Last week, you knew the anti-Trump opposition press was going to latch onto President Trump’s disinfectant remarks. It might not have been the most artful remark. In fact, the only reason why it was a terrible remark is that the liberal media would go ballistic over it, distracting us with their nonsense as we fight his Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. Partially, it wouldn’t shock me if Trump had the latter in mind, given the media’s pervasive tenacity to take everything he says literally. Frankly, I don’t care. Trump is president. They’re not. And given how badly the media has covered this White House, they can be ignored for the next century. Here’s what caused the uproar (via NYT):
President Trump’s self-assessment has been consistent.
“I’m, like, a very smart person,” he assured voters in 2016.
“A very stable genius,” he ruled two years later.
“I’m not a doctor,” he allowed on Thursday, pointing to his skull inside the White House briefing room, “but I’m, like, a person that has a good you-know-what.”
Mr. Trump’s performance that evening, when he suggested that injections of disinfectants into the human body could help combat the coronavirus, did not sound like the work of a doctor, a genius, or a person with a good you-know-what.
During the televised briefing, Mr. Trump said he's seen "the disinfectant where it knocks it [coronavirus] out in a minute."
He continued, "And is there a way you can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs — so it'll be interesting to check that. ... It sounds interesting to me."
William Bryan, the head of the science and technology office at the Department of Homeland Security, appeared to quickly shoot down the idea. Asked by a reporter, "There's no scenario that could be injected into a person, is there?" Bryan replied, "No."
Reportedly, Dr. Deborah Birx, one of Trump’s top officials on his Wuhan coronavirus task force, is not happy that the media is still predictably talking about this. Yet, this is something these clowns will zero-in on, trying to find some hook in order to weaponize it against the White House. So, they tried to suggest that hordes of people were poisoning themselves off of Trump’s remarks. That’s fake news (via Reason):
...the president suggested that perhaps an "injection" of disinfectant could help cure people of COVID-19. Critics of Donald Trump went to town—and rightfully so!—while supporters scrambled to settle on a defense (both "he didn't really say that" and "he did but it was sarcasm" have been in play). By Saturday morning, social media was abuzz with articles about people calling poison control centers, each crafted to illustrate how Americans had apparently taken Trump's ramblings to heart and consumed household disinfectants like Lysol and bleach.
The problem? Articles shared as illustrations of this actually said no such thing.
One article making the rounds, from the New YorkDaily News, is headlined "A spike in New Yorkers ingesting household cleaners following Trump's controversial coronavirus comments." But the article makes no mention of anyone deliberately consuming household cleaners. It simply states that 30 people called the city's poison control hotline "over fears that they had ingested bleach or other household cleaners."
Fearing that you ingested something doesn't jibe with having intentionally consumed that substance.
The authors of the Daily News piece, Anna Sanders and Chris Sommerfeldt, try to circumvent this inconvenient fact by noting that over the same time period in 2019, the Poison Control Center "only handled 13 similar cases." And while this time, nine calls were about possible Lysol exposure and 10 about bleach, last year's calls contained "no cases reported about Lysol exposure and only two were specifically in regards to bleach."
The paper doesn't present any other data about calls to Poison Control for comparison.
[…]
But the Daily News piece is far from the only poison-control story being framed misleadingly. A story out of Kentucky that's being shared as "evidence" people have been consuming household cleaners following Trump's Thursday statements is actually about calls to Kentucky poison control centers in March.
Trump didn’t suggest this. Again, this is why no one likes you. https://t.co/uF9OzhQzEC
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) April 27, 2020
That some in the press are still pushing the lie that Trump verbatim told people to inject themselves with Lysol explains why there is such distrust and contempt for legacy media.
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) April 27, 2020
It’s a swing and a miss again because the media had to overreach. They must attack Trump, who didn’t tell Americans to inject Lysol into their veins. This is the classic case of the isolated incident. Trump mentions, say hydroxychloroquine, as a possible therapeutic as we wait for a vaccine and one couple in Arizona injects something that sounds similar but it’s not hydroxychloroquine, and the media blames Trump. The woman was left in critical condition, while her husband died after they both ingested…fish tank cleaner. You simply cannot make this stuff up. Former CNN Producer Steve Krakauer even admitted that Trump never said we should inject disinfectants into our bloodstream, but he did note the other thing the media should talk about. One is that there should be a more balanced approach to the lockdowns and the re-openings, even though the former saved lives. That being, brace yourselves for the media shaming if there is a slight uptick in new infections. It’s going to happen, but it’s not like this administration said that there would be zero new infections in states that have met the stage one reopening criterion:
One of the storylines I've written abou tis the geographic bias in coverage of coronavirus, and that has continued as we've begun to see some strategic easing of lockdown, stay-at-home orders. While the focus has been on the beaches being populated by what the media perceives as Trump voters, California, for example, reported 50,000 beachgoers in what looked like far more crowded beaches on Friday.
But the point here is not to COVID-shame anyone. We need to be smart about how we approach emerging from lockdown. It's all about balance.
I've been enjoying following former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, but I also can' t understand his argument about the effectiveness of the lockdowns. Anyone who says we would have less coronavirus-related deaths if we all just went about our business as usual doesn't have much of a case.
I'd highly suggest everyone watch this 15-minute interview with the most interesting voice I've seenon how we strategically get back to some levels of normalcy - how we can be smart and nuanced about it - Dr. David Katz on Bill Maher Friday night. Mark Halperin's COVID-related newsletters have been excellent in presenting different points of view also.
A great many states have seen cases dip and are ready to re-open slowly. That’s fine. I’m glad it’s happening, but I know there can be a mixed bag of some new infections in some states and a mini-explosion for others. Even the Trump administration knows phase one isn’t going to go smoothly for some states, but they’re confident with these guideless that we can minimize a destructive second wave. Also, America needs to start getting back to work, but safely. And that really can’t happen if most of the media, which hates Trump, peddles fake news trash about poison control center calls spiking because of Trump
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