Trump Admits He Deliberately Downplayed "Deadly" Threat Of Pandemic

The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown

CNN

News

3.2 • 865 Ratings

🗓️ 10 September 2020

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The United States surpasses 190,000 coronavirus deaths amid Trump admitting that he deliberately downplayed the "deadly" threat of the pandemic in recorded interviews with Bob Woodward. Trump defends downplaying Covid-19 risks by saying that "we don't want a panic... We don't want people to be frightened." Woodward book reveals more disparaging Trump rants against American generals. Woodward book exposes Kim Jong Un's fawning letters to "your excellency" Trump. Woodward's book says that Fauci told associate that Trump's "attention span is like a minus number." Woodward's book also says that Fauci told an associate that Trump's "sole purpose is to her re-elected." Woodward's book says that the former DNI coats believed that Putin had something on Trump, although intel never proved it. In Woodward's book, Trump mocked concerns about Black Americans' pain and anger by saying, "I don't feel that at all." In the Woodward book, Trump knew in early February that the coronavirus was dangerous, highly contagious, airborne and "deadly." Trump to Woodward on coronavirus is early February: "It's more deadly than even your strenuous flus." A source says that aides "repeatedly" warned Trump that talking to Bob Woodward was a bad idea. Biden says that Trump "knowingly and willingly lied" about the coronavirus for months. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is CNN breaking news.
0:07.0	This is CNN breaking news.
0:10.0	Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world.
0:12.0	I'm Wolf Blitzer in the situation room we're following breaking news.
0:15.7	explosive new details from veteran journalist Bob Woodward's brand new book
0:20.7	including an admission by President Trump on tape that he fully understood
0:25.6	the severity of the coronavirus crisis in early February and that he then deliberately
0:32.4	downplayed the pandemic to the American public.
0:35.4	The bombshell revelations come as the United States now surpasses yet another terrible milestone.
0:42.0	More than 190,000 Americans have died from coronavirus and it raises the sobering question,
0:49.4	how many of those lives could have been saved if the President of the United States had
0:54.4	confronted this crisis honestly with the American public and aggressively
0:59.3	from the very very beginning. Bob Woodward's book also reveals a new account of the President's disparaging
1:06.3	language toward the United States military leadership, and in just a moment we'll also bring
1:11.0	you additional details from the book about the very
1:13.9	bizarre and affectionate letters between North Korea's Kim Jong-un and
1:18.4	President Trump. But let's begin with CNN's Jamie Gangel. She's been doing amazing reporting on all of this.
1:24.8	You've got a lot of digging that you've done on the Woodward book,
1:27.8	Jamie.
1:28.6	So what did the president precisely know
1:31.0	about the severity of the virus, and when did he know it?
1:34.8	It turns out Wolf that he knew critical details very early on.
	...

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