It has been one year since disgraced former President Donald Trump embarrassed himself and the nation by suggesting that people inject themselves with bleach to kill the coronavirus.
After being briefed about how the virus doesn’t survive very long after being exposed to sunlight and can be killed quickly with disinfectants, Trump completely misunderstood the presentation and made ridiculous and dangerous remarks to the American people.
“So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just a very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn’t been checked because of the testing,” Trump said. “And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that, too.”
“I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute,” Trump continued. “And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”
Trump’s message resulted in many Americans actually ingesting bleach in an attempt to prevent or cure the coronavirus, which has killed over 560,000 Americans in the year since.
Disinfectant company Lysol even released a statement warning against following Trump’s suggestions.
Trump’s remarks have been mocked ever since, but even White House officials mocked Trump at the time and even tried to prevent him from taking the podium because they knew what was going to happen.
“A few of us actually tried to stop it in the West Wing hallway,” a former Trump official told Politico. “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.”
“People joked about it inside the White House like, ‘Are you drinking bleach and injecting sunlight?’ People were mocking it,” another former official said. “It honestly hurt. It was a credibility issue. It was hurting us even from an international standpoint, the credibility at the White House.”
Again, Trump’s remarks embarrassed the United States and resulted in a rise in accidental poisonings. This is the kind of recklessness that Americans rejected at the ballot box when they denied Trump a second term in November. It was so bad that April 23rd should forever be known as the new April Fools’ Day instead of April 1st.
Featured Image: Screenshot
