Protection against the coronavirus. Welcome to the program. The u. S. President has criticized the World Health Organization for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Donald trump says the agency is china centric and issued bad advice at the outset of the crisis. His comments follow the lead to memo that reveal new details about warnings the Trump Administration received on how bad the outbreak in the u. S. Could be. Meanwhile, in the u. K. , Prime MinisterBoris Johnson is spending his second 19 intensive care as he battles covid19. The foreign secretary, dominic stable andjohnson is has been given oxygen but is not on a ventilator. The u. K. And the state of new york in the u. S. Have recorded their highest number of deaths in a day. The u. K. Is registered has registered 786 deaths. Holdingrump has been his daily news briefing on the pandemic. He has maintained his optimistic outlook despite a rapidly rising death toll. Even during this painful week, we see glimmers of very, very strong hope, and this will be a very painful week. And next week, at least part of next week, but probably all of look, if one person dies, that is a painful week, and we know that is going to unfortunately happen. It is a monster we are fighting. But signs are that our strategy is totally working. Every american has a role to play in winning this war. Barbara lets go to mike hanna and washington, d. C. You have been following the president. He is speaking now. What did you make of the main points he brought up . Well, once again, the president reiterating that for him, the u. S. Is testing more than any other nation in the world. Many critics contend that u. S. Got off to a very slow start in terms of testing protocols as well as reports that the initial testing kits were simply not effective. However, President Trump saying the testing protocol now firmly set in large numbers of people are being tested every single day. He also mentioned the issue of medical equipment such as ventilators, saying the program manufacturer of ventilators is going up pace and he says by june, there will be 110,000 ventilators in stock. At present, there are less than 10,000 ventilators being held by the federal government. President trump referred to the fact that some areas are handing back ventilators back to central government. California, in particular. Washington state. They moved the number of ventilators they no longer need back to the federal government for dispersal in areas that are more hardhit. New york state, new jersey, illinois all these areas are now currently hot zones. Barbara mike, the president is still speaking now. Not sure whether he has mentioned it again but he certainly has been accusing the who of contributing to just how bad the pandemic has turned out to be. What else did he say was his main accusation and why do you think he is making these accusations now . In the last few minutes, he has actually just reiterated his criticism of the World Health Organization. He did know in a series of tweets earlier on in the day, saying basically that the World Health Organization has badly handled this crisis, but what particularly appears to irk the president is the fact that the who pushed back his decision at the end of january to impose travel restrictions on passengers from china. On february 3, shortly afterwards, the who said that a ban on air travel was not necessary at that particular point, but this seems to have set President Trump off in his briefing. He reiterated his accusation that the who is, as he put it, china centric. He also said that the u. S. Will reviewing its financial contribution to the who, something his administration is looking to pay it why the timing comes out now . Not clear. Barbara timing is the issue when looking at a memo that has been released, that has been leaked, that showed that one of trumps top aides did alert the white house back in january about the potential fallout of the coronavirus. Indeed, yes, and that was the white house economic advisor, Peter Navarro, who at the end of january sent a memo to the National Security council, which was circulated through the white house. Warning of the impact that the pandemic was going to have, half athat that stage million americans who lose their lives. The Economic Cost would be 6 trillion. And also recommending, incidentally, a travel ban on travelers from china, which President Trump indicated he did see this memo, and then a month later, navarro issued another memo to the National Security council and also copied one directly to the president in as 2 millions Many Americans could die. This is now on february 29, and within that memo as well, navarro outlined specific figures. He said how many ventilators were going to be needed. He set up to one billion masks are going to be needed. Certainly, these issues were brought to the president s attention at a time where he was continuing to say that the virus could be contained, that it was nothing worse than the flu on one occasion. He said he has backtracked from all these allegations at the moment, but the point remains that he had full knowledge of the potential impact of this pandemic from one of his closest economic advisers days if not weeks before he started taking the pandemic seriously. Barbara mike hanna with the latest from washington, d. C. Thank you for that. Lets get back into the News Conference which is still going on with donald trump. He is now taking questions. Lets listen. Pres. Trump we want to open up. We want to get it open soon. Maybe we are getting to the very top of the curve. I spoke with Governor Cuomo and he seems to think that he is getting close. I think a lot of people think a lot of places are getting close. They want to start hitting the down side and i think we will be doing that. This will be a very difficult week. This week will be a very difficult week because that is the most when you are at that top position. We will see what happens. What can the federal government todo . Pres. Trump it has done a lot and it will do a lot. With this stimulus, we can maybe maybe even beyond, we are going to do perhaps notastructure which would have gotten approved before. We are paying zero interest or close to zero interest. In some cases, we are paying actually zero, no interest charge, and the dollar is very strong, and people are investing in the dollar. The fact that we have a strong currency our currency is everything. And other companies, other countries want to be in our currency. So we are getting all of the investment, wanting to come into the dollar. The dollar is the strength. The dollar is the whole ballgame. We have a strong dollar. Other currencies are going down, way, way down in some cases you look at other countries i wont mention them, but other countries are going down when he 2 , 25 , 28 , and it is very hard for them. That makes it much more difficult with us. Our currency is relatively now was overthan it ever the last few years, relevant to other countries. It is always relevant to other countries peered our currency is very strong. Therefore, people want to invest. If we do a bond issue to do infrastructure, Everyone Wants a piece of that issue, even at zero interest. See these memos that Peter Navarro wrote back in january . Them . Id you see how do these memos square with what you often said that nobody could have predicted this . It sounds like he did predict it. Pres. Trump i did not see them talkingrote some memos about pandemic pit i did not see them. I did not look for them either. That was the same time i felt we should do it, about the same time i closed it down. I asked him about it just a little while ago because i read something about a memo. I said, did you do a memo . I did not see it appeared i did not ask him to show it to me. He said, yes, i talked about the possibility of a pandemic. Nobody said it is going to happen, but you know, there is a possibility and there always has been a possibility, but people would not talk about it and it was right about the time i closed it down. Interestingly, World Health Organization was not in favor of us closing it down, and if we did not close it down, we would have lost hundreds of thousands more lives. So at the time, when Peter Navarro did circulate those memos, you were still downplaying the threat of coronavirus in the u. S. You are saying things like i think it is going to go away. Pres. Trump it will go away. He said within a couple of days, cases will be down to zero. Pres. Trump cases really did not build up for a while. You have to understand, i am a cheerleader for this country. I do not want to create havoc and shock and everything else, but ultimately, when i was saying that, i am also closing it down. I obviously was concerned about it because i closed it down our country. China, which was heavily infected. I then closed it down to europe. That is a big move, closing it down from china and then europe, and ultimately closing it down to the u. K. , and it was right about that time, but i am not going to go out and start screaming, this could happen, this could happen. I think apresident , president has to be a cheerleader for their country, but at the same time i am cheerleading, i am also closing down a very highly infected place, specifically the location, as you know, in china, that had the problems, and we are closing it down, but we close it down to all of china and then we close it down to all of europe. Those were big moves and it was right about that time. Just a quick followup, mr. President you learned about the memos today . Pres. Trump i write about it maybe two days ago. Among your staff, Peter Navarro himself told you about the memo earlier . Pres. Trump it was a recommendation, a feeling he had. I think he told people and the staff. I did not see it but i closed it down. I do not remember it even being discussed. Most people felt they should not close it down, that we should not close down to china, but i felt we had to do it, and that was almost the exact same time as the memo. If you had read the memo at the time, how would that have changed the steps pres. Trump i basically did what the memo said, and the memo was, you know, pretty good memo from the standpoint that he talked i guess, i did not see it yet. Lose trillionsl of dollars in millions of lives. Pres. Trump you will lose plenty of money but i could not have done it any better because it was about the same time and i closed it down to china. You maintain confidence in Peter Navarro. Pres. Trump of course. He wrote a memo and he was right, and i have not seen the memo. I will see it later on after this, but it did not matter whether i saw it or not because i acted on my own. I guess i had the same instincts as peter. Peter is a smart guy, and he is a good guy and he has done a wonderful job. He wrote a memo but he talks to various people about it but ultimately, i did more or less with the memo said, just about the time the memo came out. I closed it down. I took a lot of heat. The World Health Organization did not like it. They actually put out statements about it. In all fairness to joe biden, he called me xina phobic. Like i do not like china. I like china. I like the chinese people. They are phenomenal people. I was causing a phobic, i was called racist, how could i do a thing like this . Since then, joe said he was wrong, and he said that i was right, but i closed it down, and i was called names by some of the morning show hosts who do not have a clue what they are talking about, they are not smart people, and i was called all sorts of names when i closed it down to china. Now, they try and hide that, you know, the tape of them saying terrible things, that was a great decision. If i did not do it, if i did not do that, we would have had hundreds of thousands more people dying. Please. You talk a lot about the who and i was wondering, dr. Fauci if i could ask you a question. Pres. Trump thats good. He has worked with them for a long time, but they did give us some pretty bad playcalling. They have also given lots of countries in the world accurate coronavirus testing that has been central to your guys data modeling. Pres. Trump i can only say that with regard to us, they are taking a lot of heat because they did not want the borders closed. They called it wrong. Would say, called, i every aspect of it wrong. Happy about it. Look, we fund it. Take a look. Go through stepbystep. They said there is no big deal, no big problem, no nothing, and then ultimately, when i closed it down, they actually said i made a mistake in closing it down, and it turned out to be right, but at the time, you know, they did that, so we are just going to take a look at it. We fund it. And they seem to be, you know, i said recently, social media said they seem to be very china centric. That is a nice way of saying it. But they seem to be very china centric. And they seem to err always on the side of china, and we fund it, so i want to look into it. Quick followup on that. Funding to the who during a pandemic . Pres. Trump we are going to look at it. I said we are going to look at it, investigate it, look at it. We will look at ending funding, yes. Because they called it wrong and if you look back over the years, they are very much everything seems to be very biased towards china. That is not right. To followup, you talked about africanamericans and having them disproportionately affected by the coronavirus. Do you plan on requiring the cdc , any federal agencies, Public Places doing tests, and private companies doing tests, to collect that data on the race of the people being tested and the race of the people being treated . Pres. Trump we are seeing tremendous we are seeing tremendous evidedence that africanamericans are affected at a far greater percentage number than other citizens of our country because we are dealing with our country. Now, we are looking at it from a worldwide standpoint. Tony county is looking at it very Anthony Fauci is looking at it strongly and they are very strong and pretty obvious. Would you like to talk about that for a second . Please. One of the things we will be doing with our medicare data is to do that analysis. We are going to look back at the last month or so and look at related type illnesses going forward. We now have a code for coronavirus so we can stratify demographic information so we can look at race as a factor. We can also look at what the Underlying Health issues are as well, so we will be providing that data very shortly. Pres. Trump working on that. This is something that has come back here over the last few days, this has come up more and more and i do not mean by a little bit. I mean, many times, it is a real thing. Now, we want to find cures. We want to find therapeutics. We want to find vaccines, because that will solve everybodys problem. But why is it that the Africanamerican Community is so much, numerous times more than everybody else, and we want to find a reason. They are working on this. Than a week,n less i think you will have very good statistics. Physically aimed at those communities being hardhit, those black communities pres. Trump we are trying to find out, why is it that it is three or four times . Maybe that will not be the number. Why is it three or four times more so for the black community as opposed to other people . It does not make sense and i do not like it and we are going to have statistics over the next two days to three days, ok . Please. I would like to ask a question on behalf of myself and a colleague who could not be here due to social distancing. Thank you. Some banks are only providing Patient Protection loans to clients with whom they have existing pinking relationships, and you spoke to banking ceos today. I wonder if you will ask them these lenders took applications from all small businesses, not just the businesses with whom they have existing pres. Trump we are working with Small Community banks, so they will be doing that. It is a question we have already spoken about. They have longterm relationships with thousands of companies. I was amazed to see you saw the number of applications. It is hundreds of thousands, a lot of work. I did ask that question, and they are working on that. My second question from a colleague is congressman jerry connolly, a democrat from northern virginia, told the local station that you personally requested the stimulus bill be stripped of 20 5 billion for the Postal Service. Finally claims that unless the usps gets that 25 billion, the agency will be run out of money by june. He accuses you of hastening the demise of the Postal Service. Pres. Trump the reason the Postal Service they have lost billions of dollars every year for many, many years. This is a new one. I am now the demise of the Postal Service i will tell you who is the demise of the Postal Service, these Internet Companies that give them self to the Postal Services, packages, and i do not know why they are not i do not run the Postal Service you have a group of socalled independent people who run it but these packages are, they deliver they lose money every time they deliver a package for amazon or these other Internet Companies, these other companies that deliver. They drop everything and they say you deliver it. If they would raise the prices by actually a lot, then you would find out the post office could make money or breakeven but they do not do that, and i am trying to figure out why. These are independent boards, they were appointed by other administrations, they are sort of long term, there for a long time, and i have been talking to them also. You can look it up. Take a