We’ve recently passed the first anniversary of when former President Donald Trump took to the podium during a briefing to suggest that scientists investigate the possibility of injecting people with disinfectant. “The disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning,” Trump said with Dr. Birx seated nearby. “It gets in the lungs. It would be interesting to check that.” Trump also suggested hitting the body inside with tremendous light to treat COVID-19.
So, how did we get there? According to Politico, some of Trump’s aides were “worried.”
“Privately, however, some of his aides were worried,” the outlet reports. “The Covid task force had met earlier that day — as usual, without Trump — to discuss the most recent findings, including the effects of light and humidity on how the virus spreads. Trump was briefed by a small group of aides. But it was clear to some aides that he hadn’t processed all the details before he left to speak to the press.”
“A few of us actually tried to stop it in the West Wing hallway,” one former senior Trump White House official told Politico. “I actually argued that President Trump wouldn’t have the time to absorb it and understand it. But I lost, and it went how it did.”
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It became a joke inside the White House.
“People joked about it inside the White House like, ‘Are you drinking bleach and injecting sunlight?’ People were mocking it and saying, ‘Oh, let me go stand out in the sun, and I’ll be safe from Covid,” one former administration official told the outlet. “It honestly hurt. It was a credibility issue. … It was hurting us even from an international standpoint, the credibility at the White House.”
We really dodged a bullet by not reelecting this dangerous nut job:
Here is Dr. Birx’s reaction when President Trump asks his science advisor to study using UV light on the human body and injecting disinfectant to fight the coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/MVno5X7JMA
— Daniel Lewis (@Daniel_Lewis3) April 24, 2020
And yeah, people did drink bleach following Trump’s dangerous remarks. It was interesting to see Trump supporters on social media last year trying to deny that the former president said that thing that we all heard him say.
You can read the full report here.
Featured image via Political Tribune gallery
