President Trump defended his coronavirus response amid renewed claims that he downplayed the pandemic stemming from Bob Woodward’s new book.
Trump, who spoke with Woodward 18 times on the record for the book, Rage, which will be released Tuesday, said on Wednesday that he didn’t want to “create panic,” and that’s why he was publicly “show[ing] confidence,” despite talking more gravely about it with the veteran journalist who worked on the Watergate scandal.
“I don’t want people to be frightened,” the president said during a press conference where he was announcing a list of potential Supreme Court nominees should a vacancy open. “I don’t want to create panic, as you say. And 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. We want to show strength as a nation. And that’s what I’ve done.”
The president also took a shot at the book, calling it a “political hit job,” even though he was interviewed 18 times for it.
“We don’t want to have to show panic,” he continued. “That’s exactly what I did. And I was very open, whether it’s to Woodward or anybody else. It’s just another political hit job. But whether it was Woodward or anybody else, you cannot show a sense of panic, or you’re going to have bigger problems than you ever had before.”
During one of the calls between Woodward and Trump, which took place on Feb. 7, he called the virus “deadly stuff” and noted that it might be 5 times “more deadly” than the flu.
“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward during another conversation on March 19, which occurred days after he declared a national emergency. “I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”
Those comments were different from what the president was saying publicly at the time, when he said the virus was “going to disappear” and that everything was going to “all work out fine.”
The president, during the Wednesday press conference, did not deny making the statements.
