President Donald Trump jumped into the debate over whether journalist Bob Woodward had a duty to warn the public about Trump’s explosive taped coronavirus comments – and sided with the author he has accused of writing a ‘hit-job.’
The president said Thursday Woodward did not have an obligation to disclose the contents of their conversations during 18 interviews Woodward conducted with him because they were ‘good and proper answers.’
His tweet offered a new aspect to his defense of downplaying the virus, which he claimed was to avoid ‘panic’ and ‘fear,’ and co-opts Woodward into the defense.
Woodward – who no longer describes himself as a day-to-day reporter but as an author – defended himself amid criticism of not releasing the tapes in advance of his book, saying he wanted to verify if what Trump said was true, and how the president had come to learn it.
‘Bob Woodward had my quotes for many months,’ Trump tweeted Thursday morning, after defending his taped comments that the virus was ‘deadly’ stuff while also confiding that he liked ‘playing it down’ to avoid rattling the public.
‘If he thought they were so bad or dangerous, why didn’t he immediately report them in an effort to save lives?’ Trump asked.
‘Didn’t he have an obligation to do so? No, because he knew they were good and proper answers. Calm, no panic!’ Trump wrote.
Trump asked and answered a question Thursday about whether Bob Woodward should have published their conversations sooner
President Donald Trump said Bob Woodward didn’t have an obligation to disclose his coronavirus comments because they were ‘good and proper answers’
Woodward has dismissed claims that he could’ve saved lives had he published Trump’s comments sooner
Trump was referencing his own defense Wednesday, when he defended his decision not to raise too many alarms.
‘I’m a cheerleader for this country. I love this country. I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic,’ he said at the White House.
He made a similar statement to the author, telling Woodward: ‘I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.’
His comments came after some media critics pounced on Woodward for holding back the extraordinary information for months, claiming earlier publication of Trump’s private warnings could have saved lives.
Among the critics were Charles Pierce of Esquire, who equated Woodward, an author, with Trump. the head of the executive branch in being responsible for the spread of the virus.
‘Nearly 200,000 Americans have died because neither Donald Trump nor Bob Woodward wanted to risk anything substantial to keep the country informed,’ Pierce wrote.
CNN analyst Jessica Huseman, a reporter for ProPublica, tweeted: ‘How differently might Trump’s supporters have acted if – this whole time – they knew that he knew COVID was a serious threat? Woodward could have made that happen in February.’
And Jose Antonio Vargas, a filmmaker who previously worked for the Post, tweeted: ‘If journalism is a public trust– a trust that has consistently eroded –and Bob Woodward is an associate editor at the Washington Post, why did Woodward sit on this information while Americans suffered and died?’
Scott Nover, an AdWeek reporter, tweeted: ‘These interviews about Covid-19 were done in February and March. Why are we learning about it in a book published in September? Isn’t there a journalistic imperative to publish this information in a timely manner… especially during a pandemic?’
Woodward defended his decision in comments to the Associated Press. ‘He tells me this, and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, that’s interesting, but is it true?’ Trump says things that don’t check out, right?’ he said.
‘If I had done the story at that time about what he knew in February, that’s not telling us anything we didn’t know,’ Woodward said.
At that point, he said, the issue was no longer one of public health but of politics.
His priority became getting the story out ‘before the election in November,’ Woodward continued.
Woodward also told the Washington Post Wednesday that he was trying to write ‘the best obtainable version of the truth.’
However its media columnist, Margaret Sullivan, did not entirely back his position of not releasing them.
‘I don’t know if putting the book’s newsiest revelations out there in something closer to real time would have made a difference,’ she wrote.
‘They might very well have been denied and soon forgotten in the constant rush of new scandals and lies.
‘Still, the chance — even if it’s a slim chance — that those revelations could have saved lives is a powerful argument against waiting this long.’
Woodward became famous for breaking news in the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post.
Although Woodward has written multiple books about sitting presidents, often filled with revelations which set news agendas, Fear is the first book to face such criticism.
He retains an honorary title as the Washington Post’s associate editor but does not work for the paper, and has previously described his role as an author as writing ‘the second draft’ of history.
Woodward has also repeatedly pointed out that he is not in daily journalism, and has not been for many years.
Washington Post journalist, Erik Wemple, tweeted that he had recently interviewed Woodward about the issue.
‘Addressing only issues of process, Woodward said that when Trump talked about coronavirus — ‘deadly stuff’ — in their Feb. 7 interview, he (Woodward) didn’t know where Trump was getting his information, whether it was true, and so on,’ Wemple tweeted.
According to Wemple, it took Woodward ‘three months to nail down all the reporting about what Trump knew about coronavirus, when he learned it and how all that related to the public pronouncements he was making. It wasn’t until May that he put those pieces together’.
When asked directly whether earlier publication of his interviews would have saved lives, Woodward responded: ‘No! How?’
‘He pointed out that Trump made that comment on March 19, and he had already made an Oval Office address on March 11. Confirmed cases were taking off,’ Wemple tweeted about the interview.
‘Woodward did say that if anything he gathered was a legitimate public health issue, he would have gone to The Post and sought to have it published forthwith,’ Wemple added.
Trump told Woodward in March that his public rhetoric was part of a strategy to deliberately minimize the danger. ‘I wanted to always play it down,’ the president said. ‘I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.’
The president, according to the book, acknowledged being alarmed by the virus, even as he was telling the nation that it would swiftly disappear.
Coming less than eight weeks before Election Day, the revelations in the book – accompanied by recordings Woodward made of his interviews with Trump – provide an unwelcome return of public attention to the president’s handling of the pandemic.
Trump is currently pushing hard for a resumption of normal activity and trying to project strength and control to bolster his political position in his campaign against Democratic rival Joe Biden.
In a February 7 call with Woodward, Trump said of the virus: ‘You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.’
‘This is deadly stuff,’ the president repeated for emphasis.
Just three days later, Trump struck a far rosier tone in an interview with Fox Business: ‘I think the virus is going to be – it’s going to be fine.’
Washington Post journalist, Erik Wemple, recently interviewed Woodward about the claim
‘Addressing only issues of process, Woodward said that when Trump talked about coronavirus — ‘deadly stuff’ — in their Feb. 7 interview, he (Woodward) didn’t know where Trump was getting his information, whether it was true, and so on,’ Wemple tweeted
According to Wemple, it took Woodward ‘three months to nail down all the reporting about what Trump knew about coronavirus, when he learned it and how all that related to the public pronouncements he was making. It wasn’t until May that he put those pieces together’
There are more than 6.3 million cases of the virus in the US with at least 189,972 deaths
Biden said Wednesday the book shows Trump ‘lied to the American people’.
‘He knowingly and willingly lied about the threat it posed to the country for months. While a deadly disease ripped through our nation, he failed to do his job – on purpose. It was a life or death betrayal of the American people,’ Biden said at a campaign event in Michigan.
Biden’s campaign released an ad late Wednesday featuring the audiotapes of Trump’s remarks. ‘And Trump knew all along,’ the ad’s narrator says.
Speaking Wednesday at the White House, Trump acknowledged he downplayed the virus, insisting he was trying to buck up the nation and suggesting he was trying to avoid ‘gouging’ on prices of needed supplies.
‘The fact is I’m a cheerleader for this country. I love our country and I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic, as you say,’ Trump told reporters.
‘Certainly, I’m not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy. We want to show confidence. We want to show strength.’
Yet Trump’s public comments suggested he was steering people to ignore the reality of the coming storm.
The Washington Post, where Woodward serves as associate editor, reported excerpts of the book, Rage on Wednesday. The book also covers race relations and North Korea
Woodward’s account details dire warnings from top Trump national security officials to the president in late January that the virus that causes COVID-19 could be as bad as the devastating influenza pandemic of 1918.
On February 25, just weeks before much of the country was forced to shut down because of the pandemic, Trump declared the virus ‘very well under control in our country’.
Though he restricted travel from China in January, Trump did not begin to devote extensive federal resources to procuring vital personal protective equipment, including face masks, or expand the production of ventilators until March.
In fact, US officials recommended against widespread mask wearing until April in part because of a shortage of protective masks required by front-line medical workers.
Trump aides and allies said at the time that he was aiming to prop up the economy with his rosy take on the virus throughout February, even as his administration took few concrete steps to prepare for the coming pandemic.
The Washington Post, where Woodward serves as associate editor, reported excerpts of the book, Rage on Wednesday, as did CNN. The book also covers race relations, diplomacy with North Korea and a range of other issues that have arisen during the past two years.
The book is based in part on 18 interviews that Woodward conducted with Trump between December and July.
‘Trump never did seem willing to fully mobilize the federal government and continually seemed to push problems off on the states,’ Woodward writes of the pandemic.
‘There was no real management theory of the case or how to organize a massive enterprise to deal with one of the most complex emergencies the United States had ever faced.’
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Wednesday: ‘The president has never lied to the American public on COVID. The president was expressing calm, and his actions reflect that.’
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany (pictured) said Wednesday: ‘The president has never lied to the American public on COVID. The president was expressing calm, and his actions reflect that’
Biden (pictured at a campaign event in Michigan) said Wednesday the book shows Trump ‘knowingly and willingly lied about the threat it posed to the country for months’
She said Trump’s actions show that he took COVID-19 seriously. She noted that the president put in place travel restrictions with China on January 31 and said that some Democrats had criticized the move.
In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Dr Anthony Fauci said Trump never ‘distorted’ what the government’s top infectious disease expert had told the president.
‘Often he would want to, you know, make sure that the country doesn’t get down and out about things, but I don’t recall anything that was any gross distortion in things that I spoke to him about,’ Fauci said.
McEnany insisted ‘the president never downplayed the virus,’ though Trump himself told Woodward he was ‘playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic’.
‘There is damning truth that President Trump lied and people died,’ said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
Schumer said that when he thinks about how many people in his state died, ‘It just makes me angry.’ He added: ‘How many people would be alive today if he just told Americans the truth?’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said the president’s comments to Woodward showed weakness and a disdain for science.
‘What he was actually saying is, ‘I don’t want anybody to think anything like this happened on my watch so I’m not going to call any more attention to it,” Pelosi said on MSNBC.
Woodward’s book is his second on the Trump White House. The first, published in 2018, portrayed Trump in an unflattering light, and the president fumed at staff that he was not interviewed for it, according to former White House officials and Republicans close to the White House.
They were not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations and discussed the matter on condition of anonymity.
Trump was convinced that if he had talked to Woodward, it could have led to a more favorable depiction in the book, according to the officials. Trump had always held Woodward in high regard – he considered the journalist as the biggest star in the field – and told aides he must be interviewed if Woodward were to write again, the officials said.
Several Republican senators at the Capitol declined to comment on the new book, telling reporters they hadn’t yet read it, even when informed of key passages about the virus. ‘I just can´t, can´t comment on it,’ said Sen Rob Portman, of Ohio.
‘Could we all have done things differently? Yes, including Congress. We were all a little slow to recognize the severity,’ Portman said.