https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/10/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-bob-woodward-book/index.html
It matters who the president is.
Millions of lives and livelihoods depend on the character, competence, altruism and integrity of the person in the Oval Office -- whatever their party or ideology. But President Donald Trump -- as he devastatingly revealed
in his own voice to Bob Woodward -- met the great crisis of his age
with ineptness, dishonesty and an epic dereliction of duty. Rarely have a
president's actions -- or inaction -- and individual decisions on such a
critical issue been so consequential and so exposed in his own time --
in this case in taped interviews with The Washington Post reporter for
his new book, "Rage."
Throughout
history, presidents responded to moments of great trial by leveling
with the American people about often-dire challenges, but also summoned a
collective sense of mission toward a less perilous destination.
The fallout from the Woodward bombshells just 54 days before the election goes beyond White House palace intrigue. Trump's own narrative of the crisis has now been shattered. His frequent complaints that no one could have foreseen the magnitude of the challenge from Covid-19 are shown to be flagrantly untrue. Woodward reports that Trump was told by his national security adviser, Robert O'Brien, on January 28 that the virus would be the greatest national security threat of his presidency.
The President has spent months slamming China,
which he accuses of knowingly exporting the virus to the US to harm the
American economy after he earlier showered Beijing with praise for its
handling of the situation. But he makes clear in the conversation on
February 7 that he understood the severity of the virus -- and much of
his information seems to have been coming from a conversation the day
before with none other than Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The White House has spent months denying
that Trump downplayed the pandemic -- only for the President to confirm
it on a Woodward tape.
