Poison Pills

The major Trump policy initiative on the pandemic that doesn’t involve xenophobia was…to pressure medical professionals to flood the zone with a drug that appears to be worse than useless:

We have millions and millions of doses of it—29 million to be exact,” he said, as the official tally of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. topped 260,000 and governors across the country pleaded for federal support to acquire tests, ventilators, and protective gear for health care workers. “We’re just hearing really positive stories, and we’re continuing to collect the data.” That evening, according to emails obtained by Vanity Fair, Trump’s political appointees would ramp up the pressure on career health officials to make good on the president’s extravagant promises, despite clear warnings from federal clinicians about the risks and unproven benefits of chloroquine-based treatments for COVID-19.

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And yet, just hours after that April 4 press conference, White House officials pushed ahead with a massive behind-the-scenes pressure campaign on the government’s top health officials to deliver huge amounts of chloroquine drugs to just about anyone who wanted them, according to documents reviewed by Vanity Fair. That night, Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services, sent an email with the subject line “Hydroxychloroquine” to a group including FEMA administrator Pete Gaynor, HHS assistant secretary for preparedness and response Robert Kadlec, and Navy Rear Admiral John Polowczyk, who leads a supply-chain task force at FEMA.

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Since then, a steady drumbeat of small-scale studies and medical recommendations has cast increasing doubt on the treatment that Trump once hailed as a “game changer.” On April 21, a study of 368 COVID-19 patients at veterans hospitals showed that about 28% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine died, compared with 11% of those who didn’t receive the medication.

On the same day the National Institutes of Health issued detailed treatment guidelines, stating, “There are insufficient clinical data to recommend either for or against using chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19.” The agency advised clinicians using the drugs to closely monitor patients for adverse effects, particularly cardiac risks.

This is what happens when you have a president who has no interest in his actual job but does spend hours a day watching TV to see how he’s being covered:

The economy — Mr. Trump’s main case for re-election — has imploded. News coverage of his handling of the coronavirus has been overwhelmingly negative as Democrats have condemned him for a lack of empathy, honesty and competence in the face of a pandemic. Even Republicans have criticized Mr. Trump’s briefings as long-winded and his rough handling of critics as unproductive.

His own internal polling shows him sliding in some swing states, a major reason he declared a temporary halt to the issuance of green cards to those outside the United States. The executive order — watered down with loopholes after an uproar from business groups — was aimed at pleasing his political base, people close to him said, and was the kind of move Mr. Trump makes when things feel out of control. Friends who have spoken to him said he seemed unsettled and worried about losing the election.

But the president’s primary focus, advisers said, is assessing how his performance on the virus is measured in the news media, and the extent to which history will blame him.

For this reason, he’s not interested in hearing about anything but an immediate medical cure, which is just going to threaten his re-election prospects even more. Even if the light at the end of the tunnel comes next January, though, this is a terrifying situation.