'I was cruising to election': New Bob Woodward tapes reveal Trump blamed COVID for killing rallies
Among new recordings that reporter Bob Woodward is revealing is a tape in which Donald Trump complained he couldn't hold rallies – and that the COVID crisis wasn't measured in deaths but in rallies he was missing out on.
"What is the first person who made you see how serious this was going to be?" asked Woodward in the tape, played on MSNBC's The Beat.
Trump explained: "China, when I saw how many people were dying."
Woodward asked about the conversation Trump had with Xi Jinping Feb. 2020, but Trump corrected him.
"No! No! It was earlier," Trump said. "Look, I did the stop I think in January some time, toward the later part of January, Bob."
"Yeah, I suspect if you say, sir, first mobilization, we're at Manhattan Project level here," said Woodward. Trump said, "No matter what I do, they'll always tell you bad."
Okay, but you know what?" Woodward asked. "I don't care," Trump replied. "I think people want — even people who don't like you, people who are opposed to you — want this country to succeed on this," said Woodward. Trump disagreed, saying people want him to fail and want more people to die so he'd lose the election.
"But there's a lot of really fake news out there, Bob," Trump explained.
By July, when hundreds of thousands of Americans had died, Trump was telling Woodward, "It's flaring up. It's flaring up all over the world, Bob. By the way, all over the world. That was one thing I noticed last week. You know, they talk about this country. All over the world, it's flaring up. But we have it under control."
Woodward later told Ari Melber that he felt like the president was "in denial."
"If we didn't have the virus, I was 10, 12, points up. I was cruising to election," Trump complained.
"Yeah, well, people are worried about the virus," Woodward explained.
"I know that, Bob. But the virus has nothing to do with me," Trump complained. "With COVID, you really can't do rallies — probably airport rallies — but you can't do stadium rallies, you can't do the indoor arena rallies."
"You're running against the virus. Not Joe Biden," Woodward tried to explain.
Trump claimed it was both, really.
See the clips in the video below or at the link here.
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