Trump’s contradiction on Covid-19: he just wanted to be an ‘cheerleader’ for the nation

US President Donald Trump spoke privately about the “deadly” coronavirus last February, even as he declared to the United States that it was no worse than the flu and insisted it was under control, according to a new book by the journalist. Bob Woodward. Trump said Wednesday that he was just being a “cheerleader” for the nation and trying to keep everyone calm.

His public rhetoric, Trump told Woodward in March, was part of a strategy to deliberately minimize the danger. “I always wanted to downplay it,” the president said. “I still like to downplay it because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Trump, according to the book, acknowledged being alarmed by the virus, even as he told the nation that it would quickly disappear.

Less than eight weeks before Election Day, the revelations in the book, accompanied by Woodward’s recordings of his interviews with Trump, provide an unwanted return of public attention to the president’s handling of the pandemic that even now it has killed about 190,000 Americans.

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He is currently pushing hard for normal activity to resume and trying to project strength and control to bolster his political stance in his campaign against Democrat Joe Biden.

In a Feb. 7 call with Woodward, Trump said of the virus: “You just breathe the air and that’s how it spreads. And that’s very complicated. It’s very delicate. It’s also more deadly than even your exhausting flu.” . “

“This is deadly,” the president repeated for emphasis.

Just three days later, Trump took a much more optimistic tone in an interview with Fox Business: “I think the virus is going to be there, it is going to be fine.”

Biden said Wednesday that the book shows that Trump “lied to the American people. He consciously and willingly lied about the threat he posed to the country for months. “

“While a deadly disease swept through our nation, it didn’t do its job, on purpose. It was a life and death betrayal of the American people, “Biden said at a campaign event in Michigan.

Biden’s campaign launched and released an ad Wednesday night with the audiotapes of Trump’s comments. “And Trump knew it from the beginning,” says the narrator of the ad.

Speaking Wednesday at the White House, Trump acknowledged that he played down the virus, insisting he was trying to cheer up the nation and suggesting he was trying to avoid “overstating” the prices of needed supplies.

“The fact is that I am a cheerleader from this country. I love our country and I don’t want people to be scared. I don’t want to create panic, as you say, “Trump told reporters. “Certainly, I am not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy. We want to show confidence. We want to show strength ”.

Yet Trump’s public comments suggested that he was leading people to ignore the reality of the coming storm. Woodward’s account details dire warnings from Trump’s top national security officials to the president in late January that the virus causing Covid-19 could be as bad as the devastating 1918 influenza pandemic.

On February 25, just weeks before much of the country was forced to shut down due to the pandemic, Trump declared that the virus was “very well under control in our country.”

Although he restricted travel from China in January, Trump did not begin devoting extensive federal resources to purchasing vital personal protective equipment, including face masks, or expanding fan production until March. In fact, US officials recommended not wearing masks until April in part due to a shortage of protective masks required by front-line medical workers.

Trump’s advisers and allies said at the time that his goal was to prop up the economy with his optimistic version of the virus throughout February, even as his administration took some concrete steps to prepare for the next pandemic.

The Washington Post, where Woodward serves as associate editor, reported excerpts from the book, Rage on Wednesday, as did CNN. The book also covers race relations, diplomacy with North Korea, and a variety of other issues that have cropped up over the past two years.

The book is based in part on 18 interviews Woodward conducted with Trump between December and July.

“Trump never seemed willing to fully mobilize the federal government and he continually seemed to push problems to the states,” Woodward writes of the pandemic. “There was no theory of actual case management or how to organize a massive company to deal with one of the most complex emergencies the United States has ever faced.”

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Wednesday: “The President has never lied to the American public about Covid. The president was expressing calm and his actions reflect that. “

She said Trump’s actions show that he took Covid-19 seriously. She noted that the president imposed travel restrictions with China on January 31 and said some Democrats had criticized the move.

In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said Trump never “misrepresented” what Fauci had told the president.

“Often he would want to, you know, make sure the country doesn’t get put off by things, but I don’t recall anything that was a major distortion in the things I talked to him about,” Fauci said.

McEnany insisted that “the president never downplayed the virus,” although Trump himself told Woodward that he was “downplaying it because I don’t want to create a panic.”

“There is a damning truth that President Trump lied and people died,” said New York Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. Schumer said that when he thinks about how many people died in his state, “it just makes me mad.” He added: “How many people would be alive today if I told Americans the truth?”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the president’s comments to Woodward showed a weakness and disdain for science.

“What I was really saying is, ‘I don’t want anyone to think that something like this happened on my shift, so I’m not going to draw any more attention to that,'” Pelosi said on MSNBC.

Woodward’s book is the second on the Trump White House. The first, published in 2018, portrayed Trump in an unflattering way, and the president infuriated staff because he was not interviewed for him, according to former White House officials and Republicans close to the White House. They were not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations and discussed the matter on condition of anonymity.

Trump was convinced that had he spoken to Woodward, it might have led to a more favorable description in the book, according to officials. Trump had always held Woodward in high regard – he regarded the journalist as the biggest star in the field – and told his assistants that he should be interviewed if Woodward wrote again, officials said.

Several Republican senators on Capitol Hill declined to comment on the new book, telling reporters that they had not yet read it, even when informed of key passages about the virus. “I just can’t, I can’t comment on that,” Sen. Rob Portman said.

“Could we have done all things differently? Yes, including Congress. We were all a little slow to recognize gravity, ”Portman said.