Donald Trump Coronavirus Press Briefing Transcript April 14: Trump Halts WHO Funding

Donald Trump: (00:03)
Very importantly, I’d like to begin by saying that we’ve just reached an agreement, the Secretary of Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, with the major airlines, all of our great airlines, to participate in a payroll support program. This agreement will fully support airline industry workers, preserve the vital role airlines play in our economy and protect taxpayers. Our airlines are now in good shape. And they will get over a very tough period of time that was not caused by them. The United States is continuing to make substantial progress in our war against the virus. We grieve at every precious life that has been lost to the invisible enemy, but through the darkness we can see the rays of light. We see that tunnel, and at the end of that tunnel, we see light. We’re starting to see it more than ever before. We’ve held our rate, the numbers, everything we’ve done. We’ve been very, very strong on it and very powerful on it.

You look at what’s happening in other countries, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, we’re working with them. We’re trying to help them, especially with ventilators. They’ve been calling a lot. They need ventilators so badly. 15% of counties within the United States have zero cases, and many counties within the United States have a very small number of cases. Large sections of our country are really looking at other sections and saying, “Wow, that looks bad.” But they don’t have the problem. I salute the American people for following our guidelines on social distancing, even you people are so different looking out there, when I look at you. Their devotion, your devotion is saving lives. Today, I’m instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus. Everybody knows what’s going on there.

American taxpayers provide between 400 million and $500 million per year to the WHO. In contrast, China contributes roughly $40 million a year. And even less as the organization’s leading sponsor, the United States has a duty to insist on full accountability, one of the most dangerous and costly decisions from the WHO was its disastrous decision to oppose travel restrictions from China and other nations. They were very much opposed to what we did. Fortunately, I was not convinced and suspended travel from China, saving untold numbers of lives. Thousands and thousands of people would have died. Had other nations likewise suspended travel from China, countless more lives would have been saved. Instead, look at the rest of the world. Look at parts of Europe. Other nations and regions who followed WHO guidelines and kept their borders open to China, accelerated the pandemic all around the world. Many countries said, “We’re going to listen to the WHO.” And they have problems the likes of which they cannot believe.

Nobody can believe. The decision of other major countries to keep travel open was one of the great tragedies and missed opportunities from the early days. The WHO’s attack on travel restrictions put political correctness above lifesaving measures. Travel bands work for the same reason that quarantines work. Pandemics depend on human-to-human transmission. Border control is fundamental to virus control. Since its establishment in 1948, the American people have generously supported the World Health Organization to provide better health outcomes for the world, and most importantly to help prevent global health crises. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have deep concerns whether America’s generosity has been put to the best use possible. The reality is that the WHO fail to adequately obtain, vet and share information in a timely and transparent fashion. The world depends on the WHO to work with countries to ensure that accurate information about international health threats is shared in a timely manner, and if it’s not to independently tell the world the truth about what is happening.

The WHO failed in this basic duty and must be held accountable. It’s time after all of these decades. The WHO failed to investigate credible reports from sources in Wuhan, that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts. There was credible information to suspect human-to-human transmission in December, 2019, which should have speared the WHO to investigate and investigate immediately. Through the middle of January, it parroted and publicly endorsed the idea that there was not human-to-human transmission happening despite reports and clear evidence to the contrary.

The delays the WHO experienced in declaring a public health emergency cost valuable time, tremendous amounts of time. More time was lost in the delay it took to get a team of international experts into examine the outbreak, which we wanted to do, which they should have done. The inability of the WHO to obtain virus samples to this date has deprived the scientific community of essential data. New data that emerges across the world on a daily basis, points to the unreliability of the initial reports. And the world received all sorts of false information about transmission and mortality.

The silence of the WHO on the disappearance of scientific researchers and doctors, and our new restrictions on the sharing of research into the origins of COVID- 19, and the country of origin, is deeply concerning. Especially when we put up by far the largest amount of money. Not even close. Had the WHO done its job to get medical experts into China to objectively assess the situation on the ground and to call out China’s lack of transparency, the outbreak could have been contained at its source with very little death, very little death, and certainly very little death by comparison. This would have saved thousands of lives and avoided worldwide economic damage. Instead, the WHO willingly took China’s assurances to face value and they took it just at face value and defended the actions of the Chinese government, even praising China for its so-called transparency.

I don’t think so. The WHO pushed China’s misinformation about the virus, saying it was not communicable and there was no need for travel bands. They told us when we put on our travel ban, a very strong travel ban, there was no need to do it. Don’t do it. They actually fought us. The WHO’s reliance on China’s disclosures likely caused a 20 fold increase in cases worldwide, and it may be much more than that. The WHO has not addressed a single one of these concerns nor provided a serious explanation that acknowledges its own mistakes, of which there were many. America and the world have chosen to rely on the WHO for accurate, timely, and independent information to make important public health recommendations and decisions. If we cannot trust that this is what we will receive from the WHO, our country will be forced to find other ways to work with other nations to achieve public health goals. We’ll have no choice but to do that.

Our countries are now experiencing, you look all over the world, tremendous death and economic devastation, because those tasked with protecting us by being truthful and transparent failed to do so. It would have been so easy to be truthful. And so much death has been caused by their mistakes. We will continue to engage with the WHO to see if it can make meaningful reforms. For the time being, we will redirect global health and directly work with others. All of the aid that we send will be discussed at very, very powerful letters and with very powerful and influential groups and smart groups, medically, politically and every other way. And we’ll be discussing it with other countries and global health partners. What we do with all of that money that goes to WHO, and maybe WHO will reform, and maybe they won’t, but we’ll be able to see.

As you know, in other countries, hit hard by the virus, hospitals have been tragically forced to ration medical care and the use of ventilators, but due to our early and aggressive action, the skill of our healthcare workers, and the resilience of our healthcare system, no hospital in America has been forced to deny any patient access to a ventilator. With all of the talk you’ve heard, where some states wanted 40,000 ventilators. I said, “That doesn’t work. 40,000.” And they ended up with seven or 8,000. And they had no problem. 40,000 ventilators for one state. It was ridiculous. The scariest day of my life was about a month ago when after a long day of meetings, my team told me that we were going to be needing 130,000 ventilators.

That we were short hundreds of thousands of ventilators. This is the system we inherited. I had governors requesting unreasonable sums that the federal government just didn’t have. And you look at the states, the states didn’t have, the states were not prepared. I knew that every person who needed a ventilator and didn’t get one would die. And that’s what we were told. They would die. I saw another country’s doctors having to make decisions on who got a ventilator and who didn’t. And I knew that this would be a defining challenge of the crisis. Those that didn’t get ventilators were said to be in a position, only of one alternative, and that was death.

Would we be able to prevent Americans from dying because we couldn’t get them ventilators, and the ventilators that they needed and they needed immediately. I instructed my team to move heaven and earth to make sure that this didn’t happen. We started to smartly ration and distribute the ventilators that we had and that others had. And I got daily updates on the supply we had, from requests coming in and people wanting to have updates. We had a great group of people working on it. I instructed my team to use the Defense Protection Act.

And the Defense Production Act was used very powerfully, more powerfully than anybody would know. In fact, so powerfully that for the most part, we didn’t have to officially take it out. It was a hammer. It was a very powerful hammer, in order to manufacture as many ventilators as possible. Last year, America manufactured from a dead start, 30,000 ventilators. And this year the number will be over 150,000 ventilators. It could be as high as 200,000. Far more than we’ll ever need. So we’ll be able to stockpile, we’ll be able to talk to states about stockpiling. These are high quality ventilators. We had a choice. We could do inexpensive, less productive ventilators or high quality. We’ve done a high quality ventilator, so we should have anywhere from 150 to 200,000 ventilators.

In addition to that, we have 10, 000 ventilators right now in the federal stockpile ready to move, should we need them. We might not. Should we need them in New York, or New Jersey, or in Louisiana, or in Illinois, or any other state that may need them, if we have a surge. I’d like to ask Adam Bowler to come up and just say a few words. He’s done a fantastic job. A young man who worked 24 hours a day on handling this situation. And I’d just like to have Adam, wherever he may be, come up and say a few words. Adam, please. Thank you very much.

Adam Boehler: (14:41)
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. At your direction, this country has worked hard over the past few weeks to ramp up ventilator production through all means possible. Thousands of ventilators are coming in now monthly, with over 100,000 by the end of June. At the same time, there are over 60,000 ventilators in our hospitals right now that are not in use. Knowing this and at your direction, we reached out to the American Hospital Association to design a system that allows hospitals to lend ventilators to other hospitals right when they need it. Within the past week alone, 20 top health systems have signed up for this dynamic ventilator reserve representing over 4,000 ventilators. Not only do we have top academic systems, like Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic, but we also have top health systems from New York City, New Orleans, Washington State, and California. Over a week ago, these places would have needed help, but now they are here to help.

There’s been no American that has needed a ventilator that has not received one. This dynamic virtual reserve, combined with our strategic stockpile, will ensure that this is always the case. I’d like to thank the president for his leadership and directive to focus on public private partnerships like this one. I’d also like to thank Sam Hazen from HCA, Lloyd Dean from Common Spirit, for leading this effort with the AHA and the Federation of American Hospitals. These have been difficult times. A few weeks ago, the Vice President came into my office and he reminded us of the power of the resilience of the American people and of private companies. We needed it that day, Mr. Vice President. This partnership is another example of Americans helping Americans. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Fantastic.

Thank you, sir.

I’d shake his hand, but I’m not allowed to. Times have changed, haven’t they? Thank you very much. You did a fantastic job. We’re very proud of you and your whole team. Thank you. Today, we are taking further action to maximize our oversupply and available-

… to maximize our oversupply in available ventilators. This afternoon I met with the leaders, the top people of many of America’s big, powerful, beautiful and very, very important hospitals and hospital associations who join us today. We had a great meeting, learned a lot, and they’ve been going through a lot. They’ve been doing a fantastic job as everybody here will attest. I’m pleased to announce that my administration is partnering with the hospitals across the country to create an innovative new system called the Dynamic Ventilator Reserve so that we’re going to have tremendous numbers of ventilators that we’re able to help our states with at a later date. If there’s ever a problem like this, which we hope to God will never happen again. It was 1917, 1918, that’s a long time ago. We hope it never happens again. And I’d like to ask Rick Pollock, CEO of American Hospital Association, Sam Hazen, CEO of HCA Healthcare, it’s the largest in the United States, Warner Thomas, CEO of Oschner Health, and if I could, Ami Hall. Are you here from Cleveland Clinic? Somebody? Good, thank you. Come on up, [Faulx 00:00:18:25], please. Thank you. Say a few words.

Ami Hall: (18:32)
Thank you very much Mr. President. We appreciate the opportunity to work with you and your team on the Dynamic Ventilator Reserve Program. This will provide a really important mechanism for us in serving our patients and communities by ensuring that this vital equipment will be available to critical areas that are in need. As this battle against this disease has affected the country a little bit unevenly, the rates of infection, hospitalization and ICU use varies from one region to another. In some places with lower infection rates some ventilators may not be in use while other areas are potentially stretched beyond their capacity. The database of available ventilators that we are creating will allow us to flex so that we can make sure that available equipment can be shared with those in need.

Ami Hall: (19:28)
We appreciate the leadership of the health systems that are here today that has stepped forward and Adam mentioned a few, I don’t know if he caught Dr. Fritz Francoise from NYU Langone and David Dill, the CEO of LifePoint as well. We appreciate the work of the administration in helping us find innovative solutions to ensure the best care for our patients. We’ll continue to work with hospitals and health systems across the country to add to this reserve further. Your team has provided us with important leadership and we look forward to working with you in making this a success. Thank you Mr. President.

Thank you very much.

Speaker 3: (20:08)
Thank you Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, Adam, the team. I stand here before you in front of our 285,000 colleagues who provide care to patients every day across the country. One of the guiding principles we had when we went into this COVID-19 battle was to find partnerships, partnerships with other components of the industry, partnerships with other health systems, but partnerships with governments, both local and federal and we’re proud to be a part of this private-public sector partnership and I think it’s going to do great good for the community. So thank you very much.

Great job. Thank you [inaudible 00:20:43].

Oschner Health Representative: (20:48)
Thank you Mr. President. It’s great to have Oschner Health be part of this program. We certainly have been a recipient and the State of Louisiana has been a recipient of help getting ventilators to our state and to Ochsner Health. We’re currently taking care of about 60% of the Covid patients in New Orleans and we did see a spike over the past few weeks, but we’re starting to get on the other side of that and heading in the right direction. I also want to thank you personally for helping Ochsner Health. A couple of weeks ago we were running short on surgical gowns and you and your team were able to direct some to New Orleans, which was helpful to us and other hospitals around the New Orleans area. So we’re excited to be part of this Dynamic Ventilator Reserve and we are proud to be a part of that and help other communities around the country. Thank you.

Cleveland Clinic Representative: (21:38)
Thank you Mr. President for the invitation here. On behalf of the Cleveland Clinic, I would just like to offer a slightly different story about a Covid pandemic. In our home state of Ohio, we did an early institution of a social distancing. Our ability to scale up the testing and ramping out the capacity, we have actually seen a stable number of patients over the last 8 to 10 days. Only 160 patients have been hospitalized with Covid infection in Cleveland Clinic Health System. We are also very grateful for the support from our state government as well from our federal government. This is a battle where we’re all in together. We coordinate our efforts, share our resources and work together as one. I’m firmly convinced that we can do a lot of good when we work together. Thank you very much for having us. Thank you, sir.

Thank you all. Great job.

That was a terrific meeting and thank you all for being here. Thank you very much. The United States has far more ICU beds per capita than any other nation. We have 34.7 ICU beds per 100,000 people, which is the best there is compared with roughly 12.5 beds per 100,000 in Italy, 11.6 beds in France, 9.7 beds in Spain. Think of that, 34.7 we have and 6.6 in the UK. There are more than 60,000 ventilators at hospitals and other healthcare facilities that are not in use at this moment. They didn’t need them. We got a lot of them out and they didn’t need them and that’s a good thing that they didn’t need them, but a lot of good brain power was involved in making a lot of fantastic decisions. I want to thank our vice president for the task force and I want to thank all members of your task force on having done an incredible job. You really have done an incredible job. Thank you Mike very much.

Through this new partnership with the hospitals, where they have unused ventilators they will voluntary lend those ventilators to other hospitals and other areas of greater need. Within the last several days, more than 20 of our nation’s largest health systems have already pledged more than 4,000 ventilators should we need them, and I have been told that if they need more, there are more there. We’re going to be helping very soon when the supply really starts pouring in, which started but will really start in about less than a month. We’re going to be helping other countries and they need it very badly. They have no chance without these ventilators. They have to have ventilators.

As we continue our medical war against the virus, the FDA has now authorized the first test developed by researchers from Rutgers University that can use saliva from patients. The first one. These tests can be self administered by patients in healthcare settings, which will reduce exposure for medical workers and save personal protective equipment. Rutgers will begin processing 10,000 tests daily. So by using saliva, that’s a first, they’ll be able to do things in terms of speed and ease that we haven’t been able to do before. So a lot of great innovation is taking place during this period of time and that’s innovation, I call it innovation under pressure. There’s a big difference. Innovation under pressure, right? Cleveland Clinic knows all about that.

As we prepare for the next phase of this great struggle, we must also do everything in our power to restore prosperity for the American worker. There’s tremendous interest and excitement surrounding the administration’s efforts to get the economy roaring once again, and I think it’s going to roar once it gets open. I think it’s going to go up tremendously. You see what’s happening with the stock market already because a lot of the very smart financial people, the great minds, they’re looking at the stock and they’re saying, “Wow,” because what they’re really seeing is how we’re doing. If we weren’t doing well, the market wouldn’t be at a level that it is today. They have a lot of confidence that we’re doing the right thing and that our country’s going to be open soon and our country’s going to be booming.

We’ve had requests to participate from the best in the world as we share their enthusiasm to get our country going. So I thank them for wanting to contribute and we look forward to speaking with many industry leaders seeking their input on how we can return to what was until very recently the greatest economy anywhere in the world. And I can say the greatest economy in the history of the world, there’s never been an economy like we had just a little bit more than a month ago. We set every record you could set. More people working than we’ve ever had working before, almost 160 million. The best unemployment numbers we’ve ever had and the best employment numbers we’ve ever had. Everybody was doing well. Stock market at a record, 142 days it hit a record and I think we’re going to top those records. Okay? And I think we’re going to top them soon once we get rid of the invisible enemy, which will happen.

The plans to reopen the country are close to being finalized and we will soon be sharing details and new guidelines with everybody. I will be speaking to all 50 governors very shortly and I will then be authorizing each individual governor of each individual state to implement a reopening and a very powerful reopening plan of their state at a time and in a manner as most appropriate. The day will be very close because certain states, as you know, are in much different condition and in a much different place than other states. It’s going to be very, very close, maybe even before the date of May 1st. So that will be for some states. Actually, there are over 20 that are in extremely good shape and we think we’re going to be able to get them open fairly quickly and then others will follow.

The federal government will be watching them very closely and we’ll be there to help. We’ll be there to help in many different ways as we’ve been where we built hospital beds at a number that nobody’s ever seen before, where we did the ventilators that we just discussed at a level that nobody’s ever seen before. Nobody can even believe, other foreign countries, even powerful countries can’t believe what we were able to do with ventilators. Big powerful countries, big producing countries can’t believe what we were able to do. We will hold the governors accountable. But again, we’re going to be working with them to make sure it works really well.

Now, we have a list of people that I’ll be speaking to over the next very short period of time and in many cases tomorrow. We’re going to have elected officials and we’ll be submitting that list to you within the next 24 hours. But we have a list of different industries that I’ll be discussing by meeting by telephone because we don’t want people traveling right now. The American Farm Bureau Federation, Zippy Duvall; Cisco Systems; Tyson Foods; Purdue Farms; Cargill; Archer Daniels, Midland Company; Corteva; Tractor Supply Company; Seaboard Corporation; Grimmway Farms; Mountaire Farms and others in the agricultural business. In banking it’s Bank of America. Brian Moynihan has been great. JP Morgan Chase, Jamie Diamond; Goldman Sachs; Citi Group; Wells Fargo; US Bank Corp; Morgan Stanley, James Gorman, Grand Rapids State Bank; Southern Bank Corp, all great institutions with lots to say and lots of good ideas.

And if you look at how Paycheck has been working out, the numbers are incredible and I hope Congress is going to be able to supplement the amount of money going to our workers. I hope they are able to get that done very quickly because it’s been an incredible success and many are already spending that money and the money’s been distributed at numbers that nobody believed possible for this short period of time. It was only a week ago, but a lot of money has been distributed already. It’s going to keep our small businesses open.

The Construction Labor Workforce; International Union of Operating Engineers, Jim Callahan; North America Building Trades Union, Sean McGarvey. These are a lot of friends of mine. Labor’s International Union of North America, Terry O’Sullivan; International Brotherhood of Teamsters, James Hoffa; National Electrical Contractors Association, David Long; Bechtel Floor, National Association of Home Builders; Association of Builders and Contractors; Associated General Contractors; Richard Trumka, AFL-DIO, GH Palmer. So these are some of the unions, pretty much almost all of the ones that will be on the line.

In defense we have Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, Northrop Grumman. These are all the top of each company, CEOs, chairmans, presidents. Raytheon, General Dynamics. Energy, we had a tremendous success recently with energy over the weekend. It finished with a tremendous credit going to Russia and to Saudi Arabia, and it could be as much as 20 million barrels a day a cut so that we can get rid of some of the tremendous excess oil that’s been produced because of the fact that the virus just knocked out almost 50% of the business. It’s been an amazing achievement. Some people say one of the biggest oil deals ever made, maybe the biggest oil deal ever made they’re saying. I didn’t know that, but we were involved in getting that done and it was very important. We’re going to save hundreds of thousands of jobs for our energy industry, Texas and North Dakota, Oklahoma, all of our different energy states. It’s great. So we’re very happy about it. I want to thank everybody. We had the, it’s called OPEC Plus. That’s OPEC Plus, meaning some nations outside of OPEC. And I also want to thank the president of Mexico because he was terrific. He showed great dexterity and flexibility in getting the deal done. We want to thank him very much.

On the energy front, we had ExxonMobil, Continental Resources, Chevron, Southern Company, Alabama Power, Conoco Phillips, Occidental Petroleum, Kinder Morgan, Pess Corporation, Perot Group, and a few others, big ones, great ones. Financial services we have Blackstone, Stephen Schwarzman; Paulson and Company, John Paulson; Citadel, Ken Griffin; Elliot Management, Paul Singer; Vista Equity Partners, Robert Smith; Fidelity Investments, Abigail Johnson; Mas-

Fidelity investments, Abigail Johnson, MasterCard, Visa, Chubb, Sequoia, Stephens; Warren Stephens, great. Charles Schwab, Chuck Schwab will be here by phone. Food and Beverage National Restaurant Association, McDonald’s, Darden Restaurants, Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola, Chick Fil A, Subway, Bloomin’ Brands, Yum brands, Papa John’s, Wendy’s, waffle house. Starbucks, Wolfgang Pub, Thomas Keller, John George, my friend John George and Danielle, you know them. From the transportation world, FedEx, Fred Smith, the legend. United Airlines, Oscar Beunos, UPS, David Abney, JB Hunt, YRC Worldwide, Crowley, Maritime, Credible, big powerful shippers in transportation companies. In telecommunications we have the legendary John Malone of Liberty Media, Verizon, T-Mobile, Charter Communications, and Brian Roberts of Comcast. Thank you all very much. Healthcare, New York Presbyterian, Jerry Spire, friend of mine, HCA Healthcare. Sam Hazen. Thank you, Sam. Just met with Sam. Ascension Health, Common Spirit Health, Community Health Systems, Trinity Health, Cardinal Health, McKesson, 3M. Thank you Mike Roman for helping us with the face masks. It worked out well for everybody. Proctor and Gamble, Abbott Laboratories, Johnson and Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Thermo Fisher Scientific.

They’ve been helping us incredibly with testing. Gilead sciences, Abby Vi, Regeneron, Biogen, Roche. And Roche has been fantastic on testing. The job they’ve done, I have to call them out. They have really … They have stepped up like very few. Anthem, United Health Group, Aetna, Cigna and Humana, all the big ones. The tech companies. We have the right ones. Apple, we have Tim Cook. Google, Sundar. Thank you, Sundar. Oracle, Larry Ellison and Safra Catz. Salesforce, Mark Benenoff. SAP, SAP. Jen Morgan, Microsoft’s Satya. Great job he’s done. Thank you, Satya. Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. IBM, Intel, Qualcomm, Cisco, Advanced Micro Devices. Broadcom. Incredible companies, companies that no other country will catch if they’re smart. They have to be smart. But I’ve dealt with a lot of different countries and I will say that no … The respect for Silicon Valley and our tech companies, there’s nobody even close to our tech companies. They can’t catch them, so they try and buy them. But we’ve sort of put an end to a lot of that.

In sports, we want to get our sports back, so importantly. These will be some separate calls. Some will be together by the wait lists and some will be separate, but we have to get our sports back. I’m tired of watching baseball games that are 14 years old, but I haven’t actually had too much time to watch. I would say maybe I watch one batter and then I get back to work. The NBA, Adam Silver, the Major League Baseball. We miss our base … Well, this is baseball season right here. Rob Manford. Thank you very much. NFL, Roger Goodell. Thank you, Roger. UFC, Dana White. Great Dana White. PGA, Jay Monahan. LPGA, Michael Juan. USDA, Patrick Galbraith. Major League Soccer, Don Garber. WWE, the great Vince McMahon. NASCAR, Lisa Kennedy. Thank you, Lisa. NHL, Gary Bettman. From the New England Patriots, Bob Kraft. Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones. Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban. And some of the thought leaders that we’re going to have and there are some others that we are having, we’re just waiting to hear, but everybody is saying yes I must say. John Allison, Heritage Foundation. Kay Coles James, great person. Hoover Institute. Condoleezza Rice, another great person. Art Laffer, Steve Moore, Steve Forbes, Larry Lindsey, Catherine Reynolds, Scott Gottlieb. Just spoke with Scott. Jim Dement and Jim has been terrific friend. Bill Haggerty and Ray Washburn. And religious leaders will be coming on Friday. We’ll be speaking to and we’re going to have a separate list, but we have tremendous enthusiasm to meet by our great religious leaders. We have incredible people and they want to be a part. We’ll be talking about churches and we’ll be talking about opening and we’ll be talking about things that are very important to a lot of people, including me. We’re going to find out how we’re doing in that regard. Those are the names that we have on our list. They’re the names that are, I think, the best and the smartest, the brightest. They’re going to give us some ideas, but we’re all set, as I said.

The governors are going to be opening up their states. They’re going to declare when. They’re going to know when. Some can open very, very shortly, if not almost immediately. We’ll give a date, but the date’s going to be in the very near future, so we’ll get it open. Individual states when the governors will be held accountable. If they need things, we’ll help them get those things, but we want them to do their testing. We want them because they’re equipped to do testing. We’ve created incredible test and we’ve done more testing than anybody’s ever done in the world right now and we had a broken system and now we have a great system. We have a system where other countries are coming to us and saying, we want to get some of those tests. I want to thank Abbott because Abbott came up with the first simpler test.

The first one was rough if you were … I think it was more of an operation than a test. The first one was, for anybody that took it, it was not easy. But now we have a very simple test with Abbott. Now we have saliva. We have lots of other things that are happening, but we have millions of tests. The governors are responsible. They have to take charge. They have to do a great job and we’re going to suggest that they check people through tests or otherwise coming into their states and they run their states very strong. Eventually we won’t have to do that. Eventually this will be gone, but for a while we’re going to do it. They’re going to take charge at their borders. They’re going to take charge of people coming in, and maybe to an extent, depending on what they work out with a nearby state, it may be also people leaving. They’ll be able to do that very shortly. We’ll be announcing a date, but it’ll be very short and frankly it’ll be at a time that will be earlier than the deadline that we imposed, the end of April.

We think that some of the governors, we’ll be in really good shape to open up even sooner than that. We’ll speak to them, but we’re all set. We’re counting on the governors to do a great job. Others are going to have to take a longer period of time until they’re in a position to say we’re ready to go. And that’s okay. We understand that. Some of the governors have a very tough situation, but in almost all cases it’s all starting to come down. We’re very proud of the job everybody’s done. And if you look at the numbers … So the minimum, as portrayed, Deborah’s here. Dr. Birx has been fantastic. The minimum was 100,000 deaths and I hope to be substantially under the minimum.

Meaning we all hope, Mike, right? We all hope to be substantially under. We did the right thing because otherwise it would have been … The projections are 2 million people. The actual projection was 2.2 million people and if you cut it in half, that would be 1.1 million people. That’s many more. That’s double the Civil War. And if you cut that in half, you’re talking five or 600,000 people. That’s what we lost in the Civil War. And that’s cutting it, cutting it, cutting it. And we’re not going to … That would not be acceptable. It would not be acceptable. Nothing’s … One life isn’t acceptable, but we weren’t given that option. I’m confident that these respected people that I just read from the list will give us some great ideas in addition to what the governors have learned. The governors have learned a lot. I’ve spoken to governors that at the beginning it was a contentious relationship and now it’s a very friendly relationship and a really great relationship. I’m proud to say that some of them I think are friends.

In some cases they’re Democrats, but I think they like me and I actually like them. I’ll tell you who they are someday. But we’re all getting along and we all want to do the right thing and I think they’re going to do a great job of leading their individual states. It’ll be a beautiful thing to watch. They’ll go and rely on their mayors and their local town officials. They’ll bring it right down. And Washington shouldn’t be doing that. We can’t be thinking about a Walmart parking lot that’s 2000 miles away where we’re doing testing, but a governor of a state can and a mayor can and right down the line. I think it’s going to be a terrific system and if we’re unhappy with the state, we’re going to let them know we’re unhappy and if they’re not doing the job and they can’t get the job done. And for some reason things are happening that we’re not going to like, like the numbers are heading in a wrong direction, we’ll have to do something that’s very serious.

We’ll have to maybe close them up and start all over again, but I don’t think we’re going to have to do that. I think the governors are going to come out at a time that … And these will be individual dates and the governors are going to come out at a time when they’re ready. Some can come out very, very shortly and we look forward to watching that process. I think it’s going to be a very beautiful process. Our discussions will focus with the people that we’re dealing with on rejuvenating the economy and always health, always health. Health and life. Living is number one, but the rejuvenated economy and I think it’s going to go quickly. We’ll be utilizing our robust testing capacity for the governors. We’ll be giving them what they need if they don’t have it themselves. We hope by now there’ll be able to have it themselves.

We were hoping they would have had it themselves early on, but they weren’t, but such great advances have been made. We’ll be dealing with them on that and we, they can rely on us very strongly. They’re going to be relying on us I think for some help and we’re there, whether it’s building hospital beds, which I don’t think they’re going to need. You look at Javits Center, a great, great job that the Army Corps of Engineers did. FEMA got involved. We actually ended up sending our medical people. That was not a COVID 19 center and they asked, could you do that? And then even after we did that, it was not used very much. Meaning they didn’t have to use it nearly to the extent that they thought when they conceived it. It wasn’t that they made a mistake. Nobody made a mistake. We built it.

I’d rather have too much than too little. Err on the side of caution. It’s really incredible what they did, including the two ships, the two great ships. I just want to thank a lot of really great people, a lot of great politicians. And again, we’re going to be announcing the political list tomorrow. On there we’re going to have a lot of senators and we’re going to be having a meeting with the governor’s probably on Thursday, a meeting by teleconference and a lot of things will be discussed and some of the details will be discussed. But we want them to do an incredible job of running their states. I think they’ll do an incredible job too. After having gotten to know so many of them, I think each one of them will do an incredible job.

And again, the federal government is there. We have ventilators if they need them. We have beds if they need them. We have hospitals, if they need them. We have a testing capacity that’s now second to none, where again other countries are calling us. Countries that you thought were doing well are calling us for help on testing so we’re there to help. And with that if you have a few questions we’ll take them and if not, that would be okay too. Yeah, go ahead please. Jeff?

Jeff: (47:47)
Mr. President, two questions. First on your announcement about the WHO, I understand your grievances with them, can you address why it is the correct time to do this now in the middle of a pandemic?

Well, we’re going to be dealing with countries and we’re going to be dealing with leaders of different parts of the world. We spend $500 million a year, we have for many years more. Far more than anybody else, including China. I mean look, I read off a long list of problems that we have and we’ve had problems with them for years. It doesn’t matter. We’re looking at a term of 60 to 90 days. We’re doing a very thorough investigation right now as we speak, but this should have been done by previous administrations a long time ago. And when you look at the mistakes that were made, all of the mistakes that were made, it’s just something we have to look at and it is very China centric.

I told that to President Xi. I said, the World Health Organization is very China centric, meaning whatever it is, China was always right. You can’t do that. Can’t do that. Not right. And we spend, and again, it’s not a question of money, but when we’re spending $500 million and China’s spending $38 million, $34 million, $40 million, $42 million in a case, it’s again, not money, but it’s not right. So we’ll see. This is an evaluation period, but in the meantime we’re putting a hold on all funds going to World Health. We will be able to take that money and channel it to the areas that most need it and that’s another way of doing it. But we have not been treated properly.

Speaker 6: (49:27)
Mr. President.

Yeah, please.

Speaker 6: (49:28)
You mentioned that you’re going to speaking with all the governors tomorrow, make recommendations.

Probably Thursday.

Speaker 6: (49:34)
On Thursday. What if they don’t listen to you or take your advice or obey you? Will you consider taking away their federal funding?

I don’t want to say that. They’ll listen. They’ll be fine. I think we’re going to have a good relationship. They need the federal government not only for funding, and I’m not saying take it away, but they need it for advice. They’ll need maybe equipment that we have. We have a tremendous stockpile that we’re in the process of completing. We’re in a very good position. Again, the cupboard was bare when I got here. Nobody ever thought a thing. In all fairness to previous administrations, nobody ever thought anything like this was going to happen, but it did happen. Now, the governor’s will be very, very respectful of the presidency. Again, this isn’t me, this is the presidency. The presidency has such a great importance in terms of what we’re doing. And you can talk about constitution, you can talk about federalism, you can talk about whatever you want, but the best way, I’m talking now from a managerial standpoint is to let individual governors run individual states and come to us if they have difficulty and we will help them. Yeah, john.

John: (50:43)
Mr. President, you talked about having testing and tracing equipment and the facility for that in place to open up the government. Dr. Fauci said this morning that that critical testing and tracing ability does not currently exist.

I don’t know. Look, I don’t know. I don’t know what he said.

John: (51:03)
My question…

I don’t know, look, I don’t know. Hey, John, I don’t know what he said. Nobody knows.

Speaker 7: (51:03)
My question is will it exist by May 1st?

The individual governors have testing. The individual governors… We have many forms of testing and new testing is being developed. Our country has to get opened and it will get open and it’ll get opened safely and hopefully quickly. Some areas quicker than other areas, but there is tremendous testing and the governors will use whatever testing is necessary and if they’re not satisfied with their testing, they shouldn’t open, but they’ll use whatever testing is necessary. Go ahead, please.

Speaker 8: (51:40)
Thank you, Mr. President, back to the W.H.O., will you support the organization again, if Tedros is immediately replaced or do you want to see him step down as possible-

We’re doing an investigation. I don’t know the gentleman, but I know there’ve been problems and it’s been very unfair to the United States. Just like the World Trade Organization has been very, very unfair and now they’re coming into line. When they consider China a developing nation and because China’s a developing nation, they take massive advantage of the United States. Why did another presidents stop this? I’ve been talking about it from the day I got in and we’re looking at that very, very strongly. World trade, W, so I have problem with World Health and World Trade, both of them, I’m not sure which is worse, you want to know the truth but we’ll figure it out, okay. Go ahead, please.

Speaker 9: (52:27)
Mr. President, you were just criticizing the W.H.O. for praising China is transparent, but you were saying many of the same things about China just a couple of months ago. So I mean how do you square your decision-

Well, I did a trade deal with China, where China is supposed to be spending $250 billion in our country. We’re going to be watching a very much to see. Now we’ve got a little bit waylaid by the virus, but look, I’d love to have a good relationship with China, but if you look and we made a phenomenal deal… China has paid, because of me, china has paid us tens of billions of dollars over the course of a very short period of time, billions of it. Some of that money has been spent to farmers where they were targeted by China. We cannot let that happen. We can’t let that happen. So we ended up signing a very good trade deal. Now I want to see if China lives up to it. I know President Xi, I think he will live up to it. If he doesn’t live up to it, that will be okay too because we have very, very good alternatives. Go ahead.

Speaker 10: (53:32)
Thank you. Today’s 600,000 cases, 25,000 deaths. I know you want to blame W.H.O, but I’ve spoken to hundreds of people across the country in the last few weeks who say they still can’t get tested and that they aren’t social distancing because-

So the governors … [crosstalk 00:53:48] Excuse me, excuse me, your question, you’re ready. The governors are supposed to do testing. It’s up to the governors. Go ahead please. [crosstalk 00:53:59] Quiet, quiet, quiet. [crosstalk 00:53:59]

Speaker 10: (53:59)
Mr. President, if they are following your lead that they are not social distancing-

The governors are doing the testing. It’s now not up and it hasn’t been up to the federal government. Go ahead. [crosstalk 00:54:17].

Speaker 11: (54:15)
Mr. President, I have a quick follow on the W.H.O. but if May 1-

I told them when they put this guy here, it’s nothing but trouble. He’s a showboat. If you keep talking, I’ll leave and you can have it out with the rest of these people. If you keep talking, I’m going to leave and you can have it out with them. Just a loud mouth. Go ahead.

Speaker 11: (54:36)
If you could kind of clarify, are you basically lifting your slow the spread before the May 1 deadline?

No, I’m not at all.

Speaker 11: (54:43)
And then how many states-

The governors are going to be running their individual states some of them will say, no, I can’t open now and some of them may last longer than we even would think. Others will say, I can, you can go. I don’t want to mention states, but there are numerous states that are in great shape right now. They are viewing the rest of the country like, we don’t even believe this is happening. We have a lot of those states. They’re set to open practically now. I mean they would be open now. We’re going to let them open sooner than the date. We’re going to pick a date, we’re going to get a date that’s good, but it’s going to be very, very soon. Sooner than the end of the month. But there are many states out there that are looking at this and they’re reviewing it and they’re saying, we shouldn’t be even included in this. There’s some that want to open up almost now. Now if we disagree with it, we’re not going to let them open. We’re not going to let them open.

If some governor has a lot of problems, a lot of cases, a lot of death, and they want to open early, we’re not going to let it happen. So we’re there to watch. We’re there to help. But we’re also there to be critics. And on testing, very important. We’ve always wanted the states to do the testing. We’re now providing great testing, but the state has to provide the great testing. The state has to provide the ventilators, but they didn’t do that, so we ended up going into the ventilator business essentially, and we’ve made tens of thousands of ventilators and we solved the big problem for the states. But we want them to do the testing and we are there to help. Yeah, please.

Speaker 12: (56:14)
I have two questions, I have a question on the-

One question, just one.

Speaker 12: (56:17)
Well, I have a question on the governors, but first can I follow up on-

One question.

Speaker 12: (56:20)
Can I follow up on Jordan’s question? Do you want to walk back where you did praise China in January for being transparent about the coronavirus?

I’m always respectful of China. I’m respectful of other countries. Why wouldn’t I be respectful of China? In the meantime, China’s paid us nothing in your last administration, nothing in any previous administration. They paid us tens of billions of dollars because of what we’ve done. And the trade deal we have, they have to give us $250 billion in purchases. Let’s see if they do that and they’re also paying us 25% or $250 billion in tariffs. So we’re taking in, wait a minute, we’re taking in billions of dollars from China, they never paid us 10 cents. That’s a great thing.

Now, if they don’t produce or if we find out bad things, we’re not going to be happy. But right now, and we’re doing that, that’s what we’re doing. Look, we have an investigation underway, we’re paying almost $500 million, we have an investigation underway on the World Health Organization. We will find out exactly what went on. And we may be satisfied that it could be remedied and we may be satisfied that it’s so bad that it can’t be remedied. And if it can’t, we’re going to go a different route.

Speaker 12: (57:40)
[inaudible 00:57:40] My question, you are criticizing the W.H.O. for praising China for being transparent, but you also praised China for being transparent-

I don’t talk about China’s transparency. [crosstalk 00:57:50] Well, if I’m so good to China, how come I was the only person, the only leader of a country that closed our borders tightly against China. And by the way, when I closed our border, that was long ahead of what anybody, you can ask anybody that was in the room, 21 people. I was the one person that wanted to do it. Deborah can tell you that better than anybody. I was the one person that wanted to do it. You know why? Because I don’t believe everything I hear and I close… And if we didn’t close our border early, very early, long before the kind of dates you’re talking about, we would have had thousands and probably hundreds of thousands more death. Please. [Crosstalk 00:58:28] Please, that’s enough.

Speaker 13: (58:29)
Mr. President last week, you said that you would have data in the coming days about the coronavirus’ disproportionate impact on black Americans-

Yes, that’s being worked on very strongly.

Speaker 13: (58:38)
When will we have that?

I would say within two weeks and it’s being worked on, Deborah, we’re working on that very strongly.

Speaker 14: (58:44)
The C.D.C.

Okay, C.D.C. is working, but we’re getting reports on that. Yeah, please go ahead, no, in the back.

Speaker 13: (58:48)
Mr. President, you’re talking about reopening parts of the country by the end of the month and if you do that and as a result you see a spike in cases in those areas-

But we may not, some countries having some countries haven’t. I’m watching other countries, I’m studying other countries as they open. I mean I don’t want to go into names because for some it would be a little bit embarrassing, but I’m studying other countries as we go along. So on that we have looked at every country that’s opened. Some successfully, some, okay, no total disaster, but some, okay. And some have to go back to the hotspot and fix the hotspot. We think we’re going to do it very successfully. Again, we have one country, but we have lots of different pieces.

It’s a puzzle. We have beautiful pieces, beautiful states with capable governors. They know when it’s time to open and we don’t want to put pressure on anybody. I’m not going to put any pressure on any governor to open. I’m not going to say to Governor Cuomo, you got to open within seven days. I want him to take his time, do it right, and then open New York. I’m not putting any pressure on the governors. Some of them don’t need pressure or not pressure. I mean, they’re ready to go. And that’s a good thing. So we’ll open it up in beautiful little pieces as it comes along. Please go ahead, behind you.

Speaker 16: (01:00:07)
Yes, just a quick question. You spoke about Governor Cuomo, just wondering if you have any thoughts on some of his remarks from earlier today where he basically said that were New York to be pressured to be open, it would cause a constitutional crisis. And he basically said that you declared yourself King Trump. So I’m wondering if you heard those thoughts-

Donald Trump: (01:00:29)
Yeah, I’ve declared myself as King. You know, I heard he said that, but I didn’t see the remarks. But he understands how we helped him. He needed help. We gave him 2,900 hospital beds. He didn’t use him. We gave him a ship, he didn’t use them. But I’m saying that’s good because you know what that means he didn’t need them. But we said it was too much, but we wanted to err, we said, err on the side of caution as I said. We said, look, we don’t think you need it, but if you do, we’re going to have them built. And the Army Corps of Engineers did a fantastic job and the U.S. Navy did a fantastic job. But we moved the ship that was not meant for COVID and we had it redesigned for COVID, but they still didn’t have very many people going in. We’ll get along just fine, he understands. We’ll get along just fine. Please.

Speaker 17: (01:01:15)
Mr. President-

Speaker 18: (01:01:16)
Mr. President, how do you assure workers in states that may reopen their fear about going back or fear of getting sick?

Talk up, please, louder.

Speaker 18: (01:01:27)
What’s your assurance to workers who are asked to go back to work but are fearful of doing so?

Well, that’s going to be up to the governors. The governors are going to want to make sure everything’s safe. Now, I think that companies can do testing on a maybe weekly basis. You don’t have to do it every day with the same worker, but they can do testing. They could do temperature gauges, they could do a lot of different things. And you know, we’re only talking about for a period of time, eventually we want to get back to where we were. We want people actually sitting next to each other in ballgames eventually. We’re not going to rip out every other seat in baseball stadiums and football stadiums. We want to go back to where we were. I want people to understand that. We’re not going to be like the way you are. We have 300 reporters in the back that want to see, look at this, the way this looks. I don’t even like the way it looks.

Although, I have a lot fewer reporters, that’s okay with me. But look at the way this looks. I’ve never seen anything, John, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. But there are a lot of people, we don’t want this. I don’t want this. I don’t want this. Eventually we’re going back, where restaurants that had 150 seats are going to have 150 seats, not 50 seats because they can’t make it at 50 seats. But more importantly, the atmosphere is even better. We have to get used to it. We have to get used to it. I don’t know that people are going to be shaking hands as readily. Some will. I said to some of the hospital people today, so will people be shaking hands again? And I must say I was a little surprised, most of them said probably, because there is some kind of a thing to it. I was never a big handshaker, but when I ran for politics, I said, I think I better start shaking people’s hand. Go ahead, John.

Speaker 7: (01:03:01)
Mr. President, a couple of financial questions if I could. Larry Kudlow said this morning that the current run rate, the paycheck protection money will run out very soon. The plan to re-up it is stalled in Congress. What can you do as president to try to move that forward?

Well, we’re trying to get it done. The problem is the Democrats want to put all sorts of things, last time they put Kennedy Center and I hated putting Kennedy Center and I have great respect for Kennedy Center. But I hated putting it in the bill because it’s just not appropriate, right? But they wanted it in for whatever reason, they had their own political reason. And John, I said, watch the way that blows up and it blew up, I think it blew up in their face. We want to take care of our workers, we’ll worry about other things and other pet projects of Democrats and also Republicans later. But it’s been a tremendously successful program. I think you see it, the banks have stepped up, hundreds of thousands of loan applications approved, money is going out. It’s been a tremendous program, really has been. And obviously it was at a point where we’re almost, the money will be expired and we could use the refill for the workers. We want to be able to make sure that small businesses stay open, John, and I think that’ll happen. Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 20: (01:04:19)
Thank you, Mr. President. Today, California’s governor set out a list of six criteria for reopening the economy there. Did he consult with you on that? And also you said earlier that there were as many as 20 states that could reopen their economies as early as May 1st, could you list-

No, I didn’t say all of them by May 1st, but there are 20 states. Actually, I was given a number, 29 States who are in very, very good shape. I don’t want to say whether or not the governor spoke with me about that, but we’ve had a very good relationship, Gavin Newsom, very, very good relationship. Yeah, in the back, go ahead.

Speaker 21: (01:04:54)
Mr. President, thank you very much. I have two questions.

One question.

Speaker 21: (01:04:58)
One is from a person who can’t be here and so I-

Who cares? If he can’t be here that’s too bad.

Speaker 21: (01:05:03)
All right. Well, one question that I have is from the United Nations’ economist, Maximo Torero says that there’s a danger that the food supply could be interrupted during this pandemic and I wanted to know what you’re going to do about that?

Well, I think our farmers are incredible. They’re producing levels of food, like just unbelievable. Our transportation, that’s one of the reasons I have the transportation people on the line tomorrow for the delivery of the food. Now we’re doing phenomenally with the food. And I will say the stores, Kroger and Walmart, which does a lot of the food and many of the stores they seem to be in very good shape, but I haven’t heard that at all. We’re going to be very strong on food supply. Okay, how about one more question, go ahead please.

Speaker 22: (01:05:48)
Yeah. The death projections that you mentioned earlier are based on full social distancing until the end of May. So if you ease up on these guidelines now, how many more Americans do you think are going to die?

Well, I’m not easing up. First of all, we’ll have guidelines, even for the states that open and there’ll be guidelines, but we will not have any problem with that. Your question’s a very interesting question, but the states that are opening are not states which will have a problem with that plus they will have to adhere to guidelines until a certain point into the future when the enemy is vanquished.

Speaker 22: (01:06:22)
But the reason they don’t have a problem now is because of social distancing. So if you ease the guidelines-

No, the reason they don’t have … is partially, and some of that will stay in effect. Much of it will stay at effect for a period of time, but the reason also is the different kinds of states. They have lots of room, they have fewer people and they have lots of room. And that’s one of the primary reasons. I want to thank you all very much, so a lot of positive things are happening. We’re going to have some very strong recommendations for the governors. We’re going to work with the governors, the governors are going to do a good job. And if they don’t do a good job, we’re going to come down on them very hard. We’ll have no other choice. Thank you all very much. Thank you. [crosstalk 01:07:01]

Speaker 23: (01:07:01)
On testing, how on Earth are we going to get to a point where we have millions and millions of tests where workers will be tested every day when they go to work.

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