Reporter Gets Schooled By WH Press Secretary Over Hydroxychloroquine Smears
The media world has been falling all over their fainting couches since President Trump announced that he’s been taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative measure against COVID-19 infection. While it’s true that the scientific jury is still out as it pertains to this drug and its effectiveness against the coronavirus, the same can be said for many of the measures that the media breathlessly touts day after day as “ABSOLUTE MUSTS” during the pandemic.
With their hysterical passion to “get” Trump whenever possible, though, reporters in the White House Press Corps have been relentless in their efforts to make the president look foolish in the wake of his announcement.
Such was the case on Wednesday when a reporter confronted Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany about Trump’s remarks.
“Let me just get your reaction to something,” the reporter said. “We just got moments ago, a statement from the American Nurses Association, which says, ‘The American Nurses Association has not received reports from nurses or other frontline healthcare workers utilizing hydroxychloroquine as a preventative treatment for COVID-19.’ Why does the president continue to say that many or thousands of frontline workers are using it as a prophylactic?”
But, as these biased reporters are going to quickly learn, Kayleigh McEnany isn’t to be trifled with. As they say on the trashy reality shows, “Nuh-uh, you got the wrong one, honey.”
“Henry Ford Hospital is doing a study on this now where 3,000 frontline workers will be taking hydroxychloroquine to look at its use as a prophylaxis,” McEnany patiently explained. “I believe there’s a few hundred or 190 workers in Tampa General Hospital. So this is being used by some. And one thing I want to note with regard to hydroxychloroquine because I think it’s very important that we’re as accurate as we can be with our reporting on this. Hydroxychloroquine has been a drug that has been in use for 65 years for lupus, arthritis, and malaria. It has a very good safety profile.”
McEnany could have stopped there and the reporter would have had enough shame to last a lifetime. But since this has turned into a feeding frenzy among the president’s usual critics, she decided to give the press corps a little something to grow on.
“As with any drug and as with any prescription, it should be given by a doctor to a patient in that context,” she said. “So no one should be taking this without a prescription from their doctor. But that being said, I’ve seen a lot of apoplectic coverage of hydroxychloroquine. You had Jimmy Kimmel saying the president’s ‘trying to kill himself by taking it.’ You had Joe Scarborough saying, ‘this will kill you.’ Neil Cavuto saying, ‘what have you got to lose? On one thing you have to lose are lives.’ And you had Chris Cuomo saying, ‘the president knows that hydroxychloroquine is not supported by science. He knows it has been flagged by his own people and he’s using it.’
“Well, Cuomo mocked the president for this,” she continued. “And interestingly, I found this out just before coming here, hydroxychloroquine, of course, is an FDA approved medication with a long proven track record for safety. And it turns out that Chris Cuomo took a less safe version of it called quinine, which the FDA removed from the market in 2006 because of its serious side effects, including death. So really interesting to have that criticism of the president. And on that note to Chris Cuomo, I’d like to redirect him to his brother, the Governor of New York, Governor Cuomo, who has several on the record statements about hydroxychloroquine saying, ‘I’m an optimist. I’m hopeful about the drug and that’s why we’ll try it here in New York as soon as we get it. There has been anecdotal evidence that it’s promising. That’s why we’re going ahead.’”
Sean Spicer and Sarah Sanders were both pretty amazing in their abilities to handle this press, but Kayleigh McEnany is in a whole different league. These reporters had better up their game if they think they’re going to go toe-to-toe with her.