Woodward calls Trump’s handling of pandemic a ‘crime’

Veteran Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward on Monday called former President Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic a “crime” because he kept early warnings about the health crisis from the American people.

“If there was ever the leadership test of a lifetime for the president, it was this pandemic. It was a health and political crisis like we have not seen in this country. And he walked away from it. And as you listen to these tapes, particularly on the virus, but on any subject, he kind of goes from denial to concealment to the crime,” Woodward said on CNN’s “Tonight,” referencing clips of interviews with Trump taken from his new audiobook.

“I call it a crime, not telling the people that he had been warned that — by his national security advisers in the most vivid way, which is outlined in these tapes, the interviews with them, where they are telling him,” Woodward said.

In one audio clip aired on CNN from the summer of 2020, Woodward asks Trump whether he felt he was dealing with “the leadership test of a lifetime.” The then-president plainly denies Woodward with a “no.”

“He’s dismissing any responsibility he has. And that no is like a thunderclap: I’m walking away from this,” Woodward said of the exchange.

Trump also told Woodward in the clips about a conversation he’d had with his young son Barron, who had expressed fear about the COVID-19 pandemic.

The former president said he told his son that the virus came from China and that “the world wouldn’t have a problem” if China had warned of the virus two months earlier. According to Woodward, Trump had in fact been warned of the virus two months earlier.

“Trump is saying: ‘Oh, China, they could have stopped this two months ago.’ Trump could have stopped it two months ago,” Woodward said.

“I have known 16 national security advisers going back to [Henry] Kissinger, and never once heard one come and tell the president, ‘This will be the biggest national security threat to your presidency.’ And it wasn’t about China or Russia or Iran. It was about a domestic health crisis that he was covering up.”

Woodward’s new audiobook “The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward’s Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump” was released Tuesday.

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