Donald Trump is defending his decision to downplay the coronavirus outbreak, telling reporters his deception occurred because he is 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,” Trump said on Wednesday. “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 tremendous problem, scare everybody.”
Trump was responding to newly released audio recordings of an interview he gave to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward on Feb. 7, in which he said he already knew by then that the virus was “more deadly” than the flu but that “I wanted to always play it down.” Continue reading.