You’re a smart guy too, UltraVires.
What in Trump’s recent history of recommending cures suggests to you that what he meant was: “a course of action to medical professionals to research an issue, subject it to rigorous trials, then if it works, allowing it to be administered to patients”?
Perhaps your lack of sufficient hatred for Trump makes you unable to see that he has a responsibility to the nation to not blather out every dumbass bullshit thought that pops into his feeble brain.
Trump didn’t do this. He blathered publicly about dangerous nonsense. If he asked Birx privately about an idea that he had for research, that’d be really dumb (he’s not a medical professional and very clearly knows nothing and has nothing to offer about medicine), but it wouldn’t be dangerous. But he blathered publicly about dangerous nonsense. That’s what he did. Factually.
He sure did blather publicly about dangerous nonsense. Agreed. But he did NOT tell people to drink bleach or inject themselves with chemical disinfectant. That is the absurd falsehood that is being spread. You get memes like this:
And again, that is not from prisonplanet or some left wing 20 year old Bernie dude in his mother’s basement. That is posted in a seemingly reputable news source in Milwaukee.
Do you think ‘ingest’ means ‘drink’?
He did NOT say that he welcomes support from white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
He did NOT say that people should exercise 2nd Amendment remedies against his political enemies.
He did NOT say that bombs should be sent to media members who are critical of him.
He did NOT say that his supporters should attack and kill minorities.
He does not SAY a lot of things. And yet, somehow… He must be the most misunderstood president of all time.
He said that maybe we oughta inject disinfectant into the lungs to kill the virus. That’s enormously stupid and dangerous. And that’s pretty damn close to suggesting people inject themselves with disinfectant.
There’s no need for you to defend or excuse or rationalize this dangerous nonsense. It’s a choice you’re making, but you don’t have to make this choice.
Snopes rates the claim as true: Did Trump Suggest Injecting Disinfectant Could Be COVID-19 Treatment? | Snopes.com
Here is Trump’s direct quote: “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.”
That’s very clearly suggesting that maybe people should inject disinfectant. It’s supremely dumb and dangerous, and Trump deserves the mockery and criticism he’s getting.
Potus should not be spitballing and trolling, or giving medical disinformation in official venues around public health crises. It is too late to apologize. There’s no spin left in this dreidel. He must resign.
Hold up. If you’re going to be strictly literal about this, Trump never said anything about research or rigorous trials. If you want to criticize people for adding to the text, then you shouldn’t do it either. He’s just a dotty old man who mused aloud whether disinfectants should be put in the body or lungs, and he did use the word “injection”.
You don’t need medical trials to know this idea is batshit crazy. All of these products come with MSDS sheets written in 5th-grade language stating "to avoid serious injury or death, do not inhale or ingest this product.
Second, has your… whatever… caused you to be simply unable to see that Trump’s suggestion is prima facie bonkers, delusional, and dangerous? If Trump suggested that spreading mayonnaise on the feet might be something medical doctors should look into, does that deserve anything more than outright ridicule or dismissal?
Are you really that obsessed with media-nitpicking that you can’t simply call a stupid idea what it is?
One sentence caught my eye:
How about YOUR side? Do you have “ammunition” against Trump?
Resign?.. He’s just getting warmed up!
If we’ve learned anything about Trump, there is a twitterrhea storm coming with grievances past, present and future to be aired.
Subjects will be changed, new and old enemies will be called out.
Strap in, boys and girls.
Looks like some people took him at his word.
This is the third time I have said that it was a stupid idea and a monumentally stupid thing to even suggest.
But to take your analogy, if he told the doctors to “look into” seeing if putting mayonnaise on your feet will cure the virus, that is nowhere near, not even close to, advising people to put mayonnaise on their feet.
To the extent that people are actually considering doing it, it is not Trump that suggested it. It is the media falsely claiming that he did suggest it that would make some of his less intelligent supporters go out and try it.
That’s my issue with it. Not that it is unfair to Trump. He is a big boy and can take care of himself. It is the simple disinformation that the mainstream media, not the kooks, are saying that is causing the danger.
Further, I don’t think I’m adding anything to what he said. When you tell the medical powers that be to “look into” something, you are asking them to do research and to do trials and/or whatever else medical people normally do when they look into something. Where is the evidence that “look into” means spitballing or something else in this context?
I’m a lawyer. If you tell me to “look into” something, aren’t you asking me to do whatever it is lawyers do for that particular issue? You might not know everything I will do behind the scenes, because after all that’s why you are paying me, but you would expect that the outcome is a good lawyerly one whether that is good or bad for your case.
Again, it is not that this is unfair, but it is counterproductive, both to journalistic ethics, truth in news, and for the journalists’ obviously preferred outcome in November. If they had just reported that Trump showed a shocking lack of general medical knowledge by even suggesting such a thing, you would have gotten an “agreed” from me and from many swing voters a switch to Biden.
But by outright lying about what he said, you get an argument from me and from swing voters you get them wondering if Trump isn’t really telling the truth about the “fake news media” and from Trump supporters you get a doubling down of effort. What he says is bad enough: run on that.
But they’re not lying. He did suggest that maybe people should try injecting disinfectant. Those are his own words.
Not one of your examples of news articles could be accurately described as outright lying.
Not one.
He did not. He said that the doctors should “look into” it. Give me a cite where he said that people, individuals, Joe America out there with a bottle of Lysol under your kitchen sink, should “maybe…try injecting disinfectant.”
The headlines are what are important. The headlines do say different things than the body of the articles, but that is because people in many cases only read headlines.
I also posted above how a Milwaukee newspaper had a photo of Trump holding a bottle of clorox. Are you saying that because the content of the article never said that Trump specifically stated that you, the reader, should drink clorox, then that wasn’t the intent, therefore not “outright lying”?
This ignores the fact that many people, rightly or wrongly, lend factual weight to the utterances of the President of the United States. It’s safe to assume that, though he’s little more than a carnival barker and a failed real estate developer, some people are going to take his suggestion that simple household remedies might be effective, and apply their simple household remedies.
If the media has any culpability, they are at fault for airing anything Trump says because he lies more than he breathes.
But here again you’re wrong. Consider the hydroxychloroquine debacle. The media relentlessly undermined this as an unproven and possibly dangerous treatment. Did people listen to the media? No. People scrambled to get their hands on hydroxychloroquine. People on this board rushed to advise producing it and stockpiling it urgently. Some people even ingested it and died. “The media” never advised any of this. It was just a matter of Trump touting it. As I said above, for better or worse, some people take the word of the President as a serious matter of fact.
Well then, you have one less issue to worry about, because it’s demonstrably not the case.
no
Where is the evidence that “look into” means what you want it to mean here?
I’m not even going to bother answering this because I’m sure you have never seen a statement of work that says “look into” something where you didn’t spell out to the client whether that entails an evening at the law library, or filing a court case, and how many hours they’d probably get billed for it. Or whatever lawyers do. “Look into” is not a professional direction.
I think this is really the tack you were already primed to take, and you’re cherry-picking evidence to make the point.
The President is a big deal. A lot of uneducated people think the world of him. When he says “maybe the doctors should look at bleach in the lungs”, some people are going to do it. It beggars belief to blame this on the media, given that Trump’s followers typically do the opposite of what the media says when they contradict him.
Again, the media’s fault is not how they report Trump. There is no good way to quote a self-serving chronic liar. They shouldn’t be quoting him at all
The headlines are not outright lies. I’m not even sure what you mean because none of the headlines of the news articles you posted are even close to outright lies.
An obvious caricature (not a photo) of Trump holding a bottle of bleach is not a claim that Trump said to drink bleach. I can’t even imagine why you think it is.
Another one: A spike in New Yorkers ingesting household cleaners following Trump’s controversial coronavirus comments
However, look at the article. 30 calls this year versus 18 in the “same 18 hour period” last year. And note that those people called because they were “afraid” that they had been exposed to those substances.
But, look at the headline. Does the article give you the same impression as the headline, even if we can parse the words in the headline as technically true (even if we debate the term “spike”)?
Come on, guys. We’re here for honest debate. At least concede this one.