https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... e-doctors/
Trump retweeted a video with false covid-19 claims. One doctor in it has said demons cause illnesses.
At President Trump's press briefing at the White House on Tuesday, he responded to questions about a recent viral video that he retweeted but that was banned from social media platforms.
By Travis M. Andrews and Danielle Paquette
July 28, 2020 at 5:58 p.m. EDT
After social media companies removed a viral video showing doctors making unsubstantiated claims about the novel coronavirus, one doctor’s past phrases in particular began trending on Twitter: demon sperm. It turns out
Stella Immanuel has a history of making particularly outlandish claims — including that the uterine disorder endometriosis is caused by sex with demons that takes place in dreams.
The video showed a group that has dubbed itself America’s Frontline Doctors, standing on the steps of the Supreme Court and claiming that neither masks nor shutdowns are necessary to fight the pandemic, despite a plethora of expertise to the contrary. It was live-streamed by the conservative media outlet Breitbart and viewed more than 14 million times — fueled by tweets by Donald Trump Jr. and multiple retweets by President Trump, which have since been deleted.
Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have removed the videos. Twitter told The Washington Post that they were “in violation of our covid-19 misinformation policy.”
In the viral video, Immanuel made the unsubstantiated claim that hydroxychloroquine is a “cure for covid,” the disease caused by the coronavirus. As a previous Post story put it: “There is no known cure for the novel coronavirus or the disease it causes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. Multiple studies have disputed claims that antimalarial and antiviral drugs such as hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and chloroquine can help treat or even prevent the coronavirus. Last month, the FDA revoked an emergency approval that allowed doctors to prescribe hydroxychloroquine to covid-19 patients even though the treatment was untested.”
As the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer first noted,
Immanuel has asserted that many gynecological issues are the result of having sex with witches and demons (“succubi” and “incubi”) in dreams, a myth that dates back at least to the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” a Sumerian poem written more than 4,000 years ago.
She falsely claims that issues such as endometriosis, infertility, miscarriages and STIs are “evil deposits from the spirit husband.”
Furthermore, Sommer reported that in “a 2015 sermon that laid out a supposed Illuminati plan hatched by ‘a witch’ to destroy the world using abortion, gay marriage, and children’s toys, among other things, Immanuel claimed that DNA from space aliens is currently being used in medicine.” She also offered prayers through her website to remove generational curses transmitted through placenta.
In a news conference Tuesday, Trump addressed the video, saying: “I think they’re very respected doctors. There was a woman who was spectacular.” He did not specify which woman. He added of hydroxychloroquine, “I happen to think it works in the early stages.”
When asked directly about Immanuel and why he might trust someone who believes that alien DNA is used in modern medicine, Trump responded: “I thought she was very impressive, in the sense that, from where she came — I don’t know what country she comes from — but she said that she’s had tremendous success with hundreds of different patients. I thought her voice was an important voice, but I know nothing about her.”
. . .
In just the past 24 hours, Immanuel posted a video challenging “everyone in D.C.,” “the talking heads on CNN,” Anthony S. Fauci and “senators, all of them” to give her a urine sample, baselessly claiming that they all take hydroxychloroquine; claimed that “Big Tech is censoring Experts and suppressing the CURE” for the coronavirus; and threatened that God will crash Facebook servers for allegedly deleting her page.
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