WASHINGTON, DC — Donald Trump moved the Coronavirus Task Force briefing press conference from the White House Briefing Room to the Rose Garden with a virtual town hall shown on the . Fox News Channel.
Trump and the task force, minus, again, Dr. Anthony Fauci, took questions from Fox hosts and pre-recorded viewer videos.
- First up, Vice President Mike Pence, who insisted the stockpile of 30,000 ventilators were being sent to the states that need them, despite Governor Andrew Cuomo saying FEMA had only given New York, with more than 25,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 400 ventilators.
- Pence also suggested hospitals convert respirators into ventilators, which he said would alleviate some of the shortage.
- Trump said he responded quickly when he learned about the coming pandemic by banning people from traveling to the U.S. who had traveled in China. The restriction, signed in January, after the spread of the virus in Wuhan, exempted U.S. citizens who were still allowed to travel.
- He attacked Democratic opponent Joe Biden for calling him “xenophobic” for the travel restrictions from China, saying he doesn’t think Biden knows what that means. Biden called bans on travel from Europe xenophobic.
- He talked about re-opening businesses around the country at the end of his “15 Days to Stop the Spread” directive, which is now in Day Nine. He said this country “is not built to shut down”.
- He re-iterated that 37,000 die every year from the flu and the country is never shut down; he said we lose more than that in automobile accidents but we don’t tell the automakers to stop making cars.
- Trump once again stated that more people will die by suicide if businesses don’t open and begin to fail, saying we could have a recession or even a depression.
- He said he “canceled” the deal for the nearly two trillion dollar stimulus package because, he said, Nancy Pelosi got involved and added Green New Deal items, asking for windmills that he said to cause cancer and are killing birds, and wanted oil drilling to stop. Republicans failed to meet the 60-vote threshold necessary to move the bill forward.
- He insisted his bill would take care of workers and small business first, though the bill made provisions for small businesses only to receive loans rather than the grants being offered to large companies.
- He complained about Governor Cuomo, saying the federal government is building four hospitals in New York, but Cuomo is complaining about not getting ventilators.
- He said he just received a report saying Cuomo could have bought 15,000 ventilators, cheaply, in 2015, but refused, instead of going for “death panels”. This came from the far-right blog “The Gateway Pundit”.
- He blamed previous administrations for the lack of tests and flaws in the CDCs first round of tests, saying they didn’t have enough tests. He said his administration “broke that egg” and will have better testing for future pandemics.
- He stressed once more that he believes American could be open and back in business by Easter, 20 days from now, something health experts dispute.