Friday on CNN, anchor Anderson Cooper said President Donald Trump was “just lying” when he made his comments Thursday suggesting doctors should investigate if disinfectants could be injected as a way to treat the coronavirus was sarcasm.

In a clip, Trump told a reporter, “I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen.”

Copper said, “What you just heard is the President of the United Staes just lying right there. It’s fascinating because he’s lying about something we all witnessed just yesterday of him talking to his own Coronavirus Task Force about doing research into injecting bleach disinfectants into people, somehow cleaning them from the inside, because disinfectant works on tabletops and things like that. Now the President is claiming he was speaking sarcastically to reporters, sarcastically suggesting that. There was no sarcasm.”

He continued, “Just be clear the President yesterday made a dangerous and idiotic comment raising a ludicrous idea of somehow injecting disinfectant which to anybody who is out there is obviously not something any human being should do. Now he’s in like Soviet fashion trying to rewrite what we all know and saw as though we are all morons. Am I wrong here?”

Network White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins said, “Well, this is a tactic we have seen the President take before. When he has made a remark, and it has been widely criticized by the experts in the area, he often has said, or his aids have used this excuse that he’s just being sarcastic. I do want to note the press secretary put out a statement earlier, and she did not say the President was being sarcastic when he made those remarks. Instead, she accused the media of taking the President out of context. Though you can listen to how the President made these remarks. I was in the room yesterday during this briefing when he was turning to the DHS official, who had just given the presentation about how sunlight and disinfectants could kill it on surfaces and in the air, and the President said maybe they should check out whether or not either of those uses could work in the human body.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN