So I was almost done with this “news”letter when the Woodward story broke. We try not to do fast “hot takes” around here, but it just feels weird not to say something about all this. So I’m calling an audible and doing this on the fly. 

I am not surprised that Trump admitted to playing down the pandemic, because we already knew that. He said the virus would disappear. He admitted that he didn’t want COVID-stricken cruise ship passengers to disembark because it would make the numbers look bad. He said it would go to zero. In June, he said it was “fading away.” In July, he said it was “under control.”  

But as we learned this afternoon, Trump admitted to Woodward—in February—that COVID was much worse than the flu, saying it was “much more deadly.” 

Yet on March 9, he was pushing the “it’s-just-the-flu” narrative: