US President Donald Trump has been accused of deliberately misleading the public on the deadliness of COVID-19 by famous Watergate journalist Bob Woodward.
Woodward has published a new book called 'Rage' which is based on 18 interviews with the President in February and March.
In one of the newly released interviews from March 19, Trump admits he tried to "play it down".
"Well I think Bob, really, to be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down...because I don't want to create a panic."
Trump's comments came only a week before he told Americans to "stay calm".
"It will go away. You know it is going away," he said at the time.
On February 26, Trump told Americans "it's a little like the regular flu" and a vaccination for COVID-19 would be created "in a fairly quick manner".
But a couple of weeks earlier on February 7, the President told Woodward: "It's also more deadly than your, you know, even your strenuous flus ...this is deadly stuff".
In late March when the US death toll reached 5000, he defended himself to the public.
"I think the one thing nobody really knew about this virus was how contagious it was. It's so incredibly contagious and nobody knew that," he said on March 31.
Democrat Joe Biden, who will go up against Trump in the 2020 November Election, slammed the comments.
"He had the information, he knew how dangerous it was, and while this deadly disease ripped through our nation, he failed to do his job on purpose," Biden said.
Woodward also described the President's reaction as a tragedy.
"The President of the United States has a duty to warn the public will understand that .. but if they get the feeling that they're not getting the truth then you're going down the path of deceit and cover-up."
But Trump defended misleading the public, saying he did it to avoid panic.
"I'm not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy, we want to show confidence, we want to show strength, we want to show strength as a nation and that's what I've done and we've done very well," he said.
Trump labelled the recordings a political hit job.
"Whether it was Woodward or anybody else you cannot show a sense of panic or you're gonna have bigger problems than you ever had before."
It's yet to be seen if this will be the biggest problem for Trump going into the election.
COVID-19 has so far killed more than 190,000 people in the US.
