President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign conducted an organizing call and released a video Saturday featuring supporters celebrating the Affordable Care Act’s 14th anniversary and warning against former President Donald Trump’s attempts to abolish it.
Biden was joined by former President Barack Obama and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi to commemorate the law, widely known as “Obamacare.”
During the joint address, President Joe Biden spread a widely debunked hoax about Donald Trump.
“Now – Donald Trump and his MAGA extremists – are determined to try again” to repeal the ACA, Biden said. “We won’t let that happen. We’re determined as ever to defend and strengthen the Affordable Care Act – and to make health care a right – not a privilege in America. I know we can do it.”
Biden also complimented Pelosi, who spearheaded the efforts in the House during her stint as Speaker in 2010, saying the Affordable Care Act “would not be law without her.”
But Joe Biden also spread a widely debunked hoax about former President Donald Trump while trying to make the argument that his 2020 campaign rival doesn’t care about science.
“This is a man who doesn’t care about science and reason,” Biden claimed.
“Remember, during the pandemic Donald Trump told us to inject ourselves with bleach,” Biden said, adding, “He said there’s nothing to worry about if you do that.”
The Bleach Hoax has been spread widely by the Democratic Party. It has surfaced occasionally in biased news media since former President Trump held an April 23 press conference with his Coronavirus Response team.
But after the Bleach Hoax began to get traction in the anti-Trump media, even left-leaning “fact checkers” like Politifact debunked it.
Politifact surprisingly got the story right:
- Joe Biden said President Donald Trump told Americans that drinking bleach could help combat the coronavirus, but that’s not correct.
- Trump did not explicitly recommend ingesting a disinfectant like bleach. But he did express interest in exploring whether disinfectants could be applied to the site of a coronavirus infection inside the body, such as the lungs.
Here is video from former President Trump’s press conference:
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“A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting<‘ Trump said. “So, 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’re going to test it.”
“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,” he continued. “And I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting, right? 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,” he added. “So it’d be interesting to check that. So that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.”
During the press conference, ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl asked Department of Homeland Security official William Bryan about the remark.
“The president mentioned the idea of a cleaner, bleach and isopropyl alcohol emerging,” Karl said. “There’s no scenario where that could be injected into a person, is there?”
“No, I’m here to talk about the finds that we had in the study,” Bryan said. “We don’t do that within that lab at our labs.”
“It wouldn’t be through injection,” Trump said. “We’re talking about through almost a cleaning, sterilization of an area. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work. But it certainly has a big effect if it’s on a stationary object.”
Later in the press conference, Trump recommended using “light and heat to cure,” and Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, said that she had never heard of heat or light “as a treatment.”
The next morning, when multiple press accounts quoted experts as saying that injecting or ingesting disinfectants was harmful, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany issued a statement claiming Trump’s statements had been taken “out of context.”
“President Trump has repeatedly said that Americans should consult with medical doctors regarding coronavirus treatment, a point that he emphasized again during yesterday’s briefing,” McEnany said. “Leave it to the media to irresponsibly take President Trump out of context and run with negative headlines.”
That morning, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams also issued this warning via Twitter, “A reminder to all Americans- PLEASE always talk to your health provider first before administering any treatment/ medication to yourself or a loved one. Your safety is paramount, and doctors and nurses are have years of training to recommend what’s safe and effective.”
Trump said his statements the day before were “sarcastic.”
Here’s the kicker: Donald Trump’s remarks about UV light turned out to be scientifically accurate.
The Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology in December 2022 found that, “After exposing viral suspensions placed in darkened tubes to UV LED light, the team found that wavelengths of 285 nm were highly effective at inactivating the virus and almost as effective as wavelengths of 265 nm, inactivating 99.9% of the coronavirus in under 30 seconds.”
“Furthermore, other viruses showed similar sensitivity to these wavelengths, indicating that this technology could be useful against many types of human coronavirus, including SARS-CoV-2,” the journal article’s authors add.
The scientific journal Environmental Science & Technology in August 2022 had published a research article that showed, “UV-C Light Completely Blocks Aerosol Transmission of Highly Contagious SARS-CoV-2 Variants.”
“The prevention of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in a natural system by treating elements of the surrounding environment is one more weapon in the arsenal to combat COVID,” the authors wrote.
So while the news media mocked Donald Trump by making up a hoax that he had told Covid patients to ‘inject themselves with bleach,’ the truth is that he was discussing scientific breakthroughs that promised effective treatments for coronavirus infections like Covid-19.
But spreading hoaxes for Joe Biden is nothing new. The career Democratic politician even claimed that the reason he ran for president is because of the Fine People Hoax.
