As part of a never-ending campaign to bring down President Trump, NBC News attempted to blame the Republican for the death of a person who took hydroxychloroquine after her doctor prescribed that coronavirus-related medicine.
Not surprisingly, this isn’t the first time that network has accused the GOP official of promoting the substance that researchers are examining as a possible treatment for the outbreak.
According to an article posted on Saturday by Becket Adams, a senior commentary writer for The Washington Examiner:
NBC News, which must have thought its fish tank cleaner story was a slam dunk, is trying to pin another hydroxychloroquine-adjacent death on President Trump.
NBC’s Heidi Przybyla reports this week that a 65-year-old New York woman, Ligia, died of a heart attack shortly after being prescribed hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin by her doctor.
The woman's family believes the "drug cocktail" is what killed her.
The subhead added: “The 65-year-old woman was prescribed the malaria drug and an antibiotic by her doctor to treat coronavirus symptoms.” “What, exactly, is the story?” Adams asked. “Is this a medical malpractice story? Perhaps -- but that does not explain why Trump’s name appears four times” in the article. “This is not the scoop NBC thinks it is,” he added.
The NBC report also asserted that the medicine has “known cardiac side effects,” especially when used “outside of hospital settings, underscoring why major medical organizations, including the American Heart Association, have issued warnings about the drug’s potential to trigger heart arrhythmia in some patients.”
Adams noted Ligia's brother-in-law, Lee Levitt, acknowledges “the family does not know that the drug caused Ligia’s death. The family has not received a death certificate.” Nevertheless, “NBC published a 1,000-plus-word report anyway, headlined: ‘Family of New York woman blames hydroxychloroquine combo for fatal heart attack.'"
“Unsurprisingly, the report’s author … went viral when she promoted NBC’s separate story on an Arizona couple who ingested fish tank cleaner, thinking it would protect them from the coronavirus.”
“Ligia’s story shows the ‘cocktail’ is being administered outside hospitals -- and it’s not the only one,” Przybyla continued. “Absent from her series of viral social media posts are mentions of the fact that no one knows if Ligia had the coronavirus or whether the ‘corona cocktail’ caused her heart attack,” Adams stated.
The writer concluded by sarcastically noting: “It is just a total mystery how these details tend to get lost in the mix when reporters promote their stories on social media.” What’s not just a total mystery is that the media will find another opportunity to hammer Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
