Tag: Trump lied about COVID-19 and tens of thousands Americans died

Trump fumes over ‘very disgraceful’ questions as he gets grilled for lying about risks of COVID-19

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President Donald Trump fumed during the Thursday press conference when the first question from the press was “why did you lie to the American people and why should we trust what you have to say now?”

“What a terrible question. I didn’t lie,” said Trump.

ABC News’ Jon Karl hammered Trump on the tapes that were released by Bob Woodward showing Trump intentionally downplayed the coronavirus, he claims, to not cause “panic.” While people panicked, rioted about masks and attacked state capitols doing lockdowns, Trump was egging them on with demands to “liberate” states. Meanwhile, he knew that the virus was five times more deadly than the worst case of the flu. Continue reading.

Trump seeks to shift scrutiny amid Woodward fallout

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President Trump is going on the offensive after revelations from Watergate journalist Bob Woodward that he deliberately misled the public on the severity of COVID-19.

Both the White House and Trump’s campaign are attempting to change the narrative after excerpts and audio recordings of Trump’s interviews with Woodward showed him admitting to publicly downplaying the threat from the virus despite knowing the danger it posed.

For a second consecutive day, Trump on Thursday called a previously unscheduled news conference, where his comments to Woodward took center stage as reporters pressed the president about whether he misled the American public during crucial stages of the pandemic. Continue reading.

Coronavirus is hundreds of times more deadly for people over 60 than people under 40

How deadly is SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19? And what are the risks of death for people of different ages and demographics? These have been hard numbers to calculate during this pandemic.

To calculate the true death rate – more accurately called the infection–fatality ratio (IFR) – you would simply divide the total number of coronavirus deaths by the total number of infections. The problem is that with so many asymptomatic cases and limited testing for much of the pandemic, finding the true number of infections has been very difficult.

The easiest way to calculate more accurate infection and death rates is to perform random testing. Continue reading.

Fox Hosts Excuse Trump’s Admitted Lies About Pandemic Threat

For his new book, Bob Woodward taped conversations with President Donald Trump earlier this year. In some of the tapes, Trump admits that he knew the novel coronavirus was deadly even while he was downplaying it in public. Despite the damning revelation, Fox personalities immediately defended Trump.

In newly released audio excerpts from Woodward’s interviews with Trump, the president said on a February 7 recording: “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.” In another conversation, Trump admitted that he was downplaying the risk of the virus, saying, “To be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down.”

Even though the revelations show that the president misled the public about a pandemic that is a few days out from having caused the deaths of 200,000 Americans, Fox personalities immediately went to bat for Trump. Continue reading.

The Memo: Woodward revelations deepen Trump troubles

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President Trump’s response to the coronavirus is back in the center of the news agenda — and that spells bad news for a commander-in-chief trailing in his bid to win a second term.

Details emerged Wednesday of a forthcoming book from Bob Woodward that contains a host of damaging revelations. Worst of all, Woodward depicts Trump as privately knowing the seriousness of the coronavirus while downplaying it publicly.

The president’s handling of COVID-19 has drawn broad disapproval from the American public, according to polls.  Continue reading.

Trump says he didn’t want to spark panic. But he’s running on fear.

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“I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic.” 

— President Trump, explaining why he misled Americans about the coronavirus, Sept. 9, 2020

Bob Woodward’s first book on Trump was called “Fear.” But now the president is trying to rebut his own words in Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” by suggesting that he was trying to keep the nation calm by not revealing how much he knew about the dangerous nature of the novel coronavirus.

“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in a Feb. 7 call with Woodward. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

Speaking to reporters for weeks afterward, however, Trump repeatedly played down the threat, suggesting that it was not much more dangerous than the seasonal flu. Continue reading.

Trump Said He Underestimated How Quickly The Coronavirus Would Spread Despite Reports Saying He Knew

“All of a sudden, the world was infected. The entire world was infected,” Trump said when asked about his comments to Bob Woodward.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump insisted Wednesday that he didn’t expect the coronavirus outbreak would spread to the degree it ultimately did, even as a newly released interview showed he was privately worried about how deadly and contagious the virus was in early February.

“You didn’t really think it was going to be to the point where it was,” Trump told reporters during an unrelated press conference at the White House. “All of a sudden, the world was infected. The entire world was infected.”

His comments contradict reports in an upcoming book from journalist Bob Woodward that describe a president who was fully aware of the potential danger Americans faced with the coronavirus and regarded it as “deadlier than even your strenuous flu.” Woodward pinpoints the time frame in which the president’s aides advised Trump that the pandemic would be the “roughest thing” he’d face in his presidency. Ten days later, Woodward writes, Trump reiterated the same sentiment during an interview. Continue reading.

Trump’s lies cost tens of thousands of American lives–and Bob Woodward has the proof on tape

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It is not news that Donald Trump downplayed the severity of Covid-19 for an extended period of time, calling it a “hoax” and blaming Democrats and the media for exaggerating the seriousness of the pandemic to hurt him politically. But we live in a hyperpolarized country with a balkanized media environment, and that makes it incredibly significant that veteran journalist Bob Woodward captured Trump saying as much himself, explicitly, on tape.

In an interview Woodward recorded for his new book, Rage, on February 7, Trump said that the Coronavirus was “tricky,” that it spread via airborne transmission and was five times more lethal than seasonal influenza. “This is deadly stuff,” he added. That was three weeks before the United States would suffer the first of its almost 200,000 confirmed fatalities due to Covid-19.

Less than three weeks later, on February 26, Trump publicly compared Covid with the flu during a White House press conference. Continue reading.