President Donald Trump spent months earlier this year playing up the promise of the old anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine in the fight against COVID-19. And along the way, he convinced the right-wing media to go along with him, boosting the drug even though there was no real proof of its efficacy against the virus.
Now that Trump is fighting his own case of COVID-19 without his miracle drug, the hydroxychloroquine advocates who followed his lead are pretty frustrated.
Dr. Stella Immanuel, the Houston-based doctor and preacher who specializes in demons and alien DNA, was part of a group of doctors who in July falsely declared hydroxychloroquine a “cure” for COVID-19. Trump shared a video of the group on his Twitter account and subsequently called Immanuel “very impressive.”
So Immanuel was understandably disappointed when hydroxychloroquine wasn’t mentioned on the White House press release detailing Trump’s treatment plan.
“Whoever told the president to stop taking HCQ should be punched in the face,” she wrote on Twitter Friday.
Whoever told the president to stop taking HCQ should be punched in the face. This did not have to happened. I am so upset. This is our president for crying out loud. No one need to get sick or pcr positive. #HCQ4prevention
— Stella Immanuel MD (@stella_immanuel) October 2, 2020
Immanuel separately pushed White House staffers to take hydroxychloroquine, and added, “If your doctors will not prescribe it I will.”
On Monday, the talk show host and “PragerU” founder Dennis Prager blamed the “communists running medicine” for suppressing discussion about hydroxychloroquine, but questioned why it hadn’t come up in Trump’s treatment plan.
“They didn’t discuss it ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ with regard to the President,” he said. “The President was the one who recommended it to begin with. You’d think something would have been said. Isn’t that the obvious question everybody would have?”
Prager has claimed to be taking hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic for months. “It’s unconscionable, the hysteria with regard to it,” he said in August, adding that there was “blood on the hands” of doctors and journalists who kept COVID-19 patients from taking the drug.
The fringe website LifeSiteNews took things a step further, with co-founder and hydroxychloroquine evangelist Steve Jalsevac urging readers to literally “contact the White House to ask why the president and Melania are not immediately being given this well-proven-in-practice medication protocol for COVID infection.”
“It is reckless that this is not being done because there is no risk to giving it to Trump even if the medical bureaucrats still ridiculously refuse to believe that Hydroxychloroquine is effective,” Jalsevac wrote.
Trump certainly knows hydroxychloroquine is an option: He wouldn’t stop pushing it over the summer despite a lack of evidence that it helped COVID-19 patients, and he even claimed to have taken the drug prophylactically for two weeks in May.
At the time, some Trump sycophants, like former White House staffer Sebastian Gorka, rode Trump’s coattails and advertised their own use of the drug. On Friday, before the White House announced the list of Trump’s medications, Gorka mistakenly figured the President would get back on the horse.
“I’m sure he’s taking his hydroxy this morning just like I did this morning,” he said, adding: “Hydroxy, Z-Pak, and zinc equals MAGA.”
Other stars pushed the drug as well, including Steve Bannon and Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ).
Alas, at least as far as the White House has said, Trump skipped it entirely.
White House physician Sean Conley, the same doctor who in May wrote that the potential benefits of hydroxychloroquine use for Trump outweighed “the relative risks,” was asked Sunday why he hadn’t given Trump hydroxychloroquine for his battle against the virus.
He said simply, “I’m not going to go into all of our debates about specific medicines and therapies.”
I hear the makers of Clorox are pretty pissed too.
As are the manufacturers of UV-C lighting for endoscopy and colonoscopy sanitation techniques.
Suckers are born every minute. Apparently The Dotard just rubbed their noses in it.
If the Dumpsterfire doesn’t take his Hydroxychloroquine, does that mean he won’t get his kickback this month?
Imagine that…when it’s his ass on the line Trump follows the recommended medications from doctors and scientists. When it’s politics, he says whatever he thinks will give him an advantage, regardless of the consequences. You’d figure people would learn the lesson, that Trump only cares about a small number of people and they aren’t on the list, but I guess some people just need to be hit over the head with it until they are bloody.
We really need him out of office ASAP, all he’s doing is screwing up the nation and causing pain and suffering.