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Remarks by Trump, Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing, 04-27-2020
REMARKS
Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing
HEALTHCARE
Issued on: April 27, 2020
Rose Garden
5:38 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you. Today I’d like to provide you with an update in our war against the coronavirus. Thanks to our comprehensive strategy and extraordinary devotion to our citizens — we’ve had such tremendous support all over — we continue to see encouraging signs of progress.
{snip}
Please. Come forward, please. Thank you.
MR. RUSCKOWSKI: Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you for — all of you for being here today. And what we’d like to talk about is the progress we’ve made.
The last time we were here was March 13th, and we’ve made tremendous progress. And none of that progress could be made without the 47,000 people at Quest Diagnostics that are working around the clock, working up the test and running the test and delivering the results that we need.
{snip}
So with that, I’d like to offer my colleague the podium as well.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.
MR. SCHECHTER: Mr. President, thank you very much for your leadership and for having us all here today. Our scientists and our lab technicians are working day and night in order to do as many tests as we possibly can for the American public and to turn those tests around as quickly as possible.
{snip}
THE PRESIDENT:
{snip}
Yeah, please. Go ahead, please.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. I have a question for you regarding one of the members of your Coronavirus Task Force, and that’s Secretary of HHS Alex Azar.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
Q On January the 28th, he was in the briefing room. And in the briefing room, he told reporters that, for the individual American, the virus should not be an impact on their day-to-day life. Three months later, more than 55,000 of our fellow Americans have now lost their lives. Mr. President, why is he still your top health advisor? Why is he still serving as the HHS Secretary?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think it’s a very unfair question because you have many great professionals, some of them you have great respect for, and you have many people in the other party — you mention Alex Azar, but you have many people in the other party that have said the same thing and with even more confidence. So a lot of people didn’t get that right.
I was — I was very fortunate, whether it was through luck or whatever, that we closed the border. We put a ban on China — other than our citizens coming in. We had our citizens — you can’t keep out American citizens. You know, “Gee, you can’t come back into your country.” That’s a little tough to do.
But we put a ban on China that was very fortunate. But I could tell you that Nancy Pelosi was dancing in the streets in Chinatown. She wanted to go, “Let’s go out and party.” That was late into February. So you don’t mention that, but you could mention that.
Go ahead. Any other? Please, go ahead.
Q It’s April, Mr. President. He has not been in a briefing, Mr. President —
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, please. Stand up.
Q — since April the 3rd. Does that show confidence in him?
THE PRESIDENT: You — you should have no complaints.
Please.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Yesterday, you retweeted someone who alleged that Democrats have quoted — quote, inflate — inflated “the mortality rate[s]” of the coronavirus “by underreporting the infection rate[s].” Do you believe that’s true — that there is some sort of conspiracy theory regarding the number of infections states are reporting?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I can only say what we’re doing. We’re reporting very accurately. If you look at other countries, other countries are not. I mean, you can look at China. You can look at numerous countries where I don’t think those are right numbers.
I can only say what we’re doing. It’s very important to us to do very accurate reporting, and that’s what we’re doing.
Jon, go ahead. Please.
Q (Inaudible) by retweeting that, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Please.
Q Mr. President, I wanted to ask you about the Payment Protection Plan — the PPP plan — to help small businesses.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
{snip}
Q Mr. President, Charlie Spiering from Breitbart News. And a majority of polls show that Americans blame China for the spread of the coronavirus, and yet they’re taking advantage of the crisis to make the world more dependent on their supply chains. How do you get — how do you hold China accountable and how do you keep our country — how do you incentivize our businesses?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, Charlie, there are a lot of ways you can hold them accountable. We’re doing very serious investigations, as you probably know. And we are not happy with China. We are not happy with that whole situation because we believe it could have been stopped at the source, it could have been stopped quickly, and it wouldn’t have spread all over the world. And we think that should have happened. So we’ll let you know at the appropriate time, but we are doing serious investigations.
Q How do you keep American businesses from relying on China for their supply chains? How do you — how do you fix that?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we’ve already discussed that, and especially having to do with medical supplies and others — and others. If you look prior to this virus, the deficit was coming way down under my administration because I put massive tariffs on China. We took in tens of billions of dollars. Gave some of it to the farmers who were unfairly targeted by China. Nobody has ever done that before. We never took in 10 cents from China.
Now, all of a sudden, I think you know very well, we’ve taken in tens of billions of dollars. I helped the farmers by giving them, two years ago, $12 billion — all coming from China — and we had plenty leftover too. And then the following year, $16 billion. And this year, we’re also going to help our farmers. But nobody has ever done a thing like that. Because they were targeted unfairly by China.
So we’re doing a very strong investigation, and we’ll let you know what the result of that is. We should be able to get the answers too.
{snip}
Q Following up on Charlie’s question on making China — holding them responsible — Germany sent a bill to China for 130 billion dollars in — excuse me, 130 billion euros for the damages caused by the coronavirus. Would your administration look at doing the same?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we can do something much easier than that. We have ways of doing things a lot easier than that. But Germany is looking at things and we’re looking at things. And we’re talking about a lot more money than Germany is talking about.
Yeah, please go ahead.
Q Mr. President —
THE PRESIDENT: We haven’t determined the final amount yet.
Q Thank you, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: It’s very substantial. If you take a look at the world — I mean, this is worldwide damage. This is damage to the U.S., but this is damage to the world.
Yeah, please.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Attorney General William Barr directed federal prosecutors to watch out for state and local officials that might be violating the Constitution by some of their stay-at-home orders. What’s the strategy there? Will the federal government sue local authorities or give the governors —
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you’d have to ask Attorney General Barr, but I think he wants to see — like everybody, he wants to see people get back and wants to see people get back to work. He doesn’t want people to be held up when there’s no reason for doing it. In some cases, perhaps it’s too strict. He wants to make sure people have their rights and they maintain their rights, very importantly.
So a lot of people would agree with him. But you’d actually have to ask that question specifically, from a legal standpoint, to Attorney General Barr.
Q Do you support the federal government suing state officials?
THE PRESIDENT: It would depend on the state. It would depend on the circumstances of the state. I mean, some states are, you know, perhaps a little early, and some states are a little bit late. And the Attorney General — I read that and I saw that — and, frankly, the Attorney General doesn’t want to have rights taken away. Because, you know, there are some people, they’re not allowed to open up a store or — you know, they’re going to lose their livelihood.
And, by the way, that causes death also, between all of the things that happen. And this has been a big study. You know, the fact that people aren’t allowed to have their freedom causes a tremendous amount of problems, including death. So that’s what he’s talking about.
Please, in the back.
Q Maryland and other states — Governor Larry Hogan specifically said they’ve seen a spike in people using disinfectant after your comments last week. I know you said they were sarcastic, but do you take any —
THE PRESIDENT: I can’t imagine why. I can’t imagine why. Yeah.
Q Do you yeah take any responsibility if someone were to die?
THE PRESIDENT: No, I don’t. No, I can’t imagine — I can’t imagine that.
{snip}
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Jon, I think — precisely correct. That in my first week on this job, we were informed that HHS — I believe IDT was the vendor, Admiral Giroir — that had distributed a million, was distributing another 4 million. And we believe they did.
But again, those were tests that, frankly, but for the President’s leadership, we’d still be waiting on those tests to be done in many cases, because they were tests that were designed to be run in the old laboratory model. But early on, at the President’s direction, we brought in these incredible commercial labs. We partnered with these extraordinary retailers. And now we stand here today, literally — one day last week: more than 200,000 tests in a single day. About the time that we were making those comments, we — we’d done less than 25,000 tests in the entire country.
{snip}
THE PRESIDENT: I think it’s very important to know — and this you can get from any other country, I think, if they’re being honest — not only do we have the most testing in the world by far, but we have, by far, the best testing.
OAN, please. Go ahead.
Q Mr. President, thank you. I’d like to switch gears and talk about General Flynn. There are reports circulating now that he may well be fully exonerated this week. If that were — if that were the case, is there any reason why you would not bring him back into the administration?
THE PRESIDENT: I will only say this: I think that General Flynn is a wonderful man. He had a wonderful career. And it was a disgrace what happened to General Flynn. Let’s see what happens now. But what happened to General Flynn should never happen again in our country. What happened to other people should never happen again in our country. What happened to your President of the United States should never again be allowed to happen.
Go ahead, please.
Q Mr. President, thank you. Today, one of your top economic advisors, Kevin Hassett — he said that the U.S. is likely to experience a 20 to 30 percent decline in the GDP in the second quarter, the worst since the Great Depression. Do you agree with that assessment?
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t know. But I can tell you the third and the fourth quarter, in particular, are going to be, I think, spectacular. We were talking about it with the executives. I think we’re going to have a phenomenal third quarter. Nobody, you know, except one country, can be held accountable for what happened. Nobody is blaming anybody here. We’re looking at a group of people that should have stopped it at the source.
But — so what happens in second, happens in second. What we are doing is — I think we’re going to have — you’re going to see a big rise in the third, but you’re going to see an — an incredible fourth quarter, and you’re going to have an incredible next year.
I think you’re going to have a recovery. Look, I built — they were just telling me inside, and it’s fact — I built the greatest economy — with the help of 325 million people, I built the greatest economy in the history of the world. And one day, because of something that should have never been allowed to happen, we had to close our country, we had to close our economy.
I built it. We had the best employment numbers and the best unemployment numbers for Hispanic American, for African American, for Asian American, for everybody — best stock market numbers. And, by the way, the stock market was up very substantially today and people are seeing a lot of good things. A lot of very smart people investing in the stock market right now. It’s at 24,000 — approximately 24,000.
And if you would’ve said, with a tragedy that this country had to endure and go through, with all of the death and the people that died and were so badly hurt by what happened, and you can only say God bless them — but if you would’ve said that our country would be in the position we’re in now — we’re ready to move forward.
We’ll never forget loved ones. We’ll never forget these great people that sacrifice for a reason of incompetence or something else other than incompetence. What happened at a point where they could have protected the whole world — not just us, the whole world.
But we had the greatest economy ever in the history of our world, and I had to turn it off in order to get to a point where we are today. And now we’re making a comeback. And I think we’re going to have, economically — from an economic standpoint, next year — an unbelievable year. And I think that you’re going to see a fantastic fourth quarter, and the third quarter will start to build. But the second quarter, obviously, you’re going to have GDP lack of growth.
I’m looking at the head of Walmart. What a job Walmart has done in going through something. I mean, they were — they were doing yeoman’s work, including getting us millions of — of, really, very, very protective outfits. And — and — I mean, the job that Doug and Walmart did was incredible. Millions of outfits. And those are high quality. I’ve seen them. Those a high quality. That’s what we need.
So people have stepped up to the plate. I think we’re going to have a really good — I think it’s good to start building. I think it’s going to build fast. I think it’ll be a tremendous, tremendous comeback.
And, you know, so I say I built the greatest economy — with all of the people that helped me and all of the people in this country, we built the greatest economy the world has ever seen. And we’re going to do it again. And it’s not going to be that long. Okay?
{snip}
Q Do you have any update on Kim Jong Un’s health?
THE PRESIDENT: Say it?
Q Have you gotten any update on Kim Jong Un’s health? Has he responded to your letter from March?
THE PRESIDENT: On Kim Jong Un? I can’t tell you exactly. Yes, I do have a very good idea, but I can’t talk about it now. I just wish him well. I’ve had a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.
If I weren’t President, you’d be in war. You would’ve been in war with Korea. You would have been in war with North Korea if I wasn’t President — that, I can tell you. He expected that — that, I can tell you.
I — I hope he’s fine. I do know how he’s doing, relatively speaking. We will see. You’ll probably be hearing in the not-too-distant future.
All right. One or two more. Go ahead, please.
Q Is he alive? Are — are you confirming he’s alive?
Q Mr. President, I want to ask you a question about the 2020 election.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
Q Your likely Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, recently suggested that you were considering changing the date of the election, that you might try something like that. That’s my first question.
The second question is —
THE PRESIDENT: I never even thought of changing the date of the election. Why would I do that? November 3rd. It’s a good number. No, I look forward to that election.
And that was just made-up propaganda — not by him, but by some of the many people that are working, writing little statements. I see all the time: “Statement made…” You say, “So, statement made per Joe Biden.” Sleepy Joe. He didn’t make those statements, but somebody did. But they said he made it. No, let him know I — I’m not thinking about it at all. Not at all.
Go ahead. In the back, please. Please.
Q The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee came out with the fourth installment of its report. It concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections and there was not political bias. Do you accept its conclusions?
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t seen the report. I haven’t seen the report.
Yeah, please. Go ahead.
Q Mr. President, nice to see you. I think you have a good relationship with North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un. But last Saturday, Senator Graham — he mentioned in the Fox News — he interviewed. He said —
THE PRESIDENT: He didn’t say anything last Saturday.
Q — that Kim Jong Un —
THE PRESIDENT: Nobody — nobody knows where he is, so he obviously couldn’t have said it. If you have a — this is breaking news.
Q Yes —
THE PRESIDENT: That Kim Jong Un made a statement on Saturday, I don’t think so.
Q Yeah, but the —
THE PRESIDENT: Okay, go ahead. Let’s do — let’s do one more. Please, in the back.
Q If an American President loses more Americans over the course of six weeks than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War, does he deserve to be reelected?
THE PRESIDENT: So, yeah, we’ve lost a lot of people. But if you look at what original projections were — 2.2 million — we’re probably heading to 60,000, 70,000. It’s far too many. One person is too many for this.
And I think we’ve made a lot of really good decisions. The big decision was closing the border or doing the ban — people coming in from China — obviously, other than American citizens, which had to come in. Can’t say, “You can’t come in. You can’t come back to your country.”
I think we’ve made a lot of good decisions. I think that Mike Pence and the task force have done a fantastic job.
I think that everybody working on the ventilators — you see what we’ve done there — have done unbelievable. The press doesn’t talk about ventilators anymore. They just don’t want to talk about them and that’s okay. But the reason they don’t want to talk — that was a subject that nobody would get off of. They don’t want to talk about them.
We’re in the same position on testing. We are lapping the world on testing. And the world is coming to us. As I said, they’re coming to us, saying, “What are you doing? How do you do it?” And we’re helping them.
So, no, I think we’ve done a great job. And one person — I will say this: One person is too many.
Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you.
END
6:33 P.M. EDT
Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing
HEALTHCARE
Issued on: April 27, 2020
Rose Garden
5:38 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Thank you. Today I’d like to provide you with an update in our war against the coronavirus. Thanks to our comprehensive strategy and extraordinary devotion to our citizens — we’ve had such tremendous support all over — we continue to see encouraging signs of progress.
{snip}
Please. Come forward, please. Thank you.
MR. RUSCKOWSKI: Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you for — all of you for being here today. And what we’d like to talk about is the progress we’ve made.
The last time we were here was March 13th, and we’ve made tremendous progress. And none of that progress could be made without the 47,000 people at Quest Diagnostics that are working around the clock, working up the test and running the test and delivering the results that we need.
{snip}
So with that, I’d like to offer my colleague the podium as well.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.
MR. SCHECHTER: Mr. President, thank you very much for your leadership and for having us all here today. Our scientists and our lab technicians are working day and night in order to do as many tests as we possibly can for the American public and to turn those tests around as quickly as possible.
{snip}
THE PRESIDENT:
{snip}
Yeah, please. Go ahead, please.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. I have a question for you regarding one of the members of your Coronavirus Task Force, and that’s Secretary of HHS Alex Azar.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
Q On January the 28th, he was in the briefing room. And in the briefing room, he told reporters that, for the individual American, the virus should not be an impact on their day-to-day life. Three months later, more than 55,000 of our fellow Americans have now lost their lives. Mr. President, why is he still your top health advisor? Why is he still serving as the HHS Secretary?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think it’s a very unfair question because you have many great professionals, some of them you have great respect for, and you have many people in the other party — you mention Alex Azar, but you have many people in the other party that have said the same thing and with even more confidence. So a lot of people didn’t get that right.
I was — I was very fortunate, whether it was through luck or whatever, that we closed the border. We put a ban on China — other than our citizens coming in. We had our citizens — you can’t keep out American citizens. You know, “Gee, you can’t come back into your country.” That’s a little tough to do.
But we put a ban on China that was very fortunate. But I could tell you that Nancy Pelosi was dancing in the streets in Chinatown. She wanted to go, “Let’s go out and party.” That was late into February. So you don’t mention that, but you could mention that.
Go ahead. Any other? Please, go ahead.
Q It’s April, Mr. President. He has not been in a briefing, Mr. President —
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, please. Stand up.
Q — since April the 3rd. Does that show confidence in him?
THE PRESIDENT: You — you should have no complaints.
Please.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Yesterday, you retweeted someone who alleged that Democrats have quoted — quote, inflate — inflated “the mortality rate[s]” of the coronavirus “by underreporting the infection rate[s].” Do you believe that’s true — that there is some sort of conspiracy theory regarding the number of infections states are reporting?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I can only say what we’re doing. We’re reporting very accurately. If you look at other countries, other countries are not. I mean, you can look at China. You can look at numerous countries where I don’t think those are right numbers.
I can only say what we’re doing. It’s very important to us to do very accurate reporting, and that’s what we’re doing.
Jon, go ahead. Please.
Q (Inaudible) by retweeting that, Mr. President?
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Please.
Q Mr. President, I wanted to ask you about the Payment Protection Plan — the PPP plan — to help small businesses.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
{snip}
Q Mr. President, Charlie Spiering from Breitbart News. And a majority of polls show that Americans blame China for the spread of the coronavirus, and yet they’re taking advantage of the crisis to make the world more dependent on their supply chains. How do you get — how do you hold China accountable and how do you keep our country — how do you incentivize our businesses?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, Charlie, there are a lot of ways you can hold them accountable. We’re doing very serious investigations, as you probably know. And we are not happy with China. We are not happy with that whole situation because we believe it could have been stopped at the source, it could have been stopped quickly, and it wouldn’t have spread all over the world. And we think that should have happened. So we’ll let you know at the appropriate time, but we are doing serious investigations.
Q How do you keep American businesses from relying on China for their supply chains? How do you — how do you fix that?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we’ve already discussed that, and especially having to do with medical supplies and others — and others. If you look prior to this virus, the deficit was coming way down under my administration because I put massive tariffs on China. We took in tens of billions of dollars. Gave some of it to the farmers who were unfairly targeted by China. Nobody has ever done that before. We never took in 10 cents from China.
Now, all of a sudden, I think you know very well, we’ve taken in tens of billions of dollars. I helped the farmers by giving them, two years ago, $12 billion — all coming from China — and we had plenty leftover too. And then the following year, $16 billion. And this year, we’re also going to help our farmers. But nobody has ever done a thing like that. Because they were targeted unfairly by China.
So we’re doing a very strong investigation, and we’ll let you know what the result of that is. We should be able to get the answers too.
{snip}
Q Following up on Charlie’s question on making China — holding them responsible — Germany sent a bill to China for 130 billion dollars in — excuse me, 130 billion euros for the damages caused by the coronavirus. Would your administration look at doing the same?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we can do something much easier than that. We have ways of doing things a lot easier than that. But Germany is looking at things and we’re looking at things. And we’re talking about a lot more money than Germany is talking about.
Yeah, please go ahead.
Q Mr. President —
THE PRESIDENT: We haven’t determined the final amount yet.
Q Thank you, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: It’s very substantial. If you take a look at the world — I mean, this is worldwide damage. This is damage to the U.S., but this is damage to the world.
Yeah, please.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Attorney General William Barr directed federal prosecutors to watch out for state and local officials that might be violating the Constitution by some of their stay-at-home orders. What’s the strategy there? Will the federal government sue local authorities or give the governors —
THE PRESIDENT: Well, you’d have to ask Attorney General Barr, but I think he wants to see — like everybody, he wants to see people get back and wants to see people get back to work. He doesn’t want people to be held up when there’s no reason for doing it. In some cases, perhaps it’s too strict. He wants to make sure people have their rights and they maintain their rights, very importantly.
So a lot of people would agree with him. But you’d actually have to ask that question specifically, from a legal standpoint, to Attorney General Barr.
Q Do you support the federal government suing state officials?
THE PRESIDENT: It would depend on the state. It would depend on the circumstances of the state. I mean, some states are, you know, perhaps a little early, and some states are a little bit late. And the Attorney General — I read that and I saw that — and, frankly, the Attorney General doesn’t want to have rights taken away. Because, you know, there are some people, they’re not allowed to open up a store or — you know, they’re going to lose their livelihood.
And, by the way, that causes death also, between all of the things that happen. And this has been a big study. You know, the fact that people aren’t allowed to have their freedom causes a tremendous amount of problems, including death. So that’s what he’s talking about.
Please, in the back.
Q Maryland and other states — Governor Larry Hogan specifically said they’ve seen a spike in people using disinfectant after your comments last week. I know you said they were sarcastic, but do you take any —
THE PRESIDENT: I can’t imagine why. I can’t imagine why. Yeah.
Q Do you yeah take any responsibility if someone were to die?
THE PRESIDENT: No, I don’t. No, I can’t imagine — I can’t imagine that.
{snip}
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Jon, I think — precisely correct. That in my first week on this job, we were informed that HHS — I believe IDT was the vendor, Admiral Giroir — that had distributed a million, was distributing another 4 million. And we believe they did.
But again, those were tests that, frankly, but for the President’s leadership, we’d still be waiting on those tests to be done in many cases, because they were tests that were designed to be run in the old laboratory model. But early on, at the President’s direction, we brought in these incredible commercial labs. We partnered with these extraordinary retailers. And now we stand here today, literally — one day last week: more than 200,000 tests in a single day. About the time that we were making those comments, we — we’d done less than 25,000 tests in the entire country.
{snip}
THE PRESIDENT: I think it’s very important to know — and this you can get from any other country, I think, if they’re being honest — not only do we have the most testing in the world by far, but we have, by far, the best testing.
OAN, please. Go ahead.
Q Mr. President, thank you. I’d like to switch gears and talk about General Flynn. There are reports circulating now that he may well be fully exonerated this week. If that were — if that were the case, is there any reason why you would not bring him back into the administration?
THE PRESIDENT: I will only say this: I think that General Flynn is a wonderful man. He had a wonderful career. And it was a disgrace what happened to General Flynn. Let’s see what happens now. But what happened to General Flynn should never happen again in our country. What happened to other people should never happen again in our country. What happened to your President of the United States should never again be allowed to happen.
Go ahead, please.
Q Mr. President, thank you. Today, one of your top economic advisors, Kevin Hassett — he said that the U.S. is likely to experience a 20 to 30 percent decline in the GDP in the second quarter, the worst since the Great Depression. Do you agree with that assessment?
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t know. But I can tell you the third and the fourth quarter, in particular, are going to be, I think, spectacular. We were talking about it with the executives. I think we’re going to have a phenomenal third quarter. Nobody, you know, except one country, can be held accountable for what happened. Nobody is blaming anybody here. We’re looking at a group of people that should have stopped it at the source.
But — so what happens in second, happens in second. What we are doing is — I think we’re going to have — you’re going to see a big rise in the third, but you’re going to see an — an incredible fourth quarter, and you’re going to have an incredible next year.
I think you’re going to have a recovery. Look, I built — they were just telling me inside, and it’s fact — I built the greatest economy — with the help of 325 million people, I built the greatest economy in the history of the world. And one day, because of something that should have never been allowed to happen, we had to close our country, we had to close our economy.
I built it. We had the best employment numbers and the best unemployment numbers for Hispanic American, for African American, for Asian American, for everybody — best stock market numbers. And, by the way, the stock market was up very substantially today and people are seeing a lot of good things. A lot of very smart people investing in the stock market right now. It’s at 24,000 — approximately 24,000.
And if you would’ve said, with a tragedy that this country had to endure and go through, with all of the death and the people that died and were so badly hurt by what happened, and you can only say God bless them — but if you would’ve said that our country would be in the position we’re in now — we’re ready to move forward.
We’ll never forget loved ones. We’ll never forget these great people that sacrifice for a reason of incompetence or something else other than incompetence. What happened at a point where they could have protected the whole world — not just us, the whole world.
But we had the greatest economy ever in the history of our world, and I had to turn it off in order to get to a point where we are today. And now we’re making a comeback. And I think we’re going to have, economically — from an economic standpoint, next year — an unbelievable year. And I think that you’re going to see a fantastic fourth quarter, and the third quarter will start to build. But the second quarter, obviously, you’re going to have GDP lack of growth.
I’m looking at the head of Walmart. What a job Walmart has done in going through something. I mean, they were — they were doing yeoman’s work, including getting us millions of — of, really, very, very protective outfits. And — and — I mean, the job that Doug and Walmart did was incredible. Millions of outfits. And those are high quality. I’ve seen them. Those a high quality. That’s what we need.
So people have stepped up to the plate. I think we’re going to have a really good — I think it’s good to start building. I think it’s going to build fast. I think it’ll be a tremendous, tremendous comeback.
And, you know, so I say I built the greatest economy — with all of the people that helped me and all of the people in this country, we built the greatest economy the world has ever seen. And we’re going to do it again. And it’s not going to be that long. Okay?
{snip}
Q Do you have any update on Kim Jong Un’s health?
THE PRESIDENT: Say it?
Q Have you gotten any update on Kim Jong Un’s health? Has he responded to your letter from March?
THE PRESIDENT: On Kim Jong Un? I can’t tell you exactly. Yes, I do have a very good idea, but I can’t talk about it now. I just wish him well. I’ve had a very good relationship with Kim Jong Un.
If I weren’t President, you’d be in war. You would’ve been in war with Korea. You would have been in war with North Korea if I wasn’t President — that, I can tell you. He expected that — that, I can tell you.
I — I hope he’s fine. I do know how he’s doing, relatively speaking. We will see. You’ll probably be hearing in the not-too-distant future.
All right. One or two more. Go ahead, please.
Q Is he alive? Are — are you confirming he’s alive?
Q Mr. President, I want to ask you a question about the 2020 election.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.
Q Your likely Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, recently suggested that you were considering changing the date of the election, that you might try something like that. That’s my first question.
The second question is —
THE PRESIDENT: I never even thought of changing the date of the election. Why would I do that? November 3rd. It’s a good number. No, I look forward to that election.
And that was just made-up propaganda — not by him, but by some of the many people that are working, writing little statements. I see all the time: “Statement made…” You say, “So, statement made per Joe Biden.” Sleepy Joe. He didn’t make those statements, but somebody did. But they said he made it. No, let him know I — I’m not thinking about it at all. Not at all.
Go ahead. In the back, please. Please.
Q The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee came out with the fourth installment of its report. It concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections and there was not political bias. Do you accept its conclusions?
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t seen the report. I haven’t seen the report.
Yeah, please. Go ahead.
Q Mr. President, nice to see you. I think you have a good relationship with North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un. But last Saturday, Senator Graham — he mentioned in the Fox News — he interviewed. He said —
THE PRESIDENT: He didn’t say anything last Saturday.
Q — that Kim Jong Un —
THE PRESIDENT: Nobody — nobody knows where he is, so he obviously couldn’t have said it. If you have a — this is breaking news.
Q Yes —
THE PRESIDENT: That Kim Jong Un made a statement on Saturday, I don’t think so.
Q Yeah, but the —
THE PRESIDENT: Okay, go ahead. Let’s do — let’s do one more. Please, in the back.
Q If an American President loses more Americans over the course of six weeks than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War, does he deserve to be reelected?
THE PRESIDENT: So, yeah, we’ve lost a lot of people. But if you look at what original projections were — 2.2 million — we’re probably heading to 60,000, 70,000. It’s far too many. One person is too many for this.
And I think we’ve made a lot of really good decisions. The big decision was closing the border or doing the ban — people coming in from China — obviously, other than American citizens, which had to come in. Can’t say, “You can’t come in. You can’t come back to your country.”
I think we’ve made a lot of good decisions. I think that Mike Pence and the task force have done a fantastic job.
I think that everybody working on the ventilators — you see what we’ve done there — have done unbelievable. The press doesn’t talk about ventilators anymore. They just don’t want to talk about them and that’s okay. But the reason they don’t want to talk — that was a subject that nobody would get off of. They don’t want to talk about them.
We’re in the same position on testing. We are lapping the world on testing. And the world is coming to us. As I said, they’re coming to us, saying, “What are you doing? How do you do it?” And we’re helping them.
So, no, I think we’ve done a great job. And one person — I will say this: One person is too many.
Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you.
END
6:33 P.M. EDT