American Family Association governmental affairs director Sandy Rios defended President Donald Trump’s comments that Americans could possibly inject disinfectant to fight the coronavirus.
Rios, a weekday religious-right radio broadcaster, began the Monday broadcast of “Sandy Rios in the Morning” attacking members of the press who have questioned and criticized Trump after he suggested at a press briefing Thursday that an “injection” of disinfectant could be used to treat people diagnosed with coronavirus. (Trump claimed the next day he made the suggestion to reporters sarcastically “just to see what would happen.”)
“I see the disinfectant that 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?” Trump said. “As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”
Trump also suggested that UV light could somehow be shone inside the body to fight the virus. “So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful, light—and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it — and then I said suppose you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way,” he said.
In response to Trump’s comments, the makers of Lysol issued a statement discouraging people from doing what the president suggested. The company stated, “As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route).” Health professionals urged Americans not to ingest disinfectants.
But Rios was determined to defend Trump’s comments, regardless.
Rios told her listeners that she had been watching a television series about ultra-wealthy businessmen who helped shape the development of large portions of America, such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Rios said one of the uniting themes of the “great minds” in the series was their “ability to see things that other people couldn’t see.” Rios questioned whether any of the reporters criticizing Trump had been with an inventor who was thinking up new solutions to a problem.
“Ironically, it occurred to me that often when the president says something like that and they quickly accuse him—‘He’s crazy! He’s out of his mind! How could he say that?’—often, well let’s see, it just turns out to be true,” Rios said.
Rios then attempted to back up Trump’s remarks on UV light by pointing to findings that UV light can kill viruses on surfaces–but scientists suggest its use on inanimate objects, not people, and warn it would be dangerous to expose the human body to UV light. Nevertheless, Rios defended Trump’s intellect.
“The president is not, as a matter of fact, crazy at all. He’s crazy like a fox. He’s very smart, and he knows so many more things than those 20, 30-year-old [reporters], maybe 40 … he might just know more than they know, but they will never admit it,” Rios said. “They just, they pounce like vultures on a piece of red meat.”
