MSNBC host Rachel Maddow suggested networks should stop airing daily White House coronavirus updates because President Donald Trump’s “fairytale” assumptions about the crisis and an unproven drug are “cruel and harmful.”
In a biting commentary on her show Friday night, Maddow lashed out at the president's claims of success and optimism about unproven virus treatments.
“I know we ought to be getting used to this kind of thing by now, but I'm not,” Maddow said. “President Trump today, again, just flat-out wrong in public about this malaria drug that has gotten stuck in his mind, quite some distance from the facts.”
Maddow was referring to Trump's enthusiasm for a malaria drug called hydroxychloroquine, which is being investigated as a potential treatment for coronavirus patients.
However, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, walked back the president's assertion, saying the drug has yet to go through official clinical trials and doesn't yet have FDA approval.
“He loves saying things like that because that would be a lovely thing to be able to tell people, unless of course that's not true in which case telling people a fairytale like that is cruel and harmful and needlessly diverting and wildly irresponsible from anyone in any leadership role,” Maddow said.
“Even when he's talking about what he has done or what he will do, he is consistently lying and giving you happy talk that is stuff that the federal government isn't actually doing,” she said.
She then declared: “If it were up to me, and it's not, I would stop putting those briefings on live TV. Not out of spite but because it's misinformation. If the president does end up saying anything true, you can run it as tape but if he keeps lying like this every day on stuff this important, all of us should stop broadcasting it. Honestly, it's gonna cost lives.”
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