I think that in general, the news media have given people no reason to trust that they know what they’re talking about—

C’mon. Don’t blame the media.

Oh, I’m definitely blaming the media and very much including Vanity Fair, and I hope you put that in there. And I also think, and obviously I think this or I wouldn’t have gone there in the first place, that it’s part of the role of leaders to look beyond the media and to look at the data that’s coming in from the intel agencies—who have also been discredited and justly so—but still, look at the numbers and look at the reports coming in and to make cool and rational judgments about what that means.

There’s a ton of noise right now. I understand why it’s the temptation to dismiss it, but you can’t dismiss it because, however distorted it may be, fundamentally this is real. It’s an illness. You’re not allowed to sort of fudge on epidemics. You have to be straightforward.

And moreover, if you want to convey strength, and in a time of crisis, you need to do that, you have to convey strength—honesty can be strength. I’m being blunt with you. Strong people have no problem admitting when they’ve screwed up. They have no problem being direct. If I’m totally blunt with you, you know it, you can tell. We know deception when we hear it. So if you want to reassure people, follow your own instincts, go with what you know is true, and if you’re wrong in some ways, people always forgive you being wrong.

What they won’t forgive is you being dishonest or weak. They won’t. And dishonesty, by the way, is always an indicator of weakness. That’s what it is.

Yes, I think I’m getting your message. And so let’s bore into the story for just a moment here. Your wife signaled to you, “Hey, maybe this would be a time for you to become a messenger here.” And so you go to Mar-a-Lago on Saturday, March 7?

Yeah.

You’d never been there before?

No.

And what was your impression? There was a birthday party for a former Fox news host, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and in part you were there for that, right?

I had no idea that was in progress until I walked into it. I had no idea. I didn’t know it was her birthday until I walked into the room. My intention was to get in and out of there without being seen by anybody. And I had even asked the Secret Service to help me do that because, again, I was embarrassed that I was doing this and I didn’t feel it was my role. I didn’t want anyone to know I was doing it.

Was it prearranged that you were going to have an audience with the president?

Yeah, I mean, I had called over there. I have spoken to people there. Yeah.

And so they said there’ll be a time for you to go into another room with the president and have a private meeting.

Yeah. It’s not like Trump was calling me up and saying, “What do I do?” I mean, that’s the opposite of what happened. So it’s probably wrong for me to even say that this happened, but I am. But it would definitely be wrong for me to get into details to what they said or anything like that.

Tell me what it is that you conveyed to him.

I said exactly what I’ve said on TV, which is this could be really bad. My view is that we may have missed the point where we can control it. Once you get cases of community transmission, as we have all over the country now, by then it was clear it was happening. I know someone very well who was in the ICU—a personal friend of mine who I had just had dinner with a month and a half ago was in the ICU with double pneumonia and struggling for life. And so I just want to make it clear this is totally real; people you know are going to get it. And I’m concerned based on conversations I’ve had that we don’t have the medical capacity to deal with it. I think it’d be very hard to keep it from spreading given the nature of American life.