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Trump ‘Personally’ Pressured CDC, FDA, NIH to Allow Untested Malaria Drugs to Be Used to Treat Coronavirus: Report

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President Donald Trump personally intervened in the medical approval process, calling top officials from three of the nation’s leading federal government medical agencies to pressure them to allow drugs untested for use in treating the novel coronavirus to be used for that purpose.

Top  officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) received telephone calls from the President of the United States, who “personally pressed” them to make the malaria drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine available.

“Rarely, if ever, has a U.S. president lobbied regulators and health officials to focus their efforts on specific unproven drugs,” Reuters reveals in its exclusive report. “Shortly afterward, the federal government published highly unusual guidance informing doctors they had the option to prescribe the drugs, with key dosing information based on unattributed anecdotes rather than peer-reviewed science.”

His calls launched a “cascade of federal action.”

Trump’s focus came after a Fox News interview in mid-March of a a lawyer the conservative cable network said was associated with a small French study, who said “we have strong reason to believe that a preventative dose of hydroxychloroquine is going to prevent the virus from attaching to the body and just get rid of it completely.”

Related: Trump Official Peter Navarro Sputters and Flails After Lack of Medical Qualifications Exposed in Train Wreck CNN Interview

Two days later, that same attorney, appears on Fox News again, declaring, the president “has the authority to authorize the use of hydroxychloroquine against coronavirus immediately.”

Just one day later Trump began his campaign to promote the malaria drugs, despite only anecdotal evidence and that one small French study.

“On March 19, Trump vowed to make the drugs more widely available. ‘It’s shown very encouraging – very, very encouraging early results,’ he said at a press conference. ‘And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. And that’s where the FDA has been so great. They – they’ve gone through the approval process; it’s been approved. And they did it – they took it down from many, many months to immediate.’

The drugs had not, in fact gone through the FDA’s “approval process” to treat coronavirus, nor had they been approved by the FDA to do so.

Two days after that. Trump posted these tweets:

“Now, millions of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine pills are on their way to the public, donated by drugmakers, including Novartis’ Sandoz, Bayer and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. The FDA issued an emergency authorization on March 28 allowing them to be prescribed and distributed from the Strategic National Stockpile.”

 

 

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NOT HOW THIS WORKS

Caitlyn Jenner Slammed for Claiming She’s Qualified to Be Governor Because She’s ‘Sold $1 Billion of Exercise Equipment’

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4 years ago

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May 11, 2021

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Republican Caitlyn Jenner‘s latest interview is driving more criticism of her campaign for governor of California.

Asked what training she has that would make her qualified to be governor Jenner told CNN, “I have been in the entrepreneurial world.”

“People think that that you’ve been in show business, think of you as a reality star, certainly I’ve done that. But entertainment is a business. And you have to run that business. But I’ve also done other things,” Jenner insisted.

“You know, we sold a billion dollars of exercise equipment on television. Aviation companies. I’ve just always been involved being an entrepreneur.”

Her background did not seem to impress many, especially after Donald Trump’s presidency.

 

 

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Top Trump Allies in Full Freak-Out Mode Threaten Facebook Over Board’s Ban: ‘Supreme Court Should Overturn’

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4 years ago

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May 5, 2021

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After the Facebook Oversight Board released its decision that banning then-President Donald Trump over his comments on the January 6 insurrection – including determining that he had “created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible” – was appropriate, top Trump allies are in full outrage mode.

Mark Meadows, the former Chair of the powerful House Freedom Caucus and former Ranking Member of the powerful House Oversight Committee who traded all that to become President Trump’s fourth and last White House Chief of Staff, went ballistic, threatening the social media giant.

“It’s a sad day for America,” Meadows told Fox News. “It’s a sad day for Facebook because I can tell you a number of members of Congress are now looking at do they break up Facebook, do they make sure that they don’t have a monopoly?”

Charlie Kirk, the head of the pro-Trump activist group Turning Point USA, which took in $28.5 million in the fiscal year ending June 2019, is close friends with Donald Trump, Jr., and once “interviewed” President Trump (photo).

Kirk seemed to think that the Facebook Oversight Board is part of the U.S. federal courts system (it is not), and that based on exactly no law, the U.S. Supreme Court should intervene to overturn the “outlawing” of Trump by an independent committee to a private company.

House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy accused Facebook of shilling for Democrats.

Every day almost all of the top 10 shared links, thanks to Facebook’s algorithms, are from the far right:

Sen. Ted Cruz, who just had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, fear-mongers that there’s nothing to stop Facebook from silencing liberals, ignoring the fact that no liberals have ever incited an insurrection.

Sen. Tom Cotton called it “Orwellian,” ignoring that what’s actually Orwellian is Donald Trump declaring that “The Big Lie” will now mean the election was “fraudulent.”

 

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Trump-Loving God-Fearing MyPillow CEO Claims First Amendment Right to Lie About Voting Tech Companies

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4 years ago

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April 19, 2021

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MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is building a high-profile legal team to defend him against a billion-dollar defamation suit that he hopes will land before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The staunch Donald Trump ally has hired veteran First Amendment attorney Nathan Lewin and is getting advice from Alan Dershowitz for his defense against Dominion Voting Systems, which alleges that Lindell defamed the company with baseless claims about the 2020 election, reported The Daily Beast.

“I want to take this all the way to the Supreme Court,” Lindell has repeatedly said. “I’m not stopping.”

The 85-year-old Lewin helped prosecute Jimmy Hoffa for Bobby Kennedy’s Justice Department, and later represented Jodie Foster, former attorney general Edwin Meese, President Richard Nixon and John Lennon, and Dershowitz — who defended Trump during his first impeachment — gave a preview of Lindell’s defense.

“Our position is that Dominion is the government, for purposes of the First Amendment,” Dershowitz said. “The government delegated to them the most important governmental function, mainly counting votes in a presidential election, and they are therefore subject to criticism in the exact same ways that the government would be subject to criticism in that situation, and criticism of how the government conducted a presidential election is the highest bar protecting the First Amendment right to criticize such action.”

Dershowitz is not an attorney of record in the case, but he confirmed that he’s been helping Lindell’s team craft a defense.

“I’ve been on conference calls repeatedly with [Lindell’s] legal team, sometimes Lindell is on, sometimes he’s not,” Dershowitz said. “My role is to come up with ideas as they pertain to the First Amendment. I give them cases, and I suggest First Amendment theories — my role is limited to advising on the First Amendment issues at hand.”

 

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