Donald John Trump

“ No one is intending to pass the virus on to others, but we know, in essential workers around the United States, people are unknowingly infected and then passing the virus on. And so those are the ones that were very interested in finding. And you might say, "Well, how do you find them because they don't have symptoms?" And so this is where we really have to increase surveillance in a very deliberative and understand way. ”

“ And then, finally, I'm going to call on one additional group. There's a group out there of our HIV/AIDS activists and community workers that understand these tests that I've been talking about, these DNA — these RNA-based tests. Because they often get viral loads in HIV. But they will know how to explain this to the community, about sampling and what it means to run those assays. They are essentially virologists. They understand all of these assays. They also understand the antibody assays, because it's the antibody assays that they counsel and utilize in HIV testing across the United States. ”

“ Well, again, that is the PPP. The PPP is basically sending money to small business — 50 percent of American workers — to keep those people paid. And it's the most efficient way. Every dollar, as I said, we do through that, it's one less dollar of unemployment. And more importantly, we want those people to have — be associated with the business. So as soon as the President is ready to open up the economy, those businesses are together. We don't want those businesses to fall apart. That's why this is such a successful program, and we want Congress to put more money in. ”

“ How do you close down the greatest economy in the history of the world when, on January 17th, you have no cases and no death; when on January 21st, you have one case and no death? One case. Think of it. Now, we're supposed to close down the country?
But here's what happened: When, on January 31st, I instituted the ban, Joe Biden went crazy. He said, "You don't need the ban. You..." He didn't go crazy. Like, he has — he didn't even know what the hell the ban was. ”

“ Because it shouldn't be our expectation that every governor understands exactly everything that's in his state, but we have to understand everything in every state in order to be able to meet the needs of the American people as we increase testing. ”

“ But the one thing we do know as health people, as physicians and scientists and public health people — as I mentioned, I think over the weekend, on one of the shows, is that some people may think it's going to be like a light switch, on and off. You know, we're either out and we're in. It's just not going to be that way because we have a very large country and there are different impacts. As you see, New York is very different from other parts of the country, from the Midwest, from the mountain region, California and Washington, different than New Orleans. ”

“ We've now processed over $200 billion in loans to help small businesses retain their workers. Now we urgently need lawmakers to set aside the partisan agendas and to replenish this program with new funds because it's really something that has been an incredible success. And they need more money to keep it going to take care of these business and keep them — keep them open.
I want to thank the many governors, health professionals, scientists, and business leaders for their incredible hard work and input over the past month, and even long beyond a month, Mike, I would say. ”

“ So if I take New York and New Jersey metro area out, this is the other metro areas that we have been tracking very closely. I wanted to show this to you so that you could see how those curves are already starting to plateau.
So, if you look at Detroit, if you look at Philadelphia, if you look at Louisiana — Louisiana is in green. Detroit is in gray. You can see across the board, across these metro areas — across metro areas with — have a higher concentration of individuals, this is what the American people in these large cities have done, where it is more difficult often to socially distance. ”

“ You know, they're supposed to buy their own stockpile. They have state stockpiles. They're supposed to be using that. And unfortunately, most of the states weren't there. And a lot of people didn't want to talk about it, but they weren't there. We will talk about it at the right time, if you want to. I — at this point, I'm more focused on getting past this nightmare of a epidemic or a pandemic — anything you want to call it. We got to get past it.
No one who has needed a ventilator has not gotten a ventilator. Think of that. You know, you heard all about ventilators, ventilators. ”

“ So I just wanted you to have that perspective of how significant the New York, New Jersey issue is and why we've been tracking that so closely. But I also wanted to assure all of the other states that we're tracking them also very closely and really working with the governors and mayors and across — and that's why I wanted you to see that not only are the curves flattening in some of those major metropolitan areas, but they're starting to decrease. And this is what we're very excited about. These are cases. We also know that mortality will lag. ”

“ So, today, the Department of Health and Human Services is announcing five new contracts to procure large numbers of additional ventilators under the Defense Production Act, which we used a lot, by the way — which you didn't like to talk about — in addition to the 1,300 we received today. We received, today, 1,300 additional ventilators. Now, we're probably not going to need them, but we can add that to our stockpile, which is very big, and we can move it around should the surge take place and should it be a very substantial surge. We're ready to — we're ready to rock. ”

“ We literally estimate that, although we're doing over 110,000 tests a day in the United States, that if our — if our governors and state labs would simply activate the machines that are already there, we could double the amount of testing in the United States literally overnight. And so, I know that governors' teams watch these briefings, and we'll remind them very respectfully again to identify those labs. And we have a — we have a team that now is deploying, reaching out to labs to see if we can activate all of those labs. ”

“ The United States has now conducted nearly 3 million tests for the virus. Three million — the most of any nation. We are performing approximately 150,000 tests every single day and our rate of testing is especially high in areas hardest hit by the virus, if you look. And that's really — and it has hit some areas — the virus — very, very hard. For example, per capita testing in New York is higher than the rest of the world. ”

“ And, I mean, I made it very clear to them that what we have to do is focus on getting the resources where the vulnerable are, to be able to get testing done, to be able to get the appropriate identification, where proper and where appropriate, to isolate and contact trace if we can, but also to help mitigate in a community that is suffering and suffering much more disproportionately. ”

“ Now, the states — the states are supposed to be buying their own stuff. But should they need it, we are ready to give them, because we're building up our stockpile again like crazy.
Remember, I — and you saw the stories. I inherited — this administration — Mike, myself, the whole administration, we inherited a stockpile where the cupboards were bare. There was nothing. And I say it and I'll say it again: Just like we didn't have ammunition, we didn't have medical supplies, we didn't have ventilators, we didn't have a lot of things that should have been had. ”

“ We reviewed with the President today a very broad list of over 100 business people that are going to help advise the President on what needs to be done to reopen the economy.
We want to make sure — and again, the combination of economic impact payments, small-business payments, enhanced unemployment insurance — the President made very clear, we want to make sure that hardworking Americans have liquidity while we wait to reopen the government. ”

“ Well, we spoke with Abbott Laboratories today about how we can increase significantly the production of cartridges for the 15-minute test. Because, remember, we're — we are — we're not only scaling to rapidly expand testing across the country today. And it's one of the reasons why you heard me and Dr. Birx say that we are — we have an entire team now that's going to be working with governors and with laboratories around the country to identify the machines that already exist today and that could be activated in doing tests. ”

“ America is continuing to make critical progress in our war against the virus. Over the weekend, the number of daily new infections remained flat nationwide. Flat. Hospitalizations are slowing in hotspots like New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Louisiana. This is clear evidence that our aggressive strategy to combat the virus is working and that Americans are following the guidelines. ”

“ But in the days ahead, what the President has charged us to do is to work with our health experts. We're going to bring together an extraordinary group of American business leaders to counsel the President. And then, working with the CDC, we're going to produce new guidelines, based upon the data, for every state and territory in this nation. ”

“ And I just want to tell you that you're on our hearts, and you're in the prayers of millions of Americans as you — as you deal with this heartbreaking loss, as well as families that have family members that are struggling with serious illness. ”

“ We will soon finalize new and very important guidelines to give governors the information they need to start safely opening their states. My administration's plan and corresponding guidelines will give the American people the confidence they need to begin returning to normal life. That's what we want. We want to have our country open. We want to return to normal life. Our country is going to be open, and it's going to be successfully opened. ”

“ Outside of our country, they're calling me — every country. They're calling me. So many countries. And I'm going to try and help them because we have thousands of ventilators being built. But nobody is asking for ventilators. Nobody is asking for beds because we built hospitals. I think we built 20,000 beds in a period of a couple of weeks.
The job they've done is incredible. With all of that being said, I'm getting along very well with the governors. And if I wouldn't, Mike Pence had a call today with the governors and it was like a 10. ”

“ I'll let you know someday — let's see what happens — but I may let you know who's not doing their job. I can tell you the ones that are good, both Republican and Democrat, and the ones who don't know what they're doing. But we help some of the ones that don't know what they're doing. They should have had their own stockpiles. And now, if they want, we can build them stockpiles of ventilators.
The hardest thing is a ventilator, because it's expensive, it takes a while to get. We got them, and nobody believed we did.
Now, many of the governors were asking for far too many. ”

“ They needed two hospitals. We built one; it was perfect. We're getting — we're just starting the other. I called him up. I said, "Do you think we should build the second one? I don't think you're going to need it." He said, "Let me get back." He got back. We didn't need it.
With Governor Cuomo, in all good spirit and faith, he wanted to have the Jacob Javits Center done. And we built 2,900 incredible beds. Incredible. Then we make it — we made it COVID — and — or, to be exactly accurate, COVID-19, and — which was a lot of work. We had to change the ductwork. We had to seal up certain areas. ”

“ The federal government has absolute power. It has the power. As to whether or not I'll use that power, we'll see. I would rather —
JONATHAN KARL (ABC) : So if New York wants to stay closed down, you can —
THE PRESIDENT: Jon, I would rather work with the states, because I like going down to a local government. That's why with — I guess it's now seven states not eight that — because South Carolina did — you know, they went away from what we discussed the last time. So that's why I looked at the individual states; they're doing a very good job. They're really doing a very good job. ”