‘I happen to think it works’: Trump doubles down on hydroxychloroquine There is no evidence from several clinical trials that the anti-malarial has any impact in preventing Covid-19 or treating mildly to severely ill people.

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Donald TrumpPresident Donald Trump. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Tuesday doubled down on his promotion of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19irus despite no evidence of the malaria drug’s efficacy in doing so.

“Many doctors think it is extremely successful, the hydroxychloroquine coupled with the zinc and perhaps the azithromycin,” Trump asserted at a White House briefing, though there is no evidence from at least five rigorous clinical trials that hydroxychloroquine has any impact in preventing the virus or treating mildly to severely ill cases.

“I happen to think it works in the early stages,” the president continued, repeating his past claim, “I think front-line medical people believe that, too — some. Many.”

 Trump initially revived the issue in a flurry of social media posts late Monday, tweeting more than a dozen times in defense of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19.

Debate over the drug has resurfaced after a study run by the Henry Ford Medical Center suggested this month that the pill could help mildly ill patients recover faster. While Trump and trade adviser Peter Navarro touted the research, experts swiftly pointed out that patients were not randomized, that there was no placebo to compare with, and that many were on steroids — which are known to help with inflammation.

Still, Trump reminded reporters that he himself had taken a course of the drug prior to the FDA’s revoking its emergency-use authorization in light of data showing that it proved ineffective against the novel coronavirus and could even be unsafe. The president had markedly toned down his promotion of hydroxychloroquine for several months before resuming his advocacy this week, with coronavirus cases in the U.S. continuing to rise.

“I had no problem. I had absolutely no problem,” the president said on Tuesday. “Felt no different. Didn’t feel good, bad or indifferent, and I tested — as you know, it didn’t get me and it’s not going to — hopefully — hurt anybody.” He added that he’d read up “a lot” on the drug.

 One of the messages Trump retweeted the previous night featured a video of a woman who claimed to be a Houston physician, surrounded by others in white lab coats outside what appeared to be the U.S. Supreme Court, advocating on behalf of the antimalarial medication and discouraging the use of face masks.

 That post has since been flagged by Twitter and removed from the president’s feed. Twitter also restricted Donald Trump Jr.’s account on Tuesday after he shared a version of the same video.

The president on Tuesday questioned such decisions by social media companies, positing, “For some reason the internet wanted to take them down.”

“I don’t know why — they’re very respected doctors,” Trump said, though The Daily Beast reported that the doctor featured in the video, Stella Immanuel, has also claimed that face masks aren’t necessary to prevent the transmission of the coronavirus, that alien DNA is being used in medicine and that scientists are working to create a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. (Immanuel later endorsed The Daily Beast‘s reporting, tweeting that it did a “great job summarizing our deliverance ministry.“)

When asked by a reporter on Tuesday about Immanuel’s unorthodox medical views, Trump demurred, saying he knows “nothing about her” but calling her voice an important one.

“She says she’s had tremendous success with hundreds of different patients,” he maintained, before cutting short his session with reporters.

Trump’s latest Twitter spree represents a return to form for the president, who had escalated efforts in recent weeks to undermine his own public health officials before seemingly projecting a more science-focused tone last Tuesday regarding the pandemic.

But during a tour of a vaccine production plant in North Carolina on Monday, Trump showed signs of his previous eagerness to reopen the U.S. economy in spite of record spikes in Covid-19 caseloads across the South and Southwest.

“I really do believe a lot of the governors should be opening up states that they’re not opening, and we’ll see what happens with them,” the president said.

Earlier on Tuesday, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, dismissed the dubious medical advice from the president and vowed to continue in his role despite a new salvo of attacks from the White House.

In an on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Fauci promoted best practices for combating the coronavirus and repeatedly contradicted the president’s fervent defense of hydroxychloroquine.

Addressing Trump’s social media activity, Fauci stressed that Americans “should all be wearing masks outside” and agreed with the Food and Drug Administration’s decision last month to withdraw its emergency-use authorization for hydroxychloroquine.

“The overwhelming prevailing clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have indicated that it is not effective in [treating the] coronavirus disease,” he said.

Fauci was also asked about one of Trump’s retweets on Monday that cast doubt on his scientific credentials, including a message alleging that he had “misled the American public on many issues.”

The widely respected immunologist has served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for more than 3½ decades, advising several presidents over the course of his career.

“I don’t know how to address that. I’m just going to certainly continue doing my job,” Fauci said, adding: “I have not been misleading the American public under any circumstances.”

Trump on Tuesday denied that he was trying to undermine Fauci, telling reporters that the two had just been in a coronavirus task force meeting together and claiming not to know Fauci’s stance on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine.

But Trump argued that the drug had been politicized because of his advocacy for it and complained that Fauci’s approval rating among the public was much higher than his own.

“He‘s got this high approval rating. Why don‘t I have a high approval rating with respect — and the administration — with respect to the virus?” Trump asked, painting Fauci simultaneously as both expendable and an important teammate.

“It sort of is curious. A man works for us, with us, very closely — Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, also — highly thought of, and yet they‘re highly thought of but nobody likes me. It can only be my personality. That‘s all,” he concluded.

Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, one of Trump’s most outspoken Republican critics, said on Tuesday that officials in his state were “not going to take the president’s advice” on reopening and accused him of “falling back into those old habits of just saying things that are counterproductive.”

“The messaging seems to be wrong by the president at this point in time,” Hogan told CNN. “It’s sort of like the messaging we had earlier in the crisis. But many of the states that opened too fast are now reshutting down. And we don’t want to be in that position.”

Apart from his calls for states to phase out their coronavirus-related restrictions, Trump’s renewed touting of hydroxychloroquine is also notable given the results of at least three new studies adding to existing evidence that the drug is not helpful to Covid-19 patients.

Still, Navarro, the White House trade adviser, praised the administration’s announcement on Tuesday that it would lend $765 million to the Eastman Kodak Company under the Defense Production Act to facilitate increased domestic manufacturing of drugs — including hydroxychloroquine, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“I think when people look back on this, this is the beginning of American independence from our pharmaceutical dependence on foreign countries,” Navarro told Fox Business. “This project with Kodak is going to be amazing.”

Navarro has clashed with Fauci since the early days of the federal government’s pandemic response, shrugging off the doctor’s concerns about hydroxychloroquine’s safety and authoring an op-ed in USA Today earlier this month titled “Anthony Fauci has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.”

Source:politico.com