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Rachel Maddow executed a long, thorough, and devastating takedown of the relentless cheerleading about the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine from Fox News and President Donald Trump, which has quietly stopped after recent studies here and abroad found that drug can have severe and even fatal side effects when used as an off-label treatment for the coronavirus.

“It is a common drug used to prevent malaria. You may have taken it before traveling overseas, if you were trying not to get malaria,” Maddow said, introducing her segment. “But most likely you never heard of this drug until last month when the primetime Fox News hosts and then the president started incessantly promoting it on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, as what they were quite sure was a miracle cure for coronavirus. There’s no big deal, for this coronavirus thing, we’ve got a cure already. They promoted it to despite zero clinical trials and next to no evidence of its effectiveness. But boy were they insistent.” 

What then followed was a damning, two-minute-long supercut of nearly 30 instances of Trump, as well as Fox hosts Brian Kilmeade, Steve Doocy, Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham touting the drug’s potential if not outright singing the drug’s praises.

“Beginning in middle of March, hydroxychloroquine was mentioned hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times on the Fox News channel, particularly by its primetime hosts, and by

the president, from the White House podium,” Maddow explained, before noting a stark reversal about a week ago, when those mentions disappeared almost overnight. “They just stopped bringing it up. And we don’t know why it is,” Maddow noted. “But yesterday, we did get the results of a new study, which is yet to be peer recovered, but it is the largest to date involving the use of hydroxychloroquine among 368 veterans in veterans hospitals across the U.S. In that trial, the drug was found to have no benefit, and there were actually more deaths reported among those who were given the drug than those who were given standard care.”

The president, when asked about the disappointing results of the VA study at Wednesday’s coronavirus task force briefing, quickly shrugged off the question, saying “I don’t know of the report.” Gone was the unbridled enthusiasm for the drug so evident a month ago.

The MSNBC host then pulled another thread to the story, the breaking news from Wednesday that the federal government’s lead scientist tasked with developing a vaccine for the coronavirus, Dr. Rick Bright, was abruptly demoted earlier this week, a move that he claims was payback because he refused to pursue more research funding for hydroxychloroquine.

“It is one thing to not have leadership at the federal level in response to this crisis. It is actually a whole ‘nother thing

to have the president putting American lives at risk every time he blurts something made up or that he thought he understood from TV into the microphone at the White House briefing room,” Maddow said in a very, let-that-sink-in tone. “I won’t tell you my opinion about the president and how he should be treated. But as a general matter, I think we should all agree that perhaps there should be a more concerted effort to stop the misinformation about this disease, particularly if it is potentially deadly misinformation.”

“If somebody is repeatedly misinforming the American public, about important things having to do with this disease, don’t broadcast that,” Maddow exclaimed, before throwing several not-so-veiled jabs at both Trump and Fox News. “Don’t listen to people who are lying to you about this disease. Don’t broadcast their comments. Certainly don’t keep doing it day after day, when they’ve proven themselves to be lying day after day. And honestly, it doesn’t matter who it is. Show some responsibility, honestly.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.

 

Tags: Donald Trump, Fox News, hydroxychloroquine, Laura Ingraham, media criticism, Rachel Maddow, Sean Hannity