James Downie writes:

This time, the false hope started with the president’s press secretary.

In a tweet Saturday night, Kayleigh McEnany told the world that Trump would announce “a major therapeutic breakthrough” on the novel coronavirus at a Sunday evening news conference. As the president took the podium, he echoed McEnany, promising a “very historic breakthrough … that will save countless lives.”

The truth — not surprisingly — was different: Trump did not announce any breakthrough vaccine or miracle cure, but merely an emergency-use authorization for convalescent plasma, which, while promising, is neither a sure thing nor a breakthrough. Contrary to Trump’s assurances, the treatment, which uses antibody-rich plasma donated by covid-19 survivors, has not been proven to reduce mortality. Just a few weeks ago, according to the New York Times, “top federal health officials including Dr. Francis S. Collins and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci intervened” to delay the emergency authorization because of concerns that the data on plasma’s effectiveness was too weak. Even if it does work, the treatment is already widely available, so any gains from Trump’s emergency authorization will be “incremental,” according to former Food and Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb.

These facts didn’t stop Trump from taking credit, nor from congratulating the FDA, which “really stepped up,” according to the president. It was a far cry from Saturday morning, when Trump accused “the deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA” of deliberately delaying vaccines and therapeutics until after Election Day — making clear, as if there were any doubt, that the president had been wielding this latest conspiracy theory only for his own political reasons.

That’s par for the course for this president, of course, who loves few things more than playing games with conspiracy theories. On Thursday, Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity that “we’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement” at polling places to combat voter fraud. When critics pointed out that federal law enforcement at the polls would intimidate voters and would be likely to violate the law, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows pretended that “what the president was really addressing was to make sure that if you want to show up and vote in person, we’re going to make sure that that is safe.” Sure. But it’s all empty posturing anyway: Even acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf — who had no qualms about sending federal law enforcement in unmarked vehicles to Portland — agreed Sunday that the department doesn’t have the authority to deploy officers to polling places. [Continue reading…]