Trump knew how deadly COVID-19 was and chose to downplay it.

of course he knew.

just like he knew about the Russian bounties on our soldiers.

like he knew/knows about Russian interference in our elections.

like he knew Mexico would never pay for the wall.

like he knew he didn't, and still doesn't, care about anyone but himself.

I agree!

Holy shit. All of it 😮.

Kaitlan Collins...

”Trump, March 19, on tape with Bob Woodward: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."
Kayleigh McEnany today: "The president never downplayed the virus."

I HATE HIM WITH THE HEAT OF A THOUSAND SUNS.

i just realized my sentence should have said "doesn't" isn't of does. i had to go back and change that. 

he cares....about his image, his money, his legacy. i believe he cares for anyone who will fortify those things.  once they are no longer of use to him, he no longer cares.  look at the people hes hired and appointed.  loved them all and showered them with accolades until they were no longer of any use or became a detriment to his image or agenda.  in order to tear them down afterwards, he had to care enough in the first place.    

Here’s a good analysis about that:

www.cnn.com/2020/09/09/politics/why-trump-talked-to-woodward/index.html

I think that this analysis is spot on. Especially Trump’s belief that he can manipulate anyone he talks to, leaving them with a highly favorable impression of him along with his belief that Woodward’s first book about him would have been positive, if only Trump had talked with him. 

No "poop"..Of course he knew~~

Here is trump’s answer about the tape call between him and Woodward.  This is from today’s briefing

”Q Mr. President, can you address the concerns from the Woodward book in regards to whether — did you mislead the public by saying that you downplayed the coronavirus and that you repeatedly did that in order to reduce panic? Did you mislead the public?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think if you said “in order to reduce panic,” perhaps that’s so. 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. And 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. We want to show strength as a nation. And that’s what I’ve done. And we’ve done very well. We’ve done well from any standard. You look at our numbers, compared to other countries, other parts of the world. It’s been an amazing job that we’ve done.

I think it’s very sad, in many respects, because the incredible individuals working so hard on it, including our Vice President, they’ve done this great job. They haven’t been acknowledged by the news media — and they should — for the job we’ve done. Whether it’s ventilators — and now, you’ll see very soon, with vaccines and with therapeutics, the job we’ve done has been incredible.

Q But, Mr. President —

THE PRESIDENT: But we don’t want to — we don’t want to instill panic. We don’t want to jump up and down and start shouting that we have a problem that is a — a tremendous problem — scare everybody.

And I’ll tell you the other thing: We immediately started buying. All over the world, we started buying masks and gowns and everything else. And we don’t want to cause pricing to go up to a level that becomes almost unaffordable. So —

Q But, Mr. President —

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, in that sense — so, in that sense, I agree with it.

Yeah, please.

Q Mr. President, how do you reassure the American public, going forward, that they can trust what you’re saying?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that’s really a big part of trust. We have to have leadership. We have to show leadership. And the last thing you want to do is create a panic in the country. This was a horrible thing. It was sent to us by China. It should not have happened — should never have happened. This is a disgusting, terrible situation that was foisted upon us.

And we have to show — we just don’t want to use — the best word is “panic.” We don’t want to have to show panic. We’re not going to show panic. And that’s exactly what I did. And I was very open — whether it’s to Woodward or anybody else. It’s just another political hit job. But whether it was Woodward or anybody else, you cannot show a sense of panic or you’re going to have bigger problems than you ever had before.

Please.

Q Respectfully, sir, your comments amounted to more than trying to reduce panic, sir. On February 7th, you told Woodward —

THE PRESIDENT: Please, please.

Q — “It’s more deadly than [even] your strenuous flu.” But —

THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me, he’s — he’s going.

Q But then, publicly, you weren’t saying that at all.

THE PRESIDENT: Go ahead, please.

Q Look, Mr. President, don’t you think if you were more forthright with the American, more lives could have been saved? Do you take responsibility at all for some of the 200,000 deaths that we’ve had?

THE PRESIDENT: So, I think if we didn’t do what we did, we would have had millions of people die. We closed up our country. We closed it up very, very quickly, very effectively. We did a job. We learned about this horrible disease, along with the rest of the world, which had to learn about it. And then we opened it up. And now we know the vulnerable; we know who it attacks, who it’s so vicious against. And I think we’ve done, from every standpoint, a — a incredible job.

We shouldn’t have lost anybody. Nobody should have lost — China released something that they shouldn’t have been allowed to re- — they should not have released. It came out of China. It went to Europe. It went all over the world. It should have never happened. They could have stopped it. They stopped it from going into the remainder of China. It started in Wuhan, and they stopped it. But they didn’t stop it from coming to our country.

Now, we had to show calm. We had to show — you know, if it was up to you or whoever — I have no idea what he said in the book. And again, it’s a book that — I gave him some quotes and, frankly, we’ll see how the book turned out. I have no idea. You’re asking me questions for the first time.

But, again, the last thing we can show is panic or excitement or fear or anything else. We had to take care of the — we had to take care of the situation we were given.

Now, long before anybody else wanted to do it, I closed our borders to a very heavily infected China. If I didn’t do that, we would have had hundreds of thousands more people die. Dr. Fauci said it. Many people said it. It was a great decision. It was a decision I made and I had to make.

It was a decision that a lot of people thought I was wrong. Nancy Pelosi said I was wrong. Joe Bo- — Biden said I was wrong. They all came back, and they said it was the right decision. And I was way early. That was in January. The end of January, I did that.

So that was a very good thing we did. Otherwise, we would have had hundreds of thousands more. But if we didn’t close the country, we would have been talking about millions of people, instead of the numbers that we have right now.

Go ahead.

Q Mr. President, you mentioned that you were trying to avoid price gouging. But you mentioned to Bob Woodward that you recognized, as this virus spread through the air, in — on February 7th — you didn’t begin Project Air Bridge until March; you didn’t use the Defense Production Act until March; you didn’t start ramping up ventilator production until March.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I mean, you didn’t — you didn’t really think it was going to be to the point where it was. All of a sudden, the world was infected. The entire world was infected. Everyone was scrambling around, looking where to buy facemasks and all of the other things.

We’ve opened up factories. We’ve had tremendous success with facemasks and with shields and with the ventilators. We’re now supplying the rest of the world. We have all the ventilators we can use.

And remember this: The ventilators were very important. Not one person that needed a ventilator didn’t get it. And these are very complex, expensive machines to make. We opened up something like hadn’t been done since the Second World War. We — honestly, we’ve done a — an incredible job.

But we don’t want to run around, screaming, shouting, “Oh, look at this. Look at this.” We have to show leadership. And leadership is all about confidence. And confidence is confidence in our country.

And our people have been great. We’ve been put through a lot by China. By releasing this, by having this come here, we were put through a lot. They could have done something about it, and they chose not to.

I am very honored to have presented to you today a list of 20 incredible people. And we will talk later. I’m sure we’ll be meeting later in the day.

Thank you very much. Thank you.”



Literally speechless after reading this.  He really did not present any sort of believable defense on why he decided to downplay the seriousness of this virus

When he said he “didn’t want to start a panic” he means he didn’t want to start a panic in the stock market. The economy was the biggest thing he had going for him. Even though it appears now he had an idea of how deadly the virus had the potential of being then, I still don’t think he believed it would hit as hard and fast as it did here. I’m sure his hubris led him to believe that Coronavirus would be easier to control in this country than even the H1N1 - under his supreme leadership of course 😡

I didn’t expect him to, did you?

It’s basically indefensible, though.

So not shocking, kind of surprised it was caught on tape though. Won’t make a bit of difference to his disciples.

God, I hate him so much and I am so scared for
November.