Instead of fighting President Donald Trump on the right to try off-label hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) by prescription, resistant lawmakers and activists should be putting people's health over politics, according to Michigan state Democratic Rep. Karen Whitsett on Newsmax TV.
"Right now we have to put people over politics, and that's what he's doing right now," Whitsett, who credits HCQ and Trump for saving her life from a serious COVID-19 infection, told Wednesday's "The Chris Salcedo Show." "He's taking care of the country by putting people over politics.
"And that's what we all need to do. It's too important right now and we don't have time for the game."
Whitsett said Trump's timely pushing for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve off-label use of HCQ for COVID-19 came on the same day she desperately sought out a second doctor to prescribe the drug to save her life "within a couple of hours" of taking it.
"I give credit to the president, President Trump for being able to put the medication on the forefront, because federal trumps local," Whitsett told host Chris Salcedo, saying her first doctor misinterpreted the right to try law on the drug before a second doctor read it correctly to get her life-saving care. "So, I give him credit for that.
"You can know about something all day long, but if you don't have access to it, what does that mean for you?"
Whitsett, who represents Detroit, a coronavirus hotspot, added she hopes to speak to Trump.
"I'm praying that the president hears my cry, because people in this city, we desperately need it, and the people in my community need help," she said, rebuking media criticism of Trump, suggesting he was pushing a deadly drug, when it is not.
"It's what saved my life, but I want to know how," she said, turning agitated at those calling it deadly despite the positive effects it had in her case. "How is it all those things, when it's the very thing we give to our military. How when it's the very thing people take on a daily basis when they have Lupus."
Whitsett, serving a very Democrat-heavy area, said it was not hard to cross over political lines to stand behind Trump's support of the controversial medication.
"It's not hard for me to do that at all, because right now, we're in a pandemic, it's a crisis," she concluded.
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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