President Trump on Thursday defended his decision to mislead the public about the deadliness of the coronavirus as documented in Bob Woodward's new book, declining to call his misstatements about the virus and its spread a "lie" and saying he needed to show "strength" in the face of the crisis. "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 another," Trump said at a news conference. "There is no lie here. What we're doing is we're leading," he said, insisting that America is "rounding the final turn" of the pandemic and that the nation had done "much, much better than the European Union" in its response to the virus.