Accompanied by the Vice President of the United States. Pres. Trump thank you very much. Thank you. Today i would 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 have had such tremendous support all over, we continue to see encouraging signs of progress. Cases in new york area, new orleans, detroit, boston, and houston are declining. Seattle, washington, d. C. , indianapolis, and st. Louis are all stable and declining. All parts of the country are in good shape, in all cases getting better. And we are seeing very little that we are going to look at as a superseding hotspot. Hings are moving along really a horrible situation that we have been confronted with, but they are moving along. As we express our gratitude for these hardfought gains, we continue to mourn with thousands of families across the country whose loved ones have been stolen from us by the invisible enemy. We grieve by their side as one family, this Great American family, and we do grive. We also stand in solidarity with the thousands of americans who are ill and waging a brave fight against the virus. We are doing everything in our power to heal the sick and gradually the open our nation reopen our nation and to simply get our people back to work. They want to get back to work and get back to work soon. There was a hunger for getting our country back and it is happening faster than people would think. Ensuring the health of our economy is vital to ensuring the health of our nation. These goals work in tandem. They work sidebyside. It is clear that our aggressive strategy to slow the spread has been working, and is saving countless lives. For those who are infected, we have taken unprecedented action to ensure they have the highest level of care anywhere in the world. The federal government has built more than 11,000 extra beds, shipped or delivered hundreds of millions of pieces of personal protective equipment, as you know. Some of the people here are going to be talking about it, some of our greatest executives, some of the greatest anywhere in the world. And distributed over 10,000 ventilators. We have in a very short period, many have been delivered and hundreds of thousands of being built, and frankly, every governor has more ventilators right now than they know what to do with they are shipping them two different locations and we are shipping some to our allies and others throughout the world, because we have ventilators. Like the job they have done in getting this complex piece of equipment built is actually incredible. You dont hear about ventilators anymore except in a positive way. We have launched the most ambitious testing effort, likewise, on earth. The United States is now conducted more than 5. 4 million the numberly double tested in any other country, more than twice as much as any other country. Think of that. Moments ago i came from a meeting with some of our nations largest retailers, including walmart, walgreens,vs, write a, rite aid chemtura corp. Youreally and kroger. We are joined by the leaders of those Great Companies and leaders from the top medical , u. S. Stic companies cotton the American Clinical Laboratory association. These are great, Great Companies. These private sector leaders have been others exceptional partners in an unprecedented drive to expand the states capabilities and our countrys capabilities. The job they have done has been credible. The testing that has been developed and is being developed right now has been truly an amazing thing. I want to thank Abbott Laboratories for the job they have done. I want to thank roche. In particular those two have stepped forward. Abbott with a fiveminute test and in five minutes they know what the answer is. I would like to ask the executives of these Great Companies they have really helped us a lot over the last 45day period we are talking about a 45day period where many of us met, and what walmart and many others have done has been nothing short of amazing. I want to ask them to come forward and say a few words about their company. Theyre going to make a big contribution to our country. Please, come forward, please. Thank you. Thank you, mr. President , and thank you for being here today. What we would like to talk about is the progress we have made good the last time we were here was march 15, and we have made tremendous progress, and none of that progress could be made without the 47,000 people at Quest Diagnostics who are working around the clock, working around the chest and running the tests and delivering the results we need. As far as results, we have made tremendous progress. We are currently at Quest Diagnostics testing 50,000 tests per day. We have impressed by the task force to bring up that number. By the end of making 100,000 test by david these are the molecular test we do today. We also do serological testing. We started that this past weekend by the end of may, close day. 0,000 a you put those numbers together, it is 10 million tests we will be doing at Quest Diagnostics. We will be doing that in a quicker way. We have reduced it to one to two days. The turnaround will take time for people in beds, less than 24 hours. Were doing that in the same way we have done it with the fda, delivering the quality you all expect. Convenience will improve as well, with Convenient Solutions that will be able to swab individuals more easily and deliver to consumers, the ability to have consumers choose a test online with a telehealth provider. I would like to offer my colleaguewelcome my colleagues to the party of as well. Podium as well. Mr. President , thank you very much for your leadership and for having us all here today. Our scientists and Lab Technicians are working day and night to do as many tests as we possibly can for the American Public and to turn those around as quickly as possible. Just 45 days ago, we said we could do several thousand test a day. We can now do 60,000 tests a day and we are continuing to expand the capacity every single day. In addition, our scientists are working to make testing more convenient and easier. We have the swabs that are much smaller than the original ones we launched with. Athome test he that is for Health Care Workers on the front line and first responders, but we will be rolling that out much more broadly over the coming weeks, and we will roll it out with no upfront costs for the individual consumers. At the same time, we are building our capacity for serology testing. We can do about 50,000 today, and we will be doubled to do several hundred thousand per day by the middle of may. We will be working with retailers. Our colleagues are here today to help them as they stand testing capabilities across the entire country. Lastly mr. President , we have a rather large Drug Development business, and we will work with our colleagues in the mystical and pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry to ensure we do everything we possibly can to roll out medical Clinical Trials fast for new treatments and vaccines. Thank you. President , thank you, and think the administration for all of the collaboration to enable Fisher Scientific to produce the test kits that Companies Like labcorp and qwest run. We met our original summons of producing 5 million kits a week and we are looking to double that in the coming weeks, in terms of supporting testing around the world. I would like to thank my 75,000 colleagues around the world for their tireless effort to make that a reality and supporting all of our customers throughout the testing necessary to get america back to work. Pres. Trump thank you, doing a great job. Thank you. Thank you, mr. President. Im with u. S. Cotton, and we are the company that is going to produce the swabs used in these testing kits. We have about 1200 people in our company, and yo in our cleveland operation, they have gone from the qtipstyle swab to a plastic swab with a polyester kit. Our is excited our Cleveland Team is excited to help this effort. Pres. Trump thank you very much. Mr. President , thank you. Im with cvs health. It was over a month ago that we open up our first drivethrough testing site. Since that time, we have opened largescale Testing Facilities across five states in partnership with the administration and working with the governors of rhode island, massachusetts, connecticut, georgia, and michigan. Our enabling us to test 1000 individuals today with realtime results. We have the capacity to test the 5000 individuals each week. This afternoon we announced plans to expand the capacity even further. Beginning in may we will install testing capabilities in up to 1000 cvs pharmacies. We will be using drivers and parking lots with swab testing. You will see that coming online in may. Thatgnize the fact the virus is disproportionately affecting minority communities, so we are working with the National Medical association to bring testing and care into the traditionally underserved communities. Implementginning to mobile capabilities to do that. As the spaces are restarting the workforce, deaf businesses are restarting the workforce, we will assist them as they begin to come back to normal operation. Finally, i want to thank my cvs colleagues. They have done a phenomenal job in terms of helping people in many different ways all across communities in the country. They are part of this army of Healthcare Professionals and front store and firstline supervisors and workers that are doing terrific things to bring our country together, and for that, witwe owe them a huge amot of gratitude. Thank you. Thank you, mr. President. Appreciate the invitation to be here today. It was just 45 days ago we were here. I oversee walgreens in the u. S. I want to thank the over 200,000 Walgreens Team members in stores every day taking care of our patients and our customers, giving up essential daily needs, the prescriptions they need, and even covid testing all we are here. We will be expanding our testing difficulties across all states, including puerto rico. We will be able to travel level triple the point we do now in partnership with lab partners and we are excited to do that. We are excited to put the Publicprivate Partnership we have here, because that is what webled us to do this, and will work to get these sites up and running as fast as possible. As a pharmacist from im really proud to be part of this election, and not just that profession, not just walgreens pharmacists. You are doing what you went to school for, counseling patients on the medicine and helping them understand the problems were facing. Right here with everyone in the community, and we look forward to being part of the testing like we are now, serology, whatever that might look like in the future, and treatment when the vaccine does come. Thank you, mr. President , for the opportunity. Thank you, mr. President thank you, mr. Vice president. We appreciate all you are doing to get america back to work and do it safely. I represent kroger. Im so proud of our nearly halfmillion associates you are doing everything every day to keep customers and associates safe. One of the things we were able to do is provide basic practices we are doing. We call it blueprint. It is the things all of us can learn from on how to get america back working. We announced earlier today continuing to accelerate practice on testing. We are actively engaged in states next couple of weeks six states. Next couple of weeks we will take it to 12 states. Together we will win, together we will solve this problem and move on. America is always great. Thank you again. Thank you, mr. President. Im a walmart associate, and i would like to thank our associates for admitting they are doing in our stores, sams clubs, Distribution Centers, ecommerce fulfillment centers. Ago as did45 days everyone else and we have been operating sites for a while now. We are up to 20 sites across 11 states and next week we will be 45 and at the end of may we will be 100. A few weeks ago Vice President pence and i were in a Distribution Center in virginia. The president and Vice President were speaking on the phone about surgical gowns, and the president asked if we could put in an order for millions of surgical towns. We dont normally buy those so i wasnt sure if we would be able to do that. I would like to thank our apparel team and mckesson in particular for partnering with us. We have been able to secure an additional 2. 5 million surgical gowns, and by the end of may, an additional 6 million to help. Thank you for the opportunity to serve. Pres. Trump great job. President , andr. Thanks to the team regarding this great desk for getting this great operation of an money for the benefit of the country. I am with rite aid. We operating 40 of the current test sites in 25 locations across eight states. I had the opportunity as i was driving up to stop at our richmond location and see the testing in action and thank the associates. Whether it be security or pharmacy, everybody who is helping with this great effort. All of the customers appreciate this so much. It was amazing to see. I want to thank my 50,000 associates also for keeping these Retail Locations up and running during these really, really tough times. It has been quite amazing. , are going to expand our testing, and we are doing 1500 a day. Thanks. Pres. Trump so, thank you all very much it is incredible what we have been together over a short period of time. I want to thank her Vice President for the task force and the work. Every day it gets better, and we had a fantastic over the governors today. They are as thrilled as they can be, considering the fact that there has been so much unnecessary death in this country. It could have been stopped and it could have been stopped short, but somebody a long time ago, it seems, decided not to do it that way, and the whole world is suffering because of it. 184 countries, at least. I want to thank all of these great businessmen and women for the job they have done. For several weeks, my administration has encouraged the governors to leverage unused Testing Capacity in states. Very few understood that we have tremendous capacity. One week ago we provided each governor with a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers of the labs where they could find additional Testing Capacity in their states. Within 48 hours, the number of tests across the country began to absolutely skyrocketed saturday alone, more than 200 test results were reported, which is a gigantic number, bigger than any country anywhere in the world for a much longer period, a number that was an increase earlier in the month when we tested roughly less than 100,000 a day. That, andthan double that will be doubling again very shortly. Were continuing to rapidly expand our capacity and confident that we have enough testing reopening to begin reopening. We want to get our country open, and the testing is not going to be a problem at all. Is going to be one of the great assets we have. Today we are releasing Additional Guidance on testing to inform states as they develop their plans for phase and safe reopenin. Ou safe reopening. Our blueprint establishes testing platforms to detect local outbreaks and conduct contact tracing. We have it all. Other counties are calling to find out what are we doing and how do you do it, and we are helping them. We are dealing with a lot of countries helping them on testing, just like we did on the ventilators. I directed our Medicare Program to make it easier for seniors to get the testing they need and the pharmacioes. We are allowing pharmacies now to do testing. We have other testing locations we are going to be allowing also. But having pharmacies that involved in testing is a figure. We are asking governors is a big deal. We are asking governors to do the same in a medicaid programs. That is a big deal. We are deploying the full power and strength of the federal government to help states, cities, to help local government get this horrible plague over with and over with fast. There is Tremendous Energy and country right now, and she like people havent energy like people havent seen in a long time, a spirit like they havent seen. We are doing very well, very well. Considering what happened to us and what happened to others, this is something that the world has not seen for a long, long time. You can probably go back to 1917, where it was a terrible period of time. You all know what happened in 1917. It was over 100 years ago. Without them i would like to introduce dr. Birx, if you could come up, and admiral, you could come up, and you will explain how much progress we have made and where we are going. Dr. Birx thank you, mr. President the blueprint lays out roles and responsibilities to enhance our partnership between the private and public sector, bringing together state and local governments with the federal government to make sure we can accomplish and achieve our Core Principles and objectives. Looking at the first slide, the core elements of the testing plan include three. Robust diagnostic testing plans developed in partnership with states. I want to thank the governors and Health Officials at state and local levels who have been working with us day and night. Also all the Laboratory Directors in many states as well as American Society for microbiology, who have been working with us to ensure the plans were efficient and effective. Within the robust diagnostic testing plans was unlocking the full capacity, increasing the number of testing platforms. We now have multiple tests for different platforms, increasing the ability to test samples, increasing test and Laboratory Supplies and ensuring we Work Together to make sure every client gets the tests they need. This is added with timely monitoring systems. What do i mean by that . Systems where we cannot only diagnose the symptomatic, but proactively and interactively work with individuals we know are at higher risk. We worked with states to see where outbreaks have occurred, where they are not a large metros. It occurs often in places of close settings, among our native americans and longterm care facilities. Active Monitoring Program that is active, integrated and innovated. The thirding with element, the Rapid Response program, relying on cdc to work with state and local governments to make sure every symptomatic case and asymptomatic cases are quickly tracked and traced to make sure we cannot only control this epidemic, but predict outbreaks before they expand. Approach toludes an using science and technology to develop newer platforms, more ensuring theting, antibody tests utilize and recommended by the fda and cdc have high quality in predicting both exposure to the virus and antibody development. Finally, working on innovative test for pointofcare and antigen based test, expanded ribonucleic acid tests. Thank you, mr. President and ambassador burks birx. I want to spend a couple minutes going over where we have been, but more important, where we are going. Canan understand how we group this into three distinct phases, the first is our launch, engaging the emerging epidemic in the types of things we need to do. For example, mobilize the private sector. Over the past two months the fda had 67 emergency use authorizations, outpacing anything that has been done or could have been imagined. Galvanizing the Research Community in labs. The reason we are here with labs, having done 3 million tests, that day it was galvanized by the president and Vice President. We also set models in the community, those first communitybased testing sites that were federally supported and under the direction of the health service, people who had been in japan testing people on the diamond princess to ensure it would be done right and safely for everyone involved. Then we moved to scale. That phase was important because we knew we needed to be at an immense scale to enter the third phase of supporting opening again. Example, enhancing the production capability of a Small Company in maine called puritan, which you will hear a lot about. They are sort of the swab provider for the country, but also the fda actions, being able to broaden the types to spun polyester so u. S. Cotton can start delivering 3 million swabs per week of a different type. It also did things like expanding the communitybased testing sites. Where we started small with commercial partners, you see today we have 73 of this 2. 0 site. 68 of those sites are in community a moderate to high vulnerable social vulnerability. We can make sure testing gets where it needs to be. You just heard that could be expanded to thousands of sites. Exciting,e, very coordinating with governors to support plans and response programs. A Multidisciplinary Team from fema, has mete, virtually with Multidisciplinary Teams from every state, puerto rico and the district of columbia, to understand what their testing aspirations are and make sure we can meet those demands. We will have another round of those calls this week, but as we talked about earlier today, we will be able to supply every state with supplies and tests they need to dramatically increase the number of tests we have done to this point. To give you an idea, the supplies we will be providing to states, the minimum we are supplying will be doubled in that month than the republic of korea has performed in the four months until now, accumulated. I am very excited as we complete this with the large reference high,quest providing a largescale testing. The galvanizing of hospitals and academic labs at dr. Birx has and, understanding implementing with income with governors. Also in remote areas like the Indian Health service or alaska. Thank you, mr. President. With a vat we are here to answer questions. The mic is a peer. Steve up here. Steve, please go ahead. What is the best advice on what states should do . We want everyone to be safe. You see a lot of governors to go out and they want to open this up. Many are thinking about the School System that has a long way to go. I think you will see a lot of schools open up, even for a short period of time. It will be a good thing. Vicious of what this virus goes after, young people seems to do very well. I know there are some governors who were not necessarily ready to open up the state, but maybe the School Systems. The word is safety. Rapid, but safety. Go ahead, please. Thank you, i have a question for you regarding one of the members of your Coronavirus Task force. That is the secretary of hhs, alex azar. On january the Briefing Room he told reporters, for the individual american, the virus should not be an impact on their daytoday life. Three months later more than 55,000 of our fellow americans have lost their lives. Mr. President , why is he your top health advisor, why is he still serving as hhs secretary . Pres. Trump that is an unfair question. We have great health professionals, many great respect. And many people in the other party that have said the same thing with even more confidence. A lot of people did not get that rate. Right. I was very fortunate, through luck or whatever, that we closed border, closed the with china. We did not keep out american citizens, but we put a ban on china that was fortunate. Nancy pelosi was dancing in chinatown, she wanted to go out and party. That was late in february. You could mention that. Please, go ahead. 3 a briefing on april pres. Trump you should have no complaints. Yesterday you retweeted inflated the mortality rate of the coronavirus by underreporting. Do you believe that is true, that there is a Conspiracy Theory regarding the number of infections they are reporting . Pres. Trump i can only say what we are doing. We are reporting accurately. Other countries are not. You can look at china, numerous countries where i do not think those are the right numbers. I can only say what we are doing. It is important for us to do accurate reporting. Retweetingg [indiscernible] the ppe plan to help small businesses. There have been concerns today with the website not working. The American Bankers Association saying they are deeply frustrated. They tell us american banks will not be able to help struggling small businesses. Pres. Trump i had not heard. I heard there was a glitch. Certainly it did not work out well for the original amount of money. This is the second amount. I will find out. We are relying on banks to do an accurate job. [indiscernible] get aid . Pres. Trump i would like to do that, i do not know the legal status. I am not involved in that process, but i would like to have it listed. I would do it gladly. A majority of polls show americans blame china further spread of the coronavirus and yet they are taking advantage of the crisis to make the world more dependent on their supply chain. How do you hold china accountable and keep our country pres. Trump there are a lot of ways you can hold them accountable. We are doing serious investigations. We are not happy with china. We are not happy with that whole situation because we believe they could have been stopped at the source, quickly and not have spread over the world. We think that should have happened. We will let you know the appropriate time, but we are doing serious investigations. How do you fix that . We have already discussed that, especially having to do with medical supplies and others. Deficit this virus the was coming down. I put massive tariffs on china. We took in tens of billions of farmers gave some to unfairly targeted by china. We have never done that before. Ofhave taken in tens billions of dollars. I helped farmers by giving them 12 billion, all coming from china. We had plenty left over. 16 billion. We will help our farmers. No one has done a thing like that because they were targeted unfairly by china. We are doing a strong investigation and we will let you know what the result of that is. We should be able to get the answers. As you talk about potentially reopening of america, what data are you going to look at in the future to see if restrictions need to be reimposed . Pres. Trump we are relying on local areas, the governors. That has been the way it has been for me, maybe not everyone. But for me that is how it has been at the beginning. Governors are doing an extraordinary job, not all of them. Some of them have a chance to do. To do that. Manhattan is much different than montana. You have a lot of different circumstances. If you look at the virus, it hits some areas. Some areas not at all. The entire country has been infected. West virginia is an example. I spoke to jim justice, the governor of west virginia. They were alone before anything hit and they had numerous deaths even in west virginia, and they were the last one to be hit. We are dealing with the governors. We had a great call today. Very solid. These were not complaining people, they had everything they needed. They have ventilators, testing. They see their testing is growing. We are helping them, getting them what they need. I am sure group some of you were on the line even though you were not supposed to be. I think you know what the result of that call was. A question on Holding China responsible. [indiscernible] 130 billion euros for damages caused by the coronavirus, would we look at doing the same . Pres. Trump we could do something easier than that. Germany is looking at things and we are looking at things. We are talking more money than germany is talking about. We have not determined the final amount. If you look at the world this is worldwide damage. This is damage to the u. S. , but also the world. Attorney general william barr directed federal prosecutors to watch out for those who could be violating the constitution with stayathome orders. What is the strategy . While the federal government sue local authorities . Pres. Trump you would have to ask attorney general barr. He wants to see people get back to work. He does not want people to be held up when there is no reason for doing it. In some cases perhaps it is too strict. He wants to make sure people maintain their rights. A lot of people would agree. You have to ask that from a legal standpoint to attorney general barr. Is the government suing the state . Pres. Trump it would depend on the state and the circumstances. Some states are perhaps early and some are late. I read that and saw that. The attorney general does not want to have rights taken away. Some people are not allowed to open up a store and they are going to lose their livelihood. By the way, that causes death also, between all of the things that happen. This has been a big study. The fact that people are not allowed to have their freedom causes a tremendous amount of problems, including death. That is what he is talking about. Now that other states have seen a spike in people using disinfectant after your comments last week, i know you said they were sarcastic pres. Trump i cannot imagine why. Do you take any responsibility . Pres. Trump i cannot imagine that. Dr. Anthony fauci says we need to increase testing by double at least. When are we going to be doubling . Pres. Trump it does not really matter what they say there. We just left him, we just had a meeting. We will have much more than double soon. There are big believers in testing and some governors do not feel strongly about it at all. They feel much differently. Maximum testing, something we are capable of doing. We will be much more than doubled. Whether it be much higher than doubled, mike, please. I hope the American People looking on today are as proud as the president and i are of the incredible private and blood partnerships you heard from today. It was two months ago we had done less than 10,000 tests for the coronavirus in the u. S. But because the president brought together these incredible commercial labs, brought together the best known retailers in america, now, we have 5. 4 million tests. As you said earlier today, we have done more than 200,000 tests in a single day. Since we met with governors today, i sensed the enthusiasm, for the way testing is scaling across the country. We assured them on the call today we are going to continue to directly partner with them to make sure all the resources you heard about today continue to be expanded. Gerard,o ask admiral who is working day in and day out with governors, to describe the numbers where we will be. We are north of 5 million tests done now. It is remarkable to think of the pace of acceleration, but admiral, maybe you can speak about exactly when we will reach the point experts think we need to be out, whether that is 300,000 tests a day or 500,000. What is remarkable to me, because of the partnership you forged, we are almost there and will be there soon for the American People. Everyone who is anxious to see america reopen as this president and entire administration are should know the three phased approach the president outlined 10 days ago, we believe, and i believe increasingly, governors understand around america, that we have a sufficient amount of testing today for every state that qualifies to enter phase one, to begin to reopen their economies. With your permission, i will ask admiral giroir to give specific numbers, how much quick ugly more quickly youll see expansion because of the partnership you saw here today. Mr. Ral giroir thank you president , mr. Vice president. The testing relies on the levels. High virus circulation will require more tests. Those with not high virus circulating will need less tests. Lets assume dr. Fauci was talking about a 4 million a month number, which was where a week ago where we were. Governorsto the planned for next month, we will easily double that 4 million number. We will have over 20 million swabs we are going to send out. We will have over 15 million tubes. We have everything matched machine to machine in a focused area. We are going statebystate. This is not including what you just heard, the 5 million per month tests by labcorp request or all the other tests that are out there. In may we will be doing more testing in this country. South korea aout lot. The people with the least amount of testing will double the overall cumulative number south korea has done in four months. Cvs,omising walgreens, with drivethrough testing about we sat here in the rose garden on march 13. These companies were here and other companies. By my count only 60 nine drivethrough tests i to have been set up by the companies that were here. Back in early march you said we would have 4 million test the following week. We only just got them the last few days. What went wrong over the last month and a half or two months and what will go right now . What lessons have we learned from the mistakes over the last month and a half . V. P. Pence i appreciate the question better represents a misunderstanding on your part. Partfrankly, the publics on the difference between having a test and the ability to actually process the test. Thetruth was, when president asked me to lead the Coronavirus Task force two we saw the production of lots of test kits going to the marketplace. As the president has said many times, what he understood many early on, the system would never be able to process the tests at the massive volume we would need in the midst of an epidemic. That is why the president brought together these extraordinary commercial labs as you heard from today. Literally sat them down in the roosevelt room and said, we need you to turn all of your energies loose on highspeed testing that will be necessary for us to reach the numbers we are at today. There is no disconnect. There were lots of test kits. Frankly, there still are today, literally millions of test that could be run in the old style, slow laboratory. Whether it be the cdc or state laboratories. What the president brought about with this Publicprivate Partnership, has brought us to the point where we have done 5. 4 million tests today. You just heard by next month we could be doing as many as 2 million tests a week all across the country to give the American People the confidence we can reopen and get our economy moving again. Said 4 million tests seven weeks ago you were just talking about testing sent out, not being completed . I am confused. V. P. Pence that is precisely correct. My first week on this job we idt informed hhs, i believe was the vendor, that distributed 1 million and was distributing another 4 million. Those were tests that, but for the president s leadership, we would still be waiting for those to be done in many cases, because they were designed to be run in the Old Laboratory model. Early on of the president s direction we brought an incredible commercial labs and partnered with extraordinary retailers. Now we stand here today. Last week more than 200,000 tests in a single day. About the same time we were making those comments we had done less than 25,000 tests in the entire country, but we met this moment with american ingenuity. Incredible companies are represented here and we could not be more proud. Pres. Trump it is very important to know. Any other country if they are being honest, not only do we have the most testing in the world by far, but we have by far the best testing. Thank you. I would like to switch gears. There are reports circulating that [indiscernible] may be fully exonerated this week. If that were the case is there any reason you would not bring him back into the ministration . Pres. Trump i think general flynn is a wonderful man. He had a wonderful career. It was a disgrace what happened to general flynn. Lets 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. Mr. President , thank you. Advisers saidmic the u. S. Is likely to experience a 20 to 30 decline in the gdp in the Second Quarter, the worst since the great depression. Do you agree with that assessment . Pres. Trump i do not know, but i can tell you i think the third and Fourth Quarter will be spectacular. We were talking with executives. I think we will have a phenomenal Third Quarter. Nobody except one country can be held accountable for what happened. Nobody is blaming anybody here. We are looking at a group of people that should have stopped it at the source. What happens in second happens in second. We are going to have a big rise in the third, and incredible fourthquarter and incredible next year. I think you will have a recovery. They were just telling me inside, 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 never have been allowed to happen, we had to close our country, our economy. I built it. We have the best employment numbers and unemployment numbers for hispanic americans, africanamericans, asian americans, everybody. The stock market west stock market numbers. It was up substantially today. A lot of smart people investing in the stock market now. 24,000. Ately if you would have said with the tragedy this country had to endure and go through, with all the death and people that died and were so badly hurt by what happened, and you can only say god bless them, but if you had said our country would be in the position we are in now, we are ready to move forward. We will never forget loved ones, these great people that for aiced for a reason, reason of incompetence, what happens at a point where they could have protected the whole world, not just us. But we have the greatest economy ever in the history of our world and i had to turn it off to get to the point where we are today. Now we are making a comeback and i think we will have economically, next year, an unbelievable year. I think you will see a fantastic fourthquarter. The Third Quarter will start to build. The Second Quarter you will have gdp lack of growth. I am looking at the head of walmart. What a job walmart has done. Work ine doing yeomens terms of protective outfits. And walmart doug did was incredible. Highquality, that is what we need. People of stepped up to the plate. I think it will start building. It will build fast. It will be a tremendous comeback. I built the greatest economy with all the people that help me and this country, built the greatest economy the world is seen, and we will do it again and it will not be that long. Country, how the long will you keep up travel restrictions for europe . Pres. Trump we will look at that and how long it is taking europe to heal. Italy is making a comeback, i am happy to see that. Inis tragic what went on italy and spain and france and well be looking at whats happening in europe and certainly we want to do that and they want to do it too. They want to do it very badly. Reporter do you have any update on kim jong uns health . Has he responded to your letter from march . President trump kim jong un . I cant tell you exactly. Yes, i do have a very good idea, but i cant talk about it now. I just wish himmle with. Ive had a very Good Relationship with kim jong un. If i werent president , youd be in war. Would you have been in war with korea. Would you have been in war with north korea. If i wasnt president. That i can tell you. He expected that. That i can tell you. I hope hes fine. I do know how hes doing relatively speaking. We will see youll probably be hearing it in the not too distant future. One or two more. Reporter the 2020 election, 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. Thats my first question. President trump i never even thought of changing the date of the election. Why would do i that . November 3. Its a good number. No, i look forward to that election. 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 statement made per joe biden. Sleepy joe. He didnt make those statements. But somebody did. But they said he made it. No. Let him know nimente thinking about it at all. Not at all. In the back, please. Reporter the Bipartisan SenateIntelligence Committee came out with a report that concluded that russia interfered in the 2016 elections and there was not political bias. Do you accept its conclusion . President trump i havent seen the report. I havent seen the report. Yeah, please, go ahead. Reporter nice to see you. I think you have a good lationship with north Korean Leader kim jong un, but last indiscernible] he mentioned fox news, he interviewed, he said President Trump he didnt say anything last saturday. Nobody knows where he is. So he obviously couldnt have said it. If you have this is breaking news. That kim jong un made a statement on saturday. I dont think so. Ok, go ahead. Lets do one more, please. In the back. Reporter 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 . President trump so, yeah. Weve lost a lot of people. But if you look at what original projections were, 2. 2 million, were probably heading to 60,000, 70,000. Its far too many. One person is too many for this. I think weve 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. Cant say you cant come in you cant come back to your country. I think weve 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 weve done there, have done unbelievable. The press doesnt talk about ventilators anymore. They just dont want to talk about them. Thats ok. The reason they dont want to talk that was the subject that nobody would get off of. They dont want to talk about them. Were in the same position on testing. We are lapping the world on testing. And the world is coming to us, as i said, theyre coming to us saying, what are you doing, how do you do it . Were helping them. So, no, i think weve done a great job. One person i will say this. One person is too many. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. Reporter [indiscernible] have to go to cea608 to get 500,000 tests south korea to get 500,000 tests. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] cspan has round the clock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. And its all available ondemand at cspan. Org coronavirus. Watch white house briefings, updates from governors and state officials, track the spread throughout the u. S. And the world with interactive maps. Watch ondemand any time, unfiltered, at span. Org coronavirus. Washington journal primetime, a special evening edition of washington journal. On the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. Our guests are dr. David weiner, director of the vaccine and Immunotherapy Center at an institute in philadelphia. He talks about ongoing efforts to develop a vaccine that protects against the coronavirus. And greg ferrara, president and c. E. O. Of the National Grocers association on how the nations Food Retailers are coping with the huge surge in demand and creasingly strict social distancing regulations. And increasingly strict social distancing regulations. Join the conversation tonight t 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. The pandemic is far from over. W. H. O. Continues to be concerned about the increasing trends in africa, eastern europe, latin america and some asian countries. In all regions, cases are underreported, in many countries in these regions, because of low Testing Capacity. Right now there are no studies that evaluate the antibody response as it relates to immunity. So we ant say that an ant body cant say that an antibody response means someone is immune. However there are a number of studies under way and we expect this is a very active area of research. We expect people that are infected with covid19 to develop a response that has some level of protection. What we dont know right now is how strong that protection is and if that is seen in everybody thats infected and for how long that lasts. And so right now at the present time, four months into this pandemic, were not able to say that an antibody response means someone is immune. Saying that theres no evidence in this area doesnt mean that theres no immunity, it just means that these studies havent been done yet. Television has changed since cspan began 41 years ago. But our mission continues. To provide an unfiltered view of government. Already this year weve brought you primary election coverage, the president ial impeachment process, and now the federal response to the coronavirus. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online or listen on our free radio app. And be part of the National Conversation through cspans daily washington journal program. Or through our social media feeds. Cspan, created by private industry, americas Cable Television company, as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television rovider. Earlier today, nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts briefed reporters on his states response to the coronavirus. He announced a special task force to oversee and communicate with businesses on plans to reopen the state. His took place in lincoln. Governor rickets all right, folks. Thank you very much for joining us here today to talk about what the state is doing to slow the spread of coronavirus here in nebraska. Were starting at a different time, 12 15, because we have a meeting this afternoon. And were also going to make this an abbreviated briefing because i have to get out that to that meeting. So were going to go from 12 15 to roughly 12 45. Were going to try to move this along at a pretty good clip. Six rules to stay home. This is day 18