WASHINGTON — President Trump on Tuesday defended his decision to take antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to ward off coronavirus — charging that a study which found it to be potentially lethal was a “phony investigation.”
“This was a false study done where they gave it to very sick people — extremely sick people, people ready to die — given obviously by people who are not friends of the administration,” Trump said during a cabinet meeting at the White House.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Veteran Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie also defended the commander-in-chief during Tuesday’s cabinet meeting as the “right to try president” and said the drug had been used to safely treat other diseases for decades.
While some initial studies appeared to support the drug’s benefits, the Food and Drug Administration has warned against the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 outside of a hospital setting or clinical trial, due to potential heart complications.
The Veterans Health Administration study referenced by Trump examined more than 300 COVID-19 patients and concluded the drug could be dangerous and even lethal.
“Hydroxychloroquine has been approved by the FDA for decades in the US for prevention of malaria and the treatment of lupus,” Azar told reporters.
“This is the right to try president. He for the first time got historic right to try legislation for experimental therapies but that applies to our existing regime, which is approved products may be used in the judgement of a physician in consultation with their patient,” Azar continued.
Wilkie also poured cold water on the study, telling reporters it was not done by his department but by researchers using their data, and said the numbers were not clinically reviewed and did not take into account how sick the veterans already were.
“We’ve been taking this drug for years. As the president mentioned, the Department of Defense and VA have been using it for 65 years. On any given day the VA uses 42,000 doses of this drug,” he said.
“We did this in consultation with our doctors under FDA guidelines so I want to knock down the phony story that this is somehow the VA going back on what the president told us to do, which is use every means possible to protect and preserve the lives of our veterans,” he continued.
The president sparked headlines on Monday when he announced he had been taking hydroxychloroquine for several weeks after the White House physician said he could take the drug.
Trump doubled-down on his remarks Tuesday, saying he was taking the antimalarial pill as “a line of defense” after seeing many positive studies on the effects of hydroxychloroquine in Italy, he said.
“I’m the president and I’m dealing with a lot of people,” he said, speculating the drug had only received bad publicity because he was promoting it.
“If anybody else was promoting it, they’d say this is the greatest thing ever,” he added.
In an interview earlier Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence said he did not take the drug despite being quarantined after his spokesman came down the coronavirus because his doctor had not recommended he take the drug. But Pence defended Trump’s decision to do so.
“I’m not taking it but I would never begrudge any American taking the advice of their physician,” Pence told Fox News.
“My physician has not recommended that but I wouldn’t hesitate to take the counsel of my doctor, any American should do likewise,” he added.
A Chinese journalist with close ties to the ruling Communist Party mocked Trump for taking hydroxychloroquine, charging that the commander-in-chief was using “witchcraft” to try to combat the pandemic.
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