Untested Drug Could Enrich Trump

President Donald Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci. (The White House)

I’ve been writing about Donald Trump’s political career for almost four years and after that long, it gets pretty easy to figure out how he operates. The Trump presidential run was a huge PR stunt that got out of hand. (He said it would be the best infomercial.) Even before he became president, he had a reputation in New York for being a scam artist. Writer Fran Lebowitz said he lost his home state because “everyone knew he was a con.”

“He has zero idea what this job is,” said Lebowitz in InsideHook. “So he conducts it the way I assume he conducted what Republicans call his real estate business, but what we know was, you know, some sort of hustle. You can only do that, by the way, if it’s an illegitimate business.”

Once he was in office, his presidency has been all about grifting, scamming and looking out for himself. Dr. Bandy Lee, a Yale-trained psychiatrist has described Trump as a narcissist, as have several other mental health professionals. So when Trump started hyping hydroxychloroquine, an untested drug, as a cure-all for the coronavirus, I began to have an inclining of what was going on.

After some research, I discovered that Novartis, the company that makes the drug, had been paying former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen $100,000 a month for lobbying efforts. As I said in a Twitter post on Tuesday, it wasn’t difficult to discern that Trump probably had a financial stake in the promotion of hydroxychloroquine.

So what influenced Trump to promote the drug? FOX News, of course! Since Trump refuses to read anything or listen to expert advisers, he gets all of his information from sources such as FOX News, the same channel currently getting sued for telling their viewers the coronavirus was a hoax! Hydroxychloroquine has been hyped by several FOX News commentators such as second-generation neo-Nazi Laura Ingraham and TV quack Dr. Mehmet Oz. According to Media Matters, FOX News has promoted hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine 300 times in two weeks.

On Monday, The New York Times published a story that outlined the financial ties between Trump and hydroxychloroquine.

“If hydroxychloroquine becomes an accepted treatment, several pharmaceutical companies stand to profit, including shareholders and senior executives with connections to the president. Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine,” said The Times. Trump also announced that the government had bought 29 million pills.

So let’s get this straight:

Trump is pushing a drug tied to a company that he has a stake in. He’s also advertising it, using government apparatus, which will drive up their sales and stocks.

Hydroxychloroquine has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use against COVID-19 and has been known to have side effects. Some of the side effects listed by WedMD include nausea, dizziness, mood swings and heart failure.

Trump is pushing this drug against the recommendations of the medical community. Dr. Anthony Fauci, an infectious disease specialist who serves on the government’s coronavirus response team, said, “We still need to do the kinds of studies that definitively prove whether any intervention, not just this one, any intervention is truly safe and effective.”

So what influenced Trump to promote the drug? FOX News, of course! Since Trump refuses to read anything or listen to expert advisers, he gets all of his information from sources such as FOX News, the same channel currently getting sued for telling their viewers the coronavirus was a hoax!

Hydroxychloroquine has been hyped by several FOX News commentators such as second-generation neo-Nazi Laura Ingraham and TV quack Dr. Mehmet Oz. According to Media Matters, FOX News has promoted hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine 300 times in two weeks.

A few days ago, the White House witnessed a major disagreement after disease experts, led by Fauci, objected to taking advice from Oz, a TV personality. (Oz is a trained surgeon who has been criticized by his colleagues for pushing unsubstantiated cures.)

However, Trump’s actions on hydroxychloroquine are highly unethical and possibly illegal. But this shouldn’t be surprising. This fits in with his pattern of behavior. As president, he’s hired unqualified family members, threatened foreign countries unless they did his bidding and directed government money to his companies. This is how he does business. And if he gets reelected in November, he’s going to keep doing this — and worse.