The Story:
Bob Woodward, a reporter who has covered politics at the highest levels in the United States since the 1970s, has a new book coming out about the Trump administration’s reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic, called simply Rage.
Background:
What was released first was a set of tapes on which the book is largely based. These tapes are interviews that President Donald Trump gave to Woodward, in which he appears to be speaking in a very unguarded way not merely about the pandemic but about other highly sensitive matters.
For example, the President told Woodward that the United States has recently acquired a new nuclear weapons system, “stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before.” Woodward then received confirmation from the Pentagon, where officials seemed surprised that a reporter knew about its development.
But the big news of the book concerns Covid-19 and revelations that the President long knew much more about dangers it presents than he let on.
The Thing to Know:
The President’s desire to be a morale-boosting “cheerleader” in the United States seems to shade across an important line into actively lying about important dangers to public health. That line is sure to be the subject of voluminous discussion through these final weeks of the election campaign.
