Play it down: Trump admits to hiding true threat of Covid in Woodward book

President Donald Trump appeared to fully grasp the severity of the coronavirus threat even as he was telling the nation that the virus was no even worse than the seasonal flu and insisting that the US governing administration experienced it entirely beneath regulate, according to a new ebook by journalist Bob Woodward.

“You just breathe the air and which is how it’s handed,” Trump said in a February 7 phone with Woodward. “And so which is a very challenging a person. Which is a very delicate a person. It can be also much more deadly than even your demanding flu.” “This is deadly things,” the president recurring for emphasis.

Trump informed Woodward on March 19 that he deliberately minimised the hazard. “I needed to often enjoy it down,” the president said.

The Washington Publish, in which Woodward serves as associate editor, documented excerpts of the ebook, “Rage” on Wednesday, as did CNN. The ebook also addresses race relations, diplomacy with North Korea and a array of other concerns that have arisen through the previous two a long time.

The ebook is dependent in portion on 18 interviews that Woodward performed with Trump in between December and July.

“Trump in no way did appear willing to fully mobilize the federal governing administration and frequently appeared to push complications off on the states,” Woodward writes.

“There was no real management theory of the case or how to manage a substantial company to deal with a person of the most sophisticated emergencies the United States experienced at any time faced.”