This Sweet Life: Poignant new memoir by mother and sister of James Arthur Ray victim Kirby Brown

Ginny Brown and her daughter, Jean Brown, have released This Sweet Life: How we lived after Kirby died, an intimate memoir about losing their daughter/sister, Kirby Brown, in a phony sweat lodge perpetrated in October 2009 by James Arthur Ray. Ray, as you almost certainly know, is a sociopathic selfish-help guru and star of that infamous infomercial for greed and narcissism, The Secret; for the deaths of Kirby and two other people, James Shore and Liz Neuman, he was convicted of negligent homicide and ultimately served less than two years in an Arizona state prison. He has been relentlessly pounding the comeback trail ever since his release, parading himself as a survivor of nearly unbearable personal trials and an expert in "redemption."

While Ray smirks on Instagram and Facebook and touts his overpriced "coaching" services, Ginny Brown and Jean Brown have been left with their unspeakable grief. But they have turned that grief not only into a nonprofit organization to help others, Seek Safely, but now into a book that they truly hope will make a difference. This Sweet Life has been described, in numerous reviews by advance readers, as both a beautiful and heartbreaking book and an essential work that helps to expose the dark side of the industry to which so many people turn in their quests for enlightenment and inspiration.

I am very much looking forward to reading it.

There will be a live book launch event on Facebook on Tuesday, June 30, 2020 at 7:00 PM EST. My pal Jason "Salty Droid" Jones, who has blogged extensively and poignantly about this matter, will be participating. So will former Ray follower Connie Joy, author of Tragedy in Sedona: My Life in James Arthur Ray's Inner Circle.

For more info about This Sweet Life, visit the Facebook page.

And, oh, yes, here's where you can order a copy of This Sweet Life for yourself. I already have.

Never forget.

Related on this Whirled

• October 2010: Musings on a tragedy and its meanings.
  I published this on the one-year anniversary of the infamous "sweat lodge," framing my musings around a review of Connie Joy's Tragedy in Sedona.
• April 2019: From drawn-and-quartered martyr to "Crisis Coach": James Arthur Ray's newest desperate gimmick
  This is just one of numerous posts about Ray's arrogant yet pathetic attempts to reestablish himself as a selfish-help superstar.

 

Loony Lenny takes credit for serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's imprisonment

Waaaaaay back on January 31 of this year (this sure has been a long year so far, hasn't it?) I published a long-ish post about a letter that serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie, wrote to the Honorable Judge Robert Gettleman, the judge who had presided over Trudeau's civil court battles for years. My post was in response to a January 26, 2020 report in the Chicago Sun-Times about the matter.

Specifically, Trudeau asked Judge Gettleman to give him a rundown on how much money Trudeau still owes for his misdeeds, and to whom he needs to pay that money when the time comes, and what he might legally be allowed to do to make a living upon his release from prison.

Quite a few months later, the Sun-Times piece apparently drifted into the awareness of Katie's former b.f.f., fake doctor/cancer quack/right-wing ranter/conspiranoid Leonard Coldwell (most recently highlighted on this Whirled for his covidiocy), who is often late to the party when it comes to the events of the day. Late or not, you can bet that LoonyC had something to say about it. On June 5, 2020, he puffed out his little chest and Facebook-posted the link to the Sun-Times article, along with this comment:

Biggest conman ever we got him 10 years in Prison. You mess with me you go away.. And Trudeau its [sic] not even over yet I am not done with you.

Oooo, scary, right? Katie would most likely be quaking in his prison-issued slip-on shoes, if only he were able to see Facebook, which, by all reports, he absolutely is not.

A couple of Coldwell's Facebook followers took the bait, begging to know what had happened between Coldwell and Trudeau. One follower wrote of being on a Global Information Network (GIN) cruise in 2011, when it seemed that Kevin and "Dr. C" had been the very best of friends.

But so far Lenny hasn't responded to the queries.

Well, Coldwell follower who asked the original question -- and anyone else who either doesn't know the story or is simply in the mood for a recap -- here's a capsule history of Kevin Trudeau and Leonard Coldwell. Let's just say that a lot has happened since 2011. I've written many thousands of words about the matter on this blog over the past eight years or so, but I know your time is valuable, so here you go.

A tale of two scoundrels
Leonard Coldwell (born Bernd Klein, though he legally changed his name in Virginia in 1998) left his native Germany for the US in the late 1990s, for reasons that have never been entirely clear. And in case you are wondering, he has never been a real doctor in any sense of the word, either in Germany or in the US, even though the foundation of his "career" has been his self-claimed expertise in health issues, particularly cancer. (Here's a long-winded look at his "credentials.") Once in America, Coldwell struggled for a few years to make it as a motivational speaker/natural health "expert." But, according to information provided to me by someone who was in the very best position to know, he wasn't very successful and was often on the verge of financial disaster -- that is, until Kevin Trudeau promoted him and his body of "work" in Trudeau's first Natural Cures book. That was a true turning point for Coldwell. The extent to which Leonard Coldwell owes his "success" (such as it is) to Kevin Trudeau cannot be overstated.

Or as my pal Jason "Salty Droid" Jones so eloquently put it in his first blog post about Coldwell in August 2012:

In spite of [his] impressively fake :: fake credentials … Leonard Coldwell was never able to make much of himself...

...Then came Kevin Trudeau circa 2005. Trudeau was using a popular lead gen book :: infomercials … and every other trick in the Scamworld book “they” don’t want you to know about to separate people from their money … writ large. Trudeau made fake doctor Lenny Coldwell his B-team bitch :: that changed things for Coldwell … and they’ve been together unhappily ever after.

With leads coming in from KT’s bullshit :: Coldwell could focus on manipulation and exploitation … which is far easier than generating the initial leads. Lenny needs easy jobs :: because he’s dumb … and he sucks at stuff.

A Salty Droid Dateline 60 minutes 4 PHDs exclusive investigation has revealed that Leonard Coldwell set up remote servers with family in Germany in order to process email leads generated by Kevin Trudeau’s fraudulent activities. Leonard would reply to emails as “Dr. Hohn” {who is a real person … and actual doctor} … and refer victims to his own products.

Such elaborate measures were prolly required because America’s Federal Trade Commission was crawling up the ass of Trudeau’s operation. I suspects they even sniffed out this fake Dr. Hohn situation. But they suck :: so they accomplished jackshit … and Trudeau and Coldwell scam on unabated....

Of course notoriety works both ways. Coldwell was most likely making much better money than he'd ever made because of his association with Kevin Trudeau (or, as Jason described it in a 2014 post, "swimming in Kevin Trudeau's wake with [his] mouth wide open") -- but on the other hand, neither Jason nor I would have ever heard of Coldwell, or written about him, if not for that association. I had been blogging about Trudeau for years before I'd heard of Coldwell.When Trudeau launched his huge GIN scam in 2009, he brought Coldwell right along as one of the club's main shills, eventually making him one of its sanctioned speakers. In exchange for agreeing to perform at a certain number of live GIN events per year, Coldwell was given a yearly salary of $200,000, in monthly payments of nearly $17,000 a month. (Here is the portion of his contract that he has shared publicly.)

Granted, that salary is far from being extravagantly large in the public speaking biz; actual A-list celebs and VIPs, which Lenny never has been and never will be, can command tens of thousands of dollars, or even hundreds of thousands, for a single appearance. In other words, Coldwell's claims that he is the "World's Highest Paid Speaker" are... a bit exaggerated. At any rate, his GIN gig was supposed to be a ten-year contract -- a fact that Coldwell later used as a foundation for his gripe about being cheated, conveniently overlooking the fact that most contracts are rendered null and void if either party violates the terms of said contract, which Coldwell seems to have done on several occasions. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As part of the perks of the "job," Coldwell got to fly first-class or business-class to GIN events, stay in the best hotels, go on all of the lavish GIN cruises, stuff himself at the buffets and get drunk on expensive booze, and take every opportunity to promote his own shtick (often violating the spirit of his contract) -- and all on Kevin Trudeau's dime. Well, technically, it was on the dimes of countless suckers who poured money into the GIN coffers in hopes of somehow becoming as fabulously wealthy and successful and deliriously happy as Kevin was always claiming to be, but in any case, it was all comped for "Dr." C.

In addition, Coldwell was, by his own admission on a teleconference call on October 14, 2012, given a downline for GIN's massive multi-level marketing scheme, which formed the basis of GIN's huge and fraudulent money grab. (I wrote about that in this January 2013 post; see under the sub-head, "Axes of evil"). Coldwell didn't earn the downline, and in the teleconference call he claimed that he didn't seriously work it. But he did apparently work it in his own way, such as by posting various promos for GIN (and of course for himself). The point is that while so many other rank-and-file members spent so much time and energy and money to earn and work their own GIN downlines, Lenny's was just handed to him.

All in all, it was a great gig for a formerly struggling and unknown fake doctor.
Coldwell did apparently gain a following within GIN, and later claimed that he was the very soul of the organization. (On this Whirled, we begged to differ.) In the glory daze of what was later shown to be a completely contrived bromance, Trudeau and Coldwell spent a lot of time publicly stroking each other off, figuratively speaking. Trudeau promoted Coldwell as his "personal physician in Europe." He fake-interviewed him in videos like this one to promote Coldwell's shtick. Coldwell relentlessly promoted Trudeau, or at least he promoted GIN, touting it as the best way to wealth, success and happiness. On various promotional propaganda Coldwell and/or Trudeau claimed to have been good friends for more than 20 years. It all was so lovely, and so phony, while it lasted.

For various reasons, though -- partly financial but mostly personal, from what I have been told by folks in a position to know -- the bromance collapsed. One major factor was that GIN was bleeding money, and Kevin needed that money to cover his legal fees and his lifestyle (more on that below). He had to cut expenses, which included cutting the number of live events and, apparently, getting rid of speakers who had become dead weight. Reportedly there were also complaints about Coldwell's behavior at some of the live events. And reportedly Kevin's own ego was a factor; he didn't like sharing so much attention with Coldwell, who, though full of shite, was undeniably entertaining and knew how to get a crowd riled up. Kevin himself implied that Coldwell's shtick was getting redundant.

And then there was the fact that, as mentioned above, Coldwell was apparently using GIN to promote himself in a manner that violated his contract with GIN. (He later claimed that GIN offered to settle with him, or "saddle," as he spelled it on his Facebook post about the matter, though who knows, he may have been talking about horseback riding or some perverted pony play.) 

In any case, Coldwell's separation from GIN was emphatically not because he had just suddenly "discovered" that GIN was a scam and Trudeau a scammer, as he later tried to claim. Coldwell most likely would have gladly stayed on the GIN teat for years longer, but Trudeau fired Coldwell from GIN in the spring of 2012. It was shortly after the GIN Dream Weekend in Vegas in April 2012.

Coldwell's first responses to being booted out were tentative and rather restrained (for him, anyway), though undeniably rambling and incoherent, with insinuations that there might be a chance of reconciliation, or at least a chance of saving GIN, with Lenny at the helm of the salvation effort. (I provided links to his "let's save GIN" posts when I first wrote about them, but his ramblings on that topic have since been deleted.) But it soon became apparent that reconciliation wasn't going to happen, and that GIN had booted Coldwell out for good -- and that's when he began a series of increasingly vitriolic attacks on Trudeau's character and the scamminess of GIN. 

As it happened, and as I indicated above, I'd already been writing about the scamminess of GIN and Trudeau for several years, but nobody reads this blog so it didn't make a dent in the scam; I just thought I'd mention it again. At any rate, due to a combination of members' ignorance of, and their willful blindness to, Trudeau's scammy past, Coldwell was able with some success to brand himself to disillusioned GIN and ex-GIN members as a heroic whistleblower.

He really got their attention with a ruse that he kept up for months: a spurious claim that he had initiated a class action lawsuit against GIN/Trudeau and that anyone who'd lost money in GIN and wanted to join him could most likely get all of their money back and possibly more. All they had to do was send him their name and contact information. He dangled the lawsuit as a come-on to get people to sign up for a "Life After GIN" event/boot camp in Charleston, South Carolina, promising he would give attendees detailed information and updates about the lawsuit, as well as another opportunity to get in on the cash grab. People did sign up, and paid good money to attend, though quite a few reported being disappointed when there was very little said about the lawsuit at the "boot camp."

Not surprisingly, like pretty much every lawsuit threat or actual lawsuit in which he has been involved, absolutely nothing ever came of this "class action suit." But no doubt Coldwell was able to beef up his mailing list considerably, which was of course the whole idea

But it was the whistleblower ruse that Coldwell exploited most enthusiastically. His cohorts in this undertaking were former GIN member Abe Husein, who gained considerable media attention for himself by hollering about how he had been cheated by GIN and fooled by Kevin's grandiose promises (though Abe himself had tried to cheat the system); and former GIN marketing huckster Peter Wink. (In early 2013, Coldwell and Wink formed their own version of a GIN scam, the ill-fated IBMS Masters Society, which is still limping along, though noticeably Winkless).

Meanwhile, Kevin Trudeau had been in legal trouble with various government agencies for many years because of his deceptive/fraudulent marketing practices. (This was after he had served a couple of years in a federal prison for credit card fraud, back in the early 1990s.) The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in particular had had its eye on him for a very long time. He'd been to court numerous times, had been fined, had paid fines, had signed consent orders in which he promised to cease his deceptive practices, and had repeatedly violated those orders.

At the time Trudeau launched GIN, he was in pretty deep, with a multi-million dollar fine and a civil case and later a criminal case looming over his head. In fact many of the millions of dollars that gullible GIN members were pouring into the GIN coffers were going straight to Trudeau's lawyers. Much of the rest of it was going towards the noble cause of subsidizing Trudeau's lavish lifestyle.

But it is important to know that both the civil and the criminal cases centered on Trudeau's deceptive marketing for a diet book, The Weight-Loss Cure 'They' Don't Want You to Know About. It was this matter specifically that ultimately resulted in a criminal contempt conviction and his ten-year prison sentence. It had absolutely nothing to do with Kevin Trudeau "messing with" loony Lenny Coldwell.

The ten-year sentence was decided upon by the judge who presided over the criminal case, Ronald Guzman. Judge Guzman had originally wanted to sentence Trudeau to 20 to 25 years in prison, based upon federal sentencing guidelines that took into consideration Trudeau's two previous felony convictions and the size of the fraud in the diet book case. (These sentencing guidelines were carefully explained in numerous court documents and also reported in the media at the time.) Judge Guzman eventually agreed with prosecutors, however, who claimed that a ten-year sentence would be sufficient since nobody who bought the diet book was financially ruined simply by having bought the book. In other words, and it can't be stressed enough: LEONARD COLDWELL HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH KEVIN TRUDEAU'S TEN-YEAR PRISON SENTENCE.

No doubt Coldwell provided information to authorities that may have helped nudge the cases along, but so did countless other people. Back in the pre-trial days, the FBI was visiting ex-GIN members and former GIN principals left, right, and sideways. I even got a call from the FBI during the post-trial, pre-sentencing phase, and I have never been even remotely involved with Trudeau or with GIN, except to blog about them. In the end, though, Trudeau received a sentence that was far less than the maximum allowed by law and than the presiding judge had originally wanted to impose. If Lenny wants to take credit for Trudeau's prison sentence, he needs to accept responsibility for its relative leniency.

* * * * *

So that's the story, in a nutshell (emphasis on the "nut" part), about what happened between Leonard Coldwell and Kevin Trudeau. Trudeau is in prison not because he "messed with" Coldwell but because he thumbed his nose at various authorities who had been trying for years and years and years to get Trudeau to stop scamming consumers. And for a few years, Coldwell himself was complicit in Trudeau's scams. Moreover he is still, to this day, selling GIN CDs on his IBMS web site (at $99.00 a pop!). So he is anything but a hero in the Kevin Goes To Jail narrative. 

But it's not surprising that Coldwell would try to inflate his own role in this narrative -- he has a long history of grossly exaggerating his own significance, after all, not just about his "accomplishments," but specifically regarding GIN and Kevin Trudeau as well. So I think that it's important for those who want to know the real history to search for answers outside of Coldwell's social media fever swamps.

And I think it's also worth pointing out that despite all of the time and energy Coldwell has put into denigrating Kevin Trudeau, he will never have nearly as many fans as Trudeau has, and will never enjoy anything even close to the level of hero worship that Trudeau, even though he's been imprisoned for years, continues to inspire. I am pretty sure that at some level Lenny knows that, and it must be galling.

Bottom line: I don't think that Kevin Trudeau has very much to fear from his former "personal physician in Europe."

America burns while Caligula brandishes (upside-down) Bible

Being at a (relative) loss for words over the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and the tone-deaf, totally inappropriate, and even fascistic responses from #NotMyPresident Donald John Trump and his administration, I thought I'd let late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel do the talking. The embedded video (here's the direct link) is from Kimmel's June 2, 2020 show.

Trump's Bible photo-op stunt -- which philosophy and religion professor Alan Levinovitz likened to idolatry -- has drawn fire from religious leaders across the board, and even earned Trump a rare rebuke from Pat Robertson, one of his most faithful evangelical sycophants. I hope this comes back to bite Caligula in his fat orange butt again and again as we draw closer to the US presidential election.

Meanwhile, I am proud to see the response from Houston, the former hometown of both Mr. Floyd and myself. I wish I could join the protesters and mourners, but I was and am there in spirit. Probably the most lasting contribution I'll make will be to add yet another verse to my ever-growing national anthem, O Trumpistan. It hardly seems adequate.

My heart goes out to the family and friends of George Floyd, and to the family and friends of the all-too-many innocent people who have been murdered by "law" enforcement thugs simply or primarily because of the color of their skin.

Sunday snippets

It's a lazy late-May Sunday, more summerish than springish, and as such, it's one of those daze when I don't feel like cooking up a whole blog post from scratch. So I'll just serve up a few tidbits.

TrumPyramid scheme lawsuit: full speed ahead
As reported last week (though understandably, the news got a bit buried amid reports of more pressing issues surrounding #NotMyPresident Donald J. Trump), a federal Judge in New York, Lorna G. Schofield, has refused to halt an anonymous class action suit against Trump and his three most notorious adult kiddos, Don Junior, Eric, and Ivanka. The lawsuit alleges that DJ the Elder, DJ the Younger, Eric, Ivanka, and the Trump Corporation committed "various business torts" that included an illegal pyramid scheme. Matt Naham and Aaron Keller at the Law & Crime blog report:

The lawsuit, originally filed in Oct. 2018 as an anti-“racketeering enterprise” action, was later streamlined. The class sued on various state and federal charges–including “racketeering and conspiracy to racketeer” claims. The two federal claims were dismissed by the court after the Trump family filed for a broad dismissal in January 2019. But the case is yet living.

The class action plaintiffs allege that the Trump family business promoted a multi-level marketing, or pyramid, scheme known as ACN Opportunity, LLC. ACN, the plaintiffs said, was a “get-rich-quick scheme” that relied on Trump and his family “conn[ing] each of these victims into giving up hundreds or thousands of dollars,” in violation of various state laws...

...The plaintiffs claimed that the Trump family falsely endorsed and promoted ACN by insisting that the enterprise “offered a reasonable probability of commercial success”—even using The Celebrity Apprentice to draw them in...

...According to the lawsuit, ACN was paying the Trumps for the above-described exposure but this was not public knowledge.

The Trump Corporation legal team was able to get racketeering charges dismissed, but not the entire case, and they weren't even successful in getting a stay. And just last month, as also reported on the Law & Crime blog, Judge Schofield nipped a Trump family effort to force the matter into private arbitration. So it appears that the entire saga is likely to unfold in public. (No doubt Trump and the Trumpettes and assorted Trumpanzees will whine that this is all politically motivated, since Judge Schofield was an Obama appointee.)

As uploaded to Scribd by Law & Crime, here's a link to Judge Schofield's order giving the green light for the action to proceed.

I've mentioned this numerous times before on this Whirled, but since I'm nothing if not redundant (and I know I've said that before too), I'll mention again that I first learned about the Drumpf Scamworld connections years ago from the blogger who was ahead of his time, Jason "Salty Droid" Jones. This is from September 2013, and among other things (e.g., Trump University, The Trump Network), Jason mentions the ACN scam.

As Jason has pointed out numerous times -- and as I noted too during the 2016 US presidential campaign -- the Trump scampire's playbook wasn't and isn't unique. But since the Trumps are in a position to do a lot more damage than most Scamworld hucksters, it's especially important that their misdeeds continue to be publicized and litigated to the fullest extent possible.

Deadly cults
Speaking of Jason/Salty, for the past couple of years he has been far more occupied with lawyering for a good cause than with blogging, but he does pop in on occasion with an update, such as this one posted on May 7. Like Trump has often done, though ulike Trump he does it for legitimate reasons, Jason leads with a gripe about the news media.

...the news media is absolutely horrible. Horrible. The worst. Worse than lawyers… or, at least, co-worst.

On that one thing myself and DJT can agree.

Case in point: Donald Trump is the fucking President. That bollox doesn’t happen without an absolutely rotten, hollowed out, conglomerated media (and the complicity of enough lawyers to fill a cargo ship from China). Trump is an obvious idiot… and an even more obvious conman. The only reason he’s anything other than a bankrupt former rich boy is that the media got played… over and over and over and over. Not because he’s good at it — he’s not — but because media organizations are lazy, selfish, and too easily identify with his pathological narcissism.

Celebrity as credibility is our national affliction.

What brought us Donald John Trump also brought us James Arthur Ray… and countless other dumbdumb world destroyers; faking it until they make it at faking it.

Indeed. But once in a while, Jason says, the news media get it right, a case in point being a recent episode of The Oxygen Network's Deadly Cults series covering the aforementioned and atrocious James Arthur "Death" Ray, who was responsible for the deaths of three people in a phony sweat lodge back in October 2009. Jason was interviewed for this episode. If you want to watch it, here are some ways to do it:

• On Oxygen…
• On Amazon…
• On Google…

You're quite likely to be shocked," writes Jason, "even if you already know the story."

Meanwhile in Sportsworld, Tom Brady is still huckstering too
Six-time Super Bowl champ Tom Brady appears to have joined the ranks of the corona-crapitalists, although he is apparently not making direct claims that his overpriced, non-FDA approved, homeopathic medley of vitamins -- called "Protect" -- are specifically a COVID-19 preventive. But unless you're looking at it from a crapitalistic perspective, the timing couldn't be worse, for COVID-19 cases continue to climb in Florida and in numerous other places throughout the US and the world. And as reported in the Orlando Weekly on May 18, 2020:

If you make it to the supplement's website, you'll find a lengthy pitch, aimed at athletes whose bodies may now be susceptible to "bacteria, viruses and outside threats."

“Tough workouts, long days, and too much stress can leave you—and your immune system — burnt out. Research shows that everyday stress can limit the production of white blood cells while high-intensity training can reduce levels of key antibodies — leaving your body susceptible to bacteria, viruses, and outside threats,” reads the TB12 website, which seems to be going out of it’s way to say everything excerpt “Hey, take these while working out during the coronavirus outbreak.”

But promoting overpriced health frauducts and schemes is nothing new for Brady, as noted on this very Whirled back in May of 2016. That post centered around a $200.00 cookbook -- with a wooden cover, no less -- that Tom was pushing. And as also mentioned in the Whirled post, as well as by numerous others earlier than that (here, for instance), Brady also once promoted a drink called NeuroSafe that supposedly offered protection from concussions.

Napoleon Hell
I've had a half-written post about every selfish-help huckster's idol, Napoleon Hill, on the back burner for years. My post mentioned some though not all of the stuff that's in the article I'm about to share -- an article that itself is several years old but which a friend just alerted me to recently. Because I have repeatedly gotten sidetracked with other more timely topics, and will most likely continue to get sidetracked, I'll just take the snippet route for now.

Over the years I have argued on some selfish-help hucksters' forums that Hill is far from the hero he is made out to be, but I would invariably be met with snooty remarks about how nobody's perfect, and it's Hill's body of work that counts, and that perhaps separating the message from the messenger is the way to go (a point that I disputed here back in 2009), and if critics like me who are out to hurt people would focus on trying to help people the world would be a better place. Yet so many of those who look up to Hill (and/or his work) are equally if not more sleazy than he was. And so it goes.

Anyway, here's that link. Enjoy.

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.