Alyssa Farah Griffin Says She Tried to Stop Trump’s Infamous ‘Injecting Bleach’ Briefing — But Meadows Overruled Her
Alex Brandon, AP
Former President Donald Trump was the subject of countless headlines, jokes, and memes after an April 2020 briefing of the White House Coronavirus Task Force where he suggested battling Covid-19 by injecting UV light or disinfectants. Former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin said she tried to stop that infamous moment from happening, but was blocked by Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows.
This information came in Griffin’s April 15, 2022 interview with the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, one of several transcripts that the committee released on Thursday.
Griffin described her tenure at the Trump White House as “a wild eight months” dealing with everything from the Covid-19 pandemic to the Trump White House’s notorious lack of structure and inexperienced staffers in key positions.
One serious and ongoing problem, according to Griffin, was the lack of organization or anyone to serve as a competent “gatekeeper” to keep “harmful” or “unhelpful” information from getting to Trump.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) bringing the president a folder containing a conspiracy theory accusing Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough of murdering his former congressional staffer — and Trump tweeting about it shortly thereafter — was one anecdote Griffin offered of the “chaos” of the Trump White House.
Another example Griffin gave was the Coronavirus Task Force meeting “that led to the injecting bleach comment that was made on national television.”
According to Griffin, “some folks from Fort Detrick [the location of an Army medical research institute] and DHS [Department of Homeland Security]” had briefed Vice President Mike Pence on some still-developing research showing the coronavirus’ responses under various heat, light, and humidity, specifically that it seemed to decay more quickly when exposed to ultraviolet light from the sun.
Pence “thought this is interesting” and Trump should be briefed on it, but Griffin objected:
I tried to stop it outside of the Oval Office, because I knew the President was willing to go on national television, have not been able to properly digest what the report was indicating, and say something stupid or dangerous to the public.
And I went to Mark Meadows, and I said, Sir, this is going to blow up in our faces. He’s not ready. Like, what are we encouraging? Are we saying like, you know, go buy a humidifier? Do we want to put a run on humidifiers? Or turn your heat up to 95 degrees? Like, it just didn’t make any sense.
And Meadows overruled me, and we got the injecting bleach thing.
Here is the video from that infamous moment:
Read the full transcript of Griffin’s interview (as redacted by the committee) embedded below:
Alyssa Farah Griffin interview with Jan. 6 Committee by Sarah Rumpf on Scribd
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