Vice President J.D. Vance hijacked a Cabinet meeting to make one thing clear: he is not President Donald Trump’s mysterious “fat” friend.
The interruption came after Trump, 79, retold the tale at the White House Thursday of a portly businessman buddy who had been trying to lose weight using “the fat shot,” a reference to GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic.
“I told him it wasn’t working. For him, it didn’t work,” Trump said. “He knows I’m talkin’ about him. It drives him crazy. He begs me not to mention it.”
At that point, Vance, 41, interjected.
“He’s not talking about me,” he said, earning laughs from the room.
Trump has repeated the story of his chubby pal for months. In the tale, his friend complains that Ozempic costs about $87 in London, but $1,300 in New York. Trump agrees the issue is troublesome, but tells the friend that the treatment clearly isn’t working, because he’s “fatter than ever.”
In May 2025, he told the same story nearly verbatim to Sean Hannity. He repeated it two weeks ago.
If Trump’s friend has been taking Ozempic since May, when Trump first told the anecdote, then he should have seen significant weight loss by now. According to a study done by the National Institute of Health, the average weight loss after six months on Ozempic is 27 pounds.
Critics have speculated about the identity of the unfortunate man Trump keeps mentioning. Some popular theories include Tesla CEO and former DOGE head Elon Musk, who once admitted to using the GLP-1 medication Wegovy, and White House Communication Director Steven Cheung, whom the president previously outed as being on a weight loss drug.
Others have suggested that Trump could be referring to himself. Earlier this month, he told the New York Times that he should “probably” be taking Ozempic, but isn’t.
Vance, who lost 30 pounds between 2022 and 2024, has not been among the rumored candidates for Trump’s mysterious fat friend.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Vance only spoke during Thursday’s meeting to fire off one-liners while other Cabinet members heaped praise on Trump. At the conclusion of the meeting, Trump invited Vance to speak, but he only offered brief praise and quipped, “I’m just here for the free coffee.”
Earlier in the meeting, Trump complained that media outlets made a big deal about him appearing to snooze through a December Cabinet meeting, saying, “The last time we had a press conference, it lasted for three hours, and some people said ‘he closed his eyes.’ Look, it got pretty boring.”
Thursday’s meeting was significantly shorter than the December marathon. Like in the previous meeting, Cabinet members spent their allotted time flattering the president, but not everyone in attendance spoke.
Among the Cabinet members who didn’t get any speaking time was embattled Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose job security has been called into question after disastrous immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota.
The meeting ended with Trump declining to take questions from the press.
