Many of these entertainment products are advertisement-supported. And the ads are already getting tiresome. Brands keep trotting out “we’re going to get through this” and “better together” and “in these challenging times” to sell everything from pick-up trucks to cheese puffs. Every ad bleeds fake inspiration and sentimentality or reminds us to stay home, as if we had a choice. I’ve even seen Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes used to hawk dress shirts and ties. People are, understandably, sick of it already.

But if there’s any lasting narrative to be pulled out of this period of over a month now in quarantine, it could be just how awash we are with disinformation. The schmaltzy advertisements are one thing. When the disinformation comes from the President of the United States, it’s another. During the CTF press briefing today, the Commander-in-Chief over the entire military, nuclear weapons, etc., said the following:

If you listen closely enough, you might hear a slapping noise when the national health care establishment collectively facepalms.

Interestingly, this stupifying “bleach speech” moment also offers an opportunity to understand Trump’s populist appeal as it coincides with his known germophobia and recurring concern with the purification of the body.

As political scholar Elesa Zehndorfer has noted, 80% of American voters are consistently partisan in their political loyalties: roughly 98% of the time, you can predict the partisan affiliation of a voter by examining how they view non-political, emotion-invoking images.[4] In other words, a good portion of American voters are culturally, emotionally, even viscerally invested in their chosen political party. They are so connected that they will forgive serious ethical and intellectual errors in their party leaders. Even when they are shown irrefutable proof and bound to the data “by cognitive handcuffs,” they manage, Houdini-like to free themselves from making rational conclusions that would threaten their emotional connection to their party.

And why would Trump say such and obviously strange and potentially dangerous thing from the podium? There are biographical explanations. He is a self-professed germophobe who prefers drinking water through straws and has struggled to get over his aversion to shaking hands. He is “particularly sensitive to bodily stimuli that evokes disgust,” which is also a trait that has been associated with conservatives and evangelicals who are concerned with the “right and proper” use of the body. As one scholar has noted, “conservatives are more likely than liberals to experience disgust in response to specific behaviors that violate ideals of purity.”[5]

Here, today, we have a germophobe narcissist who lacks the ability to control his speech, ruminating on the comforting idea of purifying the body through the ingestion of bleach to a population that is emotionally predisposed to believe him, despite the fact that drinking bleach is fatal. The suggestion of the bleach and the infrared light is initially shocking, but it actually fits a pattern that we have seen repeatedly.