September 10, 2020
According to a new book, Pres. Donald Trump admitted that he knows that the coronavirus pandemic was much more severe than what he says to the public and masked the virus’s actual dangers.
“This is deadly stuff,” Mr. Trump told veteran journalist Bob Woodward in February.
“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” the president elaborated during the phone call. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.”
In Woodward’s upcoming book entitled Rage, he spoke with Mr. Trump in 18 documented dialogs and written in detail in the book. The phone calls, which Mr. Trump had agreed that can be recorded, show a different picture from what he was telling everyone.
During the interview, Mr. Trump admitted that the virus could be “five times more deadly” than the flu. On the contrary, he was saying in public that COVID-19 was not worse than flu. Then, several weeks passed before the president and the administration would state that the virus not like the flu and can be transmitted through the air.
The first US Covid-19 death that has been recorded happened on February 29.
Following the series of dialogs, Mr. Woodward had another talk with the president on March 19, a few days after he declared a national emergency. In this interview, he admitted that he belittles the virus in public.
“I wanted to always play it down,” Mr. Trump said. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”
Health professionals said that if the administration implemented mandatory mask-wearing, strict social distancing guidelines, and a travel ban at the end of February, it has saved thousands of lives.
The US has recorded over 6.3 million COVID-19 cases ever since the pandemic began, and a total of 189,972 people have perished from it.
“Trump never did seem willing to fully mobilize the federal government and continually seemed to push problems off on the states,” Woodward wrote. “There was no real management theory of the case or how to organize a massive enterprise to deal with one of the most complex emergencies the United States had ever faced.”
“The president has never lied to the American public on COVID,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany stated in a press briefing last Wednesday.
The other officials’ assessment of the president’s office performance is also detailed in the book.
The nation’s best infectious disease expert and member of the White House’s coronavirus taskforce, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was cited telling others that Mr. Trump’s leadership was “rudderless” and that his “attention span is like a minus number.”
“His sole purpose is to get re-elected,” Dr. Fauci told a subordinate, as Woodward stated.
Woodward’s book covers a total of 18 interviews with Mr. Trump dating from December 5, 2019, to July 21, 2020.
Aside from speaking about the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Trump also talked about race relations in America, diplomacy with North Korea, and other issues that have arisen during his presidency.
Rage is a sequel to Woodward’s first book entitled Fear, it details a heated White House environment where aide would hide papers from the president to avoid dangerous impulses.
When Fear was released, Mr. Trump complained that the veteran journalist has never reached out to him for an interview, which means he gave so much contact to him in the latest book.
But Mr. Trump didn’t stop complaining about the forthcoming release of the book. On August 14, he tweeted:
“The Bob Woodward book will be a FAKE, as always, just as many of the others have been,”
For the book’s conclusion, Woodward made a blunt testimonial about the president, writing,
“Trump is the wrong man for the job.”
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