Venezuela’s Maduro: ‘Everybody in the United States’ Thinks Trump Faked Coronavirus

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro waves during a rally in front of Miraflores President
MARVIN RECINOS/AFP/Getty Images
Frances Martel

Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro questioned President Donald Trump’s Chinese coronavirus diagnosis during his regular television program on Sunday, claiming Trump used the disease as a “campaign strategy” to “victimize himself” and gain sympathy.

Trump and first lady Melania Trump tested positive for Chinese coronavirus in early October, prompting some time in isolation to recover. Trump has since tested negative, according to his doctors, and returned to the campaign trail.

In his remarks Sunday, Maduro said that he was not alone in doubting that Trump had lied about contracting the disease: “In the United States, everybody doubts it.”

Elsewhere in the broadcast, Maduro claimed his socialist regime had developed a “100 percent” effective treatment for the coronavirus, a reiteration of his assertions that Venezuelan “miracle droplets” and “rectal ozone therapy” were saving people in his country from dying of the disease. No credible international health agency has approved of Maduro’s alleged cures.

Maduro made his remarks  in a beachside edition of his In Contact with Maduro program while condemning the “civilized” West for a small spike in coronavirus cases in the past month:

“Donald Trump doesn’t wear a mask,” Maduro asserted:

“Donald Trump allegedly had coronavirus – allegedly,” Maduro emphasized. “Today, I doubt it, in the United States everybody doubts it, it looked like a campaign strategy to victimize himself.”

Maduro claimed the evidence of Trump lying to the world about a coronavirus diagnosis was that he was not wearing a mask when he first appeared in public after testing negative for the virus. Doctors do not consider people who test negative after being diagnosed, therefore defeating the infection, contagious in the immediate aftermath of the disease.

The dictator’s declaration on Sunday differed significantly from his initial reaction to the news of Trump’s infection.

“We send our human solidarity. We hope he recovers his health and his life,” Maduro said at the time, hoping that the virus would lead Trump to “be more reflexive and more human for the protection of the people of the U.S.”

In addition to condemning Trump, Maduro condemned the global public health community for ignoring the alleged success of Maduro’s bizarre quarantine strategy, dubbed “7+7.” The Venezuelan regime is imposing week-long total lockdowns nationwide to prevent the spread of the virus, followed by one week of freedom.

 “If Reuters, AFP, EFE, told their countries what Venezuela is doing, perhaps they could take some lessons from us Venezuelans about how to combine quarantine and care with flexibility,” Maduro said.

Maduro also used his time on national television Sunday to announce that Venezuela was pursuing the approval of a “cure” for the Chinese coronavirus. Venezuela, he said, had “acquired a medicine that 100 percent cures the coronavirus” and that Caracas would soon put the alleged cure at the disposal of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.).

“The study has been verified by experts and scientists and in the next few days we will proceed to construct a route so that, through the W.H.O., we can ratify the results,” Maduro said.

Maduro identified the “cure” as a “TR-10 molecule” that was “totally isolated and previously confronted with the COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus],” which “resulted in the 100 percent annihilation of the virus.”

This “cure” appears to be different from three other alleged treatments for coronavirus patients that Maduro has promoted on his television program. Last week, Maduro announced his regime was using “miracle droplets” attributed to José Gregorio Hernández, a beatified Venezuelan doctor from the early 1900s, to cure the coronavirus, as well as “rectal ozone therapy.” The ozone therapy, according to Maduro, has a 96-percent success rate.

Maduro repeated his endorsement of ozone therapy this weekend, vowing on his television program that every “popular clinic” in the country would soon have access to the treatment.

According to the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA), ozone is “a toxic gas with no known useful medical application in specific, adjunctive, or preventive therapy.”

“Venezuela is almost ready, we just need the results of the molecular investigations because we have an antiviral that is going to be a slam dunk against the coronavirus, made by Venezuelan minds, with Venezuelan wisdom and science,” Maduro promised.

In March, Maduro claimed that Venezuela would have access to yet another unproven and potentially dangerous “cure”: interferons manufactured in Cuba. Interferons are proteins that often surface in animals with viral infections. A group of doctors alongside the human rights NGO Cuban Prisoners Defenders condemned Havana’s communist regime in April for promoting its alleged interferon cure, stating the treatment could “kill, rather than cure” coronavirus patients and that its promotion was a “serious crime against world public health.”

“Cuba is at the head, at the vanguard — Cuba, always Cuba, is at the vanguard, with interferon, a medicine created with Cuban medical technology,” Maduro said in March. “Cuban interferon is in Venezuela to help patients who might have this issue in the future.”

Maduro’s Venezuela claims to have documented nearly 90,000 cases of coronavirus and 773 deaths since the outbreak began, despite the Maduro regime’s close ties to nations with significant outbreaks, such as China and Russia. Many global experts doubt the authenticity of the Maduro regime’s numbers, as only individuals the socialist regime approves may access tests to confirm a coronavirus infection. Venezuela is home to one of the world’s worst healthcare systems, lacking proper supplies of nearly every drug on the W.H.O. list of medicines necessary to run a functional medical system.

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