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Trump's Remarks in Press Briefing; September 16, 2020
REMARKS
Remarks by President Trump in Press Briefing | September 16, 2020
HEALTHCARE
Issued on: September 16, 2020
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
5:17 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Good afternoon. Hurricane Sally made landfall, as you know, in Alabama and Florida last night as a Category 2 hurricane, and has caused 35 inches of rainfall in some places. That’s a lot.
{snip}
I created the greatest and fairest economy in history. The biggest gains went to lower-income Americans, as they measure that kind of thing.
{snip}
I want to ask Scott Atlas to say a couple of words, because I heard Biden talking today about, “He wants to come up with a distribution plan.” A distribution — for the vaccine that we came up with.
A couple of things: We came up with that vaccine — it’ll be announced fairly soon — but regardless, this month, next month — in a level of time that nobody thought was possible because of what we did with our FDA in terms of streamlining it. I want to thank Dr. Hahn.
But what we’ve done with the streamlining has been incredible, and very safely. Number one is safety. Number two is speed. But you can have perfect safety and have much more speed, and that’s what we did.
We did this for more than the vaccine, having to do with the China virus. This was also for other things. So many other great drugs are out there that would take 10, 12 years to get them approved, and we’ve moved those schedules up a lot.
But if this were Obama-Biden, this would have taken two, three years before you were at a stage where we are now at. So we’re going to be very soon. And it’s sort of funny to watch Joe Biden getting up and reading a teleprompter and saying how — how he would have done this. They had H1N1. He calls it the “N1H1”; it’s H1N1. It’s called the swine flu, and it was a disaster.
And, as I said, the person that ran it for him said the worst things about it. I mean, just — they didn’t know what they were doing, they quit. They had no clue. And that was easy, by comparison to this. This is the most contagious — contagious flu or virus that anybody has seen. This is unbelievable how contagious it is. You found that out.
But I watched Biden quickly as he discussed, without having — without knowing a thing about a distribution plan. And he said that we don’t have a distribution plan, but we do indeed. Our military — we have military, we have everybody involved. It’s — it’s a great plan, and it’s a plan like no other.
And we can start doing it, I believe, the day that we come up with the vaccine. When it’s done, we’ll start. That same day, or the day after. Our military is very much involved, and they deploy troops, they deploy — these are the generals that do logistics and all of those things. And we’ll have it all over the county, and then, ultimately, hopefully we’ll helping the world with the vaccine. And it’s very exciting.
{snip}
Yeah, please. Go ahead.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Are you prepared to sign off on the Oracle and TikTok deal, even though the Treasury isn’t getting paid? And also, does the deal meet your requirements in terms of national security concerns?
THE PRESIDENT: Okay, they’re giving me studies on the deal. It has to be 100 percent as far as national security is concerned. And, no, I’m not prepared to sign off on anything. I have to see the deal.
We need security, especially after what we’ve seen with respect to China and what’s going on. We want security. So I’ll let you know. They’re going to be reporting to me tomorrow morning, and I will let you know.
Q And what about the payment?
THE PRESIDENT: The what?
Q What about the payment to the Treasury?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we’re going to see about that. Amazingly, I find that you’re not allowed to do that. You’re not allowed to accept — and I said, “What kind of a gov- — what kind of a thing is? If they’re willing to make big payments to the government, they’re not allowed, because there’s no — there’s no way of doing that from a — there’s no legal path to doing that. And I’m saying, “Wait a minute. They’re willing to make a big payment to the government and we’re not allowed to take the money? When does this happen? How foolish can we be?” So we’re going to — we’re looking into that right now. You understand that.
In other words, I said, “No, I want a big chunk of that money to go to the United States government because we made it possible. And the lawyers come back to me and they say, “Well, there’s no way of doing that.” You know why? Because nobody has ever heard of that before. Nobody has ever said that before. Nobody has ever said, “Well, we’ll approve the deal, but we want a lot of money to go to the government because by approving the deal, we’re making the deal valuable.” They’ve never heard of that before. Okay? Can you believe that? Right? Hard to believe.
Yeah, please. Go ahead.
{snip}
Yeah. Yeah, in the back, please.
Q Thanks, Mr. President. Bill Barr told prosecutors that he wants to charge violent demonstrators with sedition. And you told Judge Jeanine that if there’s violent demonstrations on Election Night, “We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that. Look, it’s called the Insurrection.” So I’m wondering why you want to use that kind of rhetoric when there’s such a volatile (inaudible).
THE PRESIDENT: Well, the question was asked to me about if you have violent demonstrations: Yes, we will put it down very, very quickly if there is. Absolutely.
Q Are you making plans —
THE PRESIDENT: And I think the American public wants to see that.
Yeah. OAN, please.
Q What preparations are you making for violence on Election Night?
THE PRESIDENT: OAN. Yeah, please. Go ahead.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. With regards —
THE PRESIDENT: No, just to finish — look, if there’s any kind of demonstration or violence, there will be nothing that interferes with this project — product — this — this vote. There’s going to be nothing.
The biggest problem we have right now are the ballots. Millions of ballots going out; that’s the biggest problem. When you talk about other countries, whether it’s China, Russia, or many others that get mentioned, they’re in a much better position with these paper ballots to do something than they would ever be under the old system. And that’s our biggest problem.
Our biggest threat to this election is governors from opposing parties controlling ballots, millions of ballots. To me, that’s a much bigger threat than foreign countries, because much of the stuff coming out about foreign countries turned out to be untrue.
What is — what is true is that many elections have taken place over the last year and a half, using this ballot system. They’ve been off by 5 percent, 10 percent, 15 percent; I think I read one at 40 percent — 40 percent. And these are small, easy-to-control elections.
This whole ballot system where you can send it in, and it’s not even requested — we’re not talking about it solicited; they’re unsolicited ballots, and they’re sent in — is very dangerous for our country. And you know who knows that better than anybody? The Democrats. Look at what happened in Manhattan, where they had this kind of an election, and it was so fraudulent that it should never have been allowed to be called.
We could have 5, 10, 15, 20 percent off; we could have more than that. The ballots will be stolen. Who knows where they’re going. Who knows where they’re coming from. It’s not just the counting of the ballots, which — by the way, which will take forever. It’ll take forever. You think November 3rd? You might not have — I guess, at a certain point, it goes to Congress. You know, at a certain point, it goes to Congress. You know that.
This is a disgrace. This is being done on purpose. They know it’s no good. They know it’s — it’s going to be fraudulent. It’s going to be fraud all over the place. Who’s getting the ballots? Who’s sending the ballots? They have people saying you don’t need a verified signature. This is a serious threat to our democracy, and the Democrats know that.
All we’re asking: If you solicit the ballot — you go through a process — you ask for a ballot because you can’t be there for a large number of reasons, for whatever re- — I’m doing it myself. I won’t be able to be in Florida. You solicit and they send it back. You do it, and you send it back. That’s a process that you go through. And it’s pretty secure. I use the word “pretty” secure. I guess nothing is foolproof.
But what’s pretty close to what — the most foolproof thing, the thing that really works is you go to the ballot box. It’s going to be very safe. I think by that time, COVID will be even lower. It’s going to be very low. It’s going to be a very safe process. We did it during World War One. We did it during World War Two.
The biggest threat to this election is these unsolicited ballots sent out by the millions, controlled by governors like in Nevada, who is a political person — very political, far beyond being governor — where they tried to stop you from making a speech, unsuccessfully, but we had to move around a lot, had to move quickly.
So the same guy that tried to stop you from making free speech outside — outside, not inside; outside — they forced us inside because of what they did — but outside. This is the guy that’s controlling ballots.
Then you look at Pennsylvania. You look at other places. It is a big threat. And as far as China is concerned and Russia and they say North Korea, they say Iran, they say places. Who knows? Who knows? But they say all these different places.
They can make forgeries of these ballots. They can do things that will blow your mind. And the Democrats know it’s wrong. They know it’s going to end up being a disaster. Just take a look at what’s happened. Take a look at what’s happened over the last year with this same kind of thing, except in a very small setting with very few ballots going out, so that’s much easier; not 53 to 80 million going out. A very small number.
And you know what’s happened? Fraud like you’ve never seen. Missing ballots. Ballots that never showed up. Ballots with bad signatures. Ballots with no signatures. And in the case of Nevada, they don’t even want verification of the signature. It’s a disgrace.
Now, the hope for our nation is: It’s before judges. In Pennsylvania, it’s before judges. In Nevada, it’s before judges. In other places it’s before federal judges. And hopefully they’ll do what they did the other day in Pennsylvania where we had a great victory.
Open up your state. It’s unconstitutional to close it. Because what they were doing is closing it, and they’re closing it for political reasons. It’ll open on November 4th. It’ll open up right after the election. But they want people to — they want our numbers to be as bad as possible, but the problem is our numbers are so good with or without various states opening up. With or without.
But we had a big legal victory, as you know, three days ago. A federal judge told them to open up their state. “It’s unconstitutional what you’re doing.” That’s in the case of Pennsylvania.
Now the big cases are going to be the cases on these unsolicited ballots. And we’ll see what happens.
All right. OAN, please.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. On the grounds that the Chinese Communist Party has been using slave labor in Xinjiang, your administration has imposed a limited ban on certain products coming out of Xinjiang, stopping short of a full region ban. What is your response to the Chinese Communist Party’s spokespeople who are saying that this is an outright lie. Xinjiang does not have forced labor.
And number two, have allies expressed interest in standing with this administration in taking action against forced labor imposed by the Communist Party?
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, we don’t want to see that. We’ve been very strong on that. We’re getting reports in. Over the next two or three days, we’ll know very accurately what the story is, and we’ll then take action one way or the other.
{snip}
Q Two questions. One, you said you spoke with Dr. Redfield earlier, and you said that he made a mistake. Did —
THE PRESIDENT: I think he made a mistake. Yeah, but we didn’t — I didn’t go into any great dif- — I was — I was very surprised to hear it. It doesn’t really matter.
{snip}
Q Okay. So my last question is: You told Bob Woodward the problem with a vaccine is a vaccine will take 13 to 14 months once you have because you have to test a vaccine. So do you want to clarify what you told Bob Woodward?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, what I was — what I was saying to him — no, that was a long time ago when I said that. I didn’t — we weren’t set up at that time.
Q It wasn’t that long ago.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, how many months ago? When was the statement made?
Q He doesn’t say in the book when it was made.
THE PRESIDENT: You know, his book is, sort of, obsolete because the book comes out —
Q But he only started interviewing you in December.
THE PRESIDENT: By the way, I read the book last night — very rapidly because it was very boring. I read it. And if you see what I said, I said a lot of really good things. I mean, for the most part, people like to turn it around, but I said really good things in that book.
And as an example, he doesn’t cover — I told him what we’re doing in the Middle East, and we’re doing it in an entirely different way. And that’s not covered in his book. The whole thing isn’t covered in his book.
{snip}
But no, the mask is not as important as the vaccine. The va- — the mask, perhaps, helps. Don’t forget: A lot of people didn’t like the concept of masks initially. Dr. Fauci didn’t like them, and a lot of people didn’t. And I’m not knocking anybody, because I understand both sides of the argument.
But when I called up Robert {Redfield} today, I said to him, “What’s with the masks?” He said, “I think I answered that question incorrectly.” I think maybe he misunderstood it. I mean, you know, you have two questions; maybe he misunderstood both of them. But the answer to the one is it’s going to be a much faster distribution than he said. Maybe he’s not aware of the distribution process. It’s not really his thing as much as it would be, let’s say, mine. But the distribution is going to be much faster.
{snip}
Q Mr. President, one other thing —
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, in the back, please. Go ahead.
Q Thank you so much, Mr. President. Were you informed about positive coronavirus cases in the White House today?
THE PRESIDENT: You’re going to — I cannot hear you, I’m sorry.
Q Were you informed about coronavirus cases — positive cases — in the White House today?
THE PRESIDENT: About today?
Q Yes.
Q On your staff.
Q Just — any positive cases today, sir?
Q Yeah.
THE PRESIDENT: Say it.
Q Are there cases at the White House?
Q Were there positives cases today, sir?
Q There are reports of White House staff members testing positive for coronavirus today.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, I see. About staff? You mean about —
Q Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: I heard about it this morning, at a very small level. Yes. I heard about this morning.
Q How many people?
Q How many?
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t know. We can have a report to you if you feel it’s necessary.
Q Were they yesterday at the event?
THE PRESIDENT: But it’s a small — it’s — last night, I heard about it for the first time. And it’s a small number of cases. Maybe it’s not even cases.
Do you know if — do you have any idea if there’s —
MS. MCENANY: Yeah.
THE PRESIDENT: What is it?
MS. MCENANY: There — yes, but we’re not going to confirm the identities of the individuals.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, that’s okay.
MS. MCENANY: Yes, but it did not affect the event and press was not around the individual.
Q How many?
THE PRESIDENT: And it’s not anybody that was near me.
Q How many?
Q Mr. President, how many people?
Q Was it at the event last night?
THE PRESIDENT: A very — from what I heard, a very small number. I think you can probably give the number out later on when you find out what it might be.
MS. MCENANY: Yeah, it’s one person.
THE PRESIDENT: One person?
Q One person?
THE PRESIDENT: It was one person. Okay.
Q In Philadelphia? In Philadelphia? Was the —
THE PRESIDENT: It was one person. That’s — I mean, so not too much. Not a person that I was associated with.
Thank you very much everybody. Thank you. Thank you very much.
END
6:16 P.M. EDT
Remarks by President Trump in Press Briefing | September 16, 2020
HEALTHCARE
Issued on: September 16, 2020
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
5:17 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Good afternoon. Hurricane Sally made landfall, as you know, in Alabama and Florida last night as a Category 2 hurricane, and has caused 35 inches of rainfall in some places. That’s a lot.
{snip}
I created the greatest and fairest economy in history. The biggest gains went to lower-income Americans, as they measure that kind of thing.
{snip}
I want to ask Scott Atlas to say a couple of words, because I heard Biden talking today about, “He wants to come up with a distribution plan.” A distribution — for the vaccine that we came up with.
A couple of things: We came up with that vaccine — it’ll be announced fairly soon — but regardless, this month, next month — in a level of time that nobody thought was possible because of what we did with our FDA in terms of streamlining it. I want to thank Dr. Hahn.
But what we’ve done with the streamlining has been incredible, and very safely. Number one is safety. Number two is speed. But you can have perfect safety and have much more speed, and that’s what we did.
We did this for more than the vaccine, having to do with the China virus. This was also for other things. So many other great drugs are out there that would take 10, 12 years to get them approved, and we’ve moved those schedules up a lot.
But if this were Obama-Biden, this would have taken two, three years before you were at a stage where we are now at. So we’re going to be very soon. And it’s sort of funny to watch Joe Biden getting up and reading a teleprompter and saying how — how he would have done this. They had H1N1. He calls it the “N1H1”; it’s H1N1. It’s called the swine flu, and it was a disaster.
And, as I said, the person that ran it for him said the worst things about it. I mean, just — they didn’t know what they were doing, they quit. They had no clue. And that was easy, by comparison to this. This is the most contagious — contagious flu or virus that anybody has seen. This is unbelievable how contagious it is. You found that out.
But I watched Biden quickly as he discussed, without having — without knowing a thing about a distribution plan. And he said that we don’t have a distribution plan, but we do indeed. Our military — we have military, we have everybody involved. It’s — it’s a great plan, and it’s a plan like no other.
And we can start doing it, I believe, the day that we come up with the vaccine. When it’s done, we’ll start. That same day, or the day after. Our military is very much involved, and they deploy troops, they deploy — these are the generals that do logistics and all of those things. And we’ll have it all over the county, and then, ultimately, hopefully we’ll helping the world with the vaccine. And it’s very exciting.
{snip}
Yeah, please. Go ahead.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Are you prepared to sign off on the Oracle and TikTok deal, even though the Treasury isn’t getting paid? And also, does the deal meet your requirements in terms of national security concerns?
THE PRESIDENT: Okay, they’re giving me studies on the deal. It has to be 100 percent as far as national security is concerned. And, no, I’m not prepared to sign off on anything. I have to see the deal.
We need security, especially after what we’ve seen with respect to China and what’s going on. We want security. So I’ll let you know. They’re going to be reporting to me tomorrow morning, and I will let you know.
Q And what about the payment?
THE PRESIDENT: The what?
Q What about the payment to the Treasury?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, we’re going to see about that. Amazingly, I find that you’re not allowed to do that. You’re not allowed to accept — and I said, “What kind of a gov- — what kind of a thing is? If they’re willing to make big payments to the government, they’re not allowed, because there’s no — there’s no way of doing that from a — there’s no legal path to doing that. And I’m saying, “Wait a minute. They’re willing to make a big payment to the government and we’re not allowed to take the money? When does this happen? How foolish can we be?” So we’re going to — we’re looking into that right now. You understand that.
In other words, I said, “No, I want a big chunk of that money to go to the United States government because we made it possible. And the lawyers come back to me and they say, “Well, there’s no way of doing that.” You know why? Because nobody has ever heard of that before. Nobody has ever said that before. Nobody has ever said, “Well, we’ll approve the deal, but we want a lot of money to go to the government because by approving the deal, we’re making the deal valuable.” They’ve never heard of that before. Okay? Can you believe that? Right? Hard to believe.
Yeah, please. Go ahead.
{snip}
Yeah. Yeah, in the back, please.
Q Thanks, Mr. President. Bill Barr told prosecutors that he wants to charge violent demonstrators with sedition. And you told Judge Jeanine that if there’s violent demonstrations on Election Night, “We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that. Look, it’s called the Insurrection.” So I’m wondering why you want to use that kind of rhetoric when there’s such a volatile (inaudible).
THE PRESIDENT: Well, the question was asked to me about if you have violent demonstrations: Yes, we will put it down very, very quickly if there is. Absolutely.
Q Are you making plans —
THE PRESIDENT: And I think the American public wants to see that.
Yeah. OAN, please.
Q What preparations are you making for violence on Election Night?
THE PRESIDENT: OAN. Yeah, please. Go ahead.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. With regards —
THE PRESIDENT: No, just to finish — look, if there’s any kind of demonstration or violence, there will be nothing that interferes with this project — product — this — this vote. There’s going to be nothing.
The biggest problem we have right now are the ballots. Millions of ballots going out; that’s the biggest problem. When you talk about other countries, whether it’s China, Russia, or many others that get mentioned, they’re in a much better position with these paper ballots to do something than they would ever be under the old system. And that’s our biggest problem.
Our biggest threat to this election is governors from opposing parties controlling ballots, millions of ballots. To me, that’s a much bigger threat than foreign countries, because much of the stuff coming out about foreign countries turned out to be untrue.
What is — what is true is that many elections have taken place over the last year and a half, using this ballot system. They’ve been off by 5 percent, 10 percent, 15 percent; I think I read one at 40 percent — 40 percent. And these are small, easy-to-control elections.
This whole ballot system where you can send it in, and it’s not even requested — we’re not talking about it solicited; they’re unsolicited ballots, and they’re sent in — is very dangerous for our country. And you know who knows that better than anybody? The Democrats. Look at what happened in Manhattan, where they had this kind of an election, and it was so fraudulent that it should never have been allowed to be called.
We could have 5, 10, 15, 20 percent off; we could have more than that. The ballots will be stolen. Who knows where they’re going. Who knows where they’re coming from. It’s not just the counting of the ballots, which — by the way, which will take forever. It’ll take forever. You think November 3rd? You might not have — I guess, at a certain point, it goes to Congress. You know, at a certain point, it goes to Congress. You know that.
This is a disgrace. This is being done on purpose. They know it’s no good. They know it’s — it’s going to be fraudulent. It’s going to be fraud all over the place. Who’s getting the ballots? Who’s sending the ballots? They have people saying you don’t need a verified signature. This is a serious threat to our democracy, and the Democrats know that.
All we’re asking: If you solicit the ballot — you go through a process — you ask for a ballot because you can’t be there for a large number of reasons, for whatever re- — I’m doing it myself. I won’t be able to be in Florida. You solicit and they send it back. You do it, and you send it back. That’s a process that you go through. And it’s pretty secure. I use the word “pretty” secure. I guess nothing is foolproof.
But what’s pretty close to what — the most foolproof thing, the thing that really works is you go to the ballot box. It’s going to be very safe. I think by that time, COVID will be even lower. It’s going to be very low. It’s going to be a very safe process. We did it during World War One. We did it during World War Two.
The biggest threat to this election is these unsolicited ballots sent out by the millions, controlled by governors like in Nevada, who is a political person — very political, far beyond being governor — where they tried to stop you from making a speech, unsuccessfully, but we had to move around a lot, had to move quickly.
So the same guy that tried to stop you from making free speech outside — outside, not inside; outside — they forced us inside because of what they did — but outside. This is the guy that’s controlling ballots.
Then you look at Pennsylvania. You look at other places. It is a big threat. And as far as China is concerned and Russia and they say North Korea, they say Iran, they say places. Who knows? Who knows? But they say all these different places.
They can make forgeries of these ballots. They can do things that will blow your mind. And the Democrats know it’s wrong. They know it’s going to end up being a disaster. Just take a look at what’s happened. Take a look at what’s happened over the last year with this same kind of thing, except in a very small setting with very few ballots going out, so that’s much easier; not 53 to 80 million going out. A very small number.
And you know what’s happened? Fraud like you’ve never seen. Missing ballots. Ballots that never showed up. Ballots with bad signatures. Ballots with no signatures. And in the case of Nevada, they don’t even want verification of the signature. It’s a disgrace.
Now, the hope for our nation is: It’s before judges. In Pennsylvania, it’s before judges. In Nevada, it’s before judges. In other places it’s before federal judges. And hopefully they’ll do what they did the other day in Pennsylvania where we had a great victory.
Open up your state. It’s unconstitutional to close it. Because what they were doing is closing it, and they’re closing it for political reasons. It’ll open on November 4th. It’ll open up right after the election. But they want people to — they want our numbers to be as bad as possible, but the problem is our numbers are so good with or without various states opening up. With or without.
But we had a big legal victory, as you know, three days ago. A federal judge told them to open up their state. “It’s unconstitutional what you’re doing.” That’s in the case of Pennsylvania.
Now the big cases are going to be the cases on these unsolicited ballots. And we’ll see what happens.
All right. OAN, please.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. On the grounds that the Chinese Communist Party has been using slave labor in Xinjiang, your administration has imposed a limited ban on certain products coming out of Xinjiang, stopping short of a full region ban. What is your response to the Chinese Communist Party’s spokespeople who are saying that this is an outright lie. Xinjiang does not have forced labor.
And number two, have allies expressed interest in standing with this administration in taking action against forced labor imposed by the Communist Party?
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, we don’t want to see that. We’ve been very strong on that. We’re getting reports in. Over the next two or three days, we’ll know very accurately what the story is, and we’ll then take action one way or the other.
{snip}
Q Two questions. One, you said you spoke with Dr. Redfield earlier, and you said that he made a mistake. Did —
THE PRESIDENT: I think he made a mistake. Yeah, but we didn’t — I didn’t go into any great dif- — I was — I was very surprised to hear it. It doesn’t really matter.
{snip}
Q Okay. So my last question is: You told Bob Woodward the problem with a vaccine is a vaccine will take 13 to 14 months once you have because you have to test a vaccine. So do you want to clarify what you told Bob Woodward?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, what I was — what I was saying to him — no, that was a long time ago when I said that. I didn’t — we weren’t set up at that time.
Q It wasn’t that long ago.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, how many months ago? When was the statement made?
Q He doesn’t say in the book when it was made.
THE PRESIDENT: You know, his book is, sort of, obsolete because the book comes out —
Q But he only started interviewing you in December.
THE PRESIDENT: By the way, I read the book last night — very rapidly because it was very boring. I read it. And if you see what I said, I said a lot of really good things. I mean, for the most part, people like to turn it around, but I said really good things in that book.
And as an example, he doesn’t cover — I told him what we’re doing in the Middle East, and we’re doing it in an entirely different way. And that’s not covered in his book. The whole thing isn’t covered in his book.
{snip}
But no, the mask is not as important as the vaccine. The va- — the mask, perhaps, helps. Don’t forget: A lot of people didn’t like the concept of masks initially. Dr. Fauci didn’t like them, and a lot of people didn’t. And I’m not knocking anybody, because I understand both sides of the argument.
But when I called up Robert {Redfield} today, I said to him, “What’s with the masks?” He said, “I think I answered that question incorrectly.” I think maybe he misunderstood it. I mean, you know, you have two questions; maybe he misunderstood both of them. But the answer to the one is it’s going to be a much faster distribution than he said. Maybe he’s not aware of the distribution process. It’s not really his thing as much as it would be, let’s say, mine. But the distribution is going to be much faster.
{snip}
Q Mr. President, one other thing —
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, in the back, please. Go ahead.
Q Thank you so much, Mr. President. Were you informed about positive coronavirus cases in the White House today?
THE PRESIDENT: You’re going to — I cannot hear you, I’m sorry.
Q Were you informed about coronavirus cases — positive cases — in the White House today?
THE PRESIDENT: About today?
Q Yes.
Q On your staff.
Q Just — any positive cases today, sir?
Q Yeah.
THE PRESIDENT: Say it.
Q Are there cases at the White House?
Q Were there positives cases today, sir?
Q There are reports of White House staff members testing positive for coronavirus today.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, I see. About staff? You mean about —
Q Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: I heard about it this morning, at a very small level. Yes. I heard about this morning.
Q How many people?
Q How many?
THE PRESIDENT: I don’t know. We can have a report to you if you feel it’s necessary.
Q Were they yesterday at the event?
THE PRESIDENT: But it’s a small — it’s — last night, I heard about it for the first time. And it’s a small number of cases. Maybe it’s not even cases.
Do you know if — do you have any idea if there’s —
MS. MCENANY: Yeah.
THE PRESIDENT: What is it?
MS. MCENANY: There — yes, but we’re not going to confirm the identities of the individuals.
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, that’s okay.
MS. MCENANY: Yes, but it did not affect the event and press was not around the individual.
Q How many?
THE PRESIDENT: And it’s not anybody that was near me.
Q How many?
Q Mr. President, how many people?
Q Was it at the event last night?
THE PRESIDENT: A very — from what I heard, a very small number. I think you can probably give the number out later on when you find out what it might be.
MS. MCENANY: Yeah, it’s one person.
THE PRESIDENT: One person?
Q One person?
THE PRESIDENT: It was one person. Okay.
Q In Philadelphia? In Philadelphia? Was the —
THE PRESIDENT: It was one person. That’s — I mean, so not too much. Not a person that I was associated with.
Thank you very much everybody. Thank you. Thank you very much.
END
6:16 P.M. EDT
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