Transcript: Donald Trump Signs Nurse’s Day Proclamation, Contradicts Nurse on PPE

Donald Trump: (00:02)
Well, it’s had great success and Mike Pence has done a fantastic job, whether it was on ventilators when we started. We didn’t have ventilators and we got them built very quickly and now we’re giving them to other countries all over the world that are desperate for ventilators. There’s been no person in this whole country, in our whole country that hasn’t had a ventilator if they needed it, you probably saw that. Remember at the beginning it was really tough.

Speaker 2: (00:28)
It was.

And we got them built so fast. It was really an incredible mobilization. Not since World War Two has anything happened with not only ventilators, but anything else. Testing is doing really well. And the Task Force has done a great job and I had a meeting yesterday. I had a meeting this morning, probably even more importantly, and so we’ll be leaving the Task Force indefinitely. We’ll see. At a certain point that’ll end like things end, but we’ll be adding some people to the Task Force and there’ll be more in the neighborhood probably of opening our country up, because our country has to get open again. And the people want it to be open, but we have to open it up safely. So we’ll be adding two or three additional members to the Task Force. There may be one or two that will be less involved that were more involved with the original formation of the ventilator and the ventilator systems. But if they want to stay they can because they really did a fantastic job. So at a certain point we won’t need the Task Force, but we’re going to leave that. We’re going to add a couple of people to it and that will again be for the opening of our country.

We’re opening, if you think about it, we’re opening our country again. We’re the most successful economy in history for any country anywhere in the world. And then they came, I was sitting right here and they said, “Sir, I’m going to have to close it.” I said, “Close the what?” Basically we’re going to have to close our country. And just like you said with… I said, “Is it important that they not be together?” It’s not a question. It’s not a question. You can’t have the family together. It’s so sad. So anyway, we’re have what we did something that we did the right move. We saved millions of lives by doing what we did. But it’s unbelievably tough for a country. And most countries throughout the world did something similar. But this affected 182, 184 countries, and it’s a very sad thing. Very sad thing.

So we’re keeping the Task Force for a period of time. I look forward to what we can tell as a Task Force, because then the job will be essentially hopefully over, Mike. Right?

Mike Pence: (02:39)
Yes, sir.

And you’ve done a fantastic job.

Speaker 3: (02:42)
Mr. President.

Yes.

Speaker 3: (02:45)
Could you explain the change between what you said yesterday about winding down the Task Force and now [crosstalk 00:00:02:49].

Yeah.

Speaker 3: (02:51)
Different from what you said yesterday.

Well yeah. Well I guess if you think we’re always winding it down, but it’s a question of what the end point it is, but I think it is change a little bit. I thought we could wind it down sooner, but I had no idea how popular the Task Force is until actually yesterday. When I started talking about winding it down, I’d get calls from very respected people saying, “I think it would be better to keep it going. It’s done such a good job. It’s a respected Task Force.” I knew it myself. I didn’t know whether or not it was appreciated by the public, but it is appreciated by the public. When you look at the job we’ve done on everything, on supplies, on everything, the gowns that gloves, the masks.

You saw yesterday, the masks, we were at a factory yesterday, a great company, Honeywell. And in a period of four days, they took a big factory, essentially four days, a little longer, two weeks. But it was really most of the work done in four days. They took a big plant that did other things and they converted it into masks. You have to see, it’s actually a complicated for us, but they have unbelievable equipment and they’re doing millions of masks out of this factory. And that took place so quickly. And that was all because of the Task Force. I mean all of this happened because of the people working within the Administration. And something I didn’t know, Mike, they take different layers of material and compress it, put it together, because one layer is good for something, one layer is good for something else, one layer is good for very tiny particles.

I mean it’s really, you think of it as a mask. They make a very good bed. This is really something that’s very special. So the Task Force will be around until we feel it’s not necessary. But I will say that I learned yesterday, even after I spoke, Jeff, that the Task Force is something you knew. It’s very respected. People said we should keep it going, so let’s keep it going. And so we’ll be doing that, but we’ll be adding some people to it actually.

Speaker 4: (04:54)
Sir, who are some of the people you’re thinking about-

We have a whole list of people that want to be on and we have a list of people that we want.

Speaker 4: (05:00)
What would their role-

Nobody is… I will say this. Nobody’s ever turned me down to be on that Task Force. It’s very, nobody’s turned me down for anything to be honest. When we have a committee, like we had the various committees, the sports committee, the Commissioners, everybody wants to be on everything we do. The business committees. It’s never had anybody say, “Gee, I’d rather not be on that committee.” You know, it’s very important. So we’ll be announcing, I would say by Monday we’ll be announcing two or three new members to the Task Force.

John: (05:34)
Mr. President on the issue of the reopening, it seems a little questioned that by beginning the reopening process and continuing it, there will likely be more cases of Coronavirus, more deaths than there would have been had everything stayed shut down. Will the nation just have to accept the idea that by reopening there will be more cases, there will be more deaths.

So I call these people warriors, and I’m actually calling now, as you know, John, the nation warriors. You have to be warriors. We can’t keep our country closed down for years and we have to do something. And hopefully that won’t be the case, John, but he could very well be the case. You won’t be locked in a house and some people should stay if you’re over a certain age. I mean, you’ve seen that, right? Elderly people or especially elderly people with-

Speaker 5: (06:21)
Comorbidities.

With a problem, where they have a problem. It attacks these people viciously, and I think they will be staying back and we’re strongly recommending that they do that. We’re saying over 60, and especially over 60 if you have diabetes or heart problems or whatever problem you might have. But we have to get our country open again. And you see it, look, you cover it. People want to go back, you’re going to have a problem if you don’t do it. If you don’t do it, you’ve got a very big problem.

Speaker 6: (06:52)
How close are we to a permanent problem if we don’t reopen the country?

Well I think people won’t stand for it. I actually, I don’t think our people will stand for it. Now what I really believe you… People will be able to do is at a certain age, they’ll stay back longer because you know this virus is going to disappear. It’s a question of when. Will it come back in a small way? Will it come back in a fairly large way? But we know how to deal with it now much better. You know, nobody knew anything about it initially. Now we know we can put out fires, we can put out, I call them embers. If it’s a small, or if it’s a fire or a hotspot, we can put it out. But we can’t have our whole country out. Can’t do it. The country won’t take it. It won’t stand it. It’s not sustainable.

And I think you’re going to have a tremendous transition, which is a third quarter thing. I think you’re going to have a good fourth quarter. I think next year is going to be an incredible year economically. And with that being said, if somebody lost somebody, a parent, or a wife or a husband, or any brothers, sisters, if you lost someone, you could never-

Any brothers, sisters, if you lost someone, you could never make up for that by saying, “Well you’re going to have a great year next year economically.” And so you can never do that. But I will say that from an economic standpoint, I think next year is going to be a very big year. There’s tremendous demand. You see it with the stock market, where the stock market’s at 24,000, and we went through the worst attack we’ve ever had on our country. This is really the worst attack we’ve ever had. This is worse than Pearl Harbor. This is worse than the World Trade Center. There has never been an attack like this, and it should have never happened. Could’ve been stopped at the source. It could have been stopped in China. It should have been stopped right at the source, and it wasn’t. Okay.

Speaker 7: (08:45)
Mr. President, 20 states have begun reopening without meeting those gating criteria that your administration put out. Are you okay with that?

I’ve given the leeway to the governors. If I see something wrong, we’ll stop it, but I have given leeway to the governors to make that decision. You have some governors, most of whom I have great respect for. They’re working very hard. They’re watching very closely, but we’ve given leeway to the governors to make those decisions.

Speaker 7: (09:11)
And unemployment, there is some projections that show unemployment from on table could be as high as 50%. Are you worried about that number, and are you also worried-

Well there’s nothing… No, I don’t think they can, they’re not blaming me. It’s very interesting. It’s one thing, nobody’s blaming me for that. I built the greatest economy with a lot of great people, that we’ve ever had, and I’m going to rebuild it again. We’re going to have a great economy very soon, much sooner than people think, much sooner. Now, we cut taxes, and we do things that you have to do. If somebody comes along and raises taxes, and does all of the nonsense that they’re talking about, you’ll have a crash like you’ve never seen before, but this was artificially induced. This was an artificially induced unemployment.

This was where we said, we’re taking the greatest economy in the history of the world, because that’s what it was. Most people in our country, almost 160 million people, we would never close, and we had to turn it off. One day, it turned off. Nothing like that’s ever happened before. But by doing that, we have saved millions of lives. But now we’re going to make our comeback, and the come back is going to be a very strong one, and I’ll be meeting you in a little while because as you know, we have a very good governor.

John: (10:30)
Quick question, it’s healthcare related. Today is the deadline for the White House, if the wants to modify its argument before the Supreme Court about invalidating Obamacare. To do it, will you continue with the plan to completely invalidate the ACA, or-

So what we want to do is we want to, we’re staying, we’re not doing anything. In other words, we’re staying with the group, with Texas and the group. But just so you understand, Obamacare is a disaster, but we’ve run it very well, and we’ve made it barely acceptable. It was a disaster under President Obama, and it’s very bad healthcare. What we want to do is terminate it, and give great healthcare, and we’ll have great healthcare, including preexisting conditions, a hundred percent preexisting conditions. Now we’ve already pretty much killed it, because we got rid of the individual mandate. Now in getting rid of the individual mandate, which was by far the most unpopular thing in Obamacare, that’s where for the privilege of paying a fee, you don’t have to buy health insurance at a ridiculous price for not good health insurance. It was a terrible thing.

You are mandated to pay something in order not to pay. And we got rid of that. That’s gone. And nobody thinks it’s ever going to come back. But what we are doing is we want to terminate healthcare under Obamacare, because it’s bad, and we’re replacing it with a great healthcare at far less money, and it includes preexisting conditions. There will never be a time when we don’t have preexisting conditions included. So what I’m saying here, John, is we’re going to replace Obamacare with great healthcare, at a lesser price, and preexisting conditions will be included, and you won’t have the individual mandate, which was expensive, and terrible, and very unfair to everybody, and it was very unpopular.

John: (12:24)
So to attorney general Barr’s suggestion to pull back on invalidating the entire active leave, some of it in place, you’re not going to go in that direction?

No, I don’t know about that suggestion. I think I’ve spoken a lot about this to Bill Barr, and we’re totally in lockstep with all of the many states that want to see much better healthcare. See, I don’t view it as a termination. I view this as getting great healthcare. Because Obamacare, we run it really well. I had a decision to make, I said this yesterday. We took over Obamacare. We got rid of the individual mandate, which basically was the end of Obamacare. In a formal sense, it was really the end of Obamacare, and few people are challenging the fact that we can do that. So we got rid of the individual mandate. I had a decision to make. Do I want to have Obamacare run as well as it can run, or do I want to have it run really badly, so everybody could say Obamacare is terrible?

Politically, I could do the other, I should let it run badly. But I can’t do that, because I’m president for the people, and we ran that much better than President Obama ran it, much better than the last administration ran it, SEMA, and Alex, and everybody, and spent a lot of money and running it properly. It’s still not good. It’s still not good, but I had a decision, do I want to run it great or do I want to run it really badly? Politically, I should have run it really badly, but I’m glad I made the decision to run it great. But running it great, it’s still lousy healthcare, and we are going to do something that’s going to be great healthcare. Always including, always having, again, the individual mandate gone, and preexisting conditions will be taken care of. So I’m glad you asked me that question.

Speaker 7: (14:18)
Mr. President, yesterday you went to Arizona, and you had said before the trip that you would likely wear a mask at the mask factory. You ended up not wearing one.

Well, I actually did have one. No. I put a mask on, yeah. I had a mask on for a period of time.

Speaker 7: (14:28)
We didn’t see you with a mask on.

Well, I can’t help it if you didn’t se me. I mean I had a mask on, but I didn’t need it. And I asked specifically, the head of Honeywell, “Should I wear a mask?” And he said, “Well, you don’t need one in this territory.” And as you know, we were far away from people, from the people making the masks, they were making the masks. But I did put a mask on, and it was a Honeywell mask ,actually. And I also had a 3M mask, and I had about four other masks, but I did have it on, I don’t know if you saw it or not, but I had it on.

Speaker 7: (14:56)
How long did you have it on for?

Not too long, but I had it on. I had it on backstage. But they said you didn’t need it. So if I didn’t need it, and by the way, if you notice, nobody else had it on that was in the group, and they were the people.

Speaker 7: (15:12)
We saw the workers wearing them.

The workers had them on. Yeah. The workers were there, yeah. Because they’re working next to each other.

Speaker 8: (15:17)
Mr. President, what kind of message does it send that you’re surrounded by nurses who are not doing social distancing, and who are not wearing masks? What kind of a message-

Well, I can’t help that. I mean, look, I’m trying to be nice. I’m signing a bill, and you criticize us. Look, here’s the story. There’s nothing I can do to satisfy the media, the Democrats, or the fake news. And I understand that. We did the greatest job mobilization in history with the ventilators, and I don’t think there was a story, what a great job we did. Now we’re helping Germany, and we’re helping many other countries, France, Spain, and Italy, by the way. And Nigeria, sending 250 to Nigeria, ventilators. And two months ago we didn’t have any ventilators for ourselves. We were…

And two months ago we didn’t have any ventilators for ourselves. The coverage were bare, right Debra? They were bare people have no idea. There’s not a thing I can do to satisfy the fake news and there’s not a thing I can do to satisfy Democrats. I watched this phony Chuck Schumer. Everyone in New York knows he’s a total phony. He brought nothing back to New York except salt. You know what salt is? Bad tax policy. He brought salt back. He didn’t even fight it. I watched him the other night on a show and all he could talk about was testing, testing, testing and yet I showed a chart yesterday where our testing is far superior to anybody else’s testing. And then the other thing is very interesting because we did so much more testing we have more cases. If I did a little testing, we’d have practically no cases.

So the headline was we have more cases than anyone else. Well, China has more cases than us and other big countries. You’re talking about big countries but they don’t want to use that. The fact is we’ve done better testing, more testing. In fact, we’ve done as of two days ago more testing than the entire world together. You add every country, every country together we’ve done substantially more testing than the entire world together. And all I get is, Oh we have more cases. You understand that we have more cases because we do more testing. If I don’t do testing we don’t have any cases. So as I do more testing, they say, but you have more cases. They’re very smart, but they’re very devious people and in many cases, very bad people. And in some cases it’s very good ones. There’s a couple of good ones here.

Speaker 9: (17:43)
Can we ask the man who sleeping on the floor behind you a question. Up until recently we’ve heard a lot of stories of hardships from the front line owing to a shortage of PPE, masks, that sort of thing. Can you tell us, did it get bad where you were and what’s the situation now compared to what it was?

Speaker 10: (18:00)
Sure there’s always a lag time between what happens in real time versus when you guys get it and run it. So the PPE, the ventilator situation, yes it got to a point where it was getting a bad but manufacturing ramped up and I think those are two things that we knew we would take care of as a country. The third thing that we can’t manufacture and I’ve talked about this before as a doctor or a nurse or essential personnel we can’t just manufacture them. So ultimately that ended up being the weakest point for us on the front lines. We had the PPE, we had the ventilators in time, but we just didn’t have enough people. We couldn’t get them there fast enough.

And one of the things we did is we sent in the military doctors and nurses and I think most of you have seen them and some of you have worked with them. But they did a fantastic job. John, we had a lot of the military, like we took The Comfort because it didn’t need the ship and we took The Comfort and we took the doctors and nurses and we sent them all over New York and New Jersey. We took doctors and nurses out of the convention center, the Javits convention center and many of them went throughout New York. So we did a job and we weren’t even supposed to have doctors in the convention center but we ended up putting there. Because it’s true, what you’re saying is right, the man and woman power was one of the toughest things.

Speaker 11: (19:20)
[inaudible 00:19:20] All of you are you seeing now that the suppliers are what they need to be?

Speaker 12: (19:26)
Yeah. Yes. I think it’s sporadic because I talked to my colleagues around the country certainly there are pockets of areas where PPE is not ideal. But this is an unprecedented time and the infection control measures that we learned back when we went to school one gown, one mask for one patient a day or per time. This is a different time and I’ve been reusing my N95 masks for a few weeks now. I just broke out a new one to come here just in case I needed to wear it. To answer your question earlier, we’re all COVID-19 free, we were all tested. So we’re not socially distancing but we’re all negative, then we wouldn’t do anything to harm our president obviously.

Everybody has been tested.

Speaker 12: (20:09)
Yeah we were all tested.

I hope the test works, right?

Speaker 12: (20:12)
We were all tested, we’re all negative. And so that’s why we’re not socially distancing and why we’re not wearing masks. Certainly I’ve had several tests throughout this whole COVID-19 crisis. I practice in New Orleans at a community health center. My youngest patient has been four days old, a four day old infant. And so PPE has been sporadic, but it’s been manageable and we do what we have to do. We’re nurses and we learn to adapt and do whatever the best thing that we can do for our patients to get the job done and get the care provided. And that’s what we’re going to continue to do as COVID-19 continues.

Sporadic for you, but not sporadic for a lot of other people.

Speaker 12: (20:55)
Oh no, I agree Mr. President.

Because I’ve heard the opposite. I’ve heard that they are loaded up with gowns now. Initially we had nothing, we had empty cupboards, we had empty shelves, we had nothing because it wasn’t put there by the last administration. I just saw it yesterday where they’re making millions of masks a month in a factory from in that case it was Arizona. That’s great. We have other factories being built now for masks. And for the most part I mean that was fine, but I’ve heard we have tremendous supply to almost all places. Tremendous supply to a point where we’re going to start having some of our supply go to other countries, which need it very badly. How did you find that? Do you find a good supply?

Speaker 13: (21:51)
I found that we had what we needed.

Good, thank you.

Speaker 13: (21:54)
We had to change the way we did things.

You’ll end up being used to that.

Speaker 14: (21:59)
Mr president, I just wanted to add one thing too. I’m a nursing supervisor where I work at and one of the blessings I have is my director, my assistant director, his name is Dennis Hunter. He said, you know what? You guys take care of nursing, we’ll make sure we have the supply. When we all talk about the fears, it makes it so much worse for us nurses to work. We’re seeing the reality of it but to hear it on constantly, there’s not enough, there’s not enough. In reality I’m not seeing it, I’m in the hot zone right now. I’m in South New Jersey, we’re very close to New York and we are slowing down.

And so you don’t see that when you hear this story.

Speaker 14: (22:33)
I’m not seeing it.

You know why? Because they’re fake news that’s why. I really appreciate you saying that it’s so nice that you stepped up because they’re fake news.

Jeff: (22:42)
Respectfully though sir at the beginning-

No, when I took over it’s different. Now I will say this, there was a period of time but between Russia, Russia, Russia and all the stuff that these characters put us through, it’s not so easy. And despite that, I’ve done more than any other president in history in the first three years as president. And you could look at that from any way you want to look at it from rebuilding the military to cutting taxes, to getting rid of regulations at a level that nobody’s ever come close to. To saving your second amendment, which is under siege by the way. So we’ve done, but I really appreciate your statement. That was really beautiful and [inaudible 00:23:21].

Jeff: (23:20)
The issue os masks I mean I remember at the beginning of this crisis that [crosstalk 00:07:25].

That’s right we didn’t have enough.

Jeff: (23:27)
Not to wear them in order to have it for [inaudible 00:23:29].

You’re right, but that was at-

Jeff: (23:30)
So there was not enough at the beginning?

You’re right, Jeff. And the reason that we did such a good job is because we were able now we have factories all over doing masks and building our own masks and doing them. Because a lot of countries, I don’t want to be specific, but they sent us masks which were total garbage and they were defective and they sent us other equipment which was defective. And so now we’re building our own masks, we’re doing our own masks, we’re making it by the millions. And Honeywell and Arizona yesterday was a case in point and that was some scene. I’ve never seen anything like it and I didn’t realize-

And that was some scene. I’ve never seen anything like it and I didn’t realize as they put different layers and then they put it together and each layer has a different function, I mean it’s not just like taking a thing and wrapping it as we said perhaps you can do in certain conditions, but certainly not inside of a hospital. But no, we ended up, we had an empty cupboard and now we have full cupboards and we have ventilators and we have tremendous testing and we’re doing the antibodies very shortly as you probably know. There are a lot of people that don’t believe in such big testing, Deborah. I mean, you have some people that want to test everything 15 different ways. Mostly that’s the media because they know certain things can’t be done but we have tremendous testing right now.

When you see that chart, I don’t have it with me now, I guess they have it someplace in the room, but when you see the chart that I put up yesterday as I was interviewed by one of your friends on ABC, that chart says it better than anything I can say. You saw the line going, we’re like a rocket ship. Everyone else is down here in testing and then all they do is complain about the testing. So look, you get used to that but I really appreciate the fact that, what you said. And not only do we have great equipment, but we have the quality of what we have is far better than anything that we’re getting, because we see what comes in. The quality of the gowns, the quality of the masks… As of today we got one billion gloves. One billion. Who ever heard of such a thing? At the beginning we had none. When this all started, we had none. It’s one of the greatest mobilizations… It’s a war, and it’s one of the greatest mobilizations, so it’s been very successful.

Speaker 15: (25:52)
Mr. President, one more question about reopening. The initial forecast showed that the real decline in the infection curve would be about June the 1st.

Yeah.

Speaker 15: (25:58)
Latest forecasts have pushed that now back to August. I’m wondering what the ramifications might be for certain reopenings, particularly schools which begin to go back near the beginning of August.

I mean, I’ll just address one part of that. The schools should open. The one thing you should be careful of is when instructors are over 60, especially if they have a problem, but the schools should definitely open in my opinion. Could you answer the other part, Deborah?

Deborah Birx: (26:27)
I think you’re referring to the model that looks at mortality.

Speaker 15: (26:31)
We talked about this yesterday.

And the mortality is very variable. That model has gone from 60,000 now to 134,000. Obviously we track mortality very closely. You can see the rate of new hospitalizations has gone dramatically down, and so we’re following that and mortality very closely. And so we all know about models and that’s why we follow the data metro by metro, and we have represented here New Orleans that has moved through a very large peak and has come down the other side, same with Detroit. We continue to watch Chicago very carefully. We know that both Boston and Philadelphia are still working through a very difficult time.

The country has moved as individuals, and what we are so proud about is how much the governors are using testing in a focused way. So they’re not just diagnosing the individuals that have come to the hospital with symptoms, they’re proactively going out and testing in nursing homes and prisons and testing everybody when they see one case in a meat packing plant. And this is really allowing us insight, and we really appreciate the media calling out the asymptomatic spread because we’ve been talking about it for two months, but now finally it’s really getting picked up that there is asymptomatic spread, and that’s why governors using that strategic testing to ensure that the most vulnerable, those in disadvantaged areas of the cities and multigenerational households, those in group housing, those in nursing homes, those in prisons are really, they’re aggressively doing what we call surveillance and surveillance testing and I think we’ve just been very proud to watch the governors pick up on the federal guidelines that called that out as a very key point.

Speaker 15: (28:20)
Do you think we’ll be in a place in August where schools at least in some states will be able to reopen?

Well again, it’s a county-by-county, state-by-state decision and that’s how we’re collecting data, and we’re hoping and we’re asking all of the states to have a very, very great data system so that every community member can see what’s happening in their community, both of hospitalizations and testing, and unfortunately any mortality so these decisions can be continuously updated. And we’re seeing that, we’re seeing much better sites and the state and county level to really inform the public in a very clear way.

Speaker 16: (28:53)
Now Mr. President, you say you’d like to see schools open just have people or teachers who are in risky age groups not go in or be more careful?

I would like to see schools open wherever possible, which I think is in much of the country, most of the country. No, I would say that until everything is perfect I think that the teachers that are a certain age, perhaps you say over 60, especially if they have a problem with heart or diabetes or any one of a number of things, I think that they should not be teaching school for awhile and everybody would understand that fully. That we understand. But other than that, you see how well children seem to do. It’s incredible. We realize how strong children are, right? Their immune system is maybe a little bit different. Maybe it’s just a little bit stronger or maybe it’s a lot stronger, right? Could be a lot stronger. We’ve learned a lot by watching this monster. Thank you very much.

Speaker 17: (29:50)
All right, guys. Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

Speaker 18: (29:50)
See you soon.

Okay, yeah. See you in about three minutes. [crosstalk 00:29:55]. Thanks, Margo.

Transcript: Donald Trump Signs Nurse’s Day Proclamation, Contradicts Nurse on PPE

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