A Texas-based doctor whose declarations about using hydroxychloroquine to cure COVID-19 were retweeted by Donald Trump has a long history of supporting conspiracy theories.
Dr Stella Immanuel, 55, shot to fame yesterday when Trump and millions of his supporters retweeted a video featuring her appearing in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress.
In the video – which has since been removed by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter – she promotes the discredited coronavirus remedy, hydroxychloroquine.
She attacked ‘fake doctors’ who doubt the efficacy of the drug, and claimed it’s a ‘cure’, adding ‘you don’t need a mask.’
‘If some fake science comes out and says we’ve done studies and they found out that it doesn’t work, I can tell you categorically it’s fake science,’ she said.
‘I want to know who’s conducted that study and who’s behind it. Because there is no way I have treat 350 patients and counting and nobody is dead.’
She said she has treated patients with hydroxychloroquine along with zinc, and the antibiotic zithromax.
Donald Trump Jr was also impressed by her speech, noting on Twitter that it was ‘a must-watch’.
The event was sponsored by right-wing Breitbart in an apparent attempt to get the subject off the record number of coronavirus cases now ravaging the United States.
Immanuel, who runs the Fire Power Ministries in a strip mall next door to her clinic in Houston, was born in Cameroon and did her medical training in Nigeria.
On her Facebook page she describes herself as: ‘Physician, Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Deliverance Minister, God’s battle axe and weapon of war.’
The church’s ‘beliefs’ section on their website says they are against ‘unmarried couples living together, homosexuality, bestiality, polygamy, etc.”
Immanuel has listed a “Deliverance Prayer against Homosexuality and Sexual Perversion” on her website.
She also posted through her Fire Power Ministries Facebook page in December 2016 about her belief that “practicing and celebrating [homosexuality] will take you to hell.”
On February 13, Immanuel reposted a post from Dr. Luana Stines on Facebook.
The photo showed former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg embracing his husband, Chasten. The post begins with the words, “Has the MORAL COMPASS of America tipped its scale so far into the pit of hell that homosexuality has become the norm?”
Another section of the post reads, “If we don’t STAND AGAINST SUCH VILE WICKEDNESS, sodomy will overtake the next generation!”
A lengthy bio on Immanuel’s Details section on Facebook calls the doctor a “prophet of God to the nations.”
One sentence in the profile reads, “Her attitude toward demonic forces has been described as cut-throat, a warrior to the core.”
Immanuel is also a “wealth transfer coach.”
Immanuel believes “you can be saved anointed, fire brand and wealthy too.”
Some of Immanuel’s sermons posted to her website have strange medical claims, including one in which she claims that certain medical issues like endometriosis, cysts, infertility and impotence are the result of sex with “spirit husbands” and “spirit wives,” which Immanuel described as having sex in dreams with witches and demons.
“We call them all kinds of names —endometriosis, we call them molar pregnancies, we call them fibroids, we call them cysts, but most of them are evil deposits from the spirit husband,” she said.
Immanuel warned that the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana was a gateway to evil, because its character had an ‘alter ego.’
She has claimed that schools teach children to meditate so they can ‘meet with demons.’
She also urges that ‘children need to be whipped’.