We built the most advanced and robust testing anywhere in the world, and we’ve done more testing than any country anywhere in the world.

President Donald J. Trump

PROVIDING TESTING RESOURCES: President Donald J. Trump is working tirelessly to ensure that every State, territory, and tribe has the resources they need to meet their testing goals.

The Administration is sending $11 billion to help States, territories, and tribes meet the testing goals set out by their Governors and tribal leaders.

The Federal Government will be sending approximately 12 million swabs to States over the course of May to supplement private sector resources.

President Donald J. Trump is also working to ensure manufacturers are producing enough testing supplies – such as reagents and extraction kits – to support our robust testing system.

The Administration has partnered with leading retail companies as well as local independent pharmacies to increase access to testing for Americans in more communities.

By the end of this week, more than 300 retail testing sites will be operational to serve Americans in 47 states and D.C., prioritizing access in underserved communities.

LEADING THE WORLD IN TESTING: As a result of President Trump’s leadership, the United States has become the world’s leader in coronavirus testing.

President Trump revolutionized our testing system and, in partnership with Governors, scaled up testing across the country to unprecedented levels.

More than 9 million tests have now been completed in the United States – by far the most in the world – and this number will soon surpass 10 million.

Last week, as many as 314,000 Americans were tested a day.

The United States is testing more than every country on Earth, including South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Italy.

In May, every single State will be able to test more people per capita than South Korea has tested per capita in four months since the outbreak began.

DEVELOPING NEW TESTS: President Trump has led an unprecedented effort to quickly develop more innovative, high-quality, and reliable tests.

The Trump Administration is leveraging the power of the private sector to accelerate research and development of innovative diagnostic tests.

Already, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted 92 emergency use authorizations for coronavirus tests – more authorizations than for H1N1, Avian flu, MERS, Ebola, Enterovirus, and Zika combined.

The FDA’s quick authorization of tests created by companies such as Roche, LabCorp, Abbott Labs, and many others have greatly increased America’s testing speed and capacity.

These efforts have allowed Americans to receive testing results in as little as five minutes, or collect a sample for a test within the comfort of their own homes.

New antibody tests, antigen tests, point-of-care nucleic acid testing, and genomic sequencing technologies are under development, which will enhance our coronavirus monitoring efforts.

Remarks

Remarks by President Trump on Protecting America’s Seniors

Healthcare

Issued on: May 1, 2020

East Room

April 30, 2020

4:25 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, thank you very much.  Please.

This afternoon, I’ll sign a proclamation declaring the month of May to be Older Americans Month.  I don’t know if I’m in that category.  I have a feeling I am.  But I feel good.  And our country is making a lot of progress, Alex — I want to tell you that.  Making a lot of progress.

As we honor the incredible contributions of our nation’s seniors, we are here today to discuss the unprecedented steps we that we’re taking to protect them from the virus.  I’ll also announce vital new actions to safeguard our nursing homes and most vulnerable citizens as we gradually and safely reopen our country.  And it’s very exciting to see what’s happening.

We’re joined today by Secretary Alex Azar.  Thank you.  Secretary Robert Wilkie.  Robert, thank you very much.  Administrator Seema Verma.  Thank you.  Great job.  FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor and Chief of the National Guard Bureau General Joseph Lengyel.  Thanks also to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, my friend.  Thank you very much, Bill.  Great job you’re doing.  It’s great being with you, too.  And many outstanding advocates for America’s seniors who are here with us today.  Thank you all very much.

As we tragically have seen, the virus poses the greatest risk to older Americans.  Together, as one nation, we mourn for every precious life that has been lost.  And there have been many.  There have been many.  We’re so saddened by it.

Through aggressive actions and the devotion of our doctors and nurses, however, we have held our fatality rate far below hard-hit other countries such as Spain and Italy and United Kingdom and Sweden.  We’re way below other countries.

We’re deploying every tool, resource, and power at our disposal to protect our seniors and Americans of every age and background.

Early on, we implemented lifesaving travel restrictions and directed billions of dollars toward the development of therapies and vaccines.  And that’s moving along rapidly.  We’ve moved at a speed that people are absolutely stunned to see.  We accelerated treatments including remdesivir, which is reportedly showing encouraging preliminary results.  That was the very big story yesterday.  It was announced by Gilead.

In early March, my administration advised all nursing homes to suspend all medically unnecessary visits to help slow the spread and protect our seniors, and especially in our nursing homes.  They are — they’re having a hard time in those nursing homes.  We took action to step up enforcement of infectious disease standards at nursing homes all across America.

We also acted swiftly to secure our veterans’ healthcare facilities and deployed hundreds of VA staff to help out in nursing homes nationwide.  And we’re being helped very greatly by the passage of all the things that we got passed, Robert, especially Choice, so that people can go and see their doctor when they have to and especially our seniors.

We provided nearly one billion dollars in grants to support home-delivered meals, in-home care, and other services that make it impossible [possible] for older people to just do what they want to do.  We’re helping older people with disabilities, and we’re helping them to live independently.

We dramatically expanded access to telehealth — a very big deal — for Medicare beneficiaries.  The number of Medicare patients using telehealth has increased from roughly 11,000 a week to more than 650,000 people a week.  So that’s from 11,000 a week to 650,000.  That’s almost an impossible number to believe, right?  But it’s really — it’s really something.  They get used to it, and a lot of that is going to be staying with us long after this horrible scourge is gone.

Medicare is also paying for labs to provide seniors with at-home testing, when appropriate, at zero cost to patients.

We’ve ensured a ventilator for every patient who needs one.  Nobody who’s needed a ventilator has been without a ventilator.  It’s an incredible achievement.  And we now have thousands and thousands of ventilators.  And other countries are asking us for help, and we’re helping other countries: allies and some that aren’t necessarily allies, but they’re in big trouble.  And we’re helping other countries now with ventilators.

Same thing with masks.  We have millions and millions of masks.  That was something, four weeks ago, was difficult, and now we have millions of masks coming in and already here.

The federal government is also funding over 35,000 members of the National Guard to help states deliver critical supplies to nursing homes and to assist with disinfecting and testing.

I’d like to ask General Lengyel to please come up and say a few words about the work of the National Guard.  It’s been really fantastic.  Thank you.

General, please.

GENERAL LENGYEL:  Thank you, Mr. President.  And good afternoon, everyone.  I’m very proud of the National Guard and all they are doing to help keep our nation safe here at home and abroad.

Today, over 83,000 men and women in the National Guard are engaged at home and abroad, and 45,000 of those are engaged directly in the COVID-19 response.  From running hundreds of testing sites around the country, to screening passengers at airports, to helping manufacturer PPE, to a myriad of other tasks, the National Guard is there.

We know this virus doesn’t treat everyone equally, and our senior citizens are at increased risk.  In many states, governors have directed National Guard members to help sanitize long-term care facilities, nursing homes, giving older citizens and families and caregivers peace of mind that their environments are safe.

The Georgia National Guard, for instance, has done this — has sanitized over 700 nursing homes, and this has been replicated at many places around the nation and continues to grow.

Additionally, food banks and homeless shelters — in normal times, these are often staffed by our volunteers.  Many of them are elderly senior citizens here in America.  Now, volunteering puts those great Americans at increased risk.  So the National Guard is helping these Americans stay clear of this risk.  In doing that, the National Guard is staffing many food banks across the nation where they need — the need for food assistance is increasing across the nation as this virus continues to persist.

The National Guard is a big part of the United States Army and our United States Air Force, and we’re proud of that.  But this role that we play here at home, in the homeland, under the command of the governors in our states, is distinctly and uniquely National Guard business, and we’re very proud of that.

So, Mr. President, thank you.  Thank you for the support that you give our military and the National Guard and all the men and women who serve.  They are proud to serve our nation.

Thank you for letting me talk about the Guard today.  Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much, General.  That’s great.  Four stars.  That’s a lot of stars.  Very impressive.

GENERAL LENGYEL:  (Inaudible.)  (Off-mic.)

THE PRESIDENT:  That’s right.  But that’s okay.  That’s very impressive.  You deserve them.

I do want to say, you mentioned the word “governor,” and we’ve had a lot of great success and relationship with the governors.  We’ve dealt with our governors very, very well.  We have really, I think, gotten to understand each other, know each other.  In many cases, really like each other.  And that’s worked out very well.

We had Phil Murphy here from New Jersey — the Governor of New Jersey, today.  Wonderful man.  A lot of progress is being made there.  And we had John Bel Edwards yesterday from Louisiana, and Ron DeSantis the day before, from Florida, with just tremendous progress.  Three very exceptional men, and they’re doing a really good job, as you know.  As you know.  So — and we have others coming in.  They’ll come in one or two a day.  And we’re seeing them, and whatever we can help them with, we help them with, and we help them with very — very quickly, General.  Right?  So it’s been very good.

My administration is doing everything possible to support the state-led management of nursing homes.  And here today is a governor who I happen to like a lot, and he’s done a fantastic job in a fantastic state — a state that I happen to like a lot; it’s called Tennessee.  For some reason, they like me.  I haven’t figured that out, but they like me in Tennessee.  So that’s good, Bill.

Please come up.  Governor Bill Lee, please.

GOVERNOR LEE:  Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.

GOVERNOR LEE:  Thank you very much, Mr. President.  And thank you to your team, many in this room that we have worked with.  You are guiding America through a tremendous crisis, and you’re doing it incredibly well, and America is very grateful for that.

And we are grateful in Tennessee for the partnership — the partnership between the federal government and states like ours.  As we work to make our contribution to fighting COVID-19, we can do so because of the work that you’re doing and the way that you’re supporting what we’re doing.

So, Mr. President, you’ve asked states to commit to a goal of testing 2 percent of their population.  In April, 2 percent of Tennesseans were tested.  And we have tested over 175,000 to date.  But as we look to May, to build upon that, we’re actually strengthening our commitment, particularly to the elderly, the most vulnerable of our citizens, especially those in nursing homes.

You know, there’s a scripture that describes being hard pressed on every side, but not crushed.  And that’s where we are in Tennessee.  I think that’s where we are in the nation.  But the elderly are most hard pressed in this setting, and especially those in long-term care facilities, and they need our help.

So, in Tennessee, we’re committed to testing every resident and every staff in every one of our 700 long-term care facilities.  It’ll be a great undertaking, but it honors the value of these lives in those facilities — lives that have protected our country in the hardest of times, the greatest generation, and those that have a loving legacy of being our neighbors and our friends and are grandparents.

And it’s time for us to protect them.  And we should do so by pursuing social distancing, for example, in every way that we can with them.  And the distance is sometimes a great goal if I haven’t hugged my own elderly mom in eight weeks.  But we’re doing right by these citizens, and you’re doing right by committing to these citizens to make certain that they — that we do our personal part to make sure that they’re safe and while valuing our freedoms all at the same time.

So while I think as a country we may be hard pressed on many sides, we are not crushed.  And we are grateful for your leadership and for this team’s leadership, and particularly your commitment to the most vulnerable in our nation.  And together, we will get through this.

Thank you very much, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Bill.  Thank you very much, Bill.  Great governor, by the way.

As we take steps to safely reopen our country, we must remain especially vigilant in sheltering the most vulnerable older Americans.  To that end, today I have several important announcements.

First, in addition to all of the supplies we’ve already distributed, FEMA will send supplemental shipments.  And I have to tell you, Pete, what a job you’ve done.  Everybody was — at the last call with the governors, so many of the governors said, “I want to thank him for calling…” — he called on Easter morning and he’s calling them all the time.  And you call them on Sundays and you call them every time — all the time.  And I’ll tell you, they really appreciated it.  They really do.  You’ve done a fantastic job.  Pete Gaynor, FEMA.

But FEMA will send supplemental shipments of personal protective equipment to all 15,400 Medicaid- and Medicare-certified nursing homes in America.  Right, Pete?

Second, CMS is providing states with $81 million from the CARES Act to increase their inspections of nursing homes at this very critical time.  We have to do that.  We have to do that.  It’s a — that’s a spot.  That’s a spot that we have to take care of.  I guess you could call it a little bit of a weak spot, because things are happening at the nursing homes, and we’re not — we’re not happy about that.  We don’t want it to happen.  So we’re checking that out very carefully and very methodically.

Third, this week, we’ll be finalizing a new rule requiring information about coronavirus cases in nursing homes to be reported directly to CDC and testing data to be posted online so everyone gets to see it.  This rule also requires nursing homes to report cases to residents and their family members.

And finally, to ensure that our nursing homes are prepared for any future outbreaks, we’re announcing the Coronavirus Commission for Safety and Quality in Nursing Homes.  This commission will be composed of leading industry experts, doctors, and scientists, resident and patient advocates, family members, infection and prevention control specialists, and state and local authorities.  It’s a big deal.

The Commission will convene in May and issue recommendations for further steps we can take to protect our nation’s seniors.  My administration will never waver in its relentless commitment to America’s seniors.  We owe them a sacred and unbreakable obligation, and we will fulfill that obligation with every resource and power that we have.  We are working very hard with our seniors, and we’re working very hard with our nursing homes.  And great progress is being made and will be made.  That, I can promise you.

That’s also why we are strongly protecting Medicare and Social Security.  We will protect your Social Security.  We will protect your Medicare.  We will protect you, as American citizens.  And that goes even beyond seniors.  We’re protecting this country.

Our cherished seniors enrich every aspect of our national life.  These great citizens have dedicated their entire lives to our families and our communities and our countries.  Our country could not be anything near where it is without our incredible seniors.  We’ll show them the same love and loyalty they’ve shown us and they’ve shown our nation every day of their lives.  No effort will be spared to give America’s seniors the care and support and devotion and love they have earned and that they deserve.

In a few moments, I’ll sign a proclamation design- — designing a very special — we’ve designed a very special plan.  And it’s going to designate Older American Month.  So this is Older Americans Month.

But first, I’d like to ask Secretary Azar, Secretary Wilkie, Administrator Verma, Administrator Gaynor to share what their department and agencies are doing to help our nation’s seniors.

So, just come on up, and maybe you could say a few words.  And you’ve made a lot of progress.

Alex, why don’t you start?  Thank you.

SECRETARY AZAR:  Well, thank you, Mr. President, for your leadership during this pandemic and for the work you’ve done throughout your administration to protect older Americans.  I’d also like to thank the older Americans and advocates we have here today, including those working hard at the state and local level.

As the President described during this pandemic, we have taken every possible effort to keep older Americans healthy and safe.  In addition to our public health and healthcare efforts, President Trump has secured historic investments in programs that support older Americans and help them live independently.

Over the past month, HHS has dispersed more than $1 billion in grants to aging and disability networks, which are state and local agencies, like a Council on Aging that provides services for seniors living in the community.

This is more than a 40 percent increase in the annual support that we provide to these critical organizations.  Services that we support, they include delivered meals, like my grandmother used to get from Meals on Wheels; help with trips to the grocery store or the doctor; and assistance with chores in the home.  Back in March, we put out $250 million in grants specifically for meals, including through Meals on Wheels.

We’ve been pleased to see communities get creative with these funds.  Some states are ensuring not only that the meals are getting to seniors, but that the meals are coming from local restaurants whose businesses are struggling.

It’s not just about meals and services; we also recognize that older Americans may be facing mental health challenges and feeling isolated.  Florida’s aging network, for instance, is combatting social isolation by providing electronic tablets to nursing home residents to help them communicate with loved ones.  We’re also working to protect the rights of older Americans in accessing healthcare.

Our Office for Civil Rights has been taking action to ensure that states and healthcare providers do not discriminate on the basis of disability or age and the allocation of medical care.  We’ve already had two states remove such discriminatory policies from their triaging guidelines as a result of our Office for Civil Rights work.

Finally, as the President and others mentioned, we’ve worked closely with states to ensure that they can test especially vulnerable populations, like those living in nursing homes and those who care for them.  This work to protect seniors and empower them will continue throughout the pandemic as we reopen our country and keep America’s seniors as healthy and as independent as possible.

Thank you all for what you do in this effort.  Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT:  Incredible job.  Appreciate it.  Thank you.

Thank you, Robert.

SECRETARY WILKIE:  Mr. President, thank you.  And thank you for everything you have done to transform the Department of Veterans Affairs on behalf of the nation’s nine and a half million veterans.

Seventy-five years ago, the men of the 28th Marine Regiment raised the American flag on Mount Suribachi.  No event better evoked the sacrifices and the triumphs of the 15 million Americans who put on the uniform during World War Two.

A few years after Iwo Jima, the soldiers of the United States Eighth Army defended the Pusan Perimeter, and Marines fought through and out of the Chosin Reservoir.  Veterans of those terrible times are still with us today.

Early on in this crisis, President Trump gave me very explicit orders to do everything possible to protect the lives of those precious Americans.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has 134 nursing homes, but more than half of the residents in those nursing homes fought in wars with battles with names like Guadalcanal, and the Bulge, and Inchon.  Of the 78,000 residents in our nursing homes, we have tested all of them for the coronavirus.  We have tested all of our staff in those nursing homes.  Our infection rate is low.  Many of our homes have few, if any, positive cases.

But still, as the President noted, we had to make a very tough decision early on.  After all of these veterans had gone through so much on the battlefield, we had to tell them at this stage in their lives that we were depriving them of the sustenance of their families and friends because we had to protect their lives.

Because of the President’s directions to me, we have been able to contain the virus in our nursing homes.  And now we are taking those lessons that we’ve learned from VA across the country to protect patients across America.

We are the federal experts in gerontology.  We are helping 38 states and territories handle the surge of patients dealing with this virus with our partners and our great partners at FEMA, and even by direct action through the governors.  Aiding America’s elderly is central to all of our efforts.

We deployed VA staff, as the President noted, to veterans nursing homes owned and operated by the individual states.  Early on, Governors Charlie Baker and Phil Murphy moved to protect their veterans, and they asked us for help.  In addition to Massachusetts and New Jersey, we are helping in Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee.

In California and Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Texas, we have taken in non-veteran nursing home patients and state veterans nursing home patients into our VA facilities.  We are helping elderly Americans wherever we find them.

Mr. President, you should be very proud of this VA that you have helped build.  Thousands of VA employees have leapt into harm’s way — VA leaders like Joan McInerney and Martina Parauda in your hometown; Ryan Lilly in Boston; Rima Nelson in Detroit; Vicki Brahm in Illinois and Wisconsin;  Fernando Rivera and Skye McDougall in New Orleans; and Miguel LaPuz in Florida.

All of them have put service before self to protect the most vulnerable and deserving.  These are the folks who made America strong and free.

Thank you very much, sir.  Thank you, sir.

ADMINISTRATOR VERMA:  Thank you, Mr. President.  And thank you for your commitment to the nation’s seniors and to the Medicare program.  You’ve been very clear with me since day one that you wanted to protect and strengthen the Medicare program.  And under your leadership, our Medicare Advantage program is seeing premiums at a 13-year low, and in our Part D program, it’s a 7-year low.

But today I want to focus on nursing homes.  In the scheme of life decisions, placing a loved one in a nursing home has to be one of the most difficult decisions.  And when you make that decision, you want to know that you can stay connected with your loved one and that they’re going to be safe and have the best quality of life.  And that’s why the decision to restrict visitation in nursing homes was a heartbreaking decision.  And our thoughts and prayers are with the families and the patients during this very uncertain time.

But the tragic reality is that the coronavirus seemed almost tailor-made to put major pressure on nursing homes, and countries across the world have struggled with their nursing home populations.  But the President’s early action around nursing homes has saved countless lives.

And even before the coronavirus, we have been working on a strategy to improve quality in nursing homes.  The strategy focused on quality, oversight, enforcement, and transparency for patients and their families so they understand exactly what’s going on in nursing homes, about the conditions there, and reducing regulatory burdens so that nursing home providers can focus on providing care to their patients instead of paperwork.

We’ve overhauled the entire survey system and implemented a common tool across the entire nation to ensure that our inspectors were being consistent, objective.  And that’s actually resulted in an increase in the number of fines.  And we’ve updated our websites so that patients and their families have the latest information on the quality in a nursing home and making it very clear when nursing homes have had significant cases of abuse and neglect.

And those improvements that we’ve made made it possible, when the coronavirus hit, for us to take very rapid action on several fronts.  We launched an unprecedented transparency effort, and that requires nursing homes to inform patients and families when there’s an outbreak in the nursing home, and to also report that information directly to the CDC.  And that’s going to be important to our efforts around surveillance going forward as we reopen the country.

And also, we increased reimbursement for labs so that they could do more testing in the nursing home.  And that’s going to be very critical, as I said before, to our monitoring and surveillance efforts.

Also, starting in February, we issued a series of nine guidance documents specific to coronavirus in controlling infections in nursing homes.

And just for some perspective, normally these types of guidance documents can take months, sometimes years.  But the CMS team worked days and nights and weekends to make sure we got this information in the hands of our nursing homes to do everything that we could to protect our vulnerable seniors.  And we also host weekly calls with the nursing homes to help them implement our guidance.

But federal action is just one part of the piece.  States ultimately license nursing homes.  And that’s why we’ve been working with states to investigate outbreaks that have been going on and inspect nursing homes.  And our guidance has called upon state and local leaders to support nursing homes in their efforts to control the coronavirus outbreaks.

And I commend Governor Lee and governors across the nation that have implemented our guidance, whether it’s cleaning their facilities, testing, and creating new COVID facilities.  And that helps isolate patients that are sick and keeps other patients safe.  And this work has been critical to keeping nursing home residents safe.

And I’m pleased to announce that we are putting out new state grants to support state and local efforts to nursing homes.  The President has been an advocate of this.  He has asked for increased funding to inspect nursing homes every year in his budget.  But this is the first time that Congress has provided this funding, and the money couldn’t come at a more critical time when it’ll be important to work with our state partners to ensure safety in our nursing homes.

But the President has directed us to do more.  And so, as part of our Opening Up America efforts, we are going to oversee the Coronavirus Commission for Safety and Quality in Nursing Homes.  And the commission will comprehensively assess the response, it will identify best practices, and also provide recommendations for how we go forward to protect our nursing home residents and make sure we are providing the best quality of life.

And, in closing, I want to speak directly to our nursing home residents, their caretakers, and their families: Your pain is our pain, and we are doing everything we can to support you.  And to the healthcare workers on the frontlines providing care and comfort to our nursing home residents: We thank you.

And thank you, Mr. President, for your consistent leadership and unwavering support for our elderly citizens.  Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  Seema, do you want to tell them that you’re going to have some big news very soon on insulin?

ADMINISTRATOR VERMA:  That’s right.

THE PRESIDENT:  This is a big — this is a big deal.

ADMINISTRATOR VERMA:  We’re doing everything we can to lower the price of insulin for our seniors, and we’ll have some great announcements coming up very soon to lower the price.

THE PRESIDENT:  Some big news.  Great news.  Good.  Thank you.

ADMINISTRATOR VERMA:  Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT:  Pete.

ADMINISTRATOR GAYNOR:  Thank you, Mr. President, Administrator Verma, and members of the coronavirus task force.  Let me focus on the logistics in our effort to deliver personal protective equipment care packages to those citizens at highest risk, in greatest need: those living in our nursing homes across the country.

Thanks to the leadership of the President and the tremendous support of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, FEMA will deliver care packages containing four items of PPE to more than 15,000 Medicare- and Medicaid-certified nursing homes nationwide, to include the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and Guam.

Given the lack of availability of PPE necessary for healthcare workers providing support for nursing homes, we will provide a package or a kit containing a seven-day supply of eye protection, masks, gowns, and gloves to these 15 [thousand]-plus nursing homes.  Each kit is individualized for each nursing home based on the level of staffing and the seven days of our supply calculation.

Over the course of the next 60 days, we’ll be providing each of the nursing homes with two separate shipments of 7 days of supplies, totaling 14 days of supplies by the beginning of July.  The first shipment of supplies begins next week.  These initial shipments will focus on metropolitan area sites such as New York City, Northern New Jersey, Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.  The second shipment of supplies begins in early June.  The goal is to have all supplies delivered no later than July 4th.

Assisting us in this endeavor is Federal Resources, a small business based out of Stevensville, Maryland, who specializes in chem-bio equipment support with focusing on kitting solutions for the Department of Defense.  They will help us distribute the following PPE items: 608,000 pieces of eye protection, 6.9 million surgical masks, 6.4 million gowns, 31.4 million pairs of gloves.

And finally, I would again like to extend my gratitude to the President for his leadership on this project, as well as to thank my fellow members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and their continued partnership.  Together, we have turned a critical demand for PPE for our seniors and frontline healthcare workers into reality.

Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Pete.  Great job.  Thank you very much.

Okay, thank you all very much.  I think we’ll sign.  If you’d like to come up, come on up.  Come on up.

(The proclamation is signed.)

Well, thank you very much.  And if you’d like to have some questions maybe on this, and we might venture into different territory also, I think.

John, please.

Q    Is that an invitation (inaudible)?

THE PRESIDENT:  I guess.  (Laughter.)

Q    The Vice —

THE PRESIDENT:  Not a wise one, but it’s an invitation.

Q    If we could venture straight into other territory: The Vice President said, just a short time ago, he believes that General Michael Flynn may have unintentionally lied to him or misspoken when he talked to him and did not include his meeting with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.

Q    Do you believe that General Flynn may have unintentionally misled the Vice President?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I really have to talk to the Vice President.  But I’ll tell you what: General Flynn was under enormous pressure and it was an artificial pressure, because what they did to General Flynn was a disgrace.  It was a total disgrace.  It’s shocking.  And I hear even more information came out today.  What they tried to do to destroy him and to hurt this presidency was — perhaps in our country’s history there’s never been anything like it.  An absolute disgrace.

But I’ll rely on what the Vice President said.  I can say this — and I think you understand this, Jon, very well: What happened to General Flynn should never happen again to a citizen of this country.

Yes, please.

Q    Mr. President, you said that Michael Flynn would come back even bigger and better.  So are you going to pardon him?  And if so, are you considering to bring him back into your administration?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, it looks to me like Michael Flynn would be exonerated based on everything I see.  Look, I’m not the judge, but I have a different type of power.  But I don’t know that anybody would have to use that power.  I think he’s exonerated everything — I’ve never seen anything like it.  What they did, what they wrote — you see this, General; you wouldn’t want this happening to you what they did to General Flynn.  And it’s just disgraceful.

So, you know, I guess we’ll get to that maybe someday or maybe not.  Hopefully we won’t have to get there.

Q    But would you consider bringing him back into your administration?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I think he’s a fine man.  I think it’s terrible what they did to him.  It’s something that nobody has asked me, but you’re asking me for the first time.  I would certainly consider it, yeah.  I would.  I think he’s — I think he’s a fine man.  I think he’s got a great family.  He loves his son.

I will tell you, his son was around a lot, and he loves his son, as people generally do.  And they did everything possible to destroy him.  And he’s still breathing very strongly, but they really hurt him very badly.  Very — very unfair.

Kristen?

Q    Mr. President, thank you.  A quick follow.  In what capa- — I do have a coronavirus-related question.  But in what capacity would you bring him back?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we’d — look, I mean, I’m not even — this is really the first time I’ve been asked the question, but I think he’ll be fully exonerated one way or the other.  And so, certainly he’d be capable of coming back.  He suffered greatly.

Q    I want to ask you about comments by your son-in-law.  One of your top advisors, Jared Kushner, yesterday said that the government’s response has been a, quote, “great success story.”  Is that the right tone?

THE PRESIDENT:  Could you lift that up a little bit?

Q    Yes.  No problem.  Your son-in-law, one of your top advisors —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yes.  Yeah.

Q    Jared Kushner yesterday said the government’s response has been a, quote, “great success story.”  Is that the right tone and message at a moment when people are still dying?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, it’s just, he’s saying the facts.  I mean, he’s not talking about other things that I talk about in my speech today, that I speak about all the time, and that’s death.

It’s horrible that — what this country has gone through and what the world has gone through, frankly.  This is something — it could have been contained at the original location, and I think it could have been contained relatively easily.  China is a very sophisticated country, and they could have contained it.  They were either unable to or they chose not to, and the world has suffered greatly.

But what Jared was talking about and what I talk about a lot is, no, I don’t think anybody has done the job that we’ve done, other than at public relations, because the press just won’t talk about the facts.

We had a ventilator problem that was caused by the fact that we weren’t left ventilators by a previous administration.  The cupboards were bare, as I say often.  And not only are the cupboards full now, we have ventilators; we’re the king in the world of ventilators.  We have thousands and thousands of them now being delivered.  You were at the news conferences over the last few days.  The governors never — they said we’ve never had a case where we couldn’t get a ventilator.  And a month and a half ago, people — you — were screaming “ventilator, ventilator.”

I’m just looking at the test numbers.  We have more tests — we have given more tests — and the high-quality tests — than every other country combined.  And I say it.  The friend of mine, South Korea — President Moon — called me.  You know, they talk about South Korea, and they’ve done a really good job.  But he said, “What a job you’ve done.”  And this a much bigger country, you understand.  He said, “What a job you’ve done on testing.”

So the testing and the masks and all of the things, we’ve solved every problem.  We solved it quickly.  But to think that now we’re giving thousands of ventilators to other countries — allies — and other than allies, to be honest — but we’re helping other countries where people are dying because we have ventilators and nobody else does, to this extent.  And it’s a great tribute.

I mean, Deborah — we were talking about that before.  Deborah Birx, Dr. Birx has been fantastic.  She’s a fantastic person, a fantastic woman.  And we talk about the things that we’ve done in a short period of time.  I mean, all you heard about was ventilators.  That’s a hard thing.  We energized factories that didn’t build ventilators.  They were building cars and other things, and now we’re building thousands a week.  And it’s been very spectacular.  It’s been really spectacular.

So, yeah, I think — I don’t think anybody has done a better job with testing, with ventilators, with all of the things that we’ve done.  And our death totals — our numbers — per million people are really very, very strong.  We’re very proud of the job we’ve done.  We had very little to work with because the previous administration left us very little.

Please, go ahead.

Q    A quick follow, Mr. President —

Q    Mr. President —

THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead.  Why don’t you go, and then you can go?

Q    Thank you.  Thank you, Mr. President.  You signed an executive order this morning dealing with the counter-narcotics operations that you have going on in the Western Hemisphere right now.  Why the need for more manpower?  And do you think your government is any closer to the goal of having Nicolás Maduro leave office?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I need it, and I sign it, and we do have executive orders and they help us a lot and they’ve helped up a very lot here.

We also signed things having to do with production.  As you know, I’ve used that very, very powerfully — the Act.  And oftentimes, I didn’t have to use it; I just had to talk about it.

No, I’m only signing when we want something, where we want — when we need additional manpower or brainpower or whatever it is we’re looking for at the time.  But we — again, we’ve done things that I don’t think anybody else has been able to do what we’ve done.  And this is a big country too.  This is a very big country, as you know, and I’m very proud of the country.  I’m very proud of the way they they’ve stepped up.

Now, things are opening.  As an example, Governor Lee is doing a great job in opening up Tennessee, and he’s opening it up rapidly and safely.  I think — he said to me, “Two words I think about: safe and rapid.”  And I think “safe” was the first one you mentioned, in all fairness, but it was safe and rapid.

He’s doing it quickly and safely.  And Tennessee is a great story.  But we have other governors — friends of both of ours — that are doing, really, a good job.

I will say this: Governor Murphy and Governor Cuomo have a tougher situation because that’s really a hotbed.  That’s a — it’s very, very dense area.  People don’t realize it.  I think New Jersey, believe it or not, is the single-most dense area in the country.  Who would think that?  But the governor has done a terrific job.

And Governor Cuomo, likewise, is working very, very hard and speaking to me all the time.  And whenever we can help him, we do.  And we’re helping him, and he’s helping his state.  That’s what he has to do.

Thank you.

Q    How is the operation going, though?  And do you feel — my second question was: Do you feel like you’re any closer to having Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela (inaudible)?

THE PRESIDENT:  I think the operation is doing really well.  I think that things are being discovered that you wouldn’t have thought possible.

The Abbott machine — Abbott Laboratories a great, great scientific company.  They came up with a machine that I would say, two months ago, nobody ever heard of this machine, and all of a sudden, boom, people come into my office, they get tested; it takes them five minutes, and they feel very good.  Some of them have never been tested.

But these are, you know, equipment and — equipment and tests that nobody ever thought even possible three or four months ago were being — are being used commonly now.  I looked at the numbers, and we’re over 6 million tests.  And you add up everybody together; they don’t have anywhere near that.

So it’s an incredible thing.  And it’d be great if the media could really portray it the way it is, because we’ve done some unbelievable work.  And when somebody uses the word “successful,” I mean, it really has been successful.  It’s been very successful.

But if you look at mortality and mortality rates, you know, in this country, it’s a very sad thing to be talking about.  Whoever thought you’d be talking about such a thing?  Two months ago, it was impo- — all we talked about was the economy, how well it was going.  But today we have to talk about that.

Our country has really stepped up.  Our generals have stepped up and our admirals have stepped up.  By the way, Admiral has done a fantastic job, as you know.

And, you know, we’re very proud of everybody.  This whole room has been very amazing.

Okay.  Who’s next?

Q    Mr. President, you had said that China is doing everything it can to make sure you don’t get reelected.  What specifically are they doing?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, China doesn’t want to see me elected, and the reason is that we’re getting billions and billions of dollars — many billions of dollars a month from China.  China never gave our country anything.  China gave us nothing.  Not 10 cents.  And whether it was Biden in charge of China, which was a joke because he ripped off — they ripped off our country for eight years.  And in all fairness to Biden and Obama, this went on long before they got into office.  I mean, you can go through many administrations until I came along.

And then we signed a trade deal where they’re supposed to buy, and they’ve been buying a lot actually, but that now becomes secondary to what took place with the virus.  The virus situation is just not acceptable.

Q    Do you think that withholding information about the virus is related to them trying to undermine your reelection?

THE PRESIDENT:  I don’t — I don’t want to put any — cast any dispersions.  I just will tell you that China would like to see Sleepy Joe Biden.  They would take this country for a ride like you’ve never seen before.

Q    Mr. President, yes.

THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead.  Please.

Q    Right.  With the unemployment numbers coming out today — 30 million now unemployed — have you given any thought to possibly extending the 600 extra dollars of unemployment benefits that are — that are given out now?  They will run out — and that will run out in July.  Have you —

THE PRESIDENT:  They are looking at it and they’re taking a very strong look, and we’ll be reporting to you very shortly.  I will say this: Obviously, this is what it is.  It’s this period of time.  But I think — I view the third quarter as a transition quarter.  And I think you’re going to have a very strong transition and then I think the fourth quarter is going to be incredibly successful.  I think next year we’re going to have a phenomenal year, economically.

Q    Mr. President, you keep referring to China, but do you hold President Xi Jinping responsible for misinformation?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I don’t want to say that.  I don’t want to say that.  But certainly, it could have been stopped.  It came out of China, and it could have been stopped, and I wish they stopped it.  And so does the whole world — wish they stopped it.

John?

Q    On unemployment, Mr. President —

THE PRESIDENT:  Say it?

Q    On unemployment: There are many businesses who are concerned that as America opens back up again, because of a provision in the CARES Act —

THE PRESIDENT:  Right.

Q    — that gives an additional $600, they won’t be able to get their employees back because they make more money staying at home than they would if they come back —

THE PRESIDENT:  That’s right.

Q    — came back to work, which has caused some governors to suggest that they might strip those people of their unemployment insurance if they refuse to go back to work.  Is that something you would support?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we’re looking at a lot of different things.  I brought this up before it was done.  This was a Democrat point.  And I said, you know, some people are going to be treated unfairly and some people will be treated — you know, they didn’t get into the kind of formulas, the way I saw it.  I said exactly that this was going to happen.

But when you think about it, it’s basically we’re being generous with people that — it’s short term.  And we’re being very generous with people that lost their jobs or potentially would lose their jobs.

So it’s not the biggest problem that I’ve ever heard of.  They’re getting a little bit more money.  In some cases, they’re getting more money than they thought they would have gotten.  A lot of employees are saying, “No, the job is more important.”  Because the employer is not going to forget that.  And — but it was something that I brought up at the beginning and nobody wanted to listen.

Yeah.  Please.

Q    A follow-up regarding Joe Biden.  Your campaign and surrogates going after him pretty hard with regard to these allegations from Tara Reade.  What do you say to Joe Biden?

THE PRESIDENT:  No, I don’t think so.  I don’t think they’re going after him hard with regard to Tara —

Q    What do you think of the allegations and what do you say to Joe Biden?

THE PRESIDENT:  I don’t — I don’t know anything about it.  I don’t know exactly — I think he should respond.  You know, it’s — it could be false accusations.  I know all about false accusations.  I’ve been falsely charged numerous times.  And there is such a thing.

If you look at —

Q    Do you think he’s been falsely accused?

THE PRESIDENT:  If you look at Brett Kavanaugh, this is an outstanding man.  He was falsely charged.  What happened with him was an absolute disgrace to our country.  And I guess three of the four women have now admitted that.  And of the fourth — give me a break.  I mean, take a look: 36 years.  That is — look, this is a fine man.  I saw a man suffering so unfairly — I’m talking about Brett Kavanaugh.

So — but I don’t know.  I can’t speak for Biden.  I can only say that I think he should respond.  I think he should answer them.

Q    Another question on Biden, Mr. President?  Another question on Biden?

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah, go ahead.  Please.

Q    Thank you, sir.  On China: A moment ago, you said that China, it’s possible they could have chosen not to stop the spread of the virus.  Are you insinuating they intentionally let it spread to their (inaudible)?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, they could have done it.  And I’m just saying — well, one of two things happened: They either didn’t do it and, you know, they couldn’t do it from a competence standpoint, or they let it spread.  And I — you know, I would say probably it was — got — it got out of control.

But, you know, there’s another case that: How come they stopped all the planes and all of the traffic from going into China, but they didn’t stop the planes and the traffic from coming into the United States and from coming into all over Europe?  I mean, look at Italy.  Look what happened to Italy.  And it’s very lucky.  This country is very lucky, and I’m very lucky that I put the ban on China, as you know, very early on.

In January, we put the ban on in China and that was a very early day.  That wasn’t a late day; that was an early day.  Then we later put the ban on in Europe.  And if we — if we didn’t do that, as Alex knows, we would have had a problem like you wouldn’t have believed.  We would have had a problem much bigger.  But then you take a look at what happened to Italy: A lot of those people went to Italy instead.  And that’s been a very, very tough place, Italy.  Very, very big.

Q    And then on holding them — and then on holding them accountable, is that something you’d prefer to do now in the next few weeks or —

THE PRESIDENT:  No, I don’t want to do that.  I want to find out what happened.  I think we’ll be able to get a very good, very powerful definition of exactly what happened.  We’re working on it strongly now and I think it’s going to be very powerful.  But they could have stopped it.  They are a very brilliant nation — scientifically and otherwise.  It got loose, let’s say, and they could have capped it.  They could have stopped it.  But they didn’t.  And — but they stopped planes from going to China, but they didn’t stop them from going to the rest of the world.  What was that all about?

Jim?

Q    Just to help us out on this, because — to follow up on Jordan’s question: You praised China in the past, so what’s changed?  When you tweeted, “China has been working very hard to contain the coronavirus.  The [U.S.] greatly appreciates their efforts on transparency.  It will all work out well…”  What has changed between then, when you were saying these things about China, and now?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, what’s changed is the following: We did a trade deal and everybody was very happy.  There’s nobody ever been tough on China like I’ve been tough on China.  I got elected, at least partially, because of borders and military and different things, but one of the things I’d say is how China and other countries are ripping us off.

So recently, we signed a trade deal with China, a number of months ago.  China is buying billions of dollars’ worth of our product, our farm product and other product, manufacturing product, and it’s been a great deal.  But then, we noticed a virus.  And it’s not acceptable what happened.  It came out of China, and it’s not acceptable what happened.

And now what we’re doing, Jim, is we’re finding out how it came out.  Different forms — you know, you’ve heard all different things.  You’ve heard three or four different concepts as to how it came out.  We should have the answer to that in the not-too-distant future, and that will determine a lot how I feel about China.

Q    Did you (inaudible)?

THE PRESIDENT:  But when I was — of course.  I was very rough with China.  I mean, Biden, as an example — the previous administration, they let China rip off this country like nobody has ever ripped off this country.

Now, what I did, is I took that —

Q    (Inaudible) coronavirus?

THE PRESIDENT:  Jim, I took that and I made it into a great deal for our country.  But after that, all of a sudden, we heard there’s a virus and a virus is coming in.  That changes my mind very greatly.  That’s a whole different thing.  So you can have good trade deals — that was earlier on, the trade deal.  I made the trade deal earlier on.  And it’s a great deal.

We’re — we’re take it in billions and billions of dollars of money in different forms, including the fact that we have a 25 percent tariff on $250 billion.  It’s a tremendous amount of money.  Some of that money I’ve given to the farmers because they were targeted by China.  And I gave $12 billion.  I gave $16 billion.  And this year, we’re going to be given — giving approximately $19 billion to the farmers.

But —

Q    Was President Xi misleading you?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, something happened.  Something happened.  I don’t say misleading or not.  I’ll let you know that.  I mean, I’ll be able to give you that answer at some point in the, hopefully, not-too-distant future.

But I will tell you, you take a look at what happened to this world.  A month and a half, two months ago, we had the strongest economy in the history of the world.  And all of a sudden, I have to close the economy, I have to close the country.

So, we’ve had tremendous death and tremendous sorrow and sadness, and nobody’s ever seen anything like it.  And so have most of the countries of the world.  Most — think of that: most of the countries — 184, you tell me.  It’s probably low right now because I’ve been saying 184 — 184 countries.  They’ve suffered tremendously.  It’s something that is going to have to be dealt with.  We’re going to have to sort it out.

Q    Mr. President, on the issue of loss, Vice President —

THE PRESIDENT:  Say it?

Q    On the issue of loss, Vice President Biden has said we should lower the White House flag to half-mast.  Are you going to do that?  And are you thinking about leading the nation in a moment of mourning?

THE PRESIDENT:  Nobody said that.  I mean, I would — I would not mind doing that.  I would say, not only the White House flag, we could — we could do that.  In fact, it’s something that I will be talking about later.  And we have a meeting on various things; that’s one of the topics and we’re going to bring that up.  So I think lowering the flags would be something very appropriate.

Q    Are you thinking about leading the country, though, in a moment of mourning for all of the lives lost — the more than 60,000 people?

THE PRESIDENT:  Of course I am.  I don’t think anybody can feel any worse than I do about all of the death and destruction that’s so needless.  Nobody.  But I also have to make sure that we handle the situation well.  Nobody is thinking about it more.  Nobody — nobody has spent more time, late in the evening, thinking about what’s happened to this country in a short period of time.

But, at the same time, we have to get our country open again.  And we’re doing that step by step.  Tennessee, as an example — it’s step by step.  We’re opening up our country.  And I really believe that next year we can be, maybe, even beyond — we have a lot of stimulus.  And maybe even beyond.  We’ll see about, by the way, package four — phase four.  But I really hope that we can be as good or better.  I built it once and we’re going to build it again.

John?  Go ahead, please.

Q    You said a moment ago you will soon have information on where this virus originated.  The Director of National Intelligence today put out a statement saying that they believe it was naturally occurring, and it was not manmade, but —

THE PRESIDENT:  Who was that?  What was that that said that?

Q    The Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.  But who — who, in particular?  Who was the man that made that statement?

Q    It was a statement that the ODNI —

THE PRESIDENT:  Oh, he would know that, huh?  National Intelligence.  Okay.  So, we’ll see.

Q    That would be your Director of National Intelligence, Rick Grenell, in —

THE PRESIDENT:  No, I — No, I think — I think it’s — I mean, you’d have to tell me who specifically, who made the statement.

Q    The statement was just put out under the office of the ODNI.

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay.  We’ll see.  I mean, I have to see the statement and I just haven’t seen it.

Q    But the question I had was, have you seen anything at this point —

THE PRESIDENT:  Because we’re looking at that, John, separately from — we’re looking at exactly where it came from, who it came from, how it happened, separately and also scientifically.  So we’re going to be able to find out.

Q    And my question is, have you seen anything at this point that gives you a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus?

THE PRESIDENT:  Yes, I have.  Yes, I have.  And I think that the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves, because they’re like the public relations agency for China.  And this country pays them almost $500 million a year, and China pays them $38 million a year.  And whether it’s a lot or more, it doesn’t matter.  It’s still — they shouldn’t be making excuses when people make horrible mistakes, especially mistakes that are causing hundreds of thousands of people around the world to die.  I think the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves.

Q    On Tuesday, you suggested withholding federal aid from jurisdictions that are sanctuary cities.  How serious is that consideration?  Are you — and are you just (inaudible)?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I have the right to do that.  But sanctuary cities, especially at a time like this, that’s a very dangerous thing.  Our law enforcement hates it.  They hate it.  They want — we want safe cities.  We want a sanctuary, but we want sanctuary for our citizens.  And we don’t want sanctuary for criminals that came into our country illegally, and they have big records and records — I won’t go into the type of crimes, but the crimes are the ultimate in evil, in many cases.  No.  We don’t want them to have sanctuary in our country.

We want to have strong borders.  Look, I say it again: We want to have strong borders.  I’ve been saying this for a long time.  And I think people are agreeing with me.  I really do.  I think people are agreeing with me.  The Democrats want to have open borders, where people just come in.  And you’re not only talking about coming in from a crime standpoint, you’re now talking about coming in with not only the disease that we happen to be talking about so much lately, but other diseases.  And they want to have open borders.  They want people to pour into our country from no — from who knows where they come.

No, we’re not doing that.  We have a very strong border now — our southern border.  And every day, it gets stronger because we’re building miles a day of very, very powerful wall.  And that’s a great thing for our country.  That’s so important for our country.  And very few people are arguing with it.

Yeah, please.

Q      Mr. President, you often describe this fight against the virus as a “war.”  How do you define victory?

THE PRESIDENT:  So it is a war, and I define victory when it’s gone and we open successfully — we have a successful country again.  Now, it can never be a total victory because too many people have died.  All over the world, people have died –in our country, in every country.  I’m looking at the new list of countries.  Look at what’s going on with Russia.  Look at what’s going on with — Spain is so, so incredibly harmed and injured by this.  So many people are dying.

This is — this is not something where you’ll go to your traditional, “Gee, this was an experience.”  This is not an experience.  This is a very bad experience.

But what I want is: We want the virus gone and we want to have a vibrant economy.  We want people back.  We don’t want people necessarily sitting — like these incredible people in front of me — where they’re sitting six feet apart instead — I mean, I want our country back.  I want people to go, you know, out and see football games and baseball games and basketball and hockey and golf and all of these sports, and not worry about getting sick and violently ill.

One of the things that was very interesting — you probably saw it; we put it out before — though was Sweden.  And you compare the deaths in Sweden to Denmark and Finland and Norway and — you know, I hate to say it, but the deaths are very, very substantially higher in Sweden because they’ve used that as an example.  Brazil is very high, if you look at what’s gone on — the graph — graphically — very, very high.  Very straight up, almost.  Right, Deborah?  Very straight up.

A friend of mine, a great gentleman, President of Brazil, he’s really a friend of mine.  He is a great man. But they’re having a hard time.  They’re going herd.  Sweden went herd.  But you know when they say “herd,” it’s really — in Sweden, in particular, the bars you can’t go to, certain areas you can’t go to.  A lot of the people are saying — well, the Prime Minister doesn’t have to say, “Stay in your apartment. Stay in your house.”  They’re staying there.  They’re not leaving.

So, you know, it’s really not quite what was reported.  But the number of deaths are tremendous in Sweden, compared to the countries that surround, where they did — where they did very strong lockdowns.  And we were discussing that, Deborah, before. It’s a very big difference.  It’s a very big difference.

But again, Sweden didn’t go really “herd” as you understand it.  And also the people of Sweden — very smart.  They’re staying in the houses.  They’re staying in.  They’re not going out and, “Let’s…”  Now, are some?  Yeah, I guess.  Some.  But they’ve lost a lot of people in Sweden.

Yes, John.

Q    Mr. President, can I just come back to the —

Q    Mr. President, over here.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah, I’ll get you in a second.

Q    Can I get back to what we were talking about just a second ago?

THE PRESIDENT:  Sure.

Q    I missed the — in the interruption, did you — are you suggesting that maybe you have some evidence that this was not a naturally occurring virus?

THE PRESIDENT:  We’re going to see what it is.  You’re talking about the virus and where it came from?

Q    Correct.  Yeah.

THE PRESIDENT:  No, we’re going to see where it is.  We’re going to see where it comes from.  And you know — look, you know every theory, whether you had the theory from the lab, you had the theory from many different — the bats, and the type of bat, and the bat is 40 miles away, so it couldn’t have been here and it couldn’t have been there.  And we have a — there’s a lot of theories.  But, yeah, we have people looking at it very, very strongly.

Q    And what gives you —

THE PRESIDENT:  You have scientific people, intelligence people, and others.  And we’re going to put it all together.

Q    And what gives you a —

THE PRESIDENT:  And I think we’re going to have a very good answer eventually.

Q    And what gives you a —

THE PRESIDENT:  And China might — might even tell us. China may tell us.

Q    And what gives you a high degree of confidence that this originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

THE PRESIDENT:  I can’t tell you that.  I’m not allowed to tell you that.

Q    Mr. President —

THE PRESIDENT:   Jeff, go ahead.  Please.

Q    Mr. President, would you consider having the United States not pay its debt obligations to China as punishment for the virus?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I can do it differently.  I can do the same thing, but even for more money just by putting on tariffs.  So I don’t have to do that.

You know, it’s appr- — it’s approximately a trillion dollars — a little bit more, as I understand it.  A trillion dollars.  But we can do that in a, I think, probably a little bit of a more forthright manner.  You start playing those games and that’s tough.  You know, we have the dollar to protect.  We want to protect the sanctity of the dollar, the importance of the dollar.  It’s the greatest currency in the history of the world.  It’s become stronger.

We have a very strong dollar.  That’s why we’re borrowing at zero — zero interest rate.  You know, with all of the stimulus that we’re talking about, we’re — that sounds good though, General, doesn’t it?  We’re paying zero interest so, essentially right around zero, but zero.  And you want to protect — it’s a very good question.

You know, you say, “Oh, gee.  You owe us.  We owe you a certain amount of money.  We’re going to keep it.”  But when you start playing that game, you’re really hurting the sanctity, the importance of the greatest currency on Earth.  But we can do it in other ways.  We can do it with tariffs.  We can do it other ways, even beyond that, without having to play that game.  That’s a rough game.

Q   Speaker — on a separate topic, but related — Speaker Pelosi said that she envisions up to a trillion dollars needed to help support states and localities.  Would you support that figure for the states?

THE PRESIDENT:  So, what’s happening is the Democrats have come to us, and they’d like to do a phase four.  And we’ll think about what’s happening.  They want to help the states.  They want help — bailouts.  And, you know, bailouts are very tough.  And they happen to be Democrat states.  It’s California.  It’s New York.  It’s Illinois.  You start with those three.

And the Republican states are in strong shape.  You know, I don’t know. Is that luck or is that talent?  Or is it just a different mentality?  But the Republican-run states are in strong shape.

Look, I looked today, when I spoke — I spoke with Ron DeSantis.  He was here yesterday, as I said.  And Florida is doing incredibly.  Texas is doing incredibly.  These states are doing unbelievably.  They don’t know about the word “bailout.”

We had a call from a governor of South Dakota.  And they have one of the finest-run states.  They have a, I think, a constitutional amendment they’re not allowed to — you know, they have to have a balanced budget.  And they have a balanced — a totally balanced budget.  They just have a sales tax.  That’s about the only tax they have is a sales tax.  I mean, think of that.  So, it’s a whole different thing.

But Republican states are doing very well.  Maybe the Democrats should have brought this up earlier, when we wanted certain things.  And they did, and we said — and I said specifically, “No, let’s look at it later on down the road.”  But they’d like to do something.

They want to do infrastructure.  I can understand infrastructure.  Think of it: We’ve spent $8 trillion in the Middle East, and we’re not fixing our roads in this country?  How stupid — how stupid is that?  And we’re not fixing our highways, our tunnels, our bridges, our hospitals even, our schools even?  It’s crazy.

Q    Do you think —

THE PRESIDENT:  But — but they want to do things, and the Republicans are in a much better position, from a — you know, I don’t want to use the word “negotiating position,” but we really are.  We’re in a negotiating position that’s different because they want to bail out various states.  Illinois is in big trouble.  The governor understands that — Pritzker.  He understands that.  But Illinois is in big trouble.

Is it fair to do that and then have states that are very powerful and strong like Iowa and Idaho — I mean, take Idaho.  Look at — look at all of these incredible states, and look at what’s going on and how successful they are.

So, you just take a look.  And we’re going to look at it.  We’re going to look at it.  I think we want to take a little bit of a pause.  But if we do that, we’ll have to get something for it.  Okay?

Q    Mr. President, so just —

THE PRESIDENT:  Kristen, go ahead.

Q    — a question on masks.  But very quickly, to follow-up on Jeff, it sounds like you’re potentially open to Leader McConnell’s call that states should apply for bankruptcy.  Is that what you’re saying?

THE PRESIDENT:  No.  I’m just — it’s an idea that he has. He threw that out as an idea.  I’ve spoken to him about it very strongly.  And we’re going to see what happens.  We’ll take a little bit of a pause.  We’ll see what happens.  But some states are in trouble.

I spoke today — I was with a wonderful man, a great gentleman, a wonderful human being; I think Bill knows him too, from New Jersey — Governor Phil Murphy.  And we talked about it.  You know, New Jersey is a — it’s a wonderful state.  I have to say: It’s a wonderful place.  But it’s got a lot of difficulty, in terms of the economics and the debt, the costs, et cetera.  So it’s in a different position than some of the other states that we could mention.  We could mention them all day long.

Q    Let me ask you about masks, if I could.  Vice President Pence did not wear one when he visited the Mayo Clinic earlier this week.  He’s wearing one today.  You are travelling to Arizona.  Will you wear a mask?  What is the policy for you and the Vice President?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I’m going to have to see.  I am going to Arizona.  I look forward to that.  I’ll have to see the climate.  I mean, I’m going to look and see, you know, where I am.  Here is a place that we all feel very comfortable.  Everybody is spread out and it’s a very big room.

But as far as where I’m going in Arizona, I’m going to have to look at the climate.  I’d have no problem wearing a mask.  I don’t know.  I’m supposed to make a speech.  I just don’t know: Should I speak in a mask?  You’re going to have to tell me if that’s politically correct.  I don’t know.  If it is, I’ll speak in a mask.

Q    Are you concerned you —

THE PRESIDENT:  But — but I have a — I’m going to be making a speech in Arizona.  I look forward to it.  And depending on the conditions, I would have no problem wearing a mask.  And we have millions of masks now.  You know, we have masks coming in that — there was another thing.  I mean, it was very hard to get masks.  We now have — and we’re making millions and millions of masks.  They’re opening plants, and it’s been incredible.

Q    It sounds like you’ve changed your position because before the —

Q    Mr. President —

THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead, please.

Q    The Chairman of the Federal Reserve has said that the economic recovery is going to be long and slow.  You have said that it’s going to bounce back quickly.  What do you know that he doesn’t know?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I didn’t hear what he said.  I can only tell you that I see it.  I think it’s going to be a transition quarter — the third quarter.  I think the fourth quarter is going to be very good, and I think next year is going to be fantastic because of the stimulus.

And I haven’t seen his statement, but I think we’re going to have a great year next year.  Knowing that we left behind a year of tremendous death — tremendous death.  It was a — just a terrible thing, the likes of which we haven’t seen, I guess, if you go back over 100 years — 1917.  And that was a terrible thing.  But that was close.  Depending on your — your account or the account, anywhere from 50 to 100 million people died — 1917.  So, we haven’t seen it.  It’s over 100 years.

And so, understanding that that was terrible, I think that next year from a — from an economic standpoint — I mean, look at the stock market.  People are amazed.  The stock market is at over 24,000.  Well, it was at 29,000; it’s 24,000 now.  Is that even possible, considering what we’ve gone through?  Because people are very smart.  They’re very — many of these people are very brilliant, and they look and they see a great future.

The other thing: The dollar is very strong.  So when we go out and do stimulus packages, we’re oversubscribed at zero.  I mean, think of it: You get your money back at zero.  It’s a pretty incredible thing.  The euro is having a hard time and it’s much smaller.  The dollar has really become — the dollar is king.  And the dollar is at a position now — it’s just a very powerful — it’s a very powerful thing, the dollar.  Other currencies are very — in big trouble.  They’re really in big trouble, whereas the dollar is very powerful, very strong.

So the good part about that is if you do go out, and if we do want to do stimulus or whatever we want to do, we’re borrowing at zero and the dollar is very strong.

Okay, Jim.

Q    Getting back to what John was asking about — the possibility that this virus came out of the lab in China: Are you insisting or would you insist on China allowing U.S. investigators into that lab to make sure —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.  Yeah, I don’t — I don’t want to go into that.  We’re going to see.

Q    (Inaudible.)

THE PRESIDENT:  So far, I think China has been trying to be — or at least they seem to be trying to be somewhat transparent with us, but we’re going to find out.  You’ll be learning in the not-too-distant future.  But it’s a terrible thing that happened.

Whether they made a mistake or whether it started off as a mistake, and then they made another one or — did somebody do something on purpose?  Say, “Hey…”  You know, I don’t understand how traffic, how people weren’t allowed into the rest of China, but they were allowed into the rest of the world. That’s a bad — that’s a hard question for them to answer.

Yeah, please.  Go ahead.

Q    Thanks, Mr. President.  On Kim Jong Un, have you got an update on his condition and whether he is alive or dead?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I understand what’s going on and I just can’t talk about Kim Jong Un right now.  I just hope everything is going to be fine.  But I do — I do understand the situation very well.

Please.

Q    Going back to when you talked about being complimentary of China early on, were you saying that you were complimentary of China because you were concerned about the trade deal?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I’m making a trade deal with China. This was before the virus.  Of course I’m going to be complimentary.

Now, I was very uncomplimentary prior to that negotiation. And then, every once in a while, the negotiation would break down because I’m not like Kerry, who signed the worst deal — the Iran deal, which was such a disaster.  And he never left the table.  I left the table a lot.

Anyway, we ended up making a deal.  And, of course, during the course of the deal I was both complimentary and very uncomplimentary.  But the bottom line is: We ended up making a deal before the virus came.  And I was very happy with the deal. But then later on, that was superseded by a virus that should not have happened.

Well, I just want to thank you all very much.  And we’ll see you probably tomorrow sometime.  Thank you very much.

END                5:37 P.M. EDT

Remarks

Remarks by President Trump at a Signing Ceremony for
H.R. 266, Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act

Healthcare

Issued on: April 24, 2020

Oval Office

12:11 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay.  Thank you very much.  We’re gathered today for a very historic bill signing that will provide vital financial relief to American workers and families.  We’re grateful to be joined by Vice President Mike Pence, and also with us are Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Administrator Jovita Carranza, Senators Roy Blunt, John Cornyn, Dan Sullivan, as well as Leader Kevin McCarthy and Representative Steve Scalise and Liz Cheney.  We appreciate you all coming.  A very big moment.

I want to thank Congress for answering my call to pass this critical funding.  And the bill includes, as you probably know — you’ve been watching it over the last week as it matured unto this this point — $320 billion to refill the Paycheck Protection Program, helping keep millions and millions of American workers on the payroll.  Great for small businesses.  Great for the workers.

Thirty billion dollars to the Paycheck Protection funds will be reserved for small financial institutions, including those that serve minority and distressed communities, extending vital relief to thousands of African American and Hispanic American small-business owners and their employees.  And that’s $30 billion of the Paycheck Protection funds.  And that’s really having to do very much with extending vital relief to thousands of African American and Hispanic American people in this country that are so great but have been so badly hurt.  They’re great people.  They’ve been badly hurt.

Ten billion dollars for Economic Injury Disaster Grant Program.  Fifty billion dollars for the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, which will provide loans to small businesses and farms.  Very important — farms.  Seventy-five billion dollars to reimburse hospitals and healthcare providers.  Eight hundred and twenty-five million dollars — that’s a small one; million.  That’s the first time I’ve seen the word “million” instead of “billion.  Eight hundred and twenty-five million dollars for community health centers and rural clinics, which serve many of our most vulnerable low-income communities.  And $25 billion for expanding testing capabilities.

So let me once again thank everyone who helped achieve these historic victories.  This is a tremendous victory.  This is on top of all of other things that we’ve been doing, including an incredible job, I must say — where Vice President Pence and with the task force — the coronavirus, that we are really hitting hard.  The task force has been fantastic.  The ideas and the implementation has been unprecedented.  We don’t get the credit that we should, and I don’t want it for myself, but I actually do want it for the Vice President, and I do want it for the task force.  But most importantly, I want it for all of the incredible people that are working so hard.

You see what we’ve done on ventilators.  We’re now — we’re the kings.  I have many countries calling.  We’re the king of ventilators.  Countries are calling, and they’re calling all the time now — can we help them with ventilators.  And we are helping some countries.  We spoke to a number of them today: Indonesia, Honduras, El Salvador.  We spoke to numerous countries today.  You probably saw that.

I spoke to the presidents, prime ministers.  I’m speaking to everybody.  They all want to know if we can help them with ventilators.  And we’re capable of doing that because we’re making thousands and thousands of ventilators.  And every governor has more than they need.  In fact, some of the governors are now taking ventilators and shipping them to different states that don’t even need them.

So it’s been an amazing story that hasn’t been written about.  Actually, there have been stories about why haven’t they written about it.  Those are the stories, because the news is — much of the news is not fair.  But that’s been incredible.

Likewise, our testing — Mike just said today “5 million.”  Tell me, was it —

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  It’s 5.1 million, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT:  5.1 million tests.  That’s more than all countries combined.  All countries combined.  5.1 million tests.

And you were asked a question about that the other day.  “You didn’t hit 5 million tests.”  Well, I guess Mike didn’t respond, or he wasn’t asked the answer.  But, right now, it’s 5.1 —

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Yes.

THE PRESIDENT:  — and that was just the other day, Mike.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.

THE PRESIDENT:  Some reporter named — I think his name was Jonathan Karl, right?  Who’s a very nice — actually, a very nice guy.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  One month ago, Mr. President, we had done a total of 80,000 tests nationwide.

THE PRESIDENT:  And now we’re 5.1

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  As of today, because of the partnership you forged, because of the support of leaders gathered here and governors around the country, 5.1 million Americans tested.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, and actually, I wanted to tell you this: Honduras just called, and they are in a quagmire because they don’t have good testing, and they asked us to help them with their testing.  We will.  They’ve been helping us very much on the border.  Our southern border is setting record lows for people coming through our southern border.  We have that really in good shape.

In addition, we’re now up to our 170th mile.  We want to get up to 450 early in the year, early — by the end of this year.  But basically, early next year, we’ll be up to 450.  Maybe even soon than that.  And ultimately, what we’ve done on the wall is incredible.

The amount of — and I can say this to John from Texas — John Cornyn — the numbers are incredible, in terms of coming across.  We’ve stopped it.  And that 170-mile stretch where we have the wall, it’s like — it’s like a different world.  People used to just drive right across and nobody could do anything about it.  Now we have a tremendous, powerful wall there, and it’s been — it’s been incredible, because a country needs to have borders.  And you don’t have borders if you have people pouring in by the tens of thousands.  And we have totally stopped it.  So it’s been — it’s been a great thing.

So we’re going to sign this right now.  Before I do, I think I’ll ask the Vice President if he’d like to say anything, and maybe some of the people in the room.  They’ve all been very instrumental in this, and they’ve been great friends of our country.

Mike, please.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Well, thank you, Mr. President.  And thanks to your leadership, the leadership of the members of the House and Senate who are gathered here, and frankly, the bipartisan support that we’ve enjoyed in this effort, more help is on the way.  Small businesses will be able to keep even more Americans on the payroll while our nation makes our way through the coronavirus.

And critical funding for hospitals, Mr. President —

THE PRESIDENT:  Right.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  — you said earlier in the week — we are encouraging states around the country to restart elective surgery wherever possible, even on a county-by-county basis.  Additional funding for hospitals is here and additional funding for testing.  We’ll be reviewing those resources in a conference call with governors today.

But I want to join you in thanking all of the members of the House and Senate who are here, and frankly, all of the — all the members in both political parties who have continued to provide the support you’ve called for, for the American people, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT:  It’s been really amazing, hasn’t it?

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  It has.

THE PRESIDENT:  So what was the vote in the Senate?

REPRESENTATIVE SCALISE:   385 to 5.

THE PRESIDENT:  What was it?

REPRESENTATIVE SCALISE:  About 385 to 5.

THE PRESIDENT:  There — there it was.  And what about the Senate?

SENATOR SULLIVAN:  Unanimous.

THE PRESIDENT:  And then they’ll criticize me, the Democrats, for doing the bill.  I said, “But you voted for it.”  Well, that doesn’t matter.

Dan, do you have anything to say?

SENATOR SULLIVAN:  Yes, sir, Mr. President.  And I first want to thank you and your team — you, the Vice President, the Secretary of the Treasury — literally working around the clock.  Everybody notices that.  We certainly notice it in Alaska.  We really appreciate it.

You know, my state has a lot of tough, resilient people.  Your grandfather is a part of that legacy, in terms of the great state of Alaska.

But, you know, some of our key industries — oil and gas, the energy sector, the fishing community, the tourism community — they’re facing tough times.  But this bill is going to help and your administration, Mr. Vice President and Mr. President, are doing so much to help those sectors.  So I just want to thank you on behalf of the people I represent.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Dan, very much.

Steve?

REPRESENTATIVE SCALISE:  Thank you, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, for the leadership and for calling on Congress to pass this bill — the bill you’re about to sign.  This is going to put another 300-plus billion dollars in the Paycheck Protection Program.  This has been a lifeline not only to small businesses, but — I know you’re well aware — you’ve saved over 30 million jobs just with the first tranche of that money that went out.  Over 30 million people are on the payroll today that would have been unemployed.

We just saw another 4.4 [million] Americans that went on the unemployment rolls.  This is going to save probably another 30 million people from going on unemployment.  They’ll be able to stay in their jobs.  Those small businesses will still be alive so that they can come back when we start opening the economy safely, to be able to come back.

We see all of these industries distressed — the oil and gas industry, ag industry, restaurants.  Everybody wants to start focusing on how to reopen the economy in a safer, smarter way.  I appreciate your leadership.  This bill is going to be a lifeline, again, to millions more people that will be able to stay on the payroll of their companies.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Steve.

Kevin, please.

LEADER MCCARTHY:  Yes, sir.  First of all, I want to thank all those on the frontline.  I want to thank those in the medical community; the truck drivers; the farmers who are providing the food, making sure it’s safe in America; and those even in the stores.  What you’re doing, this country is very grateful for.

I know I was with the President the other day and I was thanking him, and he was telling me, “No.”  What he’s watching across this country are that people are making those sacrifices.  And the example that you are showing every day, being in at work, is an example that America wants to see.  That we know, as Americans, we’ll get through this.  We’ll overcome this and we’ll be stronger.

We had a stronger economy than we’ve ever had before, prior to a virus that came from a distant land from a country that lied to us.  We would never have to experience this.  But this leadership is going to make a difference.

And what you’re doing right here — I want to give a little special thanks to the SBA and to the Secretary.

ADMINISTRATOR CARRANZA:  Thank you.

LEADER MCCARTHY:  Because we designed this in a time of need.  And when you just look at the data, 74 percent of that money at the very beginning went to com- — went to businesses that had $60,000 or fewer in a payroll per month.

Those are the businesses we know that make decisions around a kitchen table.  And your action early on, on April 7th, that said it’s going to need more money, you were right.  I think those in politics that held it up just for a political purpose owe this country an apology.

And today, you’re going to sign something that you created that’s going to make a fundamental difference for the rest of us.  But thank you for your actions (inaudible).

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much, Kevin.  It’s going to help a lot of people.  That, I can say.

Jovita, good job you’re doing.

ADMINISTRATOR CARRANZA:  Thank you very much, President.

THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead.

ADMINISTRATOR CARRANZA:  Appreciate that, kindly.

THE PRESIDENT:  Want to say something?

ADMINISTRATOR CARRANZA:  Of course.

THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead.

ADMINISTRATOR CARRANZA:  Your strong leadership really has propelled the motivation, the energy, the stability, and the tenacity of the Small Business Administration.  And every small business that we’ve been able to touch in some way — whether it’s answering a question, processing a loan, guaranteeing a loan, the fact that we have over $700 billion committed at this point to small businesses is herculean.

And it would not have happened if it had not been for your strong leadership galvanizing the left and the right and everything in between to make these funds possible for our small business.

Now SBA is focused on economic recovery, and we’re very focused in on the small businesses.  And we’re going to meet them at the corner to start bringing back their employees, hiring new ones, and become very, very strong in the new economy, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  And I assume that SBA has never done numbers like this.  This is record-breaking stuff (inaudible).

ADMINISTRATOR CARRANZA:  Sir, we’ve done 14 years of loan processing and guaranteeing in 14 days.

SENATOR SULLIVAN:  Unheard of.

ADMINISTRATOR CARRANZA:  And it’s like an ATM machine with over 400 billion dollars and 30 million small businesses waiting in line.

THE PRESIDENT:  It’s been incredible.

ADMINISTRATOR CARRANZA:  So, thank you.

THE PRESIDENT:  And, as you know, Harvard is giving back the money.  Stanford is giving back the money.  Everyone is giving it back.  And in many cases, they never got — we’re talking about some of the bigger companies that we felt, after we looked at some numbers, that they shouldn’t have taken it.  And Steve maybe will say something about that.

But I’ll go back to John Cornyn first.  Please, John.

SENATOR CORNYN:  Thank you, Mr. President.  You know, these are extraordinary times and it tests all of us.  And I want to congratulate you and your administration on meeting this challenge head on.

We’ve got — this virus is trying to teach us a lot of lessons that we’ve got to learn about our supply chains —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.

SENATOR CORNYN:  — about the source of these viruses, which create these pandemics.

But, you know, my state, like Senator Sullivan’s state, has got the double — double whammy.  One is the coronavirus and the other is the oil and gas industry has been decimated.

And so I appreciate your willingness to meet with the leaders of the industry, Secretary Mnuchin, and the good work that’s being done at Treasury to stand up this economic stabilization lending facility that hopefully will provide a lifeline to this industry.

But in the end, I think we all realize that we need to safely find a way to begin to reopen our economy.  Because the biggest problem the industry has is a lack of global demand because the rural economy has been shut down.

THE PRESIDENT:  That’s true.  That’s true.

SENATOR CORNYN:  So, we’ll get through this together.  But I just want to extend my appreciation to you and your administration for your leadership and your partnership with all of our mayors, our governors, and those of us who work in Washington.

THE PRESIDENT:  Good job.  Good job.

Well, we have some — one of the — one of great ones.  One of our really good friends.

Lynne [Liz], go ahead.

REPRESENTATIVE CHENEY:  Thank you very much, Mr. President.  I appreciate that.  Well, it’s an honor to be here for the signing of this really important piece of legislation.  I also know that you join me and we all join in saying thank you, expressing our gratitude to doctors and nurses, the healthcare professionals who are out there on the frontlines and taking care of people.  Our prayers to those families that have lost people to this horrible virus.

And also, I really appreciate very much the focus on remembering where the virus came from and the extent to which the Chinese Communist Party, the government of China, was very much responsible for an action that allowed this virus, that caused this virus, frankly, to be spread around the world because they were not honest, because they were not forthcoming, because they allowed travel outside of Wuhan to the rest of the world.  And they’ve got to be held accountable.

And I know there will be a lot of support on both sides of the aisle, Mr. President, in Congress to do just that.

THE PRESIDENT:  I understand.

Steve?

SECRETARY MNUCHIN:  Thank you, Mr. President.  This is the fourth bill you’ve now signed to help with the coronavirus.  And this is very important.  And I want to thank the Senate and the House for working with us to get this done.  And I want to thank the American workers and the American business for all their hard work.

And as the President said, this is really a program that’s designed for small business.  And we put out some clarification yesterday that some of the bigger businesses that have taken out loans should return the money.  We appreciate that they’ve done that.  There will be a surveillance around this if they don’t.

But I can tell you the many stories I’ve already received from very small businesses, some of them that have 5 or 10 people, and the meaningful impact that this has had.  And I know that the additional funds are going to make an enormous difference to over another 30 million workers.  So between the original funds and these funds, it will be over 60 million workers, close to half of the private payroll.

Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you, Mr. Vice President.

THE PRESIDENT:  Great.  Thank you.  Thank you very much, Steve.

Roy?

SENATOR BLUNT:  Mr. President, great to be with you.  Your team is reacting and moving in a way faster than anybody has ever seen.  What the Secretary has done in small business is unbelievable.  This is a small agency that has done years of work in just a few days.

The load that Secretary Mnuchin has taken on and the way that they’ve been able to respond to get individual direct payments out — unbelievable.  There’s always going to be some gaps in that, but now they’re stepping back and doing exactly what you need to do.  But the amount of work that’s been done here is incredible.

I talked to the mayor of Jefferson City, our state capital, yesterday, who’s the second-generation owner of the Hallmark store on High Street in Jefferson City.  And she said, without the loan — she said the minute she got the notice that she got the loan, that was the difference in whether her business was going to survive or not.

And then one other thing I’ll mention on the testing element: We’ve worked closely with you to try to design that testing to do what you think needs to be done in terms of the delivery of how we’ve attacked this virus.  About half the money goes immediately to states and to local community health centers and rural health centers.  The rest is going to be used to try to — in a “Shark Tank” kind of atmosphere, with public and private partners working together, to try not only decide what new tests can be available in a quicker way, but also how we can encourage faster production of those tests than they would ever be able to do by themselves.  And that direction came right out of this office, between you and the Chief of Staff.  And I’m glad the bill reflects that.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, thank you, Roy.  Great job, Roy.  Appreciate it very much.

So, I just spoke with Tim Cook of Apple, and he would like us to do things.  He’s going to be spending tremendous amounts of money in our country.  He’s going to be bringing back tens of billions of dollars into our country.  He’s going to build.  And he feels that we’re going to have a “V.”  You know what the “V” is.  We’re talking about the “U” or the “V,” or maybe a flat line.  But he thinks it’s going to be a “V.”  That’s his own impression.  And he’s had some pretty good impressions.  He gets it.

I just want to thank everybody that’s here today.  I want to thank, most importantly, all of the people that have suffered so greatly for a reason that should have never happened.  This should have never happened to our country.  This should have never happened to 184 other countries either.  This was a disgrace that it was allowed to happen.

So, with that, I’ll sign the bill.

(The bill is signed.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay.  Thank you, very much.  How about we’ll give one to Roy, for a change.  We’ll give one to Roy.  Don’t worry, you’re all going to get it.

Okay?  Thank you all very much.  Hold it one second.  Very importantly, we’re going to give these out.  Okay?

Liz, you’ll give them out, around.

REPRESENTATIVE CHENEY:  Yeah.

Q    Mr. President, 50,000 people have died today.  You’re saying that you want credit for what the government has done.  Do you take any responsibility for these 50,000 deaths that have happened in this country?

THE PRESIDENT:  I think we’ve done a great job.  As you know, minimal numbers were — minimal numbers were going to be 100,000 people.  Minimal numbers were going to be 100,000 people.  And we’re going to be, hopefully, far below that.  If we didn’t take quick action, you could have lost many millions of people.

So we’re really being given a lot of credit for a lot of people.  I’m not looking for credit for myself, but I am looking for credit for people in the federal government that have done such a great job, and for the doctors and nurses and everybody else.

Please.

Q    Mr. President, do you have any comment on Rick Bright, who has said he’s going to file a whistleblower complaint?

THE PRESIDENT:  I don’t — I don’t the gentleman.  I’m sorry.  I don’t know him.  I don’t know how you sign a whistleblower complaint when — is that a whistleblower complaint you’re talking about?  How do you sign a whistleblower complaint everybody knows who he is?  I know nothing about him.

Q    He says he was retaliated against because he refused to promote hydroxychloroquine.

THE PRESIDENT:  That, I don’t know.  Again, I don’t know anything about it.  I don’t know —

Q    Did you ever ask scientists —

THE PRESIDENT:  I don’t know —

Q    — to promote it?

THE PRESIDENT:  Easy, easy.  Just take it nice and easy.  I don’t know anything about him.  Until yesterday, I never heard of the gentleman.  Okay?

Q    Have you asked anyone to look into what happened to him?

THE PRESIDENT:  What?

Q      Have you asked anyone to look into the circumstances surrounding?

THE PRESIDENT:  I have not yet.  At some point, I will.  I guess they moved him to a different group.

Q    Mr. President, what price China should pay for spreading this virus and covering it up and lying about it?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we’re looking into it.  We’re studying it.  We’re investigating it, and we’ll see what happens.  But it is something that should’ve been stopped early on.  It could’ve been stopped easily in China, and we don’t understand why they didn’t do it.  So we’re looking into it.  We’re not happy about it.

Q    Why don’t — why don’t you know about —

Q    Mr. President, could you —

THE PRESIDENT:  Who are you with?  Who are you with?

Q    I’m with NPR.  Ayesha Rascoe.  I’m with NPR.

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay.  Go ahead.  You’re not up.  Go ahead, please.  Question.

Q    Do you support any money for the Postal Service?

SECRETARY MNUCHIN:  So, I can comment on that, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead.  Postal Service.

SECRETARY MNUCHIN:  So, we authorized in the last CARE Act over $10 billion of a loan.  My team is already actively working on that with the Postal Service, if they need the money.  And we’re dealing with that.

THE PRESIDENT:  The Postal Service is a joke because they’re handing out packages for Amazon and other Internet companies.  And every time they bring a package, they lose money on it.  So Amazon and other Internet companies and delivery companies are dropping all of their — not all of them, but a big portion of packages, and whatever else they’re doing, into a post office.  And the post office is supposed to deliver the packages, and they lose a lot of money.

The post office should raise the price of a package by approximately four times.  Because they don’t raise them.  For some reason — these people have been in there a long time.  But for some reason, they’re very cozy with some of these companies, and they don’t raise the price of a package.  And if they raise the price of a package, like they should, four or five times that’s what it should be — or let Amazon build their own post office, which would be an impossible thing to do because the post office is massive and serves every little piece of the country.  The post office, if they raised the price of a package by approximately four times, it’d be a whole new ball game.

But they don’t want to raise because they don’t want to insult Amazon and they don’t want to insult other companies, perhaps, that they like.  The post office should raise the price of the packages to the companies, not to the people — to the companies.  And if they did that, it would be a whole different story.

Do you agree with that, Steve?

SECRETARY MNUCHIN:  I do.  And, actually, we are going to put certain criteria for our postal reform program as part of the loan, and we’re looking forward to — the board is — recruiting a new Postmaster General and doing postal reform.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I’ll go a step further.  If they don’t raise the price of the service they give — which is a tremendous service and they do a great job, and the postal workers are fantastic, but this thing is losing billions of dollars; it has for years.  Because they don’t want to insult — for whatever reason, you could imagine — they don’t want to insult Amazon and these other groups.

If they don’t raise the price, I’m not signing anything.  So they’ll raise the price so that they become maybe even profitable, but so they lose much less money.  Okay?  And if they don’t do it, I’m not signing anything and I’m not authorizing you to do anything.

Q    Mr. President, can you clarify your comments about injections of disinfectant?  They’re quite provocative.

THE PRESIDENT:  No, I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you, just to see what would happen.

Now, disinfectant, for doing this maybe on the hands, would work.  And I was asking the question of the gentleman who was there yesterday — Bill — because when they say that something will last three or four hours or six hours, but if the sun is out or if they use disinfectant, it goes away in less than a minute.  Did you hear about this yesterday?

But I was asking a sarcastic — and a very sarcastic question to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside.  But it does kill it, and it would kill it on the hands, and that would make things much better.  That was done in the form of a sarcastic question to the reporters.

Okay.

Q    But you were asking your medical experts to look into it.  Were you being sarcastic with them?

THE PRESIDENT:  No.  No, no, no, no.  To look into whether or not sun and disinfectant on the hands — but whether or not sun can help us.  Because, I mean, he came in yesterday and he said they’ve done a big study.  This is a study.  This isn’t where he hasn’t done it.  This is where they’ve come in with a final report that sun has a massive impact, negatively, on this virus.  In other words, it does not live well with humidity, and it doesn’t live well with sun, sunlight, heat.  It doesn’t live well with heat and sun and disinfectant.  And that’s what I brought out.  And I thought it was clear.

Okay?  Anything else?

Q    Mr. President, could you comment a little bit on what you’re considering right now for helping the oil and gas industry?  That was something that was just mentioned.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah, I want to help that industry.  That industry got unnecessarily hurt by massive amounts of oil being — being produced by very big countries — oil-producing countries.  And they got carried away.  And I got involved with those two countries to have them make peace with each other.  But by the time we get involved, all of a sudden, I mean, they have billions of barrels that — they never saw anything like it.  Every tanker is loaded up with oil, sitting out on the ocean.  Oil is less than water.  Nobody has ever seen anything like it.

Now, in many respects for our country, automobiles and airplanes and all of the things that you have to do with the airlines — we’re trying to make the airlines work again, and we will.  We just provided financing for them, which was great.  We’re going to keep our airlines and all those employees totally intact.

So, in some ways, fuel cost is very low.  But I’m an energy person.  I love the energy business.  We’re energy independent.  We’re going to stay that way.

We’re also filling up, as you know, John, our National Strategic Reserves.  And we’re filling them up like never before.  And we’re, frankly, getting very good prices — okay? — as we should.  Very good prices.  So we’re filling up the reserve; that’s 75 million barrels.  And we’re going to have that filled up pretty soon.  So it’ll be filled for the first time in a long time.  And we’re doing it at a very, very low cost.  So, it’s good.

Now, it’ll come back when the virus is gone.  They lost 40 percent of their market because of the virus, in all fairness to even the producers and even the countries.  They lost 40 percent of their market because people aren’t driving automobiles; they’re not doing anything.  So, all of a sudden, they’re not flying on airplanes.  The airline business was essentially shut down.  So all of this massive amount of fuel — and this is all over the world; this isn’t here.  This is in every — virtually, every country.

I’d probably say — as you know, I’ve been talking about 184 countries.  It’s probably more than that now.  A hundred and eighty-four.  A friend of mine said — a very sophisticated friend said, “I never knew you had 184 countries.”  We actually have more than that.  But 184 countries, that we know of, have been affected by this.

So, the oil business lost 40 to 50 percent of their market.  And that was — you know, who would’ve seen a thing like that coming?  As soon as this comes back, and with the cutting, the energy business will come back and it’ll come back strong.  So, we’re working.

The energy business is very important to me, and we’re going to build it up.  This really hurt the energy business as much as any other business, because it totally knocked out — the supply kept coming.  And, by the way, there was a lot of oil where this hit.  Before it hit, there was a lot of oil.  Prices were pretty low, which is a very good thing.  But then we got hit by this, and it was devastating to the energy business all over the world.

Q    Just a quick follow-up.

THE PRESIDENT:  So we will be able to — once this straightens out and once you get some demand, and then you’re going to reduce the supply a little bit, it’ll equalize and it’s going to be great again.  We’ll — we will make the energy business great again.

Q    Can you, sir —

Q    Mr. President —

THE PRESIDENT:  And we want to remain independent.  We’re independent now.  We’re totally independent on energy.  We want to keep it that way.

Go ahead.

Q    Can you or Secretary Mnuchin perhaps clarify whether the government is considering taking stakes in energy companies?  Equity stakes.

SECRETARY MNUCHIN:  Well, the President has asked me to work with the Secretary of Energy, and we’re looking at a whole bunch of alternatives.  It would be premature for me to comment on any one of them.  But the President has asked us to look at the range of alternatives.

Q    Is that one of the alternative?

SECRETARY MNUCHIN:  It can.  You can assume that’s one of the alternatives, but there’s many of them.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, one of the alternatives we can think about, Steve — and just in sitting here watching — we could buy — you know, the United States is the largest user of oil.  We could buy oil at a great price into the future.  That gives them the infusion they need, and we have oil at a great price into the future.  So that’s something I’d like you to think about.

SECRETARY MNUCHIN:  It is, Mr. President —

THE PRESIDENT:  Likewise —

SECRETARY MNUCHIN:  — as you’ve suggested.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.  Likewise, I told Steve we’re the biggest user of the airlines — the United States government.  And one of the ways we can help the airlines is buy tickets at a very large discount, maybe 50 percent off or maybe more.

And you buy into four or five years’ worth of tickets, and you infuse them with some cash.  And in the meantime, we’re flying the people of our country for, you know, a fraction of the cost that it would be if the — you know, when the airlines get back.

They will get back, but — so we’re thinking, in terms of — as additional, because the airlines are well set right now.  But as an additional incentive, where we buy tickets in advance at a very big discount, which I’ve liked really from the beginning.

And we’re not up there — look, the fact is that the airlines are going to be fine the way it is now, but I like that as an additional help for the airlines.  I like it both ways.  I like it for us to.  We’re the larger user of the — largest user of the airlines.  So you buy tickets.  I don’t know.  It sounds good — right? — if we get a good discount.

REPRESENTATIVE CHENEY:  I appreciate, Wyoming appreciates what you’re doing for the energy industry, as well, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, Wyoming is great.  They’re great.  And they’re lucky to have you.

SENATOR SULLIVAN:  Mr. President, could I make a comment on energy, sir?  Sorry to interrupt.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yes, please.

SENATOR SULLIVAN:  But, first, I want to thank you and your administration.  Your involvement on the OPEC deal was incredible, vital.  It wouldn’t have happened without what you did.  Your whole team has been very focused on energy.

I do think one issue that a number of us are starting to have concerns about is there are big American financial institutions that the federal government has helped many times — they’re going to do well with regard to facilitating some of the CARES Act stuff — they’re starting to discriminate against American energy companies, discriminate against investment in my state, in Alaska.  And I think it’s going to be really important.  And these big —

THE PRESIDENT:  I don’t like that.  That’s —

SENATOR SULLIVAN:  These big Wall Street banks that want to —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.

SENATOR SULLIVAN:  — that want the federal government to help support them and then they discriminate against a critical sector of the U.S. economy.  By the way, the sector — the 2008-2009 recession, it really drove us out of our recession.

THE PRESIDENT:  Right.

SENATOR SULLIVAN:  I don’t think they should be allowed to do that, sir, and I know you have concerns about it too.

THE PRESIDENT:  I like the idea of looking into that.  You’re right.  You know, that got where they were pushed by the radical left, and so they’re afraid of the radical left.  Shouldn’t be afraid of the radical left.  Very nice people — AOC-plus-three and all of her friends.  But you shouldn’t be afraid of them.  You should reason with them.  And if they don’t reason, you do what’s right.  You cannot be discriminating against these great energy companies.  And there is — I’ve heard that from them.  That’s very hard.

SENATOR SULLIVAN:  Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  One of the banks, I think they said, “We want to be out of out of energy by 20- — 2050.”  That’s a long time.  But they want to be out of energy.  What’s that all about – they want to be out of energy?

So, you know, we’re blessed in this country because we’re sitting on top of tremendous wealth.  Very few countries have that kind of wealth.  We’re bigger than Saudi Arabia, we’re bigger than Russia, we’re bigger than any other country, in terms of our energy.

And a lot of things like the Paris Accord — the Paris Accord basically took your wealth away.  It didn’t give you the advantage.  And I said, “I won’t sign it,” because it took the wealth of this country away because they didn’t want us to use our energy.  They didn’t want us to use our — our great asset.

We have tremendous wealth.  You know, one of the interesting things: If you look at Iran and you look at Saudi Arabia, and you look at the big, vast waterways that we patrol — years and years and years, gratis, for nothing, so that other people got rich, so that we could get oil out of there.  But so that other people got rich.  We never got anything.  Now we get things for it.

But we don’t have ships very much in there anymore.  And with all of the conflict and all of the things — they kept saying, “Where are the American ships?”  We have so much energy now.  We’re sitting on so much.  And it’s happened, really, over the last three years, three and a half years.  We’ve (inaudible).

SENATOR SULLIVAN:  Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  One thing that happened great, John — I mean, if — if you look — John, you were even in favor of it because you’re an energy person — but we helped Alaska.  But we really helped the United States with ANWR, for Dan.  They did a fantastic job.

Ronald Reagan tried to get it approved; couldn’t do it.  Every President tried to get ANWR, and they couldn’t do it.  I got it approved.

SENATOR SULLIVAN:  Yes, sir.  Great.

THE PRESIDENT:  People don’t even talk about it, and that’s okay.  They don’t have to talk about it.  That’s why I talk about it.  (Laughter.)  Because nobody else will.

SENATOR SULLIVAN:  We love it in Alaska, I’ll tell you that.

THE PRESIDENT:  But ANWR is perhaps the largest find in the world.  Right?  It could be.

SENATOR SULLIVAN:  Could be.

THE PRESIDENT:  But it’s certainly one of them.

SENATOR SULLIVAN:  Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  But it’s been talked about for years, probably one of the — maybe the largest find anywhere in the world.  And we got it approved a year ago.  And you’re working on it, and it’s incredible.

But Ronald Reagan could not do it.  He said that was one of his big disappointments.  He could not get ANWR approved.  They couldn’t get it through.  And we got it through.  We got it passed.  And that was a great achievement for everybody in this room, and it was a great achievement, actually, for the two of you, the — the big oil guys.  Right?  It was a big — and I have to say, these senators and the people in this room, they love energy.  Not that they love it; they love the jobs it produces and they like what it represents.  And it gives us total independence.  So it’s very important.

Okay.  Any other question?

Q    Mr. President, just to follow up on energy: Are you satisfied with the current output by the Russians and the Saudis, or do you want them further to cut production?

THE PRESIDENT:  I — I’d wish you’d — because you have the mask on.  So it’s a — (reporter removes face mask.)  Yeah, that’s great.  Just for a second.

He’s not worried.  See the man in front of you?

Q    It’s okay.

THE PRESIDENT:  Are you worried about her?  Are you worried about her?  He’s not worried.  Look, he’s protected.

Go ahead.

Q    All right.  Are you satisfied with the current cut from the Saudis and the Russians, or do you want them to further cut the production?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, it could be that they further cut.  I think it’s going to be natural though, really, isn’t it?  It’s going to be natural at this point.  So I think I got them to cut maybe — what would you say?

REPRESENTATIVE SCALISE:  Nine, nine and half million barrels.

THE PRESIDENT:  I would say — well, they say 10.  They say 10 million, but I think it’s 15 million barrels.  I even heard 20 million.  But, you know, it’s going to be natural.  And in all fairness, Texas and Oklahoma, and if you go to North Dakota and all of our places, it’s going to be natural.  Canada is cutting.  They’ve got to cut.   Right now, I mean, they’ve got to cut.

And it’s — it’s — you know, supply and demand is a beautiful thing.  But what happened is, one day, all of our demand just — not all — 50 percent of our demand disappeared with this virus.  They say from 40 to 50 percent.

So you’re producing, and it’s going good.  Price is good.  Price is good enough for the companies and really good for the countries — it was really good — and the consumer.  And then one day — in one day, it stopped.  So it’s, you know — well, I guess you could always say it’s somebody’s fault, but it happened.  Something happened that nobody thought would ever happen.

Okay.

Q    Just a couple more on hydroxychloroquine.

THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead.

Q    Have you or Secretary Azar pressured or asked scientists in the administration to promote it?  And are you —

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I never spoke to a scientist.  But I will tell you this: I did speak with the President of Honduras just a little while ago, and I didn’t bring it up; he brought it up.  He said they use the hydroxychloroquine.  And he said the results were so incredible with hydroxychloroquine.  This happened an hour ago.

I just spoke to him, President of Honduras, and he said — and I guess we made some available to them or whatever.  He was thanking me.  And I said, “How has the result been?”  And he said it’s been incredible.

Now, I don’t know — he’s not a doctor, I don’t think.  But he’s — he thanked me, and he said the results have been very good.

So you hear it both ways.  I’ve seen all negative, other than the other day.  I saw some study, which wasn’t good.  But I saw very positive coming out of France and coming out of a lot.

But here’s the President of Honduras saying how good it was.  I mean, I didn’t even bring up the subject.  He brought it up.  So the study has to be there.

Q    Are you taking it?

THE PRESIDENT:  Look, I’m not a doctor.  The study has to be done.  And maybe it’s helping.  If it helps, it’s great.  If it doesn’t help, don’t do it.  It does work with, as you know, malaria, lupus, et cetera.  And it’s a very powerful drug.  And I would say this: If it works, I think everybody would be in favor of it.

But check with him, call him, the President of Honduras — a really nice guy.  I just left him — just on the phone.  You know what they needed?  Ventilators.  He said, “Can you give?”  I said, “We can help you,” because we’re making — we’re going to have a hundred and — we’re going to have 110,000 made in a very short period of time.  And they’ve been making them by the thousands.

Mike Pence went out to a factory in Wisconsin just the other day, three days ago.  And he came back; he could not believe how incredible the factory was.  They’re making thousands of ventilators every couple of months.  Thousands.

And company — and countries are calling us now: France, Italy.  We’re sending to Italy, France, Spain.  We are making thousands and thousands of very high-grade ventilators.  There’s a big difference between high grade and not high grade when it comes to what those do.

And we’re sending them to countries as they call, as they need them.  We’re sending them all over the world.  And when we asked the governors, “Do you need ventilators?” — the answer is “no.”  In fact, New York was nice.  They sent some to — I think they sent them to Massachusetts.

Yeah, please.  Jeff.

Q    Mr. President, just to follow up on the comments from yesterday, you said you were being sarcastic, but some people may have misunderstood you.  Do you want to just clarify to America?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I wish they wouldn’t — I wish they wouldn’t —

Q    Do you want to —

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I think I did.

Q    Can you just clarify to Americans —

THE PRESIDENT:  But I do think this —

Q    — that you don’t want people to ingest that?

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.  I do think that disinfectant on the hands could have a very good effect.

Now, Bill is going back to check that in the laboratory.  You know, it’s an amazing laboratory, by the way.  It’s amazing the work they do.  So he’s going to check.

Because a hard surface — this is a hard surface, I guess, maybe depending on whose hands you’re talking about, right?  But this is a hard surface.  And disinfectant — the disinfectant has an unbelievable — it wipes it out.  You know, you saw it: Sun and heat and humidity wipe it out.

And this is from tests.  They’ve been doing these tests for, you know, a number of months.  And the result — so then I said, “Well, how do we do it inside the body or even outside the body, with the hands?”  And disinfectant, I think, would work.  He thinks would work.  But you use it when you’re — when you’re doing your hands.  I guess that’s one of the reasons they say wash your hands.  But whether it’s washing your hands or disinfectant on your hands, it’s very good.

So they’re going to start looking at that.  And there is a way of, you know, if light — if sun — sun itself — that sun has a tremendous impact on it.  It kills it like in one minute.  It goes from what was it?  Hours to, like, one minute.  It’s dead.

So I said, “You got to go back and look.”  But I’d like them now to look as it pertains to the human body, not just sitting on a railing or sitting on a wall.  I’d like them to look as it pertains — because maybe there’s something there.  They have to work with the doc — I’m not a doctor.  They have to work with the doctors.  But maybe there is something to light and the human body and helping people that are dying.  Okay?

Q    But just to clarify — just to clarify that, sir: Are you — are you encouraging Amer- — you’re not encouraging Americans to ingest —

THE PRESIDENT:  No, of course — no.  Of course.

Q    — disinfectant?

THE PRESIDENT:  That was — interior wise, it’s said sarcastically.  It was — it was put in the form of a question to a group of extraordinarily hostile people, namely the fake news media.

Okay.  So —

Q    Some doctors felt they needed to clarify that after your comments.

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, of course.  All they had to do was see it was — just, you know, the way it was asked.  I was — I was looking at you.

Q    No, you weren’t, sir.  I wasn’t there yesterday.  (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT:  I know.  I know.

Q    You were looking at Dr. Birx.

THE PRESIDENT:  What’s that?

Q    You were looking at Dr. Birx.

THE PRESIDENT:  I was looking at Bill.  I was looking at the doctor.  I was looking at some of the reporters.  I don’t know if you were there.  Were you there?  I don’t think you were there.

Q    I was there, and I watched you ask her.

THE PRESIDENT:  No, not you.  Not you.  Not you.  You were there.  You — if you’re there, I never forget.  You were —

Q    I wasn’t there yesterday, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  You were not?

Q    No, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah, I didn’t think you were there.

Okay.

Q    Just, Mr. President — Mr. President, I know that you continue to say — you’re obviously —

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay, hold it one second.

Q    Yeah.

THE PRESIDENT:  Any other questions from any other people?

Okay, thank you very much, everybody.  Thank you.

END

12:53 P.M. EDT

Remarks

Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence,
and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing

Healthcare

Issued on: April 23, 2020

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

5:48 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  Later this evening, we expect the House to pass the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act.  I’m grateful that Congress is answering my call to deliver these additional $320 billion in relief for the American worker and for small businesses.

At a time when many Americans are enduring significant economic challenges, this bill will help small businesses to keep millions of workers on the payroll.  You see states are starting to open up now, and it’s very exciting to see.  I think it’s very awe-inspiring.  We’re coming out of it, and we’re coming out of it well.

And we’re — really, I’m very happy the governors have been — the governors, really, have been doing a really good job working with us, and it’s — it’s, really, pretty impressive to see.  I’ve spoken to numerous leaders of countries over the last 48 hours, and they are saying we’re leading the way.  We’re really leading the way in so many different ways.

I’m also very pleased that Harvard — as you know, it’s Harvard and Stanford and Princeton and numerous other universities and colleges, and also large businesses have sent funds back to us.  And in some cases, I stopped funds that I looked at.  And we are pleased to report that the funds have either not gone out or it’s about $350 million, and they’ve either not gone out or we’ve renegotiated it and they’re not getting them.

So — and it’s — in a couple of cases, they’re sending them back and sending them back immediately.  So I think it was very nice.  I want to thank Harvard in particular.  They acted very quickly and decisively.  And they agreed, when they heard the facts, that they should not be getting it.  So we appreciate it very much from Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and other institutions.

The bill also includes $30 billion to support small lending institutions serving distressed communities, helping countless African American and Hispanic American small businesses.

As we continue our battle against the virus, the data and facts on the ground suggest that we’re making great progress.  In 23 states, new cases have declined in the peak — week.  Forty percent of American counties have also seen a rapid decline in new cases.  Forty-six states reported drop in patients showing coronavirus-like symptoms.  That’s a big number.

To keep America gaining momentum, every citizen needs to maintain the vigilance.  And we all understand that very well; we’ve gone over it many, many times.  This includes practicing good hygiene, maintaining social distance, and the voluntary use of face covering.

A safe and phased reopening of our economy — it’s very exciting, but it does not mean that we are letting down our guard at all, in any way.  On the contrary, continued diligence is an essential part of our strategy to get our country back to work, to take our country back.  We’re winning this, and we’re going to win it, and we’re going to keep watching.  We’re going to watch very closely for the invisible enemy.

With each passing day, we’re learning more and more about this enemy.  The scientists at DHS have released a report offering a number of insights about how the virus reacts to different temperatures, climates, and surfaces.  The findings confirm that the virus survives better in cold or in drier environments and does less well in warmer and more humid environments.

I have to say that, very excitingly, we’re going to have somebody up; Bill will be up in just a little while.  It was a great report you gave.  And he’s going to be talking about how the virus reacts in sunlight.  Wait until you hear the numbers.  You won’t even believe them.

U.S. trials of the COVID-19 have been going on and have been approved in the United States, Germany, UK, and China.  That’s big news.  And we’re — a lot of trials are going on.  We have a lot of great, brilliant minds working on this, both from the standpoint of a vaccine and therapeutics.

We must be careful in all conditions, but we will — we will get this done.  We’re very close to a vaccine.  Unfortunately, we’re not very close to testing because when the testing starts, it takes a period of time.  But we’ll get it done.

And I want to thank the head of DHS Science and Technology, Bill Bryan, for what he’s going to be doing and what he’s going to be saying and the report that he’s about to give.  I think it’s going to be something that nobody has ever heard.  It’ll be brand-new information and very important information.

My administration continues to leverage the Defense Production Act to dramatically increase the manufacture and delivery of critical medical supplies.  We finalized three contracts to produce 39 million more N95 masks in 90 days.  And as you know, we’re also using a sterilization process.  Some great equipment that will sterilize the masks up to 20 times per mask.  So that’s like ordering 20 times more masks.  And it’s working very well.

We just want the hospitals and the institutions, where it is, to use it.  A lot of people don’t use it.  They’re so used to getting a new mask, they don’t want to use it.  They want to go and immediately get a new one.  We’re asking them to use the sterilization process.  Every bit as good — up to 20 times.  Think of that.

In addition to ramping up our domestic assembly lines, we also have airlifted nearly 750 million pieces of personal protective equipment into the United States through our Project Airbridge, which has been an incredible thing to watch.  It’s really a military operation.

The Vice President is now providing each governor with an exhaustive count[y]-by-county breakdown of the privately distributed personal protection.  And this is equipment and things that are incredible.  It’s personal protective equipment.  It’s incredible, and it’s all brand new and at the highest level.  We’re getting only the highest level.  And also, we’re looking at essential gear within their states, and it’s being delivered to different states quickly and as we speak.

This way, the governor should know exactly what’s being delivered through a private-sector supply chain within their states, as well as through the Project Airbridge.  We’re trying to get it immediately from the plane to the state.  When we can’t do that, we bring it into our facilities and get it to the governors.  And we’re getting them fast, and we’re notifying them very strongly so they know it’s there.  Governors can use this information to quickly ensure that they get materials where and when they are needed.

Today, I also want to extend my special thanks to our nation’s incredible county emergency management teams who have been working relentlessly for weeks around the clock, end on end, to serve their communities, help distribute critical supplies, and save countless American lives.  We salute these heroic officials on the frontlines.

As we continue to develop potential therapies, the FDA has recently begun a national effort to expand access to convalescent plasma donated from the blood of those who have recovered from the virus.  The blood of these donors contains antibodies that can potentially reduce the severity of the illness in those who are sick — and frankly, those that are very sick.  Nearly 3,000 patients are now enrolled in the Expanded Access Program, receiving transfusions nationwide.

And I want to thank all of the people that recovered, for what they’ve done.  They — as I said yesterday, they raise their hand when they barely can walk, and they’re saying, “I want to donate blood.  I want to donate whatever it is that you want, because we want to help people.”  It’s really quite incredible.

Convalescent plasma will also be used to manufacture a concentrated antibody treatment that does not have to be matched with a particular blood type.  This concentrated antibody treatment could be used as a preventative measure to keep healthcare workers and other high-risk populations from contracting the virus in the first place.  A very big deal.

Clinical trials of these products are slated to begin within weeks, and we can maybe have a fairly quick solution.  I urge Americans to get in there and keep doing what you’re doing, because again, we want those people recovering or recovered from coronavirus to contact their local blood and plasma donation center to learn how they can help.  And they’ve been so great, and I just appreciate it.

My administration has also partnered with leading — and we have really been establishing some great partnerships with leading technology companies and scientific journals to create a database of 52,000 scholarly articles on the virus that can be analyzed by artificial intelligence.

Top AI experts are now using this wealth of data to gain insights into potential therapies.  And we’re collaborating with tech firms, universities, and our national labs to harness American supercomputers in the search for treatments and vaccines.  That search is going on, and it’s being — I think you’ll see in the future — you’ll see it’s very successful.  Ultimately, it’ll be a tremendous success.  Great progress is being made at a rapid pace — a pace like no other.

We have every hope that with the full might and resources of American science and technology, and with the courage and devotion of the American people who have been so incredible, we will end this plague, and together we will restore the full measure of American strength and power and prosperity.

Our country is going to do fantastically well.  You see what’s going on.  There is a pent-up demand in our country to get it back right where it was and maybe even better, and that’s what’s going to happen.

So with that, I’d like to ask Mike Pence to come up — Vice President.  Say a few words please, Mike.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Mr. President.  And good afternoon.  Today, the White House Coronavirus Task Force met.  And while our hearts are with the families of those who have lost their life to the coronavirus and those who are struggling with serious illness today, our team, led by Dr. Deborah Birx, informs us that the data continues to show promising signs of progress.

The New York metro area, New Jersey, Connecticut, Detroit and New Orleans all appear to be past their peak.  And we are seeing consistent declines in hospitalization and cases in regions across the country.

Our only conclusion is that we’re getting there, America, because the American people have put into practice the President’s guidelines of social distancing because you’ve been listening and adhering to the guidance of state and local officials.  We are — we’re making — we’re making meaningful progress.  In a very real sense, sparing Americans to be exposed to the coronavirus and, no less extent, saving lives.

Our task force actually believes, Mr. President, that if we continue these mitigation efforts in the days ahead — as states implement their policies, including phased reopening — that we’ll preserve those gains.  We do believe, by early summer, we could be in a much better place as a nation with much of this coronavirus epidemic behind us.

Earlier today, we also had a conference call led by Secretary Ben Carson and leaders from HUD about the President’s announcement yesterday that he is repurposing the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council to focus on the impact of the coronavirus on minority communities.  Secretary Carson will convene the council tomorrow, and we’ll be reporting tomorrow afternoon on their progress.

We want to thank the more than 270 leaders of organizations dedicated to housing, homelessness, and improving the lives of people across our urban communities — not only for being with us today, for the way they have partnered with our administration and partnered with state and local officials to put the health of all of their constituencies first.

As the President mentioned, we’ll — you’ll receive a report that our task force received formally this week from Bill Bryan of the Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security.  He will outline, as the President said, encouraging news about the impact that heat and sunlight have on the coronavirus, which will increase the confidence that we feel about the coming summer.

On the subject of testing: At the present moment, we have reports of 4.93 million tests having been performed across America.  And encouraging news: As states have been engaging commercial labs at a higher level across the country, yesterday our commercial lab system did more than 100,000 tests in a single day.  So we’re beginning to activate all of the capacity.

And tomorrow, at the President’s direction, our task force will convene a conference call with all of the nation’s governors to talk about the progress that they are making on testing.  And we’re going to hear from governors about the practices that — and methods that they are employing to significantly increase testing following our briefing about capacity in laboratories this past Monday.

For instance, Governor Mike DeWine just announced that Ohio’s testing has been greatly expanded after the FDA approved Thermo Fisher’s new extraction reagent, saying, in his words, that the action, quote, “probably doubled, maybe even tripled testing in Ohio virtually overnight.”

Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota announced, along with the state’s healthcare system, the Mayo Clinic, and the University of Minnesota, what he described as a breakthrough for rapid, widespread testing — able to test more than 20,000 people using a molecular test per day.

Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa launched the Test Iowa Initiative that will triple testing capacity by partnering with Nomi Health and DOMO.  She also worked with the University of Iowa Hospitals to leverage further capacity.

And Governor Eric Holcomb and Governor Andy Beshear, of Indiana and Kentucky respectively, both announced additional drive-through testing locations.

Our priority has always been to focus first on those impacted by the coronavirus and then on those extraordinary healthcare workers ministering to their needs every day.  And I know, Mr. President, how proud you are that our men and women in uniform have come alongside our healthcare workers in communities most impacted, and I know the American people are proud as well.

As of today, FEMA reports that 35,000 National Guard have been deployed across the country to aid in our coronavirus response.  Governor Kevin Stitt of Ohio [Oklahoma] actually deployed the National Guard to hospitals across the state to evaluate protective equipment and hospital capacity and report it in to state emergency management and FEMA.

And Governor Greg Abbott of Texas actually mobilized more than 1,200 National Guard and 45 teams to provide greater access to testing.

Along with the National Guard, at the President’s direction today, more than 4,500 active duty military doctors, nurses, and medical assistants have been deployed across the country.  Yesterday, 1,013 medical professionals in our military were actually deployed to 19 hospitals in 7 states to support those amazing healthcare workers.

And with 4.4 million more Americans filing for unemployment in the past week, I joined the President in welcoming passage in the House today of the Paycheck Protection Program.  It’ll support working families.  It’ll allow small businesses to keep people on the payroll for a period of two months.  But it also, as the President requested, included $75 billion to assist hospitals across the country.

And in that spirit, the President and I will continue to urge states across the country: Given the unique burden on hospitals, we are now encouraging states to restart elective surgeries, wherever possible — either statewide or on a county-by-county basis.  We recognize the role elective surgeries play in finances for local hospitals and we’ll be working with states to enable that.

In that vein, Governor Doug Ducey exec- — issued an executive order not long ago, allowing elective surgeries beginning May 1 for hospitals that meet certain preparedness criteria.

And Indiana’s governor, Eric Holcomb, is allowing elective clinical procedures to begin on April 21st.

Finally, Mr. President, the task force received today our first report on state reopening plans.  At the present moment, 16 states have released formal reopening plans.  Thirteen of those were actually released since you unveiled the Opening Up America Guidelines to our governors and to the nation last week.

And to your point, Mr. President, states are beginning to make those plans.  And we’re encouraged to see so many states embracing the phased approach to reopening their economies that’s contemplated in our Guidelines for Opening Up America Again.

For instance, Governor Mike Parson of Missouri announced the “Show Me Strong” Recovery Plan as two initial phases intended to protect the most at-risk.

Governor Tom Wolf announced the Plan for Pennsylvania that would begin May 8th — will end a stay-at-home order for just portions of Pennsylvania.  But the plan, again, requires regions to have fewer than 50 new positive cases per 100,000 for a period of 14 days, and it also lays out a phased reopening roadmap.

Governor Kate Brown of Oregon updated their framework for reopening, doing three phases — again, on a county-by-county basis.

And Governor Brad Little of Idaho released “Rebound Idaho” in just the last few days that will consist of four phases and require specific criteria that Idaho and businesses need to meet to begin to reopen.

Mr.  President, with the — with the Guidelines to Open Up America Again, states are making plans.  And at your direction, our task force will continue to work very closely, providing them with the data, providing them with the resources to be able to implement those plans in a safe and responsible way.

So, with that, let me just end where I began, and to say thank you to the American people.  The progress that we are seeing is a testament to what all of you have done; to our extraordinary healthcare workers; to a partnership between the federal government and to state and local official.  And I’m confident it’s also owing to the prayers of millions of Americans each and every day.

All of that combined, we’re — we’re slowing the spread.  We’re protecting the most vulnerable.  We’re saving lives.  And every single day, we are one day closer to opening up America again.

With that, Mr. President, I’d be pleased to call Bill forward.  Bill Bryan leads the Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security and now will make a presentation on their recent study.

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  Thank you, Mr.  Vice President.  Thank you, Mr.  President —

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Bill.

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN: — for this opportunity to do this today.

Good afternoon everybody.  My name is Bill Bryan and I lead the Science and Technology Directorate at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  Over the last several months, we’ve intensified the Department’s R&D efforts to identify and deliver information that informs our response to COVID-19.  S&T is working to identify, develop, deploy, and deploy the tools and information to support our response to this crisis.

As part of our efforts, we’re leveraging the unique capabilities of S&T’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center to study the biology of the COVID-19 virus.  This center is a high-biocontainment laboratory located in Frederick, Maryland.  It was established in the early 2000s, in response to the Amerithrax attacks, and where we study, characterize, analyze, and develop countermeasures for biological threats to the homeland.  We work closely with the CDC, FDA, HHS, and also our Department of Defense colleagues and many others.

Yesterday, I shared the emerging results of our work that we’re doing now with the Coronavirus Task Force.  And today, I would like to share certain trends that we believe are important.

If I may have the first slide, please.  And while that’s coming up, our most striking observation to date is the powerful effect that solar light appears to have on killing the virus — both surfaces and in the air.  We’ve seen a similar effect with both temperature and humidity as well, where increasing the temperature and humidity or both is generally less favorable to the virus.

So let me illustrate with this first slide.  If you look to the right, you’ll see that term “half-life,” with a bunch of timestamps on there.

First, let me tell you what a “half-life” is.  We don’t measure the virus as far as how long we live on the surface; we have to measure the decay of the virus in terms of its half-life, because we don’t know certain elements.  We don’t know how much a person expectorates when he — when he spits — right? — when he sneezes, whatever the case may be.  We don’t know how much virus is in there.  So it’s — that has a long — a bearing on how long the virus is going to be alive and active.  So we measure it in half life because half-life doesn’t change.

So if you look at an 18-hour half-life, what you’re basically saying is that every 18 hours, the virus — it’s the life of the virus is cut in half.  So if you start with 1,000 particles of the virus, in 18 hours, you’re down to 500.  And 18 hours after that, you’re down to 250, and so on and so forth.  That’s important, as I explain in the rest of the chart.

If you look at the first three lines, when you see the word “surface,” we’re talking about nonporous surfaces: door handles, stainless steel.  And if you look at the — as the temperature increases, as the humidity increases, with no sun involved, you can see how drastically the half-life goes down on that virus.  So the virus is dying at a much more rapid pace, just from exposure to higher temperatures and just from exposure to humidity.

If you look at the fourth line, you inject summer — the sunlight into that.  You inject UV rays into that.  The same effects on line two — as 70 to 35 degrees with 80 percent humidity on the surface.  And look at line four, but now you inject the sun.  The half-life goes from six hours to two minutes.  That’s how much of an impact UV rays has on the virus.

The last two lines are aerosols.  What does it do in the air?  We have a very unique capability — I was discussing this with the President prior to coming out; he wanted me to convey it to you — on how we do this.  I believe we’re the only lab in the country that has this capability.

But if you can imagine a Home Depot bucket — a five-gallon Home Depot bucket — we’re able to take a particle — and this was developed and designed by our folks at the NBACC.  We’re able to take a particle of a virus and suspend it in the air inside of this drum and hit it with various temperatures, various humidity levels, multiple different kinds of environmental conditions, to include sunlight.  And we’re able to measure the decay of that virus while it’s suspended in the air.  This is how we do our aerosol testing.

We worked with John Hopkin Applied Physics Lab, and we actually developed a larger drum to do actually more testing.  And it’s four times the size of that.  So this is the capability that we bring to this effort.

So, in summary, within the conditions we’ve tested to date, the virus in droplets of saliva survives best in indoors and dry conditions.  The virus does not survive as well in droplets of saliva.  And that’s important because a lot of testing being done is not necessarily being done, number one, with the COVID-19 virus, and number two, in saliva or respiratory fluids.

And thirdly, the virus dies the quickest in the presence of direct sunlight under these conditions.  And when you — when you look at that chart, look at the aerosol as you breathe it; you put it in a room, 70 to 75 degrees, 20 percent humidity, low humidity, it lasts — the half-life is about an hour.  But you get outside, and it cuts down to a minute and a half.  A very significant difference when it gets hit with UV rays.

And, Mr. President, while there are many unknown links in the COVID-19 transmission chain, we believe these trends can support practical decision making to lower the risks associated with the virus.

If I can have my next slide.

And when that — while that comes up, you’ll see a number of some practical applications.  For example, increasing the temperature and humidity of potentially contaminated indoor spaces appears to reduce the stability of the virus.  And extra care may be warranted for dry environments that do not have exposure to solar light.

We’re also testing disinfectants readily available.  We’ve tested bleach, we’ve tested isopropyl alcohol on the virus, specifically in saliva or in respiratory fluids.  And I can tell you that bleach will kill the virus in five minutes; isopropyl alcohol will kill the virus in 30 seconds, and that’s with no manipulation, no rubbing — just spraying it on and letting it go.  You rub it and it goes away even faster.  We’re also looking at other disinfectants, specifically looking at the COVID-19 virus in saliva.

This is not the end of our work as we continue to characterize this virus and integrate our findings into practical applications to mitigate exposure and transmission.  I would like to thank the President and thank the Vice President for their ongoing support and leadership to the department and for their work in addressing this pandemic.  I would also like to thank the scientists, not only in S&T and the NBACC, but to the larger scientific and R&D community.

Thank you very much.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Bill.

Q    Mr. Bryan —

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting.  So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it.  And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you’re going to test that too.  It sounds interesting.

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  We’ll get to the right folks who could.

THE PRESIDENT:  Right.  And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute.  One minute.  And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning.  Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs.  So it would be interesting to check that.  So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors with.  But it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.

So we’ll see.  But the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that’s — that’s pretty powerful.

Steve, please.

Q    You’re saying that the country will be in a better place by early summer.  Does that mean you’re going to need to extend the social distancing guidelines until then?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we may, and we may go beyond that.  We’re going to have to see where it is.  And I think people are going to know.  You’re going to know.  I’m going to know.  I think people are going to know just out of common sense.  At some point, we won’t have to do that.  But until we feel it’s safe, we’re going to be extending.

Q    You said you have 23 cases where new cases — 23 states where new cases are on decline.  What does that mean about when the country can be safely reopened to a more normal point?

THE PRESIDENT:   Yeah, but it means we’re going to watch those cases very carefully.  I think we’ve all gotten very good at it.  We’ve gotten good at tracing.  We see where the cases are, where they’re going, and we’re going to be watching it.  And it’s called “containment.”  At a certain point, we’re going to be able to contain.

And, you know, when you see this, a lot of people have been talking about summer.  Maybe this is one of the reasons.  We’ve — I once mentioned that maybe it does go away with heat and light.  And people didn’t like that statement very much.  The — the fake news didn’t like it at all.  And I just threw it out as a suggestion, but it seems like that’s the case, because when it’s on a surface that would last for a long time, when that surface is outside, it goes away very quickly.  It dies very quickly with the sun.

Yeah, go ahead.

Q    You said yesterday that you’re going to look into Senator McConnell’s suggestion for allowing states to declare bankruptcy versus the aid —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah, we’ll look into it, and I have been looking into it.  I’ve been talking to a lot of the different senators, but I don’t want to talk about it now.  That was a very interesting presentation.

Go ahead, Jon.

Q    Well, I wanted to talk about McConnell’s suggestion that aid to the states amounts to a blue —

THE PRESIDENT:  I just told you I’m not talking about it now.

Q    — to a blue-state (inaudible).

THE PRESIDENT:  I’ll talk about it later.

Q    Okay.

THE PRESIDENT:  I’d like to talk about something that, right now, is of more interest to people.

Q    Could I ask Mr. Bryan a question?

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.  Sure.

Q    Thank you.  When you started your presentation, you described this as an emerging result.  Does this mean your study is conclusive?  Is there more work to do?

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  We’re continuing with that.  For example, on the aerosol side, you notice the figures were 20 percent humidity.  We’re looking at higher humidity levels.  We would expect that would even have a greater impact on the virus.  We’re looking at other types of disinfectants.  And — and so we’re — this is a — as a scientific community, we’re continuing to study the virus to understand its characteristics.

Q    Mr. Bryan, can you explain why some hotspots we’ve seen in the U.S. are hot and humid, like New Orleans, for example?

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  Let me explain — if you look at the coronavirus as a chain with many links, what we’ve done through our study is we’ve identified some of the weak links in that chain, that the virus — the transmission of the virus depends upon.  We identified that heat and humidity is a weakness in that chain.  We’ve identified that sunlight, solar light, UV rays is a weakness in that chain.  That doesn’t take away the other activities — the guidance from the White House, the guidance from the CDC and others on the actions and steps that people need to take to protect themselves.

This is just another — another tool in our tool belt, right?  Another — another weapon in the fight that we can add to it and, in the summer, we know that summer-like conditions are going to create an environment where the transmission can be decreased.  And that’s an opportunity for us to get ahead.

Q    But I — just, can I ask about — the President mentioned the idea of cleaners, like bleach and isopropyl alcohol you mentioned.  There’s no scenario that that could be injected into a person, is there?  I mean —

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  No, I’m here to talk about the findings that we had in the study.  We won’t do that within that lab and our lab.  So —

THE PRESIDENT:  It wouldn’t be through injection.  We’re talking about through almost a cleaning, sterilization of an area.  Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t work.  But it certainly has a big effect if it’s on a stationary object.

Q    Mr. Bryant, are we simplifying it too much by saying that it’d be better with the warmer weather and the sun coming out more and more, that people would be outside than staying inside their home, confined to the four walls of their house?

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  It would be irresponsible for us to say that we feel that the summer is just going to totally kill the virus and that if it’s a free-for-all and that people ignore those guidelines.  That is not the case.

We have an opportunity, though, to get ahead with what we know now and factor that into the decision making for what opens and what doesn’t.

THE PRESIDENT:  But so are you saying, on surfaces, the heat, the hot summer, and whatever other conditions — humidity and lack of humidity — that that would have an impact so that on surfaces, where it can be picked up, it will die fairly quickly in the summer, whereas in the winter, it wouldn’t die so quickly?

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  Yes, Mr. President.  When it’s exposed to UV rays — take playground equipment, for example: The UV rays hitting a piece of playground equipment will kill the virus when it hits that — when it hits on the playground equipment.  But underneath, where the sun does not get, if someone touched that and had it on their hands, it could still be there, right?  Because it has to be in direct light of the UV rays.

THE PRESIDENT:  If it’s on somebody’s hands, right?

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  Yes.

THE PRESIDENT:  And they haven’t touched their face and all of the things that we’ve all been —

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  If it’s exposed to the sun, it’ll —

THE PRESIDENT:  I know, but if they’re outside — right — and their hands are exposed to the sun, will that kill it as though it were on a piece of metal or something else?

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  Not — I don’t want to say it will at the same rate, because it’s a non-porous surface.  But what we do know — what we do know is that we looked at the worst-case scenario, and the virus lives longer on non-porous surfaces.  So porous surfaces, it doesn’t look quite as long.  So, in theory, what you said is correct.

THE PRESIDENT:  This is sort of semi-non-porous, right?  This, right?

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  That’s true.  Yes, Mr. President.

Q    Mr. Bryan, how can the governors —

(Cross-talk.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Wait, wait, wait, wait.  Okay, go ahead.

Q    One at a time.  Mr. Bryan, how should governors who are opening their states, working on that, will incorporate the findings of this study into those guidelines?

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  I would leave that up to the governors.  This is a —

Q    What was your advice?

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  This is a decision — this factors into their decision process.

As I mentioned, with knowing this knowledge and having this knowledge, as we continue to study and further know what the virus does and how it reacts, it could impact the way a governor will look at when he opens in a state, how he opens it, in what environments these things are opened up.  But I leave that up to the governors to make that decision.

Q    Obviously, at the moment, the advice is stay at home.  By the summer, could we be flipping that and saying you’d be much better off being outside with UV rays or the humidity that Washington brings in August?

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  I would not go contrary to the guidance that have been issued right now.  I think, though, to tell you that if — if I’m having an event with my family, I’m doing it in the driveway or in the backyard, not inside the house with my children.

THE PRESIDENT:  In fact, I’m thinking about moving outside to the Rose Garden.  (Laughter.)  No, it’s a very interesting question, actually.

Okay.  Please, go ahead.  In the back.

Q    Mr. Bryan, how much more research — how much more time would it take to have conclusive results that could be used here?  You said these were emerging results?

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  We — we first were able to receive the virus back in February, is when we started testing.  And it is a science-based approach.  Science is a process; the doctor can attest to that.  It doesn’t necessarily line up with goals and targets and other things.  It is what it is.  But we are now starting to get results.  And — and we’re — every week or two weeks, we’re starting to find out something new and something different.

And in talking to the task force and the Vice President, he’s already asked us to come to him every time we come up with some new discoveries that we could be — that we could share to the public.

THE PRESIDENT:  Phil?

Q    Yeah, sir, have you compared notes with your counterparts and other foreign governments or in private industry who might have been studying the same thing?  And do their findings show the same result that you found here?

ACTING UNDER SECRETARY BRYAN:  We have.  We do have a very good partnership with a lot of our allies.  We work closely with them on this particular topic.  We actually authored a document called the Master Questions List.  If you go to DHS S&T’s website, we’ve already had about 17,000 hits on this document.  It actually outlines what all the countries in the world are doing to fill the certain gaps of knowledge that don’t exist within the virus and what we do know.

And that is really what targets and drives the science community to say, “All right, what don’t we know now, so we don’t duplicate what other people have done?”  So we’ve championed that document, it’s well referenced, and I would encourage you to look at that.

THE PRESIDENT:  And we are working with other countries on vaccines, as you know.

Yeah.  Go ahead.  Please.

Q    Thanks, Mr. President.  If there is a summer ebb with this virus, what would the federal government need to do to take advantage of that time?

THE PRESIDENT:  Say it?  In the beginning — what?

Q    Oh, so if there is a summer, sort of, ebb with this virus, what would the federal government need to do to take advantage of that time to be better prepared for a possible resurgence in the fall than we were the first time?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I’ll tell you one thing: I think a lot of people are going to go outside all of a sudden.  People that didn’t want to go outside, they’ll be going.

This was a — to me this is very — really, a very interesting meeting.  We covered it in great detail.  And these are incredible people at that — we could call it a laboratory, because that’s essentially what it is.  It’s a super laboratory.  It’s a lot of things going on in that laboratory.

Q    Right, but what would you —

THE PRESIDENT:  A lot of very interesting things going on in that laboratory.

Yeah.

Q    What would you and other areas that the government need to do on testing, for example, or other things like that to be prepared if it came back in the fall?

THE PRESIDENT:  Sure, Mike.  Go ahead.  Go ahead.

Q    How would you take advantage of the summer?

THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  It’s — it’s actually a very good question.  It’s something the task force already has begun discussing.  That we are — if — a combination of factors.

Let me say again: As states put into practice the Guidelines to Open Up America Again, implement safe and responsible plans to open up their economies along the lines that the President unveiled a week ago today; as people continue to properly exercise social distancing, as is recommended in each phase, that, in combination with some of these findings, could well give us a summer respite from the coronavirus.

And our team is already speaking about working on a continuous basis through this summer.  Every single day we’re increasing testing.  Every single day, air bridge flights are coming into the country.  There are — I can promise you, at the President’s direction, there will be no letting up on — on making sure that our hospitals have the equipment, have the personal protective supplies for medical personnel.

There’ll be no letting up on the development of therapeutics by our great pharmaceutical companies that are driving toward a vaccine as soon as it is possible to make available to the public.  And there’ll be no letting up on continuing to scale testing — already, more than anyone in the world.  But by next fall, we’ll have a broad range of testing, a variety of different means.

And that’s why we say with confidence that should the coronavirus reemerge at any point next fall or next winter, we will be prepared to deal with it, identify it, do the contact tracing and isolation to ensure that — that we — we deal with this epidemic in the manner that we — that we deal with infectious diseases.

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay.  Yeah.  Go ahead.

Q    Mr. President, on the subject of medical research: Why have you stopped promoting hydroxychloroquine as a cure?

THE PRESIDENT:  I haven’t at all.  I haven’t at all.  What are you say- — we’ll see what happens.

Q    You haven’t talked about it in several days.

THE PRESIDENT:  We’ve had a lot of very good results and we had some results that perhaps aren’t so good.  I don’t know.  I just read about one, but I also read many times good.  So I haven’t at all.  And it’s a — it’s a great — for malaria, for lupus, for other things.  And we’ll see what it is.

But, I guess, Deborah, they have many, many studies going on on that.  So we’ll — we’ll be able to learn.

Q    Have you looked at the veteran study that shows that — that the death rate is higher —

THE PRESIDENT:  I have not.  I haven’t seen it.  I have not seen it.

Go ahead, please.

Q    Mr. President, we’re now over 26 million new jobless claims over five weeks.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.  Yeah.

Q    How — the Vice President talked about this summer getting better.  But how — what do your economists tell you about the time it’s going to take to you and the U.S. to create the jobs back?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I know a lot about economists.

Q    August?

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.

Q    September?

THE PRESIDENT:  Sure.

Q    October?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, let me go.  We — we know the rest of the question, right?  So I — I know a lot about economists, and the answer is they have no idea.  I think I have as good an idea as anybody, and I think our economy will start to pick up very substantially, as soon as the states get open.

And that’s happening as we speak, and it’s actually very exciting, and people are just — just thrilled to see it, because our country has to get back to work.  They want to get back to work.  You see that, whether it’s a demonstration or just in talking to people.  They’re going to get back to work, and they’re going to get back to work very fast.

States are advanced.  I look at Gavin Newson — was — Newsom was very nice today.  He wrote a beautiful statement about — we sent him a lot of — a lot of things that he needed.  Okay?  Things — different things that he needed.  We got — we got it taken care of.  They’ve done very well in California, as you know.  They’re doing really well in Florida.  They’re doing well in a lot of places.  New York and New Jersey got hit very hard.  They’re doing very well.

I spoke again with Governor Cuomo, with Governor Murphy.  They’re doing — they’re doing a great job.  And here’s the thing: We have to see.  They got hit hard.  Everyone close together — tight in.  People don’t realize New Jersey is very tight.  You realize that because you’ve been covering it for a long time, but very tight.  New York obviously is very tight.  They’re doing a terrific job.

I — I think for the most part — I’ll be able to tell you when it’s all over, but a lot of the governors have done a really terrific job.  Some I don’t think have, to be honest.  But we’ll be talking about that in future.

Yes, go ahead.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  In a new interview today with Time Magazine, Dr. Fauci said that the U.S. is not in a situation where we can say we are where we want to be, with regard to testing capacity.  He said we need much more testing capacity, as well as tests.  So why do you keep saying we have a tremendous testing capacity?  And do we have a national strategy that goes beyond tracking just what the states are doing?

THE PRESIDENT:  The answer is yes.  And the answer is — as you know, and as I’ve said many times — we’re very advanced in testing.  Other countries are calling us to find out what are we doing.

And, by the way, within two weeks, you’ll see numbers and you’ll see different forms of testing — just like we came up with the Abbott Laboratories machine, which gives it to you in five minutes — that everybody wants.  Everybody is asking, “Can we get that?”  But you can only make them so fast.  But, as you know, we’ve done more testing than every other nation combined, and that’s a big statement.

And, you know, when they talk about different tests and different things, we’re also a bigger nation than most.  And so, when they look at statistics — because, statistically, we’re doing phenomenally, in terms of mortality, in terms of all of the different elements that you can judge.  When you look, Germany and ourselves are doing very well.

We are very accurate in the reporting of numbers.  In fact, I’ll go a step further.  As you know, in New York, they actually added quite a few deaths to a list that was done in New York.  And they added a number of deaths.  We’re very, very — highly accurate.

And then you’ll look at certain lists of other countries.  Some are so obvious just to look at, where obviously the number is ridiculous, in the form of low, because they’re not accurate counts.  They’re not even close to accurate counts.  In fact, they’re insulting to look at them.

So we’ve done very well.  Again, testing — we’re doing very well on testing.  We’ve tested far more than anybody else anywhere in the world.  And within a short period of time, you’ll be hearing about new tests that are coming out that are going to be incredible.

Steve, go ahead.

Q    Do you agree with Dr. Fauci that we’re just not there yet?

THE PRESIDENT:  No, I don’t agree with him on that.  No, I think we’re doing a great job in testing.  I don’t agree.  If he said that, I don’t agree with him.

Yes.

Q    Are you considering ways to get — to ramp up production of that Abbott rapid test?

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah, well, they’re doing it.  I’ll tell you, Steve, they — they’re doing it at a level that they’ve never done it before.  Abbott is a great company.  It’s a very big, highly respected company.  They came up with this machine where you do it — I’ve done it both ways.  I’ve done it this way and I didn’t like it.  And I’ve done it the Abbott way, where you literally just touch and, five minutes later, you know the answer.

And we use them in the White House.  I think you folks have been given that opportunity, which is much more pleasant than the first way that they looked at you.  Right?

We’re making them — hundreds of thousands of machines.  The advantage to the other tests and the laboratory tests is we can get millions and millions of those tests done.  It takes a day or two days.  But — you know, because it’s really a delivery situation, more than anything else.  The test itself goes quickly once it gets to the laboratory.

But as we have found and as we have, I think, shown everybody in the room, we have many laboratories.  We have thou- — we have so many laboratories.  Nobody — nobody — a lot of the governors did not know that we have this capacity, but we have many laboratories all over our country.  Every state has laboratories and some have a lot of them.  So I think we will — we will come up with things as time goes by.

Again, when I started, we ended up — we — we started with nothing, essentially.  What — we started with a broken test, a test that didn’t work.  We started with a test that did very few people, not millions of people.

The problem is, if we did 350- — if we did 350 million tests, one for each person, the media would say, “Oh, you should have done two for each person.”  No matter what you do, it doesn’t make any difference.

It’s just like the ventilators.  I talk about it all the time.  Nobody ever mentions ventilators.  One of the hardest things are ventilators.  And now we’re making thousands a week — thousands of ventilators.  And they’re calling from Mexico; they’re calling from many countries.

I’ve received today four calls.  “Would it be possible to send ventilators?”  Right?  I got four calls today.  I got three calls yesterday.  No country is equipped like we are.  We have 11 — we have 11 different places making ventilators.  Our country, as you know, doesn’t need them now.  Our governors are very happy.

But that’s different than test, because with a test you can always say, “Oh, we — we need more.”  No, I think we’ve done incredibly well with — obviously, with ventilators.  We’re — we also have 500 million masks — 500 million masks that are very shortly going to be here.  We’ve made millions of masks.  We have ordered millions of masks that have arrived and been distributed.

We gave one hospital in New York City 300,000 masks.  Before the virus, they were using 10,000.  And now we got them 300,000, and they got rid of them very quick, which I — quickly — which I sort of say, “How did that happen?  Why?”  Because they became very valuable — the masks.  I say, “How did that happen?”

But we got — we have — we’ve done an amazing job, and we’ve worked with the governors.  And when the governors weren’t able — again, they’re the first line — when they weren’t able to get something — like ventilators, they couldn’t get ventilators.  They could’ve bought them.  You could have bought them, but most of them — many of them chose not to.  So they all needed ventilators.  We got the job done.

We have — I’ll be introducing the team when we’re finished with this whole nightmare, this whole curse, this whole plague.  But the team that worked on the ventilators was incredible.  And the team that work — and it’s a little bit interchangeable, but the team that’s working on the testing is truly an incredible team.  These are brilliant people.  And they’re doing it for the country; they’re not doing it for other reasons.

Some have been very successful.  They’re doing it for the country.

Q    Mr. President —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yes.

Q    The House has now passed, since you were here, the relief bill.

THE PRESIDENT:  Great.

Q    As you know —

THE PRESIDENT:  I’ll be signing it probably tonight.

Q    As you know, there’s no aid to states and localities in that bill.  Mitch McConnell, of course, has talked about states seeking bankruptcy protection.

He’s also — his office referred to this as a — the idea of aiding states as a “blue state” bailout.  What do you — what do say to that?  Do you agree with that?  Or do you agree with Governor Cuomo that that is a vicious attack on these states that have been hit by —

THE PRESIDENT:  I don’t know if it was a vicious attack, but certainly some people do look at it that way.  I’ve spoken to Mitch about it; I’ve spoken to numerous senators about it.  And we’re working with senators that are on the other side of the issue, and we’ll see what happens.  But we’re looking to do what’s right for the people of this country.  We’re looking to do what’s right for a particular state.  And we’ll see what happens.

But it’s certainly the next thing we’re going to be discussing because some states have — in all fairness, Jon, some states have not done very well for many years, long before the virus came.  You know, you can’t blame the plague — this horrible plague that came in and, all of a sudden — you know, they can’t blame that.  You look at Illinois — he’s got a lot of problems long before the virus came in.  And so we’ll be talking about it.  It’ll be a subject for a period of time.

And right now, we’ve — we’ve made this incredible deal for the workers and for small business.  And I’m very happy that Harvard didn’t get covered.  We actually never sent them the check.  But they were very nice about it.  We never sent them the money.  The old-fashioned way is the check; the new way is send them the money.  And we didn’t send them the money.

And — but they were very understanding and they were very nice about it.  So was Princeton, so was Stanford, so were a number of other schools that you just don’t associate with this money.  So were big companies, as you know.  You know, many of them.  It was a relatively small amount of money compared to the whole.  A very small amount of money compared.  But we want it to be fair.  We want it to go to the people that it’s supposed to go to.

Q    But are you open to this idea of state and local —

THE PRESIDENT:  I’m open.  I’m open.

Q    I mean, are these — are these —

THE PRESIDENT:  I’m open to ideas that are going to be great for the people of this country.

Q    Specifically that idea?

THE PRESIDENT:  And if we can help states, we’re always going to help states.

Now, there’s different ways of helping states.  Some ways are better than others.  So we’re looking.  It is interesting that the states that are in trouble do happen to be blue.  It is interesting, you know, if you look around.  I mean, the states that seem to have the problem happen to be Democrat.

Q    Well, New York and New Jersey got hit by this, you know, by this virus really hard, and Massachusetts —

THE PRESIDENT:  No, but New York and New Jersey were in a lot of trouble long before the plague came.  I mean, they were — you know, they had a lot of problems long before the plague came.  I spoke with Governor Cuomo about it, spoke to Governor Murphy about it.  I spoke with Gavin Newsom about it.  And we — I’m speaking to a lot of people about it, because it’s probably going to be the next thing on the list.

A lot of people understand very well what Mitch is saying, and they also understand the other side of the — the problem.  And I’ll be speaking about it.  We’re going to do the right thing for our country.  The right thing for our country and the right thing for a lot of great people.  Okay?

Yeah, please.

Q    Yes, Mr. President, after the presentation we just saw about the heat and the humidity, is it dangerous for you to make people think they would be safe by going outside in the heat, considering that so many people are dying in Florida, considering that this virus has had an outbreak in Singapore, places that are hot and —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah, here we go.

Q    — are humid?

THE PRESIDENT:  Here we go.  The new — the new headline is: “Trump Asks People to go Outside.  That’s Dangerous.”  Here we go.  Same old group.  You ready?  I hope people enjoy the sun.  And if it has an impact, that’s great.  I’m just hearing this — not really for the first time.  I mean, there’s been a rumor that — you know, a very nice rumor — that you go outside in the sun, or you have heat and it does have an effect on other viruses.

But now we get it from one of the great laboratories of the world.  I have to say, it covers a lot more territory than just this.  This is — this is probably an easy thing, relatively speaking, for you.

I would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if there’s any way that you can apply light and heat to cure.  You know — but if you could.  And maybe you can, maybe you can’t.  Again, I say, maybe you can, maybe you can’t.  I’m not a doctor.  But I’m like a person that has a good you know what.

Q    But, sir, you’re the President.

THE PRESIDENT:  Deborah, have you ever heard of that?  The heat and the light, relative to certain viruses, yes, but relative to this virus?

DR. BIRX:  Not as a treatment.  I mean, certainly fever —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.

DR. BIRX:  — is a good thing.  When you have a fever, it helps your body respond.  But not as — I’ve not seen heat or (inaudible).

THE PRESIDENT:  I think it’s a great thing to look at.  I mean, you know.  Okay?

Q    But respectfully, sir, you’re the President.  And people tuning into these briefings, they want to get information and guidance and want to know what to do.

THE PRESIDENT:  Hey — hey, Phil.

Q    They’re not looking for a rumor.

THE PRESIDENT:  Hey, Phil.  I’m the President and you’re fake news.  And you know what I’ll say to you?  I’ll say it very nicely.  I know you well.

Q    Why do you say that?

THE PRESIDENT:  I know you well.

Because I know the guy; I see what he writes.  He’s a total faker.

Q    He’s a good reporter.

THE PRESIDENT:  So, are you ready?  Are you ready?  Are you ready?  It’s just a suggestion from a brilliant lab by a very, very smart, perhaps brilliant, man.  He’s talking about sun.  He’s talking about heat.  And you see the numbers.  So that’s it; that’s all I have.  I’m just here to present talent.  I’m here to present ideas, because we want ideas to get rid of this thing.  And if heat is good and if sunlight is good, that’s a great thing as far as I’m concerned.

Go ahead.

Q    Mr. President, you talked a moment ago about vaccines and that we’re close.  How close, do you think?  The Oxford University study says they could have one by September.  Do you think the pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. —

THE PRESIDENT:  They could have one of what?

Q    They could — they could have a vaccine ready —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.

Q    — for testing by September.

THE PRESIDENT:  Oxford is one.  Johnson & Johnson is working.  They’re also working together.  You have many companies working together on a vaccine.

Q    But then, do you think they’ll scale — they can scale up production and the pharmaceutical companies will be able to do that quickly?

THE PRESIDENT:  Oh, we’ll scale it up.  If we had a vaccine, it’ll be scaled up very quickly.  In fact, some of the companies — Johnson & Johnson is one — is scaling up already, before they have the final answer.  A number of companies are doing that.  You’ll save a lot of time.  The normal is you scale up after.

I have to say, the FDA has been fantastic.  Stephen Hahn — Dr. Hahn — has been fantastic.  They’re moving along rapidly.  Rapidly.

Q    Would you say — would you put a timescale on when you think this will —

THE PRESIDENT:  No, I don’t want to put a timescale because then the — the media, the so-called — so-called “media” — “lamestream” media will say, “He said a time.”  I don’t want to say times, because every time I say a time, if you don’t hit it, they’ll say — so I don’t want to talk about time.

But I will say that there’s been tremendous progress made over the last month.

Q    Could I just ask a very quick question?

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.

Q    You spoke to Boris Johnson this week.  I just wonder how —

THE PRESIDENT:  I did.

Q    — how he sounded, how he was.

THE PRESIDENT:  I did.

Q    When do you think he’ll be back at work?

THE PRESIDENT:  He called me a few days ago.  I will tell you, he sounded incredible.  I was actually surprised.  I thought he’d be like, “Oh, Donald, how are you…”  He was ready to go.  I could — I’m very surprised to tell you this: It’s like the old Boris.  Tremendous energy.  Tremendous drive.  I was very surprised, because he called me almost, you know, pretty close to when he got out of the hospital.

I think he’s doing great.  I think he’s doing great.  He was so sharp and energetic.  Pretty incredible.  He’s an incredible guy.

He’s a friend of ours and — and a friend of mine.  He loves our country.  He loves his country a lot.  But he loves our country.  He respects our country.  And they’re lucky to have him over there.

Please.

Q    Mr. President, you, a couple days ago, said that you might reach out to Kim Jong Un directly, but also that you were working to find out if those reports about him being in possible medical trouble were true.  I’m wondering if you’ve either —

THE PRESIDENT:  I hope he’s not in medical trouble.

Q    Well —

THE PRESIDENT:  I hope he’s —

Q    — have you heard anything from North Korea or —

THE PRESIDENT:  I’ve gotten along very well with him.  And you know, here we are.  You would have been in a war with North Korea if I didn’t get elected President.  Remember, I was going to be the one that took us into war, with my first day in office.  Okay?  Here we are.  Look at what’s happened.  Withdrawal.  We’re bringing people home.  We’re not going to serve as policemen all over the world.  I don’t want to be policemen all over the world.

Q    But have you been able to leverage that relationship?

THE PRESIDENT:  And yet I’ve rebuilt our military to a level that it’s never been built at before.

Q    Have you been able to get more information?

THE PRESIDENT:  But it’s never recognized by the fake news.

Go ahead.

Q    Have you been able to use that relationship to get more information about his status?

THE PRESIDENT:  Uh, I think the report was incorrect.  Let me just put it that way.  I think the report was done by a network that was incorrect.

Q    So you blame —

THE PRESIDENT:  I’m hearing they used old documents.  But I — that’s what I hear.  I hear the report was an incorrect report.  I hope it was an incorrect report.

Q    When was the last time you heard from him?

THE PRESIDENT:  I don’t want to say.

Yeah.

Q    Since you pointed to me, just a quick question about that.  So you haven’t made any contact, though?  Just to make sure.

THE PRESIDENT:  With who?

Q    The North Koreans.

THE PRESIDENT:  I don’t want to say.  I won’t say that.

Q    Okay, so —

THE PRESIDENT:  We have a good relationship with North Korea — as good as you can have.  I mean, we have a good relationship with North Korea.  I have a good relationship with Kim Jong Un, and I hope he’s okay.  And somebody would say, “Oh, that’s terrible.”  No, it’s not terrible.  I hope he’s okay.  And I think it was a fake report done by CNN.

Q    So can I ask you a question?

THE PRESIDENT:  What do you have?  Go ahead.

Q    No, I would like —

THE PRESIDENT:  No, that’s enough.

Go ahead.

Q    Can I ask —

Q    But that wasn’t my question.

THE PRESIDENT:  The problem is you don’t write the truth, so, you know, as far as I’m concerned —

Q    What are you referencing?

THE PRESIDENT:  — I want to go — I want to go to the next question.

Q    But can I ask you a question about Rick Bright?

THE PRESIDENT:  No, not CNN, please.

Go ahead.

Q    The White House has not responded —

THE PRESIDENT:  You don’t —

Q    — to these allegations —

THE PRESIDENT:  I told you —

Q    — to Rick Bright.

THE PRESIDENT:  — CNN is fake news.  Don’t talk to me.

Go ahead, please.

Q    He says he was — but he says he was retaliated against and that’s why he was removed from his job.  Do you have a response to that?

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay, next question.

Q    Mr. President, I have two questions.  One on behalf of a colleague who is not here because of social distancing.

THE PRESIDENT:  Just ask one, please.

Q    First one: Could you talk about your decision-making process on — with the governor of Georgia?

THE PRESIDENT:  About what?

Q    You, yesterday, said —

THE PRESIDENT:  The controversy?

Q    Well, you know, you — no.  You said yesterday that you told the governor of Georgia —

THE PRESIDENT:  I did.

Q    — you were concerned about —

THE PRESIDENT:  I had a good talk with the governor of Georgia.

Q    But there are reports that, earlier in the week, you spoke and you did not convey this kind of message.  Was there a change in your thinking?

THE PRESIDENT:  I did convey the message.  I didn’t like the fact that he’s leaving certain things — I want the states to open more than he does — much more than he does.  But I didn’t like to see spas at this early stage, nor did the doctors.  Is that a correct statement, Deborah?

I didn’t like to see spas opening, frankly.  I didn’t like to see a lot of things happening.  And I wasn’t happy with it.  And I wasn’t happy with Brian Kemp.  I wasn’t at all happy, because — and I could have done something about it if I wanted to, but I’m saying let the governors do it.  But I wasn’t happy with Brian Kemp.  Spas, beauty parlors, tattoo parlors — no, that’s — that —

Q    But did your thinking change after —

THE PRESIDENT:  And, by the way, I want them to open — excuse me.

Q    — a conversation with your medical experts?

THE PRESIDENT:  Excuse me.  I want them to open, and I want him to open as soon as possible.  And I want the state to open.  But I wasn’t happy with Brian Kemp.  I will tell you that right now.

Yeah, go ahead.

Q    Sir, are you surprised he defied you on that?  Because you made it clear —

THE PRESIDENT:  No, he didn’t.  No, he didn’t defy me at all.  That’s your language.  He didn’t defy me.

Q    Well, I mean, he’s not —

THE PRESIDENT:  You know what happened?  I said, “You make your own decision.”  I told him that.  I said, “You’re not in the guidelines, but I’m letting you make your own decision.  But I want people to be safe, and I want the people in Georgia to be safe, and I don’t want this thing to flare up because you’re deciding to do something that is not in the guidelines.”

And I went to Deborah and Dr. Fauci and other people, and they weren’t thrilled about it.  And I could have stopped him, but I decided — and we all agreed — they got to watch it closely.  So we’ll see what happens.

I told him very distinctly — I said — Mike was there — I said, “You do what you think is best.”  But if you ask me, am I happy about it?  I’m not happy about it, and I’m not happy about Brian Kemp.

Go ahead.

Q    A question for Dr. Birx, if I may, Mr. President, about the rate and the decline of the curve in the U.S.  You and the Vice President tonight talking about meaningful progress, promising progress.  Could you speak to the rate of decline of cases of in the U.S.?

THE PRESIDENT:  If we do it quickly, that would be great.

Q    And just — if you’re satisfied with —

THE PRESIDENT:  Because you see it in the charts.  I mean, you have to ask the question, but you do see it in the charts.

Q    And if you have information from other countries that would inform us about the decline.

DR. BIRX:  Yeah, so, many of you — and I’ve spoken to all of you from this podium about there’s weekends’ difference in reporting, often a spike on Monday.  If you look at Mondays over Mondays, if you look at seven-day reporting, we are starting to go down.  We have a long — we had a long, flat peak, largely driven, of course, by New York, which is about 45 or so percent of the cases.  As New York goes down, so will the rest of the country have a decline, even more accelerated.

I want to say, though, we have had outbreaks.  We’ve had outbreaks in specific prisons.  We’ve had outbreaks in specific nursing homes.  We’ve had outbreaks in specific plants.  And when that happens, that adds two, three hundred, four hundred cases on that single date.

So we track, very carefully, not only what the country is doing, but what each state is doing, each county is doing.  And we look at delta changes across all of the counties so that we find early warning signals for these types of outbreaks, because we want to — we want the whole country to go down, but we also want to prevent the outbreaks before they occur.

Q    Mr. President —

THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead.  Please.

Q    Yes.  Thank you.  Looking forward to November, to the election, given the risk that the flu and the coronavirus are coming back —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah, that’s a — that’s a problem.

Q    Yeah — there could be a problem.  Do you think there is a risk that there’ll be — there will be some — there will be lack of agreement, lack of legitimacy to the results in a very close election, and people start saying, “Well, a whole bunch of people couldn’t go and vote because they were scared”?

THE PRESIDENT:  Look, I can’t tell you what’s going to happen in an election.

Q    Is there a risk for legitimate elections?

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.  Great question.  I can’t tell you what’s going to happen.  We have a sleepy guy in a basement of a house that the press is giving a free pass to who doesn’t want to do debates because of COVID.  And lots of things are happening.  Right?

And I watched a couple of interviews, and I say, “Oh, I look forward to this.”  But they’re keeping him sheltered because of the coronavirus.  And he’s not moving around; he’s not moving too much.  And then I watch what the press does to the Republican Party — and to me, in particular.

We had the greatest economy ever put together.  We were doing — this is a month and a half ago.  We were doing numbers, the like — the likes of which we’ve never done.  African American, Asian American, Hispanic American — best employment numbers ever in the history of our country.  Our employment numbers, the best in the history of our country: almost 160 million people.  The stock market: record numbers, many, many times during my tenure.  Many, many times.

But now we have a country that we had to close because of this.  And, frankly, if we didn’t close it, we would have lost millions of people possibly, but certainly we would have lost a million people.  You take the high number and cut it in half, cut it in half again.  But whether it would have been 600, 700, 800, you take a look at the travesty that there is.  You take a look at this horrible, horrible scene of hospitals with bodies in black body bags, right?  Multiply that times 10, 15, or even 20, because that would have happened.

So we did the right thing.  So far, we did the right thing.  So far, we’ve called it right.  We’ve mobilized like it was a military operation.  And it was largely a militarily operation, between ventilators and testing and so many other things.  And we’ve had a lot of good partners.  Not all good partners, but we had a lot of good partners.

Gavin Newsom today thanked us very much.  Gavin Newsom — California — thanked us so much for getting him all the things that he needed so he can keep going and keep doing a good job.  We got it to him today.  Tomorrow, we’re getting him even more.  It would’ve been harder for him to get it than us.  We agreed to get it.  We got it on time.  He said, “Promises made, promises kept.”  He actually said that in a statement today.

We’ve done a good job.  We’ve gotten very little credit for the great job we’ve done because of the media.  Because the media is not an honest media, in my opinion.  Much of it, not all of it.  We have some great reporters that I have tremendous respect, but much of the media is not honest.

So I can’t tell you about the election.  You have a Democrat Party and you have a large portion of the media automatically giving the guy a pass.  He’s been given a pass.  Whether or not he’s going to be the nominee, I have no idea, but he’s getting a pass.

And the media isn’t covering the great job that we’ve done, whether it’s Mike’s task force, which has been incredible; whether it’s the way we mobilized in a war-like operation to build these incredibly complex and very expensive ventilators.  They’re very expensive to build and very complex.  The job we’ve done has been an amazing job.  And I’m not talking about me; I’m talking about everybody.  I’m talking about the generals, the admirals, Deborah and Tony, and — and now Bill.  I mean, something we hadn’t heard today.

So I can’t tell you what’s going to happen with the election.  I think that had we not gone through a fake Russia, Russia, Russia deal; an impeachment hoax — it was a total hoax.  From the day I got elected — but, you know, it wasn’t the day; it was many months before I got elected — this has been a witch hunt that was illegal.  It was an illegal witch hunt.  It was illegal.

And with all of that, I’m doing fine, because the people see we’re doing a great job.  And you know what?  We’ll continue to do a great job.

If we had an honest press, this country would be even greater.

Thank you.  Thank you very much.

END

6:52 P.M. EDT

Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing

Healthcare

Issued on: April 20, 2020

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

5:39 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much everyone.  Thank you.  Following the release of our reopening guidelines, governors across the country are looking forward to phase one and announcing plans for an economic resurgence; we’re going to have a resurgence, too.  At a time when millions of American workers and families are struggling with the financial consequences of the virus, it’s critical to continue the medical war while reopening the economy in a safe and responsible fashion.

During this time, Americans must maintain strict vigilance and continue to practice careful hygiene, social distancing, and the other protective measures that we have outlined and that everybody has become very familiar with.

We continue to be encouraged that many of the areas hardest hit by the virus appear to have turned the corner.  For example, recent deaths are down very, very substantially.

You can compare that with their peak not so long ago, and you have numbers of 30 percent, 25 percent.  In Detroit, as an example, it’s down by over 50 percent.  Congratulations.  And, in New Orleans, where they’ve done a terrific job, they’re down 65 percent.

Thirty states have just one case or less per 1,000 people — far fewer cases per capita, as an example, than Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Ireland, Switzerland, Singapore, Belgium, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden.

My administration continues to press Congress to replenish the enormously successful Paycheck Protection Program, which has impacted 30 million American jobs.  We hope to have an agreement very soon.  And hopefully tomorrow, the Senate is going to be able to vote.  A lot of progress has been made on that — tremendous progress.  It’s a great plan.  It’s a great plan.  It’s helped a lot of people.  So we hope to have a vote maybe tomorrow in the Senate.

And based on the record-low price of oil that you’ve been seeing — it’s at a level that’s very interesting to a lot of people — we’re filling up our National Petroleum Reserves.  Strategic — you know, the Strategic Reserves.  And we’re looking to put as much as 75 million barrels into the reserves themselves.  That would top it out.  That would be first time in a long time it’s been topped out.  We’d get it for the right price.

We’re also pushing for the deal to include an additional $75 billion — our deal; the deal we’re talking about — $75 billion for hospitals and other healthcare providers.  Many providers and their employees have taken a huge financial hit in recent weeks.  And visits, elective procedures, surgeries, et cetera, et cetera, were canceled.  We think that they can all get back online.  They’ll get it done.  The hospitals have really been fantastic.  The hospitals, they’ve — they’ve stepped up to the plate.  They’ve really done a great job.  We appreciate it so much.

For areas less affected by the virus, we’ve issued new recommendations about how to safely resume elective treatments.  HHS has also distributed the first $30 billion in direct payments to a million healthcare providers across the country.  We’ve also invested $1.4 billion in community health centers to ensure our most vulnerable communities, including many African American and Hispanic American communities, have access to the services and testing that they need.

Earlier today, Vice President Pence spoke with governors from all 50 states about our unified effort to defeat the virus.  He had a great call.  It was a great call — very positive in, I’d say, every way.  Prior to the call, we provided each governor with a list of the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the labs where they can find additional testing capacity within their states — many, many labs.  We’re providing you with the list.  We’ll show it to you now if you need it.  We’ll give you the details.  But hundreds and hundreds of labs are ready, willing, and able.

Some of the governors, like, as an example, the governor from Maryland didn’t really understand the list.  He didn’t understand too much about what was going on.  So now I think he’ll be able to do that.  It’s pretty simple.  But they have tremendous capacity and we hope to be able to help him out.  We’ll work with him and work with all of the governors.

Similar to the situation with ventilators, states need to assess their complete inventory of available capacity.  Some states have far more capacity than they actually understand.  And it is a complex subject, but some of the governors didn’t understand it.  The governor, as an example, Pritzker from Illinois did not understand his capacity.  Not simply ask the federal government to provide unlimited support — I mean, you have to take the support where you have it, but we are there to stand with the governors and to help the governors, and that’s what we’re doing.  And they have a tremendous capacity that we’ve already built up.  And you’ll be seeing that; we’re going to be introducing a couple of the folks in a little while to talk about it.

I want to draw your attention to Governor Cuomo’s remarks during his press conference today.  He said: The President is right.  The states’ testing is up to the states to do, which will implement the test and logistically coordinate the tests.  We have about 300 labs in New York and they do it.  And they’re great labs, actually.  And it’s my job to coordinate those 300 labs.  I think the President is right when he says that the states should lead.

And the governor is really — they’re really getting — they’re getting it together in New York.  A lot of good things are happening in New York.  And I think the governor is going to come in to see us tomorrow.  He’s coming to the Oval Office tomorrow afternoon.  Andrew is going to be coming in with some of his people.  So we look forward to that.

The — some of the articles that just recently came about — if you remember, I put out a statement today.  For a month, it was all “ventilator, ventilator, ventilator.”  That’s all people could talk about was ventilators.  And we did a great job with that.  We built a lot of ventilators, to put it mildly.  We have so many now that, at some point soon, we’re going to be helping Mexico and Italy and other countries.  We’ll be sending them ventilators, which they desperately need.  They were a position — they were not in a position to build them themselves.

But we have thousands being built.  Every state has had — they have the ventilators.  If they don’t, we have almost 10,000 in our Federal Reserve — our “stockpile,” as they call it.  And we did a great job with the ventilators.

Unfortunately, the press doesn’t cover it — other than the fair press.  But — so then you say, “Gee, I — they need ventilators.”  We don’t need ventilators.  And that’s — that’s under pressure we did that.

Nobody that needed a ventilator in this country didn’t get one.  And a story that just came out: “How the Media Completely Blew the Trump Ventilator Story.”  I’m sure you love to see that.  That’s by Rich Lowry, a respected journalist and person.  “How the Media Completely Blew the Trump Ventilator Story” — which, unfortunately, you did.

And here’s another one that just came out.  Kyle Smith.  “The Ventilator Shortage That Wasn’t.”  “The Ventilator Shortage That Wasn’t” — because we got it fixed.  And we’re also going to help the states, by the way, stockpile ventilators.  So if a thing like this should happen again, they’ve got them.

The stories on testing are all over the place — that we’re actually in good shape.  I’m going to have the Vice President and others speak to you about that, but we’re in very good shape on testing and we’re getting better all the time.  You’re going to see some interesting things.

I thought before I went any further though, I’d like to have General Semonite, who has done an incredible job, tell you where we are.  You know we’re still building beds and hospitals for people that need them.  I guess the hospital business generally is getting pretty much closed out now, but we’re — we’re creating a lot of space for people, just in case.  And in some cases, they probably will be using them.

But I thought the general — he’s been so impressive and done such a great job.  I thought, on behalf of the services and on behalf of the federal government, he’d say a few words about what we’re doing right now.

Thank you very much.  General.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL SEMONITE:  Well, thank you, Mr.  President.  I just want you to know that, on behalf of all of us in the Department of Defense, our thoughts and prayers go out to all of those patients and all those victims that have been affected by this terrible virus.

And the President of Vice President talk all the time about the heroes, but when I’ve been out there, I’ve seen the doctors, I’ve seen the nurses, and all those that have worked very, very hard, and we’re just — we’re just so proud to be part of this noble calling.

I — for my team, I really made it very, very simple.  I said there’s three legs of this stool, and they all have “S’s”: There are “sites” — in other words, hospitals; we’ve got to worry about “supplies”; and we’ve got to worry about “staff.”

And so, right when Governor Cuomo called the President, about almost 30 days ago, he said, “I need some help” — worrying about what could be tens of thousands of hotel room — I mean, of hospital room shortages.

So the President and Secretary of Defense asked us to fly to Albany with a team.  And on the way up, we understood how complex of a challenge this was, and we knew there was no way you can solve a complex catastrophe with a complicated solution.  We needed a very, very simple solution to be able to then work with HHS, to be able to work with FEMA, to be able to work with the Vice President’s task force, and then to be able to power this down all the way down to the local level.

Some of the governors asked us to try to build a hospital in a parking lot or a field in two or three weeks.  You can’t physically do that.  So what we said was, “Let’s go to where there’s an existing facility.”  And I’m going to kind of make this in two big pots: those that are either hotel rooms or college dormitories, smaller rooms — or those that are in real large areas, like field houses or convention centers.

And we designed those standard facilities that could be either non-COVID or COVID, and then we got that approved here at the federal government to be able to then power that back down.

So we went to Governor Cuomo, and he said, right up front, “I love the concept.  I need you in the Javits Center.  I’m ready to start having you work tomorrow afternoon.”

So when we flew back that afternoon, the next day, we basically built this standard design and then continued to be able to power it down, all the way down through the rest of the team.

So I just want to show you a couple of slides here.  And we’ll — we’ll kind of let you know where we’re at right now, Mr President.

We had to do a bunch of assessments, so somewhere in the order of over 1,100 different locations we went to.  And we work for FEMA, and we work for the President, and we work for governors and mayors.  And we said, “What do you think your demand is going to be?”  And based on a lot of the modeling that’s been in this room here, we were able to understand when the peak curve was, but we also were able to understand where’s the bed shortage.

So then, these 1,100 facilities — right now today, sir, we’re actually executing 32 different facilities.  That’s on the order of merit of about 16,000 beds.  Eight of those are all done.  We’ve still got a lot more to complete.  And in the next week and a half, we’re going to complete about 15 more facilities.

We’ve got some pending.  Some mayors and governors are still wondering do they have enough bed space.  And what’s important here is we need a very agile plan.  You can’t do something three weeks ago and think that this is going to continue to stay, because this virus gets a vote.  And this entire team — the federal government has tried to be as agile as they can, supporting those states and those governors.

The beauty of the plan, though, was it doesn’t have to be built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers.  So we designed about an extra 52 facilities.  We gave those to the governors.  And I’ve got to be very, very laudatory to the governors.  They then imposed and put a lot of those on the — on the ground and did those themselves.

So let’s go to — I’m just going to show you some real simple pictures here.  Go to the next slide, if you don’t mind.

So this is an example of the Javits Center, and you heard the President talk about it quite a few times.  This one, about 2,100 bed spaces.  What you get is about an 11- or 12-foot-square cubicle.  There is lights in there.  There’s a nurse call, so if you need to be able to call the nurse station.  There are nurse spaces throughout.  There’s pharmacies throughout.  This one started as non-COVID, but then we came back in and put in central oxygen.  So everybody has oxygen right behind their bed to be able to take care of those patients.  And again built this one, and about 1,000 patients treated.

Let’s go to the next one.

I was up in Detroit with Governor Whitmer, and she walked us through and told us her intent.  Here’s what — she needed to do this in the TCF Center.  You’ll see all the cubicles that are laid out.  This is right in the middle of a convention floor where there might be like a boat show or a car show, and then we went in and we built 970 different capabilities there.

And again, a lot of great work by my guys in the Corps of Engineers and the rest of the mayors in the cities’ team all pulling together.

Let’s go to the next one.

This is called the McCormick Place.  Governor Pritzker sat us down.  He said, “Here’s, kind of, our intent on what you want to do.”  Mayor Lightfoot walked us through, and we went into another large convention center.  This is actually 3,000 bed spaces.  This was a very, very large build.  And got this one done in a relatively short time.

And then here’s another one that kind of helps you understand the dynamic here.  Go to the next one, please.

This is in Miami Beach, and I flew in to see Governor DeSantis.  And my guys had kind of scoped out about 450 beds, and he said, “Todd, how long is it going to take to build this?”  And we kind of said, “Probably until the 27th of April.”  And he went to his health people and he said, “How long do you need?”  And he said, “The day we need this is the 21st of April.”  And I told my guys, “You don’t have until the 27th.  Figure out how to get it done by the 20th.”

This is where you don’t get to build to be able to have the perfect solution.  You got to be able to get the mission essential done.  Lives are on the line here, and we’ve got to be able to get everything done to be able to save those lives.

And let’s go to the last one here.  This is one we’re doing right now: Colorado.  This is in Denver, in another gigantic convention center.  You’ll see all the different cubicles here to be able to just bring in that oxygen.  Six-inch copper pipe that comes in, and it’s all piped throughout the entire convention center.  Six miles of pipe that’s able to go in to be able to make that happen.

And in closing, I just want to be able to say that we are very, very focused in the Corps of Engineers on getting this done, but this is all about the team — the federal team, the state team, the local team.  The Vice President and his task force, and on a lot of the people sitting here, have informed us of how fast we need to go.  And it goes back to, again, all the governors and the mayors to make this happen.

But I want to reiterate: President Trump has called me three times, and Secretary Esper has been on the phone at least one of those times, and said, “What else do we need to do to set you up for success?  Is there any other knobs we can turn to be able to help you go?”  And you think about that equation of those three “S’s.”  I think that with the federal government and the mayors in the cities here, we’ve effectively taken that first “S” out of the equation.

And, sir, I can’t tell you, of all the things I’ve done in my career, this is a noble calling to be able to step up and save American lives.

So, with that, sir, I thank you very much.

THE PRESIDENT:  Fantastic job.  Thank you very much.  Anybody have a question for the general while he’s here?  Anybody?  Because I think he’s very self-explanatory.  He’s done an incredible job.

Jeff, do you have a question?

Q    Are there are there more projects, sir, beyond the ones that you’ve just identified that you’ll be working on?

LIEUTENANT GENERAL SEMONITE:  So, about a week ago, we thought we were about capped at 26.  What we’re seeing is — as I said, the virus gets a vote.  We’re seeing some of these curves are stretching out where we might have thought we only had five or six days.  We actually have a couple weeks now.

Other ones, we’re seeing exactly the opposite.  So where we didn’t think there was some — and I’m not going to go into locations here — but we are definitely get requests in.  We’ve got six more requests in just in the last four or five days.  They’re a little bit smaller facilities and more remote areas, but our job, we still — if we have enough time to go build, we want to get in there, do the assessment.  We work for the mayor and the city and the governor here.  And we can still get them done if the mayors and those elected officials make a fast enough decision.

THE PRESIDENT:  You might say, while you’re here, we’re building — the general is in charge of the wall on the southern border, and we want to build 450 miles of wall, and it’s very much under construction.  You might give them a little bit of an update: how are we doing with the wall.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL SEMONITE:  So, sir, I think the most important thing — and you stressed this and Secretary Esper stressed this — there’s really several different priorities here.  Our number-one priority in the Department of Defense and the Corps of Engineers is to protect the team, protect the force.  No matter what we do, we’ve got to continue to take care of our civilians and our service members out there.

And so every single thing we’re doing, whether we’re building for the VA, or we’re building for Civil Works projects or for the Department of Defense, or building on the southwest border, we are going out of our way.

I talked to my commanders this morning; we’ve got over 4,000 contractors that are on the ground out there, and we’ve had no positives as of this morning, knock on wood.  Same thing with my 400 employees.  We’re testing them — not necessarily with the more stringent test, but with temperatures — to be able to make sure that everybody is safe and everybody goes out of their way to do things the right way.

Construction is going very, very smooth.  What we’re seeing is our contractors are extremely focused.  Now that we’ve — we’ve got a good clear path — both on the CBP program, as well as some of the DOD program — we, I think, are very well postured.  It’s a very, very aggressive build, but we’re well postured to be able to meet your expectations, sir, of 450 by the end of December 2020.

THE PRESIDENT:  And we’re over 160 miles.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL SEMONITE:  A hundred and sixty-four as of today, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  A hundred and sixty-four miles.  And we’ll have it done sometime pretty early next year.  Very exciting.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL SEMONITE:  Yes, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  And you might just say one thing: the quality of that wall, in terms of its power for stopping people that shouldn’t be coming into our country.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL SEMONITE:  So, same thing.  If you have a standard design that you trust in and it works very well — I’ve got to pat on the back Commissioner Morgan; he was very adamant to continue to be able to make sure that it supports his agents.

And so we’ve got a design now that certainly does that.  And then we’ve got a phenomenal contractor workforce that’s in there, my Corps of Engineer employees.  And it’s going in well.  We don’t see any significant problems.

And I think it’s also important to point out that there — we want to do this the right way, so we try to balance this with environmental considerations that are out there.  We’re trying to do due diligence when it comes to anything to do with any of the citizens who are affected.  We’re trying to make sure that we’re protecting all of the things that we need to protect and try to find that balance where we can both meet the administration’s directive, while at the same time making sure we’re doing this so that everybody gets a vote and everybody has a fair shake.

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay?  Yeah, please.

Q    May I ask what you’re doing regarding the availability of — the recreation sites that the Army Corps of Engineers operates, how the access is going there and whether or not there are restrictions —

LIEUTENANT GENERAL SEMONITE:  So, I’m an engineer.  I take my guidance from some of these experts sitting on the bench over here.  And when the President says, “Turn on America,” what we initially did, like many, many other governors — they, you know, shut down beaches, shut down cities — I had a meeting with my commanders this morning, and as soon as we think it’s safe, turn them back on.

I mean, parking out there at a rec area where you’re 500 feet away from everybody in a camper is probably low threat.  I will continue to take guidance from the administration.  But when we get greenlights to continue to put our rec areas full up and let everybody go back out there and do things the safest way — I mean, we work for the administration, so I want to do it safe, but I don’t want to be the last guy that turns things on.  Not at all.

Yes, ma’am.

Q    Hi.  Thanks for walking through some of the efforts.  Do you have any — can you say anything about whether or not there are any specific efforts in communities that are hardest hit, like black communities or Latino communities, communities of color?  Are the Army Corps of Engineers doing anything that would be building any sort of temporary facilities for those communities?

LIEUTENANT GENERAL SEMONITE:  So we basically key off what the city asked for — the city and the governor.  There are a couple specific areas that certain city mayors have asked us for.  Again, I’m not going to go into details.  But we basically — if they go in and say, “I’m very worried about a hotspot on this side of town, or a specific community here,” we will do — and that’s what the administration has charged to do — is whatever we can do to be most responsive.

We just don’t want ever to have an ambulance pull up to the back of a hospital and somebody says, “We’re out of room.  Go to the next hospital down.”  So that’s where we’re trying to make sure that that bed space is available.  And, so far, everything we’ve built has been ahead of need.  In other words, we’re able to finish the building two or three days before it’s needed.

Thank you, ma’am.

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay?  So, General, you have a choice: You can stay and watch — watch these wonderful people ask us really nice questions — or you can go back to building beds.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL SEMONITE:  Sir, I got a lot of building to do.  I’m going to leave, if you don’t mind.

THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead.  I had a feeling you were going to say that.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL SEMONITE:  Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  Very impressive.  That’s an impressive job, isn’t it?  Seriously.  That’s really great.  Thank you very much.  He’s a terrific gentleman.  We have a lot of great people doing that kind of thing that they really have to get recognition for the incredible job they’re doing, because I don’t think anybody else could do it.  Nothing like that.  And that’s on top of thousands and thousands of hospitals.  And, you know, he built — just in New York alone — four hospitals and 2,900 beds, and got them done so quickly.  Nobody — nobody saw anything like it.

Fortunately, we haven’t had to use too many of them, and that’s okay.  That’s probably better news than having to use them all, right?  Because a lot of good things are happening in New York and elsewhere.

So through the public-private partnerships and deregulation, the federal government has already made immense testing capabilities available, but some states need to take action to fully utilize it.  To date, the United States has conducted millions more tests than any other country.  You can add them all up and they don’t catch us.  And our numbers are doubling almost on a — certainly on a monthly basis, but almost on a weekly basis.  We’re moving very rapidly, far — at a number nobody thought possible.

And we’ll be doubling our number of daily tests if the governors bring their states fully online through the capability that they have.  We have tremendous capability out there already existing.  And we explained that to the governor today.  Mike and all of the people explained it very strongly to the governors.  They — they really get it now, I think.

As the experts have explained, this capacity is sufficient to allow states to conduct diagnostic testing to treat patients as well as contact tracing to contain outbreaks and monitoring to pinpoint potential hotspots during phase one.

And there are some hotspots, and we have them pinpointed, and they can really cover it very, very nicely when they know exactly where to go and they’re being told where to go.  And also, these locations where they’re going — and some of them are federal; some of the governors didn’t realize they were allowed to use federal locations.  They are.

And we have a booklet of the federal locations.  We can hold it up.  I think you’ll show that.  Maybe we’ll hold it up now.

DR. BIRX:  I’ll have the locations.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.  Okay, fine.  But you see the number — thanks.  Thanks.  These are all locations where they can go, which is really pretty amazing.  This is just one page out of many.

DR. BIRX:  Over 5,000, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  Look.  Look at this.  This is — these are all locations.  (The President displays a document.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Five thousand labs.

THE PRESIDENT:  That’s a lot of locations.  And they can all — what is it?  Five thousand —

DR. BIRX:  Five thousand pieces of equipment.

THE PRESIDENT:  So that’s — thank you very much.  That’s more than anybody thought, and it’s already there.  They have to use it.  That’s all.  They have to use it.  Some weren’t aware; some were very much aware.  Some weren’t aware.

My administration also continues to support states with our massive operation to deliver masks, gowns, gloves, and other vital supplies.  Admiral Polowczyk and his team at FIFA [FEMA] are really — what a job they’ve done.  And Pete, what a job he’s done.  They’re calling on Easter Sunday to make sure everyone is okay.  But they’re using detailed data about supply chains to track the deployment of 1 billion pieces of protective equipment through private distributors every two weeks.  So what we’re doing is we’re delivering a number that nobody anywhere in the world is delivering.

FEMA is working closely with Dr. Birx and the distributors to prioritize supply of resources where they are most needed.  We’re finding the location that they have to — they have to get to that location.  We have locations that are very important to get to and get to them fast.  And that’s where they’re going.  So we have a very strong priority.

This pandemic has reaffirmed the importance of keeping vital supply chains at home.  We cannot outsource our independence.  We cannot be reliant on foreign nations.  I’ve been saying this for a long time.  If we’ve learned one thing it’s: Let’s do it here, let’s build it here, let’s make it here.  We’ve got the greatest country in the world.  We’ve got to start bringing our supply chains back.

Somebody, years ago, got this crazy idea: Let’s build all over the place and let’s have parts — let’s have a screw for a car delivered and made in a country that’s far away, and let’s have a fender made someplace else, and let’s do this, and let’s do that, and let’s put it all together.

And I like making it right here in the USA.  And I think we’ve learned a lot about that and especially maybe when it comes to pharmaceutical products.

We’ve also conducted major military operations, providing cities and states with additional medical capacity and the incredible 1,800 men and women from the Army Corps of Engineers.  You just met with Todd.  He’s — the job they’ve done is incredible.  But we have nurses, doctors — we have experts in every field, all over.

I spoke with Governor Cuomo, I spoke with Mayor de Blasio, I spoke with many of the other governors that I’m both friendly.  And — yeah, I think I’m friendly with just about all of them, if you can believe it.  But I’ve gotten friendly with a lot of them.  I’ve gained a lot of respect for a lot of the governors, both Republican and Democrat, during this process.  Some really good people, some really good talent.

But we’re sending a lot of our medical people, not only our construction people like Todd Semonite, but a lot of our medical people are being sent all over the country to different locations: New York City, New York State, New Jersey.  I spoke with Phil today.  He’s doing a terrific job in New Jersey, but New Jersey got hit very, very hard — Phil Murphy, governor.

From the day this crisis began, America launched a scientific mobilization of colossal size and scale.  Someday they’ll be able to write the true story because nobody has seen anything like it.  The fake news just refuses to cover it correctly, but that’s okay.  But the people are understanding, and that’s what matters to me.

There are now 72 active trials underway across the United States researching dozens of therapies and treatments, and another 211 are in the planning stages.  They’re getting — I mean, they’re literally mobilizing on therapeutics and also on vaccines.  A tremendous progress is being made on vaccines and, I must say, on therapeutics.

I mean, frankly, if I had my choice: Give me the therapeutics right now, because that would help people right now.  And we have some things that I think are working.  Not only working, but we have some incredible things that look like they could be an answer.  But we’ll know soon.  Being tested.  Working out right now.

This includes their therapies designed to attack the virus, as well as others that would hinder its replication, reduce the rate of infection, control the immune response, or transfer lifesaving antibodies from the blood of recovered patients.

And one of the incredible things that we’ve seen — and Mike and I were talking about it before — is the fact oftentimes somebody gets very ill from the plague — okay? — from this horrible scourge.  And they get better and they recover, and the first thing they say is, “I want to give my blood.”  That’s happened.  The doctors have told me it’s happened so much.  “I want to give my blood.  I want to give my blood.”  And they’re doing that.

But tremendous things are happening.  You’ll be seeing about — you’ll be seeing that over the weeks.  I think we’ll be talking about it in the not-too-distant future.

Johnson & Johnson is very well along on vaccines.  Again, the vaccines have to be tested.  The therapeutics are for now, but a lot of good things are happening on both.  But ultimately, we also hope to prevent infection through a safe — a very safe vaccine.  And that’ll be a great thing when we have that.  And we will have that.

So with that, I’d like to introduce Admiral Giroir and Brad Smith to discuss some of the incredible things that have been done.  And we have — they really are — what they’ve been able to do in a very, very short period of time with — and equipment.  You’re going to see equipment that you haven’t seen before.

Any if you’d just come up, Brad.  If you guys would come up, you could give us a little display of some of the equipment that we have and some of the things that are happening, having to do with testing, because “testing” is a big word.

Remember, it was all ventilators.  And the reason it was all ventilators — they said, “There’s no way he’ll ever be able to catch this one.”  And not only did we catch it, we are now the king of ventilators all over the world.  We can send them anywhere.  We have thousands being made a week.  And they’re very high quality.  And that’s — it wasn’t playing well, so then they said, “Testing.  Testing.  Oh, we’ll get him on testing.”  Well, testing is much easier than ventilators.  Ventilators are big machines that are very complex and are very expensive.  You need real — real — you need a group of people that really know what they’re doing.  We took auto lines.  We took a lot of different people, and now we’ve done that.  But it used to be “ventilators, ventilators, ventilators.”  Not it’s “testing, testing, testing.”

And I think the Admiral and I think that Brad will show you some things that you haven’t seen that are, really, very spectacular having to do with testing.  We’re way advanced.  Way advanced.

The list I showed you — these are places you can go if you’re in the states: 5,000 different machines.  Five thousand.  They’re all over the country.  And we have international also, but these are all over the country.  But you’ll see something now that’s really eye-popping in terms of what they’ve done.

And they’ve done this under great pressure.  They’ve come up with things under great pressure that are absolutely amazing.

So, please, if you would.  Thank you, fellas.

ADMIRAL GIROIR:  Well, thank you, Mr. President.  I want to talk about a couple things today a little bit different than I’ve spoken about before.

Since early March, we’ve really been focusing on two key concepts for testing.  Number one: to assure and expand supplies in the U.S. market.  This is really critical because we were talking about, really, a cottage industry with very minimal suppliers that we were asking to supply, over a two-week period of time, the normal production that would be for at least a year.

And as simple as a swab is: A swab is not a swab is not a swab.  And we need to be very careful that when we put something in a person and tell them a test result, that it’s really correct.

The second component is to secure sufficient supplies at FEMA during this time of peak disease where we could alleviate any mal-distributions within the state.  This is the FEMA process of requesting and sending things out, and also supporting outbreaks.

So, starting many weeks ago — starting in my office many weeks ago, we assembled a multidisciplinary team of really incredible people: the medical side of the equation, which I represent; the laboratory side of the equation; high-tech side of the equation; logistics and operation.

And Brad Smith is — his day job is Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services — an incredibly important component of our country’s CMS system, building the future healthcare system — but has done a really incredible job operationally and logistically in bringing everyone together.

We have focused on every piece of the supply chain that relates to testing, down to the most minute detail.  And he’s going to talk to you about some of that.  But that started in the second week of March, was starting an airlift, because the only supplier — the main supplier of swabs at that time was a place in Italy that was completely shut off because of the outbreak in Italy.  So Admiral Polowczyk arranged gray-tail Air Force planes to go to Italy to bring millions of swabs back to secure.  That’s just how it started, and it’s expanded since then.

The second part is we’ve been really marrying — and this has been the beauty — the logistics and supplies to the overall strategy.  Two pieces of strategy: Number one, what is the overall testing strategy?  And Dr. Birx has had just an elegant strategy in the past, but even more important in the future, when we make sure we take care of indigent populations and those most vulnerable.  So the clinical, the contact tracing, and the monitoring of those who are at most risk.

We’ve also married it to the strategy — and you’ve heard more than you know about — you wanted it to know about it: that a small machine — this point of care — is good for certain things, but it’s not going to test 5,000 people over a short period of time.  So the small machines, the medium machines, and the large machines and how to contextualize them.

And the third thing, before I give it to Brad, which is very important and it’s really critical, is coordinating the research, the epidemiology, and the FDA regulatory process.  And why is that so important?  When we started five weeks ago, if we wanted to test this many people with the technology we had, we would have used about 80 percent of the Strategic National Stockpile in PPE just to do testing.

We needed an innovation.  That innovation was to be able to test out of the anterior nose with a completely different kind of swab.  It sounds very mundane, but if you don’t do that, you can’t get the testing to scale.  That allowed us to really go to widespread testing last week, moving to polyester swabs, which is going to open up millions of new swabs onto the market.  But that’s a regulatory, science, and innovation step that had to co-occur with this.

And with that, I’m going to let Brad talk about some of the details that he has really shepherded over the past weeks in ways that have truly been amazing and incredibly impressive to me.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you.  Thanks, Admiral.

MR. SMITH:  Well, thank you, Mr. President.  It’s an honor of a lifetime to be here and serving in this way.  I’ve been working under Dr. Birx’s and Admiral Giroir’s leadership over the past several weeks to help increase the supply of testing across the United States.

As you all know, there’s really three parts that you need to make the test work.  First, you need the machine — which as Dr. Birx will share more, and the President spoke to, we have a very, very large number of those across the United States.  It’s about making sure that we’re taking advantage of them.

The second part of the testing is making sure that we have the collection supplies to actually be able to collect the specimen.  And I’ll talk a little bit more about that.  And then the third part is making sure that you have the materials you need to support the machine to ensure that you can actually process the test once it gets to the lab.  I’ll let Dr. Birx talk more about the machines here in a second.

But as you’ll — as you’ll see across the United States, we have a tremendous number.  They range in variety.  So we have some very small machines that do point-of-care testing.  They may do, say, 50 to 100 tests a day.  We also have other very large machines; they can do several thousand — process several thousand tests a day.

On the collection supply piece, I’ll talk through a couple of different kinds of collection that can be done.  So for the nucleic acid test, which are the tests that are currently being done today, you generally need a swab of the nose.  To do that, you need the swab, you need the collection tube, and you also need the transport media that it can be transported in.  We have a large — very large number of swabs already in the country, but we have secured an additional 3 million in production that will be ramping up over the next several weeks.

One company located in the northeast — we’re going to be using Title 3 of the DPA to help them build four new production lines.  They are currently the largest swab producer in the country, and this will help them ramp up their production tremendously to over 20 million additional swabs a month.

A second company located in Ohio is currently the largest Q-tip maker in the country.  We’re helping them convert their line from making Q-tips into making swabs.  They are actually ramping up production, starting this week, of swabs, and will be ramping up to over 10 million production — 10 million per month.  So, in total, that’s over 30 million new swabs that will be coming just over the next handful of weeks.

The second piece is on the collection tubes.  The collection tubes, we’ve been partnering with Oak Ridge National Lab, a Department of Energy lab based in Tennessee.  They have very unique and sophisticated injection molding manufacturing capability, and they are in the process of ramping that up to create collection tubes, and they will be ramping up to over 40 million collection tubes a month here over the next several weeks.

In addition to the swabs, we believe that as testing progresses, there’ll be other types of testing, like serological testing that will occur.  And those samples have to be collected in different ways.  So, many times, some of those tests will require a finger prick.  So, in addition, we’ve secured over 17 million lancets, which is what you use for the finger prick, so that we have those available, as well as 17 million alcohol swabs, which is what you need to clean the finger before you do the finger prick.

In addition, although folks are not talking about this much yet, we also believe that businesses across the country may want thermometers to test folks as they come into the office, and so we’ve secured over 650,000 infrared thermometers that states and businesses will be able to access, to be able to test folks as they come into work.  So I think we’ve made tremendous progress on the collection side.

In addition to the collection side, we’ve been very focused on ensuring that the labs have what they need.  To process a specimen in a lab, you really need two things: You need something called an extraction kit, and you need something called a PCR test.  In order to be able to fully process a test, you need both of these things.  Sometimes these things come together, and sometimes they come separate.

For some of our point-of-care tests, including the Abbott and Cepheid tests, they come together.  They are ramping up production rapidly to over 3 million of those tests per month.  And these are tests that did not exist even a month ago.

The second piece is on some of these large machines.  They also sell complex cartridges that come together.  One of the big manufacturers has already ramped up production from about 1.6 million a month to more than twice that already.  And that’s already occurred.

In addition to when they come together, they also sometimes come separate, and we see significant ramping up of production there from our manufacturers through our public-private partnerships.  And we’re seeing both several million more over the next few weeks of both the RNA extraction kit, as well as the PCR test kit.

So with that, thank you.

THE PRESIDENT:  Mike, please.  Thank you, Brad.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Mr. President.  And I share your admiration for this remarkable team — from the Army Corps of Engineers, to Brad, to Admiral Giroir.  They’re doing a remarkable job every day.

As the President mentioned, today we had our weekly conference call with governors across the country — states and territories.  And I was able to convey to them our appreciation for the leadership that every governor of every state and territory has provided.

Thanks to their leadership, thanks to the extraordinary cooperation of the American people — despite the fact that more than 770,000 Americans have contracted the coronavirus, and our hearts grieve for the more than 41,000 Americans who’ve lost their life — the truth is that, as we stand here today, we are slowing the spread.  And as the President reflected, we continue to see steady progress in less cases, lower hospitalizations, even in hotspots around the country.  And we commended America’s governors for their efforts in that regard.

We are preserving our healthcare capacity, as the General with the Army Corps of Engineers reflected.  At the President’s direction, we’ve built a great number of hospitals around the country, but the utilization rate has been fairly low because of the mitigation efforts, the cooperation of the American people, and we have not had to use them.  And that, as the President said, is very good news.

In a word, we thank the governors across country for taking actions — decisive action to save lives and to make a difference.  I reminded them that we’re all in this together, that we have one mission, and we’re one team.

And we spoke on the conference call about last week’s Guidelines to Open Up America Again.  And we heard from governors across the country about the progress that they were making.  We spoke to governors from New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and Michigan about their ongoing efforts at social distancing and addressed questions that they had about needs that have been spoken up already in this — in this presentation today.

In addition, as we promised last week when we spoke to governors on Thursday about the guidelines to open up America, our team presented every governor in the country, states and territories, with a memorandum detailing laboratory capacity and all locations of laboratory equipment for diagnostic tests that can perform the coronavirus test.

We also provided, as Dr. Birx will elaborate in just a few moments, literally a map about where these — these testing devices are located.  And I must tell you, Mr. President, I was very impressed at the way governors, as we speak, are scaling testing in their own states using these resources.

Our hope is that by providing this information, and by our team that we’ve enlisted out of Walter Reed that’s contacting every one of the laboratories in the country to find out what their needs are and to encourage them to activate those testing machines to do coronavirus testing, that we’ll continue to be able to support a state-managed effort to increase testing even more.

But a few highlights: Governor Doug Ducey announced antibody testing for 250,000 health professionals this week and first responders — a partnership between the state and the University of Arizona.

We spoke today about Governor Gavin Newsom’s announcement that he set up a task force for testing at five to seven high-capacity testing hubs, in partnership with UC San Diego and UC Davis, to increase testing in high-capacity labs around the state of California.

We heard from Governor Ron DeSantis, Mr. President, about — about the efforts of the state of Florida.  I believe he said that, at this time, Florida had conducted 275,000 coronavirus tests, and they are in the process of a major expansion of statewide testing, with the goal of opening up additional sites and using the Florida National Guard to test residents at nursing homes and long-term care facilities in Florida.

We also recommend — recommended, today, to every governor’s attention the public health website that the state of Florida established, which has useful information on a county-by-county level about where testing is happening.

Mr. President, as you said, governors are utilizing testing assets.  They’re managing and deploying these resources as they see fit.  And at your direction, we’re going to continue to work very closely with them.

Other governors that we spoke with included Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.  There are 13 new or expanded coronavirus drive-through testing sites in Michigan that her team has stood up with the Michigan Primary Care Association.  And we — and we assured her that we would continue to work, as Brad and Admiral Giroir are literally working around the clock, to make sure that they have the supplies to support all of that testing.

As the President said, Governor Hogan — who always begins our conference calls as he’s chairman of the National Governors Association — expressed appreciation for last week’s Guidelines to Open America Up Again and his appreciation, on behalf of all the governors, for the list of laboratories in each individual state.

He did raise the issue that we had included on the list Department of Defense facilities that have laboratories and machines, and also other federal facilities, many of which are in Maryland.  And I was able to assure Governor Hogan and every governor on the call that we will make all of those laboratories available across the country, to every state, as the need for testing capacity continues to scale.

And so this is one more step where you see the Army Corps of Engineers; where you literally see thousands of military doctors and nurses on the streets of New York and other cities around the country.  This is one more step where we, literally, as the President said from early on, are leaving no stone unturned, and we are delivering a whole-of-government approach for our states as they — as they deal with the coronavirus outbreak.

Governors are continuing to expand testing, and we assured them that we’re going to continue to work in every way to support their efforts to do just that.

And I will say again, as we’ve said before, as Dr. Birx comes up to explain to you what we delivered to the governors today: We told the governors once again, today, that by our best estimates, we have enough testing capacity today for every state in America to go to phase one if they meet the other criteria of 14 days of reduced cases and sufficient hospital capacity to prepare for any eventuality that may occur.  Once again, we have enough testing capacity for every state in America to go to phase one.

But we assured the governors today that we’re going to continue to work around the clock to expand the testing capacity, support supplies, and to support their efforts to encourage social distancing and the very mitigation efforts that the American people have been doing that have brought us the progress that we see all across the country today.

With that, Mr. President, I’ll just let Dr. Birx describe what we distributed today.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Mike.  Deborah?

DR. BIRX:  Thank you, Mr. Vice President and Mr. President.  I just want to show you a couple of additional slides, but also to remind all of Americans that we still have a significant number of cases, both in the Boston area and across Massachusetts and Chicago.  To really — that our hearts go out to those cities as they continue to struggle with coronavirus and the consequences at the hospitalization — to all the healthcare providers that are on the frontline.

We wanted — so these are just an illustration of the different types of equipment that are out there, describing them both as low speed but quick turnaround time, to high speed and taking three to four hours to actually run 100 or more tests.

And so the equipment range from those different — and that’s why there’s 5,000 of them, as noted by the President in this list.

We wanted every governor and every state and health laboratory director to have a clear understanding of the full capacity within the state — both for the capacity, but also where technical assistance and additional supplies may be available.  And we were proud to put the federal labs on that list because the military and the VA have stepped up every step of the way to provide support both in testing and care.  We have many military members on the frontlines, and I’m sure the military would offer their facilities to the governor of Maryland or any governor who wanted to utilize those to expand testing.

So the next slide — I’m just going to run through them very quickly.  So every governor not only received the Excel spreadsheet with the complete list of the equipment and the ZIP Code of the location and the laboratory to really be able to create a mosaic of laboratories of the high-speed and low-speed equipment together to meet the needs of their clients, depending if they’re drive-through or hospital needs.

So this is what Florida looks like.  Next slide.  This is what Louisiana looks like.  Next slide.  Maryland, with significant capacity.  Next slide.  Virginia, with significant capacity throughout the state.  Next slide.  New York — obviously a lot of capacity in New York City, with overlapping capacity.  It’s important to know where this is, because then hospitals and labs can support each other when they need surge capacity.  Next slide.  This is New Jersey.  Next slide.  Pennsylvania.  Next slide.  Massachusetts.  Next slide.  Ohio.  Next slide.  Oklahoma.  Next slide.  Washington.  Next slide.  I think that’s Wyoming.

So we wanted to show, both in states that have large populations and in states that have lower populations.  You can see that, in general, the number of machines match their population.

And we’re working with the Walter Reed group and the American Society of Microbiologists and all the lab directors to really create a web of understanding of what the capacity is currently, what the capacity can be, and how the federal government can support them in developing their strategies linked to the overarching federal strategy of testing, as outlined in our guidelines.

Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  That was great.

Q    A question for Dr. Birx, please.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.

Q    Dr. Birx, the University of Southern California and the L.A. County Public Health put out a report today that suggests that the penetrance of the virus is as much as almost 40 times what it was believed to be; that as many as 442,000 people in L.A. County may have been infected, which suggests two things.  It suggests that you have a lot more people out there who would be spreading the virus, but it also suggests that the case fatality rate is more in line with the 2017-2018 flu than what we’ve seen in some other areas of the world.  But I’m wondering if you’ve seen that and what your thoughts were.

DR. BIRX:  So we’re looking at all those studies very carefully.  And I think you will remember, over the last three weeks, I’ve been talking about the level of asymptomatic spread and my concern about asymptomatic spread.  Because with flu and other diseases, when people are sick, it’s easy to contact trace.  When people are not sick and shedding virus, you have to have a very different approach — a very different sentinel surveillance approach, a sentinel monitoring approach, which we outlined in the guidelines.  And it’s why the guidelines took that very seriously.  We knew that was unique for respiratory diseases, but it was because we were very concerned about the level of asymptomatic.

And, if you remember, we used to — we talked about younger age groups may have more asymptomatic disease, and your asymptomatic disease may decrease with your older age groups, and that your symptomatic disease might increase with — with age groups.  This is still our working hypothesis.  We have no data right now, still, to support that.  But it’s these kinds of studies that help that.  We know that New York and Detroit and other cities are very interested, which we want to also support them in — testing for frontline responders, first responders, and healthcare workers because we think their exposure may have been the greatest.

What we don’t want to do — and I’m just going to do another 30 seconds on testing.  These tests are not 100 percent sensitive or specific.  And I’m going to go over this over and over again.  So if you have 1 percent of your population infected, and you have a test that’s only 99 percent specific, that means that when you find a positive, 50 percent of the time it will be a real positive and 50 percent of the time it won’t be.

And that’s why we’re really asking people to start testing in among the first responders and the healthcare workers that have had the greatest exposure, because that’s where the test will be most reliable.  And then, when we have the luxury, we can go out to broader and broader communities.  But this has been the fundamental question to begin with and has been persistent.

And we will emphasize to the American people again: This is a highly contagious virus.  And we don’t know, by looking at someone, whether they have preexisting conditions or not.  And so all of us, as far as protecting others, must continue to do all of the recommendations to ensure that when we are in an asymptomatic state, we’re not passing the virus to others.

Q    I have a question for you as well.  The governor of South Carolina announced today they’re going to open some stores with restrictions.  But they just told my colleague, Natasha Chen, that they have not achieved that criteria in the White House Guidelines about the downward trajectory for 14 days.  So shouldn’t they not be reopening stores today?

DR. BIRX:  We have asked every governor to follow the guidelines, just as we’ve asked every American to follow the guidelines put out by the President.  But each of the governors can decide for themselves whether they’ve reached specific guidelines in specific areas.

I had a question, I think, on Saturday about Jacksonville and their beaches.  So I did spend about five hours going to every state website, and I will tell you that the — Florida’s Department of Health website is extraordinary.  And this is what every department of health should have.  Because when you go to that website, you can see that most of the cases are in southern Florida — in the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Broward County area.  And if you look in Jacksonville, they had less than 20 cases per day and less than 800 in four weeks.

And so these are the kinds — when you inform the public and give them the information that they need, then they can make decisions along with the local government and governors.

So I’m not going to say specifically with South Carolina because I don’t know their specific website right now, and I don’t talk about data unless I’ve seen it myself.  But I know from Jacksonville that they had less than 20 cases a day.

And so this is how we need to start informing the community.  These websites are critical.  It’s by ZIP Code and it’s by county.  They can see cases, they can see cumulative cases, they can see new cases, they can see hospitalizations, they can see mortality, they can see age groups of mortality, and they can see where every testing piece is.

This is how we have to inform the American public, and this is where the American public will develop confidence in each of their counties and local governments.

Q    Dr. Birx, I was hoping you can comment — the Vice President mentioned that there’s enough testing capacity right now to proceed to phase one.  But what about phase two or phase three?  Is there — are there enough machines or enough cartridges, are there enough regents right now for this sort of reopening the administration is envisioning taking place over the next month or two?

DR. BIRX:  So you can see the current machine outline.  And you can see that both of these gentlemen have par- — prepared to have everything ready for phase two, and preparing it now for what we will need in the future.  And I think that’s what you saw with the ventilators.  That’s what you’re seeing with PPE.  It’s not just for today, it’s for tomorrow.  And as our federal planning is not just for this instant — it’s making sure that we meet the needs of this instance, but we’re planning for 30 and 60 and 90 days ahead.

THE PRESIDENT:  Admiral, go ahead on that one, if you’d like.

ADMIRAL GIROIR:  I — I would just agree with Dr. Birx completely.  We are ready right now to enter phase one.  And we are ramping up all our capabilities across the board, not just to achieve what’s necessary for phase two, but two x, three x, four x, so that we will be absolutely over prepared when the nation is ready to go into those phases.

Q    President Trump?

THE PRESIDENT: And, by the way, not everybody agrees that we have to do that much testing.  We’re going maximum.  You understand.  There’s some people that don’t want to do that much testing, but we’re going maximum.  We’re going to the outer limits.  And I think that’s the way, probably, it should be.

Jeff, go ahead.

Q    Mr. President, to return to a topic that you opened the press conference with on oil: U.S. crude futures today went below zero, went into negative territory.

THE PRESIDENT:  It went negative.

Q    Yeah.

THE PRESIDENT:  Like interest rates, they go negative.

Q    Does that make you want to see Saudi Arabia and Russia and OPEC Plus do more to reduce supply?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, it’s for short term.  Much of it has to do with short sellers, much of it has to do — if you look a month into the future, I think it’s at $25 or $28 a barrel.  So a lot of people got caught.  They got caught.  And there are a lot of people that are not too happy because they got caught.

So if you take a look at it, you’ll see it’s more of a financial thing than an oil situation, but — because you take, I believe, in a month or so — in other words, go a little bit out, it’s at $25 and $28 a barrel.  So it’s largely a financial squeeze, and they did get squeezed.

Q    So would you like to see, however, Saudi Arabia and other countries make more cuts?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we’ve already done that, where Saudi Arabia is cutting back, Russia is cutting back, Mexico is cutting back, and the OPEC Plus — they call it OPEC, plus additional states — are cutting back.

And you know, the problem is nobody is driving the car anywhere in the world — essentially, 184 nations.  Factories are closed and businesses are closed.  And so, all of a sudden — we had really a lot of energy to start off with, oil in particular.  We had a lot.  And then, all of a sudden, they lost 40, 50 percent of their markets.  So it just stopped.

So it’s going to be picking up, and the energy business will be strong.  But they cut back.  It could be 20 million barrels, but it’s, let’s say, 15.  That was between Russia and Saudi Arabia.

But this had to do with the squeeze, and it was a very tough squeeze.  A lot of people got —

Q    You don’t think they need to do more right now?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, they got to do more by the market, to be honest.  Look, same thing over here.  If the market is the way it is, people are going to slow it down or they’re going to stop.  That’s going to be automatic, and that’s happening.

Yeah.

Q    Mr. President, I — on criminal justice reform and these SBA loans: I got an email earlier this morning from a fella in the northwest who owns a supply business.  And he has a felony on his record — non-violent felony — in the past five years, which under SBA guidelines makes him ineligible for one of these PPP loans.  So he has now had to let go 50 employees, many of whom are criminals trying to get back into society.

I don’t believe there’s anything in the CARES Act that would restrict somebody —

THE PRESIDENT:  If you give me the name of the company and his name, I’ll have that checked out, John.  I’ll do that.

Q    Okay.

THE PRESIDENT:  It’s a friend of yours?

Q    No, not a friend of mine.  No.  Just somebody who contacted me out of the blue.

THE PRESIDENT:  Why did he call you?  He called you to say he’s a criminal and why did he get a loan?  Or what — what’s —

Q    Because he says he wanted to apply for an SBA loan and couldn’t, and wondered how that squared —

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay.  If you give me the —

Q    — with your drive to criminal reform.

THE PRESIDENT:  — name, I’ll look into it.

Q    Okay.

THE PRESIDENT:  I’d like to look into that, okay?

Q    I have a question —

THE PRESIDENT:  Kaitlan, go ahead.

Q    — on reopening of the country.  If these companies that open, and they have employees come back to work and they get sick, will these companies be liable?

THE PRESIDENT:  Which companies are you talking about?  Under what?

Q    Any companies that open.  Manufacturing — any kind of company that opens and employees go back to work —

THE PRESIDENT:  So we have —

Q    — and they get sick, will the company be liable?

THE PRESIDENT:  I’ll give you an answer to that.  I’ll give you a legal answer to that when we look it up.  But we have tried to take liability away from these companies.  We just don’t want that because we want the companies to open and to open strong.

But I’ll get you a legal opinion on that.

Q    Who would be liable?

THE PRESIDENT:  I’ll get you — well, that’s what I’m saying.  I’ll get you a legal opinion on it.

Q    You — you guys haven’t discussed that yet?

THE PRESIDENT:  Nobody has discussed it, no.  But we will now.

Q    Have any business executives voiced concern to you about being liable, potentially?

THE PRESIDENT:  Not one.  Not one.

Q    They didn’t say it —

THE PRESIDENT:  Not at this point.

Q    — on the call last week?

THE PRESIDENT:  But we’re going to look, because they have talked about general liability.  So I’ll get you a specific answer from the lawyers.  Okay?

Go ahead.  Please.

Q    Thanks, Mr. President.  I want to follow on oil.  When you were talking earlier, you were talking about the PPP deal, and then mentioned the SPR in the first stimulus package, even though you had announced that —

THE PRESIDENT:  Oh, I’ll bet you know the price of oil right now, don’t you?

Q    I do.  Do you know the price of oil?  (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT:  I do.  I actually do.

Q    It’s negative 37 dollars.

THE PRESIDENT:  Of course, nobody has ever heard of negative oil before, but it’s for a short term.

Q    In your opening remarks, you were talking about the PPP deal, and then you mentioned the 75 million barrels of oil that —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yes.

Q    — you previously had said you wanted to purchase.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yes.

Q    You weren’t able to get funding for that in the first deal.  So I’m wondering, are you —

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, at the price you’re talking about, you don’t need funding.  They pay you.  See?  You know? Because right now —

Q    You could if you can go get it in the next 24 hours —

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, if you can get it.  That’s true.  If you can get it.

Q    So my question — my first question is: Are you asking for that funding as —

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, at a minimum, we’ll let —

Q    — part of the PPP deal?

THE PRESIDENT:  — people store.  So we’ll store it.  We’ll use it as storage and charge for it.  But people need storage desperately, and we have massive storage under the petroleum —

Q    So you’re not going to make it a requirement of the PPP interim funding deal?

THE PRESIDENT:  It’s not a question of requirement.  If we could buy it for nothing, we’re going to take everything we can get.  The only thing I like better than that is where they pay you to take the oil, but that’s a short-term squeeze.  You understand that.  So it’s — I don’t think you’re going to see that.

But, no, we’d like to have Congress — this is a great time to buy oil.  And we’d like to have Congress approve it so that we could — instead of just storing it for the big — usually the big companies.  Because I think we have 75 million gallons right now, capacity.  That’s a lot.  It’s — we’ve been building it up over a period of time, but that’s a lot: 75 million barrels.

So we’re going to get — either ask for permission to buy it, or we’ll store it.  One way or the other, it will be full.

Okay, please.

Q    Mr. President —

Q    And then, Mr. President — oh, sorry.

THE PRESIDENT:  No, go ahead.  You — you can finish up.  We’ll go right to you.

Q    Yeah, some senators, including Senator Cramer, have called on you to stop Saudi oil shipments that are on the way right now.  Is that — you can do that under Section 232.  Is that something that you would consider?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we’ll look at it.  I heard just as I’m walking into the room.  We certainly have plenty of oil.  So I’ll take a look at that.  Okay?

Yes, please.

Q    Two questions: First, on testing.  The second on the SBA loan program.  When will you — or will you, in fact, invoke the DPA to force that company you mentioned to ramp up production of cotton swabs?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we don’t — we really don’t need it.  We use it.  We go up.  And I’ve used it a lot.  But we use it and then sometimes all they have to do is see it coming.

Do you want to talk about that, Admiral?  Please.

ADMIRAL GIROIR:  I think this is — I don’t think any of us knew very much about the DPA, but there’s sort of a force side of the DPA where you force a company to do something.  But there’s a second side of it which is really a hand up.

The company we’re talking about have done — has done everything to support this effort and have ramped up production.  I’m on the phone with them multiple times a day.  This is the hand up.  This is the government coming in and saying, “How can we help you expand your lines?”  There’s no asynchrony here at all.

So this is the hand-up side of the DPA, which is exactly what these small American heroic companies need.  They don’t need to be forced.  They’re all in.  Their employees are all in.

MR. SMITH:  So a point of clarity, because —

THE PRESIDENT:  And we don’t want to embarrass people either.

Please, Brad.  Go ahead.

MR. SMITH:  So today, we were on site — or there were folks on site with that company, finishing out what their capital projections will be in order to be able to ramp up these additional four lines that I spoke about.  The company will then turn in a white paper to the DOD that will then help move the process forward.  But it’s actively in process.

Q    And I fully understand that the need is enormous, but on March 24th — March 21st, the administration promised 27 million tests by the end of March.  So far, roughly 4 million people have been tested.  So where are the other 23 million or so tests?  Did they not materialize?  Are they in the pipeline?  Help us understand that discrepancy.

ADMIRAL GIROIR:  So, since I was the one who said that, let me explain where we are — where we were.  So I was getting my information — it was correct information — about the actual tests that are in the marketplace.  So if you want to use those metrics, there’s been over 40 million, quote, “in the marketplace.”  But we have an end-to-end issue that we needed to deal with, and that’s what we’ve been dealing with: the swabs, the transport media.

If we don’t have people utilizing the machines the way Dr. Birx is talking about — we have some of our main platforms that are only 10 percent being utilized.  You can have a lot of — you could have a lot of tests in the market, and those are correct numbers, but if the machines aren’t utilizing them and they’re not organized at that level, then they’re not being –they’re not being utilized to its fullest.  And that —

THE PRESIDENT:  So, Admiral, you meant if the machines were utilized, that would be the number.

ADMIRAL GIROIR:  You would — you would have a lot of those millions of tests already being done.  I think Ambassador Birx has estimated that we have another million tests a week, just on one platform, that could be — that could be done if the machines were utilized more fully.

Q    I have a question for Admiral Giroir.

THE PRESIDENT:  For this?

Q    For Admiral Giroir.  You say that there are — and the Vice President has said this and Mr. Smith said it — that there will be enough tests in place for phase one.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  There are.

Q    There are?  The question is: What’s the standard of testing that you now have the capability for?  Is it to test people who are only very ill?  Is it test people who have the sniffles?  Is it test people who come in just because they want to get a test?  I mean, what is the standard here for the testing?

ADMIRAL GIROIR:  It is the guidelines, but I tried to be a little specific about this on Friday, and we all tried to.

Number one is, you need to test everyone who’s symptomatic, right?  And you need to over test them, because —

Q    How — how symptomatic?

ADMIRAL GIROIR:  We’re talking any symptoms that would be consistent with COVID, right?  So — and there’s a wide range of symptoms.  You want to test them and you want to over test.  And we talked about the approximate metric with Ambassador Birx — fully supports — because we — you know, this is a good metric that you want to get about one positive for every 10 tests.  Then you know you oversample.

Second — and this a really important part of the strategy — is because so many people are asymptomatic, there is no way that you can test enough people to pull one asymptomatic out of 300 people in the population.

So the strategy with — Ambassador Birx offered — and, you know, I talk to epidemiologists around the country, and they go, “Wow, I wish I would have thought of that” — is to really focus on the vulnerable population where we know that the asymptomatic rate could be much higher than the rest of the population.  And we are going to be focus- — and this is what my office does in during normal — normal times — focusing on the underserved populations, particularly in inner cities and urban areas.  They have a higher rate because overcrowding, they can’t telework, they’re subject to a lot of comorbid conditions.  Nursing homes: We all know about nursing homes, and there is both symptomatic and asymptomatic spread.  And finally, some of our indigenous populations in the Indian Health Service.

So this is a very, very important layer that most of the models and people don’t talk about, because that’s where we’re going to pick up the asymptomatic carriage.  And when you do that, that’s when you focus on track and trace.

Q    So just a quick follow-up on that.  If we have enough tests right now for everyone to go into phase one, why is the governor of Maryland having to get half a million tests from South Korea?

ADMIRAL GIROIR:  I don’t know what the governor of Maryland is doing in South Korea, but there is excess capacity every day.  If he wanted to send 30- or 40,000 tests to LabCorp and Quest, that — that could be done.  That could be done tomorrow.

Q    But he was saying they didn’t have enough that they needed to start to up their testing capacity and make it adequate.  So they had to have these late-night meetings —

ADMIRAL GIROIR:  I think — I think we’re seeing all across the country —

Q    — with South Korea.

ADMIRAL GIROIR:  — that in the states that have been hardest hit, their capacity — not only their capacity, their testing far — far exceeds South Korea.  And they’ve been able to do that on a relatively straightforward basis.  I don’t know what the governor of Maryland — we talked to him today.  He didn’t bring that up today.

Q    Haven’t you spoke to him about this?

ADMIRAL GIROIR:  We were on the governors’ call today.

Q    But you haven’t spoken to him, like, personally on this?

THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead, Mike.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  We spoke to Governor Hogan today.  I’ll follow up, because I heard there was an announcement today about that he had acquired some tests from overseas.

Maybe we could put the slide back up that showed the number of facilities, just in the state of Maryland.

And part of our process — and I don’t know when the governor placed the order from South Korea.  Wouldn’t — I wouldn’t begrudge him or his health officials for ordering tests.  But the capacity of all the different laboratories and the number of machines that are across Maryland was part of what we were communicating today, including federal facilities.  NIH is in Maryland.  There’s Department of Defense facilities.

And what we assured the governor then, and we assured all the governors, is that we’ll open up all of those facilities.

But, John, back to your — your point: There was one other element of that; that’s the phase one testing.  And I can’t — I can’t really describe it as well as the doctors here.  But it’s the contact tracing piece.  We really believe that states that meet the criteria of 14 days of cases going down and proper hospital capacity, if they test people that have symptoms, and if they deploy resources to vulnerable populations — nursing homes and other designated vulnerable populations where we believe the threat of serious outcomes from the coronavirus is real, then we also, today, informed the governors that we will be deploying CDC teams to every state and every territory in the country to assist them in contact tracing.

Governor Jared Polis raised a very good point about the legislation the President is currently negotiating on Capitol Hill.  He recommended that we make sure that the new bill, that has some $25 billion in testing resources, also cover contact tracing expenses by states.  We assured him our administration strongly supports that.  We communicated that to the Secretary of the Treasury and the rest of our negotiation team, and we’ll be pursuing that.

But we were able to tell every one of the governors that we will be deploying teams, we think of 10 or 12, for a start, from CDC to reside in all of our states and territories to supervise and work with contractors and others to do the kind of contact tracing.

So it’s: Test people that don’t feel well and may have the coronavirus.  Keep a careful eye and monitor your vulnerable population.  And when you come across a case, have a team on the ground that can do the immediate contact tracing and testing.  And that’s how we — that’s how we restrain and contain the spread of the coronavirus during phase one.  And, frankly, it’s the beginning of the structure for how we contain the coronavirus going forward.

THE PRESIDENT:  And take a look at that map.  The governor of Maryland could’ve called Mike Pence, could’ve saved a lot of money.  Look at all of the — look at these different places.  And that’s Maryland, right there.  So, could’ve saved a lot of money, but that’s okay.

Q    So you’re saying he didn’t need to go to South Korea for those testing kits?

THE PRESIDENT:  No, I don’t think he needed to go to South Korea.

Q    Have you guys not spoken to him about this?

THE PRESIDENT:  I think he needed to get a little knowledge, would’ve been helpful.

Q    Mr. President, on the SBA loans, do you think it’s right that major corporations, major institutions — like the Ritz restaurant chain, like Harvard University — apparently got a lot of money under the CARES Act, money that was supposed to be earmarked for small-business owners.  Do you think that’s fair?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I know one thing: I didn’t get any. That’s for sure.  I didn’t get any.  We’ll look at individual things, and some people will have to return it if we think it’s inappropriate.

Q    But should the criteria be changed so that that money goes to people who need it the most?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, it’s being done by great professionals.  It’s being done by banks and, as you know, community banks all over the country.  They’re — that’s what they do.  They loan money, and they’re supposed to do it according to not only criteria, but according to what we think is right.  But if somebody got something that we think is inappropriate, we’ll get it back.  Okay?  Good — good point.

Please. Go ahead.

Q    Yes.  Another — a different question about South Korea.  There are reports that you are personally negotiating with President Moon the terms of reduction of U.S. forces on the Korean Peninsula, and that there are four scenarios involved.  Can you confirm that?  And, if so, what is your desired outcome?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I think that South Korea — I had a great talk with President Moon.  He’s a friend of mine.  I congratulated — he had a wonderful election victory.  I was very happy about that.  He was — as you know, just recently.

No, we are negotiating for President Moon and for South Korea to help us monetarily, because we — as you know, we have 32,000 soldiers there.  That varies from 28- to 32,000 in South Korea.  And we think that, before I came aboard, they paid very little, if anything.  So we’re defending a wonderful nation — a nation that we have great relationships, but we’re asking them to pay for a big percentage of what we’re doing.  It’s not fair.  So, it’s not a question of reduction; it’s a question of will they contribute toward the defense of their own nation.

We’re defending nations that are very wealthy.  South Korea is a very wealthy nation.  They make our television sets.  They make ships.  They make everything.  And I give them great credit.

We’ve been defending them for many, many decades, as you know.  Many, many — over eight decades.  And I’ve gone to them in the past.  Last year, I went to them and now they’re paying a billion dollars a year.  And I went to them again, I said, “Look, I’ll be back because that’s just a fraction.”  And again, the relationship is great, but it’s just not a fair relationship.

We renegotiated the trade deal and made it a much more equitable deal than it was in the past.  It was a terrible deal. It was done by Hillary Clinton.  It was a terrible deal.  The new deal is a much more equitable deal — that’s on trade.

But, on the military, I mean, we’re paying for the military for — to defend another nation that’s 8,500 miles away.  And they’re not the only one I’m talking to you, by the way, as you know.  I won’t go into names, but I’ve done this.  Nobody talks about it, but I think it’s appropriate.  I think the taxpayer of our country — taxpayers — want to hear these things.  And so now they’re — they’ve offered us a certain amount of money, and I have rejected it.  I just said, “It’s just — look, you know, we’re doing a tremendous service.”  We have a wonderful feeling and a wonderful relationship with each other, but we have to be treated equitably and fairly.  And so that’s where it is right now.  And what’s going to happen, I can’t tell you, but we’ll find out fairly soon.

But I congratulate the President, who is a friend of mine — I congratulate President Moon on having a terrific victory.

Please.  Yeah.

Q    Thank you, sir.  A question for you about Governor Cuomo’s visit, and then also a question for Dr. Birx, if you’ll let me.

THE PRESIDENT:  Sure.

Q    The New York governor, along with the National Governors Association, in the past, have called for aid to be unrestricted.  As a lot of state and local governments see their revenues drop, are you open to the idea of unrestricted aid or do you want it to be pandemic-specific?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we’re going to be talking about that in phase four, as you know, which will start very shortly.  And that has to do with infrastructure — hopefully infrastructure, because this country needs infrastructure.

We spend all this money in the Middle East — $8 trillion.  Eight trillion — trillion, with a “T” — dollars in the Middle East, but if you have a pothole in a highway someplace, they don’t want you to spend the money to fix it.  How stupid have we been in this country?  How stupid have we been?  And that’s changing rapidly — you know that; you’ve seen that — including things like negotiating with friends.

But when we are helping friends, friends should reimburse us for the cost.  I mean, why should we be defending nations for free?  We’re defending a nation for free.  Now I’m getting a billion dollars a year, and we’re — we’ll be getting — we were offered much more than that, but I turned it down.  So that’s where we are with that.

As far as — as far as the other is concerned, look, we have to be smart in this country.  We’ve been taken to the cleaner by every — and I mean with allies, not just with the enemies — with allies.  We’ve been to — frankly, the allies have taken us much more so than the enemies.  The enemies we don’t do business with, right?  The allies, we do business with.

And whoever made these deals, whoever made these contracts — in many cases, we didn’t have a contract.  Like, we didn’t have a contract — we didn’t have a trade deal with China.  They came in and they took $500 billion a year for many years.  But anywhere from $200- to $550 billion dollars a year out of our hides.

Now we made this great trade deal.  Unfortunately, that was a number of months ago.  And it’s a great deal.  They’re paying 25 percent on $250 billion.  They’re — a lot of things are happening.  They’re going to have to purchase $250 billion worth of goods, including farm product — up to $50 billion.

So, a lot of good things are happening, but then what happened with China was the plague hit us, right?  The plague. That was after.  This was long after we signed the deal.  The plague hit us, so I’m not happy about that.

Okay.  John, please.

Q    A question for Dr. Birx, if I could.  Dr. Birx, a question on the virus itself: As it passes from patient to patient, it mutates.  Over time, have you picked up any indication that it has become less virulent?  Have you picked up any indication it has become more virulent?

DR. BIRX:  You know, that is an excellent question because we watch that all the time, particularly with RNA viruses, to really track its adaptation to humans.  I mean, you’re really asking: Has this virus become more adapted to humans and more able to spread, or is it becoming less adapted to humans and less able to spread?

We don’t have any indication that it’s less able to spread, and we’ll have good analyses that will come from — obviously, the Roosevelt had its incident with a virus outside of the United States, and we’ll be able to look at those parameters.  And the DOD and the military have done a great job in really ensuring the health of the sailors, but also ensuring that this — these questions can really be asked and answered.

We have extraordinary evolutionary molecular biologists in this country, all around the United States, and they’re looking at this very question.  And a lot of the work that we’ve been doing and a lot — you’ll see a lot of work happening with testing in New Mexico and testing in other states.  They have extraordinary molecular biologists that are evolutionary biologists, and they’ll be able to look at that, both in — both in New Mexico, that it may have lower transmission rates, and compare that to New York, that has maybe 10x the transmission.

But it’s an excellent question, and it’s something that will be able to be answered by what we see in the United States.

THE PRESIDENT:  John, what a good question that was.  Where did that come from?

Q    You know, once in a while, I pull one out of my hat, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT:  No, that’s very impressive.

You know, when Senator Schumer wrote a letter a couple of months ago, and he said, “You should use admirals and generals.” I said, “Well, that’s where we’ve…”  First of all, we have our Vice President, who has been incredible, but we have the admirals, we have the generals.  And I was just talking to the admiral inside, just before we came out.  I said, “Did you go to Annapolis?”  He said, “No sir.”  I said, “Oh, that’s too bad.  That’s too bad.  Where did you go?”  He said, “I went to Harvard.”  “Oh, that’s okay too, I guess.”  Right?

So he went to Harvard and he was a great student at Harvard, and he’s doing a fantastic job.  And this young gentleman was very, very successful.  But he wanted to help the country.  He wanted to come into the country, and we appreciate it very much.  He was a big success — a big, big success.

Let’s do here, and there next.  Okay?  We’re all set.  Good.  Go ahead.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  I was hoping you’d talk about your meeting tomorrow with Governor Cuomo that you mentioned.  Is there a reason he is coming all the way down here?

THE PRESIDENT:  I don’t know.  He wanted to, and —

Q    Is that sort of travel essential?

THE PRESIDENT:  We, believe it or not, have — we get along.  Okay?  He was very generous yesterday, in particular. Said we did a, quote, “phenomenal” deal.  I don’t know if anybody wrote that, but he said that, and I appreciated it.  Because it’s not about me; it’s about these people and thousands behind Mike and the admiral and all of the other people that are working with us.

I mean — and you see it.  Look, I don’t understand when — when I see polling and approval ratings for the job.  I mean, this group should get a 95.  It really should.  And we’re really helping the governors a lot.  And the governors call me — the ones I know, or the Republicans, but the ones I know — and they say, “It’s incredible, the job you’re doing.”  Again, not me — the job this group is doing.

And you sit here — I just — I’m watching from — from the corner, and I’m just saying, “Boy, it’s incredible stuff.”  When you watch the general get up — General Semonite — and talk about — boom, boom, boom.  You don’t see that.  You don’t see that.  When you hear the admiral speak about the testing — how good it is — and yet people don’t like to say it.

But remember, it was all about ventilators a month ago. Ventilators, ventilat- — then we fixed it.  You don’t hear about ventilators.  Where is the ventilator — Jeff, you haven’t asked about ventilators recently.  What’s going on?  What about ventilators?  We’re helping other countries now, because they can’t have — they’re very hard to come by, and they take a long time to make — like, years.  It’s incredible, the job they’ve done — that our people have done and also private companies have done.

You know, you talk about the act.  We — we don’t like to use it unless we have to.  Because, a lot of times, just the fact that you have it gets you everything you need.  So, you know, we don’t want to embarrass any of the companies.  But we have used it on a number of occasions and it worked.  But it works just as well before you have to use it, because they don’t want to be embarrassed, and I don’t want to embarrass them because they’ve done a great job.

Please, go ahead.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT:  No, I think, right behind you.  I promised. I can’t — I cannot tell a lie.  So, I mean, we’ll get you next.  Okay?

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT:  We’ll get you next.

Q    Are you talking to her or me?

THE PRESIDENT:  No, no.  You.

Q    Me.  Okay.  Well, thank you so much, Mr. President.  My question — I have two questions.  The first one is on testing.  You talked about the idea that first it was ventilators, and now it’s testing.  You seem to maybe possibly be implying that talking about testing is a personal attack on you.  Can you explain why you think testing — talking about testing is a personal attack, given that the access to testing has been an issue for a long time?  There’s bipartisan outcries still today that there is not enough testing.  Why do you think it’s a personal attack on you?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, it’s not bipartisan.  It’s mostly partisan.  But more importantly than mostly partisan, it’s incorrect.  You have — you have the experts.  Look at these maps.  I mean, you have the maps with so many different locations.

In the case of, as an example, Governor Hogan.  He didn’t really know.  He really — it was very obvious to any of those listening on the call today — even though you weren’t supposed to be on it, I’m sure that some of you were or representatives were.  He really didn’t know about the federal laboratories.  Would you say that’s correct, Mike?  He didn’t know.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  He didn’t know they were available.

THE PRESIDENT:  He didn’t know.  And Mike doesn’t like to get into this stuff.  He’s less controversial than I am.  But he didn’t know about it.  And if he did know about it, he would’ve been happy.

No, we’ve done a really good job on testing.  Now, with that being said, we have tests coming out perhaps over the next two weeks that will blow the whole industry away.  Now, a lot of people love the Abbott test.  So do I.  You know, the Abbott test is great because it’s, boom, it’s — they touch, they put it in, and in five minutes you have — the problem is that doesn’t do massive numbers like the big machine.  But the big machine takes a day, takes a day and a half, you know, with delivery and everything else.

But we have tremendous testing — tremendous testing capability.  Remember this: We’ve tested more than any country in the world by far.  In fact, I think I read where if you add up every other country in the world, we’ve tested more.

But remember this: We’re dealing in politics, we’re dealing with a thing called — November 3rd of this year.  Do you know what November 3rd represents, right?  You know better than anybody in the room.  November 3rd of this year — it’s called the presidential election.  No matter what I do, no matter where we go, no matter how well we do, no matter what, if I came up with a tablet, you take it and this plague is gone, they’ll say, “Trump did a terrible job.  Terrible.  Terrible.”  Because that’s their soundbite.  That’s the political soundbite.

They know the great job we’ve done.  But with all of that being said and — and also, there is a thing that somebody could talk to if they want, but I don’t want to bore you with it.  Not everybody believes we should do so much testing.  You don’t need so much.  We’re talking about maximum.  Maximum.

The reason that the Democrats — and some others, maybe, because they don’t know — they want maximum because they want to be able to criticize.  Because it’s almost impossible to get to the maximum number, and yet we’ve been able to do it already.

But with that — and you’ll be seeing this over the next — I think over the next couple of weeks or sooner.  We have a test — if it comes out, it’ll revolutionize the whole world of testing.  It’ll be — it’ll be something really special.

So I don’t view it as personal at all.  What I do say is, it’s something that’s not fair to thousands of people that have done such a good job.

Q    The second question I had was about your language and how you approached the coronavirus at the beginning.  I interviewed someone who said that his family got sick.  They went to a funeral in mid-March, and they said mainly because the President wasn’t taking it seriously.  He said, “If the President had had a mask on, if he was saying we should stay home, then I would have stayed home.  Instead I had family members…”

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I know.  I understand.

Q    I just want to — and he said his family members were sick because they were — they were listening to you.  Do you feel like or are you concerned that downplaying the virus maybe —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.

Q    — got some people sick?

THE PRESIDENT:  And a lot of people love Trump, right?  A lot of people love me.  You see them all the time, right?  I guess I’m here for a reason, you know?  To the best of my knowledge, I won.  And I think we’re going to win again.  I think we’re going to win in a landslide.

But just so you understand, you’re talking about March, right?

Q    Yeah.  But this is —

THE PRESIDENT:  And yet — excuse me.  Excuse me,

Q    — this is an American that’s concerned.

THE PRESIDENT:  I know.  I understand.  And yet, in January, a certain date — you know the date better than I do — we put on a ban of China, where China can’t come in.  And before March, we put on a ban on Europe, where Europe can’t come in.  So how could you say I wasn’t taking it seriously?

You know, I put on a ban on China before anybody in this country died.  I put on a ban.  And so you tell me.  Nancy Pelosi was having — she wanted to have a street party in Chinatown in San Francisco at the end of February.  That’s a month later.  And then they tell me it’s only a political talking point.  But you feed into it, because you’re too good a reporter to let that happen.  Really, you are a good reporter.  You’re too good a reporter to let that happen.

Remember this: So at the end of January, I put on a ban.  People that were in that room will tell you — I think there were 21 people — I was the only one in the whole room that wanted to do it.  Fortunately, I was the one that counted for that purpose.  We put on a ban because I was reading bad things about China.  World Health Organization should have told us, but I was reading it, with or without them.  They should have known.  All they had to do is read it.  They didn’t have to even be there.  But they tried to cover up for China — World Health covered up for China.

Q    But you did hold — you held rallies in February and March.

THE PRESIDENT:  But — no, no.  Wait.  But you can’t say this.  Look, I put on a ban.  In other words, I stopped China from coming to the United States.  I stopped Europe from coming into the United States, long before the March date that you’re talking about.  So people should say I acted very early.  That was a very hard thing to do.  Doing that was a very hard thing.  I didn’t want to do that.

Q    But you held rallies in February and March.

THE PRESIDENT:  But I did it because I thought — and Dr. Fauci said that, by doing it, President Trump saved tens of thousands of lives.  So I did take it very seriously.

Q    You held rallies in February and in March.  And there are some Americans saying —

THE PRESIDENT:  Oh, I don’t know — I don’t know about rallies.  I really don’t know about rallies.

Q    You had about five rallies in February.

THE PRESIDENT:  I know one thing: I haven’t left the White House in months, except for a brief moment to give a wonderful ship, the Comfort —

Q    You held a rally in March.

THE PRESIDENT:  I don’t know.  Did I hold a rally?  I’m sorry I hold a rally.  Did I hold a rally?  Let me tell you, in January, when I did this, you had virtually no cases and no deaths, and yet I put it on.  So how could I not?

Why was Nancy Pelosi — right? — Nancy Pelosi is holding a street fair.  She wants a street fair in San Francisco, in Chinatown, to prove — you know what the purpose of it was — to prove that there’s no problem.  Many other politicians did the same thing.  They wanted to prove —

Q    So you (inaudible) —

THE PRESIDENT:  While I was — no, of course not.  No, no, no.  I’ve been — people are amazed at how early I acted, and I did act early.  With that being said, it’s very hard to say, “Let’s close down the greatest economy in the history of the world.”  I had it closed down.  I, and everybody else that works with me, and 300 and — close to 350 million people built the greatest economy in the history of the world: best employment numbers, best stock market numbers, best numbers in virtually every category.  Even good manufacturing numbers.  The previous administration said manufacturing was dead for our country.  Even great manufacturing numbers.

And you know what?  I did that, and somebody walked into my office and said, “Sir, you’re going to have to close down the economy.  You’re going to have to close the country.”  But you know what I say to you?  We’re going to rebuild it.  And we’re going to rebuild it better, and it’s going to go faster than people think.  I built it once; I’ll built it a second time.

Please.

Q    Mr. President, thank you.  Chanel Rion with One America News.

THE PRESIDENT:  Please.  Go ahead.

Q    We have — in going back to the topic of friendship and bipartisanship — Americans — with the exception of Pelosi, Schumer, and even Romney — Americans have seen an unprecedented chapter of bipartisanship and cooperation on the political landscape.  On a personal note, what has been the most significant signal that your relationship with Democrats, below the leadership level, have changed for the good of America?

THE PRESIDENT:  I think it’s a great question, because there is bipartisanship.  Look, we’re getting the Paycheck Plan.  It’s — already $350 billion was approved, essentially unanimously.  And we have another 250, which I think you’re going to find out is going to be a higher number than that.  Okay?  I won’t say it now, because I don’t know if they’ve released it or not, but it’s going to end up being more than $250 billion.  And this is going to small businesses and it’s going to workers.

And these are really bipartisan plans.  It’s a great thing that’s happening.  So I think the fact that we’re able to do all of this in a bipartisan way is great.

Now, the tax cuts that the Republicans did, we had no help from the Democrats, so you can’t say that’s bipartisan.  But this whole thing, getting our country back — and, you know, Nancy Pelosi has been — she’s very nasty.  She, you know, wasted a lot of time with the impeachment hoax.  It was a total hoax.  It went nowhere.  But — and that was not good.  And Schumer, I guess, did the same thing, but he sort of accepted it.  He just did what he was supposed to do, and he didn’t do very well with it.  But, you know, that was not appropriate.  That was a bad thing for our country.  But it was fine.  I mean, I understand the game.

They have a little bit of a majority.  So they say, “Let’s do something and let’s try and stir it up.”  But they wasted a year.  They wasted tremendous — we could’ve been doing things that would have been great for our country.  They could have been looking into China.  They should have been looking into China, as an example.  A lot of people are blaming the Democrats for wasting all that time, because it was during that period of time, as you know, that it was fomenting.

But I think we’ve had a great spirit of bipartisanship, in a certain way.  It’s not — I wouldn’t say we’re going to set records throughout the world, but things are happening that are very good.  The country is coming together.  And I’ll tell you what: The people are coming together.  The people are really coming together.  I think you’re going to find that our country is much more unified.

I do think that the press, the media, foments a lot of this — a lot of anger.  I really believe it.  It foments tremendous anger.  For instance, I’ll be asked a tremendously hostile question from somebody, and then I’ll answer to — in a hostile way, which is appropriate; otherwise, you look foolish.  Otherwise, it looks like just walk off the stage and bow your head.  I can’t do that.  You know, I just can’t do that.

But a lot of these questions that are asked from certain networks are so hostile, and there’s no reason for it.  There’s no reason for it.  We are in a war.  This is a World War Two, this is a World War One — where, by the way, the war essentially ended because of a plague.  That was one of the worst ever.  They lost almost 100 million people.  But we’re in a big war.

And I’ll say one thing about — because I think it’s important.  The last person — I did it early, but I was the last person that wanted to close down one of the great economic — you can’t call it an experiment, but everything, I guess, in life is an experiment.  So I say experiments.  But one of the great economic stories in history.  I’m the last person who wanted to do it.

But we did the right thing, because if we didn’t do it, you would have had a million people, a million and a half people, maybe 2 million people dead.  Now, we’re going toward 50, I’m hearing, or 60,000 people.  One is too many.  I always say it: One is too many.  But we’re going toward 50- or 60,000 people.  That’s at the lower — as you know, the low number was supposed to be 100,000 people.  We — we could end up at 50 to 60.  Okay?  It’s horrible.  If we didn’t do what we did, we would have had, I think, a million people, maybe 2 million people, maybe more than that.

And you look — there’s one country in particular that decided, “Let’s wing it.  Let’s just keep going.”  They are being inundated with death.  Now, if you take a look at some of the hospitals where — one of them I knew growing up in Queens, and I’m looking at the bodies laying in hallways, being brought into refrigerated trucks.  The trucks — these massive trucks, bodies going in.  Multiply that times 10.  It’s not sustainable.

And many of the people that have this theory, “Oh, let’s — you know, maybe we could have just gone right through it,” I was — I was somebody that would have loved to have done that, but it wouldn’t have been sustainable.  You can’t lose a million people.  That’s more than — that’s almost double what we lost in the Civil War.  I use that as a guide.  Civil War: 600,000 people died.  So it’s not sustainable.  But it could have been much more than a million people.

I mean, if you took a number and cut it half, and half, and in half again, you’d end up at 500,000 people — okay? — if you want to make a very conservative guesstimate.  Five hundred thousand people is not acceptable.  Is that a correct sort of an analogy?

So, I mean, I see it all the time by friends of mine, by people that I have great respect for: “Well, we could have done this.  We could have done…”  And remember this: When we say 50 and they compare 50 to the 35 of the flu — because it averaged 35, 36,000 over a 10-year period.  It’s a lot.  Who would think that?  But we’re not talking about with the flu.  That’s just — it just goes.  We’re not locking ourselves in our units.  We’re not locking ourselves in our apartments and not moving and not touching anybody, and just saying — you know, the world.  In this case, we are.  And we’re still going to lose between 50 and 60.

But if we just kept it going on a normal basis, which is really the only standard that you can compare it to with the flu, because that was a normal basis.  You get into an airplane, you travel to Florida, you go to Texas.  You go wherever you’re going.

But, in this case, if we didn’t do anything, the number wouldn’t be 50 to 60,000.  The number would be a million people dead.  It would be a million-five, a million-two.  Maybe 700,000.  It would have been a number in — like that.

Because — because — and it’s so important because I see so much: “Oh, well, you know, they can…”  You can’t compare it, because I’ll tell you what: The people of this country, what they’ve done — they’ve gone out of their way — what they — the way they’ve lived, it hasn’t — it’s not — it’s not great.  It’s terrible.  Maybe the first three days, and then all of a sudden — you see what’s going on; they want to get going.  And I get that fully.

But I just say this: If we would have done that, we would have lost anywhere from a million to more than 2 million people.  Now, with all of the death that we’ve seen — and 50- or 60,000 people, heading toward — right now it’s at 40.  But 50- or 60,000 people; probably over 50, from what I see.  But that’s with our guard up.  If we took our guard down and just said, “Okay, we’re just going to keep this open,” we would have lost millions of people.  Can you imagine?

Look how bad it looks now, when you look at the bodies.  When you look at Hart Island in New York, where they have the mass grave, and all of the things that you see.  Can you imagine if we had the guard down, if we didn’t do anything and we just said, “Let’s ride it out”?  It would not have been sustainable in any way.  It would have been an atrocity.

So we’ve done the right thing.  We’ve really done the right thing.  And the people that have worked so hard — and dangerously.  I’ll tell you — again, I say it, but I watch those doctors and nurses and medical people running into those hospitals, and they don’t even have their gear on.  Forget about gear, whether it’s great gear or not.  And we’re bringing in the best gear in the world.  But they’re running in with open everything, and they’re pushing.  I mean, the job — they’re like warriors, the job they’re doing.

But if we didn’t do the moves that we made, you would have had a million, a million and a half, 2 million people dead.  So multiply that times 50; you’re talking about — you would have had 10 to 20 to 25 times more people dead than all of the people that we’ve been watching.  That’s not acceptable.  The 50,000 is not acceptable.  It’s so horrible.  But can you imagine multiplying that out by 20 or more?  It’s not acceptable.

So it’s a very good question.  I appreciate it.  We’ll see you tomorrow.  We’ll see you tomorrow.

END                 7:18 P.M. EDT