In His HBCU Commencement Speech, Barack Obama Reminds Us That The People at the Top Don't Always Know What They're Doing

Earlier today, former President Barack Obama gave a virtual commencement address to a consortium of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Speaking from a home office, he congratulated the graduates, talked with them about economic justice, and discussed racial equality. But let’s not miss his main point: he honed in on the key problem of the American republic, which is the lack of government expertise.

“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing. A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge.”

During the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump and his top staff have repeatedly rejected the advice of qualified experts, while implementing inconsistent policies that have been so ineffective that the European medical journal Lancet took the bold, unusual step of editorializing against American public health policy.

And, truly, American public health policy during the pandemic has been terrible. President Trump stood up on national television and talked, in all seriousness, about injecting disinfectants into coronavirus patients. He advocated an unproven and eventually discredited drug, hydroxychloroquine, as a coronavirus treatment. As a consequence of the United States’ failure to fully implement basic public health measures like extensive testing and contact tracing, the United States leads the world – by far – in coronavirus deaths. As of this writing, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine reports 88,675 confirmed coronavirus deaths in the United States, and the number continues to grow.

Link: Ceremonial Speakers Teach Us Cultural Values

And indeed, as former President Obama pointed out in his speech today, the pandemic has shown us that the people at the top sometimes have no idea what they are doing. Indeed, there is no reason that the United States, the world’s most powerful industrial nation, should lead the world in pandemic deaths.

I have written many times that ceremonial speeches like Obama’s HBCU commencement speech today are not just empty show. While congratulating the graduates, President Obama reminded us of values that many millions of us seem to have forgotten. In particular, he spoke against the idea that people who have no idea what they are doing deserve unlimited respect and obedience. I hope that we were all listening.

Follow-up: President Trump's bad ideas have not greatly harmed his popularity. Why not?

P.S. I clicked on FoxNews.com after writing this. Conspiracy theories and personal attacks against Obama's speech are already starting. What else could they say?

Once Again, Trump Proves That Speakers Need Research

Donald Trump, White House photo

Yes (sigh), once again, Donald Trump needed research. Trump’s town hall yesterday at the Lincoln Memorial, although bizarre, was no more bizarre than his usual public presentations. He made simple factual errors that could have been easily prevented. All he needed was a few minutes of research. 

Of his many odd statements, what struck me most was his ignorant comment about the 1918 flu epidemic:

"So in 1917, we had a horrible, that case was the flu, you remember the Spanish flu? So much has been written about it, now of course it’s the hottest.” 

He continued:

“Everybody that writes a book about the Spanish flu of 1917, it killed between I guess 50 to a hundred million people. It probably ended the first world war because the soldiers were all getting sick. It was the worst the world has ever seen that we know of.”

Speakers need research, and Trump didn’t have it.

First, the so-called Spanish flu broke out in the spring of 1918, not 1917. Somehow, Trump seems to have in his head that it started in 1917 and he has been unable to get that straight. The History Channel website, for instance, explains that: “The first wave of the 1918 pandemic occurred in the spring and was generally mild.” For a more prestigious source, we can turn to an article in the scientific journal Revista Biomedica, where scientists Jeffery K. Taubenberger and David M. Morens explain that “The ‘Spanish’ influenza pandemic of 1918–1919, which caused ≈50 million deaths worldwide, remains an ominous warning to public health.”

Second, although the influenza epidemic spread across the world and infected many service personnel, it did not end World War I. A simple glance at credible sources (like the History Channel) would establish that the 1918 (not 1917) influenza pandemic swept through the United States Army and Navy, and yet the United States was on the winning side. An article in the scientific journal Virology gives similar information in more depth.

I assume (it’s not entirely certain, given his comments) that Trump understood that the United States did, in fact, fight on the winning side? If not, research makes that information available as well. For example, an article on the Imperial War Museum website explains the 1918 armistice’s terms. The United States Library of Congress offers a PDF file of the armistice’s actual text.

Speakers Need Research: Donald Trump Suggested Injecting Disinfectants to Cure the Coronavirus

The sources that I cited are easy to find. I avoided sources like Wikipedia or other encyclopedias and instead looked for information published by responsible people and organizations. Primary sources, such as the actual text of the armistice, are especially credible. I was careful not to rely just on one source for potentially controversial information. It didn’t take me long to get the basic facts.  The History Channel website shows up prominently on a Google or Bing search, whereas Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/) offers quality academic sources, often with full-text links, at the click of a button.

Mike Lee Tries to Make Fun of the Green New Deal but Only Makes Fun of Himself (P.S. Speakers Need Research)

If he decides to stop making silly mistakes, Mr. Trump can make either of two choices: (1) he can get on his famous cell phone and look up simple facts, or (2) he could ask his advisors for some quick research before (not after) he opens his mouth. Neither method would take any more time than sending out four or five rage tweets

Millions of people believe the President of the United States just because he is the President. That means that the President of the United States really should make basic efforts to get his facts right. At the same time, the more mistakes the President makes, the less likely it is that people will believe him in the future. Even slavish acolytes might have limits. Trump’s political prospects could improve if he didn’t make so many silly mistakes and commit so many unforced research errors.

P.S.: Many of the things we learn in school become out of date 20 or 30 years later. That is why the most important thing you can get out of high school and college is to learn how to locate and evaluate quality, credible information for yourself. Learning and education are lifelong tasks.

Trump, the "China Virus," and the Art of Controlling the Agenda by Misdirection

“The China virus.” That’s what Donald Trump, who is always eager to shift blame, calls the coronavirus pandemic.

For example, last month, President Donald Trump tweeted that: “The United States will be powerfully supporting those industries, like Airlines and others, that are particularly affected by the Chinese Virus. We will be stronger than ever before!”

Okay, sure. The virus is widely believed to have started in China, and there’s nothing new about naming viruses after their supposed national origin: the Hong Kong flu, the Spanish flu, and so forth.

But “China virus” is more than a name to President Trump. “China virus” underlies President Trump’s coronavirus strategy (or lack thereof). By talking about the “China virus,” in one masterful swoop of deception and deflection, Trump simultaneously appeals to his xenophobic voters, deflects blame, and – this last deception is especially brilliant – gives his many critics something to complain about other than his incompetence. The “China virus” is the verbal meme that puts Trump in control of the public health agenda.

In the meantime, United States has, as of this writing, suffered 66,760 of the 245,531 of the confirmed coronavirus deaths, about 27% of the total, while the United States’ population is only about 4.25% of the world population. Prima facie, something is going very wrong with the American coronavirus public health response.

Indeed, Trump’s legendary incompetence manifests itself everywhere you look:

• Trump asked his science advisors whether it would be beneficial to inject household disinfectants into coronavirus patients. Really? Yes, he did.
• Trump suggested shining bright ultraviolet light into coronavirus patients.
• Trump promised that the United States would soon be able to administer 5 million coronavirus tests a day. Of course, that capacity does not exist and he soon backtracked, calling the story a “media trap.”

Why Didn't Dr. Birx and Acting Under Secretary Bryan Speak Up Loudly Against Bleach Injections and UV Light Treatments?


Injecting bleach into patients and promising medical tests that never materialize in the promised numbers won’t stop the coronavirus pandemic. President Trump therefore could choose between two alternatives: (1) he could take effective public health actions to reduce the pandemic’s farms, or (2) he can shift the blame elsewhere. Alternative (1) would require administrative and leadership skills. Since President Trump has, so far, manifested few administrative skills, his only remaining choice is to shift the blame. China fills the bill just fine: the virus probably originated in China; China is a dictatorship with a morally questionable government, and China did, in the early days of the virus, conceal how bad things really were. That is, as we will see, pure diversion on Trump's part: even if China truly was as bad as he says, that does not excuse his own mistakes.

So, let’s look at Trump’s “China virus” rhetoric.

First, one of Trump’s major themes was that he restricted immigration from China. For example, in the April 22, 2020 Coronavirus Task Force Press Conference, Trump said:

“Plus, we put the ban on so much earlier. When Nancy Pelosi, as an example — you don’t say this — when she’s having her rally in San Francisco — in Chinatown, in San Francisco. Nobody wants to say that. If we didn’t — and Dr. Fauci said this — if we didn’t close our country to China, we would have been so infected, like nobody’s ever seen.”

Since (according to Trump), the virus was China’s fault, stopping immigration from China should (according to Trump) have stopped the virus. Focusing on the false claim that Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi held a big rally in Chinatown sharpened the contrast between Trump, who opposes China, and Pelosi, whom Trump attacked.

At a White House business roundtable on April 29, Trump acknowledged the pandemic’s enormity, but blamed it on others, including China:

“Look, this thing will pass. And when it passes, that’ll be a great achievement. And we — we’ve done a very good job. It’s far too many people, needlessly, because it could have been stopped at the point of origin. And somehow we weren’t helped by — whether it’s World Health Organization or China, whoever, we weren’t — they didn’t do what should have been done.”

Not his fault, he said, but the World Health Organization or China (or maybe both, since he wasn’t clear) was to blame. Notice the vagueness: “somehow we weren’t helped.” A week earlier, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had accused the WHO of being subservient to China: “We know that the leader of that organization traveled to China and then declined to declare it a pandemic until everyone in the world knew that was already true,” so Trump was tying together a collection of China-related accusations.

At her first White House press briefing, newly minted Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany dealt with the press question about China and the coronavirus by accusing China of having "mishandled the situation:"

“Q The markets are down super substantially today after the President yesterday suggested in the East Room that he might use tariffs to punish China over the coronavirus. Is there any serious consideration being given to putting new tariffs on China, or was the President just spit balling yesterday?
“MS. MCENANY: Look, I won’t get ahead of any announcements from the President, but I will echo the President’s displeasure with China. It’s no secret that China mishandled this situation.”

First, Trump’s rhetoric has long centered, above all, in what stage magicians call misdirection. If he can divert attention to China’s failures, which were certainly real, he can get his supporters to think less about his own failures, which were also real.

More about Trump and Misdirection: Trump's Twitter Speech: Lots of Talking Points, No Content

Second, Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric appeals to xenophobic members of his voting base. As Eliza Relman pointed out last year out in Business Insider, “Since the earliest days of his presidential campaign, Trump has inflamed tensions over race and immigration.”

Third, every time mainstream persons in media outlets complain about Trump’s China xenophobia, they accomplish little other than to reinforce the xenophobia of Trump supporters. This morally obtuse boomerang effect is Trump’s evil superpower. And the mainstream media never seem to get it. So, when the Huffington Post’s George Zornick writes, “giving voice to a hateful blame game that has been simmering among hardcore right-wingers for weeks,” he is completely right. But the simple fact that he pointed it out becomes, to Trump's supporters, more evidence that Trump is baiting liberals.

In other words, baiting liberals works. Baiting liberals puts Trump in charge. Every time someone like Relman or Zornick correctly points out that Trump’s rhetoric is hateful and bigoted, they are burning oxygen that could be used to attack the incredible weakness of Trump’s policies. Yes, Trump's xenophobia is evil, and it is right to criticize it. But Trump’s persuasive technique centers on spewing out so many outrageous comments that critics, fact checkers, and respectable people can’t keep up with the torrent. Saying cruel and bigoted things – and talking about the “China virus” is, bad as it is, far from the cruelest – does not harm Trump's standing among his base voters. The Republican base and undecided voters would be much more likely to care about Trump’s weak coronavirus response. By blaming it all on China, Trump diverts attention from his own failures, appeals to his base's  xenophobic views, and distracts mainstream commentators from talking about his policy mistakes.

Inspired by Trump's strategy, a Republican consulting group distributed a 57-page memo urging Republicans to attack China's coronavirus policies from every angle, giving them an alternative to defending Trump's obviously indefensible policies.

I have written several times that the winner of the debate is the side that controls the agenda. Trump is saying many things that are wrong, but the agenda is all his.

Teenagers Know to Keep Their Stories Straight, but President Trump Does Not: The Sad Case of the Injecting Disinfectants Briefing

Coronavirus Task Force Briefing

The President of the United States should know how to keep his story straight. After all, any self-respecting teenager knows that, if Mom catches you, you had better tell a consistent story:

MOM: Your curfew was at eight o’clock, so why are you walking in the door at ten? 
PAT: Well, Mom, I told you that I was going to Chris’s house to work on our science project. 
MOM: Try again. I called Chris’s mom, and you weren’t there. [Spoken in full Mom Voice.]
PAT: Oh, that’s right, I went for a walk in the park, and the stars were so pretty that I lost track of time. 
MOM: You lost track of time looking at stars outdoors in a thunderstorm? [Mom’s patented Sarcastic Voice.] And yet you walked in the door a few minutes later, perfectly dry? Try again. 
PAT: Mom, I’m hurt that you don’t trust me. [Sobs insincerely.]

Obviously unprepared for the Coronavirus Task Force Briefing last Thursday, President Donald Trump asked a series of questions about the wisdom of injecting disinfectants into coronavirus patients and shining ultraviolet light inside their bodies. Noticing that Trump’s suggestions were dangerous and irresponsible, his critics have been jumping all over him. Never one to admit that he was wrong, President Trump, joined by his conservative enablers, has offered various excuses, none of them consistent with the others, and none of them consistent with what happened.

In the Pat-Mom dialogue above, Pat’s mother taught an important lesson. That lesson is simple: if you tell transparent lies, you’re going to get caught, and you will get caught faster if your lies contradict one another. President Trump needs to learn the same lesson. Also, just like Mom, the voters can figure out the truth faster than you think.

Trump Asked About Injecting Disinfectants
As I discussed in my last post, President Trump asked, among other bizarre things:

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.”

Bleach and disinfectant manufacturers responded quickly, for example, the manufacturer of Lysol said this: “We must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route).”

Donald Trump Could Learn Something about Good Public Speaking from Public Relations People: Truth and the Coronavirus

Basic public relations technique would require President Trump to immediately retract his statement and warn people not to ingest or inject disinfectants into themselves. The story would have been over in a day. Instead, we heard a bizarre series of implausible, inconsistent stories. Let’s look at them.

Story #1: The White House Said Trump Was Quoted Out of Context
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said this:

“President Trump has repeatedly said that Americans should consult with medical doctors regarding coronavirus treatment, a point that he emphasized again during yesterdays' briefing statement. Leave it to the media to irresponsibly take President Trump out of context and run with negative headlines.”

Similarly, Charlie Kirk, leader of the conservative group Turning Point USA, tweeted that:

“It’s ridiculous:
“The mainstream media is more upset about an out of context comment about disinfectant than they are about Joe Biden’s sexual assault story
“That tells you everything you need to know about the dishonest press
“They hate Trump more than they love America”

My post yesterday quoted the entire exchange just to make sure that my readers could see Trump’s context. He did not simply make an offhand comment; he talked about disinfectant and light injections at some length. Still, if he wanted to claim he was being quoted out of context, he should have stuck with that story. Instead, his story quickly changed:

Story #2: Trump Said He Was Being Sarcastic
On Friday, the day after his disastrous press briefing, Trump said that he didn’t mean that people should ask for disinfectant injections; he was just being sarcastic to provoke reporters:

“I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters just like you, just to see what would happen. I was asking a sarcastic and a very sarcastic question to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside. But it does kill it and it would kill it on the hands, and it would make things much better.”

Trump’s tone of voice, facial expressions, and phrasings did not strike me as sarcastic at all. When I’m sarcastic (a temptation I try to avoid), I usually put a sneer on my face and in my voice. Furthermore, he addressed the question to Acting Under Secretary William Bryan, not a reporter. The Annenberg School’s website FactCheck.org also sounds doubtful: “There’s no clear indication in his remarks that Trump was joking, either in his initial comment or when he returned to the topic later in the briefing. But we’ll leave it for readers to judge.”

Still, Story #2 is a shift from Story #1. It’s one thing for Trump to say that he was taken out of context. But, if he was quoted inaccurately, how can he then say that he meant what he said, albeit jokingly? It is remotely conceivable that he was being sarcastic, but this is not the same as Story #1. Just like teenage Pat in my story, Trump is not keeping his story straight.

In the YouTube era, anyone with a computer can watch the relevant clip from the White House press briefing and decide for themselves whether Trump sounded sarcastic. Feel free to post a comment saying what you think.

I think that it would be ethically wrong for the President to bait reporters by deliberately giving inaccurate information in a press briefing during a national emergency.

Story #3: Trump Was Musing Out Loud
Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of the Coronavirus Task Force who is a physician with a distinguished research record, spoke on television Sunday – three days after the disastrous press briefing – to explain that Trump was merely engaged in a “dialogue” with the other task force members: “I think I’ve made it clear that this was a musing, as you described.” She also complained that the press was spending too much time on the story.

Now, maybe Trump was “musing” and engaged in “dialogue” with the other task force members. However, a press briefing is not a college dorm session and is not the right time to discuss controversial or dangerous ideas that no one has fully vetted. Any “musing” or “dialogue” needed to happen before they invited the press. Maryland’s Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, said it best: “I think it is critical that the President of the United States -- when people are really scared and in the middle of this worldwide pandemic – that in these press conferences, that we really get the facts out there.”

In any case, even if Trump was just “musing,” Story #3 contradicts Stories #1 and #2. If he was merely musing, that means that he was quoted in context and the only mistake listeners made was to take him seriously. If he was being sarcastic, he was neither musing nor engaged in dialogue.

Speech research in the new media era

The Truth Is Always Consistent
Like our teenage friend Pat, Trump and his friends didn’t keep their story straight. The facts contradict all three of Trump’s stories. Worse, Trump’s stories contradict one another.

Of course, in the long run, liars never keep their story straight, do they?

My previous blog post argued that President Trump was unprepared for the briefing. That is why speakers need research. This post shows that, instead of admitting that Trump said something foolish and dangerous, Trump supporters and Trump himself have twisted themselves into knots trying to defend him. Unfortunately, they didn’t coordinate their stories.

Before I leave this regrettable press briefing behind, I will have one more point to make: the other task force members failed to correct Trump forcefully. The taxpayers, not the president, pay these people’s salaries, and their first loyalty needs to be to the people of the United States of America, not to him. Keep a lookout for my next post.


P.S.: New York television news reports that “New York City's Poison Control Center for exposure to certain household chemicals more than doubled after President Donald Trump suggested injecting disinfectant might be one way to combat COVID-19, the city said Saturday.” Maybe the President should be careful about speaking carelessly, musing or making sarcastic comments. Maybe he should do his homework before, and not after, he talks to reporters in public.

Image: White House Flickr

Trump Uses Medical Quackery to Divert Attention from the Real Issues

Coronavirus Task Force, whitehouse.gov

In 1868, Pennsylvania’s Samuel L. Carter began to market a product called Carter’s Little Liver Pills. At various times, he claimed that his pills were good for increasing the flow of bile, curing headaches, treating “torpid liver,” and relieving “furred tongue,” among other real and imaginary ailments.  An apocryphal story claims that someone once asked Carter what his pills were good for, and he responded cynically by saying, “$100,000 a year” or some such claim. The pills are still on the market, although the FDA insisted that the word “liver” needed to be removed. 

Okay, well, in 1868, modern scientific medicine lingered in its infancy. But what excuse do we have today?

President Donald Trump, who surely passed a science course along the way to his bachelor’s degree from an Ivy League university, has been promoting a quick, unproven cure for the coronavirus, the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine. He may even believe in it. Rhetorically, however, hydroxychloroquine helps Trump create yet another diversion from – and maybe a good excuse about – his anemic response to the coronavirus pandemic. 

So, here is what Trump said during his opening speech at one of the many Coronavirus Task Force briefings that he held in March 2020:

“Now, a drug called chloroquine — and some people would add to it ‘hydroxy.’  Hydroxychloroquine. So chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine. Now, this is a common malaria drug. It is also a drug used for strong arthritis. If somebody has pretty serious arthritis, also uses this in a somewhat different form. But it is known as a malaria drug, and it’s been around for a long time and it’s very powerful. But the nice part is, it’s been around for a long time, so we know that if it — if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody.”

His odd comment that “some people would add to it ‘hydroxy’” convinces me that he knew very little about the drug’s pharmacology or chemistry.  (Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are chemically related but they’re not the same.) He was, I promise you, not finished. He also said:

“So, Regeneron, again, and — is some — is a company that’s done fantastically well, as I understand, with Ebola and some other things.  Great company.  And they’re looking at some very promising events also.  So you have remdesivir and you have chloroquine and hydro- — hydroxychloroquine.  So those are two that are out now, essentially approved for prescribed use.”

Now, first, President Trump was advocating an unproven cure for coronavirus. Second, Trump assured the American public that the drug was safe: “if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody.”

Both claims are dubious. Andrew Noymer, who is professor of public health at the University of California, Irvine, said that a study that Trump cited was "meaningless" because it lacked scientific controls. The CIA has quietly advised its personnel against using hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus: “At this point, the drug is not recommended to be used by patients except by medical professionals prescribing it as part of ongoing investigational studies. There are potentially significant side effects, including sudden cardiac death, associated with hydroxychloroquine and its individual use in patients need to be carefully selected and monitored by a health care professional.”

Public reactions have been predictable. Mr. Trump’s supporters are thrilled. Attorney General William Barr complained that the press was engaged in a “jihad” against hydroxychloroquine. Fox News’ Sean Hannity predictably touted hydroxychloroquine on his television show. My social media pages overflow with presumably responsible people praising hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus cure and complaining bitterly that the mainstream press is unfair to the drug because they hate President Trump. The National Review, which is the closest that we have to a responsible conservative news outlet, complained earlier this month about the “Left’s Ugly Reaction to Hydroxychloroquine.”  This may be part and parcel of what Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman notes is a long-standing relationship between America’s right wing and medical quackery. (For example, Alex Jones has hawked a nanosilver toothpaste to cure coronavirus while one of evangelist Jim Bakker's guests promoted a silver solution.)

Okay. I am a (retired) academic person, and so, when something like this happens, I want to ask – why? Why would the president of the United States devote so much energy to something so apparently silly? The answer? I think that Trump is advocating hydroxychloroquine, not just as a desperate attempt to give his supporters hope, but also to mitigate the criticisms against him. The hydroxychloroquine dustup diverts attention from Trump’s coronavirus failures.

Coronavirus-19, CDC image

Trump’s critics say that he was slow in responding to the coronavirus, that his administration has mishandled coronavirus testing and the provision of medical supplies, and that he has routinely made false promises that he was never able to keep. All that makes Trump look weak. It makes them look ineffective. He could get away with all of it, however, if hydroxychloroquine makes the coronavirus disappear like magic. And that is pretty much what Trump said later in the same press conference:

“THE PRESIDENT:  And I have to say, if chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine works — or any of the other things that they’re looking at that are not quite as far out — but if they work, your numbers are going to come down very rapidly.  So we’ll see what happens.  But there’s a real chance that they might — they might work.”

So, first, even if programs like testing, social isolation, ventilators, and economic stimulus programs failed to control the coronavirus pandemic, Trump will still look okay if an easy, inexpensive cure pops up and coronavirus fizzles away like magic: if “your numbers are going to come down very rapidly,” as he said. A quick, easy coronavirus cure would give him a Get Out of Jail Free card right out of a Monopoly game.

Second, while the Trump administration has had problems providing adequate testing and medical supplies to our hospitals, it’s much simpler to manufacture and obtain large quantities of hydroxychloroquine. And so, in a later Coronavirus Task Force briefing just a few days ago, Trump listed all of the things that he was doing, or pretended he was doing, to alleviate the coronavirus threat:

“On the medical front, the FDA — FDA has issued 47 emergency use authorizations for advancements and testing new ventilator designs, innovations, and personal protective equipment, and experimental medicines.  And Dr. Hahn is going to be talking about that.  We’ve cut through the red tape to give doctors and patients unprecedented freedom to make their own healthcare decisions, granting access to potential therapies and drugs. Since Monday, we’ve deployed two major shipments of hydroxychloroquine from our National Stockpile.  And it’s going to various cities.” [italics added]

Most of that was quite vague. New ventilator designs? When will they be available? What experimental medicines? When will personal protective equipment become available? How much benefit will we get from cutting “through the red tape?” (On a side note, Republicans have for decades complained that government red tape is our country’s main problem, so anything that cuts red tape surely appeals to Trump’s core voters.)

The one specific thing that Trump said in that passage is that the government had obtained “two major shipments of hydroxychloroquine” and was sending them “to various cities.” So, hydroxychloroquine gave Trump a simple, specific accomplishment that he could list to make himself look less inept. Maybe he was slow to confront the coronavirus. Maybe the government failed to establish a testing program. Maybe there are not enough ventilators. He can ignore all of that if a common, ordinary drug will solve the problem lickety-split.

Was Trump finished with hydroxychloroquine in March? No way! As recently as Monday, April 13, Trump said at yet another press conference:

“Furthermore, over the last seven days, my administration has deployed roughly 28 million doses of hydroxychloroquine from our National Stockpile.  We have millions of doses that we bought and many people are using it all over the country.  And just recently, a friend of mine told me he got better because of the use of that — that drug.  So, who knows?  And you combine it with Z-Pak, you combine it with Zinc — depending on your doctor’s recommendation.  And it’s having some very good results, I’ll tell you.”

So, here we have the president of the United States hawking the modern-day equivalent of Carter’s Little Liver Pills. And, while he was unable to provide real help for coronavirus patients, he was able to boast about distributing 28 million doses of an unproven medication. An April 14, 2020 White House fact sheet reiterated the same point: “28 million tablets of Hydroxychloroquine have been shipped across the country from the Strategic National Stockpile.”

So far, scientifically, Trump’s foray into pharmacology has not gone well. The scientific journal that published the first positive study about hydroxychloroquine has since cautioned that the study does not meet its usual standards. The publisher issued a statement that they believe "the article does not meet the Society’s expected standard, especially relating to the lack of better explanations of the inclusion criteria and the triage of patients to ensure patient safety”.

A clinical trial of the drug in Brazil was discontinued because of dangerous side effects. (It turns out, contrary to Trump’s promise, that this drug can be dangerous.) A study that started with 150 patients in China was discontinued because hydroxychloroquine failed to show enough benefits to justify continuing the experiment. The CDC quietly dropped its dosage instructions for the drug, now merely saying: “There are no drugs or other therapeutics approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to prevent or treat COVID-19.” 

All the same, if Trump's supporters want to believe that hydroxychloroquine is a miracle cure that fails only because Deep State stands in the way, they have all the excuse they need to defend Trump's indefensible public-health actions.

Mostly, however, it looks as if Trump is promoting hydroxychloroquine as a diversion.While the public gets riled up about hydroxychloroquine, we might overlook worse things that he's doing. In the unlikely event that it worked, hydroxychloroquine would get Trump out of trouble. But it didn’t. This is not the first time that Trump has tried, with the skill of a stage magician, to divert attention away from his own failures. It will not be the last. Magicians often fool people into thinking they're seeing something real. So does Trump.


Elsewhere on my blog:  

Trump Uses Creative Confusion As a Persuasive Tactic 

Trump Creates a Magical Illusion That He Is Giving Proof


P.S. Trump and his supporters have other diversions up their sleeves and behind their magical hidden panels. I hope to write something about them in the future.