Giuliani says Trump got him COVID 'miracle cure' most people can't get

Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani said Tuesday that he got “exactly the same” experimental COVID-19 treatment that Trump received when he was hospitalized after he tested positive for the coronavirus in October.

Trump had promised that all Americans who needed treatment would also receive the same experimental cocktail, free of charge. But that has not happened, and thousands are continuing to die of causes related to the coronavirus.

Giuliani was hospitalized after testing positive for the coronavirus earlier in the week, sending those who had met with him in recent days scrambling to get tested themselves.

“[Trump’s] doctor sent me here, talked me into it. I didn’t really want to go to the hospital and he said ‘Don’t be stupid, we can get it over in three days if we send you to the hospital,'” Giuliani said by phone during a call to his daily radio show in the New York area. “The minute I took the cocktail, I felt 100% better.”

“Sometimes, when you’re a celebrity, they’re worried if something happens to you. They’re going to examine it more carefully and do everything right,” Giuliani said, claiming that he didn’t know that the treatment he received was not widely available.

Trump had received an experimental antibody treatment that early trials have shown promise in speeding up recovery from the virus. And he continued to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19, claiming the cocktail of therapeutics “was a cure” and telling supporters at a rally in October, “I took something, Regeneron, which we’re making available to everybody free.”

Business Insider estimated that the cost of Trump’s care would have been $650,000 if paid out of pocket.

Trump was one of the first 10 patients to receive the drugs, under compassionate-use approval. It has since been cleared by the FDA for emergency use, but is not widely available.

Regeneron predicted last month it would have enough doses for about 80,000 patients by the end of November and 300,000 by the end of January. More than 186,000 new coronavirus cases were reported in the United States on Tuesday alone.

Another close Trump ally, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, received similar treatment in October, a comparable cocktail made by Eli Lilly and Co. The company told S&P Global Market Intelligence at the time that it made the experimental drug available only under “exceptional circumstances” to patients not in clinical trials.

More than 282,000 Americans have died after contracting the coronavirus, more than 1,000 a day for the past month.

And the vast majority of COVID-19 patients have not had access to the treatments that Trump and his close friends are given.

Rather than do anything to address the rising number of cases or the lack of available therapeutic treatments, Trump has largely ignored the crisis. At a “vaccine summit” on Tuesday, he called the imminent approval of coronavirus inoculations the end of the problem — though they too will be in short supply and unavailable to most Americans for months.

Instead of focusing on the ongoing global crisis, Trump used the occasion to repeat debunked conspiracy theories about President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and to urge state lawmakers and federal judges to have “the courage” to declare him the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.