MET ONE NATIONALIST...:

As Greg Miller and Ellen Nakashima reported months ago in the Washington Post, Trump's briefers warned him "at the beginning of January" that the virus was spreading in Wuhan and the Chinese government was working "to conceal details of the outbreak." For weeks thereafter, he was told that "China was suppressing information about the contagion's transmissibility and lethal toll." Woodward's new book, Rage, reports that Trump's head "popped up" when he was advised, in a briefing on Jan. 28, that the virus would be "the biggest national security threat" of his presidency.

Trump could have warned Americans. Instead, he teamed up with Xi. On Feb. 7, he confided to Woodward what he had just learned from an overnight phone call with the Chinese president. "We've got a little bit of an interesting setback with the virus going in China," Trump told Woodward. "It goes through the air," he said, and "it's also more deadly" than "even your strenuous flus." But in public statements that day, Trump didn't talk about setbacks. He said China was working smoothly with the U.S. government, was managing the virus "really well," and would take care of it. He tweeted that Xi "will be successful" and the virus would soon be "gone."

Trump wasn't just defending China's censorship. He was saying he would have done the same thing.

During their phone call, Xi suggested to Trump that in April, warm weather would kill the virus. Trump could have run that idea by his own health officials, all of whom thought it was a bad assumption. But he didn't. Instead, Trump began to peddle it as a talking point on Twitter, at rallies, and in speeches and interviews. It turned out to be fatally wrong. In late spring and summer, as states yielded to Trump's pressure and allowed bars and restaurants to reopen, the virus rampaged across the United States, causing tens of thousands of additional deaths.

Why did Trump parrot Xi's assurances, defend the Chinese government, and join it in shading the truth? One reason is that the two leaders shared an interest in looking as though they had the crisis under control. Another is that Trump wanted China to give American scientists more data about the virus. But there's a third reason that goes to the heart of Trump's fraud as a China hawk: He had cut a deal with Xi to get Beijing's help in the 2020 U.S. election.

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