Video clips of a man collapsing Nov. 6 at President Donald Trump’s drug pricing announcement quickly spiraled into misleading narratives.
Dave Rickschair and chief executive officer of Eli Lilly and Co., was speaking in the Oval Office when a man standing behind him fainted. Television cameras captured Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. leaving the room as other people, including federal health official Dr. Mehmet Oz, treated the man who collapsed.
After White House officials paused the event, social media users misleadingly jumped to conclusions about the man’s identity and Kennedy’s response.
“BREAKING: RFK Jr. flees the scene after Novo Nordisk Executive Gordon Findlay collapsed in the Oval Office,” says the caption of a Nov. 6 X post that had more than 3 million views as of Nov. 7.
Other social media posts on TikTok and X shared similar claims, including X’s artificial intelligence-powered chatbot Grokwho responded to users that Gordon Findlay was the person who fainted in the Oval Office.
These posts named the wrong person, and the White House disputes the explanation for Kennedy’s exit.
Here’s what we know about the incident at Trump’s event with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk executives to lower prices for popular pharmaceutical drugs such as GLP-1 weight loss medications.
Gordon Findlay is not the man who fainted in the Oval Office
In the clipRicks pauses his remarks and says, “Gordon, are you okay?”
This likely made people think the person who collapsed was Gordon Findlay, Novo Nordisk’s global brand director based in Basel, Switzerland.
Multiple media outlets also identified the man as Findlay before later correcting their stories.
But Findlay didn’t attend the White House event.
Newsweek reported that Novo Nordisk said in a statement, “CEO Mike Doustdar and Executive Vice President of U.S. Operations, Dave Moore were the only two Novo Nordisk representatives in the Oval Office.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters who were rushed out of the room that the man who fainted was a “representative” of one of the companies at the event.
“During the Most Favored Nations Oval Office Announcement, a representative with one of the companies fainted. The White House Medical Unit quickly jumped into action, and the gentleman is okay. The Press Conference will resume shortly,” Leavitt said, according to an email to the press pool.
When the press conference resumed, Trump said the man was fine, without naming him.
Ricks identified him as a guest of Eli Lilly in a press briefing after the event, The Hill reported.
Dan Diamond, a Washington Post White House reporter, wrote on his Substack that after talking to people with direct knowledge of the White House event, he learned that the man who fainted was an Eli Lilly patient who had been invited to the White House because of his experience of taking a GLP-1 drug.
The claim that Kennedy fled from the scene is also misleading
Social media users mocked Kennedy as fleeing the scene, but White House officials said that wasn’t what happened.
Kush Desai, White House deputy press secretary, responded to an X post from independent journalist and social media video clipper Aaron Rupar, saying that Kennedy rushed out of the event to seek medical assistance for the man who fainted.
Our ruling
An X post says, “RFK Jr. flees the scene after Novo Nordisk Executive Gordon Findlay collapsed in the Oval Office.”
Findlay didn’t attend the White House event. The man who fainted doesn’t work for Novo Nordisk or Eli Lilly; he was an Eli Lilly GLP-1 patient and guest.
Social media users said Kennedy fled the scene; a White House spokesperson wrote on X that Kennedy was seeking medical attention for the man.
We rate this claim False.
