When the world's top virologist, Didier Raoult first came out early and promoted the used of hydroxychloroquine, zinc and Azithromycin for use against Covid that's all the world really needed to verify, he didn't make it to the top putting out false information.
But you see they can honestly claim hydroxychloroquine doesn't work because by itself it does not. hydroxychloroquine is used as a chelator to help the zinc break through the cell walls, the zinc stops the replication of the virus in the cells. The real problem all along wasn't that it didn't work it was that Trump said it did work so they found a deceptive but honest ploy to use against the president. What you would call a half truth because if something needs defeated more than this virus it's any chance that Trump could get re-elected, they don't care how many people they have to kill to achieve that objective.
If Trump wants to save lives then it's best he don't speak on the issue as they will use anything that he promotes that is a positive and find a way to turn it into a negative.