“I see that the disinfectant kills the virus in a minute. One minute. Is there any way we can do this [no corpo], for example through an injection or a kind of cleaning? I am not a doctor but I am a person with a good instinct (…) Suppose we hit the body with tremendous light, whether it be ultraviolet or just a very powerful light (…) Suppose you take the light into the body, the that we can do through the skin or otherwise ”. Donald Trump dixit, last Thursday.
After hearing presentation President Trump suggests irradiating people’s bodies with UV light or injecting them with bleach or alcohol to deal with COVID19. pic.twitter.com/cohkLyyl9G
– Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 23, 2020
Over the course of more than a month, conferences at the White House hardly ever broke the news. For being long, for having the president of the USA as the protagonist. However, those phrases spoken in that context and even with that body expression that seemed to refer to a trip to a past where Trump used to give letters on TV with the program “The Apprentice” had an unprecedented reaction in the country, with doctors, politicians and other community leaders asking people for everything so that they would not do something that suddenly became a question: ingest (which should be read as not to ingest) disinfectant to fight the new coronavirus.
That was when the attempt to spin history: the first, in Off, through staff, saying that all that had been misinterpreted; later, on Friday, with Trump aggressively shooting the sentence for a reporter “I asked the question sarcastically to journalists like you, to understand the reaction ”; next, Deborah Birx, immunologist and White House advisor in combating the pandemic (it is even part of the task force assembled for Covid-19) who was bothered to hear those phrases, said in an interview with Fox News that the leader had just received the information and was still “digesting” it.
As even that was not enough, Trump had the shortest conference this Friday (which also did not count on anyone from the team that makes the task force combat the pandemic) and did not answer questions. Nor was that enough, this Saturday there was no intervention of the American president more than a month later. There was not there, there was in tweets. As a first in which he defended that after all he was not having that dialogue for Deborah Birx but for a Laboratory Expert (who, it is understood, should be in the room). Or a second to say that it was not worth giving lectures because they only ask hostile questions and write lies.
What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately. They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2020
Still, there is a story to tell that explains what happened on Thursday, told by CNN.
William Bryan, the scientific representative appointed by the Department of Homeland Security, shared in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday the main conclusions of a new study carried out at task force combating the pandemic. And one of the points even intersected in a line of reasoning already defended by the American president: the spread of the virus is slower with heat. Everyone listened, everyone understood that it would be best to prepare the presentation of this information in another way. Donald Trump was not there.
Some of those present even questioned the conclusions of the study, in view of the strength they would have to be the target of public disclosure. And then with a criticism to the head: Bryan has extensive military experience but is not a scientist nor has he spent as a doctor. Mike Pence, the country’s vice president, was more restrained. On Thursday, at three in the afternoon, the person in charge had the presentation reformulated but, again, Trump was not present. Thus, the only contact the US leader had with these conclusions was a few minutes earlier, in the Oval Office. When he heard the explanation, Trump left “standing out”. And he said what he said.
On two levels, even today, 48 hours later, those statements have their impact. On the one hand, the Political (who curiously also had a big interview with Joe Biden, Trump’s rival in the next elections, this Saturday) guaranteed that “some of the allies are becoming concerned by the way the president is ruining his chances for re-election with his behavior at press conferences during a public health and economic crisis ”. On the other hand, ABC News reported that dozens of calls had already been made to emergency numbers with poisoning by disinfectant in various states of the country.
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