Pfizer’s chairman is increasingly desperate to cozy up to President Trump

My, how Pfizer chairman Dr. Albert Bourla’s views on President Trump have changed.

In October 2020, Pfizer sat on data that could have helped Trump win millions of votes against Joe Biden.

In November 2022, Bourla called Trump (though not by name) an “agent of evil.”1

But now that Trump is back in the White House and Pfizer needs his help, Bourla feels differently. In April, Bourla said he had personally told Trump that Trump “should have received the Nobel Prize.” (Nope, not making that up.)

Wait, there’s a Nobel Prize for Evil?

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(I don’t care about prizes. I do care about getting you the truth.)

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Bourla’s on-all-fours butt-kissing is funny.

Only it’s not. Not at all. Not for anyone who cares about drug safety and pricing, vaccine immunity, and the efforts by Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb to censor me and others who criticized Pfizer’s mRNA Covid jabs.

As the last month’s knife fight over Dr. Vinay Prasad’s role at the Food and Drug Administration proved, drug companies will do anything to protect their multi-billion-dollar profits. And Pfizer, which delayed Covid vaccine results that could have helped Donald Trump in 2020, is at particular risk from Trump’s potential wrath.

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(Untrue believer)

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So Bourla is doing everything he can to get close enough to pucker up.

He and Pfizer have spent millions since Trump’s November election win to get near Trump. In January, Bourla and Pfizer rented space in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for a multi-day executive “off-site meeting.”

Bourla attended Trump’s inauguration and then came back to the White House in February, when a crowd actually booed him after Trump introduced him. He’s also had dinner with Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Most egregiously, last week Bourla attended a $1 million per plate fundraiser at Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey for Trump’s MAGA Inc. political action committee.

Last week’s event wasn’t exactly heavy with other top corporate executives, either.

Attendees included the head of a Canadian cannabis retailer and cryptocurrency investors — the kind of people willing to buy a seven-figure lottery ticket in the hope of bending Trump’s ear outside of standard policy-making channels.

So why is Bourla, who runs a company that has already spent almost $8 million this year on lobbying, so desperate for Trump’s personal attention?

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The most obvious reason is that Trump appears interested in lowering American pharmaceutical prices. On July 31, he wrote major drug companies demanding that they charge no more for their drugs in the United States than they do in other big wealthy countries.

The administration refers to this as a requirement for “most favored nation” pricing. The White House claims the new pricing should include all drugs that Medicaid pays for, as well as all new drugs covered by Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurance.

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(President Trump’s letter to Eli Lilly on July 31 demanding that Lilly lower prices on its drugs. Pfizer and other major drug companies received similar letters.)

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To be sure, the exact mechanism for how the White House would force the companies to even out prices is not clear. The proposal can even be read as a demand that drug companies raise prices internationally.

Nonetheless, the proposal highlights the fact Americans pay far more for many medicines than people in other countries. The pharmaceutical industry would rather not discuss, much less address, this issue.

And Trump appears to be taking it seriously. It is easy to see why the president, who hates feeling that other countries are taking advantage of the United States, would find equalizing prices appealing.

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Besides heading off any effort to rein in insane American drug prices, Pfizer hopes to keep its ironclad immunity for its troubled Covid-19 vaccine and childhood vaccines, including its RSV vaccine for children.

And though federal Judge Jessica G.L. Clarke last month dismissed Bourla and Gottlieb from Berenson v Biden — my lawsuit over the conspiracy to censor me and force me off Twitter in 2021 — Pfizer may still want the Trump administration to refuse to settle the federal portion of the suit. A settlement would lead to media attention and throw an unpleasant spotlight on Gottlieb’s demands that the company censor me and other people who questioned Pfizer’s jabs.

So Bourla, who worked hand-in-glove with the Biden Administration in 2021, suddenly has remembered how much he loves President Trump. Yep, he even thinks Trump deserves a Nobel Prize — and he wants to make sure Trump knows it.

It’s a bold strategy.

Will it work? Can Bourla really make Trump believe he’s a fan and convince him to help Pfizer?

We’ll find out.

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(My investigation in May into Pfizer’s critical decision to delay the results of its Covid vaccine trial until after Election Day 2020.)