Trump adviser cornered by CNN's Bash over the president pushing hydroxychloroquine despite risk of death

CNN's Dana Bash put one of Donald Trump's economic advisers on the spot on Sunday morning, questioning him over the safety of the president taking hydroxychloroquine to ward off the COVID-19 virus despite extreme health risks.

Speaking with senior adviser Kevin Hassett, Bash stated, "I want to ask about hydroxychloroquine. The new study this week says that the drug was associated with an increased risk of in-hospital death. President Trump, as you know, has been publicly touting the drug and says he's been taking to it."

She then showed a clip of the president proclaiming, "It's not going to kill anybody."

"It's not going to kill anybody," the CNN host repeated. "Well, we now know according to a major study, that is not true. The president has been giving medical advice on hydroxychloroquine. Do you think that that is putting American lives at risk?"

"The problem right now is that we're going up against this enemy, the virus, that we don't know how to treat yet and we're watching treatments go through the pipeline at hospitals all around the world and aggregating data to try to learn about it," Hassett attempted. "As Dr. [Anthony] Fauci said at press conferences, what we really need is a controlled randomized trial so we can figure this out. I think until we see a large-scale controlled randomized trial, there will be questions."

"So, unfortunately, we're in a world where doctors all around the world are anecdotally trying things and watching to see what works and doesn't work and they're treating their patients accordingly," he continued. "I wish we were in a better world where we had all these treatments that have had the gold standard trials and everybody."

"Have you taken it?" Bash pressed. "You're in the White House, would you take it or are you?"

"We're really not supposed to talk about our personal health here," he demurred. "The only reason I talk about my health in this case is I talked about it with my doctor because I think there is a lot of evidence in the lab that it could help."

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