This is a story that shouldn’t matter in the United States in the year 2020. At least at one point, this country was the most technologically-developed nation to ever grace the planet. We have the best scientists and the resources to fund their research, engineer the net, and launch satellites. We should have the most sophisticated, publicly-funded, research program in the history of public health ongoing to defeat the disease that threatens to overtake us. Yet this story does matter because we are led by a man more interested in making money off the crisis than fixing it. This is how we come to have the “My Pillow” guy in our lives.

Grifters are going to grift.

“My Pillow” CEO Mike Lindell went on CNN to push for the approval of an extract made from Oleandrin for use on COVID-19 patients. Oleandrin, you will of course note, is a poison (in large concentrations) derived from a cheap flower. But there is money to be made in lotions, potions, and elixirs, especially when a huge segment of people trusts the people on their side of politics to give them a miracle cure. There is a lot of money to be made.

Anderson Cooper is having none of it and pushed Lindell, saying that the U.S. military has already researched oleandrin and found it to be a “waste of time.” Lindell argued that he had seen a study that proved it to be useful, though he couldn’t recall where or who did it.

Up with that, Cooper would not put:

“You got to see a study but you don’t remember anything about it? You don’t remember who did it. You don’t remember their control group.”

“What do you think I’m on here for?” Lindell answered back, angrily.

“To promote this! Because you think that just by coming on and getting this name out there for this unproven thing, desperate people will get it.”

Lindell tried to butt-in, but Cooper kept going:

“You’re a snake oil salesman telling people, take this product, you’re desperate.”

Lindell then went full-Trump and asked Cooper why Cooper was attacking him. Cooper let him know.

“Because you are telling people who are desperate to take something that is unproven. You have no evidence to back it up. It’s kind of morally bankrupt.”

Kind of?

It is the very definition of morally bankrupt. Indeed, without the political angle, Lindell wouldn’t have an audience for his claims. The MAGA movement has become a self-contained grifting operation, where making money is the only end to the movement for the people leading it. Ask Hannity, Don Jr., Trump himself, and all the other hangers-on, it is about making money off the rubes who believe they are victims of something bigger. That “bigger” thing is an increasingly pluralistic society. Lindell is in it for the same reason Trump is in it, and has always been in it, to make as much money as possible. And just like Trump, Lindell doesn’t care how many people die along the way. He takes no responsibility.

That’s why these stories matter. Lives are at stake and so is the nation.

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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on twitter @MiciakZoom