President Donald Trump claimed he was being sarcastic when he asked health experts in a White House coronavirus briefing whether UV light or disinfectants could be inserted inside humans as a possible coronavirus treatment. “I was asking a very sarcastic question to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside but it does kill it and it would kill it on the hands and it would make things much better,” he told reporters at the White House on Friday. When told he had actually directed the comments to medical experts, he claimed he had only asked them to look into whether sun and disinfectant on the hands “can help us.”

After a Homeland Security official presented widely disputed findings on Thursday that sunlight, heat, and humidity can weaken the virus, Trump turned to the official and said: “So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said 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 gonna test that too?” At another point in the briefing, he turned to the official: “I see the disinfectant where it knocks [the virus] out [from a surface] in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that [by] injection inside or almost a cleaning?”

Reverting to “sarcasm” is a favorite get-out-of-jail card for Trump. He previously said he was being “sarcastic” when he repeatedly claimed that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton founded the Islamic State, and when he repeatedly thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for expelling U.S. diplomats.