Woodward says Trump has 'lost his way, not just as a president but as a human being'
Bob Woodward said President Trump’s false claim at a town hall this week that he never sought to downplay the threat of the coronavirus shows Trump has “lost his way, not just as president but as a human being trying to assess what’s real and what’s unreal.”
In a wide-ranging live interview with Yahoo News Editor in Chief Daniel Klaidman and Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff for the “Skullduggery” podcast Thursday, Woodward said Trump’s assertion during the ABC town hall that he “up-played” the threat of COVID-19 to Americans was “so confusing, it makes you dizzy.”
“This idea of up-playing, I don’t think that’s even a word,” Woodward said. “Now it will be in one of those slang dictionaries.”
In a Feb. 7 interview for Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” Trump told him that he knew the virus — which has now killed over 190,000 Americans — was “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”
“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said, adding: “This is deadly stuff.”
But publicly, Trump sought to downplay the virus, which he acknowledged in another interview with Woodward on March 19.
“I wanted to always play it down,” he said. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”
Woodward has faced sharp criticism for not disclosing Trump’s private recognition of the danger posed by the coronavirus months ago, when it might have affected the course of the pandemic.
He said that at the time of Trump’s Feb. 7 comments, there were few cases in the U.S. of the virus, which originated in Wuhan, China.
“It was a China story,” Woodward said. And when Trump acknowledged he was downplaying the threat of COVID-19 in late March, Woodward said the public already knew how infectious it was.
Woodward, who conducted 19 on-the-record interviews with Trump for the book, said he asked Trump at one point what he considered to be the job of the president.
“He said, ‘To protect the people, that is job No. 1,’” Woodward recalled. “‘Job No. 2 is to tell the truth.’”
Woodward said Trump’s failure to do either of those “saddens” him.
And it’s also why the legendary author, who has written books on presidents dating back to Richard Nixon, said he felt a responsibility to conclude his latest with the assessment that Trump is “the wrong man for the job.”
“You can’t duck what is an obvious conclusion,” Woodward said.
Ex-Pence adviser says Trump bungled VIRUS; SHES FOR BIDEN.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A former adviser to Vice President Mike Pence who served on the White House coronavirus task force says President Donald Trump once suggested that COVID-19 might be a good thing because it would stop him from having to shake hands with “disgusting people."
Olivia Troye is the latest former member of the Trump administration to speak out against him and urge voters to deny him a second term. She joins a growing list that includes Miles Taylor, former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, and former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci.
Trump said Thursday that he did not know Troye, who was Pence's homeland security adviser.
In a video released Thursday by the group Republican Voters Against Trump, Troye says working for Trump was “terrifying” and says he was more concerned about his reelection chances than about protecting the nation from the virus.
“The truth is he doesn't actually care about anyone else but himself,” she says.
Troye alleges that, during one task force meeting she attended, the president said: “'Maybe this COVID thing is a good thing. I don’t like shaking hands with people. I don’t have to shake hands with these disgusting people.'”
“Those disgusting people are the same people that he claims to care about. These are the people still going to his rallies today who have complete faith in who he is,” she says, insisting, “If the president had taken this virus seriously, or if he had actually made an effort to tell how serious it was, he would have slowed the virus spread, he would have saved lives."
Asked about Troye as he left the White House late Thursday for a campaign rally in Wisconsin, Trump said he had no idea who Troye is.
