US President Donald Trump admits he tried to minimise the lethal threat of the coronavirus at the outset of the pandemic in audio recordings released Wednesday from interviews with veteran US journalist Bob Woodward.
"I wanted to always play it down," Mr Trump said in an interview with Woodward on March 19, according to a CNN preview of the book"Rage," due to be published 15 September.
In public, however, Mr Trump had been repeatedly telling Americans that the virus should not be considered much of a danger and would"disappear" by itself. "It's important to express confidence, it's important to express calm," she said."The president has never lied to the American public on COVID."Anthony Fauci, the country's leading infectious disease expert and member of the White House task force on COVID-19, said he did not get the sense the president had distorted concerns.
The president has repeatedly insisted that he has managed the pandemic successfully, pointing to his early decisions to ban travel from China, where the virus first appeared, and from hotspots in Europe.At minimum, Mr Trump long delivered mixed messages at a time when the country was looking for guidance. He veered from declaring himself the equivalent of a war-time president to contradicting government scientists and calling for early reopening of the economy.
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