trump press conference injecting breach
President Donald J. Trump departs after speaking with members of the coronavirus task force during a briefing in response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Thursday, April 23, 2020 in Washington, DC
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
  • Trump famously touted injecting disinfectant as a cure for COVID-19 during a press briefing.
  • Olivia Troye, a former aide, said that the White House Coronavirus Task Force was "in shock."
  • The task force then had to discuss how to mitigate people actually ingesting bleach, Troye said.
  • See more stories on Insider's business page.

A former aide has revealed what happened when then-President Donald Trump first suggested injecting disinfectant to treat COVID-19, HuffPost reported.

Olivia Troye, who served on the White House Coronavirus Task Force and also as a staffer to former Vice President Mike Pence, shared the "inside story" in a video released by the anti-Trump Republican Accountability Project on Saturday.

"We were in shock," Troye said in the clip. "You could see everyone looking around the room, saying, 'did he really just say that?'"

Prior to the daily briefing on April 23, 2020, Troye said that the task force had agreed with Trump that he should communicate that "the mitigations and the 45 days to slow the spread had worked and the numbers had dropped."

Trump, however, veered off-course in the presser and instead decided to focus on a briefing from the Department of Homeland Security about sunshine and cleaning products potentially being able to reduce the number of hours that the coronavirus could live on a surface.

During the conference, Trump famously and erroneously suggested that injecting disinfectant inside people could work as a cure for COVID-19.

He said: "And I then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute and is there a way you can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs."

Injecting oneself with bleach or any other disinfectant is not only dangerous and even life-threatening, but it is also not an effective treatment or cure for the coronavirus.

Troye explained how the task force was horrified and frustrated by the comments. "He just threw away all of the work we've done," she said. "That night there was a discussion of how do we mitigate people actually ingesting bleach," she continued.

Later on in the clip, the former aide cited this incident as an example of why Trump should not run for office again. "He's hinted at running at 2024, Troye said, "That's why we've got to remember moments like this... because we can't allow him or someone like him to ever hold power again."

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