Just for the record, here’s a video of the segment of yesterday’s Trump Show in which Trump proposed injecting people with disinfectant. That’s what he said. Loudly and clearly.
And this is from the official White House transcript of yesterday’s Trump Show:
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.
Is he not saying that we should try injecting disinfectant? Of course, that’s what he’s saying.
I’m bringing this up because the disinfectant remark was stupid even by Trump standards, and right-wing media is tripping all over itself claiming that he didn’t say what he said. For example:
I don’t dignify Breitbart with links, but the article says:
Trump used the word “inject,” but what he meant was using a process — which he left “medical doctors” to define — in which patients’ lungs might be cleared of the virus, given new knowledge about its response to light and other factors.
Let’s review:
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.
Especially in the larger context, in which he also proposed shining lights into the body to kill the virus, there’s no mistaking that he was proposing injecting people with disinfectant.
A lot of people have called for the networks to stop broadcasting the daily briefings. Some of them have complied; The Trump Show has disappeared from my local NBC affilliate, possibly because it was pre-empting Jeopardy and viewers complained. I suspect there will be louder calls now to cancel the Trump Show before people start dropping dead from drinking Lysol.
The makers of Lysol want you to know you should not injest their product, btw.
But I’m wondering if we’re being hasty. If Trump wants to make a fool of himself on television, why get in the way?
There’s a long but fascinating article in the New York Times headlined Home Alone at the White House: A Sour President, With TV His Constant Companion by Katie Rogers and Annie Karni. This reveals a lot, including about the origins of The Trump Show.
Mr. Trump became enraged watching the coverage of his 10-minute Oval Office address in March that was rife with inaccuracies and had little in terms of action for him to announce. He complained to aides that there were few people on television willing to defend him.
The solution, aides said, came two days later, when Mr. Trump appeared in the Rose Garden to declare a national emergency and answer questions from reporters. As he admonished journalists for asking “nasty” questions, Mr. Trump found the back-and-forth he had been missing. The virus had not been a perfect enemy — it was impervious to his browbeating — but baiting and attacking reporters energized him.
“I don’t take responsibility at all,” Mr. Trump told White House correspondents in answer to one question.
The next day he planned to attend a briefing, but since he was there he was encouraged to just take the podium. And a television phenomenon was born.
The daily White House coronavirus task force briefing is the one portion of the day that Mr. Trump looks forward to, although even Republicans say that the two hours of political attacks, grievances and falsehoods by the president are hurting him politically.
Mr. Trump will hear none of it. Aides say he views them as prime-time shows that are the best substitute for the rallies he can no longer attend but craves.
Mr. Trump rarely attends the task force meetings that precede the briefings, and he typically does not prepare before he steps in front of the cameras. He is often seeing the final version of the day’s main talking points that aides have prepared for him for the first time although aides said he makes tweaks with a Sharpie just before he reads them live. He hastily plows through them, usually in a monotone, in order to get to the question-and-answer bullying session with reporters that he relishes.
Reviewing the transcript, it appears the “disinfectant” remarks came after the prepared talking points part of the program. He might help himself if he, you know, rehearsed some of the show before going live. But I guess that would be too much work.
The article also describes a typical Trump day this way: He shows up in the Oval Office about noon, having been up since 5 am watching television — “Fox News, then CNN, with a dollop of MSNBC thrown in for rage viewing” — and making calls with the television audible in the background. He’s mostly interested in what people are saying about him, not in the news per se. In the afternoon he is given his daily security briefing — whether he pays attention or not isn’t clear — holds staff and other meetings, and makes more phone calls before it’s time for The Trump Show, which apparently is all he really cares about. After the show he watches television in his private dining room, comforting himself with french fries and Diet Coke. He may occasionally have dinner with Melania and Barron before retiring to his bedroom to watch more television.
Somehow I don’t see Franklin Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln spending most of the day watching television to see what people were saying about them.
Anyway — so should The Trump Show be canceled? I say no. If the man wants to hang himself on live television, let him. There also have been calls to give Joe Biden equal time, since The Trump Show amounts to unpaid campaign advertising. At the moment, though, it may be just as well if Biden stays in the background while Trump stumbles around. We’ve got a few months left before the general election. See Joe Biden is leading in presidential polls as a generic alternative to Trump.
And as of this morning, 50,939 Americans are known to have died of covid-19.
Other Stuff to Read
Politico, Trump owes tens of millions to the Bank of China — and the loan is due soon. Maybe China will repossess him.
Washington Post, FDA issues hydroxychloroquine warning, citing serious effects, including death
Paul Krugman, McConnell to Every State: Drop Dead
Timothy Egan, How Republicans Became the Party of Death
I was not a huge fan of his earlier show The Apprentice, but his current show where he pretends to be president is just hilarious! Its like you just never know kind of whacky thing he's going to say next, and his insult-comic bits to the reporters sends me into fits of laughter. God I hope it doesn't get cancelled!
I loved the episode where he said to Philip Rucker of the Washington Post.. "You ready for this?..you're fake news" His delivery in conjunction with his Trumpian gesticulation was absolutely perfect. What a showman! Now I don't have to watch reruns of Benny Hill to get a good laugh.
Right! I'm glad there's no laugh track, I think that makes it all that much funnier. I feel like I could die laughing at times!
"I'm no doctor, I'm just a person with a good you know."
The Hill and NBC news are reporting Trump claiming his comments were sarcasm in response to a reporters question. I felt compelled to watch the clip to judge if his claim might be supported by the footage. What a reality gap on that one. My assessment was that Trump was trying to brainstorm with what appeared to be a medical expert also present with him at his daily show. He seemed to be trying to give her pointers on where to look for the magical medical solution that was sure to make this pandemic disappear. As for sarcasm, I saw now indication of any of that at all. The comedy I saw was only that his brainless comments on factors effecting the "life" of the virus on common surfaces, might give insight into how to "kill" a virus busy "tricking" human cells into reproducing itself inside of a human body. It is funny because he thinks a virus works like bacteria, and we just need to kill it with a miracle drug like penicillin. If they would just realize his superior brain and intuition is showing them obvious paths to the solution, and thus the world will be saved. Now I find, in his "mind" or "memory", he thought he was just attempting to perform a bit of sarcasm aimed at a reporter. No way that is true.
Who knows, for at my age my mind could go at any time. It could be gone and I do not know it. At this point, though, I will claim it is HIS mind that is gone and he does not know it. I'll go with Pelosi on this one and Swami too. You always have your unknown you knows. This is not one of them though.
I would guess that with a body count of over 50,000 dead and a nation in a state of high anxiety, if not sheer terror, that the use of sarcasm coming from the president isn't the best way to communicate with the public. Maybe he should try empathy. I know it's not an emotion that is readily available to him, but he should fake it until he makes it.
Normally, I would say, yeah, keep him on TV and let him display his remarkable stupidity, ignorance, bigotry, misogyny, lack of empathy, etc…, so that he keeps hurting his own reelection chances.
But it's gotten to the point where this moronic maniac is even more of a clear and present danger to the public than he was before.
It was bad enough that his uncaring indolence caused this pandemic to hit us harder than it should have, but he's now combining that with medical musings that can be not just harmful, but fatal! Terminally fatal!
Yes, you'd have to be an imbecile to listen to to this narcissistic sociopath's of-the-cuff utterances and vape some Lysol, swallow a flashlight and wash it down with bleach, but shouldn't even imbeciles have a right to live? A right to die a natural death, and not one that that makes his/her's obituary be used as a nomination for a Darwin Award?!?
TAKE HIM OFF!
Your Honor, I rest my case.
PS: On the plus side, there's a 1.2 mile-wide comet that will come close to us next week, but experts say it shouldn't hit us. So there's that for hope.
Take him off. Such a waste.
Nor should Biden agree to televised debates with him.
Joe and his pre-selected cabinet and department heads should hit the road with a super unified message. Blow DT further into irrelevancy.
Lawyers, Guns, and Money, relaying a piece from the Guardian, reported on a Florida Man, who wrote Trump and put the idea in his head:
Of course he has a church. What kind of dofus President believes in this nonsense?
moonbat, When you write Florida Man with man being capitalized are you identifying a species or a male who lives in Florida?
Well in a sense it does "cure" them as they're now dead.
What's with the hydroxychloroquine efficacy trials for coronavirus being conducted by the VA? Are they using veterans as guinea pigs to test Trump's lamebrain theories? It kind as a ring of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments to it.
Gotta go with G u l a g on this. Public safety trumps (deliberate pun) the self-inflicted damage POTUS does by broadcasting his stupidity. There's a function that briefings could have, informing people. There are pros with CDC who might use the platform to fortify public opinion about the value and importance of following guidelines.
In the same vein but on the revers side, a briefing could be a vehicle to explain how to advocate for relaxing standards using (ahem) numbers, statistics, trends. (If you don't have numbers statistics and trends to back up your argument, maybe you should shut up.)The virus doesn't respond to rhetoric about freedom and there's no credible evidence coronavirus is afraid of AK-47s.
No mater how much the Trump Show may drive down his numbers, I'd prefer to save American lives and get the virus under control.
I'm all for canceling the show. Only because no matter how much damage is done to public safety, and how much of an ignorant jerk he shows himself to be, the numbers of his supporters won't diminish beyond where they stand today. If anybody still looks favorably at Trump after almost 4 years of his clown show, then they are not going to be moved to change their opinion now regardless of what he does. The numbers are pretty well fixed so it's just best to get his ugly mug off the screen as much as possible.
No man is so blind as he who refuses to see.
Stupid comes natural to some people, but in the case of injecting bleach, it appears to have had a little help:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/revealed-leader-group-peddling-bleach-cure-lobbied-trump-coronavirus
As for Biden leading in the polls, he's leading by less than Hillary (according to a NYT article). That does not bode well if that continues. Hopefully, that will change with time and if he chooses a VP that will excite more voters.
Oh, what have we become. A nation where the preachers want to heal you and the doctors want to preach to you.
A quick search of "Archbishop" Mark Grenon (from the Guardian article) seems a horror story beyond what Edgar Allen Poe could have imagined. We need serious social distancing from his healing arts.
Every disaster movie starts with a scientist being ignored; but only stupid disaster movies have the President recommend injecting disinfectants.
This year is badly written. I want my time and money back.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/25/media/trump-goes-into-hiding-reliable-sources/index.html