From Harper’s Weekly Review:
Joe Pizza, a regular visitor to Mar-a-Lago and the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that manufactures the active ingredient in hydroxychloroquine, was accused of telling the president the drug could help. Americans have lost approximately $12 million to COVID-19 scams that have included bootleg tests, robocalls advertising nonexistent respiratory masks, an app that freezes the user’s phone until they pay a bitcoin ransom, and a silver tincture sold by Jim Bakker.
And the biggest scammer of all:
Donald Trump rejected a proposed bailout for the United States Postal Service, which employs nearly 600,000 workers, and suggested that its insolvency could be paid off by raising mailing rates for online retailers. The president also announced plans to lift COVID-19 restrictions by May 1 in order to aid the economy, and stated that the final death toll would be “substantially under” initial projections of 100,000 to 240,000 lives lost. Trump later explained that the decision to resume normalcy in two weeks would be “based on a lot of facts and a lot of instinct also. Whether we like it or not, there is a certain instinct to it.” The White House debated halting all financial support for the World Health Organization and creating an independent body.