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In a series of interviews with journalist Bob Woodward, Donald Trump admitted that earlier this year he received detailed information about the threat of the new coronavirus and knew that it was about five times “more deadly” than the flu.
“This virus is deadly,” the US president told the journalist on February 7, although in the following months he has always devalued Covid-19, ensuring that the virus “would disappear” and everything “would be fine.”
In the book entitled “Rage” (“Anger” in Portuguese), to which CNN had access, Woodward published the interviews with Donald Trump and describes him as a president who has betrayed the public trust and his most fundamental responsibilities.
“We just breathe air and that’s how it is transmitted,” Trump told the reporter. “So it is a very complicated virus, it is very delicate,” he added. However, the image Trump was showing to the public was very different.
On January 22, when asked by CNBC if the pandemic was a cause for concern, Trump responded: “No, not at all. We have everything under control. It’s going to be okay. “Later, on February 10, the US president predicted that in April,” when it’s a little warmer, [o vírus] it miraculously disappears “and on the 26th of the same month, when commenting on the first cases of contagion registered in the country, Trump said:” Soon we will be with only five people. And we may be with just one or two people in the next few days. So we were very lucky ”.
Trump justified the journalist that “he always wanted to minimize the seriousness” of the situation. “I still like to minimize it, because I don’t want to panic,” the president added in an interview on March 19, even after declaring a national emergency days before due to the pandemic.
Experts believe that instead of “minimizing gravity,” if Trump had acted beforehand by enacting strict lockdown and calling for the use of masks and adherence to hygiene standards, thousands of American lives could have been saved.
In the book – to be published on September 15 – the journalist Woodward also reveals new details about the warnings that Trump received and that, most of the time, he ignored.
On January 28, national security adviser Robert O’Brien already warned Trump that SARS-CoV-2 would be “the greatest threat to national security” under his presidency. However, Trump continued to publicly devalue the risk of Covid-19.
In May, Woodward asked the US president if he remembered this same warning from his adviser. “No, I don’t remember,” Trump replied.
Even ignoring all the warnings about the dangers of Covid-19 infection, Trump has not stopped taking all the credit for fighting the pandemic in the country, always highlighting his “excellent work.”
In his last interview in late July, Trump returned responsibility for the pandemic to China. “The virus has nothing to do with me,” Trump told the journalist. “It’s not my fault. China let out the damn virus.”, stressed.
Trump’s conscious minimization of the severity of the new coronavirus is just one of the many revelations in the book “Rage.” Woodward also shares views of various former and current advisers to Donald Trump on the president himself. Former US Defense Secretary James Mattis is said to have called Trump “dangerous” and “incompetent.”. According to Mattis, Trump “has no moral compass” and made foreign policy decisions that showed his opponents “how to destroy America.”
The book also reveals that after leaving office, Mattis discussed with former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats whether they should proceed with “collective action” to speak publicly against Trump.
Woodward also reveals harsh assessments by current officials of Trump’s policy on the pandemic. Among them is Anthony Fauci, the White House’s top infectious disease specialist, who has spared no criticism of the US president in recent months. Fauci is quoted in the book as saying that Trump “had no purpose” and that his “attention span is like a negative number.” “Your only goal is to be re-elected”Fauci said, according to Woodward.
After his 18 interviews with the US president, Woodward concludes that Trump is like “dynamite behind the door” and ends his book with the certainty that “he is the wrong man for the job.”
