Candace Owens
Right-wing media helped dupe their audiences into believing that drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine were miracle cures for COVID-19. Now, conservative commentators are apparently cashing in on that credulity thanks to the paid sponsorship of a mail-order pharmacy that provides easy access to the medicines.
The Florida-based All Family Pharmacy has sponsored a slew of right-wing commentators, including Fox News host Laura Ingraham, presidential son Donald Trump Jr., podcaster (and now deputy director of the FBI) Dan Bongino, One America News Network’s Matt Gaetz and Chanel Rion, The F1rst’s Bill O’Reilly, podcaster Candace Owens, and radio hosts Lars Larson, Michael Savage, and Howie Carr.
These pundits tout the company in social media posts and live ad reads as a way for their followers to acquire drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Some even offer personal testimonials about their own experiences as its customers.
All Family Pharmacy, in turn, points to being “featured” by the commentators on its website, and provides dedicated pages for several of them that include their images.
The company is careful, both on its website and in the ad copy read by its right-wing promoters, not to explicitly invoke the use of ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine as treatments for COVID-19 without disclaimers. But it’s very clear what’s going on.
How right-wing pundits built demand for dubious COVID-19 cures
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, right-wing media outlets combated the public health consensus by promoting the virtues of unproven drugs.
In March 2020, they touted the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as an alternative to stay-at-home orders. A year and a half later, they highlighted the purported therapeutic benefits of the antiparasite drug ivermectin as an alternative to the safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines they typically deplored.
Unfortunately, studies found that the drugs do not actually work as COVID-19 therapies, and a slew of health agencies and the manufacturers warned against their use for that purpose.
As a result, when consumers of right-wing media asked their doctors to write off-label prescriptions for the drugs that the media figures they most trusted had recommended for COVID-19, the doctors sometimes refused.
But telemedicine companies filled that gap in the market, offering credulous right-wingers easy access to prescriptions and mail-order drugs.
When NBC News reported on one such company, SpeakWithAnMD.com, in September 2021, I wrote that its success “shows how the right-wing movement functions as a money-making operation that serves up its hapless members" to organizations trying to cash in on conservative trends, but noted that while right-wing media figures “play an essential role” in the scheme, “there’s no reason to think they directly profit from it.”
That is no longer the case.
All Family Pharmacy sells easy access to the drugs
All Family Pharmacy’s operation is similar to that of SpeakWithAnMD.com. “We work with doctors all over the country to help get access to medications normal pharmacies don't or are unwilling to dispense including but not limited to Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine,” its website says.
The Florida-based telemedicine company promises an “easy as 1-2-3” process of obtaining medicines in which customers “choose your meds, fill out the medical form, and pay,” and then, after “a licensed doctor reviews your form and writes your prescription,” receive the drugs by mail.
While All Family Pharmacy says it provides “Easy Access to 200+ Medications,” its website emphasizes the availability of drugs that became conservatives’ causes célèbre during the pandemic.
An image of a box of ivermectin and capsules of the drug is splashed across the website’s landing page and separate pages for the right-wingers it sponsors, and the company is currently offering a “Buy One Get One FREE” sale for both that medicine and the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine.
All Family Pharmacy provides would-be purchasers of ivermectin with their “Covid-19 Treatment Dose” and “Covid-19/Viral Prevention Dose,” but also informs them that the drug is “not FDA-approved for … COVID-19 treatment or prevention” and instructs to “consult a licensed healthcare provider for advice.”
All Family Pharmacy co-founder Michael Kuenzler touted the company and sale in a March 17 appearance on Howie Carr’s radio show.
Kuenzler explained that their business took off during the pandemic due to “patients contacting us because their doctors were not prescribing medications that they felt were helpful toward the illnesses that they were having or enduring. My brother and I, we started pushing to help patients outside of their traditional PCP doctors get access to antibiotics, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, any drugs that physicians just purely weren’t prescribing for whatever reasons.”
“I’m not a pharmacist, I’m not a doctor, I’m just here to help patients get access to a lot of these medications that they’re unable to get access to for various reasons,” he added.
The right-wing commentators pitching All Family Pharmacy’s ivermectin
Carr described himself as a “very satisfied customer” of All Family Pharmacy’s ivermectin during Monday’s interview with Kuenzler, praising the company’s pricing and easy process. “The first time I ordered it, I had it within 48 hours,” he said.
“I remember,” Kuenzler replied, chuckling. “A lot of our advertisers, they like to try the ivermectin out, and I promise you this — within 30 days, I have another request coming. It's becoming a very popular drug of choice.”
Dan Bongino, the newly minted deputy director of the FBI, is among the right-wing pundits who are not only sponsored by All Family Pharmacy but say they are also its customers.
“Need ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, emergency antibiotics, or other essential medications — you got it,” Bongino said during an ad read for one of his final podcasts. “I use All Family Pharmacy. They’ve been great to me, helped me on a couple of vacations I was on. They step up when the system fails you.”
“I never travel without my emergency kit!” Matt Gaetz said on social media last month while promoting his ad-read touting All Family Pharmacy’s ivermectin.
Donald Trump Jr. read ad copy for All Family Pharmacy on his podcast earlier this month, saying that the company is “cutting through the red tape to get you the meds you need fast, easy, with no interference, whether it’s ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, you know, those ‘bad things’ that other guys wouldn’t want you to have but have been proven to be really effective.”
Bill O’Reilly told his audience that buying drugs from All Family Pharmacy gives them protection during pandemics and political chaos.
“Yes, they’ve got the miracle drug everyone’s been talking about, ivermectin,” he added in an ad read on The F1rst in late January. “Here is the truth: When the system collapses and shortages happen, the unprepared suffer. Do not be one of them.”
Here are some more All Family Pharmacy ads from right-wing commentators who tout its supply of ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, or both:
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
