Bedminster new jersey. He commented on the coronavirus, the election, and talks on reaching an agreement on a new aid package. And gentlemen, the president of the United States, donald trump. I appreciate everybody being here. Number oftremendous things. I want to begin by giving an update on the economy. Economic health is vital to public health. Our strategy to kill the china virus is focused on protecting those at greatest younger andllowing healthy americans to safely return to work and safely return to school. Very important. We added 1. 8 million jobs in july and added a total of over 9. 3 million jobs ands may, and i will say the job growth we have seen over the last three months, 9. 3 million, is that single greatest three month period of job creation in american history. That is big news and great news. Over the past three months, the United States has surpassed Market Expectations by a total of 12 million new jobs. Over the last three months, the United States has added 623,000 manufacturing jobs. Andwould need a magic wand we are getting them in a disappearing. H is it is going to disappear and 639,000 brandnew construction jobs. Jobs are of new fulltime jobs and wages are up 4. 8 , which is terrific. Has lowered nearly 30 since april. Think of that, 30 since april. Hispanic unemployment has byreased 32 and jobs held africanamericans, hit especially hard by the shutdowns , increased by nearly one million over the past three months and that is also a record. That is a job record. African american, one million it is a job record. We must ensure the progress continues. My administration has enacted dollars inlion historic relief since china allow the virus to infect the world, so weve contributed 3 trillion. My administration continues to work in good faith to reach an agreement with democrats in congress to extend protections against evictions. A terrible thing happens with evictions, not fair. It was not their fault we were with this disease from china. And get relief to families. Tragically, nancy pelosi and Chuck Schumer continue to insist on radical leftwing policies that have nothing to do with the china virus. Nothing to do with it at all. So you have a virus that comes in, and you have people in congress that do not want to help our people. If democrats continue to hold this critical relief hostage, i will act under my authority as president to get americans the relief they need. What we are talking about is deferring the payroll tax for months until the end of the year and i can extend it at a certain period. Hopefully i will be here to do the job. We have been doing the job like nobody could. Nobody would, actually. We are going to have the payroll tax go until the end of the year and it will be retroactive to july 1. We will go back to july 1, and it will go to the end of the payroll tax. At the end of the year. It may be extended. We will enhance Unemployment Benefits through the end of the year. Unemployment benefits will be that is a big one, will be brought out to the end of the year, and deferred student loan forgive interest until further notice. Students paying student loans, in many cases not allowed to go back into their colleges. Extend the eviction moratorium. We will be extending that so people are not evicted. It is not their fault. We had a lengthy discussion this morning with president macron of france concerning numerous subjects, but in particular, the catastrophic event which took place in beirut, lebanon. Horrible, horrible event. At 3 00 p. M. This afternoon, i spoke with president aoud of lebanon to inform him three large aircraft are on the way, fully loaded, fully loaded, with medical supplies, food, water and many other things. Lots of emergency equipment. Also, first responders, doctors and nurses are on their way. This was an event like the world has not seen in a long time. We will have a Conference Call on sunday with president macron leaders of lebanon and leaders from various parts of the world. Everyone wants to help. Spoke to a lot of people. They all want to help. The United States is with authorities on the ground right now in lebanon to identify further health and humanitarian needs and we will offer further assistance. We are working closely with their government and leaders. On behalf of the United States, i want to extend our condolences to all of the families. Much larger number of families than anyone would have thought. And at first thought, but all of those families who lost loved ones, relatives, friends, in this horrible tragedy. We stand firmly with the people of lebanon and we will continue to offer our full support through this very difficult time. We have not seen anything like this in a long time. As you know, earlier this week, i met with American Workers at the Tennessee Valley authority, who had been laid off by the leadership at the Tennessee Valley authority. As you know, this is a form of utility that has been around a long time, since fdr. The head person, not controlled by government, but it is sort of semipublic, in a sense, gets paid the highest salary in the world of government. Gets 8 million a year. That is not a bad amount of money. Its 8 million a year. We are not accepting that, even though we are not the ones that appoint him or her, in this case him. We are not accepting someone being paid 8 million a year. This has been going on many years. We will do something about that and are already in negotiations right now, including possible termination. They and hundreds of their fellow american tech workers at the tba were being terminated from their positions on top of all of this, and on top of the 8 million salary and a chief of staff who makes much more than 1 million a year. On top of all that, they were terminated from their positions, these incredible people, in order to train the lower cost Foreign Workers imported to replace them. Hows that for a law . This was set up originally to create jobs and economic development. And now, they are getting fired and they are supposed to train people for who get a much lower salary. It is crazy. This was a grave injustice. I fired the chairman of the board in response. On friday, i fired the chairman of the board, along with one other board member. That is the one thing we have, the right to fire board members. I made it clear that if they did not swiftly reverse course, i would continue with these firings of the board members. We just were informed that they have agreed to change course totally. Today, i am proud to announce a major victory for the workers of tennessee and kentucky and other areas that are covered, great states. Great states. That the leadership of the tva has canceled the layoffs and given hundreds of American Workers their jobs back. They are being rehired as we speak. In this administration, we live by two rules. Buy american and hire american. You cannot fire all our workers andhire workers from faraway parts of the world at lower prices, especially when they have to train the people and they can never train the people like what you have because they been there a long time. We love the tva. They love the Tennessee Valley tohority, and are so proud work for it, but it happened and it is a terrible thing. They will all be getting their jobs back. Nearly every nation on earth continues to combat the virus. A number of countries are seeing a surge in new cases, including japan, the philippines, major parts of europe. Cases continue to surgeon latin surge in latin america. Right now, it is the most infected place anywhere in the world. They more than doubled in recent days. Latin america is doing very little testing. They are not equipped to do that. Its tough. In the u. S. , more than 80 of jurisdictions report declining cases. We are doing very well. You do not hear that often from the media, but we are doing well. We had a very large country, very complex country in a sense. More than half of americas counties reported less than 20 cases last week. If you look at that, more than half of americas counties report fewer than 20 cases last week. We have to remain vigilant. We are doing very well, but we have to remain vigilant. Nationally, the percentage of emergency room cases with coronavirus symptoms is down to almost half what it was in july. The Southern States that were very strong hotspots not long ago, arizona, texas, florida, continued to show significant improvement, including increased availability of hospital beds. Arizona now has the smallest number of coronavirus inpatients since mid june. The governor was up and we had a great meeting, governor ducey. The meeting was terrific. Since mid june. They are doing well and it is heading down rapidly. Texas is stabilizing and improving rapidly with progress in the rio grande valley. Other communities along the border with mexico that had shown the biggest increases in hospitalizations and deaths. Florida is also stabilizing its statewide positive test rate. It continues to decrease from 13 july 23 take percent this week. 8 this week. Florida has done very well. It is heading down quite rapidly. Even miami, which was the hottest spot in florida, is heading downward. But florida has done very well. Texas has done very well rapidly and arizona has done incredibly well. Arizona has a rapid drop. New jersey and new york remain stable with less than 1 of emergency room visits due to the china virus, the illness took a devastating toll on both states, as you know. While both states really took the brunt of the infection earlier this year, thankfully, we have not seen a resurgence. They have been doing a good job, everybody is working very hard, both governors are working very hard. We are in touch with them, supplying them with a lot of supplies as needed, if needed, but they are needing very little right now. They are in good shape. We will continue to monitor the new cases throughout this crisis. My administration provided extraordinary support of people, equipment, medical supplies, to the people of new jersey, new york, and to people of every state. All of our states. We are carefully monitoring californias Central Valley as well as san diego, los angeles, sacramento, and san francisco, which are starting to stabilize and go down. We are carefully watching regions from increasing cases including boston and chicago as well as the midwest. We are watching the mall very carefully. It is vital all americans work all veryng them carefully. It is vital all americans Work Together to protect the vulnerable. For this reason we have delivered vast amounts of protective equipment and testing supplies to Nursing Homes across america. We focus very much on the elderly, especially when they have heart problems or diabetes. Diabetes is a big problem. Approximately half of all deaths have occurred in Nursing Homes and longterm care facilities. That is an incredible number, when you hear half of the deaths have been in Nursing Homes and longterm care facilities. I will tell you that i met with owners and representatives of Nursing Homes. They are very, very vigilant. They are doing a very good job now. They have done something i think is special. They are doing very well in terms of the virus, working very hard, a lot of forces came together and hit the Nursing Homes very hard, but the representatives of Nursing Homes, and in some cases the ownership of Nursing Homes are working very hard. The federal government and private sector have delivered more than 9 million n95 masks, 3 27 million surgical masks, 3 million face shields, 20 million gallons and 668 million gloves to new jersey alone. Think of that. We provided 3. 4 billion to the state of new jersey in emergency relief funding. We happen to be in new jersey right now, so those are great numbers. The governor is working very hard. Governor murphy is doing a good job. We are working very closely with him. We also provided nearly 5 billion to new jersey hospitals and health care facilities. And through the paycheck action Protection Program you know so well, we provided 23 billion to support more than 250,000 new jersey Small Businesses. A lot of the Small Businesses you see that our opening right now, they are going to do well. They are there because of what we did with paycheck protection. On therapeutics and vaccines updates, three vaccine candidates have moved into phase three trials, years ahead of schedule. We have done wonders with the fda. I want to thank the fda and all of the great people there, dr. Hahn. We have phase three trials already going on, which most people would have said impossible to even think about. Today, pfizer announced it will create gileads drug remdesivir. Where we have had tremendous success. Last week alone, my administration procured and distributed over 120,000 vials of remdesivir, enough to treat more than 19,000 patients. Plausible treatments continue to show incredibly encouraging results, really incredible what is going on. If you can go to a blood bank if you have had this disease and beat it, and there are a lot of people who have. If you can, go to a blood bank and donate. That would be a tremendous help. The United States is only 5 of the worlds population, but we have conducted over 25 of the worlds testing. Think of that. 5 , and we have given 5 of the worlds 25 of the worlds testing. Any Global Analysis of confirmed cases must really take this into account because we are constantly showing cases, cases, cases are up. The reason cases are up, we are doing one of the reasons, we are doing a lot of testing, more than anyone else. Close to 65 million tests, where other countries have done very little testing. They will test people if they get sick. They will test people if they go to the hospital. We are doing tremendous testing and especially at the Nursing Homes. Over the last week, the testing turnaround times have declined significantly as major commercial labs have begun to pull samples. We have been able to send out many more of the tests, the fiveminute minute to 15 minute result tests. Testing samples from multiple patients in one batch is also something we are very focused on doing, but in the not too distant future, so many tests will be a quick test. Five minutes to 15 minutes. We will not have to worry about the process of sending and receiving. If you figure it takes a day to send and receive and a day at the laboratory, that is three days right there. The other tests you can have in five to 15 minutes. Over the next two weeks, i will be pursuing a major executive order requiring Health Insurance companies to cover all preexisting conditions for all customers. Thats a big thing. I have always been very strongly in favor, we have to cover preexisting conditions. We will be pursuing a major executive order requiring Health Insurance companies to cover all preexisting conditions for all of its customers. This has never been done before, but it is time the people of our country are properly represented and properly taken care of. This follows a series of executive orders to lower drug prices and Prescription Drug prices. Significantly, we had the only year last year, where drug prices went down, in 51 years. We are talking about going down at a level nobody has even thought possible now, even though the Drug Companies are running very big ads on me. That is usually a reason, they are not too happy, but they have made a lot of money over the years. Prices just go up. Not fair. This includes a landmark executive order requiring companies to charge americans no more than they charge to Foreign Countries they have to charge americans no more than they charge Foreign Countries. That means our country cannot be charged more. If germany gets drugs at a very small or low price and we are paying many times that price in the United States because we pay for all of the research and development, promotion and other things, we will get what is called a favored nations clause, we are going to have and i signed a favored nations clause, so that the United States, which is the number purchaser of one drugs, by far, in the world. World. Purchaser in the not even close. Other countries that are bigger, if you look at india, china. Not too many. We have countries that are bigger, but not even close in terms of ordering drugs. We are the number one country in the world. We have a favored nation, so if somebody has a drug, in many cases it comes from a plant, the same plant. It is the same pill, same medicine or medication. Whatever the lowest country charges if germany charges . 10 for a pill and we charge two dollars, and i only use germany as an example, then we get that for . 10. So what can happen is that is going to go up a little bit and ours will come down a whole lot. I will tell you big pharma is not happy. For too long, we have been forced to subsidize cheaper drug prices and Foreign Companies countries, to a level nobody could believe. Nobody talked about it. Everybody wondered, how come every president who runs for office says they will lower drug prices and never do . They go through the roof. Over the last administration, they went up, like skyrocketing. Skyrocketing. That is biden. Biden will not be able to do it. He has no clue. So what is happening is, we are going to be getting rid of all the subsidies to foreign lands and we will give essentially all of the benefits that frankly they have as great negotiators, those benefits will go to our people. It is called a favored nations clause. You can look it up and see. Nobody has had the courage to becausee it, to call it it is a very big step. But it is someth