Rachel Maddow Rips Trump, Fox News After Drug Flunks Coronavirus Study

Rachel Maddow ripped into both President Donald Trump and Fox News after a drug heavily promoted by both as a coronavirus treatment failed in a new study.

The two “incessantly” promoted malaria drug hydroxychloroquine “on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, as what they were quite sure was a miracle cure for coronavirus,” Maddow said. According to the progressive group Media Matters, the drug had nearly 300 on-air mentions between March 23 and April 6, and Trump repeatedly talked it up at news conferences.

On Wednesday, Maddow played a supercut of Fox personalities, including Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, praising the drug, along with some of the president’s own comments. 

“What do you have to lose?” Trump asked at one appearance as he suggested patients with the infection try the medication. “Take it.” 

But last week, there was a sudden change. 

“They just stopped bringing it up,” Maddow said. “And we don’t know why that is, but yesterday we did get the results of a new study.”

That study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found the drug did not help either on its own or in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin, and there were more deaths among the patients given the treatment.

“It is one thing to not have leadership at the federal level in response to this crisis. It is actually a whole ’nother thing to have the president putting American lives at risk every time he blurts something made up or that he thought he understood from TV into the microphone at the White House briefing room.”

“I won’t tell you my opinion one way or the other about the president and how he should be treated,” she added. “But as a general matter, I think we should all agree that perhaps there should be a more concerted effort to stop the spread of misinformation about this disease, particularly if it is potentially deadly misinformation.”

Then, she warned viewers: “Don’t listen to people who are lying to you about this disease.” 

See her full segment above.