Analysis: Trump twists history of Churchill and FDR to cover up pandemic denialism

It was a historically illiterate gambit, since unlike Trump in the pandemic, both statesmen leveled with their people about grave national crises.

But it reflected his struggle to explain his failure to tell the American people the truth about the seriousness of the virus -- even though he told Bob Woodward in interviews for his new book in February that it was "deadly stuff." In a low-energy news conference earlier in the day, Trump doubled down on falsehood, declaring that "I did not lie" when he warned Woodward the pathogen was worse than the flu while publicly comparing it to the seasonal illness.

In one stunning moment, he said that if the Washington Post reporter, whose book "Rage" comes out Tuesday, was so concerned about what was said in their taped conversations, he should have gone to the "authorities" so they could prepare the country.

Of course, under the Constitution, the President is the ultimate authority and whether Trump likes it, the buck stops with him for the pandemic and every other national crisis.

"I don't want to jump up and down and start screaming death, death," Trump said, after Vice President Mike Pence bizarrely suggested Trump's negligence in fact typified a British propaganda campaign that was never widely used during the war and has become part of marketing kitsch in recent years: "Keep Calm and Carry On."

At his Michigan rally, Trump jumped on the metaphor, comparing himself to the wartime prime minister.

"We have to be calm.

And Trump's admission to Woodward that he knew the virus was transmitted through the air back in February is training fresh scrutiny on his decision to hold a string of rallies through February and early March.

The President's latest positions mirror those he took at the beginning of the summer when he goaded supportive state governors to open up their economies and mocked mask wearing, thereby helping set off a disaster in the Sun Belt.

The impression then was the same as it is now: the President is desperate to restore at least an illusion of normality and to juice up the economy to boost his chances of reelection -- ignoring the human cost of his actions.

"This is the single largest public health failure in the modern history of the United States, certainly, in the last hundred years," said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor University.

"And it happened because of the refusal by the White House to launch a national campaign and a national strategy against the virus.

"We could have had one-fifth the deaths we've have had, and part of this is a failure to communicate," Tom Frieden, the former director of the CDC, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

"We will pass 200,000 deaths in the beginning of October, by all estimates, and this is a number that is just almost inconceivable," Frieden said.

"This is an enormous number of people dying and it's tragic to recognize that if we just had a more organized, well-led response with clear communication, many of those deaths could have been avoided."

Biden seizes chance to attack

The Woodward revelations, piled on top of previous evidence of Trump's mishandling of the pandemic, are likely to have a devastating impact on the President's legacy.

Thom Tillis, who's facing a tough reelection, told CNN, "When you're in a crisis situation, you have to inform people for their public health but you also don't want to create hysteria."

Democratic nominee Joe Biden launched a fresh attack on the President over his handling of the crisis that plays into the core argument of his campaign that Trump is temperamentally and intellectually unfit for office.

"He said there's no need for social distancing, don't bother wearing a mask.

He still has not moved."

The explosion over the Woodward books comes just two weeks after a Republican National Convention that made Trump's campaign strategy clear -- avoid discussion of the pandemic at all costs.

But as Trump's struggles on Thursday showed, he's finding it all but impossible to change the subject.