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US President Donald Trump admits that he tried to downplay the severity of the Covid-19 threat at the start of the pandemic in released audio recordings of interviews with veteran journalist Bob Woodward.
“I’ve always wanted to downplay it,” Trump said in an interview with Woodward on March 19, according to a CNN trailer for the book “Rage,” due out next week.
“I still like to downplay it, because I don’t want to create a panic,” he said in the conversation with Woodward, which was recorded.
In another taped interview on February 7, he told Woodward that the virus “runs through the air,” despite repeatedly poking fun at people wearing masks in the weeks and months that follow. It was until July before he was seen publicly wearing a mask.
Arriving eight weeks before the November 3 presidential election, the revelations add new pressure on Trump. Opinion polls show that around two-thirds of Americans disapprove of his handling of the virus, and he has often been accused of downplaying the crisis to try to increase his chances of re-election.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump denounced the book as “another successful political work” and said that if he had downplayed Covid-19 it was to avoid a “frenzy.”
“I don’t want people to freak out,” he said.
“I am not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy,” he said. “We have to show leadership and the last thing you want to do is create panic.”
He criticized Mr. Woodward for doing “successful work with everyone” and said that he “probably, almost definitely won’t read it because I don’t have time to read it.”
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However, “Rage” will give new ammunition to Democrats who argue that Trump did not prepare Americans for the severity of the coronavirus outbreak or lead them to an adequate response.
In interviews with Woodward, Trump made it clear that he would have understood early on that the virus was “a deadly thing,” far more dangerous than the ordinary flu.
In public, however, Trump repeatedly told Americans during the first weeks in early 2020 that the virus was not dangerous and would “go away” on its own.
“I knew how deadly it was,” said Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden while campaigning in Michigan. “He lied to the American people. He consciously and willingly lied about the threat he posed to the country for months.”
“It was a life or death betrayal of the American people,” added Biden.
“It’s disgusting,” Biden later told CNN. “Think about it. Think about what she didn’t do.”
Biden criticized Trump’s behavior as “almost criminal.”
But there was support for Trump from highly respected infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, who has consistently told the public that the coronavirus requires a tough response, even as the president seemed to be saying something different.
“I don’t remember anything that was a huge distortion in the things that I told you about,” he told Fox News.
Trump was eager to keep the country from “falling and going,” Fauci said.
The president has repeatedly insisted that he has successfully handled the Covid-19 pandemic, which is on track to claim 200,000 lives in the country.
It marks early decisions to ban travel from China, where the virus first appeared, and from access points in Europe.
Yet at the very least, Trump delivered mixed messages at a time when the country was seeking guidance.
He went from declaring himself the equivalent of a wartime president to contradicting government scientists and calling for an early reopening of the economy.
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