Sirota criticizes Woodward for not releasing Trump information sooner

Jacobin Editor-at-Large David Sirota slammed longtime journalist Bob Woodward in an interview with Hill.TV over Woodward’s decision to delay reporting that President Trump privately told him the coronavirus pandemic would be particularly deadly.

“Here you have a reporter who has the president of the United States, the head of government, on tape in early February, in an on-the-record situation, I mean that was confirmed by the Washington Post, it wasn’t off the record, where the president says essentially that the virus is extremely lethal and is transmissible through the air,” Sirota said. The journalist has that, then sees the president going out and downplaying the virus, as Trump himself admitted. He sees the president, in some cases going out there, and in some cases a few months later saying ‘come to my rallies, it’s completely safe.’

“He’s got an audiotape of the president saying ‘Actually, the virus is much more lethal than the flu. It is airborne,’ and he sits on the tape for months, as tens of thousands of people are killed,” he continued. “Now, that doesn’t mean that the deaths are Bob Woodward’s fault directly, but, again, I go back to the point of a duty to warn.”

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