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MANDEL NGAN / AFP / Getty President Donald Trump
The recently released tapes of months of interviews Donald Trump gave journalist Bob Woodward show that the president speaks candidly about the genuine risk posed by the new coronavirus, despite his public statements.
In the audio of the talks, excerpts from which were released Wednesday through CNN and the Washington Post, Trump acknowledges behind closed doors the opposite of what he said in the country.
Interviews with Woodward are the basis of his rage e-book, which is expected to be Tuesday as a follow-up to his 2018 e-book, Fear.
CNN reported that Trump chose to contact Woodward, a Pulitzer Prize winner and part of the duo of reporters who covered the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, after ignoring the way he described Woodward’s previous book.
Woodward recorded his conversations with Trump’s permission for CNN.
In addition to the tapes, copies of his upcoming e-book were received and reported through CNN, the New York Times and the Post.
Although Trump has publicly insisted that the coronavirus “disappears” and minimized it in relation to seasonal influenza, his interviews with Woodward show that he is aware of his risks as far as February.
After speaking with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump told Woodward on February 7 that the two leaders “were basically talking about the virus and I think he is going to have it in good condition, but it is a very delicate situation. ” the air, Bob. It’s harder than touching it. “
“This is a very delicate question. This is a very sensitive subject. It’s also more fatal even than his grueling flu,” 74-year-old Trump continued. “People don’t realize it, we lose between 25,000 and 30,000 people a year here, who would think that, right?I mean, it’s pretty amazing. And then I said, “Well, is it the same?”It’s more fatal.
“These are fatal things, ” he said in that February appeal.
On March 9, however, he tweeted, “So last year, 37,000 Americans died from the unusual little flu. . . At this time, there are 546 cases shown of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about it!”
It wasn’t until mid-March that the White House followed a large-scale reaction opposed to coronaviruses, adding encouraging social estating, after Trump ordered restrictions in China and Europe.
“Bob, to be fair to you, I sought to minimize it, I like to minimize it, because I don’t need to panic,” Trump told Woodward on March 19, days after what Woodward described pivoting his technique to the coronavirus. Gravity.
“Now it turns out it’s not just about old people, Bob. Today and yesterday, unexpected events came to light, they are not just elderly people,” the president told Woodward in this March interview.
In contrast, Trump went on to say that other young people and young people are less exposed to the virus, or even “almost immune. “
The federal government’s reaction to the pandemic has been under scrutiny since the spring, and many first described it as inept and ill-equipped, i. e. with the deployment of evidence and the provision of comprehensive rules to states.
Trump’s contradictory rhetoric on the virus is underlined throughout the Woodward tapes.
Getty Images President Donald Trump
The president blatantly hesitated between supporting his fitness officials and undermining them, between highlighting the risks of the virus that killed nearly 200,000 people in the United States and announcing that “it would be like a miracle . . . to disappear. “
Trump, in turn, loathed his restrictions on China and Europe in January and March, respectively, as well as his administration’s paintings on fan supply.
He argued that states had failed to manage their epidemics.
Speaking to Woodward on July 21, in his last interview, he quoted: “The virus has nothing to do with me. It’s not my fault. Is. . . China has let this damn virus go. “
Although Trump spoke to Woodward for several months and praised him last year as “great, quiet and interesting,” he criticized the new e-book preemptively.
“Bob Woodward’s e-book will be FALSE, as always, like many others,” the president tweeted in August, proceeding to call Woodward a “social suitor. he never has anything to say. “
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany insisted that audio and quotes from the president’s mind were what they looked like, while reporters explained the disparities.
“The president has never lied to the American public,” he said, arguing that “the president expresses calm and his movements reflect that. “
Alex Wong / Getty Images President Donald Trump
“The president has never lied to the American public about COVID,” the White House press said. Kayleigh McEnany said in reaction to reports that President Trump admitted that he intentionally minimized the risk of coronavirus in an interview with Bob Woodward. t. co/Ud65CGPMjB pic. twitter. com/j2odpoNA7n
– ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) September 9, 2020
“At a time when you face insurmountable challenges, it’s to express your confidence, it’s to express your calm. . . He makes it clear that he doesn’t need to see chaos,” McEnany said.
“The president has been lucid with the American people,” he said.
On one occasion later Wednesday, Trump said, “I gave [Woodward] some quotes and, frankly, let’s see how the eBook turned out. I have no idea. “
He called himself “an animator of this country” and said, as McEnany had done, that he did not need to panic even though he has a history of histrionic language and capital statements on other subjects.
According to the Post and other media outlets, Woodward writes in his new e-book Trump denigrating his predecessors George W. Bush (“a stupid idiot”) and Barack Obama (“very overrated,” unsatered and a wonderful speaker).
Trump said he personally enjoys calling President Obama “Barack Hussein,” Obama’s first and middle name, according to Woodward.
Woodward also writes that Trump praised North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who sent the president congratulatory letters, which Woodward obtained. In a letter, Kim wrote that “the deep and special friendship between us will serve as a magical force. “
Trump, who has pushed an unrthodox form of face-to-face international relations to defuse North Korea’s risk, called Kim “far beyond the smart,” according to Woodward.
Woodward writes that by describing his penchating for autocrats like Kim, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Trump told Woodward: “It’s funny, the more complicated and unpleasant the relationships I have, the better I take with them. You know? Explain that to me someday, okay?
Woodward’s e-book would come with other scathing trump stories, which adds to what has a craft industry of his former collaborators writing negative testimonies.
“His attention span is like a negative number,” wrote Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the coronavirus working group, about Trump, Woodward writes. “Their purpose is to be re-elected. “
Former Trump Defense Secretary James Mattis, who has since publicly denounced him, also said he “had no compass,” according to Woodward.
He writes that former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, overthrown by Trump in 2019, said that “for him, a lie is a lie. That’s what he thinks. He doesn’t know the difference between a fact and a lie. “
(Officials named in Woodward’s e-book simply cannot be contacted through PEOPLE for comment. )
Trump’s son-in-law and lead assistant, Jared Kushner, “is widely cited” in Rage, to the Post.
I would have proposed this interpretation of Trump’s presidency: remember Alice in Wonderland, and Trump is like the Cheshire cat.
“The other, most harmful people around the president,” Kushner said, according to Woodward, “they’re too confident idiots. “