Multiple White House officials are denying that President Donald Trump was the mystery patient who reportedly got early access to an experimental weight loss drug to treat severe health complications.
On Tuesday, health news site STAT reported that drug maker Eli Lilly and the Food and Drug Administration granted a 79-year-old access to retatrutide, a hotly anticipated treatment, under “compassionate use,” which allows patients with severe health issues to access experimental therapies.
A senior clinician at the National Institutes of Health reportedly sought permission in April to give the drug. The patient in question reportedly sought the medicine to treat refractory obesity with obstructive sleep apnea and pulmonary hypertension, high blood pressure in the lungs, which can be life-threatening.
Sources told the outlet that the request drew interest from top health officials, suggesting the patient was “well connected.”
The Trump administration strongly denied speculation that the patient, whose age matched up with the president’s at the time, was, in fact, Trump.
“This application was not for the President,” White House spokesman Kush Desai wrote on X, calling suggestions it was Trump “baseless speculation.”
White House communications director Steven Cheung accused the outlet of “peddling falsehoods.”
(Lizzy Lawrence, the STAT reporter who investigated the alleged retatrutide case, says she reached out multiple times to federal health officials and the White House but did not get direct answers before publication.)
A separate White House account accused commentators of spreading “bulls*** from the usual suspects” by linking Trump to the reported drug request.
“No, it isn’t President Trump,” the White House rapid response account wrote on X. “You people are sick.”
The Department of Health and Human Services referred The Independent to Desai’s statement.
The Independent has contacted the FDA for comment.
“In rare situations, when individuals can’t join a clinical trial and have run out of treatment options, Lilly may provide an investigational medicine in coordination with a requesting physician,” a Lilly spokesperson told The Independent in a statement. “We make these decisions following all applicable regulations. We do not comment on the specifics of individual cases.”
The president has gotten early access to a treatment before.
During the pandemic, President Trump got a dose of an antibody therapy to treat his case of Covid before federal officials approved it for general use.
In addition to the antibody treatment, Trump got the Covid vaccine, though this was only disclosed after he left office.
This January, President Trump said he had never taken weight loss drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic.
“No, I have not,” he told The New York Times. “I probably should.”
Speculation has been mounting about the president’s overall health since he returned to office, given his frequently bruised and bandaged hands and his apparent habit of falling asleep during public appearances.
President Trump, now 80, is the oldest person to ever become U.S. president.
He “remains in excellent health, demonstrating strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and overall physical function,” his physician, Dr. Sean Barbabella, wrote after the president’s annual medical exam in May.
Trump has attracted scrutiny for seeing an “extraordinary number” of specialists as part of the checkup, as well as for an unusual mid-year medical screening he got in October after his annual physical earlier in 2025.
Health concerns also dogged the final months of the Joe Biden administration.
Before Trump, the Democrat was the oldest man to ever hold the White House, and his inner circle allegedly concealed his mental and physical decline from the American public.
A disastrous debate performance, in which President Biden appeared confused and unfocused, helped prompt his ouster from the 2024 Democratic presidential ticket.
