CNN’s John King Says Trump ‘Deliberately’ Withheld Information on Coronavirus Which Could Have Saved Thousands of Lives

CNN anchor John King and Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta ripped President Donald Trump on Wednesday for not enacting coronavirus measures sooner as Bob Woodward’s new book alleges the president knew how dangerous Covid-19 was in early February.

After playing a video of Trump downplaying the coronavirus on February 27th, Gupta said, “Now we know on February 7th he knew that this was, he said, ‘five times deadlier than the flu.’ He knew this close to three weeks earlier, John. I mean I think that’s quite striking.”

“To your point earlier, if we had acted even a week earlier, if you put in some of these social distancing mechanisms even a week earlier, according to a study out of Columbia, by May we know it would have prevented at least 36,000 deaths. Just acting one week earlier,” he continued. “Two weeks earlier could have prevented 84 percent of deaths by that point in May. So, yeah, it make a difference, and it makes a bigger difference if you enact these things early.”

King replied, “And this may be a somewhat unfair question, but as a medical professional yourself, as someone who has to sometimes decide what do I tell my patients, I have really tough news to deliver… In terms of getting people to change their behavior, to deal with a serious risk, they need the information, do they not?”

“The president here deliberately withholding and he says it in his own words, this is not the fake news, this is not CNN. In his own words, it was a strategy, he said I’d do it and I continue to do do it. To keep information from people,” he went on. “Information which they could have used, whether John king, or Sanjay Gupta, or a Republican governor who reluctant to impose a mask mandate or social distancing, or just an average citizen out there. Information they critically could have used to change their behavior in February or March, not July or August, right?”

Gupta answered, “Yeah, I mean absolutely, and you know, the thing that you’re asking about, if you’re talking to a patient. You’re right, John. I think what you’re alluding to I think is, there’s always an inflection point between being hopeful and being honest, but honesty absolutely has to lead the way, full and transparent.”

“You gotta keep in mind that the entire world was going through this at the same time, so it wasn’t like we’re talking about an isolated event in the United States,” Gupta noted. “The whole world was going through this, and we saw that if you implemented some of these public health measures, you know the idea of staying at home for a few weeks at the beginning to get the viral spread under control, it could have had a huge difference. Tens of thousands of people may have still been alive.”

“We don’t know. These are models and I think there’s going to be a huge discussion about this after this is all over in terms what differences these thing would have made, but it’s pretty clear that acting earlier would have made a big difference,” he declared.

King concluded, “Pretty clear that a president who was honest and transparent with his people might have helped change behavior a lot earlier, especially among those reluctant to listen to the government might have listened to him… The Woodward book says the president was briefed in early February, that he knew the depth of the coronavirus crisis. What he told you was very different.”

Watch above via CNN.