Cable news network hosts excoriated Donald Trump on Wednesday night over the bombshell revelations in journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” which details how the president understood the deadly threat of COVID-19 early on in the outbreak but downplayed its risks for months.
In a taped February interview for the book, Trump admitted to famed Watergate reporter Woodward that he knew the coronavirus is “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.” Anchors on CNN and MSNBC hammered Trump on Wednesday for endangering Americans by ignoring the advice of public health experts to increasingly politicize the pandemic that has now killed more than 190,000 people nationwide.
“This president has betrayed you,” said Don Lemon, the host of “CNN Tonight.” “It’s just plain out betrayal. Doesn’t matter if you support him or if you don’t support him, he’s betrayed you.”
Check out Lemon’s comments here:
CNN’s Chris Cuomo said, “There is no price worth forgiving this kind of perfidy.”
He called for those in the Trump White House who knew about the president’s deceit but remained silent to be “exposed” and “shamed.”
Check out Cuomo’s comments here:
“People say lives have been lost, but they haven’t been lost. They are dead,” CNN’s Anderson Cooper said. “The president lied to us when it really mattered, when action could have been taken based on the information the president had that would have saved lives.”
Check out Cooper’s comments here:
And MSNBC’s Joy Reid addressed Trump’s supporters.
“Your president, the man to whom you have given your absolute devotion over the last four years, lied to you,” she said.
Check out Reid’s comments here:
Nicolle Wallace, the host of MSNBC’s “Deadline White House,” said the question looming over Trump was how many people died because they believed his lies about the virus.
Check out Wallace’s comments here:
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow described the revelations as “some heavy stuff for our country.”
“If this were a TV series about what’s going on in American news and politics right now, tonight would probably be the episode of the TV series where the president of the United States resigns,” she said.
Check out Maddow’s comments here:
And MSNBC’s Chris Hayes slammed Trump’s catastrophic handling of the pandemic and subsequent gaslighting.
It is “a scandal of epic proportions” and “arguably the worst cover-up in American history,” he said.
Check out Hayes’ monologue here:
Hosts on the conservative Fox News, meanwhile, sought to downplay the revelations ― with primetime personality Tucker Carlson blaming Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) for his reported role in brokering the interviews.
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