Oleandrin: Are Trump and cronies trying to crapitalize on a new phony COVID-19 cure?

Quick take: Donald Trump, his sycophantic mega-donor Mike Lindell of MyPillow fame, and sleepy-eyed Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson have, in various ways, been pushing an unproven supplement -- an extract from the (highly toxic) oleander plant -- as a "cure" for COVID-19. The supplement, manufactured by Phoenix Biotechnology and aggressively promoted by the company's Vice Chairman and Director, Andrew Whitney, could potentially make Lindell and Carson a shipload of money -- and could earn Trump some much-needed political capital, if not actual money. Trump has been strongly suggesting that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) "approve" oleandrin, and Whitney has been putting pressure on the agency as well. Almost certainly there are multiple potential conflicts of interest here... but it's just another day in Trumpistan.
 

Watch: CNN's Anderson Cooper nails the MyShillow guy, Mike Lindell, on Lindell's unfounded claims about oleandrin.

In March of this year I published a post about some of the craziness inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic. I reviewed not only some of the wackier conspiracy theories about the virus, but also some of the fraudulent "cures" or unproven remedies that various hucksters were pushing. Now there's another miracle "cure," which at best is unproven: oleandrin, an extract from the extremely toxic oleander shrub, manufactured by Phoenix Biotechnology and currently being pushed by Andrew Whitney, Vice Chairman and Director of the Phoenix Biotech board. And #NotMyPresident Donald Trump, his hyper-enthusiastic mega-donor Mike Lindell of MyPillow (MyShillow?) fame, and Trump's [totally unqualified] HUD director, Ben Carson, seem to have jumped aboard the oleandrin express.

The Interwebs are on fire with the news, first reported at length on August 16, 2020 by the inimitable Jonathan Swan at Axios:

To the alarm of some government health officials, President Trump has expressed enthusiasm for the Food and Drug Administration to permit an extract from the oleander plant to be marketed as a dietary supplement or, alternatively, approved as a drug to cure COVID-19, despite lack of proof that it works.

Driving the news: The experimental botanical extract, oleandrin, was promoted to Trump during an Oval Office meeting in July. It's embraced by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell, a big Trump backer, who recently took a financial stake in the company that develops the product.

• Lindell told Axios that in the meeting, Trump "basically said: …'The FDA should be approving it.'"
• The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

...It's part of a pattern in which entrepreneurs, often without rigorous vetting, push unproven products to Trump — knowing their sales pitches might catch his eye. Trump will then urge FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn to "look at" or speed up approval.

• In March, Trump personally lobbied Hahn to authorize hydroxychloroquine's emergency use to treat COVID-19.
• The FDA obliged. But in June, after a large trial, the agency revoked that authorization and warned of the "risk of heart rhythm problems" in COVID-19 patients treated with the drug.

As Swan notes in his article, the Washington Post was the first to report the July Oval Office meeting.

Why oleandrin? Is there any evidence at all that it might work? Well... maybe. And maybe not. Swan continues:

A July 2020 study from the University of Texas at Galveston shows, in a laboratory setting, that oleandrin can inhibit the coronavirus in monkey kidney cells. This study has not been peer reviewed and one of the authors of the study, Robert Newman, is chairman of Phoenix Biotechnology's scientific advisory board — the company developing the oleandrin product.

• Phoenix Biotechnology's website listed Newman as the president of the company and a member of its board of directors until quite recently (Google's cache shows he held both roles as of August 12th).
• When Axios checked the website on Friday night, Newman was still listed as president. But on Saturday evening, after Axios had emailed questions to Whitney, Newman was no longer listed as president of the company; the website listed him only as a scientific adviser.

In an interview with Axios, Mike Lindell said that he's such a believer in oleandrin that he now has a financial stake in Phoenix Biotechnology and wants to make sure that every American has access to this "cure" for COVID-19. He explained that he first became aware of the botanical when Andrew Whitney called him on Easter Sunday with the news that it could cure COVID-19. Lindell then took the information to Ben Carson, who hopped aboard. Lindell claims that he has been taking oleandrin himself and has shared it with family and friends; he believes it's kept him from getting COVID-19 and has cured other people. This despite the lack of published clinical studies showing that the botanical either cures or prevents COVID-19.

So far the FDA hasn't said the product is safe or effective for the purposes claimed by its backers. In fact Lindell said that the head of the FDA, Stephen Hahn, wasn't even in July's Oval Office meeting about oleandrin.

As for Whitney, he says he approached Lindell because he's one of the country's greatest businessmen, and he was impressed that Lindell mobilized MyPillow to make face masks.

Read the entire piece on Axios. Here's that link again.

Turds of a feather...
It's no big surprise that Mike Lindell would be pursuing the oleandrin business op, nor that he would be the conduit between Whitney and Trump. Lindell is, if nothing else, an inveterate hustledork, and he sure does love his president. From the Washington Post, May 27, 2020:

Mike Lindell is what you might get if you took the political personalities of Donald Trump and Mike Pence, shred them down in a hammer mill, mixed the aggregate together, stuffed it in a linen case and sold the product between segments on Fox News.

He’s a serial As-Seen-On-TV entrepreneur and an evangelical Christian who travels the country preaching the Gospel. He’s also a mile-a-minute talker who used to own and tend a bar and is quite comfortable swapping stories for hours with anyone who will listen.

“When you hang out with Mike, he has that kind of hyperkinetic energy,” said Matt Schlapp, who runs the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, at which Lindell has spoken. “You might wonder, ‘Did this guy take too much cold medicine?’ ”

But Lindell swears he’s not on anything. Not anymore. He’s a former crack addict, a retired card counter with a history of bad debts, near-death experiences and soured marriages before fully accepting God into his heart. Such a past might be a liability for someone thinking about moving into a life of politics...

Not to worry. In today's GOP, it doesn't really matter what your past is. Donald Trump lowered that bar into the ground. You can't even see the bar anymore.

Nor does it probably matter much that in some respects Lindell seems a tad hypocritical: another rich bidness man who reaped the benefits of the infamous 2018 Trump tax cuts, and boasted up, down, and sideways about the new era of prosperity that Trump had ushered in -- but then, instead of letting all of those gains trickle down to his employees, he pissed on them (the employees, not the gains). This is from a May 2019 CityPages piece:

...it now seems Lindell's sugar high has come to a halt. Last week, he announced the layoffs of 150 MyPillow production workers in Skakopee [Minnesota].

The official rationale was the need to take production space at the facility to accommodate shipping for a new venture, MyStore.com, an “online store for entrepreneurs and inventors to sell their products.”

Left unsaid was the apparent decline in MyPillow sales, which have made the production of 150 workers unnecessary.

Not all Lindell's woes can be attributed to the larger economy. He's facing boycotts over his advertising support of Fox News bombardiers Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson. He's also soured at least some customers with his business practices.

Two years ago, he was forced to lay off 140 people after complaints of false advertising. The Better Business Bureau withdrew the company's accreditation, and changed its rating from an A+ to F.

Two years later, that grade remains a F. So while Lindell may have a generous friend in the White House, it appears his customers still have some say over his continued wealth...

It certainly hasn't all been an easy road for Lindell. Back in 2017 the Better Business Bureau accused him of swindling customers, an accusation that came on top of "multiple lawsuits and burned partners," as The Daily Beast reported in April of that year.

MyPillow, a pillow and mattress-topper company best known for its infomercials and outlandish medical claims, came out swinging for Donald Trump during the presidential election. “I’m here to give all my credibility to Mr. Donald Trump,” the company’s founder and spokesperson Mike Lindell told Fox News during an interview at the final presidential debate, where he had scored seats to support Trump.

But Lindell might be the rare businessman with less credibility than Trump. The Better Business Bureau yanked MyPillow’s accreditation this week and slapped the company with an “F” rating, over what customers described as a misleading ad campaign.

MyPillow has racked up years of customer complaints, from allegations of the pillow’s trumped-up health claims, to a recent complaint that reads “I want to murder Mike Lindell” 15 times and accuses the company of selling overpriced wares.

The BBB also took issue with MyPillow’s price scheme, albeit in less violent language. The consumer rights organization cited MyPillow’s ongoing “buy one, get one free” offers, which advertises two pillows—usually $49.99 each—for “half price” at $99.97. The total savings were one cent. In October, MyPillow customers filed a class-action suit claiming to have been duped by the offer.

And what about those burned partners? Also from the Beast article:

In 2013, Salesforce sued MyPillow for $550,000, accusing the company of breaching contract and stiffing them on a $125,000 credit card bill. Earlier that year, two of Lindell’s early backers accused him of cutting them out of their rightful share in the company, which they said was a combined 42 percent.

Given his troubles, it's not surprising that Lindell would be on the lookout for new business ops. "Well, gee, Cosmic Connie, that's what entrepreneurs do," you might be saying. "Even the honest ones." Point taken; and in fact for the past few years Lindell has been putting money into other ventures too, such as financing films for the theocracy -- one example being an anti-Planned-Parenthood (actually anti-abortion) documentary, Unplanned. From The Hollywood Reporter, November 21, 2018:

Lindell also has a cameo in Unplanned that's sure to raise eyebrows in certain circles, as he is seen bulldozing a Planned Parenthood site to make way for the headquarters of an anti-abortion group called 40 Days for Life. "I'm pro-life and I'm happy to do it," Lindell says.

The film did respectably at the box office, though critical response was less than enthusiastic, and the American division of Planned Parenthood stated that its arguments were false. More than likely, the movie did little to change anyone's mind about abortion or Planned Parenthood.

But this oleander product may just be the Next Big Thing for which Lindell has been searching.

Ben Carson's involvement with oleandrin isn't really all that surprising either, considering that he has rock-solid Scamworld/huckster creds, even to the point of lying about his involvement with dodgy supplement MLM firm Mannatech -- a matter that was widely reported way back in 2015 when he was still a GOP presidential candidate. From New York magazine, October 29, 2015:

Last night’s Republican presidential debate was hardly lacking in demonstrable lies uttered with total conviction. One of the more audacious was Ben Carson’s claim that he never had “any kind of relationship” with controversial nutritional-supplement company Mannatech.

At the debate in Boulder, CNBC moderator Carl Quintanilla asked Carson why he had maintained a ten-year relationship with Mannatech, despite the fact that the company paid $7 million to settle a deceptive-marketing lawsuit brought by the state of Texas in 2009. The suit accused Mannatech of circulating materials that advertised its supplements as a miracle cure for Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, autism, and cancer.

"Well, that’s easy to answer,” Carson replied. “I didn’t have an involvement with them. That is total propaganda. I did a couple speeches for them. I did speeches for other people. They were paid speeches. It is absolutely absurd to say that I had any kind of relationship with them.”

...Carson’s non-relationship with Mannatech dates back to at least 2004, when he spoke before a meeting of its sales associates, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. In that address, the celebrated neurosurgeon credited Mannatech’s supplements with curing his own prostate cancer.

“Within about three weeks my symptoms went away, and I was really quite amazed,” he says to loud applause in a video of the event. 

That was then. For the past few years, Carson has been largely preoccupied with making life more miserable for the financially and residentially challenged, while continuing to spew some of his nutcakey ideas. But who says he can't do a little bit of oleandrin hustling on the side?

Lest you be tempted to trust Carson's judgment on oleandrin as a plausible COVID remedy because he's an actual doctor, albeit a retired one, and that he is, after all, a member of Trump's coronavirus task force, I would ask you to consider two points: (1) the aforementioned years-long involvement with a highly questionable supplement MLM and Carson's lies about that involvement; and (2) the fact that his specialties were neurosurgery and pediatric neurosurgery (and though generally renowned, he was known to push ethical boundaries at times), the point being that Carson is not an expert on antiviral drugs or infectious diseases. And let's add a third point for the heck of it: Carson's shaky relationship with actual science (and that's putting it kindly).

And Trump? You probably know that he too has a solid Scamworld background, along with just generally being a serial failed businessman (and, of course, he and his family continue to capitalize on his presidency). But even if Trump doesn't have his pudgy fingers in the oleandrin pie as of yet, even if he has no plans to make money from it, there's a good bit of political capital that he stands to gain if the product really takes off. The political factor alone is a reasonable explanation of why Trump continued, against the advice of most experts, to push hydroxychloroquine as a COVID remedy (though there was also speculation that he had some financial interests there too), and more than likely his desire to look like a COVID hero war president sheds light on the fact that back in April, he seemed to be suggesting even more dangerous remedies.

Perhaps Trump reasons that if this oleander thing works, or even just look like it works, he could be perceived as the standard bearer for the defeat of the COVID monster. Maybe people might even forget about his gross mismanagement of the pandemic crisis.

Or maybe not.

It's all about the money (as usual)
Andrew Whitney and Phoenix Biotech are currently pursuing two avenues for their fruit of the poisonous shrub: having it approved as an actual drug to treat or cure COVID-19; or as a dietary supplement, sold with the disclaimer that the FDA has not evaluated claims made by the manufacturers and that the product is not intended to prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure disease. My money is on Whitney pushing hard for the latter option, since the approval process for a drug is longer and more rigorous than that for a mere supplement.

So far FDA director Hahn, who is an MD, seems to have resisted Whitney's pressure, which I'm thinking is a good thing, given the great risks. The medical profession, aware of those risks, has reacted with alarm, as reported on Med Page Today:

The thought of another potentially dangerous compound being touted as a "miracle cure" by the Trump administration, like hydroxychloroquine, had medical experts up in arms on Twitter on Monday.

"Oleandrin? Yeah that would definitely end up killing people," tweeted David Juurlink, MD, PhD, of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto.

Juurlink told MedPage Today that oleandrin is "akin to digoxin. Too much can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, but the main concern is arrhythmias, which can be fatal."

Jennifer Gunter, MD, tweeted that it's "easier to kill a person with oleandrin than COVID-19" and highlighted a case report in which two people were poisoned after eating snails that had munched on an oleander plant.

It's going to be a long, long road to November 3, for many reasons. How the oleandrin story will go is anyone's guess at this point, but there's definitely reason for concern. As Jonathan Swan concludes in his piece in Axios:

Scientists around the world are in a race for cures, treatments and vaccines for COVID-19. Government regulators are investigating hundreds of products. When a biotech executive like Whitney can take his case directly to the president, it casts doubt over the scientific rigor of the drug development process.

Caveat emptor.

PS added 19 August, 2020: On an interview aired on August 18, CNN's Anderson Cooper cornered the MyShillow guy re the oleandrin frauduct, coming right out and calling him a snake oil salesman. Nothing Lindell said contradicted Cooper's assessment. Among other things, Lindell flat-out lied that he has "no monetary gain here." Some highlights from the interview:

Lindell: Well, the 1,000 people are out there. I don't know if you can't find it. But I'm not a medical doctor. I just know that Ben Carson, who's on the task force, he brought it to the President, going --
Cooper: OK. But, stop, sir. Ben Carson has in the past been paid to promote supplements and got in trouble for it in 2015. So he has a track record on that. You are telling people that this cures Covid. You have no studies to prove it. And you are saying 1,000 people were tested --
Lindell: You know what: I got my own study. When I took the -- When I've seen the test of 1,000 people that it was safe. That's all I needed.
Cooper: Sir, OK, if you've seen this test, where is this test?
Lindell: I've been taking it since April. I've been taking it since April. I have 100 friends and family -- this thing works. It's the miracle of all time.
Cooper: You said -- Sir, you said you've seen this test, where is it?
Lindell: The tests are out there. The thousand people -- phase one, phase two.
Cooper: Where is the test? Show it to us.
Lindell: I don't have the test.

Watch the video embedded at the beginning of this post; if that link doesn't work, here's a direct link.

Scamdemic: Kevin Trudeau's enablers continue to push COVID-19 conspiracy tales along with KT hero/martyr/Guru narrative

At some point soon I really will blog again about something besides COVID-19 and the various hucksters, scam artists, and cynics (inside and outside of politix) who continue to push wacko conspiracy narratives about, and dubious or dangerous "cures" for, the coronavirus plague sweeping the planet. But for now, let's pop in and see what imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie on this Whirled, is up to regarding the virus saga.

Or, more accurately, let's look at what his water carriers are up to, since it seems that rumors of his impending freedom have once again been exaggerated, and that continued lockdowns at Camp Cupcake are apparently restricting his ability to provide valuable COVID-19 upchucks... I mean, updates. To date, there have been 13 of these "updates," which are essentially overcooked sales letters for the Trudeau-founded GIN (Global Information Network), mixed well with stale whines about Katie being "censored," and well-seasoned with recaps of conspiranoid and right-wing talking points.

But what Katie can't do for himself, his enablers continue to do for him. On May 12, 2020, the admins of the Official Kevin Trudeau Fan Club page on Facebook posted this endorsement of the conspiracy-porn "documentary," Plandemic:

FROM TONYA AND RAHELIOS:Kevin has not viewed this, as he can not view any internet content from prison, but we have reviewed it. We have no documentation or substantiation about the facts being true in this video, but it does resonate with us. We suggest you view it, as it is in agreement with what Kevin has been saying in his books, "Natural Cures They Don't Want You to Know About", "More Natural Cures Revealed" and "The Weight Loss Cure They Don't Want You to Know About". It also is in agreement with what Kevin has said in his Covid-19 updates.The mainstream media and all social media are censoring this video. It is banned from YouTube. It is banned from Facebook. They don’t want you to see this. Many people are downloading it and sharing it, so that it remains available to the public. After you watch it, you might want to do the same.Currently, it is still available at the website PlandemicMovie.com. Watch it now, while you still can...

By the way, I just now followed the link that was embedded in the Facebook post. Apparently some wag co-opted the URL after the movie was (once again) taken down. [Update on May 21: The content I referenced has now been removed as well, but never fear; I copied and pasted the content and took a screen shot; see the end of this post. ~ CC] At any rate, although I hadn't participated very much on Katie's Facebook fan page in a while, I felt moved to respond to this particular post. I wrote:

Connie Schmidt I imagine Kevin would indeed like "Plandemic," since he apparently never met a conspiracy theory he didn't like. Conspiracy theories and forbidden knowledge form the foundation of his marketing strategies. I don't know how long this comment will be allowed to stay, but I am taking the liberty of sharing an article that offers some perspective on the virologist, Judy Mikovits, whose work is at the heart of "Plandemic." BTW, there's nothing "healing" about the beach when the water is full of flesh-eating bacteria, as has been the case numerous times over the years in some US waters (e.g., the Gulf coast of Texas). The proliferation of these bacteria is apparently a direct result of global warming (climate change), but if I'm not mistaken, Kevin doesn't believe in that either.

This is the link I shared following my comment on the Katie fan page. It's a basic fact-checking piece that does indeed give some salient perspective about virologist Mikovits, and that I thought might be useful for those who are willing to entertain something besides the conspiracy narrative du jour. (One point the article addresses is Mikovits's questioning why public beaches should be closed, with her question framed around her claim that the beach is a healing place because of "sequences" in the sand and "healing microbes in the ocean in the salt water." That's why I mentioned the flesh-eating bacteria that have increasingly been popping up in salt water, and the probability that climate change is only making the threat worse.)

But my comment, link and all, now seems to be disappeared. I can only speculate that this is because the admins either thought that Kevin wouldn't like it, or that it might possibly shake the faith of the faithful, or both.

The admins of the page did, however, leave another comment of mine up there, though it's possible, since it was a reply that's nested under someone else's comment, that they just haven't seen it yet. My comment was in response to one by a long-time fan of Katie's, David Krueger, whom you may have met briefly on this blog back in 2012. Back in the day, David was thrilled right down to his toes to be on the same plane as Kevin Trudeau. More recently, he wrote this about the conspiracy vid Plandemic:

David Krueger Facebook and YouTube themselves have confirmed the truth of it for us with their censorship campaign.

To which I replied:

Connie Schmidt Facebook and YouTube are privately owned companies and they have a right to decide which content they want or do not want to host. But Facebook also allows pages like this one that push Kevin Trudeau's "information," so there's not really too much cause to complain, is there? BTW, many of my own comments have been removed from this page, presumably because Kevin would not like them. But I'm cool with that because the site admins have a right to remove anything they want to remove. However, using the same logic you used, it could be said that my offending posts have been removed because they were too truthful.

And I am actually cool with having my comments removed from a Facebook forum; it is the admins' right to determine, at least up to a certain point, what goes on their page and what doesn't -- the point at which their rights end being when Facebook gatekeepers determine that content violates Facebook's terms of service or "community standards" or what have you. But as I noted in my response to David Krueger, it is, after all, Facebook that is allowing those admins to push Kevin Trudeau's propaganda, despite all insinuations about Facebook and YouTube being involved in sinister censorship efforts.

GIN is still doing a lot of the heavy lifting for Trudeau as well
Meanwhile, in neighboring parts of Scamworld, some of Katie's other cronies continue to enable and promote him in various ways. For instance, on May 15, 2020, current GIN co-owner Tom Morter, aka "Dr. Tom" -- one of the "GIN fat cats" I wrote about earlier this year -- spent quite a few minutes on his weekly "GIN update" telling folks how they can send money to Kevin in the clink and to the lawyers who failed to keep him from going to the clink. According to "Dr. Tom," money sent to the KT Legal Defense Fund goes directly to Winston and Strawn, one of the main law firms behind Katie's failed attempts to stay out of prison. But then again, Kevin himself wrote, in a letter to Judge Robert Gettleman in January of this year, that his lawyers are no longer even speaking to him, so who knows what's really going on? Maybe the plan is to get the gullibles to send enough money to the lawyers so that they'll start speaking to Katie again, and will resume their futile efforts to get him sprung.

As I've also 'splained on this blog, there is a cozy symbiotic relationship between Kevin and the Morter bros and the other GIN co-owner, Blaine Athorn -- at least for now. But they probably need Katie more than he needs them, which is why they've been pushing so hard on various online forums for people to join GIN and pay up in order to possibly get a chance to see Katie in person some time in 2022 (maybe).

Watching "Dr. Tom's" tiresome performance on the latest GIN update reminded me once again that no matter how jovial and enthusiastic he or his brother Ted or their fellow co-owner Blaine Athorn are, it's a pretty safe bet that they will never come within spitting distance of inspiring the abject worship accorded to Kevin Trudeau, or "GuruKev" as he has fairly recently begun branding himself (with a little help from the above-mentioned water carriers).

I think it's also a pretty safe bet that Kevin is very well aware of that hero worship, and that he gleefully exploits it, sometimes employing false modesty, which seems to make the faithful love him even more. On April 15, 2020, there appeared on the KT fan page this somewhat puzzling post about the death of Nelson Mandela (who had actually passed away in 2013):

GURUKEV:
Nelson Mandela passed away… One of my heroes.

He was convicted of being a TERRORIST!

And spent 20 years in a jail cell!

A hero. A person I admired and respected. If I had only 1% of his character.

I mention to you many of my heroes....such as Jesus, Gandhi, Chavez etc. All people that were convicted of crimes in court and were sentenced to prison time.

I am not even in their league.

They are my heroes. They give me strength. Always look at people who walk the walk, not just talk the talk. And gain strength from what they had to go through. You will be inspired by those who went through much more than you or I have ever endured.

I look at my life and current situation and see that I have it so easy compared to others who went before me. You can always put things in perspective. Focus on the good things and what you want…and be happy right now!

I am!

Much love!
GuruKev

My blogging colleague Bernie at GINtruth and I are well aware of Kevin's history of comparing himself, sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly, to Mandela and Gandhi and Christ and others. We made quite a few comments about that topic on this thread, but the faithful insisted that Katie was definitely not comparing himself to these heroes of history. "Kevin even clarified it on the post," said one fan who had clearly been fooled by Kevin's faux-humility. Another fan wrote, "No point to argue and waste time, people. Because Kevin IS very similar to Mandela, Gandhi, and Jesus."

Oh, dear.

In any case, both Bernie's and my comments were subsequently wiped away, leaving only the worship.

But Kevin is still his own best promoter
While the Facebook admins and the GIN owners are diligently propping Kevin up and polishing his brand, he still remains his own most effective shill. Also on April 15, Kevin's 12th COVID-19 "Update" appeared on the Facebook fan page. In this post he doubled down on his claims that he and he alone has access to the real info about the coronavirus, "unlike the mainstream media." And once again he played on his GuruKev persona.

You may have noticed that all the predictions I have made in those updates and other communications have come true or are in the process of coming true. All I have stated has proven to be correct and true (unlike the mainstream media).

I have gotten thousands of communications from people all over the world who have been so amazed by the uncanny accuracy of my predictions about this "pandemic". Many are asking if I am some sort of "mystic" or "psychic" or have powers to see the future. Many ask if I am "channeling" some "higher entities" or "ascended masters" or "tapping into the Ether, Universal Field, Akashic Records or Universal Consciousness".

Others ask if my former membership in certain "societies" still gives me access to people that have direct first-hand knowledge of what really goes on in the power circles around the world, and things that are hidden "behind the curtain".

People ask me if certain current "insiders" actually "leak" secret information to me so that I can disseminate it.

The answers to the above questions are two fold.

1.) First, I do have first-hand insiders as some of my "sources". I have mentioned in previous updates who some of my "sources" are, and that I almost always use exclusively "first-hand" sources.

A first-hand source is the person who actually said the thing or did the thing. If I do not have a first-hand source, I always use a person who was actually there and witnessed the thing being done with their own eyes or heard a thing said with their own ears.

I still must have at least 2 other independent sources before I will report something. Second and third-hand sources are only used to verify, document and substantiate something. I authenticate everything before reporting it. I do not spread "rumors" or speculation or theories.

2.) Next, I do also "tap or plug into the Field". Some call this channeling.

You may hear of someone who channels "entities" or "frequencies" such as Esther Hicks who channels the group of entities called "Abraham", or Paul Selig who channels a different frequency thus a different group of "non-physical entities". But I do not tap into a specific frequency or group of entities. Rather I tap into the "entire Field" all at once. This "one Field" is the "one SELF".

One of my closest friends is an Enlightened Perfected Being, a "Guru", and is called a "Saint". We were talking about this as we both do the same thing when it comes to "plugging into the Ether". We discussed that the highest "frequency" is the ONE SELF. All frequencies are contained in the ONE SELF. Thus, when we "channel", we channel "our SELVES". We are not on a "lower frequency" or a "single band" of frequency. We are getting all frequencies ALL simultaneously. Therefore, I channel my "SELF".

This is important to understand. When someone "channels" a particular frequency, it is like getting a report from a person who is up on a mountainside. They have a much better view than you because they are higher up the mountain. They see more.

But a person high on one side of the mountain can only see the view from that side. Another person higher up on the same side will have a slightly different report, as they can see more and have a more complete view. Yet another person on the other side of the same mountain might have a very different report, because they are looking in a different direction.

This is why authentic "channellers" sometimes deliver different or conflicting messages from each other.

But the person on the very top of the mountain or in a helicopter hovering over the mountain has ALL views, of ALL sides and a COMPLETE and TOTAL perspective. They can see that all the "channelers" are giving accurate information from their limited perspective, but do not see the "Big Picture". They do not have a totally integrated view of EVERYTHING at the same time.

This total, all-encompassing "knowing" is the ONE SELF. This is what I "channel". I channel my SELF, not someone or something else.

So with both of these "Sources", 1 and 2 above, you can now see why the data being reported here and in the other trainings I have produced are so accurate.

"I channel my SELF?" Sounds a lot like #NotMyPresident Donald John Trump's past claims that his chief consultant on foreign policy and other matters was "myself, because I have a very good brain, and I've said a lot of things."

Next Kevin uses his own very good brain to spew some of the same "facts" about the COVID-19 pandemic that we've seen in his previous missives, and then, predictably, he segues into (yet another) sales pitch for GIN.

As I predicted, the worldwide numbers for this "created" horrific, global pandemic are a big nothing burger.

And the numbers for the USA are worse than other countries for the reasons I outlined previously, but still a big nothing burger.

Compare the number of "deaths" caused by this virus to the number of deaths caused by other health issues and viruses, and you will see that the media and governments around the world have misrepresented the facts and totally mislead [sic] everyone.

To get the real death numbers of other viruses and health issues to compare and see for yourself, go to these websites:

World Life Expectancy Website
https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/world-rankings-total-deaths#WORLD%20RANKINGS

World Health Organization (WHO) Global Health Data Repository
https://www.who.int/gho/database/en/

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) FastStats (USA Data)
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/default.htm

Our World In Data - Causes of Death

https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death

And of course, to get the “official” data on Covid-19 deaths, all you have to do is search online for “Covid-19 Deaths”.

You can also see that several countries such as Mexico, Brazil and others did not do ANY social distancing and did NOT shut down their countries. They stayed "business as usual". Their countries operated completely normally without changing anything. They did not buy into the big lie.

What happened? NOTHING! No "mass deaths" as the "experts" predicted. The funeral homes and morgues were NOT filled with dead people from Covid-19. Hospitals were NOT filled. Everything was exactly the same as it always is. Every day people die from a variety of things. Nothing changed. NO spike in deaths.

Covid-19 was nothing more than a “bad-flu-year” in those countries, and in most areas, Covid-19 was not even as bad as a normal flu. This shows that all the mass hysteria about "if we don't shut everything down, millions will die" was simply a BIG LIE. IT DID NOT HAPPEN in those countries that did not shut anything down and everyone went on living their lives as normal.

As I stated previously in other updates, I am being severely restricted now. My "voice" and Free Speech expression is being suppressed once again. I cannot say certain things on this public forum. This is one of the reasons why a "private club" is so vital and important now and in the future.Only through a private club, like GIN, will people be able to share information without censorship or fear of retaliation from powerful organizations, internet monopolies, and government. That is why the Global Information Network (GIN) is so important, and why it has "Information" in its name....

There are several problems with the above statements. A major problem is that one of the countries Trudeau specifically mentioned as having "stayed 'business as usual,'" Brazil, has, in fact, become not just the Latin American but also the global epicenter of COVID-19 -- while its fascist "leader" (and Trump bromantic partner) Jair Bolsonaro has continually played down the threat, joking about the "neurosis" of Brazilians who are actually worried about the virus. From Time, May 9, 2020:

Even by the standards of other right-wing populists who have sought to downplay the COVID-19 pandemic, Bolsonaro’s defiance of reality was shocking. From the favelas of densely packed cities like Rio de Janeiro to the remote indigenous communities of the Amazon rain forest, Brazil has emerged as the new global epicenter of the pandemic, with the world’s highest rate of transmission and a health system now teetering on the brink of collapse.

Unlike the previous global hot spots – Italy, Spain and the U.S. – Brazil is an emerging economy, with a weaker social safety net that makes it harder for local authorities to persuade people to stay home, and an underfunded health care system. When a particularly severe outbreak struck the city of Manaus, in the Amazon, in late April, hospitals were quickly overrun, leading to a shortage of coffins. On May 17, the mayor of São Paulo, Latin America’s largest city, warned that hospitals there would collapse within two weeks if the infection rate continued to rise. The country has confirmed almost 18,000 deaths as of May 19, with a record 1,179 people dying in the preceding 24 hours–the world’s second highest daily fatality rate. Epidemiologists say the peak is still weeks away.

And another country Trudeau mentioned, Mexico, is now among the top 10 countries for COVID-19 deaths.

On May 13, 2020, The Guardian reported that both Brazil and Mexico recorded their deadliest days from COVID-19.

And on May 19, the LA Times reported that COVID-19 is rapidly spreading past the hot spots of Brazil and Mexico, and threatening to overwhelm other Latin American countries. Chile and Peru and Ecuador are not doing well at all.

Even though the articles I linked to above were published weeks after Trudeau's "Update #12," at the time he posted it there had already been numerous published reports that things were not looking good in Brazil and Mexico. The point is that Kevin's "secret sources" and "self-channeling" and other exclusive tools have failed him and his readers.

But Kevin's fans aren't big on fact-checking his screeds, so it's not surprising that this one was met with the usual round of enthusiastic support. (I posted a comment that pointed out the inaccuracy of his statements about Brazil and Mexico, but it was wiped away.) Among numerous worshipful responses to Kevin's Update # 12 was this:

You are One And ONLY KING on this planet Earth !!!
Thank You Thank You Thank You ... For Everything You Are Givinig [sic] to us !!!!!!!
Thank You Thank You Thank You !!!!

Eat your hearts out, Morters and Athorn!

But seriously. If Katie's spiritual shtick, with its attendant responses, some of which are truly disturbing, isn't an example of "toxic spirituality" (to evoke the beat and book title of guru/cult scambuster Be Scofield), I don't know what is. (And this of course assumes that the worshipful comments are in fact sincere and aren't just a moderately clever form of trolling.) Kevin Trudeau may not be a sex predator like some of the "gurus" Scofield writes about, but for much of his career he has been a financial predator, as well as a conduit of other forms of exploitation that, for some followers, may be as harmful as sexual abuse.

Plandemic is a crock of shite
And bringing it back to the conspiracy-porn vid that kicked off this post, regardless of whether he ever sees or endorses Plandemic, I don't think one can go wrong by betting on Kevin Trudeau continuing to embrace and exploit conspiracy narratives and forbidden-info themes, no matter how wildly wrong, all in the service of lining his own pockets. People love that stuff because it's exciting and it makes them feel really special to be privy to information that "they" won't tell you -- and Kevin knows it.

But I'm thinking that all you really need to know about Plandemic can currently could, for a few days, be found on the link embedded in that May 12 post on the KT Facebook fan page. Just below the graphic is the actual text, in the event that you can't read it on the pic (Blogger seems to have forcibly scaled it down to the point of unreadability, and try as I might, I couldn't fix the problem).

FACTS YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Judy Mikovitz [sic] is bat shit crazy (COVID pun intended)
• Bill Gates is not patenting any of these drugs ... and what the fuck do you think he would do with >$100 millon more anyway?
• Masks aren't going to kill you
• The world is scary now. Believing that this is all part of a global conspiracy is more comforting than the truth. If we give into fear and ignore *actual* science things will only get worse

Amen.

This post has been revised since its original publication, most notably, to add information contradictory to Trudeau's COVID-19 "updates" (specifically, about COVID-19 in Latin America). ~ CC

Bless this mess with MMS: phony church (and possibly a phony president?) tout bleachy cure-nothing for COVID-19

Was Donald Trump influenced in any way by direct or indirect communications from the promoters of a health frauduct known as MMS, which in effect is industrial bleach? Despite the speculation of multiple skeptics and Trump critics, we may never know for sure, but two points are salient: (1) Trump's stream-of-consciousness musings about disinfectant during his April 23, 2020 COVID-19 "briefing" were irresponsible and deeply inappropriate; and (2) the MMS peddlers are very much a part of the phony-cures problem as the world struggles to deal with this health crisis. And there's no doubt that Trump's comments have breathed new life into a fringe "health" movement that has been a problem for years.

You know what they say: "Life's a bleach and then you die." Well, maybe they don't say that, exactly, but it's what the vast majority of sane people would say in response to the proposition that a person ingest bleach or bleach products to combat or prevent illness. But there are scads of other folks who swear by the (imaginary) health benefits of what amounts to an industrial bleach -- chlorine dioxide -- marketed as MMS, which, depending upon the source that's pushing it, stands for Miracle Mineral Solution, Miracle Mineral Supplement, or Master Mineral Solution. And ever since the coronavirus disease currently known as COVID-19 became a thing, some of these folks have been promoting their potentially deadly cure-nothing as a remedy for the viral plague. Of course MMS is far from the first or only phony coronacure that is being touted, as recently discussed on this very blog.

I've written a few times about MMS -- in this October 2016 post, for instance, ahead of the airing of an ABC News 20/20 segment about the matter. A lone anonymous commenter on my post wrote, "This is Garbage Journalism. Goodbye!" He or she wasn't wrong, I suppose; I was journalizing, to the extent that I do that on this blog, about a garbage "cure."

Both my post and the ABC report gave more than a passing mention to the elderly frauduct peddler who pretty much started the bleach ball rolling, Jim Humble. Humble has been whining for years because his "information" on MMS is constantly being "censored." Lately, and not at all surprisingly, Humble and his cohorts, under the umbrella of a phony religious institution called The Genesis II Church of Health & Healing, have been strongly insinuating or outright claiming that their favorite frauduct can effectively fight COVID-19.

The purpose of the phony church, which was founded years ago and is currently based in Florida, has always been to skirt US law by exploiting the separation of church and state. Their claim is that the consumption of MMS, and any other snake oil they might be selling, is nothing more nor less than an official sacrament of the church, and therefore not subject to US governmental interference. While the "Church" and some of its principals are in the US, Humble himself is hiding out who-knows-where; when ABC News tracked him down for their 2016 exposé he was "in a small town outside Guadalajara, Mexico, outside the reach of American law."

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has never bought into the sacrament excuse, and was clearly not amused by the ersatz church's COVID claims. Accordingly the agency issued a warning letter to the "Church" and its principals on April 8, 2020. The letter provided numerous examples of the spurious corona-claims, such as...

On your page titled, “Coronavirus Update (COVID-19),” from your website https://jimhumble.co/blog/coronavirus-update-covid-19:

• "14 people who were confirmed cases of COVID-19 (in Europe), took MMS and have recovered their health. All of these tested positive and when re-tested after taking MMS, they came out negative for COVID-19.”
• “Those of us who have used chlorine dioxide (MMS) over the years certainly expected it to also work with this virus, but we wanted to be sure and now with this data we are confident that the proper mixture of chlorine dioxide (MMS) has every hope of eradicating COVID-19.”
• "If you have COVID-19: --Take Protocol 6 and 6 to start. This is one 6-drop dose of MMS, then one hour later take another 6-drop dose of MMS. --After two 6-drop doses of MMS, go on hourly doses of 3 activated drops in 4 ounces of water hourly . . . --For children, follow the same instructions as above and cut the amounts in half.”
• “Here is the testimony of a man who was experiencing very serious symptoms of Coronavirus: The man is 85 years old and was confirmed to have coronavirus. He was quarantined at home, all of his relatives at home were also infected, but the elderly man was in very serious condition and on oxygen—by far he was the most worst off. He was given a 1 liter bottle of water which had 20 activated drops of MMS added to it. He was instructed to take a sip from the bottle every five minutes, but not to let it go past 10 minutes. So every 5 to 10 minutes the man took a sip (not a big gulp, just a sip) from the bottle—that’s all, but he did this faithfully, every 5 to 10 minutes throughout the day until the bottle was finished, just a sip each time. After three days he was noticeably improved and off of the oxygen, so his dose was reduced to 12 activated drops in the 1 liter bottle of water and he drank from it, just sipping it, every half hour. He is recovering quickly—90% improved, has just a slight remnant of cough occasionally. The rest of the family who also took MMS are now fully recovered.”

You get the drift. There's much more in the letter.

* * * * *

Jim Humble initially captured my attention because among the many hats he wears (figuratively speaking, that is; in a literal sense he only wears one hat, which he apparently hasn't taken off since the Reagan administration), Humble is the vanity publisher of the German-language books of this blog's least favorite phony doctor/cancer quack/right-wing nutcake/chronic conspiranoid, Leonard Coldwell. (Coldwell has been busily engaged in his own covidiocy for months now.)

But in the past few days, Humble and gang have garnered renewed attention, not only from this Whirled but from the world at large, because of a possible, though not yet proven, connection with a few bumbling comments made by #NotMyPresident Donald J. Trump at his daily coronavirus briefing/surrogate campaign rally on Thursday, April 23, 2020. From Vanity Fair, one of hundreds of media outlets to report the incident:

...After a White House science official presented research Thursday that suggested light and disinfectants like isopropyl alcohol and bleach could effectively kill the coronavirus on surfaces, Trump chimed in with his own helpful medical advice: Why not just get those things inside the body and kill off the coronavirus that way?

The president of the United States seriously suggested that Americans “clean” their bodies with disinfectant to treat the coronavirus, in response to Bill Bryan, who heads the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology division, touting cleaning agents’ ability to kill coronavirus on surfaces. “I see disinfectant, where it knocks [coronavirus] out in a minute—one minute—and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning,” Trump said at Thursday’s press briefing. “Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that. So you're going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds interesting to me.” (When Bryan said that his lab was not doing any research to look into that, the president responded, “Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work.”)

...The president later asked public health expert Dr. Deborah Birx if there were any current treatments using light or heat to cure the novel coronavirus. “I say maybe you can, maybe you can’t. I'm not a doctor, but I'm like a person that has a good you-know-what,” Trump said, pointing at his head...

Oh, good lord. Of course, social media have been absolutely on fire with jeers about the unhinged remarks. (See, for example, the Randy Rainbow vid above.) Trump, apparently embarrassed, subsequently offered the believable-only-to-Trumpanzees defense that he was just being "sarcastic" and was merely trying to own the reporters who have treated him so unfairly.

The aforementioned Dr. Deborah Birx offered the backhanded defense that Trump was probably just "digesting" or "talking through [new information] out loud" rather than seriously suggesting that folks imbibe or inject bleach. The expressions on her face in real time while her boss was "digesting" would suggest that Dr. Birx doesn't really believe her own rationalization, but even if she does believe it, and even if Trump really was just thinking out loud, those are certainly the types of thoughts that should remain inside a president's "good you-know-what" instead of spewing out of the oversized you-know-what on his other end. Stream-of-consciousness babble is not a good look on someone who is supposed to be leading a country through a multifaceted crisis (and for whom the very concept of "consciousness" is a stretch anyway).

So what's the possible Trumpian connection with MMS and Humble et al.? Well, as The Guardian reported on April 24, Mark Grenon, one of the phony MMS Church's self-described "archbishops" (and the first-named recipient of the FDA's April 8 warning letter), had written to Trump earlier in the week saying that chlorine dioxide can rid the body of COVID-19.

In his letter, Mark Grenon told Trump that chlorine dioxide – a powerful bleach used in industrial processes such as textile manufacturing that can have fatal side-effects when drunk – is “a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body”. He added that it “can rid the body of Covid-19”...

...A few days after Grenon dispatched his letter, Trump went on national TV at his daily coronavirus briefing at the White House on Thursday and promoted the idea that disinfectant could be used as a treatment for the virus. To the astonishment of medical experts, the US president said that disinfectant “knocks it out in a minute. One minute!”

Trump did not specify where the idea of using disinfectant as a possible remedy for Covid-19 came from, and the source for his notion remains obscure. But the Guardian has learned that peddlers of chlorine dioxide – industrial bleach – have been making direct approaches to the White House in recent days....

...In his weekly televised radio show, posted online on Sunday, Grenon read out the letter he wrote to Trump. He said it began: “Dear Mr President, I am praying you read this letter and intervene.”

Grenon said that 30 of his supporters have also written in the past few days to Trump at the White House urging him to take action to protect Genesis II in its bleach-peddling activities which they claim can cure coronavirus.

On Friday, hours after Trump talked about disinfectant on live TV, Grenon went further in a post on his Facebook page. He claimed that MMS had actually been sent to the White House. He wrote: “Trump has got the MMS and all the info!!! Things are happening folks! Lord help others to see the Truth!”

The Guardian also reported that other conspiranoids and nutcakes have advocated MMS as a miracle cure, e.g., former ambassador and advisor to Ronald Reagan, Alan Keyes, who has featured Genesis II bleach products on his conservative TV show, Let's Talk, America. 

Some of Trump's defenders have rather gleefully pointed to recent and ongoing research studies involving viruses and UV light exposure, mega-doses of intravenous Vitamin C (which in the body breaks down into hydrogen peroxide, a known disinfectant), and other possibilities that would seem to validate Trump's ramblings at the briefing. This is their way of attempting to prove that Trump did indeed know exactly what he was talking about and was simply commenting on research that could possibly lead to more effective treatments for, or even prevention of, coronavirus disease.

However (and putting aside the fact that some of this research is not very promising at this point), had this been the case, Trump would not have responded to media jeers in the childishly defensive way he did, claiming that he was just being "sarcastic" in order to bait the news media. Instead he would have specifically cited some of those research areas, or at the very least he would have reiterated some of the research points that had been made by his own committee member, Bill Bryan, who as mentioned above is acting secretary of science and tech at the Department of Homeland Security. In any case, regardless of whether Trump was in any way influenced by the MMS quacksters, and regardless of the viability of ongoing research studies, it seems clear that he was embarrassed by the blowback from his original remarks.

At the time that The Guardian article was published, the outlet had not yet received a White House response to its inquiry of whether "Archbishop" Grenon's letter had influenced Trump's comments on April 23. And, especially since Trump didn't directly mention MMS or bleach in his own comments (though he was responding in part to previous comments by Bill Bryan, who did mention bleach in his comments), we may never know for sure if Trump was influenced by the concerted efforts of Grenon and his cadre of MMS proponents. After all, transparency isn't exactly Trump's thing, nor is it a characteristic of his administration in general, and he has a tight circle of defenders who, like their boss, are willing to gaslight the hell out of the country in order to keep their jobs and their power. [Update: According to a New York Times piece published on April 24, a "person familiar with the situation" told the Times that "senior administration officials were not familiar with Mr. Grenon or his letter."]

Even so, MMS critics are pretty riled up (and I don't blame 'em), and, of course, MMS fans are celebrating what they see as an endorsement of their magical potion by the Oaf of Office.

And as The Guardian also reported (April 21, 2020), even though the FDA followed up their warning letter by setting in motion legal action to keep the Church from selling its frauducts, other groups have begun to repackage the bleach as a cure not only for COVID-19 but also for autism, cancer, AIDS, and a host of other diseases and ailments. As we (well, I) like to say on this blog, in Scamworld there are no neat and tidy endings.

Related on this Whirled:

• March 2020 ~ Coronacrazy: COVID-19 virus brings out the conspiranoids & fraudsters
  A look at some of the most popular coronaconspiracy theories, as well as some of the other phony remedies besides MMS.
• October 2016 ~ ABC v MMS: from Humble beginnings to 20/20 investigation
  The 2016 ABC News investigation, as well as the larger alt-health/Scamworld connections (familiar territory for this blog), and a few thoughts on phony churches.
• November 2014 ~ Black Friday blowout: I'm back (and the scammers never left)
  In a series of May 2015 updates at the end of this long post, I discuss some of Jim Humble's shenanigans in Europe.
• August 2014 ~ Leonard Coldwell: the facts don't matter if the story is good (Part 4 of 5)
  This is part of an entirely-too-long series about the aforementioned fake doctor/cancer quack/conspiracy peddler, whom most of the world has still never even heard of and who has never been more than a C-list player in either the alt-health industry or the larger selfish-help/motivational field, but it's not only about him. It's also about phony alt-health hero/martyrs (sometimes known as "Brave Maverick Doctors") in general, with a few specific examples besides Coldwell. And it's all framed in a larger discussion of persecution complexes and the myth of the alt-health hero --- a myth that is so passionately embraced because of people's fears and their disillusionment with science-based medicine. As well, I attempt to put to rest the years of accusations that I am some sort of shill for Big Pharma/the medical profession/big government.

Related off-Whirled:

• April 2020 ~ President Trump and "just asking questions" about disinfectants and UV light to treat COVID-19
  From the Respectful Insolence blog. My favorite doctor blogger, Orac (David Gorski, M.D.), has written volumes about quackery over the years, and he doesn't disappoint here. He too suspects an MMS connection to some of Trump's unhinged remarks at the April 23, 2020 briefing.
• March 2020 ~ COVID-19 pandemic: A golden opportunity for quackery
  Another Respectful Insolence offering from Orac/Gorski. By sheer coincidence he posted this on the same day (March 13, 2020) that I published my own corona-quackery post. I would say "great minds think alike," but I am not even remotely in his league.
• April 2020 ~ On the Bleach
  From the conservative National Review web site. Contributing editor Andrew Stuttaford attempts to put the bleachy remarks in perspective; he's one who tends not to be convinced that Trump was inspired by the MMS fanatics, and he also argues that you really can't blame Trump's comments if some people are actually dimwitted enough to ingest products that are clearly labeled poisonous.