President Donald Trump speaks in North Carolina on September 8, 2020. | Sean Rayford/Getty Images

Trump admitted he wanted to downplay Covid-19 in recorded interviews with journalist Bob Woodward.

President Donald Trump admitted to publicly downplaying the real threat of Covid-19 for weeks, even as cities and states shut down and more Americans fell sick, according to excerpts and audio recordings from reporter Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book Rage.

“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump said on March 19. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

In several interviews with Woodward, Trump said he was aware of the threat of the novel coronavirus as early as January, and continued downplaying the true risk the disease presented well into March, when the US’s epidemic took off. (CNN published audio clips from the interviews.)

On February 7, Trump