You just absolutely know the call went out from every editor in every newsroom in America. “Find me someone who’s injected themselves with Lysol!”
There’s surely a Pulitzer out there for the reporter who unearths the Trump supporter in some backwoods corner of Hicksville who listened to the president’s press conference last week and dutifully self-medicated by pumping a cupful of household disinfectant into his veins.
The happy discovery of such a hapless rube would represent for much of the media the perfect, defining story of this pandemic, hitting in one go all three of their primary targets. It would be another gruesome episode in the misery porn that now daily pours forth from every screen and newspaper. It would demonstrate beyond contradiction how irredeemably stupid Trump voters are ("They’ll even drink bleach if he tells them to!").
"Trump is likely angry about Republicans for the Rule of Law's ad showing Trump’s suggestion that doctors find a way people can inject disinfectant."
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) April 27, 2020
If it's true you're angry about our ad, here it is again, @realDonaldTrump, for your viewing convenience.https://t.co/wnyFqlPmUF pic.twitter.com/7qd5KpgbnQ
Above all, of course, it would represent the smoking gun they’ve been seeking all along, proof that President Trump is responsible for the deaths of untold Americans through his response to the crisis ("Blood on his hands!").
They might get lucky, but I doubt it. A few weeks ago, the press went into a similar frenzy when they thought they’d found an Arizona man who’d taken some of the hydroxychloroquine that the president had been touting as a possible therapy for COVID-19 and promptly died. But it turned out, after just a little more detailed and balanced reporting, that his wife had actually supplied some fish tank cleaner that contained the chemical in a drink. Just this week local police opened a murder investigation into his death.
Unfortunately for the ever-hopeful media, there is unlikely to be an epidemic of Lysol-induced fatalities, mainly because Trump supporters are not the mindless cult-members they are depicted to be in most of the news coverage of American politics. In fact the present crisis is exposing once again the fundamental reason why Donald Trump, for all his verbal infelicities, emotional incontinence and unsettling intellectual vacancy, is a formidable political figure, more in tune with the hopes and values of American voters in the heartland than his opponents.
It’s worth pointing out that the president wasn’t actually recommending that people take the bleach cure. His infamous remark came during one of his familiar press conference ambles through some misty science he’d obviously less than fully absorbed. Mr Trump wondered aloud if there might be therapies to be developed from evidence that viruses can be eliminated on some surfaces by both sunlight and certain types of disinfectant.
For all the ridicule, the sunlight part is in fact the subject of active scientific research. At least one biotech company in California has been working on a therapy that would channel ultraviolet light inside the body in an effort to weaken viruses. The disinfectant part was a typical Trumpian verbal muddle, not actually an invitation to people to inject the stuff into themselves, but a misordered speculation that perhaps medical research might be able to find something in the chemicals that are used in household products that could be of use in the human body.
The president’s verbal indiscipline has got him into plenty of trouble over the years, and this was another model of unclarity. But once again, it took a hostile press corps and a compliant chorus of media and entertainment types to frame it as a direct invitation to self-harm.
This happens again and again with President Trump. Perhaps the most persistent misrepresentation that has achieved the status of unchallenged truth is that he once said “Nazis are good people” when commenting on racially charged demonstrations in August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He never actually said anything of the sort. His guarded words of mild approval were directed at those who oppose the removal of historical monuments to confederate generals.
We are back to that famous line by the journalist Salena Zito in 2016 that President Trump’s supporters take him seriously but not literally, while the media take him literally but not seriously. While reporters hear “drink the Lysol”, his supporters hear a president constantly seeking to find reasons for hope and progress against a media backdrop that accentuates misery and loss.
There’s a gathering expectation among political pundits and pollsters that the president is sinking, pressed under by the pandemic and a new Great Depression. His approval ratings have slipped and most voters give him low marks for his handling of the crisis. Opinion polls suggest he is on track to lose the presidency in November.
But look at the details of the polling and you see why it’s premature to write him off. An Emerson poll this week shows him trailing Joe Biden, his Democratic opponent, by six points. But asked about their enthusiasm, almost two thirds of Trump voters said they were very or extremely excited to vote for him. Less than half of Biden voters said they were similarly motivated.
April National Poll:
— Emerson College Polling (@EmersonPolling) April 28, 2020
How excited are you to support your candidate for President? @realDonaldTrump supporters-
36% extremely excited
28% very excited
22% mildly excited
15% not that excitedhttps://t.co/qUXPjfeOwQ pic.twitter.com/T2dkMy72o1
April National Poll:
— Emerson College Polling (@EmersonPolling) April 28, 2020
How excited are you to support your candidate for President? @JoeBiden supporters-
22% extremely excited
23% very excited
29% mildly excited
26% not that excitedhttps://t.co/qUXPjfeOwQ pic.twitter.com/XKYv8c0M8n
Since he stepped on to the political stage, Mr Trump’s political success has owed less to what he says and more to what he represents: a visible raised middle finger to the people who have dictated the terms of political and cultural debate in the country for the last few decades. He has been in many respects less a candidate with a platform and solutions and more an antihero appealing to voters, most of whom are not by any means extremist, bigoted or stupid, who feel disenfranchised and disdained by controlling elites. Their passion for him, their determination to stop the country reverting to the ancien regime and their willingness to look past the verbal curiosities remain his most potent political weapons.
THE TIMES
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