Trump's remarks, in which he floated the idea of using "light inside the body" and studying the use of disinfectants "by injection," triggered an urgent warning from the maker of Lysol that "under no circumstances" should its product be used as treatment.
The considerable blowback, which the White House dismissed as media sensationalism, once again put the president at odds with his own health experts as his administration battles a pandemic that has killed more than 50,000 Americans.
Trump has often touted remedies and raised seemingly off-the-cuff ideas at his daily press conferences that top aides have then carefully sought to temper.
Adding fuel to the controversy, the White House initially distributed a transcript of Trump's press conference in which Deborah Birx, one of the nation's leading experts on the coronavirus, said that the method Trump was touting "is a treatment." White House aides released a corrected transcript Friday in which Birx said they were not treatments.
At the White House on Friday, Trump said he was being sarcastic when he suggested that injecting disinfectants inside the body might be a treatment for coronavirus.
Asked by reporters if he was encouraging their use, he replied, “Of course not.” He continued to float the possibility that sunlight might be used to treat coronavirus. “Sun has a tremendous impact on it,” he said.
The genesis of Trump's remarks was a Department of Homeland Security study that found the lifespan of the virus on a surface or in the air could be significantly reduced by exposure to sunlight, humidity and other factors.
Trump invited a Homeland Security official to brief White House reporters about the study on Thursday.
"Our most striking observation to date is the powerful effect that solar light appears to have on killing the virus, both on surfaces and in the air," said Bill Bryan, an undersecretary of science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security.
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