Joe Biden has branded Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic “almost criminal” after book revelations that the US president admitted in early February the disease was “deadly stuff” but deliberately played it down. As the death toll from Covid-19 nears 200,000 in America, the world’s highest, Biden excoriated his opponent in November’s election over the way he did not address the defining crisis of his presidency early and comprehensively. “He waved the white flag,” Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview scheduled to be aired in full on Thursday afternoon. “He walked away. He didn’t do a damn thing – think about it! And it’s almost criminal.” Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, highlights of which were revealed in his newspaper, the Washington Post, on Wednesday, features 18 interviews with Trump from late 2019 and into the early summer of 2020, covering the start and the peak of the pandemic in the US. Totalling nine hours, the interviews were recorded and are therefore impossible for Trump to deny. Woodward, a veteran journalist who helped break the Watergate scandal in the 70s that eventually brought down President Richard Nixon, discloses that in early February this year, just as the first infections were emerging in the US, Trump knew the extent of the deadly coronavirus threat. And the president had been told that it was an airborne disease, and much deadlier than influenza, but he intentionally misled the public by deciding to “play it down”, saying it was under control when it wasn’t and predicting the virus would “disappear”. At the same time he was conceding to Woodward that “this is deadly stuff”. On 7 February he told Woodward in a phone call: “It goes through the air. That’s always tougher than the touch. You don’t have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air and 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 even your strenuous flus.” Biden said Trump’s public advice downplaying the virus has “cost lives”. The former vice-president cited a report by Columbia University Medical School that said that if Trump had acted a week earlier in March to curb the virus, about 31,000 lives would have been saved, and if he had acted two weeks earlier, more than 50,000 deaths would have been prevented. “This caused people to die,” Biden said. Biden asked, rhetorically, why didn’t Trump follow experts’ advice on rules about public behaviour. “It’s all about making sure that the stock market did not come down, and his rich friends didn’t lose money, and that anything that happened had nothing to do with him.” On Wednesday, Trump acknowledged that he had played down the dangers of the virus to avoid causing a panic – though critics note he frequently stokes fear about crime and illegal immigration – and claimed that leadership is about showing confidence. When asked about this by CNN, Biden said: “Yeah, and that’s why we have no confidence in his leadership.” He added on Twitter: “Donald Trump said he didn’t want to tell the truth and create a panic. So he did nothing and created a disaster.” Anger over the revelations continues to mount. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, told MSNBC’s Morning Joe: “Look, when the house is on fire and there’s a five-alarm fire, you have an obligation to let people know. If not, they’re going to burn and they’re going to die. And this awful, awful incident, tragedy, can be summed up in four words: Trump lied, people died.” On a press call organized by the Biden campaign, Kristin Urquiza, whose father voted for Trump and died from coronavirus, said the “betrayal of my father and our country is even more clear now”. She continued: “If Donald Trump had told the American people in public what he had told Bob Woodward in private, thousands of lives could have been spared, including my dad’s.” At a contentious White House press briefing on Thursday, Jon Karl of ABC News asked Trump point blank: “Why did you lie to the American people and why should we trust what you have to say now?” Irked, the president replied: “Such a terrible question and the phraseology. I didn’t lie. What I said is we have to be calm, we can’t be panicked … Your question, the way you phrased that, it’s such a disgrace. It’s a disgrace to ABC television network. It’s a disgrace to your employer.” Trump tried to defend himself: “What I went out and said was very simple. I want to show a level of confidence and I want to show strength as a leader and I want to show our country is going to be fine, one way or the other … This is nobody’s fault but China. There was no lie here. What we’re doing here is leading.” Karl challenged: “You weren’t downplaying it? Because you said you were downplaying it. That’s what you told Woodward.” Trump said: “No, I don’t want to jump up and down and start screaming, ‘Death! Death!’ because that’s not what it’s about.” He also sought to use Woodward as a shield to deflect criticism. “If Bob Woodward thought what I said was bad then he should have immediately, right after I said it, gone out to the authorities so they can prepare and let them know. But he didn’t think it was bad and he said he didn’t think it was bad.” Philip Rucker, a colleague of Woodward’s at the Washington Post, interjected: “Bob Woodward is not the president.” The book also covers race relations, diplomacy with North Korea and a range of other issues. It has provoked infighting in Trump’s inner circle over why he spoke so freely to a journalist unlikely to do him any favours, not once but 18 times. The president is notorious for effectively being his own communications director and spokesman. Politico reported that Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, persuaded him to cooperate with Woodward, arguing that former president George W Bush benefited by doing so for an earlier book. Even Sean Hannity, a Fox News host and Trump cheerleader, expressed surprise at the decision during an interview with Trump on his show on Wednesday night. Trump explained: “I figured: you know, let’s just give it a little shot. I’ll speak to him. It wasn’t a big deal. I speak to him, and let’s see. I don’t know if the book is good or bad. I have no idea. [I] probably, almost definitely, won’t read it because I don’t have time to read it.” CNN’s Reliable Sources newsletter suggested that Trump was trying to impress Woodward. “Trump was furious that he didn’t cooperate for Woodward’s book Fear, so he ‘determined full participation with the follow-up would provide the best chance of securing a positive take on his rollicking tenure’,” it reported. “So they talked and talked … Sometimes late at night … At one point, when First Lady Melania Trump came into the room, Woodward heard him say, ‘Honey, I’m talking to Bob Woodward.’” As if to underline concerns over how the world’s most powerful man spends his time, at Thursday’s briefing Trump reeled off a long list of the Fox News and Fox Business shows he watched the previous evening and that morning.