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

rodeomom I am SO very sorry.  My sympathies to your son, his family and to you.  I'm sure that he freaked out when a co-worker tested positive now.  I pray that he'll be okay during his own quarantine.  xo

I’m so sorry. Hugs

I'm not sure if your son has any underlying risk factors, but I would absolutely explore other options before assuming you at 60 with underlying conditions is the best choice as a caregiver. Now if he becomes very ill and you need to be there for your son - I understand completely. But if he lucky enough to have a milder form, your risk is substantially higher.  I hope that he stays healthy.  (((hugs)))

Thanks, I just hope he doesn't get it. He tested today and was told two days to get results back.

Do you have sources for this?  For one thing, JEFF Zucker is the head of CNN. MARK Zuckerberg is the head of Facebook.  From what I just found when I searched, it seems that your interpretation of what is happening when Trump says CNN is fake news is off base.

I think the stock market was one of the main reasons he downplayed this. But I also don't think he has the ability to see that there is a middle ground. There aren't only two options--Shout "Death! Death!" or say it is no big deal. You can explain the seriousness of the virus in a calm way and give clear information. Just like most leaders would. He isn't capable of that. But he has never corrected that and continues to downplay the virus, so that leads me to think that there are other issues at play.

"If Bob Woodward’s new blockbuster teaches us anything new about the character of the 45th president, it’s that we don’t yet have the words to describe the multiple variants of the vacuum inside his head.

There’s the stupidity of arrogance, the stupidity of ignorance and his old friend: the stupidity of blatant duplicity. There’s his homicidal stupidity, his traitorous stupidity, his criminally corrupt stupidity and his plain old infantile stupidity.

Let’s start with the top of this taxonomy: the domain of Donald’s dumbness. At his core, the former reality TV star is a particularly stupid man who thinks he is very smart. Or as he prefers to call his own character, “a very stable genius”.

Perhaps, just maybe, this lies at the root of his monumentally dumb decision to grant Woodward 18 interviews, on the record and on tape.

Maintaining a modicum of self-restraint would be an overwhelming challenge for this president for the duration of just one response to one question. Over the course of many hours of conversation, after business hours in the executive mansion, even the ultra-disciplined Barack Obama would struggle to keep his guard up.

Instead, our very stupid genius vomited up all manner of secrets that collectively prove beyond all reasonable doubt that he represents the greatest single danger to the fate of both the American people and to himself.

How do we classify the stupidity of blabbing the greatest secret of them all: that he knew all along how Covid-19 was deadly and easily transmissible? We now know that in late January, his national security adviser told him the coronavirus was the “biggest national security threat” of his presidency. A week later, he told Woodward that the disease was “more deadly even than your strenuous flus”."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/10/donald-trump-bob-woodward-interviews