Trump on coronavirus: "I always wanted to downplay it"

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, last May in Ypsilanti (Michigan) .The Detroit News / TNS / ABACA / GTRES

"Donald Trump knew it."

That is the phrase that tweeters repeat after

published an audio on Wednesday in which the US president admits that he has deliberately downplayed the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump acknowledged this fact in March to journalist Bob Wooward, who interviewed him almost twenty times for his book

, which will go on sale next week, and some pieces of which were made public this Wednesday.

The

who has had access to several conversations between the president and the journalist, reveals that while the Republican informed the population that covid-19 was no worse than a flu, he knew that the death rate was several times higher than an intense flu .

“It is more deadly than even severe flu.

This is deadly, ”the Republican president warned the two-time Pulitzer winner on February 7.

The United States is the country with the most infections in the world, with more than six million cases, and close to 200,000 deaths.

Half of the country remains closed and the economic crisis affects unemployment with figures that have not been seen since the Great Depression.

“I always wanted to downplay it.

I still like to downplay it because I don't want to create panic, ”Trump told Woodward on March 19 in a recording shared by CNN.

A week later he spoke of reopening the country on Easter Sunday, and up to 10 days before he insisted that it was nothing more than any flu.

"Donald Trump knew it.

He lied to us for months.

And while a deadly disease swept through our nation, he didn't do his job ... on purpose.

It was a betrayal of life and death to the American people ”, were the harsh statements of the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Twitter after the audios were known.

According to Woodward's book, cited by the

Trump participated in a January 28 meeting on the coronavirus where he was informed that the world was facing a health emergency on par with the 1918 pandemic. to be the greatest threat to national security that you face in your presidency, ”his National Security advisor, Robert O'Brien, told him at the meeting, according to the Woodward book advances mentioned in the

After the information bomb, less than 60 days before the presidential elections, the White House this Wednesday delayed its press conference for half an hour compared to the scheduled time.

“The president never downplayed the virus.

The president expressed calm, "said spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany.

One of the questions to the spokesperson was related to the president's statements at the end of February, when he said that the coronavirus "one day, as if by a miracle, will disappear."

McEnany responded: “No one is lying to people.

One day, the covid will disappear.

It is a fact".

Woodward, who in 2018 published

, a book in which he described the Administration as a "madhouse", interviewed the Republican president 18 times between last December and July.

One of the big issues they addressed, in addition to the pandemic, was police abuse of African Americans in the United States.

The country faced the largest wave of racial protests in half a century after George Floyd's death at the hands of the police in late May.

On June 19, Woodward suggested to the president that as white men of the same generation they had a responsibility to "better understand the anger and pain" felt by the black community.

"No," Trump replied, in a voice described in the book as mocking.

“You really drank the Kool-Aid [fruit soda], right?

Listen to what you say.

Wow.

No, I don't feel that at all, ”the president told him.

And he avoided answering about whether there was systemic or institutional racism in the country, arguing that it exists "everywhere", and that it is probably less in the United States than "in most places."

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