28
Thu, Mar

Lysol-Gate: Trump Still Trying to Figure Out What It Means to Act Like a President

LOS ANGELES

GELFAND’S WORLD--We keep waiting for that moment when even the right wing decides it’s had enough of Trump’s mentality.

Trump’s latest idiocy – the suggestion that doctors ought to be testing the use of cleaning chemicals and ultraviolet light internally – like down your throat -- should have been a last straw even for the MAGA crowd. But it seems that they have too much invested in The First Crybaby to give up at this point in the proceedings. I won’t dwell on the obvious conclusions that have already been made so well by so many: Trump is not too bright, he tends to spout off on whatever he heard most recently, and he doesn’t seem to have the ability to think critically on anything. After all, the kitchen counter is constructed very differently from the inside of your bronchial tubes, and the one doesn’t necessarily resist what the other takes up routinely. But there is one aspect that Lysol-Gate reveals: 

Trump still hasn’t figured out what it means to act like a president

Let’s imagine for the moment that his explanation for his bone-headed remarks about washing your lungs with Clorox had indeed been sarcasm, and not intended seriously. That is, after all, how he tried to walk back the story after the international outcry blew his stupidity out of the water. It was all sarcasm on his part. And if the press didn’t recognize it at the time, he apparently wasn’t required to say, “Just kidding.” 

Suppose Trump had, indeed, been a remarkably good actor, good enough to deliver the lines about injecting household cleaners internally, even though he didn’t really mean them. That’s the current party line for Republicans. But is it proper for the President of the United States to be that dishonest when he is speaking to the American people about a critical matter of public health? The term un-presidential doesn’t begin to describe that course of conduct. 

What would it say about the country’s elected leader if, in this moment of supreme national tragedy, he chose to take the time of the news media and television viewers just to make a morbid joke that obviously nobody got? Trump has used sarcasm as an explanation and excuse previously, when he was caught in an obvious stupidity or downright lie. He didn’t really mean it, we’re supposed to believe. 

Let’s try a more believable explanation 

Trump actually meant what he said. That’s because he surrounds himself with advisors who have been chosen for their political craziness and personal loyalty rather than ability and professional achievement. Importantly, it wasn’t just a presentation on how to get Corona virus off of doorknobs and pizza delivery boxes that confused Trump so badly. Even Trump can figure out that what he ingests – Big Macs and diet Cokes – aren’t really good for cleaning kitchen counters, and it follows that Clorox and Lysol aren’t all that good for treating pneumonia. 

But there are actually people who believe in applying bleaching solution internally. These ideas seem crazy to the scientifically trained (or anybody who passed both high school biology and chemistry), but there is that small cult-like fraction of the population who push chlorine dioxide enemas as a treatment for autism in children. (Yes, that is what I typed. Read it again.) They also suggest feeding it by mouth. There have been investigations and legal action by the authorities to try to shut this down, [https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-federal-judge-enters-temporary-injunction-against-genesis-ii-church] including a federal court injunction against something called the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing, forbidding them from inviting people to treat Covid-19 with what is, after all, a strong industrial bleach. 

The use of chlorine dioxide as an anti-autism treatment (and a sort of panacea for other things) is not a new idea. It has been exposed repeatedly by the Respectful Insolence blog. 

So here comes Trump and touts an old quack nostrum that is not only useless for autism, it is downright toxic. But it has its adherents, and there is a strong overlap between the chemical quacks/autism activists and the anti-vaccination groups. We knew before the 2016 election that Trump had, at various times, been contacted by these groups and had even evinced a certain level of sympathy for their claims. Trump has obviously been affected by the crackpot wing in this country that pushes all sorts of useless and toxic nostrums. He spoke sympathetically to the anti-vaccine crowd at one time, and treats science and logic like it was a return of the communist menace. This all fits with Trump’s personal need to be anti-science because it fits with his need to deny the reality of global warming. 

So when Trump is given the chance to put 2 and 2 together in his pea-brain, he does so and out comes a repetition of standard quackery. 

The only interesting thing about the whole episode is that one of the chlorine dioxide quacks, when challenged by the press and the tv networks, would have doubled down and defended the insertion of bleach through both ends of the alimentary tract. Trump has other needs, the most important being the maintenance of his image against personal embarrassment, so he pivots on a dime and throws the quacks under the bus. “I was being sarcastic.” 

He didn’t realize that he had to pretend sarcasm until the whole world rose up and mocked him for his words. Curiously, the mainstream press didn’t notice the quackery underlying the Trump nostrum. They just thought it was some incredibly superficial idea that Trump had picked up after a presentation on cleaning viruses off of surfaces. 

And by the way, when Trump claimed he had just been sarcastic, that is, in and of itself, a confession that the earlier statement was wrong and stupid. 

The requirements of the job 

I have often pointed out that although I am not a planetary physicist or an epidemiologist, my college training and graduate education left me with a sense of who I can trust. I suspect that most MIT undergraduates would say much the same thing. I don’t mean that the guy I’m quoting about global warming is necessarily faithful to his wife or somebody who always drives safely, but when it comes to scientific questions, there is a level of honesty and expertise that is expected. 

And that person I put my trust in has to be smart enough to understand the topic under consideration – and this next part is particularly important – must be willing and able to seek out and find experts who will tell him the parts that he is himself not yet expert in. 

And that is what presidents normally do, or at least should be doing. Their appointments are not without an ideological tinge. For offices such as Attorney General and Secretary of Defense, how could it be any different? But we have the right to expect that an ideological appointment will be limited to candidates who also fulfill at least the minimal requirements of the office. 

Particularly when it comes to terrorism and pandemics, we as a people have the right to expect that the president will surround himself with people who are competent to fulfill the duties of the office. Importantly, we also have the right to demand that these people be allowed to fulfill their duties without being undercut by the president if they happen to say something that is not in agreement with his personal prejudices. With Trump we have been getting the worst of all possible worlds. Most of his appointments are hard-right trouble makers who exist merely to ruin the environment and damage the rights of workers. The few appointees who had some ability were forced out when they inevitably disagreed with one of Trump’s idiocies. 

It’s nothing new. There are lots of books exposing the disaster that has been the Trump presidency. But when the situation involves a serious epidemic, we have not only the need, we have the right to a higher quality of governance. This is what the news media should be harping on at this moment. 

Taking responsibility 

As far as Trump is concerned, nothing is ever his fault. On the other hand, he loves to take credit for gains, even when they are not real. This is the moment when the strong majority of the American people should make clear that this is no longer acceptable. Within a few days, the American death toll from Covid-19 will exceed the total for the Viet Nam War. By the fall of 2020, it could be near twice that level. But in the meanwhile, Trump has a reputation for undercutting and then firing anybody who speaks unpleasant truth, or who disagrees, no matter how trivially, with him. In a situation where we need honest, competent people in charge, the Trump style conflicts with the national need. 

The ultimate outrage 

By now, most of you have heard how Dr Bright was demoted from his post overseeing the vaccine program. He is an extremely competent person with a strong record, but he got on the president’s wrong side for being a little too candid about the use of hydroxychloroquine. Will Fauci be next? 

There is an unsettling corollary to all of this. It is obvious that Fauci and his peers have had to walk on egg shells in terms of speaking the truth to the American people and the press. How does a serious medical scientist respond to the idiocy of Trump’s proposal that we test the internal use of cleaning products? 

Addendum 

At the time of this writing, I became aware of a piece contributed at about the same time to the Skeptical Raptor blog by Dorit Reiss, an expert in the law of public health and vaccination. She discusses the cult-like background for the suggested use of chlorine dioxide in all manner of ailments, now extended by the cranks to Covid-19.

 

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])

-cw

 

 

Get The News In Your Email Inbox Mondays & Thursdays