Trump admits to Bob Woodward that He Knew How Deadly Covid-19 was back in February of this Year.

Nick Calandra

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I'm telling you what everyone knew 6 months ago.
I think you're missing the point. He was right in not wanting to create a panic, but he downplayed it so much that people didn't think (and still don't) they needed to take COVID seriously. All he had to do was tell people at the very start of all this was to wear a mask, listen to your local authorities and do everything you can to reasonably social distance (until the actual lockdowns happened).

It may or may not have changed the eventual outcome of all this, but he would have done his part as President to make sure people were informed and understood the severity of the virus. It may have lead to more people taking it seriously, or maybe not because people don't care about things until it affects them directly, but we'll never know because he's an idiot and guards his self-created ego more than the people in this country.

Also Woodward, as a journalist, sitting on those recordings for months until he could profit from them by selling his book is extremely scummy too.
 

Kwak

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Well that's just genuinely presidential. The man actually considered the consequences of his words and attempted to inspire hope, and there's evidence of it. Crazy.
Holy shit, that any thinking human being can choose to interpret this in this way is sickening.

Yeah, so fucking presidential and inspiring.

“What do you say to Americans, who are watching you right now, who are scared?”

Erupting in anger, Trump unleashed a tirade: “I say that you’re a terrible reporter. That’s what I say. I think it’s a very nasty question and I think it’s a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people.”

thefuckouttahere
 

Silvanus

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Did Trump downplay it? Sure.
Am I misremembering, or didn't you yourself say that it was no worse than the 'flu as well (when Trump was saying it)?

Just be honest. You're going to defend the position regardless of what it is. The content doesn't matter. Only the speaker matters.
 

lil devils x

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I think you're missing the point. He was right in not wanting to create a panic, but he downplayed it so much that people didn't think (and still don't) they needed to take COVID seriously. All he had to do was tell people at the very start of all this was to wear a mask, listen to your local authorities and do everything you can to reasonably social distance (until the actual lockdowns happened).

It may or may not have changed the eventual outcome of all this, but he would have done his part as President to make sure people were informed and understood the severity of the virus. It may have lead to more people taking it seriously, or maybe not because people don't care about things until it affects them directly, but we'll never know because he's an idiot and guards his self-created ego more than the people in this country.

Also Woodward, as a journalist, sitting on those recordings for months until he could profit from them by selling his book is extremely scummy too.
On Woodward, was it that he was just sitting on them , or was he trying to get Trump to tell him as much as he could? The moment he released any of this, his cover was blown and there was no way Trump would talk to him again. He managed to get Trump to spill a good deal, even classified information, and was likely trying to get Trump to talk about something that he could actually be prosecuted for and had Trump talking for a while there. Would releasing them earlier have changed anything Trump was doing though? You never know with Trump, he just doubles down when confronted, like he is now with defending his actions.It isn't like there is anything that anyone can do about Trumps actions unless they have something they can actually prosecute WHILE in office, most of anything that will be done will be after he is out of office. Charging him with criminal negligence would still have to be done while out of office, but isn't likely to happen even then. I am not seeing it would have really made a difference in trump's actions even if Woodward had come forward. It isn't like that would have made him FINALLY send the PPE to the front lines that we still need that never arrived, or made him remove his unqualified son in law from the team that was supposed to procure the PPE for the front lines and put someone competent in there. Hell you still cannot even buy disinfectant in the stores around here so people are still being denied what they need to clean and kill viruses while we are moving into flu season.
 

Nick Calandra

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On Woodward, was it that he was just sitting on them , or was he trying to get Trump to tell him as much as he could? The moment he released any of this, his cover was blown and there was no way Trump would talk to him again. He managed to get Trump to spill a good deal, even classified information, and was likely trying to get Trump to talk about something that he could actually be prosecuted for and had Trump talking for a while there. Would releasing them earlier have changed anything Trump was doing though? You never know with Trump, he just doubles down when confronted, like he is now with defending his actions.It isn't like there is anything that anyone can do about Trumps actions unless they have something they can actually prosecute WHILE in office, most of anything that will be done will be after he is out of office. Charging him with criminal negligence would still have to be done while out of office, but isn't likely to happen even then. I am not seeing it would have really made a difference in trump's actions even if Woodward had come forward. It isn't like that would have made him FINALLY send the PPE to the front lines that we still need that never arrived, or made him remove his unqualified son in law from the team that was supposed to procure the PPE for the front lines and put someone competent in there. Hell you still cannot even buy disinfectant in the stores around here so people are still being denied what they need to clean and kill viruses while we are moving into flu season.
Mainly why I said I don't know if it would have changed anything. I just personally, as someone that has a degree in journalism, seeing those recordings released alongside his book feels really gross. Nothing Trump said surprised me or anything like that, I don't think any of it's even as newsworthy as people are making it out to be for that matter. If you've paid attention, he's pretty much said this stuff out loud numerous times.

But I do think, if Woodward had those tapes all the way back in February, and considering the audio specifically has Trump saying he knows how serious the virus is...I think, especially living in MIssouri myself, that might have changed some people's opinions on the matter and made it a little less political and more a matter of just taking it serious and being safe.
 

Agema

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I think you're missing the point. He was right in not wanting to create a panic, but he downplayed it so much that people didn't think (and still don't) they needed to take COVID seriously. All he had to do was tell people at the very start of all this was to wear a mask, listen to your local authorities and do everything you can to reasonably social distance (until the actual lockdowns happened).
And he also needed to order a massive stockpile of PPE in a timely and orderly fashion. So the states didn't end up making each other pay far more money than they needed to by bidding against each other for urgent need, then have their order requisitioned by the federal government anyway so it could buiild up a stockpile.
 

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Mainly why I said I don't know if it would have changed anything. I just personally, as someone that has a degree in journalism, seeing those recordings released alongside his book feels really gross. Nothing Trump said surprised me or anything like that, I don't think any of it's even as newsworthy as people are making it out to be for that matter. If you've paid attention, he's pretty much said this stuff out loud numerous times.

But I do think, if Woodward had those tapes all the way back in February, and considering the audio specifically has Trump saying he knows how serious the virus is...I think, especially living in MIssouri myself, that might have changed some people's opinions on the matter and made it a little less political and more a matter of just taking it serious and being safe.
It should be noted that Woodward also kind of operates in a different sphere than most journalists, mostly sticking to his massive presidential books (why every goddamn administration seems to make the mistake of giving him access I will never understand). Part of that is going to be linked to limiting pre-publication disclosure as balance of maintaining the trust of sources versus the overall benefit of releasing the information prior to the intended publication.

I honestly don't know what to make of these particular circumstances. I'm more skeptical of the benefit of releasing the information at the time given the near-absolute grip Trump has on his supporters version of reality and the near-total acquiescence of elected Republicans to Trump's whims. Unless it actually managed to change his own approach to the crisis, which was just to play it down until someone pointed out it was killing his chances of reelection, I don't think there would have been a substantive difference between what would have happened and what did.
 

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And he also needed to order a massive stockpile of PPE in a timely and orderly fashion. So the states didn't end up making each other pay far more money than they needed to by bidding against each other for urgent need, then have their order requisitioned by the federal government anyway so it could buiild up a stockpile.
To be fair, most nations didn't make a stockpile either....

But then the stupid shenanigans where states had to hide purchases from Trump because he would just steal it was just stupid.
 

lil devils x

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Mainly why I said I don't know if it would have changed anything. I just personally, as someone that has a degree in journalism, seeing those recordings released alongside his book feels really gross. Nothing Trump said surprised me or anything like that, I don't think any of it's even as newsworthy as people are making it out to be for that matter. If you've paid attention, he's pretty much said this stuff out loud numerous times.

But I do think, if Woodward had those tapes all the way back in February, and considering the audio specifically has Trump saying he knows how serious the virus is...I think, especially living in MIssouri myself, that might have changed some people's opinions on the matter and made it a little less political and more a matter of just taking it serious and being safe.
Yea, I have to wonder if it would have made those people storming the court house protesting masks would have maybe rethought doing so, but then again, Trump encouraged them and cheered them on KNOWING the actual risks involved. We did have leaks early on though coming out that said that Trump was aware of how dangerous it was and I wonder if those didn't actually come from Woodward since they were anonymous. That wasn't as effective as actual recordings, but it was being leaked to the public at the time, people just are not really listening to any of the leaks, or anything that his own staff are telling us and pretending it isn't real or something. "Willful ignorance" is difficult to cure.

It would have been better if Woodward would have released them when he was actually finished gathering information from Trump then let his book release whenever they were done separately. Sales would have been the same. I have a feeling this is part of " the parade of officials speaking out " that Trump's former Chief of Staff for the Department of Homeland Security, Miles Taylor, told everyone that was coming in " coming weeks" . This may just be one of many they chose to wait until right before the election to release. With how many of Trumps own " best people" who have spoken up though, is it really going to make a difference? So many people defend him regardless of what his own people say he is doing, even when they hear him say it or see him do it themselves.
 

tstorm823

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I think you're missing the point. He was right in not wanting to create a panic, but he downplayed it so much that people didn't think (and still don't) they needed to take COVID seriously. All he had to do was tell people at the very start of all this was to wear a mask, listen to your local authorities and do everything you can to reasonably social distance (until the actual lockdowns happened).
Trump didn't downplay it so much people didn't think they needed to take it seriously. The media caricature of Trump did.

Trump says that Democratic claims he's doing nothing are a hoax. Media reports Trump calls the virus a hoax.
Trump says it's like the flu and the flu is dangerous and kills people. Media reports that Trump didn't know the flu kills people.
Doctors use hydroxychloroquine and Bayer donates a ton of it, then Trump mentions it. Media reports it's dangerous and deadly.

And while there's this concerted effort to make Trump look as wrong as possible, there's also constant fear mongering. Constantly coming up with new angles to terrify people. Like the stupid one the other week where they reported some kids having a greater infection than adults as kids being more infectious, not accounting for the study only dealing with people who were in the hospital for treatment. The logical error is so clear, they may as well replace the old WWII plane example when teaching about survivor bias. How can we hold Trump to task on his communication when entire communication industries dedicate themselves to undermining the messaging?

Like, at one point he did an interview and was asked if people were wearing masks just to spite him. He said "no, not at all". So they asked a second time if it was possible, and he said something like "well maybe it's possible, but I really think they do it because..." I forget the exact phrasing, and the original interview is behind a paywall. The point is, he was asked the question specifically, specifically said no, and by the time it got to the general public the headline was:
Or at a press conference, he asks the doctors that advise him if you could use disinfectant on people's lungs. It's a stupid question, I agree entirely it's a stupid question, but it's so easy to say "no" to that stupid question. It was obviously phrased as a question, it came with the explicit caveat that he'd have to see what doctors say, and it was stated in vague terms that you need to translate before doing something dangerous. Top of Twitter?

People barely listen to Trump. It's not coincidence that when he was doing regular briefings on the pandemic personally, his approval was up. More people than average were listening to his actual words, and not the ones invented to make him look bad. Trump at his words is a perfectly medium president doing basically what any other president would do. The danger to society that says all the wrong things is fictitious Trump.
 
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dreng3

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At this point I've lost track of the entire mess that is Trump during covid but some of the major ones that stood out to me was:

1. Peddling that useless drug I can't pronounce that killed some people.
2. Not wearing a mask until somewhere around june.
3. Holding an indoor rally where he expected thousands to be in attendance.
4. Stating that the virus would just "go away" as the temperatures rose.
5. Harping on about the importance of reopening even in the midst of a pandemic.

If he already knew the virus was going to be bad and still encouraged events that would bring people in close proximity with each other their blood is on his hands.
 

lil devils x

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At this point I've lost track of the entire mess that is Trump during covid but some of the major ones that stood out to me was:

1. Peddling that useless drug I can't pronounce that killed some people.
2. Not wearing a mask until somewhere around june.
3. Holding an indoor rally where he expected thousands to be in attendance.
4. Stating that the virus would just "go away" as the temperatures rose.
5. Harping on about the importance of reopening even in the midst of a pandemic.

If he already knew the virus was going to be bad and still encouraged events that would bring people in close proximity with each other their blood is on his hands.
Those are not anywhere near the worst. The worst was instead of providing the front lines with PPE they were begging for, he accused healthcare workers of stealing masks out the back door and put his incompetent son in law in charge of procuring them and then he didn't. He instead grabbed a bunch of unqualified college kids to try to do it and told them to make sure they "make Trump supporters priority when giving out contracts" .The PPE that the hospitals were able to obtain on their own Trump's administration actually intercepted them in route to the hospitals and put them in a storage warehouse instead not to be used because people yelled at him for having his FEMA warehouse empty leaving hospitals without any and no way to get any. After the hospitals are out of PPE isn't the time to take them away from them and send them to stock his warehouse in the middle of a pandemic. Yea.. that is just a small sample of what really happened here, there really is so much more:



Trump IS the reason why we STILL cannot obtain adequate PPE and disinfectant in our local stores because he didn't think it was important enough to do.
 
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Xprimentyl

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Trump didn't downplay it so much people didn't think they needed to take it seriously. The media caricature of Trump did.
Is it possible that that "media caricature" is just your seeing the reality you've been willfully blind to all along? Blind adherence to an ideal of a man makes harsh realities that contradict said ideal seem biased and unfair.

Trump supporters be like:

 
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Silvanus

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Trump says it's like the flu and the flu is dangerous and kills people. Media reports that Trump didn't know the flu kills people.
Might have something to do with the words, "Does anybody die of flu? I didnt know people died of flu".

I believe your past justification for this was that he was... speaking about something a hypothetical version of himself would have said if he hadn't known?

Doctors use hydroxychloroquine and Bayer donates a ton of it, then Trump mentions it. Media reports it's dangerous and deadly.
He didn't just "mention" it, though, did he? He said it could be one of the biggest "game changers in the history of medicine", and "what do you have to lose" by taking it.

And it has potentially lethal side effects such as arrhythmia, so the media is correct.

Some of these mental gymnastics are honestly astounding.
 

Eacaraxe

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Also Woodward, as a journalist, sitting on those recordings for months until he could profit from them by selling his book is extremely scummy too.
This is just my opinion as a history and poli sci person, but I think Woodward's just out to re-ingratiate himself with the center-right after nearly two decades of Bush apologia, especially in light of today as the age of Bush redemptionism.

He's no dummy, and the irony certainly isn't lost on him that Russiagate brought with it a spate of attacks against Trump, his inner circle, and his supporters that darkly mirror those used by Nixon against himself, Bernstein, and Ellsberg. Particularly in the case of his contemporaries which saw virulently antisemitic allegations levied against them then, and now at a point Democratic alliance with revisionist zionism has never been stronger, allegations of antisemitism flow like water towards anyone who might take a stance towards Israel which might be remotely critical or skeptical. I don't think the man who took Nixon down, has a good enough political compass to navigate a political landscape in which the two parties are trying to out-Nixon each other.
 

Buyetyen

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Is it possible that that "media caricature" is just your seeing the reality you've been willfully blind to all along? Blind adherence to an ideal of a man makes harsh realities that contradict said ideal seem biased and unfair.

Trump supporters be like:

Might have something to do with the words, "Does anybody die of flu? I didnt know people died of flu".

I believe your past justification for this was that he was... speaking about something a hypothetical version of himself would have said if he hadn't known?



He didn't just "mention" it, though, did he? He said it could be one of the biggest "game changers in the history of medicine", and "what do you have to lose" by taking it.

And it has potentially lethal side effects such as arrhythmia, so the media is correct.

Some of these mental gymnastics are honestly astounding.
I honestly believe these sorts of mental gymnastics are nothing more than elaborate excuses to not give a shit. Once a person has decided that they 100% do not care about a certain idea, they don't need a reason. A reason would suggest some sort of cause and effect. But all you need to justify dismissal is an excuse. Something to push that, "Fuck it," button in our heads that always gets pushed when you make the decision to indulge a vice when you have better reasons not to.
 
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lil devils x

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I honestly believe these sorts of mental gymnastics are nothing more than elaborate excuses to not give a shit. Once a person has decided that they 100% do not care about a certain idea, they don't need a reason. A reason would suggest some sort of cause and effect. But all you need to justify dismissal is an excuse. Something to push that, "Fuck it," button in our heads that always gets pushed when you make the decision to indulge a vice when you have better reasons not to.
You would think though after SO MANY excuses though it would start to sink in that it is starting to look really bad by now. But having 190,000+ deaths staring them in the face that would have some sort of impact, but no, they then seriously try to tell themselves " nothing could be done" completely ignoring the fact that the President of the United States not only refused to get the front lines PPE, he took it away from them when they needed it most, AND accused them of stealing it while they are watching their fellow Physicians, nurses, EMT's and others falling ill and dying around them. He ALSO made sure the general public did not have access to PPE or disinfectant in the middle of a pandemic and STILL do not have access to these basic things when he tries to force them into situations that would infect them while we are now moving into flu season. Let's see, Pandemic hits and Trump does NOTHING to make sure you can buy disinfectant to kill the virus and slow the spread in your local stores and obtain PPE that can protect the user so that the most vulnerable have access to some sort of protection during this. The same things that the vulnerable ALREADY used regularly to protect themselves and were easily accessed before the Pandemic. The Pandemic hits and he thinks people suddenly don't need them or something.
.
 

Nick Calandra

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Trump didn't downplay it so much people didn't think they needed to take it seriously. The media caricature of Trump did.
I'm only responding to this bit, specifically because the only fact you need is that he absolutely refused to wear a mask, even symbolically, until his officials were practically begging him. I get your point about the media, but he did downplay it again and again through his words and actions. You just can't overlook that.

I'm as critical of mainstream media as anybody else, but there are things Trump COULD be doing to make himself even slightly more tolerable. But, all that aside, all you need to do is watch the Axios interview for a true insight in the way he thinks about things with a journalist that didn't do any gotcha journalism with him.

If you haven't watched that yet, you should. He doesn't even understand population proportions.
 

Buyetyen

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You would think though after SO MANY excuses though it would start to sink in that it is starting to look really bad by now.
They have excuses to not give a shit about that, too. The "Fuck it," button is the perfect shortcut out of any feeling of responsibility or accountability. It requires no expenditure of willpower, minimal thought and stymies counterarguments by refusing the engage with them in good faith, if at all.