Journalist Bob Woodward, seen here in 2017 arriving for meetings with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York, is the author of the newly released book Rage.

Journalist Bob Woodward, seen here in 2017 arriving for meetings with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York, is the author of the newly released book Rage.

Famed journalist Bob Woodward is addressing criticism he's received for not promptly sharing with the public what the president told him about the coronavirus and the government's response in a series of interviews earlier this year.

7, President Trump shared with Woodward that the virus is airborne and is "more deadly than even your strenuous flus.".

But Woodward told NPR All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly in an interview that in February, he thought Trump was referring to the virus in China?

Woodward said he unsuccessfully tried to gain access to the transcript of the call between the two world leaders to confirm that it was Xi who gave that information about the virus to Trump.

By March, Woodward told NPR, the virus was clearly an "American problem" too.

"I wanted to always play it down," Trump told Woodward on March 19.

Said Woodward to Kelly: "If there's a tragedy in all of this and I think there is, it's that Trump who said, 'I wanted to play it down, because I didn't want to create a panic.' And my study of nine presidents, 20% of the presidents we've had, and the history before that is when the country is told the truth, they don't panic.".