WASHINGTON—President Trump told journalist Bob Woodward in March that he was deliberately playing down the severity of the coronavirus to avoid inciting panic as he publicly dismissed the virus’s threat in a way public-health experts say harmed the ability to restrict its spread. “I wanted to always play it down,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Woodward on March 19, according to audio recordings of the interview aired by CNN on Wednesday. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”Weeks earlier, on Feb. 7, Mr. Trump told Mr. Woodward the virus was “deadly stuff” and “more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” according to the recordings. Yet in public in the weeks that followed, the president routinely compared the virus to the flu and predicted it would soon disappear. CNN and the Washington Post published audio excerpts of those interviews, but the full transcripts and recordings haven’t been released.

Source: Wall Street Journal September 09, 2020 18:17 UTC