Woodward tapes: Trump’s “no panic” spin is incoherent

President Donald Trump’s response to devastating revelations from a brand new e-book that he privately knew the coronavirus can be devastating to the US is to say he was making an attempt to venture “calm” — a state of being at odds together with his complete reelection technique.

Trump’s political model depends on stoking concern that “radical left” Democrats help violent looters invading the suburbs. In current weeks, he’s proclaimed that Joe Biden’s election would “destroy the nation” and unleash “chaos, corruption, and financial collapse.” His marketing campaign’s political advertisements are extra akin to horror film trailers than they’re to substantive messages about what Trump hopes to perform in a second time period. Biden, for what it’s value, has aggressively condemned looting and reminded American voters that racial unrest is going on throughout Trump’s presidency — not his.

And but, within the 24 hours because the Washington Put up printed audio of Trump’s interviews with Bob Woodward — interviews that reveal the president had a transparent grasp of simply how grave the risk posed by the coronavirus could possibly be and but repeatedly misled the general public earlier this 12 months — the president’s speaking level is that he merely felt an obligation to attempt to maintain the nation calm.

“Bob Woodward had my quotes for a lot of months. If he thought they had been so unhealthy or harmful, why didn’t he instantly report them in an effort to save lots of lives?” Trump tweeted on Thursday morning. “Didn’t he have an obligation to take action? No, as a result of he knew they had been good and correct solutions. Calm, no panic!”

That tweet echoed what Trump advised reporters on Wednesday, when he stated, “I don’t need individuals to be frightened. I don’t need to create panic, as you say. And positively, I’m not going to drive this nation or the world right into a frenzy.”

Trump, nonetheless, clearly has no downside with whipping individuals right into a panic when he thinks doing so is in his political self-interest. The truth is, later Thursday morning, Trump posted one other tweet suggesting {that a} vote for Biden is a vote for poor, violent looters to besiege “America’s Suburbs.”

Trump’s spin doesn’t make a lot sense, but it surely’s a minimum of one thing he can use to attempt to clarify away proof that he knew extra concerning the severity of the coronavirus than his public statements from January, February, and March would lead you to consider — proof that has introduced his authorities’s laissez-faire response to the pandemic below renewed scrutiny.

Trump on Wednesday night characterised the Woodward revelations as a “political hit job,” regardless of the actual fact they encompass nothing greater than tapes of him speaking.

Trump actually did have incentive to tamp down panic — however his motives had been political, not health-related

The Woodward recordings reveal that whereas Trump spent February and March insisting to the general public that the coronavirus would go away by itself “like a miracle,” he was extra life like concerning the risk posed by the pandemic in his conversations with Woodward.

As my colleague German Lopez detailed on Wednesday (emphasis mine):

President Donald Trump admitted to publicly downplaying the actual risk of Covid-19 for weeks, at the same time as cities and states shut down and extra People fell sick, in response to excerpts and audio recordings from reporter Bob Woodward’s forthcoming e-book Rage.

“I wished to at all times play it down,” Trump stated on March 19. “I nonetheless like enjoying it down, as a result of I don’t need to create a panic.”

In a number of interviews with Woodward, Trump stated he was conscious of the specter of the novel coronavirus as early as January, and continued downplaying the true threat the illness offered properly into March, when the US’s epidemic took off. (CNN printed audio clips from the interviews.)

On February 7, Trump advised Woodward, “That is lethal stuff.” He advised Woodward that it was 5 occasions as lethal because the flu. He acknowledged that the virus “goes via air,” including, “That’s at all times more durable than the contact. You understand, the contact, you don’t have to the touch issues, proper? However the air, you simply breathe the air, and that’s the way it’s handed.”

Whereas Trump acknowledged to Woodward that the coronavirus was far deadlier than the flu, publicly he was insisting that Covid-19 wasn’t actually as lethal as public well being authorities had been warning and prematurely making an attempt to strong-arm states into reopening their economies.

Trump’s feedback on Wednesday and Thursday are supposed to reassure people who he actually had their pursuits at coronary heart when he advised Woodward, “I don’t need to create a panic.” In actuality, nonetheless, Trump’s motives had been political — he was playing that downplaying the virus was his greatest wager to maintain the financial system sturdy heading into his reelection marketing campaign. And maybe by downplaying the severity of the virus, he could have inspired individuals to take extra dangers — dangers that wound up being lethal for some.

He was flawed. Six months and 190,000 deaths later, the US continues to be uniquely devastated by the continued pandemic. The federal authorities nonetheless hasn’t developed a complete plan to get the state of affairs below management, and the president has been extra occupied with Twitter browbeating and holding potential superspreader marketing campaign occasions than he has with tackling the virus. In the meantime, he’s constantly trailed Biden within the polls.

So, as a substitute of working on his document, Trump’s marketing campaign has needed to resort to stoking wildly exaggerated fears about Joe Biden. On the similar time, nonetheless, Trump desires the American individuals to purchase that he didn’t degree with them concerning the coronavirus as a result of he didn’t need to stoke concern.

Taken collectively, these speaking factors are incoherent — however by now we perceive that incoherency is a characteristic, not a bug, of Trumpism.

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