White House Flips Out Over Report Trump May Be on Weight Loss Drug

A White House spokesperson flipped out Tuesday after he was quoted failing to deny a report suggesting President Donald Trump may have been given early access to a weight loss drug.

A STAT report Tuesday found that one 79-year-old man had received special access to retatrutide, a powerful new weight loss drug—prompting speculation that the individual in question was none other than the president of the United States.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai publicly lashed out at STAT’s Lizzy Lawrence, who in her original report, noted that Desai did not explicitly deny that Trump was the patient in question.

“Because this has to be spelled out for @LizzyLaw_, who has proven herself to be an unserious gossip columnist, this application was not for the President,” Desai wrote on X Tuesday after the story quickly gained national attention.

“Thank you for clarifying. I asked you, the FDA, and HHS multiple times yesterday whether this application was for the President. No one answered my question directly,” Lawrence replied.

“We shouldn’t have to bat down baseless speculation for you to not print it. Any reporter with standards would understand this,” Desai wrote. “Are you going to now go ask this idiotic question to the ~4 million Americans in this age cohort and then speculate about them being the application?”

As a White House spokesperson, it’s Desai’s responsibility to respond to queries from the press. As TNR contributor Nina Burleigh pointed out on X: “If you don’t want to do your job, maybe stop taking taxpayer funds…”

Desai did little to dismiss the story when it first came across his desk and originally referred STAT to the Department of Health and Human Services, which didn’t offer a denial either.

In fact, Desai may have fueled further questions about the president’s health. When the 79-year-old patient requested “compassionate use” access to retatrutide in April, it was to treat refractory obesity with obstructive sleep apnea and pulmonary hypertension.

Asked whether Trump has obstructive sleep apnea and pulmonary hypertension, Desai originally told STAT a White House memo on Trump’s most recent medical evaluation “covers this.” It does not.

Anti-ICE protesters in Texas were sentenced to at least 50 years in prison Tuesday on terrorism charges, The Guardian reported. The case was widely seen as a test of whether the Trump administration would be able to enact its crackdown on dissent over its immigration policies.

Last July 4, activists set off fireworks at a detention center in Alvarado, Texas, and some of them vandalized cars, slashed tires, and broke a security camera. When a police officer arrived and drew his weapon, one person shot him in the shoulder from the woods.

Five of the protesters were sentenced to 50 years in prison and one was sentenced to 70 for providing material support to terrorists. The person who shot at the police officer was sentenced to 100 years for attempted murder, according to the Texas Standard.

President Donald Trump and his administration have claimed that the activists were part of an “antifa cell” in north Texas, even though antifa is not one specific group or organization. Most of the protesters didn’t know each other well, and were connected through a local left-wing book club and gun group.

This case was the first time that federal prosecutors have attempted to convict protesters against the Trump administration on charges related to domestic terrorism. With the White House’s attempt to criminalize protest, it likely will not be the last.

A mysterious, well-connected 79-year-old man has gained sole access to an experimental obesity drug created by Eli Lilly.

The outlet that first reported the early access, STAT, speculated that the patient could be Donald Trump, in no small part due to the president’s unabashed support for weight-loss drugs, which has extended to suggestions that he and his staff should take what he calls “the fat drug.”

In January, the president told The New York Times that while he hadn’t yet taken Ozempic or Wegovy, he “probably should.”

Trump tips the scale at 224 pounds, according to his 2025 physical results published by the White House. At six-foot-three, that puts his body mass index in the overweight category. The data suggests Trump has slimmed down since his first term: In 2020, he weighed 244 pounds, which placed him firmly within the BMI’s obesity range.

Throughout his second term, Trump has expressed a keen interest in weight-loss drugs and has even directed his administration to lower their costs.

In April 2025, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told CBS Mornings that Trump had “ordered” his department to bring the costs of GLP-1 drugs down in the U.S. to compete with European prices.

Months later, in November, Trump announced that the prescription costs of Ozempic and Wegovy would come down by hundreds of dollars if purchased through his discounted prescription drug marketplace, TrumpRx.

Trump has even used his own officials as props to promote the drugs. During the White House event unveiling the TrumpRx arrangement, Trump said he was “thrilled” with manufacturers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, and proceeded to conduct a fat-shaming round-robin of his underlings to determine who was already on the weight-loss drugs.

“Secretary Howard Lutnick. You take any of this stuff, Howard?” Trump asked his commerce secretary at the time.

“Not yet,” Lutnick replied.

“OK, good,” Trump said before going back to reading names of people on his team. “CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz—he doesn’t take it. Food and Drug Administrator, Commissioner Marty Makary, and Director of Medicare Chris Klomp. And we have Steve.… Where’s Steve? Is he here? Head of public relations for the White House? He’s taking it.”

President Donald Trump blatantly lied about how much oil is actually traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, amid growing backlash to his peace deal.

In a post on Truth Social Tuesday, Trump bragged that the 19 million barrels of oil that flowed through the strait on Monday constituted “an all time RECORD.”

That’s a complete lie. Before the U.S. attacked Iran, an average of 20 million barrels of oil passed through the strait every day, according to the International Energy Agency—more than Trump’s so-called “all time RECORD.”

Plus, Trump’s numbers don’t seem to add up anyway.

From Saturday to Monday, only 109 vessels passed through the Strait of Hormuz, The New York Times reported, citing Kpler, a global maritime data firm. That’s the largest three-day number since the war began in February—but still less than the nearly 140 ships that once passed through the strait on a daily basis. It seems unlikely that 19 million barrels could have passed through in one day with the strait still facing restrictions.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Trump pushed phony numbers about oil. Trump previously claimed that he’d directed the military to conduct a “secret mission” to send more than 100 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz without anybody knowing—including his own energy secretary!

Trump’s latest lies were part of a larger meltdown Tuesday, as Iran denied having made commitments the Trump administration had touted as a done deal.

President Trump is practically begging Illinois Governor JB Pritzker to allow a federal takeover of Chicago.

“At least 39 people injured, 4 dead, in Chicago weekend shootings. Governor Pritzker, I, as President, can fix this, FAST and Permanently. D.C., Memphis, New Orleans, all down to record lows, and quickly!” Trump wrote just after midnight Tuesday on Truth Social. “CALL ME!”

Trump said the same thing out loud on Monday, calling the city of Chicago a “shooting field.”

“If the governor would call me … I would solve the Chicago problem in three, four months,” he said in the Oval Office.

Chicago has long been on Trump’s radar for a federal takeover, and he has exchanged barbs with both Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson since his return to the White House last year.

President Trump has already brought federal takeovers to Washington, D.C., Memphis, and Minneapolis, with varying results. His claims of cleaning up each city are tenuous at best, as each city has had violent and negative experiences with the influx of federal agents and the National Guard.

Pritzker has yet to respond, while Johnson spoke out Monday after the president’s comments.

“Trump has worked overtime to defund the agencies and programs that actually build safer communities. Whether it’s by defunding the ATF—the federal agency tasked with getting illegal weapons off our streets—stripping our community violence intervention partners of their funding, or starting illegal wars that send prices skyrocketing, Trump has completely betrayed his promise to working Americans and is making all of our lives less safe,” Johnson wrote on X.