President Donald Trump on Monday night fired off tweet promoting a viral disinformation video, sharing with his 84 million followers the false claims that no one needs to wear a mask and that hydroxychloroquine is a cure for coronavirus.
The video, featuring a group calling themselves “America’s Frontline Doctors,” was viewed tens of millions of times on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube on Monday before all three networks took action and removed it from their networks.
Twitter deleted the posts Trump had shared, saying the video was “in violation of our COVID-19 misinformation policy.”
Trump’s Twitter feed now has a note on it saying: “This tweet is no longer available.” Similar action was taken on tweets shared by Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr.
Facebook and YouTube have also removed the video from their platforms, where it was first posted by right-wing news outlet Breitbart. Facebook said it was removed for “sharing false information about cures and treatments for COVID-19.”
The video shows footage from a press conference with a group of people wearing white lab coats calling themselves “America’s Frontline Doctors” standing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC.
The group, whose website was first registered earlier this month, is made up of anti-vaxxers, lawyers, and a social media coordinator.
The group claims it wants to “empower Americans to stop living in fear” and “if Americans continue to let so-called experts and media personalities make their decisions, the great American experiment of a Constitutional Republic with Representative Democracy will cease.”
During the press conference, the “doctors” presented a number of false and misleading claims, including that “you don’t need masks” to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and that recent studies showing hydroxychloroquine is ineffective are just “fake science” sponsored by “fake pharma companies.”
One of those speaking was Stella Immanuel, a Houston GP, who claims she has successfully treated more than 350 people with coronavirus using hydroxychloroquine.
“This virus has a cure, it’s called hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax,” Immanuel, who is also a minister, said. “You don’t need masks, there is a cure.”
The #2 most-engaged post on Facebook today is a Breitbart video of a group of doctors claiming that hydroxychloroquine is "a cure for Covid" and "you don't need a mask."
14 million views in 6 hours. (For scale, Plandemic got ~8 million in a few days.)
— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) July 28, 2020
But the claims fly in the face of what White House officials and public health authorities have said, as well as with scientific findings. Studies show that hydroxychloroquine has no impact on patients suffering from COVID-19 — and in some cases, those receiving the drugs had suffered negative side effects.
