Donald Trump Coronavirus Press Briefing Transcript April 15

Donald Trump: (11:23)

Thank you very much, everyone. Before I begin, I’d like to offer my condolences and best wishes to the people all across our great South who have endured deadly tornadoes and other severe weather in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina.

Donald Trump: (11:42)

My administration will do everything possible to help those communities get back on their feet. We’re speaking with their governors and representatives. FEMA’s already on its way and they got there. As soon as we heard the word. I said, “Get out there.” So FEMA’s there and you know the great job that FEMA does, it’s really something very special. So we just want to say warmest condolences and we’re with you all the way. It’s a tough deal. That was a bad, bad level five. That was a bad group. That’s as high as it gets. It was a bad grouping of tornadoes, something that’s something incredible, the power, the horrible, destructive power.

Donald Trump: (12:26)

America is continuing to make critical progress at our war against the virus. Over the weekend, the number of daily new infections remained flat. Nationwide flat. Hospitalizations are slowing in hotspots like New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Louisiana. This is clear evidence that our aggressive strategy to combat the virus is working and that Americans are following the guidelines. It’s been incredible what they’ve done.

Donald Trump: (12:54)

You looked at the charts, and the charts are, and the models from early on predictions were 100 and 120,000 people look like if they did well, they were going to unfortunately perish. And we’re going to be hopefully way, way below that number. So that will be a sign of people doing things right, but it’s still just a horrible thing all over the world, 184 countries. This is attribute the wonderful healthcare advisors and experts who have been with us right from the beginning. We appreciate it so much. In fact, Dr. Fauci is here. Maybe I could ask Tony to say a few words before we go any further. Thank you very much, Tony. Please.

Dr. Fauci: (13:46)

Thank you Mr. President. Just a couple of things and then I just want to make a comment about something that happened yesterday. You’re going to hear from Dr. Birx soon about the numbers that we’ve been talking about, how things are starting to balance off. And I think the more as we go by each day, I think we’re going to see, and again, I never like to get ahead of myself, or of Dr. Birx. But it looks like even though we’ve had a really bad week last week, remember when I was speaking to you before I was saying this was really a bad week. There’s still going to be a lot of deaths, but we’re starting to see in some areas now that flattening, particularly in a place that was a hot spot like New York. That’s the first thing.

Dr. Fauci: (14:25)

The second thing is that I had a really very, very productive conversation with the Congressional Black Caucus this morning for about an hour. And they really wanted to know what exactly are we going to be doing in the immediate, as well as the long range about the health disparities and the discrepancies both in infection and in poor outcome in the minorities in general, specifically African American. And I made it very clear to them that what we have to do is focus on getting the resources where the vulnerable are to be able to get testing done, to be able to get the appropriate identification where proper and where appropriate to isolate and contact trace if we can. But also to help mitigate in a community that is suffering and suffering much more disproportionately. So I just wanted to get that to the way.

Dr. Fauci: (15:17)

The other point I wanted to make is that I, I had an interview yesterday that I was asked a hypothetical question. And hypothetical questions sometimes can get you into some difficulty, because it’s what would have, or could have. The nature of the hypothetical question was if in fact we had mitigated earlier, could lives have been saved? And the answer to my question was as I always do and I’m doing right now perfectly honestly say, “Yes.” Obviously, mitigation helps. I’ve been up here many times telling you that mitigation works. So if mitigation works and you instigate it and you initiate it earlier, you will probably have saved more lives. If you initiated it later, you probably would have lost more lives. You initiate it at a certain time. That was taken as a way that may be somehow something was at fault here.

Dr. Fauci: (16:13)

So let me tell you from my experience, and I can only speak from my own experience, is that we had been talking before any meetings that we had, about the pros and the cons, the effectiveness, or not of strong mitigations. So discussions were going on mostly among the medical people about what that would mean. The first and only time that Dr. Birx, I went in and formally made a recommendation to the president to actually have a “shutdown”, in the sense of not really shut down, but to really have strong mitigation. We discussed it. Obviously there would be concerned by some that in fact that might have some negative consequences. Nonetheless, the president listened to the recommendation and went to the mitigation. The next second time that I went with Dr. Birx into the president and said, “15 days are not enough. We need to go 30 days.” Obviously there were people who had a problem with that because of the potential secondary effects. Nonetheless, at that time, the president went with the health recommendations, and we extended it another 30 days. So I can only tell you what I know and what my recommendations were. But clearly as happens all the time, there were interpretations of that response to a hypothetical question that I just thought it would be very nice for me to clarify because I didn’t have the chance to clarify. Thank you. [crosstalk 00:17:50]. Excuse me?

Speaker 6: (17:51)

The date?

Dr. Fauci: (17:52)

You know what, to be honest with you, I don’t even remember what the date was. But I can just tell you the first and only time that I went in and said, “We should do mitigation strongly.” The response was, “Yes, we’ll do it.”

Speaker 6: (18:02)

And what did he do? Was that the travel restrictions?

Dr. Fauci: (18:04)

No. The travel restriction is separate. That was whether or not we wanted to go into a mitigation stage of 15 days of mitigation. The travel was another recommendation when we went in and said, “We probably should be doing that.” And the answer was yes. And then another time was, “We should do it with Europe.” And the answer was yes. And the next time, “We should do it with the UK.” And the answer was yes.

Speaker 6: (18:25)

In this interview, you said there was pushback.

Dr. Fauci: (18:27)

Yeah.

Speaker 6: (18:28)

Where did that pushback come from?

Dr. Fauci: (18:29)

No, it wasn’t. That was the wrong choice of words. You know what it was when people discuss, not necessarily in front of the president, when people discuss, they say, “Well, this is going to have maybe a harmful effect on this, or on that.” So it was a poor choice of words. There wasn’t anybody saying, “No, you shouldn’t do that.”

Speaker 6: (18:45)

Are you doing this voluntarily, or did the president [crosstalk 00:18:47].

Dr. Fauci: (18:45)

No, I’m doing it…. Everything I do is voluntarily. Please. Don’t even imply that.

Speaker 7: (18:53)

So Mr. President, the question is…

Donald Trump: (18:55)

And by the way, the travel ban, that was earlier. Travel ban was done earlier. And if you look at statistics, I happened to write a couple of them down, if you look at statistics… So on January 6th, that’s long before the dates you’re talking about, CDC issued a travel notice for Wuhan, China, a notice before there was even a confirmed case of the virus in the United States. That’s on January 6th. It’s all documented because we have so much fake news, I like to document things.

Donald Trump: (19:29)

January 6th long before the dates we’re talking about. CDC issued travel notice for Wuhan. On January 11th, we have zero cases in the United States. Zero. We don’t have any cases, so there are no cases reported that we know of. This is January 11th. The CDC issued a Level 1 travel notice for health while there were still no confirmed cases. So we had zero cases. People want me to act. I’m supposed to close down the economy, the greatest economy in the history of the world, and we don’t have one case confirmed in the United States. That’s January 11th.

Donald Trump: (20:10)

On January 17th to CDC began implementing public health entry screenings at three major U.S. Airports that received the greatest volume of passengers from Wuhan, at my instructions. There was not a single case of the coronavirus in the United States. So on January 17th, there wasn’t a case. And the fake news is saying, “Oh, he didn’t act fast enough.” Well, you remember what happened, because when I did act, I was criticized by Nancy Pelosi, by sleepy Joe Biden. I was criticized by everybody. In fact, I was called xenophobic. I was asking Biden to please define that for me. I was called other things by Democrats. And some others, not too many others actually, by the media, definitely.

Donald Trump: (20:58)

Now, on January 21st this is long before the time we’re talking, because when Tony’s talking, I believe he’s talking about the end of February. On January 21st, it was still early, there was one case of the virus at that time. We called it the Wuhan virus. Wuhan. There was one case in the whole United States. We had one case. This is all documented. It all comes from you. A lot of it comes from your people.

Donald Trump: (21:27)

On January 21st the CDC activated an emergency operation center. There was just one case, one person. That’s why that ad was such a phony. There was one person in the United States, you see it, there’s only one person, that statement was made at that time. One case in the whole United States, one case. I’m supposed to shut down the government, the biggest economy in the history of the world, shut it down. We have one case. Seven cases were on January 31st. Now in January 21st there was a case, not one person had died. You heard that Steve, right? Not one person.

Donald Trump: (22:08)

So we have this massive country, the United States of America. We have the greatest economy in the world. Bigger than China’s by a lot, right? Because of what we’ve done over the last three and a half years, prior to the virus, but including the virus. So we have the biggest economy, the greatest economy we’ve ever had, the highest employment numbers, the best employment numbers, best unemployment numbers, also, the best of everything. So on January 31st, think of it, not one person has died. Not one. Nobody died. Not one, John, I don’t think you’ll find any.

Donald Trump: (22:46)

This is reported by CDC, confirmed by the news, which doesn’t mean anything to me, because they don’t tell the truth. But CDC reported, January 31st not one person has died. And I issued a travel restriction from China. Think of it. So nobody died. And I issued, you can’t get earlier than that. So we have, nobody died. And I said, “China, you can’t come in. I’m sorry”, because I saw what was going on. Wasn’t so much what I was told, it was that I saw what was going on and I didn’t like it. But I didn’t speak to Tony about, didn’t speak to very many people about it. I didn’t like it. So what did I do?

Donald Trump: (23:28)

Ready? January 31st in the United States, not one person had died because of, again, the Wuhan virus, so I issued travel restrictions on that date, even though nobody died and I got brutalized over it by the press, because I was way too early. I shouldn’t have done it. Brutalized by the press, but I’ve been brutalized for the last four years. I used to do well before I decided to run for politics, but I guess I’m doing okay, because to the best of my knowledge, I’m the president of the United States despite the things that are said.

Donald Trump: (24:06)

So then, first mandatory quarantine in more than 50 years, we did. First mandatory in 50 years. The same restrictions that the Democrats in the media called xenophobic. Now Joe Biden said he’s a racist. Call me a racist, because I said, “We’re shutting down entry from China. We’re shutting it down.” He called me xenophobic and he called me a racist and other things. Since then, on a Friday night, two weeks ago, Joe Biden issued a… It wasn’t him. He didn’t write it. I’m sure he doesn’t even know that it was issued.

Donald Trump: (24:46)

But the people from his campaign who are smart, people that write these little PR releases are pretty smart, reasonably good, not the best, but they’re not bad. But they issued a statement saying that Joe Biden agrees that that President Trump was right to close it down to China. Now he did that. Now he issued it on a Friday night. We’ve all heard about that, John, Friday nights, right?

Donald Trump: (25:07)

In fact, his was later Friday night than I ever released mine on Friday nights. Okay? [Crosstalk 00:25:12] So he did it pretty late, at like at 11 o’clock in the evening or something, it’s pretty late. Anyway, so Joe Biden issued, and it’s one of those things. But in February, Nancy Pelosi said, “We should come to Chinatown.” This is late February. “Come to Chinatown. We think it’s very safe. Come here. Let’s all have the big parade. Chinatown parade.” Probably referring to San Francisco, and that’s it. But I took this action early.

Donald Trump: (25:42)

And so the story in the New York Times was a total fake. It’s a fake newspaper and they write fake stories. And someday, hopefully in five years when I’m not here, those papers are all going out of business, because nobody’s going to want to read them, but now they like them because they wrote about me. Now with that, I have a couple of interesting… We have a few clips that we’re just going to put up. We could turn the lights a little bit lower. I think you’ll find them interesting and then we’ll answer some questions. I’ll ask you some questions, because you’re so guilty, but forget it. But most importantly, we’re going to get back onto the reason we’re here, which is the success we’re having. OK, please. You can put it on. Thank you.

Video Woman: (14:59)

People should be more concerned right now with the flu in this country.

Video Man: (15:01)

Probably, people are concerned about the coronavirus because they’re hearing a lot of news about it right now, but the reality is comparing it to the flu, for example, it’s not even close to being at that stage.

Sean Hannity (Video): (15:10)

What if it is worse? Is this a moment where maybe countries put politics aside, a little bit of pride aside, and do we have US officials? Should US professionals such as yourself get involved?

Video Woman: (15:24)

How worried should Americans be about coronavirus?

Video Man: (15:27)

Coronavirus is not going to cause a major issue in the United States.

Donald Trump: (15:39)

Well, we’ve asked them to accelerate whatever they’re doing in terms of a vaccine.

Donald Trump: (15:43)

We will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days.

Donald Trump: (15:49)

To unleash the full power of the federal government through this effort today, I am officially declaring a national emergency.

Donald Trump: (15:55)

Medicare patients can now visit any doctor by phone or video conference at no additional cost.

Video Man: (16:01)

The first 1 million masks will be available immediate-

Donald Trump: (16:03)

Video Woman: (16:09)

As there were more cases, and it was clear that it was spreading out of China where it originated, the president took this move that he was widely criticized for by Democrats and even some Republicans at the time, which was he halted a number of flights from China into the US. The idea was to halt the spread of the disease, keep transmissions to a minimum. He was accused of xenophobia. He was accused of making a racist move. At the end of the day, it was probably effective because it did actually take a pretty aggressive measure against the spread of the virus.

Andrew Cuomo (Video): (16:55)

His team is on it. They’ve been responsive late at night, early in the morning, and they’ve thus far been doing everything that they can do. And I want to say thank you, and I want to say that I appreciate it.

Gavin Newsom (Video): (17:08)

He returns calls. He reaches out. He’s been proactive. We got that Mercy ship down here in Los Angeles. That was directly because he sent it down here. Two thousand medical units came to the state of California, these FMS, these field medical stations, and that’s been very, very helpful.

Ron DeSantis (Video): (17:28)

The president has been outstanding through all this. The vice president’s been outstanding. Members of the coronavirus task force, very responsive.

Phil Murphy (Video): (17:37)

We had asked if we could have, New Jersey could have, access to a piece of the beds that are on the USNS Comfort, and the president came back, called a short few minutes before I walked in here to say indeed they would grant that to New Jersey. So that’s a big step for us in addition to all the other capacity. That news is literally hot off the press, and I thank the president and vice president who were on the call together.

Arizona Governor (Video): (18:02)

President Trump approved Arizona’s requests for presidential major disaster declaration. I want to thank the president for a quick turnaround. We requested this on a Wednesday, and we had approval by Saturday morning. And we are grateful to the administration for their continued support and responsiveness.

Larry Hogan (Video): (18:25)

Well first of all, I want to thank the president and the vice president for doing a really good job of communicating with all the governors.

Donald Trump: (18:37)

So we could give you hundreds of clips like that from governors, including Democratic, or Democrat as I call them, governors, which is actually the correct term. We could give you hundreds of clips just like that. We have them. We didn’t want this to go on too long, but I just want to say it’s very sad when people write false stories, like in that case, I guess it was gotten mostly from The New York Times, which is a highly… I mean if you had libel laws, they would have been out of business even before they’ll end up going out of business, so it’s too bad. But we could have given you some other statements. We have hundreds of statements, hundreds of statements, including from Democrats and Democrat governors, and if you look, they were all saying, “We need ventilators.”

Donald Trump: (19:27)

You don’t hear ventilators anymore. They have all the ventilators they need, which we were right about. We said, “You’re asking for too many. You don’t need that.” And in all fairness, these two people right here, Dr. Birx, Dr. Fauci, they said, “I don’t think they need that many ventilators.” I said, “I agree.” At one point, and I’m not docking in New York for this, but they were asking, you remember, 40,000 ventilators. And that’s more than they have all over the country, and we got them a lot of ventilators and nobody’s complained. We got them, as you know, beautiful. We built hospital rooms all over the country. The governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, was very nice. He said, “You know what? You don’t have to build the second hospital.” Because good news is happening. They’re not able to fill the beds. They needed two hospitals. We built one. It was perfect. We’re just starting the other.

Donald Trump: (20:20)

I called him up. I said, “Do you think we should build the second one? I don’t think you’re going to need it.” And you said, “Let me get back.” He got back, we didn’t need it. With Governor Cuomo, in all good spirit and faith, he wanted to have the Jacob Javits Center done, and we built 2,900 incredible beds, incredible. Then we made it COVID, or to be exactly accurate, COVID-19, which was a lot of work. We had to change the duct work. We had to seal up certain areas. We had to put areas of rooftop things over the beds. We did a lot of work, and we had it… but they never really had too much use for it. And they called also, Mayor de Blasio, rightfully he called. He said, “Would it be possible to get more medical help?”

Donald Trump: (21:10)

So now not only are we building facilities, they’re asking us to help because they’re unable to man it. And we got him the help. We got Mayor de Blasio a lot of help. Then when the Javits Center wasn’t used much, and then as you know, the Mercy, we took the Mercy and we took the Comfort. And we made them both Los Angeles and New York. We made them a COVID adaptable, which was not easy to do. And we didn’t get almost any people sent there. They didn’t need them at the beginning because they didn’t need it for anything but this because there were fewer accidents, fewer motorcycles, fewer everything. And what we did was an incredible job, but they didn’t need them. It turned out they were there, we were ready. You know the expression, they have an expression, “Ready, willing, and able.” We were ready, willing, and able. What the Army Corps of Engineers did was a miracle. What FEMA did was a miracle. What the doctors did, so I got a call two days ago from the mayor of New York. He said, “Could you help us even more with medical personnel?” And we sent, I think it was 448 doctors, nurses, and respiratory experts, real experts, and I got a call from the mayor and he said, “I want to tell you, incredible. These people are incredible.” He said, “They lifted the spirits of the hospital workers from New York City like nothing I’ve ever seen.” It was unbelievable, what he said was really appreciated, and I let them know that. I let the military people… He said, “They went in there so brave, so incredible. They lifted the spirits of everybody.” We did all of this work, but when you read the phony stories nobody acknowledges this.

Donald Trump: (22:51)

And it doesn’t have to be acknowledged from my standpoint, but it does have to be acknowledged from the great work that these doctors and nurses, the Army Corps of Engineers team, all these people, they’ve done this incredible job. And they shouldn’t be abused because you take a look at what’s happened, nobody’s asking for ventilators except outside of our country. Outside of our country, they’re calling me. Every country, they’re calling me. So many countries, and I’m going to try and help them because we have thousands of ventilators being built. But nobody’s asking for ventilators. Nobody’s asking for beds because we built hospitals. I think we built 20,000 beds in a period of a couple of weeks. The job they’ve done is incredible. With all of that being said, I’m getting along very well with the governors, and if I wasn’t… Mike Pence had a call today with the governors and it was like a 10.

Donald Trump: (23:42)

I said, “How was it?” He said, “It’s a 10.” He used one of my expressions actually, but he said it was a 10. And I’m sure you people were probably on the call, although you weren’t supposed to be, but you were sitting in somebody’s office listening to it because every time we have these… And you would know that for weeks those calls have been very good, but there wasn’t a raised voice. There wasn’t even a statement of, “We think you should do this or that.” I heard it was just a perfect phone call. It might not be reported that way. They’ll say, “I thought that somebody maybe slightly raised…” Didn’t even raise their voice. My only point of saying this because I want to get back to why we’re here, the press has not treated these incredible people who’ve done such a great job, they haven’t treated unfairly.

Donald Trump: (24:27)

They’re way off. We were way ahead of schedule, and remember this because The Times [inaudible 00:24:32] was a fake, but everything… Remember this, everything we did, I was criticized because I was too early. If I waited longer, you would have been critical. If I went way early, if I went three months earlier, I would have been criticized for being way too early. So with all of that being said, we understand it. I think I’ve educated a lot of people as to the press, and I would love to be able to say that we have a very honest press. Honestly, John, there’d be nothing I would be more proud of if the press would work, and I don’t mind being criticized. But not when they’re wrong. Not when people have done a great job. Yes?

Speaker 17: (25:14)

Let me talk to you about the video, so I’ve never seen a video like that played in this room. It looks a bit like a campaign ad. Who produced that video for you?

Donald Trump: (25:23)

That was done by a group in the office, and it was done just by… we just put some clips together. I’ll bet you I have over a hundred more clips even better than them. They were just pieced together over the last two hours. That was just… Oh, we have far better than that. That’s nothing compared to some of them.

Speaker 17: (25:39)

This was produced here in the White House by-

Donald Trump: (25:40)

Yeah, this was done by Dan and a group of people, and they just put it together in a period of probably less than two hours.

Speaker 17: (25:46)

Why’d you feel a need to do that?

Donald Trump: (25:48)

Because we’re getting fake news, and I like to have it corrected. They’re saying what a great job we’re doing, these are the governors of California, governor of New Jersey, governor of New York. Look in New York, we work very close with Andrew. In New York, ventilators were going to be a problem. They didn’t have a problem. We got them tremendous numbers of… thousands, but we got them tremendous number of ventilators. You don’t hear ventilators are a problem. Beds were going to be a problem. I mean, I’m happy about it. The Javits Center, which is incredible, is almost empty because they don’t need them. That’s good news, not bad news. I’m not saying, “Gee, I wish more people were there.” I don’t want more people there. We brought in the boat. We brought in the Comfort, and the Comfort was originally not supposed to be for this at all, the coronavirus, was not supposed to be for that at all.

Donald Trump: (26:36)

They called, they said, “Could we have it?” That was a number of weeks ago. We said, “We don’t think you need it, but if you need it, we’ll do it.” Then they said, “Could you get the medical personnel to run the Javits Center? Could you get the medical personnel to run the ship?” We said, “If it’s necessary, we will, and we did.” There were military personnel. That’s the ones that Mayor de Blasio was so great to in terms of his statements. I mean, I really appreciated his statements. He was so impressed with them, and I am too. The level of genius and bravery, they’re great people, the military people, and we pieced that together. I would say it took less than two hours. It was done in-house. Steve?

Speaker 17: (27:14)

But just to be clear, this was produced by government employees, by people here at the White House, this campaign-style video here?

Donald Trump: (27:20)

I wouldn’t use the word produced. All they did was took some clips, and they just ran them for you. And the reason they did is to keep you honest. Now, I don’t think that’s going to work. It’s not going to have any impact, but just think of it. You heard the clips, you heard what I said. They said I acted late on closing down the country. Some people wish we never closed it down. Now if we didn’t, we would have lost hundreds of thousands of people interestingly, so I’m against it. We did the right thing. Everything we did was right. If we would have closed down-

Speaker 17: (27:48)

There’s going to be dangerous [inaudible 00:27:49] along the way here. You think everything you did was right?

Donald Trump: (27:51)

Well look, governors should have had ventilators. They chose not to have them. We were able to get them ventilators. You haven’t heard other than there was a lot of panic, a lot of screaming, “We want ventilators.” They got the ventilators. You don’t have that anymore, and the surge is supposed to be coming now. And if they do need ventilators, John, we’ve got almost 10,000 that are ready to rock. We have people standing with those ventilators right now. If you needed 2000 in New York, which you don’t, but if you did, we can have them here in less than 24 hours. We’re ready to rock. [crosstalk 00:28:24] This was a great military and beyond that operation. Let’s get back to the regular. Well shouldn’t we get back to the regular?

Donald Trump: (28:31)

We can talk about this, but all I’m doing is this, I could have given you… Those are four or five clips that we just played for you, I could have given you hundreds of people. Gavin was on television two days ago with one of your competitors singing praise. The question was asked in a negative way. He said, “Look, I know what you want me to say, but he’s been really good. It’s hard for me to say that. In fact, it’s impossible for me to say.”

Donald Trump: (29:02)

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California. I have many clips. I have some clips from Anthony that I didn’t want to put up, which were really good. I think Anthony would be the first one to say when I closed the country to China, the China ban, whatever you want to call it, Anthony said I saved a lot of lives by doing that. I mean, am I correct? I don’t want to put words in Anthony’s mouth, by the way, and I like him. Today I walk in, I hear I’m going to fire him. I’m not firing him. I think he’s a wonderful guy. [crosstalk 00:00:29:32]. I retweeted somebody, I don’t know. They said fire, doesn’t matter.

Speaker 17: (29:41)

Did you notice that when you retweeted it?

Donald Trump: (29:41)

Yeah, I notice everything.

Speaker 18: (29:44)

So you retweeted it even though it said time to fire Fauci?

Donald Trump: (29:46)

Well, no, that’s somebody’s opinion. All that is is a opinion.

Speaker 18: (29:49)

But you read it, and you elevated it.

Donald Trump: (29:50)

Well, I was called about that. I said, “I’m not firing.” In fact, if you ask your friends in the public relations office, I was immediately called upon that, and I said, “No, I like him. I think he’s terrific.” Because this was a person’s view. Not everybody’s happy with Anthony. Not everybody’s happy with everybody, but I will tell you, we have done a job the likes of which nobody has ever done. The mobilization, getting of equipment, all of the things we’ve done, nobody’s ever done a job like this. We have 50 governors and territories, by the way, people don’t ever mention that. We have territories. We have 50 governors and territories, and many of those governors are Democrats. And they can’t find anything to complain about, and honestly, many of them didn’t do their jobs. I’ll let you know someday. Let’s see what happens, but I may let you know who’s not doing their job.

Donald Trump: (30:41)

I can tell you the ones that are good, both Republican and Democrat, and the ones who don’t know what they’re doing. But we help some of the ones that don’t know what they’re doing. They should have had their own stockpiles, and now if they want, we can build them stockpiles of ventilators. The hardest thing is the ventilator because it’s expensive. It takes a while to get. We got them and nobody believed we did. Now, many of the governors were asking for far too many, and we said they were asking for far too many. We talked and we said, you said very strongly that they just don’t need that, but you said they don’t need that many beds, Deborah. So that’s it. Go ahead.

Speaker 19: (31:18)

[inaudible 00:31:18] you and Dr. Fauci are on the same page?

Donald Trump: (31:21)

Yeah, we have been from the beginning. I don’t know what it is exactly, but if I put somebody’s opinion up, I don’t mind controversy. I think controversy is a good thing, not a bad thing, but I want it to be honest controversy. Now, when I got a call, I got a call not very quickly, and nobody saw that as being any big deal. They said, “How are you doing with Dr. Fauci?” I said, “I’m doing great,” and I didn’t talk to Dr. Fauci even until we just got here. Dr. Fauci asked one of the people if he could get up and speak, and he did. [crosstalk 00:31:53] And they totally misinterpreted him. I saw what they did.

Speaker 18: (31:56)

Can I ask you, he said the question was hypothetical, but what he was just acknowledging is that lives would have been saved if the mitigation practices were put into place earlier.

Speaker 18: (32:03)

That seems obvious. Do you not agree with that?

Donald Trump: (32:06)

Here’s the thing. Now what he really is saying though, but how could you have done it? Look, I just went over stats with you, right? Here, right here. How do you close it up? You have no deaths and no cases, on January 11th. Doctor, would you recommend closing the United States of America? Oh, this must be terrible. How many cases do we have? None. How many deaths do we have? None. January 17th, go back another week. On January 17th, this is 10 days before I did the, little bit less than 10 days, before I did the ban. I did a ban on China. You think that was easy? I then did a ban on Europe and a lot of people said that was an incredible thing to do because you look at Spain, and by the way, we’re doing very well because when you look at all of those flat graphs and you add it all up, the United States is very low.

Donald Trump: (32:54)

And per capita we’re very low. We’re doing very well. But how do you close up the United States of America? So on January 6th, no deaths. On January 11th, no deaths, and no cases. On January 17th, no cases, no cases, no deaths. I’m supposed to close up the United States of America when I have no cases.

Speaker 21: (33:16)

You didn’t close down until the middle of March. Should you have closed it down earlier? [crosstalk 00:33:19].

Donald Trump: (33:19)

I closed down from China. Excuse me, I closed it down from China. And by the way, some people think I should have waited longer and maybe ridden it out. I disagree with them, okay? But it was thought of. I mean, that was an alternative. You know, there are a lot of people that would’ve said, “Let’s ride it out.” Now, I’ll give you the good news. If I would have done that, it would have been, I think, catastrophic, because their numbers are, Anthony, 1.6 to 2.2 million people would have died if we tried to do that. And I did this last time, cut it in half.

Donald Trump: (33:54)

Don’t say 2.2 million. Cut it in more than half, say a million people died. Well, that’s much more than the Civil War. Cut it in half. Take the million and cut it in half. That’s 500,000 people would have died. Now that number we would’ve reached, okay? That would have been easy to reach if we did nothing. So we did the right thing and our timing was very good. But here’s the one thing, and you have to say this. When you asked me, “Why didn’t you do this?” How come when I did the ban on China, and instituted some very tough things, how come Nancy Pelosi, a month later, is in Chinatown saying, “Let’s all march. This is not going to happen.” How come we have many of the experts from CNN and many other networks, if you call CNN a network, I don’t personally, but we have CNN, we have many other places, and they’re all saying he doesn’t need to do it. He doesn’t need to do it.

Donald Trump: (34:50)

All I’m saying is this, how do you close down the greatest economy in the history of the world, when on January 17th, you have no cases and no death. When on January 21st, you have one case and no death. One case, think of that. Now we’re supposed to close down the country? But here’s what happened. When on January 31st, I instituted the ban, Joe Biden went crazy. He said, “You don’t need the ban.” He didn’t go crazy. He didn’t even know what the hell the ban was, so he didn’t go crazy. But he did say, [crosstalk 00:35:24] he did call me xenophobic, wait a minute, he called me xenophobic. He called me a racist because… He has since apologized and he said I did the right thing.

Donald Trump: (35:34)

So when you say, why didn’t you do this? Every Democrat thought I made a mistake when I did it. I saved tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives [crosstalk 00:35:43] by him.

Speaker 22: (35:44)

What did you do with that time that you bought? The argument is that you bought yourself some time. You didn’t use it to prepare hospitals. You didn’t use it to ramp up testing. Right now, nearly 20 million people are unemployed.

Donald Trump: (35:50)

You’re so disgraceful. It’s so disgraceful the way you say that. Let me just, listen. I just went over it.

Speaker 22: (35:57)

Tens of thousands of Americans are dead. How is this [crosstalk 00:35:57] or this rant supposed to make people feel confident in an unprecedented crisis?

Donald Trump: (35:59)

I just went over it. Nobody thought we should do it, and when I did it-

Speaker 22: (36:06)

But what did you do with the time that you bought? The month of February. That video has a gap, the entire month of February.

Donald Trump: (36:10)

You know what we did? What do you do when you have no case in the whole United States?

Speaker 22: (36:15)

You had cases in February.

Donald Trump: (36:18)

Excuse me. You reported it. Zero cases, zero deaths on January 17th-

Speaker 22: (36:23)

January, February, the entire month of February.

Donald Trump: (36:25)

I said in January.

Speaker 22: (36:25)

That video has a complete gap.

Donald Trump: (36:27)

On January 30th-

Speaker 22: (36:28)

What did your administration do in February for the time that your travel ban bought you?

Donald Trump: (36:33)

A lot.

Speaker 22: (36:33)

What?

Donald Trump: (36:33)

A lot, and in fact, we’ll give you a list. What we did, in fact, part of it was up there.

Speaker 22: (36:37)

It wasn’t. Your video had a gap.

Donald Trump: (36:37)

We did a lot. Look, look, you know you’re a fake. You know that. Your whole network, the way you cover it is fake, and most of you, and not all of you, but the people are wise to you. That’s why you have a lower approval rating than you’ve ever had before times probably three.

Speaker 22: (36:53)

20 million people are unemployed. Tens of thousands are dead.

Donald Trump: (36:54)

And when you asked me that question, let me ask you this, why did Biden apologize? Why did he write a letter of apology?

Speaker 22: (37:03)

I don’t think anyone in this room cares about why Joe Biden didn’t apologize to you.

Donald Trump: (37:03)

No, that’s very important. Why did the Democrats think that I acted too quickly? You know why? Because they really thought that I acted too quickly. We have done a great job [crosstalk 00:05:12]. Now I could have, I could have kept it open and I could have done what some countries are doing. They’re getting beat up pretty badly. I could have kept it open. I thought of keeping it open because nobody’s ever heard of closing down a country, let alone the United States of America. But if I would’ve done that, we would’ve had hundreds of thousands of people that would right now be dead. We’ve done this right, and we really have done this right. The problem is the press doesn’t cover it the way it should be. Go ahead. One more question, Steve. Go ahead.

Speaker 23: (37:47)

There’s a debate over what authority you have to order the country reopened. What authority do you have?

Donald Trump: (37:53)

Well, I have the ultimate authority, but we’re going to get into that in a minute. We’re going to just finish this up. We’re going to tell you about other things that we’ve done right, but I will say this, had we said, “Let’s just keep going and let’s not do a closing,” whether it’s 2.2 that they at one point predicted as an outside, or 1.6 at a lower number, you cut it all the way down to six or seven or 800,000, take just a fraction of the number that could have happened, it literally would have been more than the Civil War. It would have been a disaster. So the minimal number was 100,000, and I think, I feel pretty good that we’re going to be substantially below, Anthony, the hundred thousand, and I hope we will.

Donald Trump: (38:33)

All right, so today the Department of Health and Human Services announcing five new contracts to procure large numbers of additional ventilators under the Defense Production Act, which we used a lot by the way, which you didn’t like to talk about, in addition to the 1,300 we received today. We received today 1,300 additional ventilators.

Donald Trump: (38:55)

Now we’re probably not going to need them, but we can add that to our stockpile, which is very big and we can move it around should the surge take place and should it be a very substantial surge. We’re ready to rock. The contracts are with General Electric, Hill-Rom, Medtronic, Resmed, and VIAIR combined with the DPA contracts that we announced last week with General Motors and Phillips, and two other contracts with Hamilton and Zole, we’re adding 6,190 ventilators to the strategic national stockpile of which we have a lot already, thousands, close to 10,000, but this will be added by May 8th, another 29,000 by the end of May, and more than 120,000 total we will have by the end of the year. Now we’re going to help other countries. We’re going to help states if they need it. We may help some state stockpile.

Donald Trump: (39:49)

You know, they’re supposed to buy their own stockpile. They have state stockpiles. They’re supposed to be using that and unfortunately most of the states weren’t there, and a lot of people didn’t want to talk about it, but they weren’t there. We will talk about it the right time if you want to. I, at this point, I’m more focused on getting past this nightmare of a epidemic or a pandemic, anything you want to call it. We got to get past it. No one who has needed a ventilator has not gotten a ventilator. Think of that. You know, you heard all about ventilators, ventilators, we need ventilators, because they didn’t have them, because the states should’ve had them. No one who has needed a ventilator has not gotten a ventilator. No one who has needed a hospital bed has been denied a hospital bed. That’s not even really our responsibility.

Donald Trump: (40:34)

Now if we can help, we’re going to do it, but that’s where the Army Corps of Engineers did such a great job. We built over 20,000 beds. In fact, we built thousands more than we’ve actually needed to be safe. We wanted to be safe, and they rose to this incredible occasion. I mean, we built more beds than we thought. We thought in Louisiana, we were going heavy. And again, when I called the Governor, I said, “Maybe we shouldn’t build that second hospital because we don’t want to build it if you don’t need it.” He called back, he said, “I don’t think we’re going to need it.” They had a thousand rooms, a thousand beds, and they used a lot of them, but they didn’t need the other ones, so we stopped it because we don’t want to waste. But we’re prepared to build thousands more, should we need it. I don’t think we’re going to need it because it looks like we’re plateauing and maybe even in many cases coming down.

Donald Trump: (41:21)

In addition, we’ve ordered a total of 16 mobile decontamination systems. So the decontamination is system from Battelle, Ohio, is an incredible thing because it takes the masks and up to 20 times you can decontaminate a mask. And I’ve been asking from the beginning, “Why can’t we sterilize and sanitize these masks?” And it turned out we can, and there was a great company in Ohio. They sent us some great equipment and they’re doing that now, and now we’re going to have more than 33 million N95 masks per week will be cleaned, decontaminated, and it’ll be great. It’s something that frankly, I think people should have thought of a long time ago.

Donald Trump: (42:07)

Five more flights landed today as part of the Project Air Bridge, our massive airless lift operation to bring personal protective equipment into the United States, which has now delivered nearly half a million N95 masks, 370 million gloves, 25 million surgical masks and 4.9 million gowns. So we have millions of gowns, gloves, masks, all surgical equipment coming in should the states need it. Now the states are supposed to be buying their own stuff, but should they need it, we are ready to give them because we’re building up our stockpile again like crazy.

Donald Trump: (42:44)

Remember, and you saw the stories, I inherited this administration, Mike, myself, the whole administration. We inherited a stockpile where the cupboards were bare. There was nothing, and I say it and I’ll say it again, just like we didn’t have ammunition, we didn’t have medical supplies, we didn’t have ventilators, we didn’t have a lot of things that should have been had, and you can read your own stories on that because you know what happened. They didn’t want to spend the money, but we did. To date, we’ve facilitated the supply of more than 38 million N95 masks nationwide. This week we’ll be sending two million N95 masks to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Vice President will go into more detail. He’s got great detail on that and I think it’s a pretty amazing story. We have a lot of masks already in stock and we have more coming.

Donald Trump: (43:35)

We’re further expanding hospital surge capacity in key areas of the opening, and we have a portion of certain VA hospitals and non-veteran coronavirus patients including at the East Orange New Jersey Medical Center as well as facilities in Manhattan and Brooklyn. They’re ready, they’re able, they’re beautiful. Hopefully we won’t need too many of them because frankly we built everything that the governors wanted and in many cases it’s too much. We told them it was too much, but we wanted to err on the side of caution.

Donald Trump: (44:06)

The United States has now conducted nearly 3 million tests for the virus, 3 million, the most of any nation. We’re performing approximately 115,000 tests every single day, and our rate of testing is especially high in areas hardest hit by the virus. If you look, and it’s hit some areas of the virus, very, very hard. For example, per capita testing in New York is higher than the rest of the world. The NIH, CDC and FDA are also currently validating several antibody tests that will allow us to determine whether someone has already had the virus and potentially become immune to infection. We’re looking at that. The antibody tests are going to be very interesting over the next short while. A lot of things are being developed as we speak.

Donald Trump: (44:54)

In the race to develop effective treatments, the drug company Gilead announced that its drug Remdesivir has shown promising results, very promising in compassionate use settings. In addition, the FDA has just granted Emergency Use Authorization for a device that removes certain proteins from the bloodstream, possibly preventing a patient’s immune system from overreacting to the virus and damaging vital organs, which is a big problem.

Donald Trump: (45:23)

Furthermore, over the last seven days, my administration has deployed roughly 28 million doses of hydroxychloroquine from our national stockpile. We have millions of doses that we bought and many people are using it all over the country. And just recently a friend of mine told me he got better because of the use of that drug. So, who knows? And you combine it with Z-Pak, you combine it with zinc depending on your doctor’s recommendation, and he’s having some very good results. I’ll tell you, I think of anybody recommended it other than me, it would be used all over the place, to be honest with you. I think the fact that I recommended it, I probably set it back a lot. But it’s a lot of good things are happening with it, a lot of good tests.

Donald Trump: (46:07)

Scientists are also pursuing a blood therapy known as a convalescent plasma, convalescent plasma. This therapy uses antibodies from the blood of recovered patients to treat those who are sick, and this is something that actually is a very old procedure, but it’s done in a very modern way. During this difficult time, we’re also working to ensure that the 2020 census is completed safely and accuracy. We may be asking for an extension because obviously they can’t be doing very much right now. They wouldn’t even be allowed to do it. So the census, we’re going to be asking for a delay, a major delay, I think. How can you possibly be knocking on doors for a long period of time now? The Census Bureau recently made the decision to temporary suspend its field operation data collection activities to help stop the spread. In addition, while millions of Americans continue to complete their questionnaire online, the Census Bureau has asked Congress for a 120 extension.

Donald Trump: (47:07)

I don’t know that you even have to ask them. This is called an act of God. This is called a situation that has to be, they have to give, and I think 120 days isn’t nearly enough. My administration’s also taking bold action to help American workers. On Friday, Americans began receiving the cash payments authorized by a historic $2 trillion relief bill. By the end of the week, nearly 80 million Americans will receive a total of $147 billion and from what the Secretary of the Treasury tells me, that’s very much on time and going very nicely. He’ll be speaking in a moment. In payments, these payments go directly into the banks and the bank accounts of these people. Millions of additional payments will follow. The typical family of four will receive $3,400, that’s for a family of four. That’s something. Additionally through our paycheck protection program, which is a tremendous success, and they should extend it and increase-

Donald Trump: (48:03)

… tremendous success, and they should extend it and increase it. This has been a tremendous success. So successful that the banks should take it a little bit longer to distribute the money, but it’s going rapidly.

Donald Trump: (48:12)

We’ve now processed over $200 billion in loans to help small businesses retain their workers. Now we urgently need lawmakers to set aside the partisan agendas and to replenish this program with new funds, because it’s really something that has been an incredible success and they need more money to keep it going, to take care of these business and keep them open.

Donald Trump: (48:35)

I want to thank the many governors, health professionals, scientists, and business leaders for their incredible hard work and input over the past month. And even long beyond a month, Mike, I would say. We’ve been working together with a lot of them for it seems like forever.

Donald Trump: (48:50)

I’ve been having many discussions with my team and top experts. We’re very close to completing a plan to open our country, hopefully even ahead of schedule. That’s so important. We will soon finalize new and very important guidelines to give governors the information they need to start safely opening their states. My administration’s plan and corresponding guidelines will give the American people the confidence they need to begin returning to normal life. That’s what we want. We want to have our country open, we want to return to normal life. Our country’s going to be open. It’s going to be successfully opened. We’ll be explaining over a very short number of days exactly what is going to be.

Donald Trump: (49:35)

We’ve also, as you probably heard, developed a committee. We’re actually calling in a number of committees with the most prominent people in the country, the most successful people in the various fields. We’ll be announcing them tomorrow.

Donald Trump: (49:49)

This weekend, the United States also helped facilitate an unprecedented agreement among the 23 nations of OPEC-Plus. That’s OPEC plus additional energy producing nations, representing many of the world’s largest oil producing countries to stabilize all markets. We have, in fact, and I think you’ve seen, a big stabilization over the last couple of days. Together, countries around the world will cut oil production by approximately 20 million barrels. People are saying 10 million, but we think that the number that they’ll actually hit is going to be closer to 20 million barrels a day. That will help a lot with saving jobs all over Texas, and Oklahoma, and North Dakota, and many other of our big energy states.

Donald Trump: (50:33)

This historic action will help nearly 11 million American workers who are supported by the US oil and gas industry. It’s a very monumental agreement. I want to thank Saudi Arabia and the king of Saudi Arabia, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, both. I want to thank President Putin of Russia. And I want to thank a very good friend of mine, man who’s become a friend of mine, the president of Mexico showed great flexibility. President Lopez Obrador. He showed great flexibility and tremendous intelligence doing what he did. It was not that easy for him, and I want to thank Mexico and the president. This is a very historic deal, very historic, so we’ll see how it all goes.

Donald Trump: (51:18)

In this time and challenge, and we are certainly in a time probably like we haven’t been in many, many decades, we are strengthened and sustained by the bonds of love and loyalty that unite all Americans. I’m so proud of the American people. Everywhere you look, you see the patriotism of our people shining through, and the courage of our doctors and nurses on the front lines, and the dedication of our food supply workers, and in the commitment of every citizen to achieving victory over the virus. That’s what’s going to happen. It’s going to happen sooner than people think.

Donald Trump: (51:54)

We’re going to be smart about it. Very, very smart about it. We’re going to be safe about it. We’re going to be listening also to the great doctors and medical professionals. Together, we’re beating back the invisible enemy, and we’re paving the way for great resurgence. It’s really a great resurgence, the American prosperity. Our country wants to go back. They want to go back to work. They’re going to go back safely. That’s what we want.

Donald Trump: (52:18)

I’d like now to ask Vice President Pence to say a few words, followed by Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx. I think before we do this, because I know there’s an emergency where they want Steve to come. So what I’ll do is I’ll ask Steve to come up, secretary of the treasury. You can talk a little bit, and then maybe take a couple of questions about what’s happening. Tell them the success we’re having. Thank you very much.

Steven Mnuchin: (52:45)

Thank you, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President. As you announced, we are very pleased that we are ahead of schedule on delivering the economic impact payments. These were what was known as the checks in the mail that we want to deliver in direct deposit. This is ahead of schedule. We started processing those last Friday. We expect that over 80 million hardworking Americans will get the direct deposit by this Wednesday. We know how important that is to all of those hardworking Americans, many of which are at home, not working at the moment.

Steven Mnuchin: (53:20)

If you do not receive them by Wednesday, on Wednesday, we will be launching at irs.gov, click on irs.gov, go to “Get your payment.” If you filed a tax return in 2018 or ’19, have that information available. You’ll be able to ID yourself. You’ll be able to put in your direct deposit information, and within several days, we will automatically deposit the money into your account. We want to do as much of this electronically as we can. It’s very important in this day and age. It’s more secure, and you don’t have to go to the bank.

Steven Mnuchin: (53:56)

If you are a social security beneficiary, you do not need to do anything. You will get a direct deposit. If you have not filed and did not need to file a 2018 and ’19 return, you can go to irs.gov now, and enter your information and authenticate yourself. Again, we are very pleased that that is ahead of schedule.

Steven Mnuchin: (54:18)

I’d also like to announce the progress we’re making on the new SBA program, the PPP. Let me just remind everybody, this is a brand new program that is now one week old. We have distributed and confirmed 230 billion of loans to over 4,600 lenders participating. That is multiples and multiples of anything that the SBA has ever done in one year before. I especially want to thank the broad-based community banks that are participating. Again, over 4,600 banks. If you haven’t had your loan processed, you will get it processed this week. As the president said, we’ve gone back to Congress and asked them for more money to make sure that every business has access to this.

Steven Mnuchin: (55:08)

Let me also comment for the states. We are distributing out half the money this week to the states. That’s a week ahead of time. We’ll deliver the other half of the money to the states next week.

Steven Mnuchin: (55:19)

Then let me just finally comment, we’ve been working very closely with the Federal Reserve. Last week, we announced expanded facilities and new facilities that total $2.3 trillion of liquidity. In particular, I’d just like to highlight a main street lending facility that will be for companies between one worker and 10,000 people, so mid-size businesses. Also, a municipal facility for states and local governments to be able to access funds, given the shortages that they have. With that, I’m happy to answer any questions.

Donald Trump: (55:54)

Do you have any questions for Steve, press?

Speaker 24: (55:55)

Secretary Mnuchin. Thank you, sir. Both Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Schumer have said that they’re in negotiations with you right now on additional funding for these small business loans, that package. Leader McConnell though has said that nothing should be added to the package. They should just be specific to small business loans. What is the opinion of your administration? Should there be some sort of horsetrading here, or should it just be small business loans?

Steven Mnuchin: (56:24)

The president’s view, and the vice president’s, and my view is this was a bipartisan program. This SBA program, it wasn’t a Republican program, it wasn’t a Democrat program. It was a bipartisan program. We’ve committed to small businesses. We should top up that program now. I know the Democrats want to talk about more money for hospitals and states. Right now we’re just sending the money out to the hospitals and states. They haven’t come close to using that money.

Steven Mnuchin: (56:50)

I know the president and vice president have said, once we get the SBA done, we can go into a another funding bill. The president’s talked about potentially adding infrastructure and other things. We think there is a likelihood we will need more money. We will sit down and try to get a bipartisan bill. But this is important we deliver on small businesses. 50% of the people work for small businesses.

Speaker 24: (57:13)

Thank you, sir.

Speaker 25: (57:14)

What’s the emergency that the president said you had to go for? The president said you had an emergency-

Donald Trump: (57:20)

Negotiation.

Speaker 25: (57:21)

Over this bill?

Steven Mnuchin: (57:22)

Yeah. Well, because we don’t want to run out of money. We’ve used about 220 billion of the 350 billion. We don’t want to run out of that money. We don’t want to create panics that people won’t get it. That’s why we want to top that up, and we’ve asked for another 250 billion for that program.

Steven Mnuchin: (57:40)

Again, let me just remind you, every dollar we spend in this program, we save a dollar of unemployment insurance. Even though we’re asking for 250 billion, it really won’t cost that much.

Speaker 25: (57:52)

Could I follow up?

Speaker 26: (57:52)

Do you have concerns about lifting the guidelines too soon? I mean, what’s the economic impact? I understand the economic argument for getting people back to work, obviously. But what’s the economic risk of lifting them too early and seeing a spike in cases again?

Steven Mnuchin: (58:07)

Well, of course there’s economic risks in both directions. We reviewed with the president today a very broad list of over a hundred business people that are going to help advise the president on what needs to be done to reopen the economy. We want to make sure, and again, the combination of economic impact payments, small business payments, enhanced unemployment insurance. The president made very clear, we want to make sure that hardworking Americans have liquidity while we wait to reopen the government.

Speaker 27: (58:37)

Do you believe the country, excuse me, should be reopened on May 1?

Steven Mnuchin: (58:41)

I’ve had discussions with the president. I know he’s considering it. I believe he’s going to make a decision later in the week.

Donald Trump: (58:47)

Everything has to be safe. We want safe.

Speaker 27: (58:48)

What is your advice to the president?

Steven Mnuchin: (58:50)

My advice is as soon as it’s ready to open, and based upon the medical professionals… Again, we’re working very closely with the president and outside business leaders to develop a plan.

Speaker 28: (59:00)

[crosstalk 00:59:00] ask you, Mr. President. If you could sketch for us what reopening the economy looks like, do you think it’s going to be everything open or do you think-

Donald Trump: (59:09)

Well, I’ll be doing that over the next few days, because we’ll probably be making a statement about that and exactly what it looks like. I know what that looks like, but I also want to get the advice, in a sense. We have some of the biggest from every business on this council. We’re actually setting up a number of different councils or committees, I guess you could call them. We have a lot of smart people. I think that they will give us some also good advice. But no, we want to be very, very safe. At the same time, we’ve got to get our country open.

Speaker 29: (59:41)

Mr. President.

Speaker 28: (59:41)

I don’t understand though, Mr. President. Do you think there is a possibility then that what you do is you open it incrementally? Do you think people would go back to restaurants, concert, the cinema-

Donald Trump: (59:49)

I do think so. Eventually, they will. Yeah. We hope so.

Speaker 28: (59:52)

Let me ask one final-

Donald Trump: (59:53)

I think eventually they will do that. I think we’re going to boom. I think it’s going to go quickly. Our people want to get back to work, and I think there’s a pent up demand like there hasn’t been in a long time.

Speaker 28: (01:00:05)

[crosstalk 01:00:05].

Steven Mnuchin: (01:00:05)

One other-

Donald Trump: (01:00:06)

That’s why you see the stock market… I mean, to think that the stock market’s at the level it is right now with all that this world and this country has gone… And look at the European Union, how badly decimated they’ve been. Look at other countries. Look at China, by the way. I’ve seen the numbers. Look at China. Look at how these countries have been just decimated by this. And to think that the stock market is at this tremendously high number. Not that much… It was looking a little bleak for a while, but it hit a certain point and then started going up. I think that’s a great tribute to the fact that there’s a demand. Yeah.

Speaker 24: (01:00:39)

Mr. President, thank you, sir. In regards to some of your tweets earlier today, and I think it was Steve’s question, my question to you is what provision in the Constitution gives the president the power to open or close state economies? And then-

Donald Trump: (01:00:54)

Numerous provisions. We’ll give you a legal brief if you want.

Speaker 24: (01:00:58)

We’ll be looking forward to that, sir. But following up, what happens if you say, for instance, we want states to reopen, but California or New York do not open, what would you do then?

Donald Trump: (01:01:08)

Well, I think everybody wants to open. I mean, I guess-

Speaker 24: (01:01:09)

[crosstalk 01:01:10].

Speaker 28: (01:01:11)

Sorry, could I just ask one other thing on the-

Donald Trump: (01:01:12)

I guess that could happen, but I don’t think that would happen.

Speaker 29: (01:01:13)

Mr. President [crosstalk 01:01:14].

Speaker 30: (01:01:13)

The states that have closed, ordered schools closed, it’s been states that have ordered businesses like restaurants and bars and place-

Donald Trump: (01:01:21)

That’s because I let that happen, because I would’ve preferred that. I let that happen. But if I wanted to, I could have closed it up. But I let that happen. I like the way they’ve done it.

Donald Trump: (01:01:29)

The seven that remained, really, in sort of a semi-lockdown, if you look at those states, they’ve really done a very good job. They’re very much different from a New York or from other places where they’ve been hit very hard. Go ahead, please.

Speaker 31: (01:01:39)

So you’re prepared then to [crosstalk 01:01:40] states and say, “I order you to open your schools. I order you to force kids to be able to go.”?

Donald Trump: (01:01:44)

Go ahead, please.

Speaker 32: (01:01:45)

Yeah. Yes, Mr. President. Following up on that, there are two consortiums of states today, California, Oregon, Washington on the West Coast, Northeastern states, totally representing about a hundred million people, who said they’re going to cooperate and decide when to reopen those states.

Donald Trump: (01:02:00)

Well they can decide, but-

Speaker 32: (01:02:01)

Does that undermine what you’re trying to do?

Donald Trump: (01:02:03)

No, not at all. Let me just tell you very simple. I’m going to put it very simply. The president of the United States has the authority to do what the president has the authority to do, which is very powerful. The president of the United States calls the shots. If we weren’t here for the states, you would have had a problem in this country like you’ve never seen before. We were here to back them up, and we’ve more than backed them up. We did a job that nobody ever thought was possible. It’s a decision for the president of the United States.

Donald Trump: (01:02:31)

Now, with that being said, we’re going to work with the states, because it’s very important. You have local governments. They’re pinpointed. It’s really, you talk about… It’s like a microchip. They’re pinpointed. We have local government that hopefully will do a good job. If they don’t do a good job, I’d step in so fast. But no, they can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States.

Speaker 33: (01:14:21)

So if some States refused to reopen and you ordered them to, the 10th amendment of the constitution says all powers that don’t reside in the president of the Congress reside in the states, how do you overcome that?

Donald Trump: (01:14:30)

Well if some states refuse to open, I would like to see that person run for election. They’re going to open. They’re going to all open.

Speaker 33: (01:14:37)

[crosstalk 01:14:37] the ballot box, I think that –

Donald Trump: (01:14:38)

That’s something that’s not going to happen. They want to open. They have to open. They have to get open. Every one of those states, the people want to go and they want to … Now, some will be, are in a different situation. You have, I won’t name states now, but I will over the next two or three days. I’m going to be very specific, but you have some states where this is not the kind of a problem than it is in New York or Louisiana or Michigan or other places that got hit very hard. Illinois got hit very hard, but all states want to open and they want to open as soon as possible, but they want to open safely and so do I. Yeah please.

Speaker 34: (01:15:15)

Thank you, Mr. President. Today, the French president, Emmanuel Macron , said that he will keep the shutdown down in France till the middle of May. Does that mean that the US will keep the ban of flights from New York?

Donald Trump: (01:15:26)

No, France got hit very hard. France got hit very hard and again, he has to do what he has to do. He’s a friend of mine, but France, Spain has just been decimated. You look at what’s happened in Italy, it’s a very well known fact what happened in Italy. No, they were hit very hard.

Speaker 35: (01:15:43)

Question for secretary Mnuchin. Has everybody that you would like to have, the 100 business people on the economic council, have they all been invited already? Have they all agreed to [crosstalk 01:15:51]?

Steven Mnuchin: (01:15:52)

They haven’t been invited yet. We just reviewed the names with the President today [crosstalk 01:15:55].

Speaker 35: (01:15:56)

And are they from all sectors? Energy-

Steven Mnuchin: (01:15:57)

Yes. Basically there’s vertical, so every single area of the economy, we want it to be represented.

Speaker 35: (01:16:03)

Great. One other thing. Is there anything else needs to be done to work on industry, oil industry jobs to save oil industry jobs after the deal this past weekend?

Steven Mnuchin: (01:16:12)

Well, I think there’s always things. So we’re working with Larry Kudlow. We have-

Speaker 35: (01:16:15)

Anything specifically that needs to be done?

Steven Mnuchin: (01:16:16)

We have economic plans for every single part of the economy. Obviously in the case of the oil industry, they’ve been hit especially hard because you’ve had both the supply issue and you’ve had the demand issue.

Speaker 28: (01:16:30)

Have you figured out the bail-out money for the airlines, the allocations for the airlines?

Steven Mnuchin: (01:16:33)

So I’m pleased to say we’ve worked very hard. I think as you probably have seen, we put out a press release that we have now had discussions with almost all the airlines. I’ve personally had discussions with all the major airline CEOs. We specifically created an exception for small airlines that we could process very quickly and I think you’ll see, very quickly, decisions coming out. I’m very pleased with the discussion we’ve had.

Donald Trump: (01:16:59)

We’ve had very good [inaudible 00:13: 00].

Speaker 36: (01:17:01)

Mr. Secretary?

Steven Mnuchin: (01:17:02)

Yes.

Speaker 36: (01:17:02)

Do you still see a need for a Phase Four stimulus or is it just [crosstalk 01:17:04]-

Donald Trump: (01:17:04)

Steve I just want to say we have had discussion-

Speaker 36: (01:17:06)

[crosstalk 01:17:06] with that?

Donald Trump: (01:17:06)

Excuse me one second. We’ve had very good discussions with the airlines. Very good discussions.

Speaker 28: (01:17:12)

Is it possible to reopen the economy on May the 1st?

Donald Trump: (01:17:15)

I don’t want to say that. You’ll be hearing over the next few days.

Speaker 36: (01:17:18)

[crosstalk 01:17:18] do you still see a need for a Phase Four this push in lieu of another stimulus?

Steven Mnuchin: (01:17:25)

Okay. So again, let me just comment. Congress, on a bipartisan basis, approved an unprecedented amount of money to help American workers and American business because it was no fault of their own that business was closed down. We have been very diligently executing on that. Everybody said it was going to take months to get people money. We are executing very quickly. We created a whole new SBA program in a week. Our job right now is to execute the 2.3 billion, which we can add several trillion dollars with the Fed.

Steven Mnuchin: (01:17:59)

The one area we are particularly concerned about is the small business program. Quite frankly, it’s even more incredibly popular and successful than we anticipated. So the President wants to be very clear. We have money for that and once we get done with that, we will review with the President. If there is more money that needs to be to support this economy, to support hardworking Americans, we will work with Congress to get that in time.

Donald Trump: (01:18:22)

And Steve, do you want to talk about Phase Four?

Steven Mnuchin: (01:18:25)

So Phase Four, the President has talked about infrastructure for a long period of time. We’ve talked about to the extent that the hospitals need more money because of the medical issues, we’ll monitor that. We want to make sure there are incentives for restaurants, entertainment, people to get back to those types of things. So we’ll be looking at very specifically provisions to stimulate parts of the economy. Some of them may be money issues, some of them may be regulatory issues.

Speaker 37: (01:18:55)

[crosstalk 01:18:55] just to clarify your understanding of your authority vis a vis governors. Just to be very specific. For instance, if a governor issued a stay at home order-

Donald Trump: (01:19:06)

When you say my authority, the president’s authority, not mine, because it’s not me. This is when somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total and that’s the way it’s got to be.

Speaker 37: (01:19:17)

It’s total. Your authority is total?

Donald Trump: (01:19:19)

It’s total. It’s total-

Speaker 37: (01:19:19)

What part of the [crosstalk 01:19:19].

Donald Trump: (01:19:20)

And the governors know that.

Speaker 37: (01:19:21)

So if a governor-

Donald Trump: (01:19:22)

The governors know that. Now you have a couple of bands of-

Speaker 37: (01:19:24)

[crosstalk 00:15:24]-

Donald Trump: (01:19:24)

Excuse me, excuse me.

Speaker 37: (01:19:25)

Could you rescind that order?

Donald Trump: (01:19:26)

You have a couple of bands of Democrat governors, but they will agree to it. They will agree it.

Speaker 37: (01:19:34)

What does the authority cover?

Donald Trump: (01:19:35)

The authority of the President of the United States having to do with the subject we’re talking about is total. [crosstalk 01:19:41]. Yeah please go ahead.

Speaker 30: (01:19:43)

One of the things you spoke we saw in your video about was the travel ban from Europe. As part of reopening America, do you want to reopen the borders so that people from Europe, from the UK-

Donald Trump: (01:19:56)

At the right time.

Speaker 30: (01:19:57)

How soon [crosstalk 01:19:57]-

Donald Trump: (01:19:58)

A very good question actually. Well, I would have to take a look. I wouldn’t say Italy’s doing great right now and I wouldn’t say Spain’s doing great right now and we just heard that France is extending its stay inside order. They’ve extended it. I just see that and I think for short period of time, but no. When they’re back, we want to do it very quickly, but we want to make sure everything’s good. No, right now we have a very strong ban. We’re going to keep it that way until they heal.

Speaker 30: (01:20:24)

Weeks, months? What would you-

Donald Trump: (01:20:26)

Well, I can’t tell you that. I have to see. How are they doing? France just went for another two weeks. We have to see. John.

John: (01:20:32)

So Dr. Fauci said that you took his advice on the question of mitigation. He made the recommendation, you accepted and you put it into place. As you make this next decision which you have said-

Donald Trump: (01:20:41)

Well, I’m not sure who … John, I’m not sure who really gave me advice on the ban. I think I took my own advice on the ban. I don’t know.

John: (01:20:50)

Not the ban [crosstalk 01:20:50] the social distancing, I’m talking about, the shutting down, not of travel, but of activity. So my question is, as you make this next decision, which you have said maybe the most difficult or important decision of your presidency, will you assure the American people that you will again take the advice of the doctors of Dr. Fauci, of Dr. Birx? Will you take the advice of the health experts before you do that?

Donald Trump: (01:21:13)

I will and many other people also, but I will absolutely take their advice. Please go ahead.

John: (01:21:18)

Would you go against their recommendation if they say you need another 15 or 30 days-

Donald Trump: (01:21:20)

I don’t think it would be likely because I think we’re not very far from being on the same page. Please.

Speaker 38: (01:21:26)

Yes, Mr. President. One thing that Governor Cuomo said today is that states do not have the capacity to do mass COVID-19 testing ahead of a reopening [crosstalk 01:21:36]-

Donald Trump: (01:21:36)

Well, they have to do it. [crosstalk 01:21:37] supposed to be [crosstalk 01:21:38].

Speaker 38: (01:21:38)

They can’t purchase the diagnostic tests or equipment and needs federal help. So will the states get that?

Donald Trump: (01:21:42)

They may need help but-

Speaker 39: (01:21:43)

Will they get it?

Donald Trump: (01:21:43)

But they’re there. They’re on ground. They’ve got local mayors, local representatives. They have people that do it-

Speaker 38: (01:21:50)

But needs the supplies.

Donald Trump: (01:21:50)

And what we did last time is unprecedented. We literally rebuild tests. We rebuilt a whole industry because we inherited nothing. What we inherited from the previous administration was totally broken, which somebody should eventually say. Not only were the cupboards bare as I say, but we inherited broken testing. Now we have great testing. I just left the top executives at Abbott. Who would have thought that would have happened where they have such a great test as that?

Donald Trump: (01:22:18)

And in fact what I’ll do, I think unless you have any further questions for the Secretary of Treasury, do you have anybody for Steve? Anybody? Is that for the secretary of the treasury or for me? Because if it’s for me, we can wait.

Speaker 27: (01:22:28)

It’s for the secretary [crosstalk 01:22:28].

Donald Trump: (01:22:29)

We have to get him back to work okay?

Speaker 27: (01:22:30)

Yes sir. For Secretary Mnuchin, I have a question from one of my colleagues who’s not able to be in the room. They’re curious about the SBA rule that prevents small casinos from getting some of this relief. Is that something that you’re taking a look at? Is there going to be a change [crosstalk 01:22:48]?

Steven Mnuchin: (01:22:48)

Not small casinos, but there are such things as small taverns and restaurants that have literally small gaming things, and we are coming out with some additional guidance on that. But I want to be clear, it’s not small casinos.

Speaker 27: (01:23:02)

Thanks sir.

Speaker 39: (01:23:03)

Secretary Mnuchin?

Speaker 40: (01:23:04)

Secretary?

Steven Mnuchin: (01:23:04)

Yes.

Speaker 40: (01:23:05)

There was a letter that some house Republicans sent this weekend about the liquidity for mortgage service owners.

Steven Mnuchin: (01:23:11)

Yes.

Speaker 40: (01:23:11)

Can you explain what you’re looking at in that front?

Steven Mnuchin: (01:23:14)

Sure. So I think I commented on this a week or so ago. We had a sub committee task force at FSOC that specifically studied this issue. We have all the appropriate people on it. Ginnie Mae has automatically taken some action. We’ve had conversations with the FHFA as to what they’re going to do for Fannie and Freddie. And we’ve said that to the extent they need certain authorities from the treasury, we will accommodate that. So we’re very aware of the issue. Quite frankly, we’ve been studying this issue way before COVID and had concerns about some of these non-bank servicers not being well-capitalized, but we’re going to make sure that the market functions properly.

Speaker 27: (01:23:54)

Thank you sir. We have seen in a number of these relief bills that Democrats and Republicans have been able to push forward different non coronavirus specific funding priorities. Are you trying to keep funding specific to coronavirus and then if there are going to be other additions, for instance a change to labor rules is something that many on the left wanted. Some on the right are wondering if they should also, if you should also be pushing for their preferred add-ons.

Steven Mnuchin: (01:24:24)

I think our expectation has always been this is COVID related. Some people have a rather broad view of what COVID related is because it has impacted almost every single business. I think we’ve, the President has talked about the Kennedy Center, which is a good institution. Obviously that was not the major priority of the bill, but they were hit with COVID related. So, but no, the President instructed we want to be very specific in the next bill, it’s COVID related items.

Donald Trump: (01:24:52)

[crosstalk 01:24:52] it’s been reported with the Kennedy Center just so you understand and that was done … The Democrats wanted it and we didn’t want that, but they wanted it in and we had to agree in order to get something done for the workers. But we want this to be for the workers and for companies that employ the workers. That’s what we’re looking for. We’re not looking for extraneous nonsense.

Speaker 27: (01:25:11)

You argued that at the time of that the China man was being discussed, that was too disruptive to the global economy. Was that accurate?

Steven Mnuchin: (01:25:18)

Let me be clear. I had nothing to do with the China ban. I wasn’t on the task force at the time. I’m not even sure I was … I think I was traveling at the time, but I never had any … I was not part of … I did become very active in after the China ban, but that report in the New York Times was not accurate. I was not part of the task force at that time and I was not involved. Matter of fact, I think I may have been traveling.

Speaker 32: (01:25:41)

A proposal by Senator Hawley to get direct payments to employers to pay people who’ve been laid off and to keep people on payroll. Does administration support that proposal?

Steven Mnuchin: (01:25:57)

Again, that is the PPP. The PPP is basically sending money to small business, 50% of American workers, to keep those people paid and it’s the most efficient way. Every dollar, as I said, we do through that, it’s one less dollar of unemployment and more importantly, we want those people to be associated with the business so as soon as the President is ready to open up the economy, those businesses are together. We don’t want those businesses to fall apart. That’s why this is such a successful program [crosstalk 00:22:26]-

Donald Trump: (01:26:26)

But are you talking about the unemployment or you’re the unemployment?

Speaker 32: (01:26:28)

[crosstalk 01:26:29]-

Donald Trump: (01:26:30)

Sending it indirectly to the states. We would have preferred that it was sent directly to the people. The Democrats wanted it to be sent through the unemployment system. And I’ve talked to you about it, we have 40-year-old equipment in many of those systems that run by the state, but I’m hearing to getting the money out anyway.

Steven Mnuchin: (01:26:47)

So some of them are and some of the states aren’t, and we encourage … We’re working with the states to try to update their computers, but it’s a long haul. [crosstalk 01:26:55] thank you. Thank you Mr. President.

Donald Trump: (01:26:58)

Phase Four Steve. Phase Four. Come on Steve.

Speaker 29: (01:27:01)

A quick question on something you just said. You said when someone is President of the United States, their authority is total. That is not true. Who told you that?

Donald Trump: (01:27:10)

You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to write up papers on this. It’s not going to be necessary because the governors need us one way or the other, because ultimately, it comes with the federal government. That being said, we’re getting along very well with the governors and I feel very certain that there won’t be a problem. Yeah please, go ahead.

Speaker 29: (01:27:28)

Has any governor agreed that you have the authority to decide when their states [crosstalk 01:27:32]?

Donald Trump: (01:27:32)

I haven’t asked anybody because-

Speaker 29: (01:27:34)

That no one is [crosstalk 01:27:34]-

Donald Trump: (01:27:36)

You know why? Because I don’t have to. Go ahead please.

Speaker 29: (01:27:36)

But who told you the president has the total authority?

Donald Trump: (01:27:36)

Enough. Please.

Speaker 41: (01:27:40)

You mentioned the Vice President’s call with the governor’s today. Governor Hogan of Maryland has urged your administration to ask Congress for 500 billion to help stabilize budgetary shortfalls created by coronavirus.

Donald Trump: (01:27:52)

It’s nice to have Governor Hogan very much. We appreciate Governor Hogan’s statement.

Speaker 41: (01:27:56)

Governor Cuomo said the CARES Act ignored state government [crosstalk 01:27:59] shortfalls. Do you [inaudible 01:28:01] that request and [crosstalk 01:28:02]-

Donald Trump: (01:28:01)

Which one? Where is it?

Speaker 41: (01:28:03)

He said the CARES Act ignored the budgetary shortfalls.

Donald Trump: (01:28:08)

Well, they’re looking at things in Phase Four where they talk about states and they’re also talking about hospitals. They’re talking about States who have been battered and they’re also talking about hospitals and we’re certainly willing to look at that.

Speaker 41: (01:28:21)

Will you urge Congress on their behalf?

Donald Trump: (01:28:22)

We’ll see what we all come back with but they are talking about states and they’re talking about hospitals. [inaudible 00:24:29].

Speaker 42: (01:28:29)

Thank you Mr. President. Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, has on Thursday signed an executive order banning the sale of non-essential goods. If other states follow her-

Donald Trump: (01:28:39)

The sale of what?

Speaker 42: (01:28:40)

Non essential goods. She has banned the sale of non essential goods. Many are calling this draconian, unconstitutional. As president, do you think that if other states were to follow her example in the coming weeks that the federal government should intervene?

Donald Trump: (01:28:56)

Well I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think it’s very extreme, but she’s doing it and I think it’s going to be over a long way before we have to start thinking about it too much. It is strong. It’s a very strong position to take, but they’re making a lot of progress in Michigan, so let’s see how it all works out.

Speaker 28: (01:29:12)

What is the status of the funding for the World Health Organization?

Donald Trump: (01:29:15)

We’re going to be talking about that very soon. I’m getting a full report. I’m not happy with the World Health Organization. Not happy with the World Trade Organization either. We’ve been ripped off by everybody. We have, this country, for so many years, has been ripped off by everybody, whether it’s the World Health or World Trade. They’re like, I call them, the Bobbsey Twins. They look at our country, for years and years, we had people that did nothing about it. We’re doing a lot about it. So we’ll have a report and we’ll also, we’re also talking about the World Trade Organization, but we’ve made a lot of progress there. We’re now winning cases for the first time because they know I’ll leave if we don’t get treated fairly.

Donald Trump: (01:29:52)

This country, our country, was at a point where we’ve rarely, if ever, won the lawsuits within the World Trade Organization, but now we’re winning a lot of them because they know I’m not playing games. We will pull out if we have to. We just won a $7 billion lawsuit, which was very nice.

Speaker 28: (01:30:11)

Do you expect a decision this week on cutting funding for the WHO?

Donald Trump: (01:30:14)

Yeah. I would say by the end of the week, I’m going to make a decision, yeah. Right now there’s a lot of things happening. Go ahead.

Speaker 36: (01:30:21)

From China, why are there no consequences for China for the misinformation that they shared-

Donald Trump: (01:30:27)

How do you know that there are no consequences?

Speaker 36: (01:30:28)

Well, you’ve been asked and it appears that they’re weren’t-

Donald Trump: (01:30:28)

How do you know that there are no consequences?

Speaker 36: (01:30:29)

What are the consequences Mr. President of the misinformation-

Donald Trump: (01:30:30)

I wouldn’t tell you. China will find out. Why would I tell you?

Speaker 36: (01:30:34)

But people are concerned that they stone-walled [crosstalk 01:30:35]-

Donald Trump: (01:30:35)

No, you started off by saying why are there no consequences?

Speaker 36: (01:30:39)

But you’ve been asked this a few times, [inaudible 01:30:39]. Why are there no consequences for China?

Donald Trump: (01:30:41)

How do you know that there are no consequences?

Speaker 36: (01:30:43)

Because we’ve asked you and said-

Donald Trump: (01:30:44)

You’re going to find out.

Speaker 36: (01:30:45)

You’ve said [crosstalk 01:30:45].

Donald Trump: (01:30:45)

I wouldn’t tell you. You’d probably be the last person on earth I’d tell.

Speaker 36: (01:30:48)

So you’re saying there was no consequences?

Donald Trump: (01:30:49)

Go ahead. Yeah, please.

Speaker 37: (01:30:51)

Mr. President, actually this is a question for Mr. Vice President. Do you agree with the President’s statement and his understanding of federalism that his power is total in a way that he described it? Is there anything you’d like to add or any context you’d like to add to the way he was discussing that?

Mike Pence: (01:31:07)

I support the president’s leadership under the national emergency declaration that he signed. We’re standing before you today, the first time in American history, when all 50 States have issued emergency declarations and the territories. This is an unprecedented time in the life of the nation. Unfortunately, as the President’s reflected and our health experts will continue to reflect, because the American people have heeded the President’s coronavirus guidelines for America, because state governors have taken those and implemented them even in States where there was not a significant outbreak, and implemented additional measures as we provided them with data about cases and best practices, we’re making real progress as a country. But make no mistake-

Speaker 37: (01:32:00)

[crosstalk 01:32:00] more circumscribed than total.

Mike Pence: (01:32:03)

Well, make no mistake about it. In the long history of this country, the authority of the President of the United States during national emergencies is unquestionably plenary. You can look back through times of war and other national emergencies. And as the president said, we’ll happily brief that. But in the days ahead, what the president’s charged us to do is to work with our health experts. We’re going to bring together an extraordinary group of American business leaders to council the president. And then working with the CDC, we’re going to produce new guidelines based upon the data for every state and territory in this nation. We’re going to give them guidance and as the president’s indicated, we’ll continue to respect the leadership and partnership that we’ve forged with every governor in America, but this is an unprecedented time.

Mike Pence: (01:32:58)

But I have to tell you, when you look at the fact, despite the heartbreaking loss of more than 22000 Americans, when you look at the fact of what the health experts told us this could be, I think I only can feel a sense of gratitude to the American people, gratitude to the extraordinary team that has counseled this President, the steps of President Trump has taken, the policies that governors have implemented all across America. We were discussing today at the task force that when you look at the European Union as a whole, they have nearly three times the mortality rate that the United States of America has today, and that is a tribute to our extraordinary healthcare workers, their dedication, their tireless work. But it’s also a tribute to the fact that the American people put into practice the mitigation efforts that the President counseled the nation to do on the advice of our best scientists now more than a month ago. And our hospitals were not overwhelmed and are not overwhelmed at this hour.

Mike Pence: (01:34:09)

And I have to tell you, standing here today, I couldn’t be more proud to stand alongside this president and to be a part of this team that has served the American people during this challenging hour. And I’ll just say to you, to every American looking on, as we see the numbers leveling and maybe even beginning to go down, I just encourage you to keep doing what you’re doing. Because of the sacrifices that Americans and American families have made through these mitigation efforts, you’re saving lives and you’re seeing our nation through this time.

Speaker 43: (01:34:46)

Sir, did the States tell you, you’ve been talking to the governors quite a bit. Did those coalitions of states on the West coast and in the Northeast, did they tell you what they were going to be announcing before they announced it?

Mike Pence: (01:34:59)

Governor Phil Murphy and the Governor of Connecticut expressed today that they were going to be speaking on and discussing on a regional basis what their recommendations would be. And we assured them today-

Speaker 43: (01:35:11)

[crosstalk 01:35:11] house about that though sir?

Mike Pence: (01:35:11)

We assured them today on our conference call with I think 48 governors that were with us today for the better part of an hour and a half, we told them that what the president would be producing is directed to be produced are additional guidelines for the states, certified by the CDC, that would inform those governors and local communities and mayors about the best way forward based on the unique circumstances that those states and those communities are facing.

Mike Pence: (01:35:43)

I think what’s clear is the American people have seen the experience in Washington State, where this really all began for us, and in California, and now the extraordinary challenges in the greater New York City area, including New Jersey and Connecticut, the challenges in New Orleans and Louisiana and Detroit, still Chicago-

Mike Pence: (01:36:02)

… New Orleans and Louisiana and Detroit, still Chicago, parts of Houston, but they’re also seeing that in each one of those cases that the mitigation efforts are truly working. So we’ll work with those States, and in some cases it’ll make perfect sense for them to work together on a regional basis.

Speaker 44: (01:36:20)

But you know ahead of time what they were planning?

Donald Trump: (01:36:22)

[inaudible 01:36:24].

Mike Pence: (01:36:24)

The president will be …

Donald Trump: (01:36:26)

You don’t know that yourself.

Mike Pence: (01:36:26)

I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your question.

Speaker 44: (01:36:28)

Can you tell us? Did they let you know?

Donald Trump: (01:36:29)

[inaudible 01:36:31].

Mike Pence: (01:36:29)

I didn’t hear what you said. I’m sorry.

Donald Trump: (01:36:30)

We would like to have their cooperation, and we are going to have that cooperation. They will cooperate perfectly. Watch.

Mike Pence: (01:36:42)

Let me just affirm what the president said. We heard it again today in what I think was our ninth conference call with governors is I think every American would be proud to see the partnership that this president has forged with governors across the country. It is an extraordinary statement, and you’ll see some data when Adam Polowczyk gets up in just a few moments, but the flow of resources from around the world that we’ve moved into areas that have faced challenges … I mean, this president has directed us to ensure that every state has what they need, when they need it. The spirit that I heard again from republicans and democrat governors today was reflective of that partnership, and as we move forward to the president’s goal of reopening America, we expect the same kind of partnership in the interest of the nation.

Donald Trump: (01:37:31)

All right, go ahead.

Speaker 45: (01:37:34)

Sir, if you can hear me through the mask.

Donald Trump: (01:37:37)

Barely. I hear you well.

Speaker 45: (01:37:39)

The District of Columbia argues that they were short changed in the most recent funding bill, because they were treated as a territory instead of as a state. Will that be made right in phase four?

Donald Trump: (01:37:52)

Well, we’re looking at that certainly. I heard that complaint, but the mayor seems to be very happy with everything we’ve done, and she was on today saying very good things. Okay, yeah. Go ahead in the back.

Speaker 46: (01:38:03)

Mr. President, you talked about this being the most difficult decision that you’re going to have to take about whether to reopen the economy. I wonder how much it weighs on your mind the thought that if there is a second wave, you’ve reopened the economy and you might have to shut things down again.

Donald Trump: (01:38:20)

It does, and I hope that won’t happen. I certainly hope that won’t happen, but it does weigh on my mind. Okay, in the back. Go ahead. Go ahead, yes.

Speaker 44: (01:38:26)

Mr. President?

Donald Trump: (01:38:29)

Go ahead.

Speaker 47: (01:38:33)

Thank you. A question for one of my colleagues who wasn’t able to be here. China deployed an aircraft carrier to the South China Sea this weekend amid claims by Chinese state media that COVID has reduced U.S. military readiness in the region. What kind of responses are you thinking of? Will you have a response to this action?

Donald Trump: (01:38:57)

China has their own difficulties. We have a relationship with China that we’re not happy with certain things that happened over the last period of time, as you know, and I’ve been very explicit on that, but we know all about that and know China is … We’ve seen what they did. We’ve seen many other things that they’ve done both pro and constitution, and we’ll be just fine.

Speaker 48: (01:39:24)

At the [crosstalk 01:39:25] earlier where you said that you’re putting together the economic task force and that you thought that the recommendations were happening earlier than expected, did you mean to suggest that it could be before May 1st that you start recommending?

Donald Trump: (01:39:36)

I don’t want to say that, but we’re going to be putting our guidelines and recommendations fairly quickly in a few days.

Speaker 48: (01:39:43)

You’re not rolling out that it would be before?

Donald Trump: (01:39:44)

I’m not going to say it, but look. Certain states are doing very well. Certain big parts of the country are doing very well. They’re doing really very well, so we’re going to be putting out recommendations and guidelines very soon. Stay with us.

Steve: (01:39:55)

What would your guidelines be? Would they fit each area, or would they be a uniform set of guidelines?

Donald Trump: (01:40:00)

See, I don’t want to tell you now, but right now we have a very strong indication that we know pretty much we have some good ideas. I also want to have … We’ll have video conference or at least a conference call with a lot of very good people having to do with certain fields, whether it’s energy or whether it’s entertainment and restaurants, et cetera, et cetera. We have to get people back into restaurants. We have to do what we have to do, whether it’s deductability or not. We’ll see, but it should be deductability. You’ll get them back so fast. I mean, they used to have deductability. The restaurant business, it was one of the hot businesses, and then they ended it a long time ago, many years ago, but we may need that to get people back into the restaurants.

Speaker 49: (01:40:43)

Yep. Michelle Obama today got behind mail-in voting nationwide as a possible solutio