Transcripts and audio clips of chats between Donald Trump and Bob Woodward in Woodward’s “Rage” (Simon & Schuster, 9.15), reported in a 9.9.20 Washington Post story by Robert Costa and Philip Rucker:

Excerpt #1: “On 2.7.20, Trump called Woodward and revealed that he thought the Covid-19 situation was far more dire than what he had been saying publicly. ‘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. This is deadly stuff.'”

Excerpt #2: On 3.19.20, Trump told Woodward that “I wanted to always play [the virus] down…I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic.”

What he meant, of course, is that he didn’t want to panic the stock market and the business community. So rather than deal with it as a leader from a straight, take-charge, here’s-what-needs-to-be-done perspective, Trump tried to bullshit his way through the situation.

In a CNN interview earlier today, Woodward’s former Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein called this a case of “homicidal negligence.”

September 9, 2020by Jeffrey Wells81 Comments