The French Connection: Trump Family Trusts Are Invested in Hydroxychloroquine Maker
By: Colin Kalmbacher (MSN)
This explains why trmp is saying that he's been taking hydroxychloroquine for the last week and half.
Yeah...I know it's under a mutual fund. But he could very know what stocks his mutual funds are invested in. I know I get a quarterly statement.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
President Donald Trump and his allies in the conservative media sphere have repeatedly pushed the health benefits of anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine for patients who have contracted the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). While scientific opinion on the efficacy of the drug for treatment of the COVID-19 disease is necessarily shy of consensus, Trump himself has a personal financial interest in a French drugmaker that produces a brand-name version of the medication.
© Provided by Law & Crime Trump Family
According to a Monday night report by the New York Times, Trump's family stands to benefit from widespread use of the drug. Per that report:
If hydroxychloroquine becomes an accepted treatment, several pharmaceutical companies stand to profit, including shareholders and senior executives with connections to the president. Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.
According to Trump's 2019 Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Reports filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, the 45th president's three family trusts each have two line item entries describing investments between $1,001 and $15,000 apiece in the Dodge & Cox International Stock Fund.
The Times notes that Sanofi, the drug manufacturer, is the mutual fund's largest individual holding. According to MarketWatch, the exact size of the fund's stake in Sanofi "at last check was 3.3%."
Marketwatch also notes-and shrugs off-additional Sanofi stakes:
It turns out he does look to have more than [a] modest sum invested in Sanofi, because, unmentioned in the Times report, his trusts also hold broader European stock-market index funds. The iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF IEFA, 1.721% has 0.67% of its holdings in Sanofi, and Sanofi is a 0.78% holding for the iShares MSCI EAFE ETF EFA, 1.660%, which is neither surprising nor notable, in that the French drug maker is so large.
Aside from Trump and his family's personal stake, at least two of Trump's closest political allies are closely connected to Sanofi as well.
Republican mega donor and billionaire Ken Fisher runs Fisher Asset Management, one of the drug manufacturer's largest shareholders.
According to Federal Election Committee (FEC) data compiled by OpenSecrets, Fisher Investments has contributed in excess of $2 million to GOP organizations and politicians over the past five election cycles.
A July 2019 CNBC article notes Fisher's direct relationship with Trump:
Kenneth Fisher, the founder of investment advisory firm Fisher Investments, along with his wife Sherrilyn, combined to give $250,000 [to fund the Trump Victory Committee]. Fisher historically has backed Republican efforts and contributed to Trump's first run for president.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a loyal Trump appointee, previously ran the Invesco mutual fund. That fund is also heavily invested in Sanofi. In a Monday statement obtained by the Times, Ross sought to distance himself from both his former work and the administration's current jones for hydroxychloroquine pills.
Ross claimed he "was not aware that Invesco has any investments in companies producing" the anti-malarial medication, "nor do I have any involvement in the decision to explore this as a treatment."
Trump, on the other hand, is pitching hydroxychloroquine as something of a wonder drug in an attempt to dredge hope from whatever he can.
"What really do we have to lose?" Trump asked during a Sunday press briefing, while boosting the drug's potential for the umpteenth time-despite the lack of proof about its effects and warnings from doctors that patients who have long needed the medication may face a run on supplies and rising costs.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) notes the scientific uncertainty around hydroxychloroquine in a fact sheet specifically about Plaquenil, which is typically prescribed for adult lupus patients.
"The precise mechanism by which hydroxychloroquine exhibits activity against [the malaria parasite] is not known," the FDA fact sheet reads. "Hydroxychloroquine, like chloroquine, is a weak base and may exert its effect by concentrating in the acid vesicles of the parasite and by inhibiting polymerization of heme. It can also inhibit certain enzymes by its interaction with DNA."
Notably, a scientific publication which published the initial study on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in treating Coronavirus patients has since performed an explicit volte-face on those initial findings-saying the article extolling the virtues for COVID-19 treatment "does not meet the [International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy's] expected standard, especially relating to the lack of better explanations of the inclusion criteria and the triage of patients to ensure patient safety."
As Law&Crime reported on Monday, Sanofi isn't the only hydroxychloroquine connection to Trump. Novartis, a manufacturer of the drug that agreed to donate up to 130 million doses, once paid Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen more than $1 million for healthcare policy insight following the election in 2016.
[Image via TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images]
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I'll take "Things to Think About" for a $1000, Alex
This is a joke right? A common broad market mutual fund that has 3.3% of its assets in one French company? Between 1-15k? That fund likely has over a million investors in it. That’s $30-$450 each times the six total. So the allegation is that a billionaire President is going to move heaven and earth to manipulate at the very most a combined $2,700.00 investment? That assumes that all six from the three groups invested the max 15k each. They invested as much as $90,000 in six investments to prop up at most $2,700? Talk about conspiracy theories...
You think facts will stop this crazniess?
Well I at least had to try!
It's as crazy as believing in any sort of coordinated "deep state".
I rarely agree with you, but in this case I must. Besides the fact that dirty Donald is an imbecile and I doubt he could name the top 5 companies he's got investments in, the payoff is simply not worth it. This is just a rather humorous coincidence.
Tell it to Carter Page or Michael Flynn.
This is just a rather humorous coincidence.
It's less than that. HA said it exactly right: "A common broad market mutual fund that has 3.3% of its assets in one French company"
And that is the pretext for a hate fest!
Gotta laugh at the make drugs here while investing in and pushing pills from a French drug company.
Or the anything that comes from overseas while pushing "MAGA"
That generic cheap drug is made by a whole bunch of pharmaceuticals as shown above including American and one from Israel which has donated millions of doses to us.
And if it had turned out to be the treatment for COVID, the US would have contracted with 1 of those countries to produce it.
I wonder which one they would have chosen.......
Here is the thing I don't get. If he has nothing to profit from why is he pushing it? The drug has been shown to be possibly dangerous, especially to people who are overweight.
btw.. I love that he says he is 245 lbs and 6'3". That is the exact same weight as Boris Johnson who is 5'9" and despite the fact that their girth is the same, the 6 inch difference makes his weight questionable. But then again, loads of people lie about their weight.
I think he's closer to 300. My father was 6'4"*** and at his heaviest he weighed 250. He was a big man...through the shoulders. He had somewhat of a gut but not that huge fat ass.
When he passed away, the coroner said he more like 6'5" not 6'4" but that's what Dad claimed throughout his life. He was a little stooped because of trying to avoid hitting his head on doorways
I dunno, his head is basically hollow and that's usually 12-15 lbs. right there for a normal human, unless most of his skull is solid bone of course.
For the same reason people hoard toilet paper or take Pepcid or Vitamin D. They're doing whatever they can to give themselves some small advantage in a situation where they have no other options. And as president, Trump sees so many people on a given day, it's really a miracle he hasn't gotten sick already.
I did the math based on the mutual fund in question and the size of the investments total possible by the six investments from the tree groups. At most assuming the maximum 90k spread across the six investments and the 3.3% share of that company in that fund, the whole family would have less than $3,000.00 indirectly invested in that company and if the investments were the minimum number in the article it’s less than $200. What kind of world is it where an investment in a common mainstream mutual fund can be spun into a scandal?
True, but, as Trump is the current POTUS his overall health is a very important issue. If Trump, his current Doctor, or any of his family or aids are indeed lying about his weight if it is detrimental to his overall health while in office, he is deceiving the American people, nad that is not right. And simply looking at Trump in his suit is telling for his being overweight, but, the pictures of him at the golf coarse in street clothes is a true telling of his gross obesity.
So trying to pretend that he is not obese or seriously over weight is like p*ssing on the American people and then trying to make them believe that it is just raining. There is no way Trump weighs only 245 lbs.
And if he is indeed invested in the company that makes the drug that he says he takes everyday he is very aware of the severe consequences of taking the drug. So chances are he is not actually taking the drug, but, saying he is in order to promote the drug to boost its' sales. As big a liar he is, lying about taking a drug to boost his own investment would not surprise me in the least.
And in view of the serious side effects of the drug that could endanger the life of others who may take it based on his own promotion of it, he obviously could care less as long as he can put more money in he and his family's own pocket.
Is this the stupidest, most retarded, example of non-critical thinking in the news - and even on this site - today? Yeah, it just might be. It definitely is a top contender.
He has an interest in lots of things. Guess how much of his total net worth is in this one company? We're talking a few percentage points in a mutual fund. The Trump Organization (which Trump owns) controls 500 companies and real estate all over the world. His investment in this pharmaceutical company is like spitting in the ocean. No one would ever notice the difference.
Oh is that right? Is that important? You think that really drives his medical decisions?
Sanofi produces several dozen medications and vaccines. Is Trump taking all of them, too? I very much doubt it. So there seems to be no justification for concluding that he's taking this specific medication because some tiny portion of his net worth is invested in the company.
It is FARRRRRRR more likely that because he is concerned for his health, he consulted with his doctor and the two of them decided that it would be prudent for him to take the medication as a precaution.
And oh by the way, for those of you who believe that what happens between a woman and her doctor is none of your fucking business, well, the same is true for Trump and whatever medicine he wants to stick in his own body.
Only if you take out your brain and play with it like it's a Rubik's Cube or something.
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Lol .... like Trump is concerned about profits from a fractionally small portion of a very big portfolio. Hilarious.
This is nothing but petty, sour grapes directed towards Trump.
Nothing more, nothing less.