To be sure, that official — Governor Charlie Baker — is hardly a Trump ally. But the opioid epidemic has given the Swampscott Republican a relatively stable, if slim, slice of common ground with a combustible president he’s often sought to keep at a politically safe distance.

The White House has pushed for “fairly significant” funding to fight the problem, the official contends, and, like Trump, this elected leader used strong language in laying a portion of the blame for the crisis at the feet of the drug industry.

President Trump, according to one prominent official, has curated an understanding of the opioid epidemic through his brother’s own experience with addiction.


“The thing [Trump] understands, because he’s spoken directly to it, is addiction,” Baker told STAT executive editor Rick Berke Monday in an interview at the Atlantic Summit on Health Care in Boston.

“His brother was basically an alcoholic and died of alcoholism,” Baker said. “When he speaks about addiction, he speaks about it with a lot of his own person in it, and frankly in some ways, that’s usually how you tell someone has a particular connection to an issue. And on this one, I believe he does have a connection.”

Baker’s wide-ranging talk spanned nearly 45 minutes and several topics, from the administration’s Amazon bid to the state’s budding biotech industry. But the conversation turned several times to battling opioids, which Baker has made a centerpiece of his first term, enough so he served on a White House commission recommending the next best steps for Trump to take to fight the epidemic.

At different points, Baker offered subtle support of the steps Trump has taken, even if they fell well short of a warm embrace. Baker is seeking re-election later this year.

“If you look at what he proposed in his budget, it’s one of the few places where they proposed some fairly significant new funding,” Baker said of the White House, which in February recommended putting $13 billion toward the opioid crisis over the next two years.


The tack Trump has taken on fighting opioids overall has been debatable, from their efficacy to his general focus. He’s pushed to allow the death penalty for drug traffickers, a proposal on which Baker has publicly declined to weigh in.

Trump twice last year said that drug companies are “getting away with murder.” Baker on Monday said he didn’t agree.

“Murder? No,” he said.

But he later referenced Sam Quinones’ book on the opioid crisis, “Dreamland,” saying that after reading one “would conclude that most of the [pharmaceutical] industry contributed to a horrible national tragedy that led to the deaths of literally tens of thousands people.”

Berke said it sounded like Baker was actually saying the same thing as Trump.

“I’m not saying the same thing, OK?” Baker responded. “I’m saying that a whole series of certain types of situations, decisions, willful blindness and all the rest led to a calamity that I think everybody would acknowledge is tearing apart every community and many families across this country and leading to the death of tens of thousands of people.”

“And that’s a fact,” he said. “It’s pretty hard to argue with that one.”

Reach Matt Stout at matt.stout@globe.com. Follow him on twitter @mattpstout