(Newswire.net— September 11, 2020) — US President Donald Trump knew that the coronavirus was dangerous, but he deceived the public – claims famous journalist Bob Woodward, in his latest book “Rage”, who is also known for discovering the “Watergate” affair.
The book, which stirred up the American public, says that national security adviser Robert O’Brien told the president on January 28 that the virus would be “the greatest danger to national security that he will face during his term.”
CNN came into possession of the audio recording of the conversation between Trump and Woodward, in which the president clearly said all the way back in February that he understood how much danger threatens America and the whole world.
According to the audio, President Trump said that he talked to Chinese President Xi about the virus and that Trump knew it is ” Delicate and more deadly even than the strong flu”.
In public, however, he downplayed the danger and told the Americans that the virus would soon disappear and that it would be nothing worse than the seasonal flu, and that the American government was in control of the situation.
US President Donald Trump has defended his decision to downplay the risks of COVID-19, saying that journalist Bob Woodward had the opportunity to publish the story months ago, but he didn’t because Woodward knew that Trump gave the “proper” answers.
“Bob Woodward had my quotes for many months. If he thought they were so bad or dangerous, why didn’t he immediately report them in an effort to save lives?” Mr. Trump said.
“Didn’t he have an obligation to do so? No, because he knew they were good and proper answers. Calm, no panic!” Trump said.
In one of his 18 conversations with Trump that Woodward recorded, the president admitted that he deliberately reduced the danger saying that the virus will one day just disappear.
White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany tried to reduce the damage of the interviews, so she said that “Trump wanted to calm the nation and that is what the leaders are doing.”
“No one is lying to the Americans. One day the COVID will disappear. We all hope for that day. We will also have a vaccine, because of the president who broke up the bureaucracy, in order to get a safe vaccine,” McEnany said.
On the first day of the campaign, Republican President Donald Trump attacked his rival from the ranks of Democrats for being an anti vaxxer. Joe Biden retaliated by accusing the president of being guilty of the deadly Covid-19 campaign.
“It’s disgusting. We realized that when the first 100 people died and 190,000 Americans died, and he knew what was going to happen,” Biden said.
Biden claims that Trump knowingly and voluntarily lied to people about how dangerous the corona virus is.
Quotes from Bob Woodward’s book appeared a few weeks before the US presidential election and represent a challenge for both candidates, states the Voice of America.
There is, without doubt, a worthy debate to be had as to whether Woodward should have immediately gone to the Post after Trump made his statements about downplaying the virus to write a big contemporaneous piece about it, CNN reports.