White House press secretary Jen Psaki falsely claimed Wednesday that former President Donald Trump told people to “inject bleach” when she was confronted with the fact that more Americans have died from coronavirus under President Joe Biden.
Fox News’ Peter Doocy quoted Biden’s statement during the second presidential debate in 2020 that “anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States of America.” About 220,000 Americans had died at that point; more have now died under Biden than Trump. “Is that the standard?” Doocy asked.
Psaki replied testily, claiming that Trump had exposed others to coronavirus after testing positive himself before the first debate (a claim that emerged earlier Wednesday, and which Trump immediately denied). She also claimed that Trump had suggested that people “inject bleach” as a way to treat the coronavirus. Psaki has used this claim before — which is false, as Breitbart News has demonstrated on several previous occasions, when Biden used the same false claim on the campaign trail:
Trump never told anyone to inject bleach, much less in their arm. Nor did he tell anyone to injest bleach — another common Democratic Party talking point. On Thursday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) claimed — falsely — that Trump told people to “swallow Clorox.”
As Breitbart News has noted, and as the transcripts of White House press briefings confirm, Trump was discussing the future use of experimental ultraviolet light technology to disinfect surfaces and remove the coronavirus. The UV technology is already being used to disinfect offices and other spaces. Trump wondered openly whether it might be possible to “inject” UV light into the body — a technology that is currently in development, and which was reported in the media just days before.
When he was asked a follow-up question about whether he thought disinfectant should be “injected into a person,” Trump said no: “It wouldn’t be through injection. We’re talking about through almost a cleaning, sterilization of an area.”
The transcript of Trump’s original remarks, clearly disproving Psaki’s false claim, are at the White House archive site.
Psaki also claimed that Biden was doing a better job because he was distributing vaccines, though she did not note that the vaccines were developed under President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, at a time when Biden was skeptical of the vaccine.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.