NO ‘LIE’ ON BUG FIBS
Don: Halted panic by not howling
President Trump’s asking the American people to trust him instead of their lying eyes.
The beleaguered commander-in-chief insisted Thursday that he didn’t mislead the public about the severity of the coronavirus threat in the early days of the pandemic — even though he admitted to doing so in a soon-to-be-released book.
“I didn’t lie,” Trump told reporters at the White House after he was asked about the bombshell new book by journalist Bob Woodward. “What I said is we have to be calm. We can’t be panicked.”
Woodward’s book, “Rage” — which is based on 18 recorded interviews with Trump — recounts how the president said he knew in January that the coronavirus was at least five times more deadly than the common flu and far more contagious, but that he didn’t want to share that information with the public to avoid “panic.”
“Really, to be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic,” Trump admitted to Woodward on March 19, according to the book, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily News ahead of its release next week.
Around the same time
Trump shared the unvarnished truth with Woodward, he was giving the public the false impression that COVID-19 was akin to a bad flu season and that Americans didn’t need to bother with face masks, social distancing or restricting their day-to-day activities.
“It’s like a miracle, it will disappear,” Trump said of the virus at a news conference on Feb. 28.
In the Thursday briefing, Trump struggled to explain why he told Woodward one thing and the public another.
“What I said was very simple, listen, what I said was very simple: I wanted to show a level of confidence,” Trump tried. “I want to show strength as a leader. I
want to show our country will be fine, one way or the other.”
More than 191,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 so far — the worst national death toll in the world by far — and public health experts say thousands of lives could have been saved if Trump took the threat of the virus more seriously from the outset.
But Trump maintained Thursday that he did “the best job” possible and that his early misleading statements about the virus were justified because he didn’t want to “jump up and down in the air.”
“There’s no lying,” Trump said. “I don’t want to jump up and down and start screaming, ‘death, death!’ ”
Democrats had a hard time swallowing Trump’s defense and noted that his political modus operandi has always been to fan the flames of fear and division.
“Is this the same president busy panicking Americans right now, telling women in the suburbs their safety is at risk when the suburbs are not at risk at all? Is this the same president who invented a caravan of migrants in an attempt to panic Americans before the last election?” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) said. “This president uses panic as a tool when he thinks it serves his interest, so the idea that he did it because he didn’t want to panic Americans does not ring true.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) put it more bluntly.
“Trump lied and people died,” she told reporters on Capitol Hill.
After his press conference at the White House, Trump headed to Michigan for a campaign rally, where a largely maskless crowd of supporters packed closely together in violation of the a d m i n i st ra t i o n ’s own COVID-19 guidelines.
Woodward’s book is the latest in a long line of explosive tell-alls about the Trump presidency, with recent memoirs from his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, his niece,
Mary Trump, his wife’s former friend, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, and his ex-national security adviser, John Bolton.
But Woodward’s book stands out in that it shines a damning light on Trump’s handling of the pandemic, which has emerged as the worst scandal of his presidency and one that will loom heavily over November’s election.
Joe Biden, who’s trouncing Trump in most polls with less than two months to go until Election Day, told supporters on a virtual fundraising call Thursday afternoon that the Woodward revelations appear to reveal the president’s true priorities.
“Donald Trump knew all along just how deadly this virus is. He knew and purposefully played it down because all he was concerned about was his reelection,” Biden said.
Before shipping off for Michigan, Trump tried to poke holes in the Democratic backlash by questioning why Woodward didn’t report on his comments earlier instead of saving them for his book.
“If Bob Woodward thought it was bad, he should have immediately gone out publicly,” Trump said at the White House. “He’s had that statement for four months, maybe five months. He’s had it a long time.”