Pfizer CEO to attend Trump fundraiser after price demands

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla is expected to attend a $25 million fundraiser at US President Donald Trump's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, just a day after the president demanded that pharmaceutical companies slash domestic drug prices, CBS News reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

The event, organized for the pro-Trump super political action committee MAGA Inc., is among the largest fundraising efforts of the election season.

On Thursday, Trump sent letters to 17 major drug companies-including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Sanofi-urging them to commit within 60 days to offering US Medicaid patients and all new drugs at "most favored nation" prices, meaning the lowest prices charged in comparable countries.

Trump posted the letters on his social media platform, Truth Social, and accused the pharmaceutical companies of offering "more of the same" since he issued an executive order in May instructing officials to draft pricing regulations unless the industry took action.

"I've gone to war with the drug companies and, frankly, other countries," Trump said in an interview with Newsmax on Friday. "I think we're going to be very successful fairly soon. We'll have drug prices coming down by 500, 600, 800, even 1,200 percent."

High drug prices have long fueled political debate in the US, where patients often pay far more than in other developed countries.