President Donald Trump told reporters he did not lie about the coronavirus despite lying to the American people for months. In a series of 18 recorded interviews President Donald Trump in January and February told Watergate reporter Bob Woodward he knew how deadly the coronavirus was, while publicly downplaying its danger.
“Why did you lie to the American people and why should we trust what you have to say now?” ABC News’ Jonathan Karl asked Trump.
“Terrible question, and the phraseology. I didn’t lie,” Trump said, lying. “What I said is we have to be calm, we can’t be panicked.”
“I knew that the tapes were there,” the the president continued, “these were a series of phone calls that we had mostly phone calls, and Bob Woodward is somebody that I respect just from hearing the name for many many years, not knowing too much about his work and not caring about his work, but I thought it would be interesting to talk to him for a period of you know calls. So we did that. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, I don’t even know if the book is good or bad, but certainly if he thought that was a bad statement, he would have reported it because he thinks that you know you don’t want to have anybody that is going to suffer medically because of some fact, and he didn’t report it because he didn’t think it was bad. Nobody thought it was bad, and your question, the way you phrase that is such a disgrace it’s a disgrace to ABC Television Network, it’s a disgrace to your employer. And that’s the answer are you ready, because I love.”
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