While leaders around the world left no stone unturned in a bid to restrict the spread of the coronavirus in their country, Donald Trump admitted in a conversation he had with journalist Bob Woodward that he deliberately downplayed the initial outbreak. In March, when America was witnessing historic shutdowns to quell the spread, the president said that he did not consider the coronavirus pandemic as a leadership challenge of a lifetime.
He made these remarks during an interview with veteran journalist Bob Woodward. On Mar. 19, Woodward asked Trump if there was a moment in the last two months when he thought combating the coronavirus pandemic was a leadership test of a lifetime. "No," the president responded in a new clip which was aired on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" on Sept. 15.
When Woodward asked again, Trump said he thinks it might be, adding that he doesn't think that. He went on to explain that his focus is simply on getting it solved, although several people told him that he was a wartime president.
The remarks came over seven weeks after the president was warned by his national security adviser that the coronavirus would be the "national security threat" as far as his presidency was concerned. In multiple interviews, before these comments, Trump had told Woodward about his concerns over the pandemic.
By the Mar. 19 interview, 256 people had succumbed to the deadly virus in the United States. There have been over 195,000 reported deaths in the country, with more than 6.6 million Americans contracting COVID-19 to date. COVID-19 has become the biggest public health catastrophe in over a hundred years.
In early May, Woodward discovered that in a Jan. 28 28 top-secret intelligence briefing, national security adviser Robert O'Brien informed the president that the coronavirus would be "the biggest national security threat" of his presidency. O'Brien's deputy Matthew Pottinger also warned Trump about the human-to-human and asymptomatic spread of COVID-19.
Earlier this week, Woodward referenced how the president refrained from mentioning the pandemic during his State of the Union address on Feb. 4. Woodward said ideally a leader would warn everyone about the impending trouble, and inform them about what can be done to stop it.
Woodward accused Trump of not warning the people, but rather claiming that he remained mum about the situation to avoid creating panic among Americans. The journalist added that Americans do not hide the truth when they know it, slamming the president for not warning the country despite knowing the severity of the virus.