Debacle of Trump's coronavirus disinfectant comments could be tipping point
Debacle of Trump's coronavirus disinfectant comments could be tipping point
The US president plans to ‘pare back’ his daily coronavirus briefings after falsely claiming his suggestion to inject cleaning products had been ‘sarcastic’
Coronavirus – latest US updates
Coronavirus – latest global updates
See all our coronavirus coverage
A grim-faced Donald Trump arrives with Vice-President Mike Pence to address and uncharacteristically curt coronavirus taskforce media briefing on Friday.
A grim-faced Donald Trump arrives with Vice-President Mike Pence to address and uncharacteristically curt coronavirus taskforce media briefing on Friday. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
David Smith and Kari Paul
Published onSat 25 Apr 2020 14.07 BST
5,632
For Donald Trump, it was the strangest and most news-making thing he could have done: instead of taking questions from journalists, dominating the nation’s airwaves yet again, the US president gave a short pre-written statement and then stalked off the stage.
Three months and 50,000 deaths: the defining Covid-19 moments in the US – timeline
Read more
The abrupt end of Friday night’s daily press conference, which has become a ribald, unruly and often shocking ritual in America during the coronavirus pandemic, was probably the clearest sign yet of how badly Trump’s bizarre statements over disinfectant have shaken his administration.
Instead of going on the offensive after the world reacted with shock and horror to his Thursday night suggestion that the coronavirus might be treated by injecting disinfectant into a human body, Trump claimed he was being “sarcastic” and then retreated from public view.
The New York Times reported that some officials in the White House thought “it was one of the worst days in one of the worst weeks of his presidency.”
But it was Trump’s silence on Friday night that spoke volumes.
White House coronavirus taskforce briefings are often two-hour primetime marathons but on Friday Trump turned on his heel as reporters shouted questions in vain. Perhaps it was a fit of pique, or perhaps revenge on the reporters that he sees as persecutors. He may also have reached a tipping point, with his own advisers warning that the televised briefings are hurting him far more than they help.
Right on cue, minutes later, the Axios website reported that Trump plans to “pare back” his coronavirus press conferences, according to four of its sources. Next week, it said, “he may stop appearing daily and make shorter appearances when he does”.
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If he does that then Trump’s remarks over disinfectant will have been the straw that broke the camel’s back over the nightly ritual of the virus briefings. For weeks they have dominated the US headlines as the nation struggles to come to terms with a pandemic that has cost 50,000 American lives. They have provided a canvas for Trump’s rage, a platform from which he can attack his enemies and – only occasionally – a place where an American president can seek to reassure a scared and besieged public enduring stay-at-home orders to curb the virus.
But Trump’s remarks over disinfectant changed all that.
On Thursday, Trump had suggested that doctors study the idea of people receiving injections of disinfectant to combat the virus. He also extolled the potential and unproven benefits of ultraviolet light. Medical experts, politicians and even disinfectant makers denounced the suggestion and warned the public against consuming the product. Trump’s comments generated internet memes and headlines around the world.
His old rival from 2016, Hillary Clinton, chimed in with a quick jab on Twitter. “Please don’t poison yourself because Donald Trump thinks it could be a good idea,” she said. His new rival for the 2020 election, former vice-president Joe Biden, also pitched in. “I can’t believe I have to say this, but please don’t drink bleach,” he said, mixing mockery with a public service announcement.
From almost the moment the words left Trump’s mouth it was clear some sort of damage limitation was needed.
But, as shock and amazement traversed the globe, it was slow in coming. When it did arrive, on Friday lunchtime, it was a clean-up attempt that clearly could have gone better. At a White House event Trump tried to justify his dangerous comments, falsely claiming that he was “asking a question sarcastically to reporters”.
On Friday, even as the US death toll topped 50,000 and the grim milestone of 1 million coronavirus cases grows nearer, Trump tried to make what critics saw as a desperate and dishonest U-turn.
“I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen,” the president, sitting at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, told reporters as he signed emergency funding legislation.
“When I was asking a sarcastic – a very sarcastic question – to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside, but it does kill it, and it would kill it on the hands and that would make things much better. That was done in the form of a sarcastic question to a reporter.”
But video of the briefings clearly demonstrated otherwise. There was no hint of sarcasm and Trump’s attempts to rewrite the immediate past were undermined by the evidence just a simple Google search away.
When Trump posed the question about the efficacy of disinfectant injections, he had turned to his right and was looking in the direction of Bill Bryan, the acting homeland security undersecretary for science and technology, and Deborah Birx, the coronavirus taskforce coordinator.
Donald Trump turns to the homeland security official William Bryan during the briefing at which the president extolled the virtues of ingested disinfectant.
Donald Trump turns to the DHS official William Bryan during the briefing at which the president extolled the virtues of ingesting disinfectant. Photograph: White House/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock
But Trump – in his attempt at damage limitation – gamely pressed on. The Reuters reporter Jeff Mason asked if Trump wanted to clarify that he was being sarcastic and ensure no one misunderstood him.
He replied: “Yes. I do think that disinfectant on the hands could have a very good effect. Now, Bill is going back to check that in the laboratory. You know, it’s an amazing laboratory, by the way. It’s amazing the work they do.”
One more time, Mason gamely pressed: “Just to clarify, you’re not encouraging Americans to inject disinfectant?”
Trump: “No. Of course not. Interior-wise, it was said sarcastically. It was put in the form of a question to a group of extraordinarily hostile people, namely the fake news media.”
But Trump’s familiar turf of attacking the media was not working. In the middle of a pandemic, with Americans dying in their hundreds every day, the leader of the administration trying to guide the nation back to safety and normality had put even more lives at risk. His jumbled, inaccurate assertions only deepened concerns about Trump’s embrace of flawed science that could endanger public health.
Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s own former Food and Drug Administration director, was among those many people now forced to warn Americans not to follow their own president’s advice. He told a CNBC interviewer: “I think we need to speak very clearly. There’s no circumstance under which you should take a disinfectant or inject a disinfectant for the treatment of anything, and certainly not the treatment of coronavirus.”
The scandal exploded just a day after a New York Times report that detailed how Trump is coping with the pressures and isolation caused by the coronavirus pandemic. In a lengthy piece it portrayed a US president who has become cut off from many of his former friends and associates as he lives and works in the White House, unable to leave and travel and hold the campaign rallies that he appears to crave.
It described Trump bingeing on cable news for many hours each morning and often late into the night, surveying the wreckage of a once-booming economy that he had planned on being the main plank of his reelection strategy.
The Coronavirus Could Upend Trump’s China Trade Deal
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/21/coronavirus-trump-china-trade-war/
Bleak data on China’s economic outlook counters claims by Trump officials that the U.S. economy can get quickly back on track when the lockdown lifts.
BY JACK DETSCH, ROBBIE GRAMER | APRIL 21, 2020, 9:10 AM
U.S. President Donald Trump attends a state dinner hosted by China's President Xi Jinping
U.S. President Donald Trump attends a state dinner hosted by China's President Xi Jinping in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Nov. 9, 2017. THOMAS PETER/AFP
U.S. President Donald Trump’s multibillion-dollar trade deal with China could be yet another economic casualty of the spread of the novel coronavirus, according to a congressional report provided exclusively to Foreign Policy.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, established by Congress two decades ago and appointed by members of both parties, said that stalled trade and depressed consumer demand in China from the virus “raises the possibility that implementation could be disrupted,” upending Trump’s efforts to end a two-year trade war with Beijing that he began in 2018.
Trump administration officials and Beijing have insisted that the so-called phase one of the deal, which calls on China to buy $200 billion worth of U.S. energy and agricultural products, is set to move ahead as planned, even as the president himself took shots at Beijing from the White House podium over the weekend as the spread of the virus has now killed more than 40,000 Americans.
Yet China could invoke a clause in the agreement that allows for fresh trade consultations between the two countries “in the event that a natural disaster or other unforeseeable event” postpones the ability of either party to verify that the clauses are being met, according to the commission report, a copy of which was obtained by Foreign Policy.
The stress to the trade deal from the coronavirus comes as Trump began to sharpen his attacks against China over the weekend amid news reports that the U.S. intelligence community is considering the possibility that the novel coronavirus may have accidentally escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, where the first cases were detected. Trump had said earlier this month that he’d “love to have a good relationship” with China.
“It could have been stopped in China before it started and it wasn’t, and the whole world is suffering because of it,” Trump told a White House briefing on Saturday. Trump ally Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, also introduced legislation last week that would allow U.S. citizens to sue China for deaths and economic harm from the virus, and other lawmakers have called for the United States to consolidate supply chains for pharmaceuticals and other critical goods.
Was coronavirus born in a China lab? Donald Trump says US investigation on
1 min read . Updated: 16 Apr 2020, 01:47 PM IST
Agencies
China insists it has been transparent and has sharply criticized US officials who cast doubt on that
The source of the virus remains a mystery
As the source of the coronavirus remains a mystery, US President Donald Trump has said his government is trying to determine whether the virus emanated from a lab in Wuhan, China. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has told China to come out clean on what they know about Covid-19.
At a White House news conference Trump was asked about the reports of the virus escaping from the Wuhan lab, and he said he was aware of them. "We are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened," he said.
Pompeo conveyed the US position to his counterpart, Yang Jiechi, China's top diplomat. "The Secretary stressed the need for full transparency and information sharing to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and prevent future outbreaks," the State Department said.
China insists it has been transparent and has sharply criticized US officials who cast doubt on that. A senior Trump administration official last week said lives could be saved globally if China allowed the United States to work directly with laboratories in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak began.
Tensions have increased again between the world's top two economies over the global pandemic, which has now infected more than 2 million people, as President Donald Trump has pulled U.S. funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), accusing it of being "China-centric."
Pompeo has also said the United Nations organization had failed to deliver on its promises. He has repeatedly accused Beijing of covering up the scale of the outbreak in the early days and not sharing accurate data.
Fox News reported that the virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory not as a bioweapon, but as part of China's effort to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States.
This report and others have suggested the Wuhan lab where virology experiments take place and lax safety standards there led to someone getting infected and appearing at a nearby "wet" market, where the virus began to spread.
The US president plans to ‘pare back’ his daily coronavirus briefings after falsely claiming his suggestion to inject cleaning products had been ‘sarcastic’
Coronavirus – latest US updates
Coronavirus – latest global updates
See all our coronavirus coverage
A grim-faced Donald Trump arrives with Vice-President Mike Pence to address and uncharacteristically curt coronavirus taskforce media briefing on Friday.
A grim-faced Donald Trump arrives with Vice-President Mike Pence to address and uncharacteristically curt coronavirus taskforce media briefing on Friday. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
David Smith and Kari Paul
Published onSat 25 Apr 2020 14.07 BST
5,632
For Donald Trump, it was the strangest and most news-making thing he could have done: instead of taking questions from journalists, dominating the nation’s airwaves yet again, the US president gave a short pre-written statement and then stalked off the stage.
Three months and 50,000 deaths: the defining Covid-19 moments in the US – timeline
Read more
The abrupt end of Friday night’s daily press conference, which has become a ribald, unruly and often shocking ritual in America during the coronavirus pandemic, was probably the clearest sign yet of how badly Trump’s bizarre statements over disinfectant have shaken his administration.
Instead of going on the offensive after the world reacted with shock and horror to his Thursday night suggestion that the coronavirus might be treated by injecting disinfectant into a human body, Trump claimed he was being “sarcastic” and then retreated from public view.
The New York Times reported that some officials in the White House thought “it was one of the worst days in one of the worst weeks of his presidency.”
But it was Trump’s silence on Friday night that spoke volumes.
White House coronavirus taskforce briefings are often two-hour primetime marathons but on Friday Trump turned on his heel as reporters shouted questions in vain. Perhaps it was a fit of pique, or perhaps revenge on the reporters that he sees as persecutors. He may also have reached a tipping point, with his own advisers warning that the televised briefings are hurting him far more than they help.
Right on cue, minutes later, the Axios website reported that Trump plans to “pare back” his coronavirus press conferences, according to four of its sources. Next week, it said, “he may stop appearing daily and make shorter appearances when he does”.
Advertisement
If he does that then Trump’s remarks over disinfectant will have been the straw that broke the camel’s back over the nightly ritual of the virus briefings. For weeks they have dominated the US headlines as the nation struggles to come to terms with a pandemic that has cost 50,000 American lives. They have provided a canvas for Trump’s rage, a platform from which he can attack his enemies and – only occasionally – a place where an American president can seek to reassure a scared and besieged public enduring stay-at-home orders to curb the virus.
But Trump’s remarks over disinfectant changed all that.
On Thursday, Trump had suggested that doctors study the idea of people receiving injections of disinfectant to combat the virus. He also extolled the potential and unproven benefits of ultraviolet light. Medical experts, politicians and even disinfectant makers denounced the suggestion and warned the public against consuming the product. Trump’s comments generated internet memes and headlines around the world.
His old rival from 2016, Hillary Clinton, chimed in with a quick jab on Twitter. “Please don’t poison yourself because Donald Trump thinks it could be a good idea,” she said. His new rival for the 2020 election, former vice-president Joe Biden, also pitched in. “I can’t believe I have to say this, but please don’t drink bleach,” he said, mixing mockery with a public service announcement.
From almost the moment the words left Trump’s mouth it was clear some sort of damage limitation was needed.
But, as shock and amazement traversed the globe, it was slow in coming. When it did arrive, on Friday lunchtime, it was a clean-up attempt that clearly could have gone better. At a White House event Trump tried to justify his dangerous comments, falsely claiming that he was “asking a question sarcastically to reporters”.
On Friday, even as the US death toll topped 50,000 and the grim milestone of 1 million coronavirus cases grows nearer, Trump tried to make what critics saw as a desperate and dishonest U-turn.
“I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen,” the president, sitting at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, told reporters as he signed emergency funding legislation.
“When I was asking a sarcastic – a very sarcastic question – to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside, but it does kill it, and it would kill it on the hands and that would make things much better. That was done in the form of a sarcastic question to a reporter.”
But video of the briefings clearly demonstrated otherwise. There was no hint of sarcasm and Trump’s attempts to rewrite the immediate past were undermined by the evidence just a simple Google search away.
When Trump posed the question about the efficacy of disinfectant injections, he had turned to his right and was looking in the direction of Bill Bryan, the acting homeland security undersecretary for science and technology, and Deborah Birx, the coronavirus taskforce coordinator.
Donald Trump turns to the homeland security official William Bryan during the briefing at which the president extolled the virtues of ingested disinfectant.
Donald Trump turns to the DHS official William Bryan during the briefing at which the president extolled the virtues of ingesting disinfectant. Photograph: White House/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock
But Trump – in his attempt at damage limitation – gamely pressed on. The Reuters reporter Jeff Mason asked if Trump wanted to clarify that he was being sarcastic and ensure no one misunderstood him.
He replied: “Yes. I do think that disinfectant on the hands could have a very good effect. Now, Bill is going back to check that in the laboratory. You know, it’s an amazing laboratory, by the way. It’s amazing the work they do.”
One more time, Mason gamely pressed: “Just to clarify, you’re not encouraging Americans to inject disinfectant?”
Trump: “No. Of course not. Interior-wise, it was said sarcastically. It was put in the form of a question to a group of extraordinarily hostile people, namely the fake news media.”
But Trump’s familiar turf of attacking the media was not working. In the middle of a pandemic, with Americans dying in their hundreds every day, the leader of the administration trying to guide the nation back to safety and normality had put even more lives at risk. His jumbled, inaccurate assertions only deepened concerns about Trump’s embrace of flawed science that could endanger public health.
Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s own former Food and Drug Administration director, was among those many people now forced to warn Americans not to follow their own president’s advice. He told a CNBC interviewer: “I think we need to speak very clearly. There’s no circumstance under which you should take a disinfectant or inject a disinfectant for the treatment of anything, and certainly not the treatment of coronavirus.”
The scandal exploded just a day after a New York Times report that detailed how Trump is coping with the pressures and isolation caused by the coronavirus pandemic. In a lengthy piece it portrayed a US president who has become cut off from many of his former friends and associates as he lives and works in the White House, unable to leave and travel and hold the campaign rallies that he appears to crave.
It described Trump bingeing on cable news for many hours each morning and often late into the night, surveying the wreckage of a once-booming economy that he had planned on being the main plank of his reelection strategy.
The Coronavirus Could Upend Trump’s China Trade Deal
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/21/coronavirus-trump-china-trade-war/
Bleak data on China’s economic outlook counters claims by Trump officials that the U.S. economy can get quickly back on track when the lockdown lifts.
BY JACK DETSCH, ROBBIE GRAMER | APRIL 21, 2020, 9:10 AM
U.S. President Donald Trump attends a state dinner hosted by China's President Xi Jinping
U.S. President Donald Trump attends a state dinner hosted by China's President Xi Jinping in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Nov. 9, 2017. THOMAS PETER/AFP
U.S. President Donald Trump’s multibillion-dollar trade deal with China could be yet another economic casualty of the spread of the novel coronavirus, according to a congressional report provided exclusively to Foreign Policy.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, established by Congress two decades ago and appointed by members of both parties, said that stalled trade and depressed consumer demand in China from the virus “raises the possibility that implementation could be disrupted,” upending Trump’s efforts to end a two-year trade war with Beijing that he began in 2018.
Trump administration officials and Beijing have insisted that the so-called phase one of the deal, which calls on China to buy $200 billion worth of U.S. energy and agricultural products, is set to move ahead as planned, even as the president himself took shots at Beijing from the White House podium over the weekend as the spread of the virus has now killed more than 40,000 Americans.
Yet China could invoke a clause in the agreement that allows for fresh trade consultations between the two countries “in the event that a natural disaster or other unforeseeable event” postpones the ability of either party to verify that the clauses are being met, according to the commission report, a copy of which was obtained by Foreign Policy.
The stress to the trade deal from the coronavirus comes as Trump began to sharpen his attacks against China over the weekend amid news reports that the U.S. intelligence community is considering the possibility that the novel coronavirus may have accidentally escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, where the first cases were detected. Trump had said earlier this month that he’d “love to have a good relationship” with China.
“It could have been stopped in China before it started and it wasn’t, and the whole world is suffering because of it,” Trump told a White House briefing on Saturday. Trump ally Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, also introduced legislation last week that would allow U.S. citizens to sue China for deaths and economic harm from the virus, and other lawmakers have called for the United States to consolidate supply chains for pharmaceuticals and other critical goods.
Was coronavirus born in a China lab? Donald Trump says US investigation on
1 min read . Updated: 16 Apr 2020, 01:47 PM IST
Agencies
China insists it has been transparent and has sharply criticized US officials who cast doubt on that
The source of the virus remains a mystery
As the source of the coronavirus remains a mystery, US President Donald Trump has said his government is trying to determine whether the virus emanated from a lab in Wuhan, China. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has told China to come out clean on what they know about Covid-19.
At a White House news conference Trump was asked about the reports of the virus escaping from the Wuhan lab, and he said he was aware of them. "We are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened," he said.
Pompeo conveyed the US position to his counterpart, Yang Jiechi, China's top diplomat. "The Secretary stressed the need for full transparency and information sharing to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and prevent future outbreaks," the State Department said.
China insists it has been transparent and has sharply criticized US officials who cast doubt on that. A senior Trump administration official last week said lives could be saved globally if China allowed the United States to work directly with laboratories in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the outbreak began.
Tensions have increased again between the world's top two economies over the global pandemic, which has now infected more than 2 million people, as President Donald Trump has pulled U.S. funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), accusing it of being "China-centric."
Pompeo has also said the United Nations organization had failed to deliver on its promises. He has repeatedly accused Beijing of covering up the scale of the outbreak in the early days and not sharing accurate data.
Fox News reported that the virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory not as a bioweapon, but as part of China's effort to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States.
This report and others have suggested the Wuhan lab where virology experiments take place and lax safety standards there led to someone getting infected and appearing at a nearby "wet" market, where the virus began to spread.
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