Via the Columbia Journalism Review, Jon Allsop writes: COVID relief and the misplaced outrage about Rage. Excerpt:
And then there are the natural rhythms of the daily news cycle, which respond more viscerally to shallower outrages than to deeper ones—especially when Trump is central. Yesterday, the cycle exploded after the Washington Post published details from Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, which is out next week. An excerpt concerning Trump’s inaction in the face of an acknowledged threat elicited an especially furious reaction: in February, before the coronavirus was an all-consuming story in the US, Trump told Woodward (on tape) that the virus was very deadly, only to downplay the danger in public.
Online, many journalists charged that Woodward was wrong to sit on the interview until now; on TV, pundits fumed. “Tonight, I have to tell you the worst thing I ever have about coronavirus,” CNN’s Chris Cuomo said, of the Trump tape. He later called the tape “the most important thing I’ve ever had to tell you,” period.
The gulf between what Trump told Woodward and what he said publicly is, obviously, despicable, and Woodward’s new book looks likely to be a useful contribution to the historical record. (More so than Michael Cohen’s, at any rate.)
The idea that Woodward could have saved lives by going public sooner, though, is highly hypothetical. And his revelation doesn’t fundamentally change a fact that we’ve always known—that whatever Trump said in private, he did nothing to stop the coronavirus from ruining American lives and livelihoods. Trump’s motivation for doing nothing matters. But it matters far less than the fact of doing nothing itself.
