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Remarks by Trump, Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing, 04-15-2020
PRESS BRIEFINGS
Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing
HEALTHCARE
Issued on: April 15, 2020
Rose Garden
5:49 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Okay. Thank you very much. Please. Thank you. A big day today at the White House. All of American society is engaged and mobilized in the war against the invisible enemy. While we must remain vigilant, it is clear that our aggressive strategy is working — and very strongly working, I might add.
New cases are declining throughout the New York metropolitan area. Cases in the Detroit and Denver metro areas are flat. Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; Philadelphia; and St. Louis are showing great signs of progress, and new cases in Houston and New Orleans are declining.
The battle continues, but the data suggests that nationwide we have passed the peak on new cases. Hopefully that will continue and we will continue to make great progress.
These encouraging developments have put us in a very strong position to finalize guidelines for states on reopening the country, which we’ll be announcing. We’re going to be talking about that tomorrow. We’ll be having a news conference tomorrow sometime during the afternoon. We’re going to be announcing guidelines, and we’ll be talking about various states. And it’s very exciting.
It’s been a horrible time to see such death and destruction, especially when you come out of what was the greatest economy in the history of the world. The greatest. There’s never been an economy like what we had produced, but we’ll produce it again. And I think we’ll produce it again very fast.
{snip}
And we have a lot of patients who recover, and they’re so happy to have recovered that the first thing they do is say, “We want to give our blood.” And they do that. It’s incredible. We have thousands of people that are doing that. They recover and they feel they have an obligation because they’ve gotten such great care. And a lot of them didn’t think they were going to make it.
As the entire U.S. government works to combat the global pandemic, it is absolutely essential that the key positions at relevant federal agencies are fully staffed. And we’re not allowing that to take place through our Congress. They’re just not — they’re just not giving it to us. We have many, many positions that are unstaffed because we can’t get the approvals. The Democrats are holding us up. We cannot get approval.
We’ve gotten judges because we go through the process. I guess we’re up to 448 federal judges. And that, we’ve gotten because we focus on it; we take the maximum time. Because no matter who the judge is, they take vast numbers of days and hours to approve, and it leaves no time left for others. Very unfair system.
If a judge is going to be approved in one hour, in one session, it doesn’t matter — they’ll take the maximum number of hours and days — you’re talking about days — to get one judge approved. And we’re close to 250 judges, but because of the way they’re doing it, there’s no time for anybody else. And many of these people have been waiting for two and a half years. We have a couple that have been waiting for longer than that.
There are currently 129 nominees stuck in the Senate because of partisan obstruction. Many are nominated for vacancies that must be filled to assist with the coronavirus crisis and the resulting economic challenges. And I’ve read, over the last couple of years, “Well, I didn’t fill positions.” I don’t fill positions — in some cases, we don’t need the position, and I’m all for that. But in many cases, you do, but we can’t get them approved by the Democrats. They won’t release them.
The positions include the Director of National Intelligence, two members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the Assistant Secretary of Treasury for Financial Markets of the United States, and the Undersecretary of Agriculture responsible for administering food security programs. And Sonny Perdue, who’s going to be speaking today, is saying, “Please, can I have this man, can I have this particular person approved as soon as possible?” He’s been telling me that for a long time, and the Democrats won’t allow it to happen.
Again, every single judge, every nominee we have goes through maximum, or at least they go through a long process. So it takes days and days, and there’s no time left. And it’s just a concerted effort to make life difficult.
An example is Michael Pack. He’s my nominee for the CEO of the Broadcasking [sic] — Broadcasting Board of Governors. And he’s been stuck in committee for two years, preventing us from managing the Voice of America. Very important.
And if you heard what’s coming out of the Voice of America, it’s disgusting. What — things they say are disgusting toward our country. And Michael Pack would get in and he’d do a great job, but he’s been waiting now for two years. Can’t get him approved.
The senators left Washington until at least May 4th. The Constitution provides a mechanism for the President to fill positions in such circumstances — the “recess appointment,” it’s called — the Senate’s practice of dabbling into so-called pro forma sessions where no one is even there. It has prevented me from using the constitutional authority that we’re giving — that we’re given under the recess provisions.
The Senate should either fulfill its duty and vote on my nominees or it should formally adjourn so that I can make recess appointments. We have a tremendous number of people that have to come into government — and now more so than ever before, because of the virus and the problem. We have to do it, and we have to do whatever we have to do. They’ve made it very, very difficult to run government. I don’t think any administration has done anywhere near what we’ve done in three and a half years.
But every block — every week, they put up roadblocks, whether it’s “Russia, Russia, Russia,” or whether it’s impeachment hoax, or whatever it may be. It’s always roadblocks and a waste of time.
If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress. The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis. It is a scam, what they do. It’s a scam, and everybody knows it. And it’s been that way for a long time. And perhaps it’s never done before — it’s never been done before; nobody is even sure if it has. But we’re going to do it. We need these people here. We need people for this crisis, and we don’t want to play any more political games.
I’ve been waiting for two and a half years, three years, for some of these people. And they’re great people. They left law firms. They left jobs. They gave up everything to do it. And they’ve been waiting for three years, two and a half years, two years, one year to get approved. It’s ridiculous. And everyone knows they’re going to be approved. But there’s only so many hours in the day, when you go through judges and you go through a lengthy hearings on judges that they know should be approved immediately. And they could do it in one session, one — and they could do it in one hour. And instead, it takes them many days.
In order to advance the health and security of our nation and all nations, as we announced yesterday, the U.S. government has put a hold on funding to the WHO — World Health Organization — pending a review of the organization’s cover-up and mismanagement of the coronavirus outbreak. Over the objections of the WHO, we took decisive action and early lifesaving action to suspend travel from China. They didn’t want to do it. They were angry that we did it. It was early on. They were angry that we did it. Took them a long time to realize what was going on, but I have a feeling they know exactly what was going on.
{snip}
Sonny, please.
SECRETARY PERDUE: Thank you, Mr. President, for the opportunity to be here with you today and to — I want you to know it’s an honor to represent you in leading the Department of Agriculture and represent the constituency who are crucial in maintaining our nation’s food security, enabling us to keep food on the table of our American families — not only just food, but wholesome and safe food as well.
{snip}
Thank you, sir, for the opportunity.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. And before the Vice President comes up, I just wanted to say, speaking of Sonny, China has paid us billions of dollars — many, many billions of dollars — in tariffs, which we’ve distributed — some to the farmers, because they were targeted. We have many billions of dollars being held by Sonny. And I’ve told him to distribute much of that money to the farmers.
Our farmers were targeted and now they’re benefiting by the amount that they were targeted. And we are very honored to do that. And, Sonny, you’re going to start that process very soon. You’ll let the farmers know. Nobody can take advantage of our farmers.
So we have a lot of money that we’ve taken in from China. We’re going to be distributing that money from — from Sonny to the farmers. And there is tremendous money over and above that. That money was paid directly into the Treasury of the United States.
This has never happened to China before. They never gave us 10 cents. Now they’re paying us billions of dollars and we appreciate it.
So thank you very much, Sonny. Great job.
{snip}
Q Thank you, Mr. President. On the recess appointments, Mr. President, if I could. Mr. President —
THE PRESIDENT: Steve, please.
Q You’ve mentioned the possibility of adjourning both the chambers of Congress. Can you explain what you meant by that, sir?
THE PRESIDENT: Very simple: If they don’t act on getting these people approved that we need because of the — we need them anyway, but we especially need now because of the pandemic — we are going to do something that will be something I’d prefer not doing, but which I should do and I will do if I have to.
Kaitlan, go ahead.
Q I have two questions for you. One, on a call with business leaders today, they said testing has got to be ramped up significantly before the country — before they feel comfortable reopening their stores —
THE PRESIDENT: Sure.
Q — their restaurants, and what-not. Isn’t that what health officials and state governors have been telling you?
THE PRESIDENT: It’s what I want too. And we have great tests. And we want the states to administer these tests, for the most part. But we’re standing behind them. We have great tests. We’ve done more testing now than any country, as you know, in the world, by far.
We have the best tests of any country in the world. Nobody have — has the quality of tests, the — if you look at Abbott, what they’ve come up with in a short period of time. They’ve been incredible. Roche has been incredible. We have the best tests in the world.
And we will be working very much with the governors of the states. We want them to do it. We’re not going to be running a parking lot in Arkansas. We’re not going to be running a parking lot, where you have a Walmart — which has been great, by the way; Walmart has done a fantastic job — but where you have a testing center and running that from Washington, D.C. The states are much better equipped to do it.
But we’ll be working with the states. We’re standing behind the states. We’re going to work very closely with the governors, in terms of that — getting additional equipment. It used to be three, four weeks ago — two weeks ago, “Can we get more ventilators?” More ventilators, right? And we got them ventilators, and you don’t hear that anymore. It’s been pretty amazing, what we’ve been able to do.
{snip}
We’re working with the governors and we’re working closely with the governors. The relationship has been very good. The Vice President has had a lot of conversations over the last two weeks with either 50 or almost 50 governors on every conversation. And they’ve been really positive conversations.
Q (Inaudible) close down?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we have the right to do whatever we want. But we wouldn’t do that. But, no, we would have the right to close down what they’re doing if we want to do that. But we don’t want to do that —
Q (Inaudible) what the states are doing?
THE PRESIDENT: — and I don’t think there’ll be any reason to do that, but we have the right to do that.
Steve? Go ahead. Go ahead.
Q You got me already.
Q Mr. President, why did you have your name added to these coronavirus relief checks?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don’t know too much about it, but I understand my name is there. I don’t know where they’re going, how they’re going. I do understand it’s not delaying anything. And I’m satisfied with that. I don’t — I don’t imagine it’s a big deal. I’m sure people will be very happy to get a big, fat, beautiful check and my name is on it.
Yeah. Go ahead, please.
Q Mr. President — Mr. President —
Q Mr. President —
THE PRESIDENT: Go ahead, please. Please.
Q Mr. President, previous Presidents never did this. Why — why are you —
THE PRESIDENT: Please. Please. Go ahead.
{snip}
Yeah, please.
Q Mr. President —
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, go ahead.
Q Thank you, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Go ahead.
Q On your threat to adjourn or — adjourn Congress, on — clearly, you have the power: Article Two, Section Three. But that would be quite radical to do.
Earlier last month, you were in the Oval Office, talking about, “Now is not the time for partisanship.” How will that act lower the partisanship in this town? And could it potentially hinder your ability to get something done on coronavirus? And then —
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it is — it’s — look, it’s been a very partisan government for a long period of time, not just this administration. You can go back into the last two administrations; you’ve seen a lot of partisanship. And even now, you would think that we wouldn’t have.
As an example, with the Paycheck Plan, that’s going so well. It’s so smooth, so beautiful, almost without a hitch. All of that money is being distributed to small businesses. They’re giving it to their employees. It’s keeping them ready, viable. So when we open — and now, it’s been so good that it’s almost depleted and we want to replenish it, and we can’t get the Democrats to approve it. And that’s a program that they and everybody else admit that are great.
So, you do have partisanship. We have been trying for years to get people approved for positions. People have left — one man left a law firm. One man left a — a big chain. He was a very successful executive; he left. It was two years ago. We have people that have been waiting for three years. And we can’t get them approved by the Democrats in the Senate because they’re taking so long to approve our judges.
Now, I have to tell you that I’m totally in favor of what Mitch is doing with judges, because that’s — always seems to be a priority and it’s a very important priority. I think it’s one of the great trademarks of this administration: We’ve approved record numbers of federal judges and appellate judges and two Supreme Court judges.
But rather than approving somebody who’s highly qualified — somebody that everybody knows is going to be approved — rather than going quickly, they take the maximum amount of time, whatever that time may be. And what they’re doing by doing that is taking days to approve somebody that could be approved in a quick vote. People that get phenomenal reviews in committee are going maximum number of hours. And what they do is — there’s only so many hours in a day.
Now, we could have said, “Let’s stay.” I would have been in favor of that. They didn’t choose to do it. But I have a very strong power. I’d rather not use that power, but we have way over 100 people that we very badly need in this administration that should have been approved a long time ago. And one of them is the head of Voice of America. If you look at what they’re doing and what they’re saying about our country, it’s a disgrace — the people that are running that. We have somebody that’s really good, really talented, and that loves our country. And I want to get these people approved.
That’s one of many. We have professionals. Sonny, you’ve been waiting for — how long have you been waiting for the man that we’re talking about coming in?
SECRETARY PERDUE: Two and a half years.
THE PRESIDENT: Two and a half years. So Sonny Perdue just happens to be here talking about something else. So you’ve been waiting for one of the most important position, as Secretary of Agriculture, is the position — it’s distribution. We need it now. We’re talking about shelves. We’re talking about cupboards. He needs it. He’s been waiting — he didn’t know he was going to get this question. You’ve been waiting two and a half years.
The person is exceptional. That person left a very good job. And it’s embarrassing to me. He’ll say, “Do you think you’ll get that man approved?” He’s been saying that to me for a long time. It’s because of the Democrats.
And what we’re doing is — and I think anybody here would do it — judges are a priority. A federal judge is going to sit for 50 years, potentially — a young judge. Going to be sitting for — that’s always going to have to be a priority.
But because they’re taking so much time and approving every — they’re trying to put us through the mill. That’s — when you talk about partisanship — and it’s never ever happened before. You can look at every administration in the history of this country. Nobody — nobody has ever had hundreds of people not approved after three and a half years.
Go ahead, please.
Q What’s the timeline for that though? If Congress doesn’t act by — when? Do you have a date?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we’ll know soon. Look, they know. I — they’ve been warned and they’re being warned right now. If they don’t approve it, then we’re going to go this route. And we’ll probably be challenged in court, and we’ll see who wins.
But when the court hears that we aren’t getting people approved — as Sonny would say, for two and a half years — for an important position that we need because of this crisis — we needed these people before, but now we really need these people.
{snip}
John, go ahead.
Q Mr. President, multiple sources are telling Fox News today that the United States government now has high confidence that, while the coronavirus is a naturally occurring virus, it emanated from a virology lab in Wuhan. That, because of lax safety protocols, an intern was infected, who later infected her boyfriend, and then went to the wet market in Wuhan where it began to spread. Does that correspond with what you have heard from officials?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don’t want to say that, John. But I will tell you, more and more, we’re hearing the story. And we’ll see. When you say “multiple sources” — now there’s a case where you can use the word “sources” — but we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened.
Go ahead, please.
Q In your many conversations with President Xi, Mr. President, did you ever discuss with him State Department concerns about lax safety protocols that had been reported to the State Department from the embassy in Beijing about that laboratory?
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t want to discuss what I talked to him about the laboratory. I just don’t want to discuss it. It’s inappropriate right now.
Please, go ahead, in the back.
Q Tim Arvier from Channel 9 Australia. There have been calls in our country for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to make funding for WHO conditional on reforms to the organization. I wanted to get your thoughts on that, and if you had any advice for Mr. Morrison.
THE PRESIDENT: Look, I feel very badly about the World Health Organization, but it’s been a tool of China. It’s been, as I say, totally China-centric. You take a look at everything that’s happened; they’ve been wrong. I was all for it at the beginning. What do I know? I walked in, I said, “World Health Organization — isn’t that wonderful?” And then you start to see all the mistakes. They didn’t want us to close our borders to China — to Wuhan, specifically. They didn’t want our borders closed.
You take a look — Mike was there; we were all there — and they’re criticizing me for closing the border. I did that very early. By the way, I did that very early, while Nancy Pelosi was trying to have, in San Francisco, parties in Chinatown. Because they — she thought it would be great. She wanted to show that this thing doesn’t exist. These are people — I’ll tell you, we have some politicians on the other side that don’t know what they’re doing.
If you look at — if you look at timelines — you’ve got to look at some timelines. But the World — the World Health Organization, just like the World Trade Organization — I’m telling you — I call them — they have been treating the United States, for decades, so badly. And they’ve been so in favor of China.
China took off when it joined the World Trade Organization because of what’s happened. Think of it: They’re considered a developing nation. And because they’re a dev- — and we’re not. But we’re a developing nation too, in my book. Okay? We’re developing too.
But the fact is: We have been treated so badly by these organizations. And, believe me, I’m looking at that one too. We’re winning a lot of lawsuits right now that we never won before in the past. We’re winning a lot of money that we never won in the past. That’s with the World Trade. But with the World Health Organization — what’s happened there is a disgrace.
Here’s the other thing: We pay $400- to $500 million a year. China is paying $38-, $39-, and $40 million a year. And it’s like they control this group. I could do that too, if I want to devote full time to it. I have some very capable people dealing with Dr. Tedros. Okay? I could do it too. I could do very well with that. But there’s something going on. There’s something going on that is very bad.
Now, the $500 million that we save, we’ll determine — we’re going to make a determination over a little period of time. But they’re going to either have to make massive changes — I don’t even know if they’re going to be able to do that — or we’re going to give money to people. We want to help people. You know, what we do in Africa with AIDS — people have no idea what we do and the money we spent. We were talking about it the other day, Doctor.
We are spending billions of dollars to help people. In the case of one that Dr. Birx is very much involved in, AIDS — billions of dollars. And you know what? It’s a great thing. Nobody talks about it. Nobody gives us credit. We do that, and we do it very directly.
But we’re spending billions of dollars to help people live and — all over the world. But we’re spending $500 million to the World Health Organization, and there’s something very bad going on. And you know what? I’ve gotten very much involved. It’s been going on for a long period of time, and we don’t want to be the suckers anymore.
So, it’s cold out. We will talk to you tomorrow. A big day tomorrow. Very big day. Thank you.
END
6:47 P.M. EDT
Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing
HEALTHCARE
Issued on: April 15, 2020
Rose Garden
5:49 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Okay. Thank you very much. Please. Thank you. A big day today at the White House. All of American society is engaged and mobilized in the war against the invisible enemy. While we must remain vigilant, it is clear that our aggressive strategy is working — and very strongly working, I might add.
New cases are declining throughout the New York metropolitan area. Cases in the Detroit and Denver metro areas are flat. Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; Philadelphia; and St. Louis are showing great signs of progress, and new cases in Houston and New Orleans are declining.
The battle continues, but the data suggests that nationwide we have passed the peak on new cases. Hopefully that will continue and we will continue to make great progress.
These encouraging developments have put us in a very strong position to finalize guidelines for states on reopening the country, which we’ll be announcing. We’re going to be talking about that tomorrow. We’ll be having a news conference tomorrow sometime during the afternoon. We’re going to be announcing guidelines, and we’ll be talking about various states. And it’s very exciting.
It’s been a horrible time to see such death and destruction, especially when you come out of what was the greatest economy in the history of the world. The greatest. There’s never been an economy like what we had produced, but we’ll produce it again. And I think we’ll produce it again very fast.
{snip}
And we have a lot of patients who recover, and they’re so happy to have recovered that the first thing they do is say, “We want to give our blood.” And they do that. It’s incredible. We have thousands of people that are doing that. They recover and they feel they have an obligation because they’ve gotten such great care. And a lot of them didn’t think they were going to make it.
As the entire U.S. government works to combat the global pandemic, it is absolutely essential that the key positions at relevant federal agencies are fully staffed. And we’re not allowing that to take place through our Congress. They’re just not — they’re just not giving it to us. We have many, many positions that are unstaffed because we can’t get the approvals. The Democrats are holding us up. We cannot get approval.
We’ve gotten judges because we go through the process. I guess we’re up to 448 federal judges. And that, we’ve gotten because we focus on it; we take the maximum time. Because no matter who the judge is, they take vast numbers of days and hours to approve, and it leaves no time left for others. Very unfair system.
If a judge is going to be approved in one hour, in one session, it doesn’t matter — they’ll take the maximum number of hours and days — you’re talking about days — to get one judge approved. And we’re close to 250 judges, but because of the way they’re doing it, there’s no time for anybody else. And many of these people have been waiting for two and a half years. We have a couple that have been waiting for longer than that.
There are currently 129 nominees stuck in the Senate because of partisan obstruction. Many are nominated for vacancies that must be filled to assist with the coronavirus crisis and the resulting economic challenges. And I’ve read, over the last couple of years, “Well, I didn’t fill positions.” I don’t fill positions — in some cases, we don’t need the position, and I’m all for that. But in many cases, you do, but we can’t get them approved by the Democrats. They won’t release them.
The positions include the Director of National Intelligence, two members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the Assistant Secretary of Treasury for Financial Markets of the United States, and the Undersecretary of Agriculture responsible for administering food security programs. And Sonny Perdue, who’s going to be speaking today, is saying, “Please, can I have this man, can I have this particular person approved as soon as possible?” He’s been telling me that for a long time, and the Democrats won’t allow it to happen.
Again, every single judge, every nominee we have goes through maximum, or at least they go through a long process. So it takes days and days, and there’s no time left. And it’s just a concerted effort to make life difficult.
An example is Michael Pack. He’s my nominee for the CEO of the Broadcasking [sic] — Broadcasting Board of Governors. And he’s been stuck in committee for two years, preventing us from managing the Voice of America. Very important.
And if you heard what’s coming out of the Voice of America, it’s disgusting. What — things they say are disgusting toward our country. And Michael Pack would get in and he’d do a great job, but he’s been waiting now for two years. Can’t get him approved.
The senators left Washington until at least May 4th. The Constitution provides a mechanism for the President to fill positions in such circumstances — the “recess appointment,” it’s called — the Senate’s practice of dabbling into so-called pro forma sessions where no one is even there. It has prevented me from using the constitutional authority that we’re giving — that we’re given under the recess provisions.
The Senate should either fulfill its duty and vote on my nominees or it should formally adjourn so that I can make recess appointments. We have a tremendous number of people that have to come into government — and now more so than ever before, because of the virus and the problem. We have to do it, and we have to do whatever we have to do. They’ve made it very, very difficult to run government. I don’t think any administration has done anywhere near what we’ve done in three and a half years.
But every block — every week, they put up roadblocks, whether it’s “Russia, Russia, Russia,” or whether it’s impeachment hoax, or whatever it may be. It’s always roadblocks and a waste of time.
If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress. The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis. It is a scam, what they do. It’s a scam, and everybody knows it. And it’s been that way for a long time. And perhaps it’s never done before — it’s never been done before; nobody is even sure if it has. But we’re going to do it. We need these people here. We need people for this crisis, and we don’t want to play any more political games.
I’ve been waiting for two and a half years, three years, for some of these people. And they’re great people. They left law firms. They left jobs. They gave up everything to do it. And they’ve been waiting for three years, two and a half years, two years, one year to get approved. It’s ridiculous. And everyone knows they’re going to be approved. But there’s only so many hours in the day, when you go through judges and you go through a lengthy hearings on judges that they know should be approved immediately. And they could do it in one session, one — and they could do it in one hour. And instead, it takes them many days.
In order to advance the health and security of our nation and all nations, as we announced yesterday, the U.S. government has put a hold on funding to the WHO — World Health Organization — pending a review of the organization’s cover-up and mismanagement of the coronavirus outbreak. Over the objections of the WHO, we took decisive action and early lifesaving action to suspend travel from China. They didn’t want to do it. They were angry that we did it. It was early on. They were angry that we did it. Took them a long time to realize what was going on, but I have a feeling they know exactly what was going on.
{snip}
Sonny, please.
SECRETARY PERDUE: Thank you, Mr. President, for the opportunity to be here with you today and to — I want you to know it’s an honor to represent you in leading the Department of Agriculture and represent the constituency who are crucial in maintaining our nation’s food security, enabling us to keep food on the table of our American families — not only just food, but wholesome and safe food as well.
{snip}
Thank you, sir, for the opportunity.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. And before the Vice President comes up, I just wanted to say, speaking of Sonny, China has paid us billions of dollars — many, many billions of dollars — in tariffs, which we’ve distributed — some to the farmers, because they were targeted. We have many billions of dollars being held by Sonny. And I’ve told him to distribute much of that money to the farmers.
Our farmers were targeted and now they’re benefiting by the amount that they were targeted. And we are very honored to do that. And, Sonny, you’re going to start that process very soon. You’ll let the farmers know. Nobody can take advantage of our farmers.
So we have a lot of money that we’ve taken in from China. We’re going to be distributing that money from — from Sonny to the farmers. And there is tremendous money over and above that. That money was paid directly into the Treasury of the United States.
This has never happened to China before. They never gave us 10 cents. Now they’re paying us billions of dollars and we appreciate it.
So thank you very much, Sonny. Great job.
{snip}
Q Thank you, Mr. President. On the recess appointments, Mr. President, if I could. Mr. President —
THE PRESIDENT: Steve, please.
Q You’ve mentioned the possibility of adjourning both the chambers of Congress. Can you explain what you meant by that, sir?
THE PRESIDENT: Very simple: If they don’t act on getting these people approved that we need because of the — we need them anyway, but we especially need now because of the pandemic — we are going to do something that will be something I’d prefer not doing, but which I should do and I will do if I have to.
Kaitlan, go ahead.
Q I have two questions for you. One, on a call with business leaders today, they said testing has got to be ramped up significantly before the country — before they feel comfortable reopening their stores —
THE PRESIDENT: Sure.
Q — their restaurants, and what-not. Isn’t that what health officials and state governors have been telling you?
THE PRESIDENT: It’s what I want too. And we have great tests. And we want the states to administer these tests, for the most part. But we’re standing behind them. We have great tests. We’ve done more testing now than any country, as you know, in the world, by far.
We have the best tests of any country in the world. Nobody have — has the quality of tests, the — if you look at Abbott, what they’ve come up with in a short period of time. They’ve been incredible. Roche has been incredible. We have the best tests in the world.
And we will be working very much with the governors of the states. We want them to do it. We’re not going to be running a parking lot in Arkansas. We’re not going to be running a parking lot, where you have a Walmart — which has been great, by the way; Walmart has done a fantastic job — but where you have a testing center and running that from Washington, D.C. The states are much better equipped to do it.
But we’ll be working with the states. We’re standing behind the states. We’re going to work very closely with the governors, in terms of that — getting additional equipment. It used to be three, four weeks ago — two weeks ago, “Can we get more ventilators?” More ventilators, right? And we got them ventilators, and you don’t hear that anymore. It’s been pretty amazing, what we’ve been able to do.
{snip}
We’re working with the governors and we’re working closely with the governors. The relationship has been very good. The Vice President has had a lot of conversations over the last two weeks with either 50 or almost 50 governors on every conversation. And they’ve been really positive conversations.
Q (Inaudible) close down?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we have the right to do whatever we want. But we wouldn’t do that. But, no, we would have the right to close down what they’re doing if we want to do that. But we don’t want to do that —
Q (Inaudible) what the states are doing?
THE PRESIDENT: — and I don’t think there’ll be any reason to do that, but we have the right to do that.
Steve? Go ahead. Go ahead.
Q You got me already.
Q Mr. President, why did you have your name added to these coronavirus relief checks?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don’t know too much about it, but I understand my name is there. I don’t know where they’re going, how they’re going. I do understand it’s not delaying anything. And I’m satisfied with that. I don’t — I don’t imagine it’s a big deal. I’m sure people will be very happy to get a big, fat, beautiful check and my name is on it.
Yeah. Go ahead, please.
Q Mr. President — Mr. President —
Q Mr. President —
THE PRESIDENT: Go ahead, please. Please.
Q Mr. President, previous Presidents never did this. Why — why are you —
THE PRESIDENT: Please. Please. Go ahead.
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Yeah, please.
Q Mr. President —
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, go ahead.
Q Thank you, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Go ahead.
Q On your threat to adjourn or — adjourn Congress, on — clearly, you have the power: Article Two, Section Three. But that would be quite radical to do.
Earlier last month, you were in the Oval Office, talking about, “Now is not the time for partisanship.” How will that act lower the partisanship in this town? And could it potentially hinder your ability to get something done on coronavirus? And then —
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it is — it’s — look, it’s been a very partisan government for a long period of time, not just this administration. You can go back into the last two administrations; you’ve seen a lot of partisanship. And even now, you would think that we wouldn’t have.
As an example, with the Paycheck Plan, that’s going so well. It’s so smooth, so beautiful, almost without a hitch. All of that money is being distributed to small businesses. They’re giving it to their employees. It’s keeping them ready, viable. So when we open — and now, it’s been so good that it’s almost depleted and we want to replenish it, and we can’t get the Democrats to approve it. And that’s a program that they and everybody else admit that are great.
So, you do have partisanship. We have been trying for years to get people approved for positions. People have left — one man left a law firm. One man left a — a big chain. He was a very successful executive; he left. It was two years ago. We have people that have been waiting for three years. And we can’t get them approved by the Democrats in the Senate because they’re taking so long to approve our judges.
Now, I have to tell you that I’m totally in favor of what Mitch is doing with judges, because that’s — always seems to be a priority and it’s a very important priority. I think it’s one of the great trademarks of this administration: We’ve approved record numbers of federal judges and appellate judges and two Supreme Court judges.
But rather than approving somebody who’s highly qualified — somebody that everybody knows is going to be approved — rather than going quickly, they take the maximum amount of time, whatever that time may be. And what they’re doing by doing that is taking days to approve somebody that could be approved in a quick vote. People that get phenomenal reviews in committee are going maximum number of hours. And what they do is — there’s only so many hours in a day.
Now, we could have said, “Let’s stay.” I would have been in favor of that. They didn’t choose to do it. But I have a very strong power. I’d rather not use that power, but we have way over 100 people that we very badly need in this administration that should have been approved a long time ago. And one of them is the head of Voice of America. If you look at what they’re doing and what they’re saying about our country, it’s a disgrace — the people that are running that. We have somebody that’s really good, really talented, and that loves our country. And I want to get these people approved.
That’s one of many. We have professionals. Sonny, you’ve been waiting for — how long have you been waiting for the man that we’re talking about coming in?
SECRETARY PERDUE: Two and a half years.
THE PRESIDENT: Two and a half years. So Sonny Perdue just happens to be here talking about something else. So you’ve been waiting for one of the most important position, as Secretary of Agriculture, is the position — it’s distribution. We need it now. We’re talking about shelves. We’re talking about cupboards. He needs it. He’s been waiting — he didn’t know he was going to get this question. You’ve been waiting two and a half years.
The person is exceptional. That person left a very good job. And it’s embarrassing to me. He’ll say, “Do you think you’ll get that man approved?” He’s been saying that to me for a long time. It’s because of the Democrats.
And what we’re doing is — and I think anybody here would do it — judges are a priority. A federal judge is going to sit for 50 years, potentially — a young judge. Going to be sitting for — that’s always going to have to be a priority.
But because they’re taking so much time and approving every — they’re trying to put us through the mill. That’s — when you talk about partisanship — and it’s never ever happened before. You can look at every administration in the history of this country. Nobody — nobody has ever had hundreds of people not approved after three and a half years.
Go ahead, please.
Q What’s the timeline for that though? If Congress doesn’t act by — when? Do you have a date?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we’ll know soon. Look, they know. I — they’ve been warned and they’re being warned right now. If they don’t approve it, then we’re going to go this route. And we’ll probably be challenged in court, and we’ll see who wins.
But when the court hears that we aren’t getting people approved — as Sonny would say, for two and a half years — for an important position that we need because of this crisis — we needed these people before, but now we really need these people.
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John, go ahead.
Q Mr. President, multiple sources are telling Fox News today that the United States government now has high confidence that, while the coronavirus is a naturally occurring virus, it emanated from a virology lab in Wuhan. That, because of lax safety protocols, an intern was infected, who later infected her boyfriend, and then went to the wet market in Wuhan where it began to spread. Does that correspond with what you have heard from officials?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don’t want to say that, John. But I will tell you, more and more, we’re hearing the story. And we’ll see. When you say “multiple sources” — now there’s a case where you can use the word “sources” — but we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened.
Go ahead, please.
Q In your many conversations with President Xi, Mr. President, did you ever discuss with him State Department concerns about lax safety protocols that had been reported to the State Department from the embassy in Beijing about that laboratory?
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t want to discuss what I talked to him about the laboratory. I just don’t want to discuss it. It’s inappropriate right now.
Please, go ahead, in the back.
Q Tim Arvier from Channel 9 Australia. There have been calls in our country for Prime Minister Scott Morrison to make funding for WHO conditional on reforms to the organization. I wanted to get your thoughts on that, and if you had any advice for Mr. Morrison.
THE PRESIDENT: Look, I feel very badly about the World Health Organization, but it’s been a tool of China. It’s been, as I say, totally China-centric. You take a look at everything that’s happened; they’ve been wrong. I was all for it at the beginning. What do I know? I walked in, I said, “World Health Organization — isn’t that wonderful?” And then you start to see all the mistakes. They didn’t want us to close our borders to China — to Wuhan, specifically. They didn’t want our borders closed.
You take a look — Mike was there; we were all there — and they’re criticizing me for closing the border. I did that very early. By the way, I did that very early, while Nancy Pelosi was trying to have, in San Francisco, parties in Chinatown. Because they — she thought it would be great. She wanted to show that this thing doesn’t exist. These are people — I’ll tell you, we have some politicians on the other side that don’t know what they’re doing.
If you look at — if you look at timelines — you’ve got to look at some timelines. But the World — the World Health Organization, just like the World Trade Organization — I’m telling you — I call them — they have been treating the United States, for decades, so badly. And they’ve been so in favor of China.
China took off when it joined the World Trade Organization because of what’s happened. Think of it: They’re considered a developing nation. And because they’re a dev- — and we’re not. But we’re a developing nation too, in my book. Okay? We’re developing too.
But the fact is: We have been treated so badly by these organizations. And, believe me, I’m looking at that one too. We’re winning a lot of lawsuits right now that we never won before in the past. We’re winning a lot of money that we never won in the past. That’s with the World Trade. But with the World Health Organization — what’s happened there is a disgrace.
Here’s the other thing: We pay $400- to $500 million a year. China is paying $38-, $39-, and $40 million a year. And it’s like they control this group. I could do that too, if I want to devote full time to it. I have some very capable people dealing with Dr. Tedros. Okay? I could do it too. I could do very well with that. But there’s something going on. There’s something going on that is very bad.
Now, the $500 million that we save, we’ll determine — we’re going to make a determination over a little period of time. But they’re going to either have to make massive changes — I don’t even know if they’re going to be able to do that — or we’re going to give money to people. We want to help people. You know, what we do in Africa with AIDS — people have no idea what we do and the money we spent. We were talking about it the other day, Doctor.
We are spending billions of dollars to help people. In the case of one that Dr. Birx is very much involved in, AIDS — billions of dollars. And you know what? It’s a great thing. Nobody talks about it. Nobody gives us credit. We do that, and we do it very directly.
But we’re spending billions of dollars to help people live and — all over the world. But we’re spending $500 million to the World Health Organization, and there’s something very bad going on. And you know what? I’ve gotten very much involved. It’s been going on for a long period of time, and we don’t want to be the suckers anymore.
So, it’s cold out. We will talk to you tomorrow. A big day tomorrow. Very big day. Thank you.
END
6:47 P.M. EDT