Donald Trump is a bigger threat to the US than coronavirus or China

His retweeting of dubious claims about an unproven Covid-19 treatment was no miscalculation. It fits his pattern of undermining US institutions for personal gain, and his priority now is to win re-election at all costs

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President Donald Trump arrives on stage to speak at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 20. Trump is trailing his Democratic challenger Joe Biden in opinion polls. Photo: AP

Published: 3:30am, 4 Aug 2020Updated: 3:51am, 4 Aug 2020

“This president led on the development of remdesivir,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told reporters on July 31. And nary a mention of hydroxychloroquine.

In the months of distraction and misinformation from the White House about all aspects of the pandemic since Donald Trump banished respected health authorities like Dr Anthony Fauci, this one was a shocker.

To Trump and his supporters, hydroxychloroquine was our way out of a pandemic that has now killed more than 150,000 Americans, to the stubborn exclusion of everything else that health authorities have been pleading for, including face masks and social distancing.

Trump, his son Donald Jnr, and many others within the president’s hardcore base, apparently preferred the solutions on offer by Stella Immanuel, a registered doctor in Texas who insists, among other dubious claims, that hydroxychloroquine is a Covid-19 cure.

Earlier in the week, Trump retweeted a video of Immanuel – who is stridently anti-LGBTQ and occasionally spouts odd ideas such as the negative health implications of having dream sex with demons – speaking to the media as part of a group called America’s Frontline Doctors, all sporting lab coats, on the steps of the US Supreme Court.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro answers media questions on July 29. Navarro is among those in Trump’s inner circle touting hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus, even though the Food and Drug Administration has determined that it is unlikely to be effective. Photo EPA-EFE

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