The evidence that Trump suggested injecting disinfectant as a treatment for Covid19.

I watched the press briefing live yesterday, and — with no prompting from anti-Trump media — I thought I he'd said something sort of like that but not really.

Today, the fever is raging. It looks like this:



From the transcript:

Bill Bryan [head of the science and technology directorate at the Department of Homeland Security]: We’re... testing disinfectants readily available. We’ve tested bleach, we’ve tested isopropyl alcohol on the virus specifically in saliva or in respiratory fluids and I can tell you that bleach will kill the virus in five minutes. Isopropyl alcohol will kill the virus in 30 seconds and that’s with no manipulation, no rubbing....

Donald Trump: .... I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in 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’d be interesting to check that so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see....

He did say "something like that." Not: go ahead and put bleach or isopropyl alcohol into your bloodstream. I immediately thought of ethyl alcohol. People put that stuff into their bloodstream all the time. And there's a folk belief out there that alcohol is a treatment. I've seen that quite a few people in Iran have died trying to use alcohol this way.

Later in the briefing, a reporter said to Bryan: "The president mentioned the idea of a cleaner, bleach and isopropyl alcohol emerging. There’s no scenario where that could be injected into a person, is there?"

Bryan brushed off the question: "No, I’m here to talk about the finds that we had in the study. We don’t do that within that lab at our labs."

Trump stepped in: "It wouldn’t be through injections, [inaudible] almost a cleaning and sterilization of an area. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work, but it certainly has a big effect if it’s on a stationary object."

I have the feeling Trump talks to his experts like this a lot. He gets ideas. He experiences what we call lateral thinking. And he just blurts out his idea. He doesn't self-censor, so he comes across like a child. And he gives his antagonists rich raw material to use against him.

ADDED: There has long been a theory out there in social media that drinking bleach is a defense against coronavirus. Here's a Politifact debunking from all the way back in January:

We came across the claim in a Jan. 28 tweet by Twitter user "Chief Police 2" that urged their followers to buy "20-20-20 spray" to ward off the virus. The spray is also known as MMS, or Miracle Mineral Solution, a bleaching agent that’s been touted by anti-vaxxers and QAnon theorists as a "miracle cure" that can treat everything from autism to cancer. The same account tweeted about MMS in relation to the coronavirus multiple times, saying that drinking the solution will instantly "kill the deadly virus."...

While some Clorox cleaning agents have been found to be effective against prior coronavirus strains when used on surfaces to stem the spread of the virus, the products should never be ingested. This alarming theory is full-on Pants on Fire!

So it's bad for Trump to give any lift to this kind of theory. I suspect he's deliberately trying to signal to the alternative medicine/anti-vaxxer crowd that he gets them. He loves them like he loves that bikers for Trump who need to get back to the tattoo parlor. In the past, he's shown an affinity for the anti-vaxxer crowd. Here's something he said in one of the debates, when he was running for President:

“If you take this little beautiful baby, and you pump … I mean, it looks just like it’s meant for a horse, not for a child, and we’ve had so many instances, people that work for me, just the other day, 2 years old, 2½ years old, a child, a beautiful child, went to have the vaccine and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.”

He's pro-vaccine now, and maybe his previous skepticism helps give him credibility with ordinary people who resist the opinions of medical experts.

Anyway, Trump will surely be back for another briefing this afternoon, and he'll surely be grilled by the reporters about his supposed idea of injecting disinfectant. I've been watching all of these briefings, so I should be good at predicting what he will say. See how much of it I get right:

1. He'll say it's "fake news": These reporters are so dishonest. They said I recommended injecting bleach. Injecting Clorox bleach! Who would say that? They said I said inject Clorox. Who would inject Clorox?

2. He'll rephrase his idea so it's situated in a context that makes some sense: The expert yesterday was talking about how easy it is to kill the virus when it is on an inanimate surface, so that makes you wonder why we can't kill the virus when it's inside the body. We're talking about avoiding getting the virus — by social distancing and someday with a vaccine. But how feasible is it to kill the virus once it does get inside the body? What would it take? If somebody gets the bubonic plague, we put an antibiotic inside the body and it kills the disease. Why can't we have that for the coronavirus?

3. He was just asking the question of the expert, drawing him out. He wasn't saying, go, use your resources and work on something that I just thought up. He was setting up the expert to explain here's why it's not so easy. Here's what the virus does inside the body that's different from what it does on a tabletop. Unlike a tabletop, you have to worry about damaging (or killing) the human body. We should get all that spelled out by the experts today.

And let me add this, though I don't think it's something Trump will say:

Most people hold their tongue when they don't know what they're talking about. They are afraid of looking stupid. In 30+ years of teaching law students, I heard so many questions that began with "This might be a stupid question, but..." and that was the person who overcame the inhibition to say nothing at all. In recent years, the expression "explain it to me like I'm 5" has come into vogue. People really do crave a very simple explanation from the expert. I think Trump is — with charming (or, for non-fans, frightening) disinhibition — playing a part that so many of us identify with. The 5 year old who just asks the question.

I had a dream about Trump on August 3, 2015, a dream I've told you about a few times and I've remembered and thought about many times. In the dream, I hugged Trump and thanked him. I was thanking him for speaking freely and straightforwardly, accepting the risk and showing us that it can be done, and it can work.

That dream was more than a year before he actually won the election, which was truly an amazing thing. It continues to amaze me as the new election lumbers toward us through a haze of aerosolized virus.