WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump told reporter Bob Woodward that he knows the coronavirus is more fatal and contagious than the flu, while proceeding to minimize its risks to the public, according to Woodward’s new e-book, “Rage. “
“I tried to minimize it. I like to minimize it, because I don’t need to create panic,” Trump told Woodward on March 19 in excerpts from audio interviews received via CNN.
In interviews with Woodward between December 2019 and July 2020, Trump discussed the risk of coronavirus with a point of detail that he had yet declared to the public, on February 7, that they were “fatal things” and “more fatal than his, even the intense ones. flu. “
While Trump discussed the risk of the virus with Woodward, he continued to guarantee the public that it was “under control” in the United States and would “disappear. “
Trump publicly has coronavirus to influenza, saying coronavirus cases and deaths were fine under the flu, but with influenza, “Nothing stops, life and the economy continue,” as he tweeted on March 9.
He also told Woodward that he knew the virus had been airborne in February. However, in April, when the CDC began advising others to wear a mask to prevent the spread of the virus, Trump continued to wear a mask in public and only identified dressed in a mask as “patriot” in July.
“It’s going through the air, Bob,” Trump told Woodward in February. “It’s harder than touching it. You don’t have to touch things, do you?But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it happened. “