excalibur
Diamond Member
- Mar 19, 2015
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This was written in 2021
One year ago today, President Donald Trump took to the White House briefing room and encouraged his top health officials to study the injection of bleach into the human body as a means of fighting Covid. It was a watershed moment, soon to become iconic in the annals of presidential briefings. It arguably changed the course of political history.
Some ex-Trump aides say they don’t even think about that day as the wildest they experienced — with the conceit that there were simply too many others. But for those there, it was instantly shocking, even by Trump standards. It quickly came to symbolize the chaotic essence of his presidency and his handling of the pandemic. Twelve months later, with the pandemic still lingering and a U.S. death toll nearing 570,000, it still does.
For weeks, Trump had been giving winding, stream-of-consciousness updates on the state of the Covid fight as it clearly worsened. So when he got up from the Oval Office to brief reporters gathered in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room on April 23, there was no expectation that the day’s proceedings would be any different than usual.
Privately, however, some of his aides were worried. 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,” said one former senior Trump White House official. “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.”
Trump started his press conference that day by doing something he’d come to loathe: pushing basic public safety measures. He called for the “voluntary use of face coverings” and said of his administration, “continued diligence is an essential part of our strategy.”
Quickly, however, came a hint at how loose the guardrails were that day. Trump introduced Bill Bryan, head of science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security. “He’s going to be talking about how the virus reacts in sunlight,” the president said. “Wait ‘til you hear the numbers.”
As Bryan spoke, charts were displayed behind him about surface temperatures and virus half-lives. He preached, rather presciently, for people to “move activities outside” and then detailed ongoing studies involving disinfectants. “We tested bleach,” he said at one point. “I can tell you that bleach will kill the virus in five minutes.”
Standing off to the side, Trump clasped his hands in front of his stomach, nodded and looked out into the room of gathered reporters. When Bryan was done, he strode slowly back to the lectern.
“A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world,” Trump began, clearly thinking the question himself, “So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that, too. It sounds interesting. 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.”
The doctor that was with him knew he was talking out of his ass
Dr. Deborah Birx, Trump’s former coronavirus response coordinator, sat silently off to the side as the president made these suggestions to her. Later, she would tell ABC, “I didn’t know how to handle that episode,” adding, “I still think about it every day.”
“Even for him,” said one former Biden campaign aide, “this was stratospherically insane and dangerous. It cemented the case we had been making about his derelict covid response.”
In short order, the infamous bleach press conference became a literal rallying cry for Trump’s opponents, with Biden supporters dotting their yards with “He Won’t Put Bleach In You” signs. For Trump, it was a scourge. He would go on to insist that he was merely being sarcastic — a claim at odds with the excited curiosity he had posing those questions to Birx. His former team concedes that real damage was done.
He wasn't kidding. Do you believe Trump when he said he was kidding? Then you're a fucking idiot.
“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,” said one former administration official. “It honestly hurt. It was a credibility issue. … It was hurting us even from an international standpoint, the credibility at the White House.”
That Trump was even at the lectern that day was head-scratching for many. For weeks, he and his team had downplayed the severity of the Covid crisis even as the president privately acknowledged to the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward that it had the potential to be catastrophic. But as it became clearer that the public was not buying the rosy assessments, Trump had decided to take his fate into his own hands — assembling the press on a daily basis to spin his way through the crisis.
It’s been exactly one year since Trump suggested injecting bleach. We’ve never been the same.
It was wild in the moment. In time, it came to symbolize the chaotic nature of the presidency and the early Covid fight.www.politico.com
This: encouraged his top health officials to study the injection of bleach into the human body as a means of fighting Covid.
Isn't this: That's when he suggested we inject bleach into our veins.
Derp.
Starting to sink in that Trump isn't going anywhere despite all you've been told and will be reelected next year, huh. 
