In book, Trump tells of downplaying virus

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump talked privately earlier this year about the severity of the coronavirus threat even as he was telling the nation the virus was no worse than the seasonal flu and insisting the government had it totally under control, according to a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.

"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."

"This is deadly stuff," the president repeated for emphasis. His comments were recorded by Woodward, and audio has been released.

Trump told Woodward on March 19 that he deliberately understated the danger. "I wanted to always play it down," the president said. "I still like playing it down because I don't want to create a panic."

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At the White House on Wednesday, Trump addressed questions about downplaying the pandemic threat.

"The fact is I'm 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, as you say," Trump told reporters. "Certainly, I'm not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy. We want to show confidence. We want to show strength."

Also on Wednesday, the chief of the National Institutes of Health told Congress that the suspension of AstraZeneca's covid-19 vaccine study over an illness in a single participant shows there will be "no compromises" on safety in the race to develop the vaccine.

The Washington Post, where Woodward is associate editor, reported excerpts of his new book, "Rage," on Wednesday, as did CNN. The book is based in part on 18 interviews that Woodward conducted with Trump between December and July.

Woodward also said in his book that national security adviser Robert O'Brien told Trump in a Jan. 28 intelligence briefing that the coronavirus "will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency."

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the president's words to the public were designed to express confidence and calm at a time of major challenges.

"The president has never lied to the American public on covid. The president was expressing calm, and his actions reflect that," McEnany said.

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She said Trump's actions reflect that he took covid-19 seriously. She noted that the president put in place travel restrictions with China on Jan. 31 and that some Democrats had criticized the move.

"The president never downplayed the virus," McEnany said, despite Trump telling Woodward that he had done so.

At that time, Trump was telling the nation that the virus would soon disappear and insisting that the U.S. government had it totally under control. "I think the virus is going to be -- it's going to be fine," Trump said Feb. 10 -- three days after telling Woodward privately that it was "deadly stuff" and more dangerous than the seasonal flu.

Trump aides and allies said at the time that Trump was aiming to prop up the economy with his rosy take on the virus throughout February, even as his administration took few concrete steps to prepare for the coming pandemic.

DEMOCRATS' CRITICISM

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said the book shows Trump "lied to the American people. He knowingly and willingly lied about the threat it [the virus] posed to the country for months."

"While a deadly disease ripped through our nation, he failed to do his job -- on purpose," Biden said. "It was a life or death betrayal of the American people."

"He had the information," Biden said during a campaign event in Michigan. "He knew how dangerous it was."

"There is damning truth that President Trump lied and people died," said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. Schumer said that when he thinks about how many people in his state died, "It just makes me angry." He added: "How many people would be alive today if he just told Americans the truth?"

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the president's comments to Woodward showed weakness and a disdain for science.

"What he was actually saying is, 'I don't want anybody to think anything like this happened on my watch, so I'm not going to call any more attention to it,'" Pelosi said on MSNBC.

Several Republican senators at the Capitol declined to comment on the new book, even when informed of key passages about the virus, telling reporters they hadn't yet read it. "I just can't, can't comment on it," said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio.

"Could we all have done things differently? Yes, including Congress. We were all a little slow to recognize the severity," Portman added.

WOODWARD UNDER FIRE

Woodward, facing widespread criticism for only now revealing Trump's early concerns about the severity of the coronavirus, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he needed time to be sure that Trump's private comments from February were accurate.

"He tells me this, and I'm thinking, 'Wow, that's interesting, but is it true?' Trump says things that don't check out, right?" Woodward said in a telephone interview. Woodward said his mission was to determine, "What did he know, and when did he know it?"

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On Twitter and elsewhere online, commentators accused Woodward of valuing book sales over public health. "Nearly 200,000 Americans have died because neither Donald Trump nor Bob Woodward wanted to risk anything substantial to keep the country informed," wrote Esquire's Charles P. Pierce.

Woodward said that only in May was he satisfied that Trump's comments were based on reliable information and that by then the virus had spread nationwide.

"If I had done the story at that time about what he knew in February, that's not telling us anything we didn't know," Woodward said. At that point, he said, the issue was no longer one of public health but of politics. His priority became getting the story out before the election in November.

VACCINE CHASE

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Wednesday that it "ought to be reassuring" that AstraZeneca put on hold studies of its vaccine candidate in the U.S. and other countries while it investigates whether a British volunteer's illness is a side effect or a coincidence.

"When we say we are going to focus first on safety and make no compromises, here is Exhibit A of how that is happening in practice," Collins said.

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Scientists have been scrambling to develop a vaccine against the coronavirus since the outbreak began, and the U.S. has launched the world's largest studies -- final-stage testing of three leading candidates, with three more trials set to come soon that will each recruit 30,000 test subjects.

The hearing comes as the chase for a vaccine has been drawn into the political debate, with Trump saying he expects to see a vaccine approved before the Nov. 3 presidential election and Democrats citing concern that the president will pressure health officials to make that happen.

"When it comes to a covid-19 vaccine, we can't allow President Trump to repeat his alarming pattern of putting politics ahead of science and public health," said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the committee's ranking Democrat.

Collins, who appeared before the committee along with Surgeon General Jerome Adams, said there's no way to tell if a safe vaccine will be available before the Nov. 3 election. But he remains hopeful that one will be available by year's end.

FLORIDA KIDS

Separately, the Florida Department of Health reported that 10,513 children under age 18 have tested positive in the state since schools started reopening for in-person teaching, an increase of 34%. The state is not saying how many of those children were in school or doing remote learning.

Dozens of Florida classrooms -- along with some entire schools -- have been temporarily shuttered because of coronavirus outbreaks while parents in many parts of the state don't know if outbreaks of the virus are related to their own schools because the state ordered some counties to keep health data secret.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has pushed aggressively for schools to offer in-person classes, even when Florida was the hot spot of the nation, and threatened to withhold funding if districts did not allow students into classrooms by Aug. 31. In the state guidelines for reopening schools, officials did not recommend that coronavirus cases be disclosed school by school. In fact, the DeSantis administration ordered some districts to stop releasing school-specific coronavirus information, citing privacy issues.

The state also left it up to districts to decide whether masks should be worn by students and staffers. Some require it, but many don't.

Department of Health spokesman Alberto Moscoso said in an email last week that "the Department is currently working to determine the best and most accurate manner in which to report information regarding cases of covid-19 associated with schools and daycares." He said the information will be available "in the coming days or weeks."

Information for this article was contributed by Kevin Freking, Zeke Miller, Lauran Neergaard, Hillel Italie, Jonathan Lemire, Alexandra Jaffe, Lisa Mascaro and David Bauder of The Associated Press; by Robert Costa, Philip Rucker, Lori Rozsa and Valerie Strauss of The Washington Post; and by Anna Edney, Jacquie Lee and Riley Griffin of Bloomberg News.