quote:
TOPLINE
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell – who has been pushing, with the president’s apparent support, an unproven coronavirus treatment that could possibly be toxic – said Tuesday he was asked by the administration to gather leads on potential treatments for the White House coronavirus task force.
Lindell told CNN host Anderson Cooper that “this great administration” asked him to “bring back to the [White House coronavirus] task force” anything that is promising to fight coronavirus, be they “good sanitizers or cures.”
Lindell and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson have been privately promoting a drug called Oleandrin to Trump, who said in July that “the FDA should be approving it,” Axios’ Jonathan Swan reported.
Trump seemed to support the extract – which Forbes contributor Bruce Y. Lee called “an extract from a highly toxic plant with no real proof that it works against SARS-CoV2 infections in humans.” – telling reporters on Monday that he will “look at it.”
Lindell – who has no medical degrees – was slammed in the interview for pushing the drug to Trump while serving on the board of directors for Phoenix Biotechnology, a company manufacturing the extract, with Cooper alleging he “stands to make money from this.”
Cooper also questioned the scientific veracity of Lindell’s claim that the drug has been “tested by over 1,000 people,” asserting, “there are no public peer-reviewed studies about this” and demanding Lindell produce the test, to which Lindell replied “I don’t have the test.”
“You have no medical background, there is no evidence of this substance, it hasn’t been tested in animals or humans,” Cooper castigated Lindell, labeling him a “snake oil salesman.”
CHIEF CRITIC
“The involvement of the Secretary of HUD and MyPillow.com in pushing a dubious product at the highest levels should give Americans no comfort at night about their health and safety during a raging pandemic,” a senior Trump administration official told Axios.
