Nancy Pelosi: Trump Told People to ‘Swallow Clorox’

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) claimed Thursday, falsely, that President Donald Trump told people to “swallow Clorox.”

Pelosi was commenting on the president’s response to a question by Playboy White House correspondent Brian Karem, who asked Wednesday whether Trump would commit to a peaceful transfer of power, “win, lose, or draw.” Trump — who has said before he would leave if it lost — said he did not expect to lose, and that it depended on what happened with mail-in ballots.

Pelosi told reporters:

I mean, if he says the people swallow Clorox, and we hear about it for the rest of our lives, but he’s trying to have the Constitution of the United States swallow Clorox, and I appreciate these questions that all of you have this morning, and I guess provoked by the arrogance and the disregard for the Constitution with the President’s statement last night.

The president never told people to “swallow Clorox.” As Breitbart News has noted:

[A]s 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.”

Likewise, Democratic nominee Joe Biden claimed Wednesday that Trump told people to “inject bleach into your arm.”

On the subject of the Constitution, Pelosi said erroneously earlier this week that the House can impeach the president “every day of the week for anything he does.” The Constitution prescribes impeachment for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

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). His new 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.