A stunning admission from Donald Trump.

Seasoned journalist Bob Woodward published on Wednesday, September 9, the recording of an interview he conducted in March with the US president, a few weeks before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

"I always wanted to minimize it", explained the president in a telephone exchange with Bob Woodward on March 19, transcribed in a work entitled "Rage".

“I always want to minimize it because I don't want to create panic,” he added.

Weeks earlier, on February 7, Donald Trump explained to the same journalist how Covid-19 was "a deadly thing".

The book, which is due out on September 15, is based in particular on a total of 18 interviews granted to Bob Woodward, between December 2019 and July 2020, recorded with the agreement of Donald Trump.

Nearly 190,000 dead in the United States

Asked about these remarks by the president, his spokesperson, Kayleigh McEnany, defended his management of the pandemic and his communication on it.

"The president has never lied to the Americans about the Covid," she said during her daily press briefing.

"The president has shown calm," she added.

The management of the pandemic, which has killed more than 189,000 people in the United States, has earned Donald Trump very strong criticism, from his opponents but also from scientists and certain elected officials from his own camp.

He is accused of having sent contradictory and confused signals, but also of having lacked compassion in the face of the devastation caused by this virus.

Poll after poll, a very large majority of Americans severely judge its action on this front.   

"A betrayal", for Joe Biden

Eight weeks before the presidential election, the publication of extracts from this book written by the famous Watergate journalist provoked a strong reaction from Democratic candidate Joe Biden, who denounced a "betrayal" of the American people .

For Joe Biden, the report is clear: the president "knowingly and voluntarily lied, for months on the threat that Covid-19 represented" for Americans.

"He had the information. He knew the danger," he said from Michigan.

For her part, Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, considered that these exchanges demonstrated "the weakness" of the American president.

"He did not know how to respond to the challenge," she said on MSNBC, also denouncing "his contempt for science".

“Above all, what is striking is his total disregard for the impact (of the pandemic) on families in our country,” she added.

After long displaying an ambiguous position on the issue of wearing a mask, the Republican billionaire appeared in public wearing a mask for the first time only on July 11.

A few days later, he felt it was a "patriotic" gesture.

Bob Woodward rose to fame around the world for exposing, along with Carl Bernstein, the Watergate scandal that forced Richard Nixon to resign in August 1974.

In a first book on the Trump presidency published two years ago, Bob Woodward painted a portrait of an uneducated, angry and paranoid president whom his collaborators strive to control to avoid the worst blunders.

Avoid panic

Dr.Anthony Fauci, director of the American Institute of Infectious Diseases, judged that Donald Trump, whom he worked with a lot in the crisis unit set up at the White House, was first anxious to avoid all panic.

"When I spoke with the president, I presented the facts to him. Often, he wanted to make sure that the country does not panic," he explained on Fox News.

"I don't remember an episode where there would have been a blatant distortion of the things I had talked about with him," he added.

With AFP

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