Day 1,286: With nearly 150,000 dead Americans from COVID-19, Trump is touting ‘great doctor’ who claimed medicines are created from alien DNA
Nearly 150,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, a number that is climbing by 1,000 people per day.
Donald Trump has treated the entire pandemic with a mixture of apathy and a way to be on TV more . Trump is far more focused on reelection and his golf game than formulating a cogent plan to stem the spread of the disease and allow the country to reopen safely.
He has brought back White House briefings, at which he prefers to ramble, as opposed to letting qualified physicians or scientists do most of the talking. The briefings tend to bring as much disinformation and strangeness as anything else.
Recently, Trump has turned his attention back to hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), which he has claimed is a miracle drug. Stella Immanuel, a pediatrician and minister, has become popular with conservatives because of unfounded claims she has made related to COVID-19, such as masks skepticism and HCQ enthusiasm. Her popularity has not waned despite her history of touting nonsensical claims, like alien DNA being used in medicines and people experiencing physical manifestations of disease after they have sex with magical creatures in their dreams.
A Houston doctor who praises hydroxychloroquine and says that face masks aren’t necessary to stop transmission of the highly contagious coronavirus has become a star on the right-wing internet, garnering tens of millions of views on Facebook on Monday alone. Donald Trump Jr. declared the video of Stella Immanuel a “must watch,” while Donald Trump himself retweeted the video.
Immanuel, a pediatrician and a religious minister, has a history of making bizarre claims about medical topics and other issues. She has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches.
She alleges alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments, and that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. And, despite appearing in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on Monday, she has said that the government is run in part not by humans but by “reptilians” and other aliens.
Tuesday, Trump was asked about his support for Immanuel, where he praised her as a “great doctor,” even in the face of a question about her believing alien DNA is used to create medicine.
Trump’s comments follow his borderline obsession with, as he would say, “the hydroxy”. The FDA found no utility in the use of HCQ and revoked emergency use authorization for the drug. Study after study after study has revealed that the use of HCQ is ineffective, and maybe even more likely to kill the patient. And yet Trump has chosen HCQ Hill to make his stand.
Extolling a doctor who believes that alien DNA plays a roll in medication is really just an extension of the same strange and false claims Trump has made from the podium. Like bringing UV “light inside the body,” or injecting household cleaners to prevent the disease, or claiming that the coronavirus was man-made and allowed to escape from China, Trump’s latest doctor or theory du jour carries no substantive science or credibility of any mind.
And yet, he continues to push them from a podium in the White House like they’re gospel, all to play to a right-wing conspiracy that everyone is lying about the efficacy of a certain drug to harm Trump politically at the expense of thousands of American lives.
1,286 days in, 176 to go
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