Recently, longtime journalist Bob Woodward released a tape of his conversation with President Donald Trump in which the president admits to intentionally downplaying the threat of the Coronavirus. He had to lie to do so, and he’s kept lying in the time since — the Coronavirus has been and continues to pose a serious threat to the United States. When ABC reporter Jonathan Karl confronted the president over his deception at a Thursday press conference at the White House, Trump threw a fit.
Karl asked Trump:
‘Why did you lie to the American people? And why should we trust what you have to say now?’
Trump, who’s seemingly forever in meltdown-mode, replied:
‘That’s a terrible question and the phraseology. I didn’t lie. What I said is we have to be calm. We can’t be panicked… Certainly if [Woodward] 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. He didn’t report it because he didn’t think it was bad. Nobody thought it was bad… And your question, the way you phrased that is such a disgrace. It’s a disgrace to ABC television network, it’s a disgrace to your employer.’
Trump is a pathological narcissist — this much is abundantly clear.
Karl followed up by pointing out a very specific lie that Trump told. In his effort to avoid sparking “panic” — via lying — Trump claimed at one point that the Coronavirus was on par with the seasonal flu. It was not.
As Karl pointed out, comparing his private conversations with Woodward to what he told the American public:
‘You said it was deadlier than the flu, and then you went out and told the American public that this was just like the flu.’
Trump replied by seemingly misrepresenting reality yet again. He claimed that the U.S. “has had flu years where we’ve lost 100,000 people.” Actually, according to the CDC, at no point since at least 2010 if not earlier has the death toll from a year of influenza infections in the U.S. surpassed about 61,000.
As Karl kept pressuring the president, Trump delusionally claimed that he just “wanted to show that our country is going to be fine one way or the other.” The country is not fine. Almost 200,000 people are dead.
Watch Trump’s delusional rant below:
