Trump, selling a new kind of snake oil at tonight’s press briefing:

The other thing that we bought a tremendous amount of is the hydroxychloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, which I think, as you know, it’s a great malaria drug; it’s worked unbelievably; it’s a powerful drug on malaria and there are signs that it works on this, some very strong signs; and in the meantime, it’s been around a long time; it also works very powerfully on lupus, lupus, so there are some very strong, powerful signs; we’ll have to see because again it’s being tested; now, this is a new thing that just happened to us, the invisible enemy, we call it, and if you can, if you have a, uh, no sign of heart problems, the azithromycin, azithromycin, which will kill certain things that you don’t want living within your body, it’s a powerful drug if you don’t have a problem, a heart problem we would say; let your doctor think about it but, as a combination I think they’re going to be, I think they’re two things that should be looked at very strongly; now, we have purchased, and we have stockpiled, 29 million pills of the hydroxychloroquine, 29 million; a lot of drug stores have them by prescription and, also, and, they’re not expensive; also, we’re sending them to various labs, our military, we’re sending them to the hospitals, we’re sending them all over; I just think it’s something, you know the expression, I’ve used it for certain reasons: “What do you have to lose? What do you have to lose?” and a lot of people are saying that, when, and, are taking it; if you’re a doctor, a nurse, a first responder, a medical person going into hospitals, they say taking it before the fact is good but, what do you have to lose? They say, take it. I’m not looking at it one way or the other, but we want to get out of this. If it does work, it would be a shame if we didn’t do it early, but we have some very good signs, so that’s hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin; and, again, you have to go through your medical people, get the approval, but I’ve seen things that I sort of like, so, what do I know, I’m not a doctor, I’m not a doctor but I have common sense; the FDA feels good about it; as you know, they’ve approved it, they gave it a rapid approval, and, the reason, because it’s been out there for a long time and they know the side effects and they also know the potential; so, based on that, we have sent it throughout the country and we have it stockpiled, about 29 million doses, 29 million doses; we have a lot of it; we hope it works

Although he’s barely intelligible at the best of times, that could only have been an advertisement.

Trump, selling snake oil at yesterday’s press briefing:

Last Saturday the FDA also gave emergency authorization for hydroxychloroquine and, the hydroxychloroquine is a, I hope it’s going to be a very important answer; we’re having some very good things happening with it, and we’re going to be distributing it through the strategic national stockpile; it’s going into the strategic national stockpile to treat certain patients, and we have millions and millions of doses of it, 29 million, to be exact; in addition to that, we’re making it, and we’re also getting it from various other locations and countries and, in one case, I called Prime Minister Modi of India this morning; they make large amounts of hydroxychloroquine, very large amounts, frankly, and I said, they had a hold because, you know, they have 1.5 billion people, and they think a lot of it, and I said I’d appreciate if they would release the amounts that we ordered, and they are giving it serious consideration; but they do make, India makes a lot of it; but we have already 29 million, if you look, and that’s a big number, 29 million doses, we’ve got millions of doses that are being made here and many millions of doses that are made elsewhere that are being shipped here, and it will be arriving; we’re just hearing really positive stories and, we’re continuing to collect the data but, I’ll just speak for myself, it’s been out for a long time; it’s a malaria drug; it’s also a drug for lupus and there’s a, there’s a study out that people with lupus aren’t catching this horrible virus, they’re not affected so much by it; now, maybe that’s correct, maybe it’s false; you’re going to have to check it out, but there’s a lot of very positive things happening with that; that’s a game-changer, if that’s the case

Even if this didn’t make him sound as if he and everyone he knows has bought up all the stock in companies that manufacture hydroxychloroquine (and it really does sound like that), how is it at all ethical for the president of the United States to go on television and repeat an unfounded rumor that people with the autoimmune disease lupus aren’t affected by COVID-19 because they’re prescribed hydroxychloroquine? He’s been selling this snake oil since mid-May, and now it’s going into the national stockpile? If this doesn’t turn into the biggest insider trading scandal of all time, I’ll eat my boots.