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hi. welcome to our viewers here in the united states and all around the world. you're watching "cnn newsroom." i'm robyn curnow. just ahead -- >> i don't want people to be frightened. i don't want to create panic.

>> shocking new tapes prove president trump knew the dangers of coronavirus and downplayed the risks in public. we'll have all the details for you on that. plus those same tapes from veteran journalist bob woodward give new insights on how president trump views race. and devastating wildfires in oregon turns deadly. live from cnn center, this is "cnn newsroom" with robyn curnow. great to have you along this hour. thanks for joining me. so the u.s. president, donald trump, admits knowing as early as february just how deadly the coronavirus was and health risks, the dangerous health risks it posed but he purposefully understated it.

bob woodwork interviewed him for his book "rage." here's joao costa with all of that. >> reporter: president trump's lengthy record of false statements on coronavirus may be catching up with him. bob woodward recorded the president on tape that he intentionally downplayed the severity of the virus. 3 >> i wanted to always play it down because i don't want to create a panic. >> reporter: responding to the book, the president responded he only wanted to keep people from panicking. >> a cheerleader for this country. i love our country and i don't want people to be frightened. i don't want to create panic. we want to show confidence. we want to show strength. >> reporter: mr. trump argued he's not responsible for the 190,000 americans who died from the virus. >> i think if we didn't to what

we did, we would have millions of people. >> caylee mca nane any tried to deny. >> the president never downplayed the virus. the president expressed calm. >> reporter: in perhaps the most stunning revelation, mr. trump acknowledges in early february that covid-19 is more deadly than the seasonal flu. >> it goes -- it goes through air, bob. that's always tougher than the touch. you don't have to touch things but the air, you just breathe the air. that's how it's passed and so that's a very tricky one. that's a very delicate one. it's also more deadly than your -- you know, your -- even your strenuous flus. >> reporter: yet on march 9th the president tweeted covid-19 is not as dangerous as the flu as he held packed rallies during the early months of the pandemic, the president told the public that the coronavirus was going to disappear. >> it's going to disappear. one day it will disappear.

you know it is going away. >> reporter: but listen to what the president told woodward on march 19th, that the virus poses a danger to americans young and old. >> now it's turning out it's not old people, bob. today and yesterday some startling facts came out. it's not just older. >> yeah. >> plenty of young people. >> reporter: in the months that followed, the president argued it was safe for children to go back to school. >> if you look at children, children are almost -- and i would almost say definitely, but almost immune from this disease. so few. they've got stronger -- hard to believe, i don't know how you feel about it, but they have much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this and they do it. they don't have a problem. >> reporter: woodward reports top officials around mr. trump raised questions about his leadership drmpt anthony fauci is said to explain the president's attention span is a

minus number. >> i don't want to get involved in the stuff that is distracting to the kind of things that i'm trying to do and that we're all trying to do with this outbreak. >> reporter: so you would question that account then? >> yeah. yeah. >> reporter: woodward writes james mattis believed president trump was dangerous and unfit. my f'ing generals are a bunch of expletive. on the black lives matter movement, the president blows off woodward's question about whether mr. trump is blinded by white privilege. >> do you have any sense that that privilege has isolated and put you in a cave to a certain extent as it put me and i think lots of white, privileged people in a cave and that we have to work our way out of it to understand the anger and the pain particularly black people

feel in this country? >> no. >> do you -- >> you really drank the kool aid, didn't you? listen to you. wow. i don't feel that at all. >> reporter: they're pointing fingers over who allowed the president to speak with bob woodward. they signed off on the interviews but the president appears only to have himself to blame as we are told he went around his own press office to speak to the legendary journalist. jim acosta, cnn, the white house. president trump claims he only gave woodward a few quotes for his book not 18 on the record interviews over six months. he acknowledges that the book probably would make him look good. in the, quote, boring book. the tweet tended to brush off his own verbatim words in the book as another, quote, political hit job. joe biden is speaking out

strongly about the revelationness this book. he said it was, quote, almost criminal that donald trump knew about the serious nature of the virus and played it straight. >> reporter: joe biden accuse president trump of being unfit to serve as president after journalist bob woodward revealed in his upcoming book that the president downplayed the coronavirus despite knowing the severity of it. this comes as they tried to make the president's handling of the coronavirus the central issue of this campaign. take a listen to what biden had to say in warren, michigan. >> he knew how deadly it was. it was much more deadly than the flu. he knew and purposefully played it down. worse, he knowingly lied to the american people. he knowingly and willingly lied about the threat for months. it was a life and death betrayal. >> reporter: joe biden

criticized the president not just because of the lives lost but also because of the economic impact. biden saying the president sent the economy into a tail spin and that is something that biden originally intended to have his speech in michigan focus on. he talked about the need for american manufacturing and creating jobs here in the u.s. he traveled to michigan, to macomb county, which is a critical county that helped president trump win back in 2016. this is the county where obama and biden won in 2008 and 2012. president trump won by nearly 12 points that helped him carry the state over hillary clinton. biden has kept his focus on a lot of these swing states where the president won traveling here to michigan. later in the week he'll be in pennsylvania and next week he's heading down to florida. cnn contributor michael dantonio joins me. you're the author of "the truth

about trump." the president privately acknowledging how dangerous coronavirus was, that he intentionally hid that from the public. you've written a book with had -- about him, you've spoken to him. does that surprise you? >> not at all. this is almost like the question you might ask of a tell evangelist after the big scandal when they've been caught in a sexual affair, stealing the money. everyone says did he really believe what he was preaching? the answer was no in that case and it's no in the case of donald trump. he's never spoken the truth about his own feelings about any issue so, for example, on the issue of abortion he's very pro choice but he ran on a platform of being anti-abortion. in this case with the covid-19 pandemic, i understood all along that he knew the science, that he was being well informed and

that he found it politically advantageous to say otherwise, to promote this idea that we needn't take precautions, that this is all going to go away very quickly and that he had it under control. the shocking thing, i think, he did this interview with bob woodward, knew these many interviews, actually, were being recorded and he had the hubris to say out loud the part that he should have kept secret, and that was the truth that he knew february 7th that this was a profound looming tragedy and we can now see for certain that he did nothing and he did nothing knowing what the consequences might be. >> and why? i mean, national security advisor, we understand, had told him this would be the biggest threat to his presidency. i think that was in january. it was barely mentioned in the state of the nation speech --

state of the union speech. why would a leader play it down? why would he deny it? is it just about political expediency? >> well, the key thing that you mentioned there was the word leader. so why would a leader do this? well, the leader of a democracy who is concerned for the people he's elected to serve and protect would never do this, but a person who's got authoritarian instincts but also lacks the ability to lead would do this and this is the thing that i think a lot of people missed about donald trump when he ran for president. he announced that he was a great businessman who had run all of these successful enterprises, employed thousands and thousands of people and so of course he was a great leader. when, in fact, he was awful at running organizations that

involve more than a handful of people. he ran them into the ground and wound up in bankruptcy time and again because he's not a good leader of people. he's simply a man who promotes himself, promotes his own interests and thrives through that kind of advertising mindset, the salesmanship mind set. that's not to denigrate honest salespeople but, you know, he's a con man and this idea that he was a leader was false to begin with. so the fact that he was derelict in his duty in this case is no surprise at all. >> michael dantonio, thank you very much for joining us. the author of "the truth about trump." your perspective very much valued. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. wildfires blazing on the u.s. west coast have left seven people dead including three in the state of oregon. dry weather, high winds are

driving the fires further through that state destroying anything in their path. cnn's lucy cavanaugh is in oregon. >> reporter: the situation in oregon is incredibly dangerous all across the state, including clackamas county where i'm located. this is oregon's third most populated county. i'm going to step out of the shot. the fires in the distance moving forward because of the high wind conditions and incredibly dry air. those weather conditions preventing rescue and fire teams from being able to even begin containing the fire. the focus is on preventing the loss of life, evacuating people. oregon's governor kate brown describing the fires as, quote, unprecedented. this could be the greatest loss due to wildfire in our state's history. no part of oregon unaffected at

the moment. the problem with these weather conditions is that some of the fires are merging so things could get a lot more worse before they get better. we are expecting a potential change in the weather conditions in about a day or two with cooler western winds coming in. they have more moisture in the air but, again, the question really is how much of these properties, how much of these areas will burn before those conditions change. again, 0% containment. oregon struggling because neighboring washington state is struggling. we know some firefighters will be deploying from utah. the national guard has been activated as well. this is a historic, unprecedented fire. authorities on alert. telling people not to gamble with their lives. to get out. >> thanks, lucy, for that.

conditions aren't better down the coast of california. three people have been killed. san francisco residents waking up to this deep orange skies, raining ash. even though the closest fires to the bay area are some 200 kilometers away, the bizarre skies seem as if san francisco was a city on mars. take a look at these images. quite staggering. families have been forced to evacuate their homes. the north complex fire formed by a number of blazes. it's scorched more than 250,000 acres. derek van dam is following all of these weather conditions and mother nature sending out some very, very serious warnings about climate change. wow, look at the bay area. it's extraordinary. it does look like they're a city on mars, doesn't it? >> mother nature creating her own instagram filters too,

robyn. let me explain what's happening. the science behind the orange and red haze. those get blocked literally from our visible eyes. we're talking about the oranges and the reds and yellows, the longer wave lengths that are allowed to pass through that ash and create that almost eerie apocalyptic look to the skies. there was plenty of smoke to go around. it blanketed the entire west coast. it's going to be picked up by the jet stream and travel eastward. you could have some pretty amazing sun sets and sunrises across the great lakes and east coast. to put this into perspective for the state of california, we have the second, third, fourth largest fires burning out of control right now and they have had the most acres burned at the time of year.

back to you. >> thanks soch for the update. appreciate it. good work. derek van dam there. just ahead this hour, there is much more. yes, there is more from bob woodward's explosive new book on donald trump including so called love letters the president exchanged with kim jong-un. did you really need the caps lock? mucinex cold and flu all-in-one.

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welcome back. i'm robyn curnow. it's 23 minutes past the hour. live from cnn news center. the letters between president trump and north korean leader kim jong-un are highlighted in bob woodward's new book "rage." mr. trump has described the notes as love letters. woodward said the unusual letters certainly show diplomatic courtship. one written by kim reads, even now i cannot forget that moment in history when i firmly held your excellency hand at the beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched with great interest and hope to re-live the honor of that day. paula hancocks is joining us now live from seoul to decode these letters and give us a sense of what's in them.

paula. >> reporter: well, robyn, we have heard all along from the u.s. president donald trump that he and the north korean leader, kim jong-un, have a special friendship, a unique friendship, and he's consistently said he believes the two of them, most notably, himself. is the only one that could have prevented a war between the two countries. what we see here with these letters that bob woodward was able to see is the sort of progression of their relationship, of the friendship which really did highlight in 2018 after the singapore summit how the relationship was good, how the u.s. and north korea relationship was going well. then of course when it came to hanoi, the summit in 2019 where it was not going well, we heard from bob woodward that he had been told by the u.s. president that when he was negotiating with kim jong-un, he said, do you ever do anything other than

send rockets up into the air? let's go to a movie together. let's go play a round of golf saying within the book that was the u.s. president saying he was trying to find a breakthrough within hanoi. clearly that didn't happen. there was then that third meeting between the two leaders at the dmz in june of 2019 and just a month later there was another letter which showed his frustration on the part of the north korean leader kim jong-un saying, quote, i am clearly offended. i do not want to hide this feeling from you. i am really offended. according to the timing, that was because the u.s. had not postponed south korean military journalists as kim jong-un had assumed they would do. what this shows us, these letters and this insight into the relationship between the two is really how it appeared to be very close at the beginning and there was a lot put on the relationship between the two

individuals, which was really creating the opportunity, as the u.s. president said, for something to happen between the two countries. as we know, that did not happen. robyn. >> thanks so much. paula hancocks live in seoul, south korea. thanks, paula. you're watching "cnn newsroom." still to come. president trump dismisses the idea of white privilege as, quote, drinking the kool aid. a revealing look at his attitude on race. that is just ahead. it. i didn't do it. so when i heard they added ultra oxi to the cleaning power of tide, it was just what we needed. dad? i didn't do it. #1 stain and odor fighter, #1 trusted. it's got to be tide.

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welcome back. live from atlanta, i'm robyn curnow. as we told you at the top of our

newscast, bob woodward's new book called "rage" paints a pretty unflattering portrait of the president. the sources are not anonymous. one of them is the president himself. extensive on the record interviews over the months. one of the sensitive issues woodward raised was racial unrest in the country. brian todd has that part of the story. brian. >> reporter: bob woodward put the question bluntly to the president. the investigative journalist asked trump whether the white privilege he experienced in his yoit put him in a cave, isolated him. >> it put me and i think lots of white privileged people in a cave and that we have to work our way out of that to understa understand the anger and pain particularly black people

experience. >> no. you drank the kool aid. wow, listen to you. i don't feel that at all. >> reporter: trump escalated his contempt he feels for former president barack obama. i don't think he's smart, i think he's highly overrated and i don't think he's a great speaker. he wanted to refer to him by his first and middle names barack hussain but he wouldn't do that in his presence so he could be, quote, very nice. >> he started his politics on trying to delegitimize the first black president of the united states but at the end of the day it's more than just that. there is a personal angst against president obama. >> many of the president's divisive comments have been directed towards black women in leadership. he tweeted that the four congress women of color who formed the so-called squad on capitol hill should, quote, go back and fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. he's referred to maxine waters

as having a, quote, low iq. one of his new favorite targets democratic presidential nominee kamala harris. >> she could never be the first woman president, she could never be. that would be an insult to our country. >> reporter: certainly in his presidency he has used race as a divisive issue. he has -- he has played to white voters and not to the entire country. >> reporter: the president apparently doesn't see it that way telling bob woodward, quote, i've done a tremendous amount for the black community and honestly i'm not feeling any love. some who have known donald trump for decades believe racially polarizing comments are more than a political tool for the president. former trump lawyer michael cohen out with a new book told nbc news of a conversation he had with trump after nelson mandela died. >> he asked me if i had known of any country that's run by a black that's not an s hole. i said, how about america? of which he gave me the

proverbial fu. >> a former coo of one of trump's hotels said it goes even deeper. >> cohen's description, his characterization that trump believes blacks have a lower intelligence is absolutely true. he said these things 30 years ago. >> reporter: we reached out to the white house for response to our story. this statement was issued, quote, the individuals you cite have slandered the president, verbally attacked his supporters and covered with animosity and bias. he will not sit by and allow this hateful rhetoric to go unresponded to. donald trump's record has been one of fighting for inclusion and advocating for the equal treatment of all. anyone who says otherwise is sewing division. judd deer cited the president's work on criminal justice reform.

brian todd, cnn, washington. so earlier i spoke with cnn political commentator and "new york times" columnist charles blow about the president's dismal comments on race. you heard many of them there in that report. i wanted to get his take on mr. trump's early knowledge on the coronavirus. we've been reporting it all day. and the decision not to make that information public. take a listen to what charles said. >> it is criminal. you're responsible for people dying and the reason that you did it was because you wanted to put yourself in a better position to be re-elected. there is no way to describe what is happening here. we keep talking about it in political terms, in attitudinal terms rather than talk about it in terms of actual human beings who were alive, walking around

on this earth breathing air are now in graves and there are 190,000 of them and people -- and the experts predicted it would be 200,000 of them by the end of the month and the models show it can get active one week sooner. if we were to save thousands of lives. two weeks we could have more tens of thousands of lives. and the fact that he knew how dangerous it was, he knew the transmission rate -- the path of transmission, he knew how much more deadly it was than the flu which he kept comparing it to, he knew that children could be affected and were being affected and he said things that went against what he knew because he

thought it was bet jr. for him. it's outrageous. i don't know how we get over that. all of the people with funerals, i've been to too many zoom funerals. why do i have to go to a zoom funeral? because this man chose to conceal this and to downplay it so that the people had to die. and we had to watch the funeral on a screen. that is not how it should have been. these people did not have to die. >> those comments are not the only comments that have come out in this bob woodward book and tapes. we hear how bob woodward himself tries to grapple with his white privilege and the president kind of disdainfully said, well, you've drunk the kool aid. what does it feel like to hear that? i mean, are you surprised? >> no, i'm not surprised that he believes that there is actually

a privilege in blackness because he believes that affirmative action and political correctness give minorities an advantage. he's believed this for his entire life. he gave an interview in 1989, 31 years ago, in which he said that a highly educated black person has an advantage over a highly educated white person. he might choose to be a highly educated white person. he said that in jest and laughs. he always believed that we were getting something for free, that we were -- that there was an advantage over whiteness because the society felt guilty and they were giving black people things, right? so he doesn't believe in the concept of white privilege. >> charles blow there speaking to me a little bit earlier on. so u.s. financial markets

bounced back in a big way on wednesday. take a look. u.s. stocks had their best day in months after a three-day slide. tech stocks including apple, amazon, microsoft helped lead the charge. now the dow gained 1.6% as you can see here, all firmly in the green territory. the nasdaq saw its quickest correction ever, with a 2.7% surge. the s&p finished up more than 2%. where will the markets go from here? john defterios is live this hour in ab but dhabi. john, hi. is the extreme level of volatility we're seeing in global financial, it really is pretty extreme, but it's particularly acute here in the u.s. why? >> reporter: well, you know what, i think the best way to describe this phenomena is a whiplash in the financial

markets. >> all of 2020 is a whiplash. i think we can agree on that. >> reporter: yeah. yeah. that's for sure. we have a couple of forces at play in the financial market which makes this even more volatile. record amounts of stimulus. 3 trillion in the united states. but we're going into recession so what force wins the gain in the financial markets? there's a couple of different measurements. we have this in two charts that describe the story or the narrative for the year. first, the dow industrials with the nasdaq composite index. you have this sharp drop in march. we bottomed out in april and then went higher again. that was all about the stimulus. let's take a look at the nasdaq on its own because it recently had the a record. we start the year at 8900. dropped down to 6800 in april and then we climb up above 12,000 and then you saw tuesday a sharp jolt again. you say, what's going on? goldman sachs recently put out a report saying it's very unusual.

you have to go back to 2000 and the tech bubble when you see near records or records and really high levels of the vix index which measures volatility. again, we've seen this vix index nearly double in the last year and it's a red warning sign according to goldman sachs. they haven't been there for 20 years. we know what happened 20 years ago and, again, we have more volatility today. if you look at the futures market, 2/3 of a percent for the dow and s&p 500. the nasdaq is down another 1%. what do i say? buyer beware. >> okay. warnings all around. john defterios with that. still ahead, she's covered conflicts and crises around the world. clarissa ward shares her experiences in a new memoir. we'll speak with clarissa next. robinhood believes now is the time to do money.

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mile but the men of this base say isis fighters often go at night to that building over there so they can launch attacks on these positions. >> cnn chief international correspondent there clarissa ward where she documented the destruction and tragedy. we're learning syria is among several countries that have seen 37 million people displaced by wars america has fought since 2001. "the new york times" is citing that from brown university's cost of war project. the report accounts for people mostly displaced from countries where fighting has been the fiercest. clarissa ward has been reporting from some of the most dangerous and she writes about this from a memoir, "on all fronts, the education of a journalist." clarissa, hi, lovely to see you. is syria the place that's left the biggest mark on you?

>> reporter: hi, robin. thank you for having me on. i think every journalist who's been doing this for a long time will tell you that there's always one conflict or one story that kind of takes ahold of your heart and doesn't let it go, and for me, that story was absolutely the syrian civil war, which i started covering in 2011. and i think that was for a number of reasons, primarily of course because of the really just horrendous suffering that the syrian people have been put through, the brutality of the methods and tactics used by bashar al assad against his own people, but also unlike other conflicts i've covered, robyn, this was unusual in that you couldn't retreat to the hotel at the end of a day of reporting. you were living with syrian people, staying in their homes. often they're risking their lives to host you and that gives you a very different window on to any conflict.

>> certainly does. another window is motherhood. we talked about this before. i remember when you started writing this book. i was reporting from london. you said you were writing a letter to your unborn son. you've since then had another one. how has motherhood changed you, and in particular that question, how people react to you as a female journalist, a female journalist going to dangerous places compared to a dad who does the same thing? >> reporter: there's definitely a double standard. the minute they find out i've had children, they question my decision to cover war and conflict in a way that i don't think they do of my male colleagues. at the same time, of course, there is this sort of urgent responsibility that you have towards your children, towards maintaining the best levels of security that you possibly can, and i'm very mindful of that, more so even than i was before.

but i really say, robin, the primary way that i think my reporting has changed or my approach to my work has changed is that having children has made me so much more acutely emotionally sensitive and particularly to the suffering of children. and i think that that has, i hope at least, given new found sort of urgency and compassion to my reporting and i would like to think that in this era that we're entering where there is a broader diversity of choices telling stories, that having more mothers covering conflict with the perspective they bring can only really be a positive thing. >> thanks so much, clarissa. great to speak to you. look forward to reading the book. another look at your memoir. let's look at the cover here. "on all fronts, education of a journalist." thanks, clarissa. >> reporter: thank you. still to come on cnn.

engaging with the outside world after months of isolation. we'll tell you about a program that connects seniors with students. thanks so much. you're watching cnn.

after months and months of being cooped up during the pandemic, some seniors and pensioners in the u.s. have now found a way to engage with the outside world. the retirement community in virginia has started a program allowing retired seniors to tutor kids online. kim brunhuber reports. >> reporter: a former high school math teacher for more than 30 years, she has a new pupil for the first time in a long time. >> i love to teach so having the student will be a nice change for me, and if i can help her, then i'll feel i was a success. >> reporter: during months of lockdown in the coronavirus pandemic, mrs. waller is one of the seniors at her retirement community in virginia beach who has become a virtual tutor.

she'll be helping eighth grader lily yale with geometry as she begins the semester like many students across the u.s., going to school online. >> at the end of last year lily did have some trouble getting used to the virtual learning program. it just eases my mind in knowing that she has support and guidance from miss waller. >> instead of me having to raise my hand while being in a room with like over 30 other classmates, i can actually ask my questions. >> reporter: lily and mrs. waller were paired as part of an init tich with the retirement community. it offers them a specialized tablet named the bird song and it keeps seniors connected. >> this looks like a wonderful opportunity to engage with a student, to have fun, and to get me something to do. >> reporter: still in its trial

stages, the program focuses on retired educators ranging from math and history but robert felty will be tutoring his grandson who's a freshman in high school a few states away. >> i will help him on the tablet to do history and tell a little bit about where i've been, my father being in world war ii, the army, air force, i look forward to it. it's nice to see him. it's nice to be involved. >> reporter: after years working in military intelligence, mr. felty said he trained up to 30,000 people worldwide. he's been on lockdown since march. >> this gave me a chance to reach out. i like young people. god bless them, we need them. >> reporter: he plans to tutor his grandson once a week and ms.

waller will meet with lily two or three times a week. >> i might get better. big chance to make me feel relevant and needed. >> it would be nice if they would do this across the nation. it would be good for the tutors and the tutorees, or whatever you call them. >> reporter: kim brunhuber, cnn, atlanta. beautiful connections all the way around. thanks so much to kim for that story. stay with us for the latest on the coronavirus pandemic in the u.s. and around the world. anderson cooper and dr. sanjay gupta host the cnn town hall. coronavirus, facts and fears. see it at eight thursday morning and in hong kong. wherever you are, you can find it on cnn. thanks for joining me. i'm robyn curnow live from atlanta. "early start" is up next. when we started our business

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than $2. go to dealdash.com right now and see how much you can save. remember, shipping is always free. play it down. president trump admits on tape that he concealed the true threat of coronavirus from the american people. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. this is "early start." i'm laura jarrett. >> pleasure to see you this morning, laura. i'm boris sanchez in for christine romans. thursday, september 10th. 5 a.m. in new york. 54 days until election day. we begin with the fallout from president trump's stunning admission that he intentionally downplayed the threat of coronavirus. in an interview with bob woodward in early february the president admits he kne