Fact Check: Did Trump once ask people to 'inject bleach' to cure COVID-19?
WASHINGTON, DC: Amid the debate and controversy following the Senate hearing of Dr Anthony Fauci about the origins of COVID-19, a rumor has surfaced on social media claiming that President Donald Trump once asked people to inject bleach to cure COVID-19. The claim has sparked mockery and criticism, prompting a fact-check into the viral rumor.
Claim: Donald Trump asked people to inject bleach to cure COVID-19
According to the viral rumor, social media users claimed that Trump told people to "inject bleach" into their bodies as a way to tackle the virus.
A post on X stated that "People are dogpiling on Dr. Fauci as a way to get people to forget that Trump suggested people inject bleach in their veins to cure Covid."
The claim was amplified by other users before and after Fauci’s Senate hearing, spreading on Facebook and Instagram as well, garnering hundreds of thousands of views.
Fact Check: Donald Trump didn't explicitly suggest using bleach to cure COVID-19
Although in April 2020, during a media briefing, Trump did ask members of the government's coronavirus task force to look into whether disinfectants could be injected inside people to treat COVID-19, he did not explicitly tell people they could or should inject bleach into their bodies.
In follow up questiones when reporters asked whether cleaning products like bleach and isopropyl alcohol would be injected into a person, Trump said those products would be used for sterilizing an area, not for injections. Hence, the claim is rated as mostly true.
Since then, the rumor resurfaced several times, both online and offline, with the earliest example dating back to 2020 when former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris' social media team repeated the allegation.
The claim resurfaced after Anthony Fauci's Senate hearing
The claim resurfaced after the Senate hearing of Dr Fauci, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director who worked under both Trump and Biden.
During the hearing on Wednesday, July 29, Fauci refused to answer questions, instead choosing to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights more than 100 times while being questioned by Republican senators led by Rand Paul.
The hearing addressed the allegations that Fauci misled Congress about the origins of Covid-19, government-funded research, pandemic policies, and federal recordkeeping.
Fauci has consistently denied misleading Congress or funding research that caused the pandemic and has maintained that the scientific evidence available at the time supported the theory that the virus originated naturally, while remaining open to further investigation.
