GOP Senate candidate: Trump meant 'to give hope' by telling us to inject bleach

Senate hopeful Corky Messner said last week that Donald Trump’s suggestions about injecting disinfectants to cure COVID-19 were merely “aspirational” talk.

Messner, a New Hampshire Republican seeking his party’s nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in November, made the comment on a local radio station.

After praising Trump for “doing a great job during this crisis,” he said: “I think that, you know, as we know, President Trump sometimes talks in aspirational ways that, you know, that — to give hope, perhaps, and that’s who he is. And it’s, and I think that all of us can — as consumers of that information, and we can get educated and understand what exactly he’s talking about.”

Trump told reporters last Thursday: “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. So it would be interesting to check that.”

The makers of Lysol and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission quickly warned the public not to inject the deadly chemicals. The latter tweeted on April 24: “Cleaning products are poisonous, America! Make sure you keep those cleaning products in their original bottles and locked up out of sight and out of reach of kids!”

After the White House initially downplayed Trump’s comments on disinfectants, Trump on Friday claimed they had been “sarcastic.”

Poison control centers around the country reported spikes in calls and cases of people exposed to toxic cleaners.

Josh Marcus-Blank, a spokesperson for the New Hampshire Democratic Party, slammed Messner’s comments. “If he won’t disagree with Trump when he is spreading blatant disinformation that could kill people, it’s clear he would never split with him to defend New Hampshire,” he said.

Messner has previously touted Trump’s unpopular and troubled response to the COVID-19 pandemic in political ads.

Last month, he ran a series of Facebook ads attacking Democrats for criticism of Trump and saying that Trump’s “bold, early actions (like the travel ban) have helped limit the effects of Coronavirus on American soil.”

“We need to be supportive of him at this critical time, unlike the Democrats who continually criticize the President no matter what he does,” the ad said.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.