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Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, defended President Donald Trump on Wednesday after audio recordings revealed that the president wanted to downplay the severity of the coronavirus early in the pandemic. Speaking with Fox News’ John Roberts, Fauci denied that he ever heard the president “distort” the threat of the coronavirus and maintained that Trump’s presentations to the public were largely in line with discussions he’d had with medical experts. When asked whether he ever felt Trump was downplaying the severity of the coronavirus, Fauci said no. (Choi, 9/9)

Anthony Fauci on Wednesday said he doesn't think President Trump was publicly distorting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. During an interview with Fox News's John Roberts, Fauci said Trump's public press conferences in the early spring mostly echoed what members of the White House coronavirus task force were telling him in private. (Weixel, 9/9)

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Wednesday he would not have recommended journalist Bob Woodward gain as much access to the White House as he did in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic had Meadows been in his chief of staff role at the time. “I’m not surprised that the president was on the phone with Bob Woodward. ... His access to the White House is probably something that I would not have recommended had I been in the chief of staff role very early on,” Meadows said on Fox News’s “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” when asked if he was surprised by how much time Trump spent talking to Woodward for his forthcoming book. (Klar, 9/9)

Bob Woodward, facing widespread criticism for only now revealing President Donald Trump’s early concerns about the severity of the coronavirus, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he needed time to be sure that Trump’s private comments from February were accurate. (Italie, 9/9)

Two waves of outrage greeted the news on Wednesday of Bob Woodward’s latest White House chronicle, a book titled “Rage.” The first was Trump’s disclosure to Woodward that he knew as early as February — even as he was dismissing the novel coronavirus publicly — that the looming pandemic was far deadlier than the flu. The second was that Woodward, long associated with The Washington Post, didn’t reveal this to the public sooner. (Margaret Sullivan, 9/9)