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White House Coronavirus Press Conference. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired April 10, 2020 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:30:00]

PENCE: Finally, let me say as we go into this very special weekend and to Easter services, I know I speak on behalf of the president when I say how grateful we are to all of the churches that have been there and their ministries have been working under great difficulty to continue to provide for the needs of your members. There have food drives, there have been of phone calls and ministry has continued and we grateful for the role on this holy week, that our churches, our synagogues and all of our houses of worship can play.

On their behalf, allow me to remind you that even if you're not in the pew this Easter Sunday, if you are able, it's still it is a good idea to give because ministries continue to go forward and we encourage you to continue to support them. We also want to say very respectfully to all of the church communities around this country and all of the places of worship to continue to heed the guidelines issued in the president's coronavirus guidelines for America.

We know it's difficult and this time of year particularly, Mr. President, to avoid gatherings of more than ten, but we are grateful that so many churches, synagogues, and places of worship have done just that and we urge you to continue to do it. And to my Christian brothers and sisters across the country, let me encourage you with the words we should all remember that Jesus said where two or more are gathered, there he is also. And so you can worship, you can celebrate Easter and know that you'll be blessed and serving the nation. Thank you, Mr. President .

TRUMP: Great job, thank you. Okay, it's Good Friday. Let's be nice. OK let's be real nice. Go ahead.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. Can you clarify a little bit of the U.S. offer to Mexico in order to greet (ph) that oil deal and then also go into detail about what you spoke about on oil...?

TRUMP: All of the OPEC nations met and others and they are all the green to cut back because there's a tremendous glut. We don't even (inaudible) filling up our strategic reserves, we don't even have room to store it. In fact, they are using ships to store oil. There's never been anything like this.

It was being overproduced to start off with and then you had the virus and that took 40 percent right there so there's a glut of oil like nobody's ever seen before. It's good in many ways and depending on where you are and who you are, it's bad. We have a tremendous energy business with hundreds of thousands of jobs, we're doing great. Number one in the world. So they all got together and they said we are going to cut it. We have to get rid of this tremendous supply.

Now, the good news is gasoline prices, I'm seeing $0.90, $0.85 in different parts of the country a gallon, nobody's ever seen that. I guess you have to go back to the 1950s for that -- the big large dollar bills. Remember? You don't remember, you're too young. But the fact that you have to go back a long ways to see it. So there are some good. The airlines are trying to come back and having a lower fuel cost is good for them, other reasons, steel manufacturing, a lot of this deal goes to what they do for the oil and engineering firms, so that's a double-edged sword.

But we want to keep our energy, we want to remain independent, we will remain independent , I think regardless, but we want to get rid of this tremendous overflow. There's no place to even store it. So the OPEC nations met and been meeting. And you know I've hated OPEC over the years, absolutely hated it, but obviously it broke and we potentially have years worth of supply, a long time before it ever can catch up, even if they do reduce it. And they agreed, but Mexico didn't agree, it one of the few countries that didn't agree.

This OPEC- plus -- these are OPEC-plus countries outside, you understand? And Mexico didn't agree. And I understand the president very well, he has a level when he came in and he wanted to keep it at that level, oil is important for Mexico. The problem is I explained it very strongly, you're going to be selling it for $5 or $10 a barrel, so in the end, it's bad. But he did have some political difficulty with it frankly, and I understand that too.

TRUMP: And it's a small amount for us, a large amount for Mexico, but a very small amount for the United States being the biggest producer, so I agreed to pick up some of the slack, so he was going to reduce it by 100,000 barrels, reduce his output by 100,000 barrels and I was going to pick up the slack and they would make enough at a later day, they would make up what we're doing at a later date. It could be a different form and I don't know whether or not -- if Mexico was acceptable,

[14:35:00]

I don't know if that's going to be acceptable to the other oil- producing nations. We'll find out but it's something that would certainly be acceptable to me to get it over the back.

So Mexico's going to reduce by 100,000 barrels and that would mean that they're 250 to 300 barrels short. We would make up the difference, they would reimburse us at a later date, OK?

QUESTION: You mean a difference by cutting U.S. production?

TRUMP: By cutting some U.S. production. Now, the U.S. production's already been cut cause we're a market-driven economy and -- and oil is very market-driven. They've been cutting oil all over the place, we're cutting it back.

And what does it mean really? It means we have it in the ground, we can use it. Now we have a lot of -- we have a lot of ground with a lot of oil in it. We're -- I think we're number one in that, too -- we're probably number one, especially with ANWR. As you know, I got ANWR approved in Alaska. That's one of the biggest finds anywhere in the world.

So when you add it all up, I think we're probably number one, even in what we have under -- we're very lucky -- we were -- we grew up in a land that was rich in a lot of ways but it's also rich because it has a lot of oil underneath -- oil and gas. And as you know, natural gas, LNG is all over the country now at a very low price and our carbon, our -- our atmosphere, our -- the level of environmental cleanliness is at its all time best right now -- all time best because we are using a lot of natural gas.

But we have many forms of energy, including some of the newer forms that people want to see us go to. We have a lot of different forms of energy, we're number one in the world. We want to keep it that way. So we're helping Mexico out. We will be reimbursed in a form sometime in the future.

QUESTION: Mr. President, I'll ask about the new federal projections in a moment but first, today you tweeted the invisible enemy will soon be in full retreat. Given it's invisible, without widespread testing, how would you know?

TRUMP: Well I think that we're going to have it in retreat with it -- will it be today? No. tomorrow? No, but it will be at a certain point in the not too distant future -- it will be gone.

QUESTION: But how do you know without the widespread testing? Specifically my question.

TRUMP: Well we'll know -- we'll know because people aren't going to go to the hospital, people aren't going to get sick. You're going to know that without -- but we're going to do very substantial testing. We're doing more testing right now than any other country in the world, by far.

(CROSSTALK)

... I'll have the professional answer it -- Deborah, perhaps you could come up. We are doing tremendous testing but you'll know -- you're going to know before anybody cause you're going to see nobody's getting sick anymore. It will be gone and it won't be that much longer. Go ahead.

QUESTION: I'll ask about the projections after. Thanks, Mr. President.

BIRX: Thank you, Mr. President. So the -- the testing. I want to reemphasize about what kind of testing we're talking about. This is RNA diagnostic testing. That is the platform that was built to respond to this epidemic. It is the same platform that we utilize for HIV viral loads. And so many HIV clients have also given up their space on the machines to have these tests run for all of Americans. This assay is complicated. It's not like an assay that you have for your other diseases -- your strep tests or other diseases like that.

This is a very complicated assay that requires a lot of technical oversight and it's part of the reason why not all -- 100 percent of our machines are running at full capacity, but we had great discussion with the lab directors about that.

Every day, more are brought online and so -- but I think we have to create expectations of what the daily test rates will be. Last year, we probably did three million HIV viral loads -- or four million HIV viral loads as a country. We've done over two -- almost 2.2 million in four weeks. So this is unprecedented in what we have to do.

I think that's why we're working very hard for two pieces and I want to make sure that people understand testing is just part of our strategy. The other part of the strategy has to be the syndromic and influenza-like illness where there's an alert to an illness and so that we're surveying where we know the most vulnerable cases have appeared.

In a great call that I had with the mayors and with the health officials yesterday and mayors today, a lot of the rural areas, their primary -- and as it was in Washington and California was at the nursing homes. So the -- the issue is to build a testing strategy that speaks to our strengths of laser focusing a strategic approach to testing when we know what our volumes are -- and they increase every day but we have to be realistic about what the volumes will be a week, two weeks, three weeks from now -- and combine that with strategic surveillance so that we're testing symptomatic people and their contacts very quickly to go back to contact tracing, utilizing our complete strategy.

And I think we're very much interested -- and it's why the President three weeks ago really put us on getting an antibody test. And I think I called from the podium for

[14:40:00]

our university colleagues and -- and hospitals to begin an ELISA-based test, because that's a blood draw, but we really wanted a finger prick to make it easy and deployable.

That's what's being worked on now. Of course, we don't want to promise until we have it because I think we deserve that, the American people deserve that, to have a test that is efficient to let people know who's been positive for immunity.

That's critical to epidemiologists and public health officials, to know what the penetrance of a virus was into a community when all you're seeing are the serious cases and testing the most symptomatic. And so that's a question that we still have -- is this the tip of the iceberg or is this half the iceberg or three quarters of the iceberg, what we have seen to date?

And we have -- I just want to complete the thought by saying in the areas where we had an outbreak, these large metros -- Louisiana, Denver, Detroit, Chicago and New York, New Jersey -- by per capita, we've done more tests than any other place in the world. That was intentional. We focused the tests where -- with -- the need was the greatest and the burden of disease the greatest.

And now we're trying to really see how strategically that very valuable resource can be utilized around the countries to create a mosaic of testing combined with surveillance.

QUESTION: Can I just ask you about the new federal projections? There's new reporting today that new federal projections suggest ...

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: ... ask who?

QUESTION: I'd like to ask you if I can about the new federal projections that suggest lifting the 30 day shelter in place orders would lead to a spike in infections. Have you seen those new projections from your Department of Homeland Security and HHS, first of all ...

TRUMP: When did they say this would take place? When?

QUESTION: They said it would take place if the 30 day shelter in place were to be removed. There are three different examples ...

TRUMP: No, we'll talk about that -- doctor, would you like to talk about that?

QUESTION: ... impact your thinking, though, that those ...

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: They haven't seen it. I guess you're seeing -- they're -- I guess they leaked it to NBC.

QUESTION: They didn't leak it to us, it's being reported by ...

TRUMP: Nobody's seen it and they're the ones that do it, so ...

QUESTION: ... your administration, that's why I asked. It's from the HHS and DOJ. But I'll -- I'll circle back ...

TRUMP: They'll find out about it, they don't know about it.

QUESTION: So in terms of ...

TRUMP: You want to say something, (inaudible)? Go ahead.

FAUCI: First of all, Peter (ph), I haven't seen that so I can't quote on that. The ...

(CROSSTALK)

That's OK, I still haven't seen it. I've been in here all day.

QUESTION: I understand (inaudible) just telling you what I've ...

FAUCI: So what I think -- what -- that they're talking about is that whenever you pull back, you would expect that you might start seeing cases. And what we've been talking about, what Dr. Birx has just mentioned, is that when you see that, that's where you want your resources to be able to very efficiently, in real time, identify, isolate and contact trace.

So don't let anyone get any false ideas that when we decide at a proper time when we're going to be relaxing some of the restrictions, there's no doubt you're going to see cases. I would be so surprised if we did not see cases. The question is how you respond to them.

I think that's what they were referring to.

QUESTION: I guess the question, Mr. President -- should Americans have to decide between staying healthy and going back to work?

TRUMP: Look, I think we're going to do both. We're going to go back to work and we're going to stay healthy and staying healthy is also a proportion. If you look at what we're doing, we're looking at a date, we hope we're going to be able to fulfill a certain date but we're not doing anything until we know that this country is going to be healthy.

We don't want to go back and start doing it over again, even though it would be in a smaller scale. Yeah, Jeff (ph), go ahead.

QUESTION: Thank you. So just a -- a follow up on the oil question, the President of Mexico said that you had agreed that the U.S. would cut production by 250,000 barrels per day. Is that what you agreed to?

TRUMP: Yes, we would -- which we've already done, by the way, but we would agree to a reduction cut, they would agree to do something to compensate us in the future.

QUESTION: OK.

TRUMP: OK?

QUESTION: Did you make any assurances to Saudi Arabia that you, the United States, would not bail out oil drillers here?

TRUMP: We didn't discuss that with Saudi Arabia. We just discussed the numbers and we discussed who's opposed and who's not and pretty much everybody is in favor of it because they're getting clobbered -- they're all getting clobbered. All of those countries are having problems.

If you look at Saudi Arabia, that's their source of income -- primary source of income by far. So they want to do it, Russia wants to do it, the OPEC nations want to do it, they all want to do it. So we'll see what happens. There's a difference between wanting to do it and doing it. Yeah, go ahead, OAN in the back?

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. This is a national security question back to Venezuela and China.

TRUMP: Venezuela, go ahead.

QUESTION: Your administration has placed a $15 million bounty on Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro and we have news this morning that President Xi is talking with Nicolas Maduro, expressing his financial support for Maduro.

So two questions. One, have you discussed with Dr. Xi -- or President Xi your -- the U.S. policy on Maduro? And two, are -- what is -- how does this affect

[14:45:00]

U.S. policy with regards to your war on anti ...

TRUMP: We will not be happy if that takes place, I have not spoken to President Xi of China about Venezuela, about that aspect of Venezuela. But if that took place, we will not be happy. OK? I will not be happy.

QUESTION: Are you concerned that he is opening up another financial (inaudible)...

TRUMP: I'm concerned about everything -- I'm concerned about everything, that's why I don't sleep a lot. I get myself concerned about everything, but I would not be happy about that.

Go ahead.

QUESTION: Mr. President, getting back to Peter's (ph) question, a variation of that question. Your doctors who are gathered here seem to be in doubt as to whether or not the country could reopen on May 1st. If they come to you before May 1st and say the country is not ready, or huge parts of the country are not ready to reopen on May 1st, will you listen to them?

TRUMP: I listen to them about everything, I think they're actually surprised. I have great respect for these people, all of them -- and others that are working with us. I have great respect for this group. In fact, I told Tony Fauci, I said, why don't you move to New York, run against AOC, you will win easily.

He decided that he's not going to do that.

QUESTION: (Inaudible)...

TRUMP: I kid, by the way, you know that.

QUESTION: Some of your allies have been bashing these doctors, would you tell them to cut it out? TRUMP: I can only say this, I have tremendous respect for these people and we've done very well. And when you look at us compared to others we're a big nation. When you look at us compared to others -- when you see how we've taken testing from a broken system that I inherited, to having the best tests that anyone has made anywhere in the world. And other countries are calling us wanting to use our technology -- I have great respect for these people...

QUESTION: (Inaudible)...

TRUMP: ...I'm never saying bad about these people.

QUESTION: If they come back to you, sir, and say before May 1st, we can't open on May 1st -- do you listen?

TRUMP: I will certainly listen, I will certainly listen.

QUESTION: Will you take that advice?

TRUMP: There are two sides -- remember -- I know -- I understand the other side of the argument very well, because I look at both sides of an argument. I will listen to them very carefully though.

Please, go ahead.

QUESTION: Thank you. Mr. President, you may have seen this but JP Morgan came out with a forecast about GDP growth in the second quarter, and they're saying a 40 percent decline in the second quarter of this year. Do your economic advisors share that view...

TRUMP: I think my economic advisors are interested in the third quarter and really the fourth quarter. And I think we have a chance to do record fourth quarter numbers because there's a tremendous pent-up demand, and you see it this week.

I mean, what reason would there be other than faith in us and in this country -- faith in this group, and me, and our vice president, and everybody -- governors perhaps, you can add them in to it also. What reason would there be for, in a shortened week -- four days instead of five, to have the biggest stock market gain in over 50 years?

So I think that's -- to me, there's a sign. Hey look, with all we've been down -- I mean, we've never been hit -- I don't know, has this country ever been hit like this? Probably not. In 1917 but that was different, and it was a different time -- and frankly, Europe took the brunt of it, we didn't, but it was a terrible time also. But probably never been hit like this, right?

Somebody was saying -- in fact I was speaking with Governor Cuomo about it, because we were in New York City, a place we love -- New York State. We're at the (ph) World Trade Center, and that was approximately 3,000 people -- well we've doubled that in this same area we've doubled that -- more than double it, substantially more and it's obviously going. We had our highest number yesterday and the day before. OK, with all of this news what would lead you to believe that we're going to have the best stock market week -- shortened week in 50 years? Almost broke the all time record. You know what that is? That's the pent-up demand, now that's my opinion.

The other thing is we're doing tremendous stimulus plans, and despite what you're reading, you know there's back and forth but we are getting along with the Democrats, they want to see something happen. We have to help our workers, we have to help our small businesses, we have to help our restaurants -- I think deductibility will be great for entertainment, restaurants -- all of that.

Look, I think with the stimulus, with the people, with what we've got going, with all of the things -- we're going to be meeting with the airlines over the weekend. We have a great plan for the airlines -- we've got to keep the airlines going. You know, it's never been a great business, but it's a very vital business for the country.

We're going to be meeting with Boeing, we're going to be meeting with a lot of companies that are great companies and were great companies a short while ago. I mean, we can't let anything happen to Boeing -- it's got so much potential. You talk about potential -- can anything have more potential than that? So we have a lot of very exciting things taking place. We have tremendous plans, we have tremendous stimulus -- and I think we have a chance to do really well.

So this quarter isn't the quarter I'm looking at.

[14:50:00]

Third quarter we start to think about it, and I think fourth quarter is going to be at a level that maybe we haven't seen before. I think our country with the stimulus, with all that we've been through we've learned a lot. Don't forget, we've learned about pandemics and epidemics.

We've learned a tremendous amount, and with all that we've learned -- as an example we're making ventilators. We have thousands of them being delivered in the very near future. We have countries calling us, can we have ventilators? That would have been an unthinkable, I'd be -- I wouldn't know what to say, they have people dying but we needed them for ourselves. We have plenty, before the surge.

In New York they need far fewer hospital rooms, or far fewer hospital beds in particular, than we thought. And I have to say, Dr. Birx told me that four weeks ago, six weeks ago. Remember you said that number's too high, we don't need that many? And based on what she said, and others, we did what we had to do.

We actually gave the maximum, we built Javits, we sent the ship in -- we then made the ship COVID because there weren't a lot of people on the roads, you didn't have the accidents that we thought other unrelated accidents -- there's nobody driving. Normally you have a lot of car accidents, you have a lot of motorcycle accidents -- you have people going to the hospital -- we didn't have that. We had almost none of it. So, a lot of things have happened. I think we have a chance to be stronger than before, I really do. I think the stimulus is very important, what we're doing, I think it's very, very important.

Please, go ahead.

QUESTION: Mr. President, may I ask you about credit and debt as well? Many American individuals, families have had to tap their credit cards during this period of time, and businesses have had to draw down their credit lines, are you concerned, Mr. President that that may hobble the U.S. economy, all of that debt -- number one? And number two, would you suggest to credit card companies to reduce their fees during this time?

TRUMP: Well it's something that we've already suggested, we're talking to them. Business interruption insurance, I'd like to see these insurance companies. You have people that are paid -- when I was in private I had business interruption.

When my business was interrupted through a hurricane or whatever it may be, I'd have business where I had it -- I didn't always have it, sometimes I had it, sometimes I have a lot of different companies. But if I had it, I'd expect to be paid.

I speak mostly to the restaurateurs where they have a restaurant, they've been paying for 25, 30, 35 years -- business interruption they've never needed it. All of a sudden they need it, and I'm very good at reading language, I did very well in these subjects, OK? And I don't see the word pandemic mentioned. Now, in some cases it is, it's an exclusion.

But in a lot of cases, I don't see it -- I don't see reference and they don't want to pay up (ph). I would like to see the insurance companies pay if they need to pay, if it's fair. And they know what's fair, and I know what's fair -- I can tell you very quickly. But business interruption insurance, that's getting a lot of money to a lot of people and they've been paying for years. You know, sometimes they just started paying.

But you have people that have never asked for business interruption insurance and they've been paying a lot of money for a lot of years for the privilege of having it, and then when they finally need it the insurance company says we're not going to give it. We can't let that happen.

Please, go ahead.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. On March 6th, you said anyone who wants tests can get a test. Now you're saying that there -- that you would be open to reopening the government without having a national testing system. How do you square those two statements, given that there's still issues with testing going forward? And how can you tell people that they're not going to have their lives put at risk...

TRUMP: Well there are a lot of issues with this (ph) -- there's not a lot, and it's a good question. There's not a lot of issues with testing. Certain sections of the -- if we go to Iowa, we go to Nebraska, we go -- and interestingly Idaho is very interesting because they had a few breakouts -- small breakouts, but they are very, very capable states and they're big distances, a lot of land -- a lot of opening.

You don't need testing there, you know? Where you have a state with a small number of cases -- some states with almost none, West Virginia hung in for a long time, as you know, with none -- for a long time. So when you have that you don't need testing -- you don't have to test every person in the state of Iowa, as an example. You don't have to test every single person to say let's open up and let's get the tractors moving, and let's get the corn, and let's open up. All of the different things they do in that great state -- you don't need that.

And with that being said, if there's a little hot corner someplace, we'll be testing. But I think Deborah speaks to this very well. The same thing in New York, that's what we talked to Governor Cuomo about this morning. We have the Abbott test which is very quick and very easy, goes very fast. Then we have a lesser test that we talked about

[14:55:00]

where we can talk about a larger area.

But you going to -- so we're going to do testing, but you don't need to test 325- to 350 million people because number one, it's unnecessary. Vast numbers, vast areas of our country don't need this. I think you would agree with me on that. You just don't need it.

Now, we have certain hotspots, so Louisiana's a hotspot, New York's a hotspot, Detroit's a hotspot. And then you have certain areas in certain hotspots that you have to even go more so, and we're doing all of that.

Remember this: We've done more testing than any country in the world and we have the best test, and we developed this over a very short period of time.

Please, go ahead.

QUESTION: Can I ask you also about the African-American disparity?

TRUMP: Yes, sure.

QUESTION: Because I have a question for you and a question for the surgeon general.

TRUMP: Sure.

QUESTION: For -- for you, Mr. President, we know these health disparities have existed for a long time among African-Americans, Latinos and other people of color. Why didn't the administration (inaudible) we have a plan directed at those communities to prevent high death rates, knowing that the health disparities were there?

TRUMP: Well, we do have a plan, and one of the things I'm most proud about is what I've been able to do for the African-American community: the lowest job numbers in the history of our country. This was...

QUESTION: But I mean for the -- the virus (inaudible).

TRUMP: Sure, yeah. Just before the virus came. Well, I'm just saying because you know, this has been here for three weeks, right? So just before, African-American community had the lowest unemployment, the best employment numbers. More African-American people and communities have been thriving. If you look at our opportunity zones and what we did -- Tim Scott, who is fantastic, a fantastic senator -- came to me -- opportunity zones. More jobs for African-Americans than ever before; better healthcare than they've had before -- all of these things. The surgeon general spoke to it, and he spoke to it, I thought, really brilliantly. I found it very interesting, what he said.

And I'd love you to come up and answer the second part of her question because I think you're -- you would do a -- a much better job than I would. Please.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. Senator -- Surgeon General. I have a...

TRUMP: Thank you very much.

QUESTION: Thank you. I have a quick question for you. You -- you've said that African-Americans and Latinos should avoid alcohol, drugs and tobacco. You also also said, "Do it for your abuela and do it for Big Mama and Pop-pop." There are some people already on...

ADAMS: And your granddaddy too.

QUESTION: There are some people online that are really offended by that language and the idea that you're saying behaviors might be leading to these high death rates. Can you talk about whether or not people -- could you, I guess, have a response for people who might be offended by the language that you used?

ADAMS: Well, I -- I use that language because that's the language -- I've been meeting with the NAACP, with the National Medical Association, with others. I actually talked with -- with Derrick Johnson multiple times this week, the head of the NAACP and we need targeted outreach to the African-American community. And I use the language that is used in my family. I have a Puerto Rican brother-in- law. I call my granddaddy "Granddaddy." I have relatives who call their -- their -- their grandparents "Big Mama".

So that was not meant to be offensive; that's the language that we use and that I use, and we need to continue to target our outreach to those communities. It is critically important that they understand it's not just about them, and I was very clear about that. It's not just about what you do, but you also are not helpless. We need to do our part at the federal level. We need people to do their parts at the state level, and we need everyone -- black, brown, white -- whatever color you are -- to follow the president's guidelines, the coronavirus guidelines and do their part. Because when I talked to the NAACP three weeks ago, it's important to note that one of the things they asked me was, "Can you help dispel the myths in this community that -- that people actually can't get coronavirus if they're black?" That was a myth that was out there that's actually very important for us to squash here.

QUESTION: So do you recommend that all Americans avoid tobacco, alcohol and -- and drug use at this time?

ADAMS: Absolutely. I -- it's especially important for people who are at risk and with comorbidities, but yes, all Americans. So thank you, and I will clarify that. All Americans need to avoid these substances at all times. I put out a smoking cessation report in January. I put out a advisory against use and pregnant women using marijuana last year, and that was not directed towards any one race; that's everybody needs to do everything they can to be as healthy as possible at this critical time.

(CROSSTALK)

ADAMS: Dr. Fauci, do you have anything?

FAUCI: Yeah, I think you said it perfectly, Jerome. Thank you.

TRUMP Would you like to add anything to it? Because you are really -- you -- you expressed it very beautifully before.

FAUCI: No, I mean, I -- I -- Jerome, you did it beautifully. I can't do it any better than that. And I -- I know Jerome personally, and I -- I'm -- I can just testify that he made no -- not even a hint of being offensive at all with that comment. I thought that was appropriate. Thanks.

TRUMP: So I can tell you, Jerome has done a fantastic job, our surgeon general. I just hope nobody steals him and he goes to one of these big companies for a fortune. Don't leave us, right? Don't leave us, Jerome, please.

ADAMS: I'm serving the people, sir.

TRUMP: He's doing a great -- you are happy, and you're doing a great job, and everybody -- everybody tells me that, too, so we appreciate it.

Please?