‘Follow The Money’? Disproving The Latest Bogus Media(D) Narrative On Trump and Chloroquine
An outsider looking in might wonder why the ‘news’ media seem to be desperately hoping a miracle cure would fail in a pandemic where people’s lives genuinely hang in the balance.
If anyone other than Trump were praising it, perhaps they would have reacted differently to it. But they are so bitterly opposed to anything he says or does, they instinctively close ranks and look for ways to discredit him.
Some of these same people once called ISIS terrorist Al-Baghdadi an ‘austere scholar’. So we take what they have to say with a block of salt.
Ever since President Trump caught wind of a peer-reviewed study from France touting the success of a readily-available, cheap, and effective medicine with comparatively few side effects that has been available to the public for literally decades, the press have been looking for ways to discredit it.
They pushed the story about the fishtank cleaner, laying blame for that at Trump’s feet.
They complained that Trump was no doctor — but when liberal politicians spoke hopefully about that treatment, they got no grief over it.
Politicians actively banned the use of it for treating Covid-19 — and then the FDA approved it.
Crowder framed the ‘evolution’ this way:
https://twitter.com/scrowder/status/1247545992339128322?s=20
And then along came the money angle.
Trump is ‘making money’ on this. Media talking heads (like Mika from ‘Morning Joe’) are certain of it. THAT’s why Trump is touting this drug that doctors around the world have been using as their go-to, top-tier treatment approach.
[And did you catch all the times Joe squeezed in the phrase ‘unproven drug’ in less than a minute? It’s almost like he’s trying to push a narrative or something.]Mika Brzezinski: Trump must have "financial tie" to someone that leads him to promote hydroxychloroquine.
Mika's allegation is tantamount to an accusation that Trump is on the take.#tcot @MorningMika #Hydroxychloroquine @realDonaldTrump #coronavirus @JoeNBC @Morning_Joe pic.twitter.com/ry1GDTrKeg
— Mark Finkelstein (@markfinkelstein) April 6, 2020
No. It doesn’t even enter into their minds that he could actually care about the lives of ordinary Americans and want them to survive this medical crisis.
But that line of reasoning doesn’t hold up either. Even resolute anti-Trumpers will concede that.
I mean, really. If you’ve even lost THIS guy…
https://twitter.com/nj_hill/status/1247557882738102274
…it’s pretty clear your line of attack against Trump has gone off the rails.
Let’s break down the reality of their spurious ‘follow the money’ angle.
https://twitter.com/nj_hill/status/1247557882738102274
Market Watch crunched the numbers:
The report doesn’t say how small, but it notes that his three family trusts have investments in a Dodge & Cox mutual fund whose largest holding is Sanofi. A fund that matches this description is the Dodge & Cox International Stock Fund DODFX, +1.32%, which at last check was 3.3% invested in Sanofi.
Trump’s 2019 financial-disclosure form lists stakes in Family Trusts 1, 2 and 3 valued at between $1,001 and $15,000. So if Trump has the maximum $15,000 in each of the trusts, he holds a stake in Sanofi that’s worth $1,485 — and, at the minimum, just $99.
…And Trump has a small stake in basically every big company you can think of. —MarketWatch
But they didn’t stop there…
Another point worth making is how little the malaria drug means to Sanofi’s bottom line. In 2019, what the company calls Plaquenil wasn’t even broken out by name in the company’s financial accounts, while 33 other medications were.
That is hardly surprising as the drug has been around since the 1950s and is available generically.
A host of other companies are making the medication, including Amneal Pharmaceuticals AMRX, -7.32%, Mylan MYL, +2.35% and Teva Pharmaceutical TEVA, +0.84%.