@mattblaze I strongly agree that he was criminal, corrupt, and incompetent, but so far as I can tell he did not in fact ever urge the public to inject bleach.

(He _did_ urge his scientific advisors to investigate whether injecting disinfectant might be effective against COVID-19. Which is a stupid idea, and even if it hadn't been a public press briefing wasn't the place to raise it. But it was definitely "someone should investigate whether this works" not "the general public should start doing this", and I think the distinction matters.)

@gjm Nope. He made that statement publicly and prominently, undercutting non-crackpot measures.

There is no way to defend this.

@mattblaze He did indeed say it publicly and prominently, and it was stupid. But he didn't say that the general public should inject bleach.

I'm not saying it wasn't stupid and dangerous. Only that it wasn't "urging the public to inject bleach".

@gjm Yes it was. Poison control centers had an uptick in people ingesting and injecting poisons after he said this.

But sure, nitpick my choice of words. You are clearly a very smart person.

@mattblaze There was an uptick in suicides across Europe after Goethe published "The sorrows of young Werther" but that doesn't mean he told people to kill themselves.

It's not nitpicking to say that it's better to say true things than false things. There are quite enough _completely true_ terrible things one can say about Donald Trump without needing to say false things as well.