Citation From the March 5, 2020, edition of Fox News' Democracy 2020: Town Hall with President Trump

KATHERINE PUGH: Mr. President, at the outset of the coronavirus, your administration's response seemed to some as being confusing or minimizing. What plans are being considered on a federal level for the possibility of a long-term disruption from the novel coronavirus?

DONALD TRUMP: Well actually, we are giving, I think really given tremendous marks. You look at Gallup poll, you look at other polls for the way we have really handled it and one of the things I did is I closed down the borders to China and to other areas that are very badly affected and really having a lot of troubles. I mean, countries and areas of countries that have had a lot of problems and I closed them down very early against the advice of almost everybody, and we've been given rave reviews.

And that's why we have only -- right now -- it's a lot of people, but it's still 11 people versus tremendous numbers of thousands of people that have died all over the world. We have 11.

We have 149 cases as of this moment, this morning it was 129, and I just see right now it's about 149 cases, there are 100,000 cases all over the world. So, we are really given tremendous marks for having made the decision, it was a decision I made, to close down the border so that people from China, where we take in thousands and thousands of people a day, they stopped coming in very early, weeks ahead of where they normally would've been stopped.

BRET BAIER (HOST): Mr. President, you -- you've said you want to take politics out of dealing with this crisis, but in the White House yesterday, you said that, about the testing kits and the delay, you blamed President Obama.

TRUMP: Well, I don't blame anybody, I want to get everybody to understand they made some decisions which were not good decisions. We inherited decisions that they made and that's fine --

BAIER: As far as regulations?

TRUMP: We undid -- yes, we undid some of the regulations that were made that made it very difficult, but I'm not blaming anybody. It just seems that the Democrats -- some of them, I must say, and you know it better than anybody, Bret, it's become much better, but some of the Democrats have said no matter what -- if we found a cure and everybody is better tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock, they would say, "He's done a terrible job." It's just automatic.

How is the president doing? Oh, terrible, terrible. They don't mean it, and we've done a great job. Again, we've gotten the highest poll numbers of anybody for this kind of a thing. And it's -- and the other thing, I'm working with phenomenal people with CDC and all of the people involved. Mike Pence is doing a fantastic job. I mean, Mike Pence is working 20 hours a day or more on this and really doing a fantastic job.

BAIER: I guess the critics say that why wait until the testing issue became a crisis before dealing with it? If you want to change regulations, why not change them change them either when you took office or when you first learned of the virus in January? For example, South Korea really got their act together right away. That's what they say.

TRUMP: Well, you know, when you say take office, we just learned about this a very short while ago.

BAIER: Sure, but -- or when you learned about the virus --

TRUMP: I know, but we're not going to be -- thinking about a lot of other things too, like trade and millions of other things. I mean, we are doing some job with the economy, you know, so I'm not thinking about this. But as soon as I heard that China had a problem, I said, "What's going on with China? How many people are coming in?" Nobody but me asked that question. And you know better than -- again, you know, you both know that I closed the borders very early and were given A+s for this --

BAIER: And you were given applause for that --

TRUMP: Saved a lot of lives --

BAIER: But I'm just talking about the testing -- the testing kits.

TRUMP: Well, the testing, we did it as soon as we found out that it was a problem, we did it. It's not the kind of a thing, you say, “Gee, I just got elected, let's do some testing on this." They had some bad decisions, some bad decisions were made. We corrected those decisions.

MARTHA MACCALLUM (HOST): So, obviously you care a lot about the economy and we are seeing some impacts. It's kind of surprising how many conferences are being shut down and meetings are being canceled and flights, a lot of flights have being canceled, even the James Bond movie they are delaying because of coronavirus. I'm wondering what you think is the long term, you know, over the course of the year -- Wall Street says that they don't expect U.S. companies to have any growth in 2020, which is pretty surprising. What's the impact on the economy and also potentially on your reelection?

TRUMP: Well, I think people are viewing us as having done a very good job, what we have to do is do a very professional job. Nobody is blaming us for the virus. Nobody. I mean, I haven't heard that even from some of the so-called enemies, or whatever you want to call them, they're not blaming us. This started in China. How it started is questioned, but thousands of thousands of cases in China, and it infiltrated up to almost 100 countries right now.

MACCALLUM: But I'm not talking about the handling of it --

TRUMP: Nobody's blaming me.

MACCALLUM: Excuse me, I don't mean to interrupt, but I'm just asking about, you know, in terms of things you can't control, right? The impact on the economy, and that potentially, you know, that could, if people feel like the economy is turning around, that that could be an election issue as you go into it.

TRUMP: Well, look, we were set to hit 30,000 on the Dow, this is a number that nobody ever even came close to and already we have the number and even though it's down 10 or 11%, it's still the highest it's ever been by far. It certainly might have an impact.

At the same time, I have to say people are now staying in the United States, spending their money in the U.S. and I like that. You know, I have been after that for a long time. You know that. I have been saying stay in the U.S., spend your money here, and they are doing that. They are sort of enforced doing that. We met with the airline companies yesterday. They are doing a fantastic job and they're just not flying to areas that have a big problem. So, it's going to all work out. Everybody has to be calm, it's all going to work out.

BAIER: But to Katherine's original question, there is a long-term plan if it lasts longer than you think?

TRUMP: Sure, we could have a very long-term plan. We hope that doesn't happen, but we have plans for every single possibility, and I think that's what we have to do. We hope it doesn't last too long.