Pfizer’s Albert Bourla on Trump 2.0: ‘The status quo will collapse’
By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, Semafor
Few CEOs know the double-edged nature of dealing with US President Donald Trump as viscerally as Pfizer’s Albert Bourla. In his first term, Trump championed the $18 billion Operation Warp Speed program that helped the US drugmaker develop its COVID-19 vaccines. He also pushed conspiracy theories that made Bourla a target.
When positive data on Pfizer’s vaccine was released days after the 2020 election, Trump said the company had lacked the “courage” to issue it earlier and suggested there was a “medical deep state” aimed at aiding Joe Biden. Bourla was harassed on the Promenade in Davos a couple of years ago and at this year’s World Economic Forum gathering, he took his meetings in a nondescript apartment building — the sort of anonymous location that fits the definition of security through obscurity.
