COVID-19 Misinformation: Private Admission of Danger While Publicly Downplaying the Virus
Tier 3Documented2020-02-07 to 2020-11-01
Factual Summary
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Donald Trump made a series of documented public statements minimizing the severity of the virus that directly contradicted statements he made privately. The gap between his private assessments and his public communications was established through recorded interviews with journalist Bob Woodward, which were conducted with Trump's knowledge and consent.
On February 7, 2020, Trump spoke by phone with Woodward and described the coronavirus in the following terms: "It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flu. This is deadly stuff." At the time of that call, Trump was publicly and repeatedly characterizing the threat as minor. On January 22, 2020, Trump had told CNBC: "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China." On February 26, he said: "The 15 [cases in the U.S.] within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero." On March 9, he wrote on Twitter that the "common flu" killed more people than COVID-19 and asked why the country was not shutting down for the flu.
On March 19, 2020, in a separate recorded conversation with Woodward, Trump explained his public posture directly. He stated: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic." These recordings were released in September 2020 as part of Woodward's book "Rage."
On April 23, 2020, Trump made public remarks during a White House coronavirus briefing in which he raised the possibility of using disinfectants to treat COVID-19 internally. He stated: "And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?" The manufacturer of Lysol issued a public statement the following day warning that its products should under no circumstances be ingested. The Centers for Disease Control reported a spike in calls to poison control centers in the days that followed.
Trump also publicly promoted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 on repeated occasions beginning in March 2020, despite the absence of clinical evidence supporting its use for that purpose. The National Institutes of Health convened a clinical trial that found no benefit from hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment. The Food and Drug Administration revoked its emergency use authorization for the drug in June 2020 after studies found it was not effective and could cause cardiac harm.
Primary Sources
1. Bob Woodward recorded interview with Donald Trump, February 7, 2020, transcript published in "Rage" (Simon and Schuster, 2020) and reported by the Washington Post on September 9, 2020: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bob-woodward-trump-coronavirus/2020/09/09/
2. White House coronavirus briefing transcript, April 23, 2020, archived by the American Presidency Project: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/
3. FDA revocation of emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine, June 15, 2020: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-cautions-against-use-hydroxychloroquine-or-chloroquine-covid-19-outside-hospital-setting-or
4. NIH ORCHID trial results: Hydroxychloroquine in hospitalized adults with COVID-19, New England Journal of Medicine, November 9, 2020: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022926
Corroborating Sources
1. Washington Post: "Bob Woodward book: Trump says he knew coronavirus was 'deadly' and worse than the flu while deliberately playing it down publicly," September 9, 2020
2. Associated Press: "Trump's promotion of hydroxychloroquine raises red flags," April 2020
3. CDC: "Calls to poison control regarding exposure to cleaning products increased after April 23 briefing," reported in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 2020
4. The Atlantic: "The Disinfectant Moment," April 2020
5. New York Times: "Trump Repeatedly Promoted Hydroxychloroquine as a Coronavirus Treatment. Studies Show It Doesn't Help," July 2020
Counterarguments and Context
Trump has argued that his public statements were intended to prevent mass panic during an uncertain period and that any leader would take the same approach to protect public calm. He has pointed to Operation Warp Speed, the federal program that accelerated vaccine development, as evidence of his administration's serious engagement with the pandemic. Some of his advisors have argued that information about the virus was rapidly evolving in early 2020 and that early public statements reflected genuine scientific uncertainty rather than deliberate misrepresentation. Trump has also argued that hydroxychloroquine showed early promise in certain contexts and that his public statements reflected optimism about a possible treatment rather than a medical recommendation.
Author's Note
The Woodward recordings are the evidentiary foundation of this entry. They are primary source material because Trump consented to the interviews and the recordings were preserved verbatim. The March 19 statement, in which Trump described his own intent to "play it down," is particularly significant because it is a direct first-person account of his communications strategy. This entry does not assess the aggregate policy response to COVID-19 or attribute casualty figures to specific public statements, as those causal chains involve substantial complexity. It documents the gap between Trump's private assessments and his public communications.