Trump roasts his ‘very, very rich’ Ozempic-using friend as ‘fatter than ever’ — netizens scramble to figure out who he meant

President Donald Trump turned a White House roundtable on rural health care into a viral moment after launching into a blunt, and deeply personal, story about a mystery friend’s experience with weight-loss drugs.

About 10 minutes into the hour-long event on Friday, January 16, Trump, 79, began describing an unnamed man he repeatedly characterised as wealthy, powerful, and overweight, drawing laughter and confusion in equal measure.




“A friend of mine who is a very smart guy, very, very rich, very powerful man actually but he’s very fat and he took the fat... I call it the fat drug,” Trump said. “I won’t give you which one.”

He then paused before adding, “It was Ozempic… I won’t tell you that.”

The president went on to describe the friend as someone who “can’t walk across the street” and said the man was in London on “one of his many business trips.”



Trump explained that his friend, whom he said was “worth hundreds of millions, billions of dollars”, pays $1,300 for the drug in New York but only $87 in London.

While Trump said the price gap was “too much to bear,” he also took aim at the drug’s effectiveness.

“After I told him that the drug does not work on him because I saw him recently and he’s actually fatter than ever, I said, ‘The drug is not working on you, you’re going to have to go to something else but it does work on a lot of people.’”

According to Trump, the friend replied, “Thanks, you make me feel good,” prompting the president to add, “Well, I gotta be truthful. Always tell the truth.”

The remarks were made during a White House roundtable and later circulated widely on social media, drawing both criticism and speculation.

Not the first time Trump has told the story

The anecdote was not new. Trump had referenced the same mystery friend months earlier, in May 2025, while attacking pharmaceutical companies over drug pricing.

At the time, he described a “very rich, very neurotic, brilliant businessman” who told him he bought his “fat shot” medication for $88 in London compared to $1,300 in New York.

“I said, ‘It’s not working,’” Trump quipped during that earlier appearance, again mocking the man’s weight while criticising drugmakers for charging vastly different prices for the same medication.

Both stories were tied to Trump’s broader push to lower prescription drug costs in the US.

“Whoever is paying the lowest, we match it,” Trump said during the January roundtable.

In November 2025, the Trump administration announced that the price of Ozempic would be reduced from between $1,000 and $1,350 per month to $350 through TrumpRx. Trump said Medicare and Medicaid recipients would pay $245 a month starting mid-2026, while the lowest price, $149 per month, would apply to oral versions not yet available.

“For years, politicians have talked about making health care affordable,” Trump said during the November press conference announcing the change. “But my administration is actually doing it.”

Online speculation, and backlash

Trump’s comments sparked immediate online speculation, with users scrambling to guess the identity of the unnamed friend. Some floated names including Leon Black and Elon Musk, who has publicly said he used weight-loss drugs. Others suggested the man might not exist at all.

One user wrote, “Oh, another one of Trump’s (nonexistent) friends, very powerful, very rich…. Tears in his eyes?”

Others criticised Trump for fat-shaming, regardless of who the story was about.

“I feel bad for President Trump’s friend. Whoever he is,” one person commented.