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| Coronavirus Task Force Briefing |
MOM: Your curfew was at eight o’clock, so why are you walking in the door at ten?
PAT: Well, Mom, I told you that I was going to Chris’s house to work on our science project.
MOM: Try again. I called Chris’s mom, and you weren’t there. [Spoken in full Mom Voice.]
PAT: Oh, that’s right, I went for a walk in the park, and the stars were so pretty that I lost track of time.
MOM: You lost track of time looking at stars outdoors in a thunderstorm? [Mom’s patented Sarcastic Voice.] And yet you walked in the door a few minutes later, perfectly dry? Try again.
PAT: Mom, I’m hurt that you don’t trust me. [Sobs insincerely.]
Obviously unprepared for the Coronavirus Task Force Briefing last Thursday, President Donald Trump asked a series of questions about the wisdom of injecting disinfectants into coronavirus patients and shining ultraviolet light inside their bodies. Noticing that Trump’s suggestions were dangerous and irresponsible, his critics have been jumping all over him. Never one to admit that he was wrong, President Trump, joined by his conservative enablers, has offered various excuses, none of them consistent with the others, and none of them consistent with what happened.
In the Pat-Mom dialogue above, Pat’s mother taught an important lesson. That lesson is simple: if you tell transparent lies, you’re going to get caught, and you will get caught faster if your lies contradict one another. President Trump needs to learn the same lesson. Also, just like Mom, the voters can figure out the truth faster than you think.
Trump Asked About Injecting Disinfectants
As I discussed in my last post, President Trump asked, among other bizarre things:
“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. 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. So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.”
Bleach and disinfectant manufacturers responded quickly, for example, the manufacturer of Lysol said this: “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).”
Donald Trump Could Learn Something about Good Public Speaking from Public Relations People: Truth and the Coronavirus
Basic public relations technique would require President Trump to immediately retract his statement and warn people not to ingest or inject disinfectants into themselves. The story would have been over in a day. Instead, we heard a bizarre series of implausible, inconsistent stories. Let’s look at them.
Story #1: The White House Said Trump Was Quoted Out of Context
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said this:
“President Trump has repeatedly said that Americans should consult with medical doctors regarding coronavirus treatment, a point that he emphasized again during yesterdays' briefing statement. Leave it to the media to irresponsibly take President Trump out of context and run with negative headlines.”
Similarly, Charlie Kirk, leader of the conservative group Turning Point USA, tweeted that:
“It’s ridiculous:
“The mainstream media is more upset about an out of context comment about disinfectant than they are about Joe Biden’s sexual assault story
“That tells you everything you need to know about the dishonest press
“They hate Trump more than they love America”
My post yesterday quoted the entire exchange just to make sure that my readers could see Trump’s context. He did not simply make an offhand comment; he talked about disinfectant and light injections at some length. Still, if he wanted to claim he was being quoted out of context, he should have stuck with that story. Instead, his story quickly changed:
Story #2: Trump Said He Was Being Sarcastic
On Friday, the day after his disastrous press briefing, Trump said that he didn’t mean that people should ask for disinfectant injections; he was just being sarcastic to provoke reporters:
“I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters just like you, just to see what would happen. I was asking a sarcastic and a very sarcastic question to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside. But it does kill it and it would kill it on the hands, and it would make things much better.”
Trump’s tone of voice, facial expressions, and phrasings did not strike me as sarcastic at all. When I’m sarcastic (a temptation I try to avoid), I usually put a sneer on my face and in my voice. Furthermore, he addressed the question to Acting Under Secretary William Bryan, not a reporter. The Annenberg School’s website FactCheck.org also sounds doubtful: “There’s no clear indication in his remarks that Trump was joking, either in his initial comment or when he returned to the topic later in the briefing. But we’ll leave it for readers to judge.”
Still, Story #2 is a shift from Story #1. It’s one thing for Trump to say that he was taken out of context. But, if he was quoted inaccurately, how can he then say that he meant what he said, albeit jokingly? It is remotely conceivable that he was being sarcastic, but this is not the same as Story #1. Just like teenage Pat in my story, Trump is not keeping his story straight.
In the YouTube era, anyone with a computer can watch the relevant clip from the White House press briefing and decide for themselves whether Trump sounded sarcastic. Feel free to post a comment saying what you think.
I think that it would be ethically wrong for the President to bait reporters by deliberately giving inaccurate information in a press briefing during a national emergency.
Story #3: Trump Was Musing Out Loud
Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of the Coronavirus Task Force who is a physician with a distinguished research record, spoke on television Sunday – three days after the disastrous press briefing – to explain that Trump was merely engaged in a “dialogue” with the other task force members: “I think I’ve made it clear that this was a musing, as you described.” She also complained that the press was spending too much time on the story.
Now, maybe Trump was “musing” and engaged in “dialogue” with the other task force members. However, a press briefing is not a college dorm session and is not the right time to discuss controversial or dangerous ideas that no one has fully vetted. Any “musing” or “dialogue” needed to happen before they invited the press. Maryland’s Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, said it best: “I think it is critical that the President of the United States -- when people are really scared and in the middle of this worldwide pandemic – that in these press conferences, that we really get the facts out there.”
In any case, even if Trump was just “musing,” Story #3 contradicts Stories #1 and #2. If he was merely musing, that means that he was quoted in context and the only mistake listeners made was to take him seriously. If he was being sarcastic, he was neither musing nor engaged in dialogue.
Speech research in the new media era
The Truth Is Always Consistent
Like our teenage friend Pat, Trump and his friends didn’t keep their story straight. The facts contradict all three of Trump’s stories. Worse, Trump’s stories contradict one another.
Of course, in the long run, liars never keep their story straight, do they?
My previous blog post argued that President Trump was unprepared for the briefing. That is why speakers need research. This post shows that, instead of admitting that Trump said something foolish and dangerous, Trump supporters and Trump himself have twisted themselves into knots trying to defend him. Unfortunately, they didn’t coordinate their stories.
Before I leave this regrettable press briefing behind, I will have one more point to make: the other task force members failed to correct Trump forcefully. The taxpayers, not the president, pay these people’s salaries, and their first loyalty needs to be to the people of the United States of America, not to him. Keep a lookout for my next post.
P.S.: New York television news reports that “New York City's Poison Control Center for exposure to certain household chemicals more than doubled after President Donald Trump suggested injecting disinfectant might be one way to combat COVID-19, the city said Saturday.” Maybe the President should be careful about speaking carelessly, musing or making sarcastic comments. Maybe he should do his homework before, and not after, he talks to reporters in public.
Image: White House Flickr
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