Trump told American investigative journalist Bob Woodward that he was too busy to meet with Dr. Anthony Fauci face to face in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A previously unheard recording of president released on Monday shows Trump shrugging off the need for more in-depth meetings with the country’s top infectious disease experts.

“This is a busy White House,” president told Woodward in March as the death count began spiking. “We’ve got a lot of things happening.”

“Honestly there’s not a lot of time for that, Bob,” Trump added.

In the new recording, Trump praises Fauci as “a sharp guy” but again seeks to tamp down the need for a full-court press to fight the infection, which was just starting to take lives of significant numbers of Americans.

Woodward has said he believes Trump’s mishandling of the infection shows that he is profoundly unfit to lead the nation.