CNN host Anderson Cooper accused President Trump of lying in a “Soviet fashion” after the president claimed his remarks about injecting disinfectant were “sarcastic.”
“What you just heard is the president of the United States just lying right there,” Cooper began. “It’s fascinating because he’s lying about something we all witnessed just yesterday of him talking to his own coronavirus task force about doing research into injecting bleach disinfectants into people, somehow cleaning them from the inside, because disinfectant works on tabletops and things like that.”
Cooper then asked CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins about the president’s remarks at Thursday’s White House briefing.
“Now, he’s in, like, Soviet fashion trying to rewrite what we all know and saw — as though we are all morons. Am I wrong here?” Cooper asked.
“Well, this is a tactic we have seen the president take before,” Collins said. “When he has made a remark and it has been widely criticized by the experts in the area, he often has said, or his aides have used, this excuse that he was just being sarcastic.”
“I do want to note the press secretary put out a statement earlier, and she did not say the president was being sarcastic when he made those remarks. Instead, she accused the media of taking the president out of context.”
On Thursday, Trump attempted to brainstorm about potential treatments for the coronavirus after Bill Bryan, head of the science and technology directorate at the Department of Homeland Security, gave a report that shows the virus dying more quickly in summertime environments.
“Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous … whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you are going to test it,” Trump said to Bryan at the briefing.
“And then, I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you are going to test it.”
Bryan responded, “We’ll get the right folks who could.”
“And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning?” Trump later said.
