Team Trump recruited a group of “extremely pro Trump” doctors to discredit public health officials' advice and put a medical seal of approval on their own deadly plan to rapidly reopen the economy in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
Associated Press got wind of the scheme via a leaked recording of a conference call between a conservative coalition and “a senior staffer for the Trump reelection campaign.”
AP confirmed the plan for doctors to ignore public health experts in favor of Trumpy prescriptions with Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign communications director:
Murtaugh said the campaign is not concerned about contradicting government experts.
“Our job at the campaign is to reflect President Trump’s point of view,” Murtaugh said. “We are his campaign. There is no difference between us and him.”
Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union is on the same page:
"The president’s going to get tagged by the fake news media as being irresponsible and not listening to doctors,” Matt Schlapp said on the call. “And so we have to gird his loins with a lot of other people.”
In other words, who cares if almost 100,000 Americans have already died? Death to Americans - if it saves Trump’s political life!
In fact, it looks like the Trumper doctors have wasted no time advocating for death:
But after the AP contacted the Trump campaign seeking comment for this story, a Washington public relations firm that frequently works for conservative groups distributed an open letter to Trump signed by more than 400 doctors calling the state coronavirus lockdowns a “mass casualty event” causing “millions of casualties” from alcoholism, homelessness, suicide and other causes.
Lo and behold, Fox News is already amplifying the campaign and has printed the letter in full. You can count on seeing some of these doctors on Fox in the very near future.
AP noted that the first signature on the letter was that of Dr. Simone Gold, a conservative activist who has advocated for the use of hydroxychloroquine.
Gold told AP on Tuesday she started speaking out against shelter-in-place and other infection control measures because there was “no scientific basis that the average American should be concerned” about COVID-19.
