AP/Jacquelyn Martin
While members of his cabinet stuff sauerkraut down their wives’ handbags to maintain diets, speculation is suddenly mounting over whether President Donald Trump may have received early access to retatrutide, the potent experimental weight-loss drug from Eli Lilly and eagerly anticipated by millions.
The questions come amid a new report in STAT News pointing to a certain 79-year-old man with special insider connections who somehow managed to gain access to retatrutide, which has not received FDA approval, through the agency’s “compassionate use” program. You know, the kind of powerful individual with extraordinary ties to the Food and Drug Administration, as well as Eli Lilly, the same pharmaceutical company Trump bought stock in through the end of March and has partnered with the Trump administration to hash out pricing structures.
The White House on Tuesday denied that Trump was the applicant who made the retatrutide request. Eli Lilly, meanwhile, declined to outright deny the report. “In rare situations, when individuals can’t join a clinical trial and have run out of treatment options,” a spokesperson for Eli Lilly told Mother Jones, adding that the company does “not comment on the specifics of individual cases.”
None of which is likely to quell the theory. After all, Trump, according to his most recent health evaluation, just about hits the threshold of clinical obesity; he approvingly refers to GLP-1’s as the “fat shot” and has publicly complained about the high costs of accessing the weight loss medications in the United States. Trump has also been something of a pioneer when it comes to experimental drugs. In 2020, after infamously suggesting people could inject themselves with bleach if they got infected with Covid, the president opted for an unapproved antibody treatment after testing positive himself months later.
But perhaps the biggest tell is the president’s unflinching record of indifference when it comes to outcries over inappropriate behavior, general shadiness, and conflicts of interest. So did Trump use the levers of power to gain unusual access to retatrutide? Time will tell if the president starts to debut a trimmed-down physique. It’s either that or the kimchi.