Trump has Twitter meltdown and shares 'misleading' video about coronavirus 'cure'
On Monday night, Donald Trump had one of his routine Twitter meltdowns where he took aim at Dr Anthony Fauci and shared a video that claimed there was a cure for coronavirus.
Trump posted and shared more than 60 tweets on Monday most of which were about Joe Biden, the protests in Portland and people showing support for him but his attention soon turned to the pandemic, where the president began to share some very questionable content.
The president began by sharing statistics about the decline in cases in states such as Arizona and Texas.
Trump then took a brief break from Twitter to actually speak at a coronavirus press briefing where he claimed, without irony, that there are some 'very, very infected countries outside of the US' despite the US having the most cases in the world.
Upon returning to the website, Trump began talking about his favourite cure for coronavirus, the controversial Malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which is said to have harmful side effects. Trump retweeted several posts and stories championing the drug and its benefits.
One tweet that Trump posted in this flurry was deleted and featured a Turning Point USA video (a pro-Trump student activist group) as well as a Breitbart video, which showed Dr. Stella Immanuel claiming that hydroxychloroquine was an effective way to treat coronavirus. Trump shared two versions of this speech, both of which were deleted by Twitter.
Trump then retweeted a post from an account called War Room: Pandemic, which is a radio show hosted by his former chief strategist Steve Bannon, which said that Fauci, who is part of Trump's Covid-19 task force, had 'misled the American public' by dismissing hydroxychloroquine.
Two other tweets that Trump shared were also deleted by Twitter both showing support for hydroxychloroquine, as per the Trump Twitter Archive.
The president then got completely distracted and started to retweet himself as well as promoting his son's upcoming book about Joe Biden.
Trump's final retweet from the aforementioned Stella Immanuel which said "Covid has cure. America wake up."
Immanuel's video was originally posted on Facebook on Monday and soon racked up more than 14 million views before it was removed for sharing misinformation, which was the same reason Twitter deleted the video. A spokesperson from Twitter told CNN "We're taking action in line with our Covid misinfo policy" while a spokesperson from Facebook added:
We've removed this video for sharing false information about cures and treatments for Covid-19. [Facebook] is showing messages in News Feed to people who have reacted to, commented on or shared harmful COVID-19-related misinformation that we have removed, connecting them to myths debunked by the WHO.
Studies have found that the malaria drug does nothing to treat coronavirus and those that take it have a higher risk of death than those that do not take the drug. Trump has been widely criticised for his efforts to stop the pandemic, with the US currently topping the charts worldwide for both confirmed cases and the number of deaths.