In a series of interviews with journalist Bob Woodward, US President Donald Trump has admitted knowingly downplaying the risk of the coronavirus.

In public, he told his people that he had nothing to fear.

In private, he claimed that the Covid-19 was "a very serious thing, more deadly than the flu."

Donald Trump knowingly downplayed the risk posed by the coronavirus.

He says it himself, in interviews recorded in recent months with the famous Bob Woodward.

The American journalist who revealed the Watergate scandal is releasing a book of interviews with the American president in a few days, which will be published on September 15.

Bob Woodward was able to interview the President on 18 occasions, between December 2019 and July 2020, and the latter allowed him to record their conversations.

With less than two months of the presidential election, these revelations are already having the effect of a bombshell across the Atlantic. 

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"It's deadlier than the seasonal flu: it's deadly stuff."

Because Donald Trump has said everything and its opposite.

At the beginning of February, when the virus had not yet killed anyone in the United States, but the contaminations were largely on the rise, the American president assured his compatriots that they had nothing to fear, because the disease would disappear with rising temperatures in spring.

But on the phone with Bob Woodward, the president was much more alarmist than in public.

"The virus is a very serious thing, it is more deadly than the seasonal flu: it is a deadly thing".

Despite this information, Donald Trump will continue to say publicly during the following weeks that this virus is not worse than the flu, that the situation is under control or that the number of cases will soon be zero.

The US president knowingly hid the truth, and doesn't hesitate to admit it in another conversation with Bob Woodward in mid-March.

“To be honest, I've always wanted to minimize it. I keep doing it because I don't want to create panic,” he says. 

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Except a president shouldn't say that.

On Wednesday, when the milestone of 190,000 deaths from Covid-19 on American soil was crossed, the Democratic candidate for the White House Joe Biden accused Donald Trump of "having lied for months to the American people".