How it works

NASA.

Donald Trump, at COVID briefing: Lemme ask, and I think it was a very interesting point by the, the lady with the scarf, Dr. Brexit, who was talking about these terrible deaths — which we have very few, at the moment, and going down all the time, and soon we'll be reopening and it’ll be so wonderful — but when the person dies, what happens to the virus in that person? Can it escape and infect somebody else? Do you have to catch it like a Pokemon or how do you stop it?

DR. BIRX: I, I’m sure you’re, as you know the virus is mainly transmitted when it is aerosolized, it can live briefly on surfaces, but a virus needs a host to replicate and survive so, while our pathologists and others who touch the dead body must of course be cautious of residual infection as they do their work, when the person carrying the disease dies, the virus in that person will die as well.

TRUMP: Interesting — so if we could find a way to temporarily kill a person who has COVID, and waited a certain time to bring them back to life, that could cure them of COVID?

DR. BRIX: Well, when a person is dead, Mr. President, they’re dead, there’s no —

TRUMP: But just suppose. I was a great fan of Ted Williams, the baseball player, and when they froze him, what the people at the lab told me, and I’m not sure if they were doctors but they’re very knowledgeable people, they said that if God forbid Ted Williams had diseases, and they brought him back, those diseases would be all gone. And maybe if we froze people — with their consent of course — that would kill the virus because it would assume the person was dead. Just a thought. Okay, Dr. Fauci, I understand you have some numbers.

[Many news reports, tweets, etc. later]

Ben Shapiro: You see this is how the media tries to poison the discourse. Accusing Trump of saying we should kill people to cure them of coronavirus. First of all Trump won a presidential election, whatever else you think of him and I’ve said many things critical of the President, of course he doesn’t think you cure people by killing them and he would never say such a thing, why would he even say that. Go to the tape. Do you hear him saying “I think we should kill people” or anything like that. No. Okay. Second, the president was using a hypothetical. And the definition of a hypothetical, I can tell you from law school, is something that isn’t so. And that’s what Trump was doing. So he was doing the opposite of what the media accuses him of. By using a hypothetical he was in effect saying this is a situation that does not make sense, as we all agree it does not. And again I’ve said many, many things critical of the President...

Bret Baier: Tonight on Special Report I’ll be talking to cryogenics engineers who are giving a frosty reception to liberals who are belittling their profession and President Trump in another he-said they-said about the President’s alleged statements about how best to kill the coronavirus. We’ll also hear from our All-Star Panel led by Mollie Hemingway, about how this controversy affects middle-class jobs not only in cryogenics but also in mortuaries, headstone sculpting, and dozens of other businesses that could be affected by these reckless allegations.

Tom Cotton on Face The Nation: Whenever the naysayers lash out at President Trump, they close another potential avenue of discovery for a cure, and they make it harder to discover the source of this worldwide pandemic. You have to wonder why they’re so committed to protecting the Red Chinese.

[The following week: Trump asks Dr. Fauci about fighting the virus with angels.]