Donald Trump stood at the podium during a White House briefing this past Thursday, and suggested that the American people should be injected with disinfectant in an effort to kill COVID-19. What was more perplexing about Trump's tone-deaf suggestion was that he allowed those remarks to linger for hours before claiming that he was only being sarcastic.
Howard Stern, who returned to his Sirius XM show Monday following a week-long hiatus, was understanbly baffled and ready to tackle the story. What he wasn't prepared for was hearing a caller who defended Trump's latest gaffe. "What's it going to take? I don’t get it," he asked, perThe Hollywood Reporter, adding, "I'm very frustrated. It is mind-blowing to me. We have such a disconnect in this country — this [caller] is saying he saw that and he’s OK with it."
When Stern reached his tipping point, he suggested that Trump and his diehard supporters should congregate for a rally where all of them follow through on his advice for killing the virus.
"I would love it if Donald would get on TV and take an injection of Clorox and let’s see if his theory works," Stern said, according to the New York Daily News. "Hold a big rally, say fuck this coronavirus, with all of his followers, and let them hug each other and kiss each other and have a big rally." His co-host Robin Quivers added, "A big cocktail of disinfectant," to which Stern chimed in, saying, "Yeah. And all take disinfectant and all drop dead."
When the caller argued that Stern was being biased because of his support for Joe Biden, he didn’t hide his allegiance to the Democratic presidential nominee. "I am all in on Joe Biden," he responded. "You see the wall that's right next to you, I'll vote for the wall over a guy who tells me that I should pour Clorox into my mouth. Listen, I think we are in deep shit. I think we could have been ahead of this curve."
"I just can't take it," Stern said after hanging up on the caller. "I don't know what is going on in our country."
On April 24, the Poison Control Center reported at least 30 cases of exposure to disinfectant in New York. While the spike in such cases around the country is likely a byproduct of Trump’s recommendation, he refused to take any responsibility for his ill-conceived recommendation.
Reckitt Benckiser, the company behind Lysol, also released a statement in response to Trump's remarks, notifying people "that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body." Prior to last week, that would go without saying.
