CORONAVIRUS: [Reporter: “Mr. President, can you address the concerns from the Woodward book in regards to whether — did you mislead the public by saying that you downplayed the coronavirus and that you repeatedly did that in order to reduce panic?”]
“Well, I think if you said ‘in order to reduce panic,’ perhaps that’s so. The fact is, I’m a cheerleader for this country, I love our country, and I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic, as you say. And certainly, I’m not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy.
We want to show confidence. We want to show strength. We want to show strength as a nation. And that’s what I’ve done. And we’ve done very well. We’ve done well from any standard. You look at our numbers, compared to other countries, other parts of the world. It’s been an amazing job that we’ve done…
All over the world, we started buying masks and gowns and everything else. And we don’t want to cause pricing to go up to a level that becomes almost unaffordable… so, in that sense, I agree with it.”
-Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump on Judicial Appointments,” whitehouse.gov, Sep. 9, 2020
[Note: The reporter is referring to quotes from Donald Trump in February and March interviews for Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book.]