WASHINGTON — Try as he might to change the sub­ject, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump can’t escape the coronavirus.

In April, the pres­i­dent tried to shift the public’s focus to the econ­o­my. In July, to defend­ing the country’s “her­itage.” In Sep­tem­ber, to enforc­ing “law and order.” But all along the way, the death toll from the coro­n­avirus con­tin­ued to mount.

And now, Trump’s own words are redi­rect­ing atten­tion to his han­dling of the pan­dem­ic when he can least afford it — less than two months before Elec­tion Day.

“I want­ed to always play it down,” Trump said of the threat from the virus. That was in a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion with jour­nal­ist Bob Wood­ward last March that became pub­lic on Wednes­day with the pub­li­ca­tion of excerpts from Woodward’s upcom­ing book “Rage.”

In taped con­ver­sa­tions released along with the excerpts, Trump insist­ed he didn’t want to cre­ate “pan­ic.” But his com­ments also raised fresh ques­tions about how he has man­aged the defin­ing cri­sis of his pres­i­den­cy, one that has killed about 190,000 Amer­i­cans so far, with no end in sight.

Trump’s team would much rather cen­ter the Novem­ber vote around the econ­o­my, crack­ing down on protests spawned by racial injus­tice, and the president’s promise that he could appoint more con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices to the Supreme Court.

On Wednes­day, Trump released a list of 20 poten­tial nom­i­nees for the high court, part of an effort to ani­mate con­ser­v­a­tive and evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers. But his announce­ment was over­shad­owed by a cas­cade of unwel­come devel­op­ments, includ­ing Woodward’s rev­e­la­tions, a move by Neva­da offi­cials to can­cel upcom­ing Trump ral­lies in the state because of the virus, and a whistleblower’s charge that Trump aides had pres­sured him to cov­er up intel­li­gence reports about Russ­ian elec­tion inter­fer­ence on the president’s behalf.

Rev­e­la­tions from the Wood­ward book emerged just as Trump’s cam­paign was begin­ning to feel that the virus was reced­ing from pub­lic view. The pres­i­dent him­self has been thumb­ing his nose at pub­lic health experts’ warn­ing against the sort of large gath­er­ings — with few peo­ple wear­ing masks — that his cam­paign has been stag­ing around the country.

For all of that, Trump has faced dev­as­tat­ing rev­e­la­tions of his own cre­ation before and sur­vived them. They stretch back to his 2015 com­ments ques­tion­ing the hero­ism of Sen. John McCain, a dec­o­rat­ed Viet­nam pris­on­er of war, or the noto­ri­ous “Access Hol­ly­wood” tape that emerged just before the 2016 elec­tion in which Trump described sex­u­al­ly assault­ing women.

On Wednes­day, Trump didn’t deny his remarks play­ing down the virus, he sought to jus­ti­fy them.

“The fact is I’m 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,” Trump told reporters. “Cer­tain­ly, I’m not going to dri­ve this coun­try or the world into a fren­zy. We want to show con­fi­dence. We want to show strength.”

Yet Trump’s own expla­na­tion sug­gest­ed he was steer­ing peo­ple away from the real­i­ty of the com­ing storm. Woodward’s account details dire warn­ings from top Trump nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cials to the pres­i­dent in late Jan­u­ary that the virus that caus­es COVID-19 could be as bad as the dev­as­tat­ing influen­za pan­dem­ic of 1918.

On Feb. 25, just weeks before much of the coun­try was forced to shut down because of the pan­dem­ic, Trump declared the virus “very well under con­trol in our country.”

Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Joe Biden pounced on the Wood­ward rev­e­la­tions, declar­ing that Trump “lied to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. He know­ing­ly and will­ing­ly lied about the threat it posed to the coun­try for months.”

“While a dead­ly dis­ease ripped through our nation, he failed to do his job — on pur­pose. It was a life or death betray­al of the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” Biden said.

By evening, Trump’s own words, cap­tured on the Wood­ward tapes, had popped up in a Biden cam­paign ad. The ad includes audio of Trump pri­vate­ly acknowl­edg­ing to Wood­ward the sever­i­ty of COVID-19, and ends with a nar­ra­tor pro­nounc­ing: “Trump knew it all along.”

In a taped Feb. 7 call with Wood­ward, Trump said of the virus, “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,” Trump said.

“This is dead­ly stuff,” the pres­i­dent repeat­ed for emphasis.

Just three days lat­er, Trump struck a far rosier tone in pub­lic, in an inter­view with Fox Busi­ness: “I think the virus is going to be — it’s going to be fine.”

The Wash­ing­ton Post, where Wood­ward serves as asso­ciate edi­tor, report­ed excerpts of the book on Wednes­day, as did CNN. The book also cov­ers race rela­tions, diplo­ma­cy with North Korea and a range of oth­er issues that have arisen dur­ing the past two years.

The book is based in part on 18 inter­views that Wood­ward con­duct­ed with Trump between Decem­ber and July.

“Trump nev­er did seem will­ing to ful­ly mobi­lize the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and con­tin­u­al­ly seemed to push prob­lems off on the states,” Wood­ward writes of the pan­dem­ic. “There was no real man­age­ment the­o­ry of the case or how to orga­nize a mas­sive enter­prise to deal with one of the most com­plex emer­gen­cies the Unit­ed States had ever faced.”