WEIGHT WATCHERS

White House Cornered on Identity of Patient, 79, Given Special Weight Loss Drug

There was high-level interest among health officials, according to a leak.

A 79-year-old man was given special access to an unreleased Eli Lilly obesity drug in April that was unavailable to the public.

At first, those with knowledge of the patient’s identity would not directly deny that the man was President Donald Trump, who turned 80 earlier this month. Trump has nicknamed obesity drugs “the fat jab.”

Stat News reported Tuesday that the drug, called retatrutide, drew the interest of several top health officials, suggesting that the person who obtained it was high up the chain of command.

The patient in question was prescribed the drug through the Food and Drug Administration’s “compassionate use” program, according to Stat. The program is defined by the FDA as a “potential pathway” for a patient with a serious or immediately life-threatening disease or condition to access an investigational medical product outside a clinical trial.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai denied to the Daily Beast that the president received the drug, citing an X post in which he referred to Stat journalist Lizzy Lawrence as an “unserious gossip columnist.”

But before that, Desai initially did not directly respond to Lawrence’s inquiry about the patient, who, according to a senior clinician at the National Institutes of Health’s main Maryland campus, struggles with refractory obesity, obstructive sleep apnea, and pulmonary hypertension, Stat reported.

Instead, Desai cited a White House memo detailing Trump’s latest medical evaluation and asserted it “covers this.” The memo does not mention any of those medical diagnoses—other than noting that the 238-pound Trump received counseling on “continued weight loss,” even though he has gained 14 pounds since last year.

The White House also responded on X. “No, it wasn’t President Trump—and you people are truly sick and deranged (though the Bluesky link in your bio already gave that much away),” the Rapid Response account replied to Lawrence on X.

The Daily Beast also reached out to Eli Lilly and the Department of Health and Human Services for comment. HHS did not respond to Stat’s inquiry about the application for retatrutide or the patient’s identity. Instead, a spokesperson asserted that the Food and Drug Administration “supports expanded access programs that can provide patients with serious or life-threatening conditions access to investigational treatments when no comparable or satisfying approved therapies are available.”

“Each request is reviewed on a case-by-case basis based on the clinical circumstances and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements,” the spokesperson added.

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If the mysterious patient is indeed the president, it would not be the first time he cut the line for a miracle drug. In 2020, Trump touted an antibody cocktail that had been administered to him when he was hospitalized with a severe case of COVID-19.

The Regeneron medication given to Trump, as well as another made by Eli Lilly, was in extremely short supply and largely unavailable to most Americans, The Washington Post reported at the time.

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Laura EspositoBreaking News Reporter

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