What Trump Actually Said About the Use of Disinfectants as a Potential Cure to Coronavirus

Why is it that so many on the political left feel the need to twist Donald Trump's words or even tell lies about what Trump said in order to attack him? On April 24th, the Internet blew up after Trump discussed the potential use of disinfectant to treat people suffering from COVID-19 infections. Many FB and Twitter posts falsely claim or suggest that Trump told members of the public to drink disinfectant or inject themselves with disinfectant. Trump did not say or suggest either of these things.

Before I proceed, I should make clear what I think of the President.  In my opinion, Donald Trump is a pathological liar.  He is a proudly ignorant. He is a xenophobe and a narcissist. He is modern day philistine. He lacks empathy for real people and he is a bully with mob boss tendencies. His ignorance, lies, inaction and incompetence throughout the month of February failed the American people as the Corona Virus to spread throughout the United States. I've seen ample evidence to prove all of these things. These are some of the many reasons Trump will go down in history as an abysmally incompetent politician.

That said, here are Trump's actual words regarding disinfectant:

"So I asked Bill a question some of you are thinking of if you're into that world, which I find to be pretty interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said, that hasn't been checked but you're gonna test it. And then I said, supposing it brought the light inside the body, which you can either do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you're gonna test that too, sounds interesting. And I then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute, and is there a way you can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it'd be interesting to check that. So you're going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds interesting to me, so we'll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it goes in one minute, that's pretty powerful."

[As he made his statement, Trump repeatedly looked at Bill Bryan, the head of the science and technology directorate at the Department of Homeland Security]

Over the past months, Trump has shown hostility to science. On April 4, Trump brashly touted the use of a malaria drug for COVID-19, even though the drug had never been subject to double-blind studies. Despite these serious shortcomings regarding science and medicine, Trump did not suggest that people should ingest or inject disinfectant.  Trump was wondering out loud whether coronavirus could be cured using disinfectant. He said (looking at Bill Bryan), "So it'd be interesting to check that." He wasn't telling people to get treated using disinfectant, as he recklessly did regarding Hydroxychloroquine.

Here is my suggestion: Whenever people on the political left concoct or embellish facts as they attack Trump, they lose credibility. When they do this, they open themselves up to accusations that they have Trump Derangement Syndrome. Most importantly, when they take liberties with facts, they are doing the same thing Trump often does and this risks losing potential November votes from people from the political center and right.

It is my hope that we on the left would become more self-critical about our own reckless use of accusations. Truly, there are plenty of good reasons for condemning Trump without making shit up.

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Never Must a Pandemic Crisis Be Wasted

Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine in action. Never should a crisis be wasted. The Economist explains:

Where does this lead? Covid-19 will make people poorer, sicker and angrier. The coronavirus is impervious to propaganda and the secret police. Even as some leaders exploit the pandemic, their inability to deal with popular suffering will act against the myth that they and their regimes are impregnable. In countries where families are hungry, where baton-happy police enforce lockdowns and where cronies’ pickings from the abuse of office dwindle along with the economy, that may eventually cause some regimes to lose control. For the time being, though, the traffic is in the other direction. Unscrupulous autocrats are exploiting the pandemic to do what they always do: grab power at the expense of the people they govern.

Klein's Shock Doctrine is summarized by Wikipedia:

[The Shock Doctrine] centers on the exploitation of national crises (disasters or upheavals) to establish controversial and questionable policies, while citizens are excessively distracted (emotionally and physically) to engage and develop an adequate response, and resist effectively.

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St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner Criticized for Refusing to Bring Charges for Videotaped Daylight Shooting

There was a shooting three days ago in the Central West End during broad daylight and it was captured on video. The bullets hit the victim in the shoulder, stomach and back, although he is expected to survive. I was surprised to hear that the assailant was released from custody the following day without any charges being filed. St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has seen this video but states that her office needs more time to decide whether it will bring any charges against the assailant. Gardner mentions self-defense even though the victim had his hands down at his side when the assailant started shooting and the assailant continues shooting the victim even though the victim was running away. Are we to the point that we should only prosecute perfectly easy cases? I'd like to show this video to the Circuit Attorneys in the 100 biggest cities to see how many wouldn't immediately bring charges.

Gardner has come under a lot of criticism for the way she has been running her office since she took office in January, 2017.  And see here.  And here.  Recently, Gardner has been shown to be less than honest when making accusations against the St. Louis Police Department.

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Donald Trump Brings a Pocketknife to a Gunfight at the Easter Showdown

Donald Trump, meet Biology. I don’t believe you’ve ever met anyone quite like Biology before.

Biology doesn’t care about your threats or your bombast. Your lawyers can’t sue Biology out of existence. You can’t sway Biology by dangling your hush money. You can’t grab Biology by the pussy. Biology doesn’t care if you pound the podium and yell at it. Biology doesn’t care if you accuse it of being stupid. Biology doesn’t care that you are Commander in Chief. Your bombs and missiles mean nothing to Biology. Temporarily propping up the stock market with funny money means nothing to Biology. Biology didn’t care when you blame Coronavirus on Chinese people. Biology doesn’t care about your fantasies that national borders are somehow relevant to Coronavirus. Biology doesn’t care about fake news. Biology doesn’t care that you think you are smarter than career scientists and health care professionals. Biology doesn’t care when you assure the nation that you have an amazing brain trust consisting of people like Mike, Jared and Ivanka.

It appears that you’ve shown up to a gunfight with a pocketknife.

You can stand up to your podium and deny how Biology operates, but Biology will eventually have its own day at its own podium and Biology won’t respond using cheap words. Biology will speak in terms of hundreds of thousands of dead bodies. Biology will speak in terms of thousands of people who could have been saved had you taken this situation seriously earlier, when you had the opportunity to act. If thousands of people needlessly die, this should upset Americans, because we get upset even if one airplane crashes, killing 200. Instead of sounding the alarm to protect thousands of people, however, you denied facts and wasted time. Here’s a sampling of your pronouncements:

Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control.” Feb. 2: “Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” Feb. 10: “By April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus very much under control in the USA. … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” Feb. 26: “The risk to the American people remains very low.” At the same time, The Post reported, “Trump’s advisers struggled to get him to take the virus seriously,” despite telling him that “the virus was likely to dominate life in the United States for many months.”

Instead of immediately putting resources where they were needed, testing and ventilators, you told the nation that everything was fine. Everything was OK. And then you told Americans that they should pack the churches on Easter because (you have claimed) that day is somehow important to you. Perhaps you chose this date to pack churches because you and your evangelical friends are planning to roll out a faith-healing cure to the Coronavirus.

You won’t need to spend the upcoming days figuring out how to argue that this mess is not your fault, because you are already really good at deflecting blame. You are always well prepared to tell the world how smart you are and how other people are idiots. Spewing self-enhancing lies is clearly your main priority.

I admit that it’s possible that the Coronavirus might simply melt away with the spring warmth and that it might not kill a million Americans. This is possible, even though it looks highly unlikely given the deaths in Italy, Iran and Spain. Rather than argue about those numbers now, let’s check back in two months to see how things turned out for you and Biology. Truly, let’s check back in a couple months and then we’ll see how your amazingly brilliant plan is working.

If things don’t turn out well, you can always embrace that idea often attributed to Joseph Stalin: “A Single Death is a Tragedy; a Million Deaths is a Statistic.” And maybe you can stir in some social darwinism, drawing from your campaign attack on John McCain. To paraphrase: “I like people who don’t die of Coronavirus.”

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Coronavirus as an Opportunity to be Racist

Coronavirus is not an excuse to be racist. We all know that. Nonetheless, as we struggle to deal with the Coronavirus crisis, significant numbers of Americans are dusting off their favorite go-to tactic, racism, and aiming it toward the Far East. This time, it’s racism against Chinese people. For many examples, see the attached clip from Samantha Bee’s show (begin at 3:05 min for many examples where Fox Commentators follow Donald Trump’s xenophobic lead).

I struggle to find words to express my disappointment at this celebration of bigotry, and it’s not simply because I have many acquaintances and friends who are Chinese. It’s not simply because my daughters are Chinese. It’s because engaging in bigotry is a cruel thing to do to any another human being. We need to stop painting hundreds of millions of people with this broad brush. Have we learned NOTHING from the civil rights movement? For those who are tempted to push back at me and continue to blame “the Chinese” for our current struggle, which particular people are you angry at? You know it’s not all the Chinese people. You know that viruses don’t respect national borders. If you know anything about the evolution of viruses, you know that the next pandemic might originate in your own hometown.

Making this even more irritating for me, many of these racists claim to be Christians. Here’s my advice for those of you who are working hard to rename Coronavirus as “Chinese Coronavirus” or “Chinese Virus”: Take a deep breath, look in the mirror, take seriously your own commandment to love your enemy and put your fucking dog whistles away.

PS. This entire episode in hyper-nationalism is predictable by “Terror Management Theory.” (TMT). It’s well documented that people do this kind of shit when they are scared. See, here and here. Also see "The Worm at the Core," an excellent book on TMT by Sheldon Solomon.

That said, we can work harder to become better versions of ourselves in this crisis. We need to do a better job of keeping the focus on saving lives.

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