Significant media outlets are way off base in making a story of what seems an insignificant investment that President Trump holds in a company that makes the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine. Trump has been promoting the drug as a treatment for COVID-19, it is true, but this attack is appears to be a cheap shot, bordering on a smear. Even a hardened Never Trumper can see that.
The report first appeared in an aside buried in a larger story in the New York Times. The Times noted that Trump has three family trusts that each have an investment in a mutual fund that, in turn, has large holdings in a drug company that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.
However, that drug company no longer has an exclusive patent on that medicine. The Times reported that it also no longer sells or distributes the drug within the United States.
The Times also reported that several of Trump’s associates or campaign donors have interests in that same pharmaceutical company.
So, the casual reader might think the Times devoted too much space to that investment question within the larger story about the debate concerning hydroxychloroquine, but at least it was in a context relating how distant, and probably tiny, Trump’s potential financial interest could be.
Other large media outlets were not so careful or contextual. Salon ran this as a big headline: “Trump holds ‘financial interest’ in pharmaceutical company that produces hydroxychloroquine: NYT.” Likewise, the Daily Beast: “Trump Has ‘Financial Interest’ in Hydroxychloroquine Manufacturer: NYT.” Others followed suit, and the anti-Trump chorus on Twitter was eagerly promoting the story as well. Almost none of them took the care the Times took to show the small size or the degree of separation between Trump and his supposed interest in the drug company.
To repeat: This is a third-degree investment. A Trump trust (1) has some investment in a mutual fund (2), which in turn has some investments in a drug-maker (3), which doesn’t even sell the drug in the United States.
I haven’t done the arithmetic on all this, but several oft-reliable number crunchers have calculated that Trump’s total interest in the drug company may be $500 or less. As longtime free-market advocate Phil Kerpen tweeted, “Imagine thinking that President Trump is promoting HCQ because (through a mutual fund) he owns $99 of stock in Sanofi, which hasn’t sold the drug in the United States since 2013 and is presently *donating* its supply to France.”
Kerpen is right. Let’s get real: Trump has plenty of political and psychological reasons to want to push hydroxychloroquine as a palliative without being motivated by $99 or even $9,900 — and, even at that amount, in a company in which he probably wasn’t even aware his family had a third-degree interest.
Criticism of Trump is one thing. Trafficking in anti-Trump speculations of this sort, though, is unhealthy and feverish.
