As President Donald Trump once again erroneously promoted hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment against coronavirus, Seth Meyers was left to wonder why the president is trusting a doctor who has claimed, “Sex is a spiritual transaction. So when you’re doing it by yourself, demons come and join you.”
“There was a woman who was spectacular in her statements about it. She’s had tremendous success with it. I don’t know why they took her off,” Trump said this week of Dr. Stella Immanuel, the doctor at the center of a widely condemned misinformation video that claimed hydroxychloroquine was a coronavirus “cure.” Trump added, “I can tell you this: She was on air, along with many other doctors. They were big fans of hydroxychloroquine, and I thought she was very impressive.”
“Cool. So Trump won’t listen to the renowned infectious disease expert who actually works for him, but he loves the demon sperm lady,” Meyers joked on Wednesday’s episode of Late Night.
On Monday, Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. amplified the video, which was eventually pulled from Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook—but not before it was viewed millions of times. In the wake of the viral moment, Twitter limited Donald Jr.’s access to the platform because he spread disinformation. The temporary suspension of functionality was a sore point for the president’s son.
“Twitter takes me down for that but Twitter has no problem saying that coronavirus disinformation spread by the Chinese government does not violate their rules. That’s interesting,” Donald Jr. told Tucker Carlson on Fox News this week. He added, while holding printouts of articles, “Jake Tapper himself, a few weeks ago, posted, ‘Study finds hydroxychloroquine helped coronavirus patients survive better.’ Now, why is Jake Tapper somehow not spreading misinformation, but I somehow am?”
“It’s fun when a dumb guy brings printouts to an interview. It’s like when the jock on campus carries around a book to impress girls,” Meyers joked. “By the way, there’s a huge difference between a journalist tweeting a link to a news story and what you tweeted out. At least he tweeted a link to a reputable news organization, reporting on a study that put the findings in proper context and used cautious language. Whereas you just tweeted out a video funded by a right-wing dark money group with a doctor calling hydroxychloroquine a ‘cure for coronavirus.’”