US Politics
‘On it!’ Trump vows to help cancer-stricken Dilbert creator after public plea to ‘save my life’
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The creator of the popular corporate dystopia comic strip Dilbert made a public plea to Donald Trump for help in accessing an experimental cancer treatment — and on Sunday, the U.S. president said he’d help him out.
Scott Adams, a longtime Trump supporter and far-right activist on social media, revealed his diagnosis of stage 4 prostate cancer earlier this year. In social media postings, the comic strip artist said that his disease had progressed to the point where it had become severely debilitating. In July, he announced to followers that he was battling suicidal ideations.
In a post dated 4:29 a.m. on Sunday, Adams reached out to Trump for help, claiming that a hangup with his health insurance provider, Kaiser of Northern California, was delaying access to a newly-approved cancer treatment drug. The president, Adams said, hoped he could put pressure on the company to approve his treatment plan.
“My healthcare provider, Kaiser of Northern California, has approved my application to receive a newly FDA-approved drug called Pluvicto. But they have dropped the ball in scheduling the brief IV to administer it and I can’t seem to fix that. I am declining fast. I will ask President Trump if he can get Kaiser of Northern California to respond and schedule it for Monday,” said the comic artist.
Trump replied hours later on Truth Social, attaching a screenshot of Adams’s post: “On it!”
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Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy also responded on social media: “The President wants to help.”
It’s just the latest example of how the president of the United States is using his political office to benefit his individual allies in media, public service, and culture more so than any other president in the modern history of this country.
His vow to help out Adams comes just days after Trump commuted the sentence of fraudster and disgraced ex-congressman George Santos, who’d made his own public pleas to the president. In May, he did the same for two reality TV stars, Todd and Julie Chrisley, and he’s also issued a pardon to the son of a supporter who attended a fundraiser with a $1 million entry fee.
But this latest example is one that illustrates Trump’s “soft” power. While the federal government as a whole and the president individually have no jurisdiction to unilaterally order a health company to decide on behalf of a specific patient, Trump has seen success in steering similar outcomes by putting pressure, publicly or privately, on corporations and individual private citizens.
The most famous use of that example in recent weeks was ABC’s suspension of Jimmy Kimmel in the wake of criticism from the president over the former’s remarks about slain far-right activist Charlie Kirk. Trump has since attempted to bully a second late-night host, NBC’s Seth Meyers, off the air, too.
After taking office, the president also issued threats against several top law firms and successfully coerced some into providing pro bono legal services to his supporters.
Adams, an outspoken far-right conservative, has remained an active poster and podcast host since his diagnosis.
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His career as a comic largely collapsed in 2023 after Adams went on a racist rant about Black people. At the time, he revealed that he thought Black people were inherently violent and urged white people “to get the hell away” from them. Most major newspapers subsequently canned him.
In May, Adams revealed his diagnosis alongside the announcement from former President Joe Biden that he would also undergo treatment for prostate cancer. Biden’s diagnosis was particularly heartbreaking for many of his supporters, given his management of the so-called “cancer moonshot” effort to speed development of cures and treatments for various forms of cancer, as well as the death of one of his sons, Beau, from glioblastoma in 2015.
The former president, through a spokesperson, announced that he was undergoing hormone treatments and radiation therapy for cancer that had metastasized to his bones.
The same day, Adams said on his podcast: “Big story of the day. You may have heard that Joe Biden has prostate cancer, but it’s not the good kind. It’s the bad kind. There’s something you need to know about prostate cancer. If it’s localized and it hasn’t left your prostate, it’s 100% curable. But if it leaves your prostate and spreads to other parts of your body, in this case, Joe Biden has it in his bones, it is 100% not curable.”
Adams has said that his own cancer is incurable as well.
