President Joe Biden didn’t pull punches during a recent fundraising stop, mocking former President Donald Trump’s false 2020 suggestion that household cleaning products like bleach might be a remedy to COVID-19.
“Just a few days ago, [Donald Trump] asked a famous question in one of his rallies: Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Biden reportedly told a crowd of supporters during a Thursday fundraising stop in Houston, Texas. “Well, Donald, I’m glad you asked that question, man. I hope everyone in the country takes a moment to think back to what it was like in March of 2020.”
Biden was referring to the onslaught of COVID-19 infections sweeping the country at that time. As millions of Americans got sick and thousands more died, Trump routinely downplayed the severity of the virus and floated combating the virus using sunlight and disinfectant.
“And then I see the disinfectant where it 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 during an April 2020 press briefing. “Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”
The statement caused the makers of household cleaning products Lysol and Dettol to issue a statement reminding people not to ingest dangerous cleaning products.
At his Houston fundraiser, Biden took the opportunity to insult Trump’s past remarks.
“Remember when he said inject bleach?” Biden asked, according to reporters at the event. “I think he must’ve done it.”
Trump himself contracted COVID-19 in October 2020 and was hospitalized for three days. In an attempt to show his supporters he was healthy, Trump took a drive in his presidential vehicle with Secret Service members while he was still sick with the virus.
Nearly 900 Secret Service agents were ultimately infected with the virus between March 2020 and March 2021. More than half were in the division directly responsible for protecting the president and vice president.