LISTEN to Trump Tell Bob Woodward He Won’t Unveil a Covid Plan Before the Election: ‘Bob, I’ve Got 106 Days’

Former President Donald Trump told Bob Woodward in the lead-up to the 2020 election he was hesitant to release a Covid plan for the country for fear it would have been forgotten by election day.

Woodward recorded eight hours of conversations with Trump throughout his presidency which he compiled for the audiobook The Trump Tapes. The pair spoke 20 times from 2016 to 2020.

In a soundbite released by CNN Monday night from July 2020, Trump told Woodward he was hesitant to release a plan about the pandemic for fear it might not be politically beneficial.

The transcript reads as follows:

TRUMP: Bob, you’ll see the plan over the next four weeks.

WOODWARD: This is what –

TRUMP: You will see the plan, Bob. I’ve got 106 days. That’s a long time. You know, if I put out a plan now, people won’t even remember it. People won’t even remember it in 100. I won the last election in the last week.

WOODWARD: No, no. But it’s not just putting out the plan, It’s executing it, isn’t it?

TRUMP: No, I am executing it. You’ll see it starting.

It is not clear exactly what the plan was, or if it might have altered the trajectory of the pandemic.

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, who also interviewed Trump for her book, said last week he would have been re-elected “had he handled [Covid] remotely competently.”

“He kept saying this to people, ‘Can you believe this is happening to me?’” she told The Recount’s John Heilemann.

Watch above, via CNN.

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