Trump claims the media misrepresented his coronavirus cure comments. Video proves otherwise.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump accused the media of misreporting the facts surrounding his widely ridiculed comments on Thursday about disinfectant injections and sunlight being possible miracle coronavirus treatments.

There’s just one problem — there’s video proving he’s lying. It demonstrates the lengths to which he’s willing to go to shift blame instead of simply admitting he misspoke.

Trump’s new line, as expressed in tweets posted on Saturday, is that the “corrupt & sick” media got it “wrong” by reporting that he was “speaking & asking questions of Dr. Deborah Birx” about “sunlight etc. & the CoronaVirus.”

“What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately,” the president continued.

But video from Thursday’s briefing shows clearly that Trump was speaking directly to Birx when he asked her, “I would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if there’s any way that you can apply light and heat to cure [coronavirus] ... I’m not a doctor, but I’m, like, a person who has a good you-know-what.”

Suffice it to say that Birx looked less than thrilled with Trump’s comments. Watch for yourself:

Here's Trump's tweet claiming he wasn't speaking to Dr. Birx about "light and heat" being a potential coronavirus cure, followed by the video clip proving he's lying pic.twitter.com/lYhxpO3tlz — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 25, 2020

Here’s the backstory: During Thursday’s briefing, William Bryan, undersecretary for Science and Technology at the Department of Homeland Security, discussed preliminary government research indicating that “heat and humidity suppress Covid-19” and “commonly available disinfectants work to kill the virus.”

After Bryan’s presentation, Trump took to the podium and made a deeply bizarre inference.

“Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light ... 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’re gonna test that,” Trump said, addressing Bryan. “And then I see disinfectant, where it knocks it [coronavirus] 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’d be interesting to check that. So, that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.”

The exchange with Birx happened later during the briefing.

Trump’s tweets claiming he wasn’t addressing Birx when he made his bizarre “light and heat” comments represented the second straight day he tried to rewrite history about Thursday’s briefing. On Friday, as his comments came under heavy criticism, Trump told reporters he was being “sarcastic” and merely asking a “question to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside.”

However, video in this instance also proves that neither of those claims is true.

Here's a mashup of Trump claiming today he was just asking "a very sarcastic question to the reporters in the room" when he mused about disinfectant injections as a possible coronavirus miracle cure, followed by the original clip showing beyond a doubt that he was not doing that. pic.twitter.com/wby4ucd59Q — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 24, 2020

While Trump desperately tries to spin the incident into grist for an attack on the press, Birx has gone to painstaking lengths to avoid criticizing the president. During a Fox News interview that aired over the weekend, she said of the president, “When he gets new information, he likes to talk that through out loud ... I think he just saw the information at the time immediately before the press conference and he was still digesting.”

Dr Birx defends Trump musing about disinfectant injections: "When he gets new information, he likes to talk that through out loud ... I think he just saw the information at the time immediately before the press conference and he was still digesting." pic.twitter.com/UPr9XwPhaq — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 24, 2020

Then, during a CNN appearance Sunday, Birx expressed frustration that people are still talking about the incident three days later.

“It bothers me that this is still in the news cycle,” she said. “I worry that we don’t get the information to the American people that they need when we continue to bring up something that was from Thursday night.”

“It bothers me that this is still in the news cycle,” Dr. Deborah Birx says about Pres. Trump’s disinfectant remarks. “I worry that we don’t get the information to the American people that they need when we continue to bring up something that was from Thursday night" #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/eu9n1jCVkO — State of the Union (@CNNSotu) April 26, 2020

One could argue Birx should be more upset that Trump would make such irresponsible comments — ones that prompted an increase in calls to emergency hotlines in a number of states. Still, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator has already made it abundantly clear that not only is she unwilling to criticize the president, but she’ll say whatever it takes to stay in his good graces.

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