I don't think we wasted too much time and money on chloroquine. It looked promising in early trials. The proper thing to do is follow up on that. If it helped even just a little it would save literally thousands of lives. Having a well known drug be even slightly effective is pretty close to the best case scenario. Not following up on such leads would be stupid.

It's a lot cheaper to test a known drug than to create a new one.

The Trump thing is a huge distraction. Doctors in China and Europe were already singing its praises before Trump got involved. These tests aren't happening because Trump got excited about it.