Analysis of his tweets have shown they often match the programming of his favorite Fox News TV shows exactly. (A time stamped remark based on something he sees on fox, then an equal delay and a new Tweet based on programming a similar amount later in the show).
This dynamic tension between the advice of experts and Fox News that Trump receives played out very visible in the HCQ saga where Dr. Fauci in the live press conferences kept trying to walk back Trump’s remarks in the same conferences. https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/20/trump-coronavirus-drug-j...
> WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday admitted that his enthusiasm for an antimalarial drug unproven as a coronavirus treatment was based largely on gut instinct, after an open disagreement with the nation’s top infectious disease expert at a White House press briefing.
> When reporters asked Tony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, whether the drug hydroxychloroquine was effective at preventing coronavirus, he said simply: “The answer is no.”
> But when Trump came back to the microphone, he told reporters that “we ought to give it a try.”
> “I think we disagree a little bit,” Trump added. “I feel good about it. That’s all it is, just a feeling, you know, smart guy. I feel good about it.”
Published a peer reviewed study, in March. But political opponents and people in favor of chaos, chose to bankroll a fake study and publish it in the so-called prestigious Lancet journal to make Trump look bad. Democrat governors like Michigan's threatened doctors for daring to prescribe the drug: https://news.yahoo.com/michigan-governor-threatens-doctors-p...
This is a drug that's been around for 60+ years. And the propaganda machine somehow turned it into a bad thing. I don't know who's behind the propaganda, maybe it's other pharm companies that want to profit, maybe it's political enemies...but I don't care, this is unacceptable and immoral.
Raoult’s study is problematic as you can see by reading it. He explicitly removed the person who was taking HCQ and got worse and died from the study. It also was not a RCT and generally speaking is basically not a very strong piece of data in favor of HCQ’s effectiveness.
Then Fox News hosts and other right wing people, who were opposed to non-pharmaceutical interventions to slow the spread of the coronavirus, began to tout HCQ as a “100%” cure for the virus which would mean that life could continue as normal.
The regulations in places like Michigan were because unqualified doctors were abusing their prescribing authority after they heard about the drug in the POTUS’ press conference. The spike in prescriptions correlates exactly to when POTUS made his statements , see https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/25/us/coronavirus-trump-chlo... “ By that evening, first-time prescriptions of the drugs — chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine — poured into retail pharmacies at more than 46 times the rate of the average weekday, according to an analysis of prescription data by The New York Times. And the nearly 32,000 prescriptions came from across the spectrum — rheumatologists, cardiologists, dermatologists, psychiatrists and even podiatrists, the data shows.”
The regulations allowed the supply of the drug to continue for the people who have been taking it for ailments such as arthritis, where it’s been known to be effective for a long time and many patients depended on it only to have their drug supply locked up by abusive prescriptions.
However people across the world associate the prestige and respects of the POTUS office as conferring authority on his statements. They think he has access to sources of info they may not (His HCQ boosterism seems to have been based on tweets and watching Fox News cable hosts though, no inside info).