Let’s look at some news that broke after last week’s Friday Five that ought to be covered now rather than wait for Friday.

First up, the Grifter-in-Chief (and his toadies) keeps recommending a drug that studies indicate does not help treat Covid-19: CNN Doctor Shreds Peter Navarro: ‘This Is Not A ‘Can’t-Hurt-Might-Help-Why-Not’ Situation!’ – Dr. Sanjay Gupta took the wind right out of Peter Navarro’s arrogance by putting some facts on the table.

When it first happened, I figured it was just the usual stupidity from the guy. Someone mentioned it to him, and as a narcissist suffering from some form of severe dementia, he has a constant need to say stuff that make it sound like he knows what he’s talking about. But after being debunked a few times, and after at least one person died trying to self-treat with it, why did he start talking about it again?

Well, it turns out it’s about greed, because of course it is: Pharma-Funded Group Tied to a Top Trump Donor Is Promoting Malaria Drug to the President. That’s right, some of the companies who make the drug that doesn’t work against this thing are donating money to Trump. So, of course, he’s going to tout it so people will buy it and put money in the pockets of people putting money in his pocket!

But it’s even worse than that! Millions of doses of Covid drug bought by Trump admin today from Novartis–Michael Cohen connection. This article links to several others, but it appears that either a shell company owned by Trump or by some of his toadies, has managed to buy up a bunch of the drug that does not work against Covid-19, and now they are selling this stockpile to the feds.

This shouldn’t surprise us, because Trump’s entire financial career has been about stealing from his investors, contractors, employees, and charities. It has also been about tricking other people into paying for his projects and making it look as if he was the person who raised the money or donated or whatever. All those seasons of his reality show, when at the end the winner (or a charity) got a big novelty check that made it look as if Trump was paying them? Every penny actually came from the network. Neither Trump or any of his businesses contributed so much as a dime. He was paid, the network paid for the production and everything related to it, the network paid the actual award money, and on those occasions when a Trump business was mentioned or a picture of one of his buildings was shown, the network paid said business a royalty.

It does leave one wondering how his faithful keep believing him after lie upon lie upon lie. Well, in this case, there is a bit of an explanation: Here’s why the tormented conservative mind is so drawn to the dangerous allure of miracle drugs.

Trump is also really good about blaming other people, no matter how implausible the blame is: Trump Earns “Pants On Fire” Rating For Insane Claim He Inherited “Broken” Virus Tests From The Obama Admin. So Trump is now claiming that the reason we have been so behind on testing is because Obama left behind thousands or millions of “broken” test kits. Big problem with that lie: when Obama was President, know one knew that the virus which causes Covid-19 existed, yet. So no one had tried to make kits, yet. The problem is that Trump didn’t think the disease was serious (or that it would hurt anyone he cared about), nor was he willing to take and pay for kits from any of the foreign entities that had developed them as the disease swept through parts of China and other countries, nor was he willing to put any money into developing our own.

Unfortunately, his base doesn’t seem to be smart enough to do anything but swallow the lie. Even when the evidence is overwhelming:

How Trump and Kushner Failed on Testing and Ventilators: A Closer Look:

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Meanwhile, it’s important to remember that not everyone is hurt to the same degree by this current catastrophe, as Samanth Bee explains below:

Introducing: Coronavirus For Her! | Full Frontal on TBS:

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