Bob Woodward: Trump knew Covid 19 was deadlier than he claimed, deliberately deceived the public

President Trump’s head popped up during his top-secret intelligence briefing in the Oval Office on Jan. 28 when the discussion turned to the coronavirus outbreak in China.

“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien told Trump, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward. “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”

Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, agreed. He told the president that after reaching contacts in China, it was evident that the world faced a health emergency on par with the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.

Ten days later, Trump called Woodward and revealed that he thought the situation was far more dire than what he had been saying publicly.

“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in a Feb. 7 call. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

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

At that time, Trump was telling the nation that the virus was no worse than a seasonal flu, predicting it would soon disappear and insisting that the U.S. government had it totally under control. It would be several weeks before he would publicly acknowledge that the virus was no ordinary flu and that it could be transmitted through the air.

70 days: The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged

Trump admitted to Woodward on March 19 that he deliberately minimized the danger. “I wanted to always play it down,” the president said. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Source: The Washington Post

Washington Post wrote:Trump admitted to Woodward on March 19 that he deliberately minimized the danger. “I wanted to always play it down,” the president said. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Imagine. A swimmer is about to be attacked by a white shark, and an lifeguard says he kept still because "I don't want to create a panic!"

The US is approaching 200,000 dead of the Trump Virus, and he's worried, what, people might rush into the streets and stop traffic??

And now Fauci has come out saying this is wrong. That's the problem with life in 2020. I don't believe Trump, I don't believe Biden and I don't believe the press.

Maddog wrote:And now Fauci has come out saying this is wrong. That's the problem with life in 2020. I don't believe Trump, I don't believe Biden and I don't believe the press.  

The press is just quoting people -- you should disbelieve the people who say things, rather than those who report on what they say.

Maddog wrote:And now Fauci has come out saying this is wrong. That's the problem with life in 2020. I don't believe Trump, I don't believe Biden and I don't believe the press.  

Welcome to my world. I have never quite believed what I read....however, I’m inclined to believe that Trump was a denier of Covid19, but then, so was I.

Ben Reilly wrote:

Maddog wrote:And now Fauci has come out saying this is wrong. That's the problem with life in 2020. I don't believe Trump, I don't believe Biden and I don't believe the press.  

The press is just quoting people -- you should disbelieve the people who say things, rather than those who report on what they say.

I don't totally disagree. But the Press can also choose not to publish things they can't verify.

What I see a lot of now, is the Press reporting things that goes along with their political slant, and deciding not to publish things that don't.

Its why you have to read three or four different sources for the same story.

Reading more than one source of a story is just a really good habit. Leaving out any debate over whether the press has a political agenda -- which I don't generally agree with, at least not in the case of news outlets that don't have an overt political bias, like Fox News or MSNBC -- you have to account for the fact that news is reported by fallible human beings. The more versions of a story you can find, the closer you can get to the truth, in most cases.

Bob Woodward has always had a reputation for verifying...that's why he had those tapes. Both left and right have regard for his reporting as a result.

As between Fox and MSNBC, even I get tired of the extremes. CNN is a welcome, in-between relief.

I rarely watch the events themselves--the press conferences, rallies, announcements, etc.--because in this day and age they are such blatantly partisan events that they have no real content. Trump thinks of it as branding…and he uses repetition to the point of boredom.

But I like the analysis discussions, and they will always pull out clips of the content/events sufficient to cover any chance content that the principals might offer.