Trump repeats Tucker Carlson talking point suggesting white people are being denied Covid treatment

Former President Donald Trump has suggested liberals are determining “who lives and who dies” by basing Covid-19 treatments on race.

During a rally in Arizona on Saturday, Mr Trump repeated a talking point that had previously featured on Tucker Carlson, suggesting white people are being discriminated against.

“The left is now rationing life-saving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating, just denigrating white people to determine who lives and who dies,” Mr Trump told a crowd in Florence.

“If you’re white, you don’t get the vaccine or if you’re white, you don’t get therapeutics. It’s unbelievable to think this. And nobody wants this. Black people don’t want it, white people don’t want it. Nobody wants it.”

The origin of the talking point appears to come from Alex Jones’s conspiracy site InfoWars, when a host named Harrison Smith posted a video with a medical worker in Texas saying he can’t receive monoclonal antibody treatment because he had no underlying health conditions, Insider reported. The same video showed Harrison asking if he was being discriminated because of his race

A truncated version of that clip appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight.

“So you can’t get lifesaving drugs from the government of Texas if you’re the wrong colour,” Mr Carlson said on his Fox News programme. “So this is still happening on a wide scale.”

The talking point was also repeated by Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk in November, but was fact-checked in USA Today and the state has denied any such criteria exists.

In response to right-wing backlash, Minnesota removed race as a preferential factor for providers that are part of Minnesota Resource Allocation Platform, the Minneapolis Star Tribunereported last week.

Groups like the America First Legal Advocacy Group had complained about the scoring criteria.