Maybe hydroxychloroquine will turn out to be The Miracle Cure. Maybe. It's just that there doesn't seem to be much scientific evidence of that at this point. That's why Dr. Anthony Fauci, an actual expert in this area, has sought to downplay the drug in his public messaging, while Donald Trump, an expert in no field beyond bullshitting, has desperately promoted it. On Sunday, Trump went so far as to prevent Fauci from answering a reporter's question about it, perhaps fearing the doctor might offer an answer grounded in facts, which would necessarily conflict with Trump's position. The president's position is that he wants this to be true, and if he says it over and over and enough people believe him, it might as well be true. This strategy is not science, and goes against all the achievements of the human race that brought us out of the Dark Ages, but it's what got him to the White House.

We elected a snake-oil salesman as President of the United States, and by God, he's going to peddle some snake oil. How long, really, until we find out someone in Trump's orbit stands to benefit financially from boosted sales of hydroxychloroquine? The most innocent explanation here is that Trump is merely a desperate and scared conman who is in way over his head. The least innocent is that he's grifting on a global pandemic after completely botching the American response. Either way, his infomercials for this drug are not without consequences, as The New York Times found:

While many hospitals have chosen to use hydroxychloroquine in a desperate attempt to treat dying patients who have few other options, others have noted that it carries serious risks. In particular, the drug can cause a heart arrhythmia that can lead to cardiac arrest.

Dr. Megan L. Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University in Rhode Island, said in an interview on Sunday night that she had never seen an elected official advertise a miracle cure the way Mr. Trump has.

“There are side effects to hydroxychloroquine,” Dr. Ranney said. “It causes psychiatric symptoms, cardiac problems and a host of other bad side effects.”

That is to say—despite the president's leading question—that you may, in fact, have something to lose by taking this thing. (Meanwhile, lupus patients certainly have something to lose. The drug is approved for them, and now there's a run on it.) But now the whole right-wing grift-o-rama machine is oiled up and humming. The lackeys on State TV are peddling it in every segment they can, because he's peddling it and their job is to peddle him. Yes, you're supposed to believe Steve Doocy when he says this guy is doing a great job and you should ingest whatever he tells you to. Here was the president on Friday, doing his thing:

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i'm still feeling residual stranger danger from this pic.twitter.com/qjlOLlFk2U — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 5, 2020

This is genuinely unnerving. It's amazing anyone believes a goddamned thing this guy says. I wouldn't let him park my car. Would you leave your child with Donald Trump for, say, four hours? Yet we've left the country with him for four years. And now, over the next few weeks, as the pandemic rages through our nation and our people, we will see the full consequences of that. We should have listened to our fellow countrymen in Puerto Rico. They found out all about the consequences in 2017. Of course, if hydroxychloroquine does end up proving useful in any respect, the president will claim complete vindication here and say the press betrayed America by listening to the medical experts instead of him. This would be yet another case in which he thinks he's playing chess when he's actually playing roulette.

But in case you found the president's deranged whisper-prescription convincing, here he is elsewhere in that Friday presser.

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Trump has jokes: "The models show hundreds of thousands of people are going to die and you know what I want to do? I want to come way under the model. The professionals did the models and I was never involved in a model. At least this kind of a model." pic.twitter.com/vBeeWz1ayl — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 3, 2020

Yes, the president did just take a moment in a press conference on the national response to a global pandemic to reassure the public that he fucks models. That's what he was saying here, at a time when an American was dying every 90 seconds from coronavirus. This was also around the time he fired the inspector general of the intelligence community for the grievous crime of correctly handling a whistleblower report, because the report led to Trump's impeachment. Did you see that one? The president arranged for a Friday night showing of The Horny Despot, in which he assumed the title role.

There are few more essential American characters than the snake-oil salesman, and there's a strong argument to be made that Donald Trump is the most successful confidence man of all time. But now reality has come crashing into his bullshit forcefield with the full power of nature. The townspeople bought The Miracle Cure, but he can't get out of town before they realize what happened. There's nowhere to go. If there is any justice left in this world, he will one day soon have to face the consequences for what he's done. "This way to the egress" surely won't work much longer. In the meantime, he should get the damn masks and ventilators.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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