Fox News hosts are scrambling to defend Trump's disastrous interview with Bob Woodward where he said he deliberately played down COVID-19

• On Wednesday, outlets starting reporting on Bob Woodward's new book on President Donald Trump, "Rage."
• Trump told Woodward during one of the many interviews they had for the book that he downplayed the coronavirus crisis.
• On Wednesday night, the Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity defended Trump against the damaging report.
• Carlson blamed Sen. Lindsay Graham, while Hannity compared Trump's leadership to that of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Fox News hosts and contributors have jumped to President Donald Trump's defense after the release of recordings in which he acknowledged intentionally playing down the seriousness of the coronavirus in the early weeks of the US outbreak.

Outlets that got an advance preview of the veteran reporter Bob Woodward's new book, "Rage," due out Tuesday, began reporting on the stunning revelation Wednesday. The recordings of Trump's interviews with Woodward have also been released.

Later Wednesday night, the Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity attempted to downplay Woodward's book, with Carlson accusing Sen. Lindsey Graham of setting up the Woodward interviews and Hannity comparing Trump's leadership to other American presidents in time of crisis.

Carlson said on his show that he had spoken with a source who said Graham, a Republican, had persuaded Trump to talk to Woodward and had even sat in on their first meeting.

—RC Di Mezzo (@rcdimezzo) September 10, 2020

Carlson then went on to suggest that Graham did this deliberately to sabotage the president.

"Now remember, Lindsey Graham is supposed to be a Republican, so why would he do something like that?" he said. "You'd have to ask him.

"But keep in mind that Lindsey Graham has opposed — passionately opposed — virtually every major policy initiative that Donald Trump articulated when he first ran, from ending illegal immigration to pulling back from pointless wars to maintaining law and order at home."

"Lindsey Graham was against all of that, more than many Democrats, so maybe you already know the answer," Carlson said.

Hannity also said the president's decision to downplay the virus was comparable to how President Franklin D. Roosevelt led the country during the Great Depression and World War II.

"Did President Roosevelt fan the flames of misery? Did he call for panic and anxiety? No, he actually rallied a nation in a time of need, he focused on making Americans stronger by staying positive, and he got to work and he rolled up his sleeves," Hannity said.

"During World War II, with the country on the brink, FDR proclaimed: 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself,'" he said. "Did the media attack him? Of course not."

Hannity's defense echoed that of Trump in his interviews. In one recorded this March, the president is heard saying: "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down because I don't want to create a panic."

Hannity also used the analogy of how President George W. Bush responded to the September 11, 2001, attacks.

"What was President Bush supposed to say? 'America's going down in flames, you better go hide in your basement bunker.' Of course not. A president's job is to maintain order and, by the way, right the ship during and after a crisis. Not spread panic, not spreading fear among the population.

"Let's make one thing perfectly clear: President Trump has never misled or distorted the truth about this deadly truth. No, he acted faster than anyone else," Hannity said.

The Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway, a senior editor at the conservative magazine The Federalist, had a similar defense of Trump.

During an appearance on Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier," Hemingway disputed the idea that Trump did too little to stop the virus in its early days and said she didn't think the Woodward book was "such a big deal."

"We already knew that President Trump thought this was serious, he closed the border, he created a task force, he declared a public-health emergency," she said. "And we already knew in March he was asked: 'Why are you so optimistic about it?' or 'Why are you downplaying it?' He says: 'I don't want to cause panic.'

"I think that, in fact, if there were criticism to be had against President Trump, it's that he didn't do enough to stop those people who try to panic everything and to shut down."

• Read more:
• Carl Bernstein — Bob Woodward's old reporting partner — said the tape of Trump admitting to downplaying COVID-19 is worse than Watergate, calling it 'homicidal negligence'
• GOP senator says he's not interested in Woodward's latest explosive book on Trump, says it's a 'gotcha' book even though Trump was interviewed 18 times for it
• Why Trump agreed to be interviewed by Bob Woodward 18 times, despite his top aides' advice
• Woodward claims he sat on Trump coronavirus remarks for 6 months in order to do more fact checking