If extrapolated literally, 6.6 million US citizens think it's not a terrible idea to inject bleach to fight coronavirus.
Explains the more than doubling of poison control center calls after those reckless comments..
Explains the more than doubling of poison control center calls after those reckless comments..
So in a sense 98% seems suspiciously high for poll responses even assuming that the true rate of bleach-drinkers is something like 0.0001%.
It's a very minor issue and clearly grasping for a smear by the President's opponents.
Anyone who tried to drink bleach because of Trump's offhand comments that in no way endorsed doing so is beyond help or hope.
> And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we 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 would be interesting to check that. So, that, you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds—it sounds interesting to me.
But getting hung up on whether he gave a direct imperative to inject bleach, or merely floated it as something that could be worthwhile is a case of not seeing the wood for the trees.
It doesn't help that the Venn diagram of people who were already self-medicating (or worse, medicating their children) with bleach and people who support Trump probably has a significant intersection.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/health/drinking-bleach-au...
Watch the video or read the transcript yourself.
If you are the most powerful and widely-heard person in the United States, you don't get to improvise your press briefings or give dubious advice "as a joke". People often defend him with "well we've all said something stupid", or "maybe he just didn't think it all the way through". But he isn't you or me. He is the leader of the free world. He carries enormous responsibility, and he's demonstrated time and again that he can't be bothered to give a flying fart about it.
People like the man because he improvises his press conferences. They like him because he speaks off the cuff. Why, because it makes them like him. It makes them trust him (believe it or not). They don't trust the responsibility of leading them to someone who is slickly packaged by political consultants. Like that or not, that's democracy. So the question is who can the American people trust? Who DID they trust? (apologies for the all caps, not sure how to do italics). The answer is they trusted Donald Trump. Why? Because he speaks off the cuff. For some reason that's assuring to people. So if a few dozen people drink bleach due to misinterpreting a press conference, but the majority of a 350 some million person country are reassured by his making comments off the cuff, then what serves the greater good?