WATCH: Pfizer CEO Mercilessly Booed At White House Event

Pfizer’s chief executive officer was persona non grata at a White House event celebrating Black History Month, underscoring just how far the pharmaceutical company has fallen out of favor with conservatives since the pandemic.

President Trump went out of his way to “thank” Albert Bourla, who has served as CEO since 2019 and was in town as part of a roundtable with the president and leaders of Big Pharma. Before departing for a private reception, Trump addressed a room full of supporters as they scrambled to pull out their phones and film the moment.

“We also have the head of Pfizer here, one of the great, great people,” Trump started before the booing began. “One of the great businessmen. Thank you, Albert.”

As president, Trump must walk a fine line on pharmaceutical relations, appealing to his base of health freedom advocates while paying ample attention to some of the nation’s most powerful business leaders. The two sides recently faced off over the nomination of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., with grassroots MAHA supporters touting his credentials, while traditional health and pharma trade groups expressed hesitation or said nothing at all.

Vaccines has been a point of contention dating back to the start of the Covid-19 pandemic when President Trump initiated Operation Warp Speed and invested tens of billions of dollars to expedite an FDA-approved jab. The prevalence of skepticism about vaccine efficacy or side effects has caused Americans, even in deep-blue states like Massachusetts, to receive fewer Covid and flu vaccines than in years past.

Among Republicans, about one in four parents say they’ve skipped or delayed vaccines for their children as of January 2025, according to Newsweek.

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Ambivalence about Pfizer also coincides with overwhelming hostility toward the health insurance industry following the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by a lone gunman. An outpouring of bipartisan public anger — and even support for the killer — put many politicians back on their heels.

Bourla is doing his best to navigate churning political waters and warm his relationship with RFK. The two met for a private dinner in December, a few weeks before he was nominated to lead HHS, and since then, Kennedy has offered several positive remarks about vaccine manufacturers.

Trump himself has touted the launch of Stargate, a $100 billion initiative by OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle to drive artificial intelligence projects forward on U.S. soil. One of those projects will be the use of AI to discover new mRNA medicines, the technology behind Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.

Still, Trump is well aware that his base is unhappy to see he is not completely anti-vaccine. He was booed in December 2021 after revealing he had been vaccinated against Covid-19 while appearing on stage with Bill O’Reilly, and he has since refrained from mentioning it.