CLAIM: Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo listed off a litany of left-wing talking points while campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris in Michigan, claiming that former President Donald Trump told people to “inject bleach,” tried to enforce a “Muslim ban,” and called Nazis “fine people.”
FACT CHECK(s):
• Trump was talking about research into potential coronavirus remedies, not recommending any form of treatment for individuals to attempt without approval from a doctor.
• He limited immigration from specific countries with substantial terror threats, and the Supreme Court (before the appointments of Brett Kavanaugh of Amy Coney Barrett) ruled this policy was religion-neutral.
• The president “totally condemned” neo-Nazis and said “fine people” were protesting the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. Even far-left fact checkers have belatedly admitted this is a hoax.
“It’s time to get up, America. It’s time to get up and get down with Democracy, and down with Donald Trump and Trumpism,” Ruffalo told the crowd. “Who wants four more years of that kind of garbage? I mean, who wants four more years of what they’re selling us? It’s hatred, it’s division, it’s loss, it’s despair, it’s a drag, it’s a downer, and we ain’t going back — no way. We ain’t going back.”
“And, no matter how hard they want to take you back, you just can’t go back,” Ruffalo continued. “And, we did it once, it sucked. Understatement, how bad did it suck? Real bad. I mean, he tried to get us to inject bleach in our veins, he wanted us to stick lightbulbs up our [gestures to mimic the insertion of a suppository]. He tried to enforce a Muslim ban, like his great big idea, first thing he does when he gets into office.”
Ruffalo’s claim that Trump told people to “inject bleach” is false. As Breitbart News has previously reported, the White House transcript showed that Trump had been discussing the possibility of using experimental ultraviolet (UV) light technology in the future, and how it could be used as a disinfectant. The former president questioned whether it was possible to inject it into people’s bodies, but never suggested people should inject bleach.
THE PRESIDENT: 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.
ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN: We’ll get to the right folks who could.
THE PRESIDENT: Right. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocs 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.
After being asked by a reporter if Trump had meant a disinfectant could be “injected into a person,” Trump explained that “it wouldn’t be through injection.”
THE PRESIDENT: 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.
Ruffalo’s claim that Trump “tried to enforce a Muslim ban” is also false. As Breitbart News also reported, the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s travel ban in a 5-4 decision.
Breitbart News’s Joel Pollak reported that while Democrats have claimed that Trump’s travel ban was a “Muslim ban,” it was actually “an executive order issued on January 27, 2017, that barred tourism and immigration from seven countries previously identified by the Obama-Biden administration as being particularly vulnerable to terrorism.”
But there is no “Muslim ban,” and there never was. What Democrats called a “Muslim ban” was an executive order issued on January 27, 2017, that barred tourism and immigration from seven countries previously identified by the Obama-Biden administration as being particularly vulnerable to terrorism, partly because their internal record-keeping was substandard. These seven nations — Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen — happened to be Muslim-majority countries, but there was no blanket ban on Muslims from other Middle Eastern countries or large Muslim countries like Indonesia.
Ruffalo continued to repeat the conclusively debunked “fine people hoax,” which selectively edits a quote from the former president to suggest he praised neo-Nazis rather than condemning them.
“This is the man who said there’s very fine people among the packed house of Nazis in Charlottesville,” he quipped. “You want to talk about antisemitism? Let’s talk about antisemitism. The Nazis love Trump!”
Beyond those claims which have long been established as false, The Poor Things star delivered many more shrill and comical assertions without evidence. He went on to accuse Trump of “raping” women and warning women voters that they will “go back to the ’50s where you’re stuck in a kitchen, made to have children that you don’t want to have and have to support them” if he gets re-elected.
“He wants to shut down the public education system,” Ruffalo continued. “Jesus Christ! What are we going to do when we can’t, we have nowhere to send our kids?”
The bizarre speech only got stranger once the actor switched over into effusive praise for Vice President Harris.
“She’s got a black woman wisdom,” Ruffalo declared. “I’m not going to say that’s the only wisdom, but that’s a special kind of wisdom. That’s a kind of wisdom that comes from the grace of being part of an awful part of American history. That is painful. And I have to learn to survive in that, generation after generation. That gives you a grace; that gives you a humility; that gives you a compassion that has to be — we have to think about that. We have to honor it.
“I’m not saying it’s better than anyone, but there’s something to be learned from that, just like there’s something to be learned from every different kind of people that make up America.”