US: Trump again touts hydroxychloroquine for COVID

President Donald Trump again touted the benefits of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 patients, insisting many doctors believe it's "extremely successful."

The comments come a day after President Donald Trump and his son shared a fresh dose of misinformation about the drug in videos that were quickly taken down by Twitter and Facebook.

Scientific studies have shown the drug can do more harm than good when used to treat symptoms of COVID-19, but doctors who believe otherwise argued for its use at an event Monday in Washington, citing their own experiences treating patients with the drug.

Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr., and others shared video of the event on Facebook and Twitter, prompting both companies to step in and remove the content as part of an aggressive push to keep the sites free of potentially harmful information about the virus - though not before more than 17 million people had seen one version of the video circulating on the web.

On Tuesday, Trump told reporters, "There was a group of doctors yesterday, a large group, that were put on the internet and for some reason the internet wanted to take them down."

"Maybe they had a good reason maybe they didn't. I don't know," Trump said, adding that "politically, it's not that popular."