The Trumpsphere is lying about hydroxychloroquine because if people believe there is already a cure, they’ll go back to work and send their kids to school.

Trump believes reopening will save his presidency. He doesn’t care if you die.

Folks, I’ve gone through this before. There isn’t a big financial opportunity in HCQ.

It is a generic. It is cheap. Many companies make it. More would make it if it worked.

Let that one go.

Novartis is one of those companies (through subsidiaries and relationships).

HCQ is not much more than a dollar a pill.

If Novartis sold 100,000,000 HCQ tablets, that would equal...

...about a 0.2% increase in revenue.

One of the mistakes people make with narcissists is expecting their decisions to be rational.

It would be rational for a normal greedy person to be driven by a profit motive.

Trump is driven first by ego-service.

Look first for the ego-motivation.

COVID makes Trump look bad. It is hurting his presidency.

In his mind, if people just stopped thinking COVID was a problem, he’d be doing great.

That’s irrational, of course, so ‘ordered thinkers’ - rational, healthy people - have a really hard time even processing it.

Trump is disordered. His thinking is disordered.

Ask first: How would this thing Trump is pushing help protect his ego? How would it help him avoid shame?

Those are the two operant questions for *everything* Trump does.

He wants people to believe HCQ works because in his warped mind, if they did, coronavirus would cease to be a big problem *instantly*.

In his mind, a disordered place where consequences don’t exist, people believing there’s a cure is the same as there actually being one.

I could go on about Trump is incapable of thinking in the long-term or planning beyond the moment.

But I’ll just leave it here.

Trump thinks the public believing there is a cure would solve his problem *today*.

And that is all he cares about.

Ever.