela's immigration authority, SAIME, in a statement Saturday referred to Saab only as a “Colombian citizen" implicated in several criminal investigations in the U.S. Rodríguez on state TV Monday echoed those sentiments, saying she was committed to defending Venezuela's national interests.

Rodríguez heaped on Saab a few years ago during the international campaign Venezuela's government mounted to free him from U.S. custody. Serving then as Maduro's vice president, she described Saab as an “innocent Venezuelan diplomat” who had been illegally “kidnapped” by the U.S.

But as Rodríguez cements her rule, she has distanced herself from Saab, firing him from her Cabinet and stripping him of his role as the main conduit for foreign companies looking to invest in Venezuela.

Saab amassed a fortune through Venezuelan government contracts. The indictment against him in 2019 was tied to a government contract for low-income housing that was never built.

The new indictment stems from another case the Justice Department brought against Saab’s longtime partner over the so-called CLAP program set up by Maduro to provide staples — rice, corn flour, cooking oil — to poor Venezuelans at a time of rampant hyperinflation and a crumbling currency.

Saab had been identified in the 2021 indictment as “Co-Conspirator 1” and allegedly helped set up a web of companies used to bribe a pro-Maduro governor who awarded the business partners a contract to import food boxes from Mexico at an inflated price.

As U.S. sanctions crippled Venezuela’s foreign trade, Saab and others allegedly expanded their corrupt influence deep inside the Maduro government, accessing billions of dollars in oil sales from state-run oil company PDVSA, prosecutors said in a five-page indictment unsealed Monday.

Now in U.S. custody, he could be asked to testify against his former protector — something he has considered in the past.

Saab secretly met with the Drug Enforcement Administration before his first arrest and, in a closed-door court hearing in 2022, his lawyers revealed that the businessman for years had helped the DEA untangle corruption in Maduro’s inner circle. As part of that cooperation, he forfeited more than $12 million in illegal proceeds from dirty business dealings.

AP writer Regina Garcia Cano in Mexico City and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

This story is part of an investigation that includes the FRONTLINE documentary “Crisis in Venezuela,” which aired Feb. 10, 2026, on PBS. Watch the documentary at pbs.org/frontline, in the PBS App and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel.

FILE - Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, left, and Alex Saab stand together during an event marking the anniversary of the 1958 coup that overthrew dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez, in Caracas, Venezuela, Jan. 23, 2024. (AP Photo/Jesus Vargas, File)