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A new book suggests that President Trump understood the threats of the coronavirus even as he told the nation it was no worse than the seasonal flu. USA TODAY

Opinion: Donald Trump has built his entire political career on sending people into a panic. But ... not when it came to the greatest health threat we have faced in a century.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump explained why he lied to the public in the crucial early days of the pandemic, publicly proclaiming the novelcoronavirus no more dangerous than the flu while privately warning that it was deadly stuff.

I dont want people to be frightened, Trump told reporters on Wednesday.I dont want to create panic, as you say. And certainly, Im not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy.

This, from the president who on Thursday sent out this tweet:

Trumps entire political career is built on sending people into a frenzy, if not a full-blown panic

Whether its Mexicans who illegally cross the border (The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc. drug dealers, criminals, rapists, etc)

... Central American caravans. (Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in. I have alerted Border Patrol and Military that this is a National Emergy [sic]. Must change laws!") ...

...The Supreme Court, if he's not re-elected.(Radical justices will erase the Second Amendment, silence political speech and require taxpayers to fund extreme late-term abortion. They will give unelected bureaucrats the power to destroy millions of American jobs. They will remove the words under God from the Pledge of Allegiance. They will unilaterally declare the death penalty unconstitutional, even for the most depraved mass murderers. They will erase national borders, cripple police departments and grant new protections to anarchists, rioters, violent criminals and terrorists.) ...

...Or the Democrats. (Joe Biden and the radical, socialist Democrats would immediately collapse the economy. If they got in, they would collapse it. Youll have a crash the likes of which youve never seen before. Your stocks, your 401(k)s.).

Trump is a walking, talking, tweetingklaxon, forever blaring out a warning that the boogeyman is at the gate. FDR said there was nothing to fear but fear itself. Trump, meanwhile, warns us daily of the many dangers confronting the average American, from terrorists amassing at the bordertoanarchists invading our suburbs.

But not, apparently, from the greatest health threat we have faced in a century: a global pandemic that has killed more than190,000 Americans and counting.

One that for months our president publicly downplayed as it took hold across America.

We dont want to instill panic, he explained on Wednesday. We dont want to jump up and down and start shouting that we have a problem that is a tremendous problem, scare everybody.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com.

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Donald Trump says he didn't want to panic people ... then he tweeted this? - The Arizona Republic