Boos rang through the White House Thursday as President Donald Trump thanked Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla at a Black History Month event, appearing to catch the president off guard.
(LifeSiteNews) — When President Donald Trump introduced the head of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer at yesterday’s White House Black History Month event, the room packed full of Trump supporters immediately erupted into sustained loud booing, seemingly taking the president by surprise.
The crowd that had gathered in the East Room of the White House on Thursday consisted mostly of African Americans who had helped the president get re-elected.
“We also have the head of Pfizer here (CEO Albert Bourla), so I want to thank him, one of the great people, one of the great businessmen,” said the president, who chuckled as he tried to quiet the crowd by repeatedly saying “thank you” until the booing subsided.
Golfing great Tiger Woods, who was on the stage with Trump, looked on stone-faced.
“Trump needs to understand we HATE Pfizer,” wrote one X user who saw the video. “It was not good.”
Laura Powell, a civil liberties attorney, asked on X, “Why was Bourla invited to the Black History Month event anyway?"
“He did it on purpose for future negotiation purposes,” another user suggested. “Watch what happens next.”
Some interpreted Trump’s “thank-yous” not as a device to calm the crowd but as a literal “thank you” to the crowd for booing the Big Pharma CEO.
“I’m starting to think that he was trolling him (the Pfizer CEO) with a public humiliation,” another said. “Trump knew what he was doing.”
Bourla was in town to meet with Trump along with other leaders from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).
“While only time will tell whether the biopharma industry and Trump 2.0 play nice over the next four years, recent moves by the administration – including efforts to cut National Institutes of Health research grants and mass layoffs at health agencies like the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) – have created significant uncertainty for the industry,” Fierce Pharma’s Fraiser Kansteiner explained.
“Elsewhere, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was confirmed as HHS secretary last week, said on Tuesday that the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again commission will investigate whether childhood vaccination schedules and antidepressants, plus other factors like ultra-processed foods, are tied to a ‘drastic rise in chronic disease’ in the country,” Kansteiner noted.
