U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) criticized President Trump for not signing the bipartisan housing bill after Trump abruptly cancelled the signing event. Trump says he won’t sign the bill until the SAVE Act is passed.
As seen below at a press conference, Lieu said he doesn’t understand why the President would “chicken out,” suggesting that perhaps the President is suffering from “side effects from a new drug.”
[NOTE: Lieu’s words were not randomly chosen — beginning with his numerous reversals and adjustments on tariffs, Trump gave life to a nickname for a Wall Street trading strategy called TACO, an acronym for Trump Always Chickens Out.]
Lieu expanded on his insinuation about the President’s prescription regimen, “We don’t know. This erratic behavior is very concerning. He has trouble staying awake at multiple White House events and cabinet meetings. He clearly has some weakness in one of his arms, he’s got swelling in his hands, and the White House needs to come clean.”
BREAKING: Rep. Ted Lieu is publicly calling on the White House to answer growing questions surrounding reports that an unidentified 79-year-old man received exclusive access to a powerful experimental drug through the FDA’s compassionate use program.
“The White House needs to… pic.twitter.com/bEBtMqpV3Z
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) June 24, 2026
Lieu added: “What we know is a report saying that one person in America got this special drug, is a 79-year-old person who’s very high profile,” and that the drug can only be given “under the compassion use provision meaning that you do that if someone basically has a terminal illness. So we need to know. Did Donald Trump get this special drug from Eli Lilly.”
[NOTE: Lieu’s reference is to an article in the medical publication STAT, with the headline “Eli Lilly gave extraordinary obesity drug access to a 79-year-old patient. Who was it?” and the subhead “Sources point to a single instance in which experimental therapy retatrutide was provided for ‘compassionate use’.”]
White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung replied on social media: “Ted Lewd is a dumb[expletive]. He probably spent hours laughing to himself thinking that peddling this lie would be funny. Sadly for Ted, there’s no special new drug to cure being a [expletive].”
The New Republic reported that a “senior clinician at the National Institutes of Health, Ranganath Muniyappa, requested access to the drug for the unnamed patient in April” and that the request was fulfilled. The clinician reportedly cited “a diagnosis of refractory obesity with obstructive sleep apnea and pulmonary hypertension, a potentially life-threatening disease characterized by high blood pressure in the lungs” in making the request.