Words come back to haunt Trump
TRY AS he may to change the subject, President Donald Trump can’t escape the coronavirus.
In April, the president tried to shift the public’s focus to the economy. In July, to defending the country’s “heritage”. This month to enforcing “law and order”. But all along the way, the death toll from the coronavirus continued to mount.
And now, Trump’s own words are redirecting attention to his handling of the pandemic when he can least afford it – less than two months before election day.
“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump said of the threat from the virus. That was in a private conversation with journalist Bob Woodward last March that became public on Wednesday with the publication of excerpts from Woodward’s upcoming book Rage.
In taped conversations released with the excerpts, Trump insisted he didn’t want to create “panic”. But his comments also raised fresh questions about how he has managed the defining crisis of his presidency, one that has killed more than 190 000 Americans so far.
The president unleashed a barrage of tweets yesterday morning, some in an effort to change the subject, and others taking on the Woodward book head-on, defending his comments and charging the media with conspiring against him.
“Bob Woodward had my quotes for many months,” Trump wrote. “If he thought they were so bad or dangerous, why didn’t he immediately report them in an effort to save lives? Didn’t he have an obligation to do so? No, because he knew they were good and proper answers. Calm, no panic!”
Woodward has defended his decision to hold off by saying he needed time to make sure Trump’s private comments were true.
On Wednesday, Trump didn’t deny his remarks playing down the virus, he sought to justify them.
“The fact is I’m a cheerleader for this country. I love our country and I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic,” Trump told reporters. “Certainly, I’m not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy. We want to show confidence. We want to show strength.”
Yet his own explanation suggested he was steering people away from the reality of the coming storm. Woodward’s account details dire warnings from top Trump national security officials to the president in late January that the virus could be as bad as the devastating influenza pandemic of 1918.
On February 25, weeks before much of the country was forced to shut down, Trump declared the virus “very well under control in our country”.
Democratic nominee Joe Biden pounced on the Woodward revelations, declaring that Trump “lied to the American people. He knowingly and willingly lied about the threat it posed to the country for months.
“While a deadly disease ripped through our nation, he failed to do his job on purpose. It was a life or death betrayal of the American people.”
By evening, Trump’s own words, captured on the Woodward tapes, had popped up in a Biden campaign ad.
In a taped February 7 call with Woodward, Trump said of the virus: “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous influenzas.
“This is deadly stuff,” the president repeated for emphasis. Three days later, Trump struck a rosier tone in an interview with Fox Business: “I think the virus is going to be – it’s going to be fine.”