Is he, though? Take a closer look at the full transcript.
There is a significant difference between telling everyone to inject themselves with disinfectants and saying that disinfectants effectively kill the virus and maybe we can use this knowledge somehow (“something like that by injection”). Multiple media outlets reported that Trump is “suggesting the possibility of injecting disinfectants,” conveniently dropping the phrase “something like”. Snopes even gave its official stamp of truth. Then social media lit up and Democrats attacked, claiming that Trump is actually telling people to inject themselves with disinfectants. Companies like Clorox and Lysol responded with statements telling people not to do it. Then came all the memes.
Let’s rein it in and imagine if Trump had said “Viruses are great at killing cells. Maybe we can treat cancer patients with something like that by injection to fight the cancer.” Then the media decides to run with “Trump is telling cancer patients to inject themselves with viruses!” At one point, the idea of harnessing viruses to treat cancer may have been laughable, but if no one had thought of it in the first place, oncolytic virus therapy would not exist. Science is typically thought of as being a methodical fact-based process (something Trump would never comprehend!), but how does it start? Simple, creative, out-of-the-box ideas are often the foundation of scientific discoveries. In fact, internally applied ultraviolet light for antimicrobial treatment (the other idea in Trump’s statement that has invited much scorn) has been studied by a team at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. So which side is being anti-science here?
Now imagine if you were the president and had a pandemic on your hands, where the entire country is giving in to fear, panic, and despair. Wouldn’t you be desperate to give people hope? Trump has perhaps taken this too far, prioritizing reassurance over accuracy particularly when no one had the answers yet, initially announcing that things were under control and that the virus would soon disappear. At the same time, he is never one to admit that he was wrong, so he attempts to rewrite history. In any case, he appeared to want to tell people, “Hey, this thing isn’t invincible- look what our disinfectant wipes can do. We can beat this.” So he threw ideas out there, so that people could latch on to something, anything, and get through this crisis one way or another.
Then, as either a failed attempt at damage control or simply a troll move, he claimed that he was being sarcastic - granted, he may not exactly know what the term means - and the media had a field day, with pieces accusing him of gaslighting.
Relatedly, he faced much criticism for his comments on hydroxychloroquine. There is a fine line between spreading optimism and exercising enough caution not to push potential benefits of a drug that has not been fully tested, and few would argue that Trump has sufficient tact and careful choice of words to navigate this challenge. What is truly absurd, however, is how he was blamed when a couple drank fish tank cleaner containing chloroquine, resulting in the husband’s death. The deceptive headlines characterized this as “attempting to take Trump’s coronavirus ‘cure’”.
The amount of drama generated by these statements is truly astounding. The incessant news coverage of these trivial comments begs the question: what are they not covering?
Written by Ramya. Artwork by Dhanya.
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