Trump accused of telling Covid conspiracy theories to his youngest son

A journalist was left stunned by what he claims the disgraced former US President told his youngest son about the coronavirus at the beginning of the pandemic.

Appearing on CNN’s Tonight show, Watergate journalist Bob Woodward claimed that a comment by Trump left him “as stunned as I’ve ever been as a reporter”.

On the programme, Woodward shared audio clips of Trump that were recorded during interviews for the journalist's 2020 book “Rage”.

The recordings from 19 March 2020 at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic revealed what Trump said to his youngest son Barron, who at the time was 13 years old.

Trump explained: “I said, it came out of China, Barron. Pure and simple. It came out of China. And it should’ve been stopped. And to be honest with you, Barron, they should’ve let it be known it was a problem two months earlier … the world wouldn’t have a problem. We could have stopped it easily.”

Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter

While CNN host Jake Tapper admitted that there was “a lot of blame” to lay at the door of the Chinese government, which failed to raise alarms about the new virus, he criticised Trump for saying he wished he’d known about the virus sooner because the president had actually been warned about it in January 2020.

Woodward said that when he heard about Trump’s prior warning about the virus he was left “stunned” after listening back to the March 2020 interview tape.

Woodward claimed: “I go back to listen to this and my God, Trump is conning not just me but his son and he is laying out, ‘Oh this could have been fixed, the Chinese could have done something about it.’

“Donald Trump could have done something about it by being honest and warning the public that he, as president, has a constitutional and moral responsibility to do.”

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.