It turns out President Donald Trump made even more private comments acknowledging the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic to reporter Bob Woodward back in April.
On Monday night, CNN released clips of Trump’s phone conversation with Woodward regarding COVID-19 on April 13 in which the President asserted that “this thing is a killer if it gets you.”
“If you’re the wrong person, you don’t have a chance,” Trump told the reporter.
In another clip of the conversation, the President said COVID-19 “rips you apart” and described the virus as “the plague.”
Twitter users pointed out that Trump made the comments three days after he claimed that the virus “will soon be in full retreat!” and four days before he called on the right-wingers protesting stay-at-home orders to “LIBERATE” Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia.
The new recordings further fuel the scandal surrounding Trump’s private remarks to Woodward as the journalist was working on his book, “Rage,” in which the President admitted in February that the virus was “deadly stuff” even while publicly downplaying the pandemic. In March, Trump told Woodward he “wanted to always play it down.”
After revelations of Trump’s comments emerged last week, the President claimed he had purposefully downplayed the virus to the public in order to prevent “panic.”
BuckRowdy on September 15th, 2020 at 12:59 UTC »
What is kind of baffling to me is that doing the right thing on Covid wouldn't have lost him any of his support. They're with him no matter what. It would have gained him lots of support that he never once tried to court.
He didn't want the stock market to dip even for a day though.
Custergrant on September 15th, 2020 at 12:22 UTC »
It's pretty fucking chilling that he addresses the lethality of COVID-19 in the same language he uses to address political dissidents and protestors.
s_wisch on September 15th, 2020 at 11:51 UTC »
4 days later he sent out his liberate tweets... this “guy” is all sorts of horrible