President Trump claims injecting disinfectant remark was 'sarcastic'
Trump addresses controversial comment from task force briefing; chief White House correspondent John Roberts reports.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., responded Tuesday to President Trump's criticism of her showcasing gourmet ice cream in her freezer during the stalemate over the most recent coronavirus aid legislation.
“He makes a big fuss about my having ice cream in my freezer," Pelosi told MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace. "That's his latest today ... I have ice cream in my freezer. I guess that's better than having Lysol in somebody’s lungs, as he is suggesting.”
Pelosi was responding after Trump used her ice cream as an example of Democratic inaction during the pandemic, telling reporters earlier Tuesday, "if you look at Nancy Pelosi eating ice cream on late-night television."
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The speaker's comment referenced the president's apparent suggestion that disinfectants could be injected into a person in order to kill the coronavirus.
"I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute," he said during a coronavirus task force briefing last week. "And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets on the lungs and it does a tremendous number, so it will be interesting to check that. So that you're going to have to use medical doctors. But it sounds, it sounds interesting to me."
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The president subsequently claimed that he was being "sarcastic."
Lysol parent company Reckitt Benckiser issued a statement Friday reminding people that "under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route)."
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Pelosi showed off a freezer full of ice cream during an appearance earlier this month on CBS' "Late Late Show." The Trump reelection campaign parlayed Pelosi's appearance into an ad portraying the Speaker as elitist by juxtaposing Pelosi showing her freezer full of ice cream with headlines that Americans were waiting for "hours" at food banks.
"Right now, it's survival mode," one man says in the ad. In the following clip, Pelosi says: "I don't know what I would have done if ice cream were not invented."
The commercial ends with a spoof quote, playing off of one attributed to French Queen Marie Antoinette.
"Let them eat ice cream," the quote reads, before citing "Nancy Antoinette."
Fox News' Tyler Olson and Peter Aitken contributed to this report.
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