Claim Trump told people to ‘inject bleach’ to cure COVID-19 recirculates online after Fauci’s Senate hearing

Since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, social media users have repeatedly claimed that U.S. President Donald Trump told people to “inject bleach” into their bodies as a way to tackle the virus.

In late July 2026, the rumor resurfaced again following the July 28 Senate hearing of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former chief medical advisor to both Trump and former President Joe Biden.

Fauci was called before a Republican-led Senate committee to answer questions about the pandemic and was grilled over how he managed the country’s response to COVID-19. Throughout the process, he refused to answer questions, instead choosing to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights more than 100 times. “Pleading the Fifth” protects people from answering self-incriminating questions.

In response to the tense exchange, numerous social media users expressed disbelief that Fauci had been called before Congress, instead seemingly suggesting Trump should have taken his place for a remark he allegedly made at the start of the pandemic.

For example, one X user said (archived), “People are dogpiling on Dr. Fauci as a way to get people to forget that Trump suggested people inject bleach in their veins to cure Covid.” Others echoed this claim in the days before and after Fauci’s hearing.

The rumor has spread online and offline for years, with numerous Democrats, such as Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris’ social media team, repeating the allegation.

The earliest examples of the rumor date back to 2020. They were posted on X (then Twitter) after Trump conducted a media briefing (archived) in late April, near the start of the coronavirus pandemic, during which he discussed using disinfectants, such as bleach, in the U.S. government’s response to COVID-19.

Though Trump’s comments made little sense and were ridiculed and described as dangerous by experts, under any reasonable interpretation of his words, he did not explicitly suggest people should inject themselves with bleach or other household disinfectants.

Instead, while floating the idea to the government’s coronavirus task force and the media, Trump asked whether injecting disinfectants “inside” could help fight the virus, as we further outline below. Therefore, because the social media posts making the claim since have been at best a misinterpretation and at worst a misrepresentation of what Trump said, we have rated this claim as containing mostly false information.

So what did Trump actually say?

On April 23, 2020, Trump conducted an hourlong media briefing with members of the government’s coronavirus task force (transcript).

He spoke several times throughout the conference, but just over 26 minutes in, he took over from the then-head of the science and technology directorate at the Department of Homeland Security, Bill Bryan, who had just been discussing the use of ultraviolet light and disinfectants — such as bleach and isopropyl alcohol — to kill the virus rapidly on nonporous surfaces.

In an apparent reference to Bryan’s earlier comments, Trump then said (around the 26:51 mark, emphasis ours):

TRUMP: Thank you very much. So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too. It sounds interesting.

BRYAN: We’ll get to the right folks who could.

TRUMP: Right. 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.

Four minutes later, a journalist responded to Trump’s disinfectant comments by asking whether there was any scenario in which cleaning products like bleach and isopropyl alcohol would be injected into people.

Bryan replied first, saying: “No, I’m here to talk about the findings that we had in the study. We won’t do that within that lab, our lab.”

Trump then clarified his own remarks, adding: “It wouldn’t be through injection. We’re talking about through almost a cleaning, sterilization of an area. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work. But it certainly has a big effect if it’s on a stationary object.”

At no point in the media briefing did Trump recommend that people inject bleach or other disinfectants into their bodies. He merely asked experts whether disinfectants could be injected to tackle COVID-19; a stance he later rowed back on when pressed by a journalist.

A day later, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office his question about injecting disinfectants was a “sarcastic question” to “see what would happen” (archived):

I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters 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 that would make things much better. That was done in the form of a sarcastic question to the reporters.

He then denied he was asking medical experts to look into injecting people with disinfectants.

Criticism of Trump’s comments

Nonetheless, Trump’s comments about injecting disinfectants drew widespread criticism from experts.

Reckitt Benckiser, the Britain-based maker of cleaning, disinfectant and antiseptic products Dettol and Lysol, said in a statement (archived): “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).”

John Balmes, a pulmonologist at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, told Bloomberg (archived) on April 24, 2020, that inhaling chlorine bleach “would be absolutely the worst thing for the lungs.” 

“The airway and lungs are not made to be exposed to even an aerosol of disinfectant … Not even a low dilution of bleach or isopropyl alcohol is safe … It’s a totally ridiculous concept.”

Dr. Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist and global health policy expert, told NBC News that same day (archived): “This notion of injecting or ingesting any type of cleansing product into the body is irresponsible, and it’s dangerous … It’s a common method that people utilize when they want to kill themselves.”

Sources