Trump retweeted a video of Stella Immanuel claiming that hydroxochloroquine was a cure for COVID-19. Trump made the unsubstantiated claims about the drug many times, despite there being no evidence for it. She also called masks unnecessary.
Immanuel previously claimed that various gynecological diseases were the result of sexual intercourse with demons and their “evil deposits.” She also claimed that medicines were made from “alien DNA.” In 2019, she was sued for malpractice.
In a subsequent press conference, Trump referred to her as “very impressive,” drawing criticism and ridicule as “demon sperm” became a trending Twitter topic.
In a video posted to Twitter and Facebook, Trump claimed that children were “mostly immune” to COVID-19. The videos, part of a campaign to re-open schools across America amid record case and death numbers, was flagged by Twitter and Facebook for misinformation.
Though the suspension was for 12 hours, the video was quickly removed from both platforms and the suspension dropped.
During an August 7 press conference, Trump dismissed his own intelligence community’s belief that Russia was working to again have Trump elected.
REPORTER: Thank you, sir. Mr. President, the intelligence agencies today said that Russia is already meddling in this year’s elections to hurt Joe Biden, and that China is considering meddling to hurt you. Do you believe that intelligence, and what do you plan to do about it?
TRUMP: I mean, I could be very much. I think that the last person Russia wants to see in office is Donald Trump, because nobody’s been tougher on Russia than I have, ever.
REPORTER: That’s not what they calling it.
TRUMP: Well, I don’t care what anybody says. Nobody with any common sense would say, “Do it.” Look at what we’ve done with our military. Look at what we’ve done in exposing the pipeline with billions of dollars going to Russia. Look at all of the things we’ve done with NATO, where I’ve raised $130 billion a year from countries that were delinquent, and now they’re paying all of this money. And the $130, by the way, $130 billion, not million, billion, goes to $400 billion over a few years. And that’s all money to protect against Russia. China would love us to have an election where Donald Trump lost sleepy Joe Biden. They would dream. They would own our country.
National Counterintelligence and Security Center William Evanina released a press statement the same day that asserted, “We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment.'”
The suit, which Young posted on his website, states, “The Campaign has willfully ignored Plaintiff’s telling it not to play the songs and willfully proceeded to play the songs despite a lack of license.” It goes on to explain that Young “in good conscience cannot allow his music to be used as a ‘theme song’ for a divisive, un-American campaign of ignorance and hate.”
Trump’s campaign has used various songs without the artists’ permission.
On August 4, 2020, a fire at the docks of Beirut, Lebanon ignited some 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate, a common compound used for fertilizer and explosives.
During a following press conference, Trump claimed that the explosion “looked like a terrible attack.” When asked to elaborate, Trump remarked,
Well, it would seem like it based on the explosion. I’ve met with some of our great generals and they just seem to feel that it was. This was not some kind of a manufacturing explosion type of event. This was seems to be, according to them, they would know better than I would, but they seem to think it was a attack. It was a bomb of some kind. Yes.
Department of Defense officials rejected Trump’s claim, saying instead that there was yet no indication of any kind of attack.
August 4th ammonium nitrate disaster in Beirut. Sky News
Ammonium nitrate disasters have happened several times throughout history. The largest non-nuclear bomb in the American arsenal, the MoAB (Mother of All Bombs) has a yield of 11 tons of TNT. The catastrophic explosion in Beirut was equivalent to approximately 1 kiloton of TNT.
In a July 19 interview on Fox News, Trump shrugged off over 150,000 American deaths from COVID-19 by saying, “it is what it is.”
WALLACE: But I can tell you, the death chart is a thousand cases a day.
TRUMP: Excuse me, it’s all too much, it shouldn’t be one case. It came from China. They should’ve never let it escape. They should’ve never let it out. But it is what it is. Take a look at Europe, take a look at the numbers in Europe. And by the way, they’re having cases.
WALLACE: I can tell you cases are 6,000 in the whole European Union.
Trump went on to claim that the reason why cases were lower in the European Union was because they didn’t adequately test.
Trump repeated the remark in another interview with Axios on August 3 when asked about the daily deaths across the country.
TRUMP: Yeah. Under the circumstances right now, I think it’s under control. I’ll tell you what-
SWAN: How? 1,000 Americans are dying a day.
TRUMP: They are dying. That’s true. And it is what it is. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it. This is a horrible plague that beset us.
During an August 3, 2020 interview with Axios, Trump defended his administration’s response to COVID-19 by using data showing deaths per confirmed cases. When the interviewer noted the deaths per capita instead, Trump replied, “you can’t do that,” and went on to say that he was “reporting it wrong.”
.@jonathanvswan: “Oh, you’re doing death as a proportion of cases. I’m talking about death as a proportion of population. That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”@realdonaldtrump: “You can’t do that.”
The difference in considering deaths per cases and deaths per capita is that the former reflects the quality of healthcare for the infected, while the latter reflects the presence of COVID-19 through the population.
At the time of the interview, the United States ranked 10th highest in the world for deaths per capita, and had a case fatality rate of approximately 3.3%. It totaled 4,863,916 confirmed cases and 158,928 deaths. Trump downplayed concerns over COVID-19 since it first began to spread in the United States.
During the same interview, Trump also avoided offering any praise for the late civil rights leader and US Representative John Lewis.
When asked how he viewed US Representative for Georgia and civil rights figure John Lewis’ legacy after his death, Trump remarked:
He didn’t come to my inauguration; he didn’t come to my State of the Union speeches—and that’s okay, that’s his right. Again, nobody has done more for Black Americans than I have.
John Lewis, a major figure in the US Civil Rights Movement, was among the main organizers of the March on Washington in which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Lewis died on July 17, 2020 of pancreatic cancer.
John Lewis (left) and Martin Luther King Jr. (right) march from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi. (Harry Benson / Contour / Getty)
In the same interview with Axios, Trump again dismissed ongoing concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic and record deaths in the United States.
On July 16, 2018, Trump and Putin met at a conference held in Helsinki, Finland. At the conference, when asked about Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump remarked:
I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any reason why it would be…So I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that president Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. And what he did is an incredible offer. He offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators, with respect to the 12 people. I think that’s an incredible offer.
Before the conference, Trump and Putin had a two-hour meeting in private, with only a single translator present.
At the conclusion of the 2018 Helsinki conference, Putin offers Trump a gift, remarking “the ball is in your court.”
After the conference, Trump reiterated his position on Twitter.
As I said today and many times before, “I have GREAT confidence in MY intelligence people.” However, I also recognize that in order to build a brighter future, we cannot exclusively focus on the past – as the world’s two largest nuclear powers, we must get along! #HELSINKI2018
US intelligence agencies were in agreement that Russia had actively interfered in the 2016 election. In April, 2020, the Republican-controlled US Senate affirmed their findings.
