Life's a Bleach

President Trump was angry after a day of punishing headlines Friday, largely about his comment at
the previous evening's briefing wondering if it would be helpful to inject disinfectant into people to fight the coronavirus. That idea drew loud warnings from health experts who said the idea was dangerous. Trump answered questions from reporters on Friday and claimed that his suggestion about disinfectant had been “sarcastic." That doesn't square with a transcript of his remarks.

In the aftermath of ridicule and alarm over Trump’s comments about the use of disinfectants to perhaps clean out the coronavirus from the human body, the White House first claimed on Friday that the comments were taken out of context.

Then, just hours later, Trump had a new walk back. “I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen,” he said to a pool gathered at a White House meeting.

The problem is his comments, made during his nightly briefing on Thursday, certainly were not interpreted as sarcastic. They also beg the question of why, in the midst of a pandemic, when the stakes are so much, much higher, the president would be using the press conference to joke or riff so casually about potential treatments.

Fox News (which favors Trump) anchor Bret Baier told viewers that “it didn’t seem like he was being sarcastic when he was talking.” CNN anchor Anderson Cooper said, “Now he’s in like, Soviet fashion, trying to rewrite what we all know and saw as though we are morons.”

By Friday morning, a number of medical professionals were still dumbfounded at the crazy idea of even suggesting the ingestion of a disinfectant as a treatment — as even small doses can kill. Most household products are labeled with those warnings. Lysol and the Environmental Protection Agency issued guidance warning against it.

Paul Levinson, professor of communication at Fordham University, said via email that “it doesn’t matter if Trump’s disinfectant advice was taken in or out of context. First of all, not everyone watches the entire or even a big part of his press conferences,” Levinson wrote. “Some people, even many people, may tune in and just hear Trump say we should get disinfectant inside our bodies. That’s all they hear, and that’s terribly dangerous advice.” He added, “In general, a rule of thumb in communicating about serious subjects is try to never say anything that can be misunderstood. The more serious the topic, the more crucial that is. When it comes to this deadly pandemic, there’s nothing more serious these days on the face of the Earth.”

“People expect presidents to speak with authority all the time,” said Edward Frantz, a presidential historian at the University of Indianapolis. “You can’t pick and choose the times as president when you are going to act presidential ... and then say to the public, ‘You’re supposed to understand I was being sarcastic.’”