Trump spitballed about injecting disinfectants into people's lungs. He didn't say that individual people should do it, but he did say that doctors should test it out.
> And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds - it sounds interesting to me. So we'll see.
The specific disinfectants Trump was talking about were bleach and isopropyl alcohol. Trump's comments came right after a presentation by the undersecretary for Homeland Security about using these specific disinfectants to clean surfaces. Trump then genuinely appeared to think it might be a good idea to try these disinfectants out inside the human body. Anyone can watch the video and judge for themselves whether Trump was being sarcastic, as he later claimed - I think it's obvious that he was completely serious.
Trump had just gotten done watching a presentation on how surfaces could be disinfected with chemicals that the average person knows to be extremely toxic (such as bleach). His takeaway was that maybe doctors should try injecting those extremely toxic chemicals into patients. I was amazed that the president of the United States thought this might possibly be a good idea. But let's pretend, for a moment, that it was actually a reasonable suggestion: why was the president even spitballing possible CoVID-19 treatments on live television? The whole spectacle was just absurd, and I think the White House recognized that, because this was the last press briefing the task force gave for months, and when they started up again, Trump was not present.
> He didn't say that individual people should do it, but he did say that doctors should test it out.
Only, people regularly think that they're smarter than doctors, and will self-medicate based on suggestions of somebody they trust. We saw people die because Trump boosted hydroxychloroquine -- he should have known at that point in time that people would follow his suggestion. And guess what? Thousands of people followed his advice on disinfectant/bleach.
A slight mischaracterization (doctors should do it, instead of people should do it themselves), and the original does not make Trump look any better.
Edit: Looking again, OP did not misrepresent Trump's comment at all. Trump did clearly recommend that doctors try injecting disinfectants (including bleach) into patients.
I think it's important to differentiate saying X should be investigated as a treatment and X is a viable treatment.
When I hear "Trump recommending bleach injections" what I, and I think most people, understand from it is Trump recommending everyday people inject themselves with bleach as a cure for covid, not Trump saying doctors should investigate whether injecting bleach would cure covid. And the former is clearly not what Trump was communicating
This was during the peak of the first wave, in mid-April 2020. The president was up on stage improvising about how injecting patients with bleach or isopropyl alcohol might be a good treatment. I think most people were just shocked that a man who would even consider that as an idea had somehow become president of the most powerful country on Earth.
That's what I find most incredible about this thread and the confidence of the person denying something Trump said on the record. It hasn't even been a year and we're already forgetting the dumpster fire that was the original response to COVID.
> And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds - it sounds interesting to me. So we'll see.
The specific disinfectants Trump was talking about were bleach and isopropyl alcohol. Trump's comments came right after a presentation by the undersecretary for Homeland Security about using these specific disinfectants to clean surfaces. Trump then genuinely appeared to think it might be a good idea to try these disinfectants out inside the human body. Anyone can watch the video and judge for themselves whether Trump was being sarcastic, as he later claimed - I think it's obvious that he was completely serious.
* C-SPAN: https://www.c-span.org/video/?471458-1/president-trump-coron...