Self-dealing, election-fixing bitter pills to swallow
By Sid Schwab / Herald columnist
Anyone having any two of five human senses operating at 50 percent capacity or greater recognizes that Trump’s government is a kleptocracy.
The latest of many examples: Rudy Giuliani bought $2 million worth of stock in Novartis, the company that makes the malaria drug he began hyping as a miracle cure for Covid-19 immediately after the purchase. Trump, Inc., has a stake, too. Trump’s “administration” purchased a million doses of the unproven drug, with our money. Anyone surprised? Remember that Novartis paid Michael Cohen $1.2 million for access to Trump. It’s all of a piece with several Republican Congress-dwellers cashing in by buying and selling related stocks right after being briefed on the coronavirus, before the rest of us knew anything.
Serving in Vietnam, I took the Trump-drug as malaria prophylaxis. Despite seeing several cases while there, I stopped, because it made me sick. That the drug is innocuous is another of Trump’s endless lies. Is it effective for coronavirus victims? We don’t know. But the studies touted by such unreliables as Rudy and Trump and Fox “news” fabricators and, unbelievably, Trump’s second-most egregious groveler, William Barr, are equivocal at best, and they’ve been the opposite of scientific. Either way, Trump will take credit for everyone who recovers after taking it, true or not.
Fear of truth is why Trump fired two inspectors general this week and last, and attacked the integrity of another who’d accurately reported that hospitals across the country are in desperate need of protective equipment. Trump assumes his followers will believe him when he says everything is fine, because he’s done a “fabulous” job. It’s not, and he hasn’t. Our local hospital, where I’m assisting in surgery, is in better shape than most. Still, PPE is under strict control. Having changed masks between cases for my whole career, it’s now necessary to reuse them throughout the day. Other locations are facing far worse.
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