Phil Kerpen, President of American Commitment, broke down the bill and has been posting the latest versions of the bill to the American public on his twitter feed daily. Today he joins to discuss the breakdown of what he calls, ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ of the COVID-19 stimulus package. Plus President Trump's briefing on the Coronavirus.The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Newt Gingrich today, Dr. Oz today, Senator Tim Scott today.
And we are going to get into just how despicable, corrupt the mob and the media is.
I've got a lot to get to.
We're going to go back to this bill.
Some of what, well, first let me give props to this audience.
In large part, I've been told by a number of senators, so many of you picked up the phone and called, a lot of the crap we were describing during yesterday's program, not enough, not all of it, but a good amount of it that is good got taken out of the bill last minute because I am told, numerous sources, because of all the calls that went into the Senate.
I'll get to that today.
I want to, and we'll break down the analysis, et cetera.
I got to start with something here.
Now, I am in New York.
We had Governor Cuomo on.
We had a pretty pleasant, you know, conversation about doing everything we can do to help New York.
New York is ground zero in all of this.
6,500 cases, 100 new deaths.
I mean, that's a lot of people.
New York is the majority of the cases here.
That's 30,811 cases, you know, pretty big.
385 people have died as of now.
Again, I'm looking at the latest numbers I have.
And you've got everybody in the media.
Well, maybe Cuomo could be the alternative to Quidden Pro and Quojo.
Let me tell you something that has been going on here, and I've had it.
I have absolutely had it.
I am watching Comrade Bill, the biggest, most wasteful spender, de Blasio.
And I am watching the biggest waste fraud abuse governor lecture.
We need this.
We don't have enough of that.
We need more.
We need more.
We need this.
Every second of every day, when heaven and earth, rightly so, I support this, is being used to help ground zero, which is New York.
Everything is being, and they sit there and they point fingers and blame and attack the president.
Well, I have a list of everything that the president has done.
Every single thing, including, oh yeah, that U.S. Navy hospital ship he's sending to New York City Harbor and the declaration of a major disaster declaration for New York.
That was on March the 20th.
Or the Army Corps of Engineers beginning construction of hospitals all throughout New York, Manhattan and Nassau County and Suffolk County and Westchester counties.
A big undertaking.
This is now already in the pipeline and done.
Then the president saying that the federal government is sending the National Guard to the hardest hit states like New York, California, and Washington, deploying tons of supplies from national stockpiles, et cetera, et cetera.
That would be gloves and medical beds and N95 masks and gowns delivered already have arrived.
4,000 ventilators have arrived this week in the state of New York.
Enough hydroxychloroquine for the people that are now part of a study, clinical study in New York, although the governor, you are not allowed to have or pick up at any pharmacy.
He issued an executive order, if you're not part of his study, to get your own chloroquin.
I guess in that case, you're on your own.
You either do what they say, do it their way, or you're not going to get it.
Now, he claimed last night, all over to you, we're only getting $3.8 billion.
This is a pittance.
This is outrageous.
This is, well, even his friend.
Well, first of all, go talk to your buddy Chucky Schumer.
He would be the Senate minority leader.
He would be the one that has the most power in the United States Senate where they passed that bill with a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse in it itself.
A lot of good things in there.
We couldn't waste any more time.
But if you look at the ventilators alone, they just announced this week another 4,000 ventilators were sent this week on top of hundreds of other ventilators that have been sent.
And it's like every second of every day, this is all we get.
The Blasio doom and gloom and lecturing the president pretty much every day.
You know, there comes a point here where you rarely hear a thank you.
You rarely hear a, thank goodness the government has gone all into help New Yorkers.
This is what we're doing.
We're working together.
That's not what these press conferences are.
He sits there authoritatively and says, we need this, but we need that.
We need 10 more thousand of this and 14 more thousand of that.
And when you want to look at Governor Cuomo here and you look at his record, it is atrocious.
He wants to play politics.
He wants to look at money spent.
If de Blasio, the comrade mayor of New York, all right, well, we'll look at it here.
And what the president did say in that town hall is absolutely true.
I read from real clear politics.
Governor Cuomo came to a fork in the road in 2015.
He could have chosen to buy more ventilators.
Instead, he asked his health commissioner, Howard Zucker, to assemble a task force and draft rules for rationing the ventilators they already had.
That's what he did.
And now he's demanding 30,000 of them.
We don't have any indication yet.
And we know GM, we know Ford, we know Washington.
They're moving heaven and earth to get as many ventilators as everybody in this country might one day need.
I hope we don't get to that point.
Hopefully the hydroxychloroquine with these azithromyosin will do the trick and hopefully we can get people out of trouble faster.
It's a lot of money.
Anyway, Cuomo could have purchased those $16,000 for $36,000 apiece or $576 million.
All right, a lot of money.
But you know what?
He's the same governor that wasted $750 million on this boondoggle Buffalo billion solar panel factory.
It's his fault that they're losing revenue in New York and New York City because all of the ridiculously high taxes and burdensome regulation and irrational fear of fracking, which would have saved New York economically had he done that, while Pennsylvania is thriving, literally, they're taking New York's gas.
And I don't blame them.
They're smart.
New York is dumb.
But he's out there every single day.
How much New York takes in a year?
You know what their all-funds receipt is?
$178.3 billion.
That's what they take in every year.
Now, this is a state that has a 10% state income tax.
Florida, zero.
Texas, zero.
Who has better infrastructure?
Texas, Florida, or New York?
Well, Texas and Florida.
New York infrastructure is a disaster.
Then when you dig a little bit deeper and you see what they actually spend this money on, it is despicable.
What the president, I'm sorry, what the governor told his state last night that New York is only getting a drop in the bucket, $3.8 billion of the $2 trillion.
Well, his own lead senator, the Senate Minority Leader, begs to differ.
That it'll be well over $40 billion, including everything you could ever want or imagine.
That every other person in the country, we agree, New York needs the extra help.
Fine.
Even Schumer's office put out a response to it.
Everything that's going to be included, unemployment insurance on steroids and $260 billion, deliver at least $15 billion directly to New York, $1,200 for individuals, $2,400 for couples, $15.5 billion, a Marshall Plan, as he describes it for New York hospitals.
Billions will begin flowing to New York right away.
That's part of the bill.
Local governments, state governments, all of this money flowing into New York, and he's out there lying to New Yorkers.
And I'm not exactly sure.
Maybe he's buying in or enjoying the fact that people are saying, hey, maybe, maybe this is the guy.
Maybe he can really do it.
I don't think he can.
Well, guess what?
Since taking off, this is his third term.
Since taking office in 2011, he has doled out more than $10 billion in public funding and tax breaks in the name of economic development.
And they end up being costly giveaways, a series of broken promises, a ton of boondoggles.
You know, they called it Andyland in one of the local New York papers here.
And the same with de Blasio, by the way.
I mean, he's out there scaring everybody, yelling at Donald Trump every day, and every single thing that they've ever wanted that they've asked for.
They are getting all of this.
And here's another thing: here: while they've been wasting money, and I'll give you specific examples, how is it possible knowing New York is the number one target of terrorists and others in the entire United States?
How is it they are this ill-prepared for anything?
Because they're telling us the hospitals aren't prepared, they don't even have extra masks.
Well, we didn't store them, we didn't store this, we don't have that.
He's there's not one thing that it seems that they have been prepared for, not one.
And then they just sit there every day and they scare people and then they lecture the president.
Um, lecture the president, what do you need?
I need more of this, I need more of that.
I need more.
Well, maybe Diplasio could have saved money and bought masks instead of you know, labeling transgender bathrooms.
How about you just make an announcement?
Go to the bathroom anywhere you want, whether it says men or women.
How's that?
That would have been quick, and we would have saved the money.
You could have bought some masks and gowns, et cetera.
It is a taxpayer disaster in New York.
You know, 15 million goes to a film hub in Syracuse, sold for $1, along with $90 million for a light bulb factory.
Then the $750 million he spent on a solar plant that promised 3,000 jobs.
But guess what?
It now got mothballed, just like they built a nuclear facility out in Long Island, and that went, well, not under his watch, but even that got shut down.
And it's the same with his counterpart, the New York City mayor, Comrade de Blasio.
I mean, I'm looking at all the money that these guys spent, and I'm like scratching my head.
And it's like, there's nothing good enough here.
Just take this one example: how many masks, how many gowns, how many ventilators, how much money could have been spent preparing New York for what would ultimately probably, unfortunately, be the inevitable, which is either a terrorist attack or some type of pandemic.
It's a big city.
It takes, it's an international city.
It's more likely to be a victim.
And if you're taking in more money than any other state in the country, why aren't you preparing for any of this?
This guy spent $750 million on a solar panel factory.
Eventually was taken over by Elon Musk of Tesla.
Solar City Riverbend was supposed to be the largest manufacturing facility in North America.
They promised thousands of people jobs.
They said they would attract billions of new investment.
Tesla ends up closing this place after they took it over, and all of that money thrown down the drain.
And the same thing, you can look at de Blasio as mayor and his wife.
Oh, let's read from the New York Post.
Yeah, they wasted $1.8 billion they've identified in taxpayer dollars in the city of New York.
And they're lecturing everybody.
Give me this, give me that, give me that.
Why are you guys lecturing anybody on the use of money?
And in the meantime, Comrade de Blasio is saying he's going to release 300 criminals from Rikers Island.
Okay.
Well, they also have in this state no bail.
In other words, you get arrested, you don't have to post bail, and you're released.
Another dumb idea.
And you have criminals going on television and in newspapers all over New York bragging, hey, I just get to go out and do it all over again.
And guess what they do?
They do it all over again.
Also, turns out, the Obama administration never replaced a protective mask for their health care workers either.
I mean, I'm watching these people.
The list is comprehensive.
The amount of monies that are being spent to help New York, rightfully so, are unprecedented.
And you don't get a single good word out of either one of these guys that frankly are culpable when they should have stopped wasting money and they should have been preparing, knowing ground zero is always kind of close to New York.
It's going to happen.
Likely to happen, unfortunately.
Now, that's not going to stop the president.
President's going to take care of New York.
President's going to take care of California.
President's going to take care of Washington.
American taxpayer is going to do what we are born to do.
But I am fed up watching everybody.
Oh, he could really, it should be him, not Joe.
Okay, I'll take that bet.
Because once I get finished, after looking and doing a deep dive into this guy's record, it's not a pretty sight at all.
$750 million solar panel factory disaster.
2013, New York Nonpartisan Citizens Budget Commission, yeah, they estimated state expenditures on the quote development $7 billion annually.
2014, New York partners with a California light bulb company to build $90 million, a $90 million factory outside of Syracuse, promising 400 jobs to the region and et cetera, et cetera, paying a dollar annually in rent.
And as they were putting the finishing touches on it, well, the company pulled out of the deal.
Cuomo announcing a $600 million investment in a computer chip factory in Utica six months after celebrating the groundbreaking amid delays as their reason for saying goodbye to upstate.
Guess what?
Yeah, they found an alternative site.
The film industry gets $420 million annually in tax credits from New York State.
Oh, they're going to make movies in New York.
Last year, the state also decided to extend tax credits, $25 million to the music and video gaming industry.
Really?
Why didn't they prepare for some type of emergency in New York, knowing this is ground zero?
This is the number one target in the entire country.
And then he sits there, you know, pointing fingers.
What did the president do?
He's building hospitals.
He's sending Navy ship hospitals.
He declared a disaster relief.
He lies and says he's only getting $3.8 billion in yesterday's bill.
Chuck Schumer even says it's well over $40 billion.
Whine, complain, waste, fraud, abuse, high taxes, chasing everybody out of New York City and everybody out of New York State, the number one state in terms of people making a mass exodus.
I'm sick of lectures from Andrew Cuomo.
All right, 25 now to the top of the hour, 800-941.
Sean, you want to be a part of the program?
I mean, I've never seen anything like it.
I've never seen such waste, such fraud, such abuse, such high taxation, such incredible, burdensome regulation, and zero preparation for any emergency at all.
And the chasing every single person they can to get the hell out of New York State.
You know, chasing conservative everybody out.
They're leaving.
And it's the waste, fraud, abuse, bureaucracy, burdensome regulation that is chasing everybody out.
And then, of course, the opportunity that they would have.
Oh, for example, you know, fracking.
Yeah, they're doing it next door in Pennsylvania.
You know what?
Pennsylvania is kicking New York's ass big time and taking in huge sums of money and taking in a ton of stuff in terms of money and creating jobs for people.
Unbelievable.
Now, I want to get to this other, you know, it is so despicable what we have witnessed now the last week.
Probably the single most shameful display of just raw partisanship and despicable partisanship.
Well, it's not, it's been three years plus.
I mean, it's been three years.
It's now officially dangerous for the country how bad this radical socialist party has become.
And I will tell you, they did it in this case.
They basically, politically speaking, you know, holding hostage the Republicans, putting, again, not really, a political gun to their head for all this crap, this list of garbage that they want that we have been telling you about.
And in the meantime, the hardworking Americans that are out there that, through no fault of their own, need help.
And by the way, every American I know understands it.
Most of the people that are going to get the help, they don't really want it.
They would rather have their lives back to normal.
That's what they would prefer.
But everybody understands it.
Okay.
If you get just unemployment insurance, it's kind of, you know, ridiculously low.
That means people would be losing their homes.
They would not be able to pay their rent, their car payment, and life, as they know it would be turned upside down, ultimately even rebounding back and hurting the economy in ways we can't even imagine.
So this stimulus package, now the third bill passed, for the American worker.
But they've been waiting all this time as these Democrats, you know, play politics and make a wish list of everything that has nothing to do with coronavirus.
Nothing to do, nothing about helping workers and what they were fighting for.
Nothing to help businesses and what they were fighting for.
Nothing to help hospitals that desperately need things too, that they were fighting for.
I mean, it was the single most repulsive, disgusting, shameful display I think I've ever seen in my life.
Oh, and then you got, you know, clueless Joe Biden.
Where do you hear the tapes from today?
It's unbelievable.
Now we're back to Joe, and this time, well, let's play the one, the one I just mentioned because it was pretty funny.
I'm not sure what cut number it is.
You can't even make this up.
Remember, we hold these truths to be the seller and all men and women created equal by the thing.
You know what the thing, the thing is, the thing thing, whatever the thing is.
Now he can't, he struggles with the Declaration of Independence.
Listen.
And what we have done is the reason why most of the world has repaired to us, particularly after World War II, is because of who we are as a nation.
We the people, we hold these truths, et cetera.
Sounds corny, but it's real.
I have got a lot more.
These truths, et cetera.
I can't remember, so I'll act like I know.
I'll act like you know, too.
Then he's taking out ads, trying to raise money off coronavirus.
Then you've got these super PACs run by a former advisor to Hillary, $6 million, slicing and dicing Donald Trump.
Donald Trump says, oh, yeah, they're using it as a hoax.
Those that were politicizing president's actions and the travel ban and the quarantine speak for themselves.
Anyway, so now it's $2 trillion.
We got the $4 trillion freed up for loans in the Fed.
We know all of that.
One-time direct payments, if you want to know, for individuals, $24 per couple, $2,400 per couple, $500 per eligible child, one-time tax rebate check, not reduced for lower-income Americans at all.
They are reduced, higher income starting at $75,000 for individuals, $112,500 for head of household, $150,000 for married couples, phases out completely at $99,000 for individuals, $198,000 for married couples.
Expanded unemployment insurance even covers self-employed, 1099 employees, contract employees.
New SBA-backed loan program to help small businesses.
Loans taken by small businesses to keep employees on the payroll may be forgiven.
501c3s will also be eligible.
Federal government will forgive eight weeks of cash flow rent utilities at 100% up to 2.5 times average monthly payroll.
Assistance to distressed job creators, loans, loan guarantees, investment authority, $529 billion with $454 billion to be used by the Treasury, working with the Fed, all sectors of the economy, $75 billion in loan guarantees.
I mean, it gets complicated.
We've broken it all down for you.
Ensuring access to care for every American worried about care.
They're now getting testing kits that would not only be driving up and being able to get, but ones you will quickly be able to use at home.
Off-label use of hydroxychloroquine.
By the way, there's an executive order in New York.
You can't pick one up at a pharmacy in New York.
No, no, no.
Andrew Cuomo has an executive order.
You must participate in their study.
Direct funding for the pandemic for hospitals, $340 billion supplemental appropriations, states, cities, localities fighting the pandemic, support for healthcare workers, hospitals, local responders, research treatment, vaccines, small businesses, health industry, colleges, universities, veteran health care.
I mean, there's a lot of people in need.
It's going to cost a lot of money.
Most Americans understand it.
It's when they come and they start doing what they did.
It was repulsive.
And we've been going over this.
And unfortunately, some of the crap still exists.
You know, they did get rid of some things like mandatory early voting, ballot harvesting, requiring federal agencies to review the usage of, quote, minority banks, the attempts to curb airlines, carbon emissions.
Ocasio-Cortez has met at that.
We know that, and a lot of other things are gone too.
But Pelosi still won some things.
Many businesses that take a government loan will be obligated to remain neutral in union organizing efforts.
The bill provides $25 million for the House of Representatives.
Of course, more salary and expenses for them.
They did get 25 of the 35 million for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
And geez, that's what America needs right now.
An opera house in Washington, D.C. that nobody's ever going to go to that's listening to my voice right now, or maybe one person.
I'm surely not that person.
I'll go out of my way to stay away from it.
Anyway, Phil Kirpett is really good.
He's the president of American Commitment.
I saw some of his tweets somebody told me breaking down the bill.
When you go through a monstrosity like this, it is very hard to get every detail.
And we're going to be finding nuggets of this crap in the days, weeks, and months ahead.
It's 880 pages, 96 to zero were passed in the Senate.
I'll tell you why.
Because they got rid of some of the crap, but they've been fighting for a week for the crap.
And hospitals and hospital workers and American workers and small businesses and big businesses desperately need the help.
So they made them eat it to get this thing passed to get the aid out.
Anyway, Phil, how are you?
Welcome to the program.
Yeah, I'm doing all right, Sean.
I guess as all right as I can be under, you know, effective home arrest and with the whole economy lockdown and everything else, but no different than everyone else, I guess.
You know, I know a lot of people have been saying that this sets the stage for martial law, whatever, and I've been reading all that.
I will tell you as an American citizen that if it's going to prevent other Americans from dying for a short period of time, and I know some people have mandated, in other cases, it's not, I just think it's the right thing to do.
Now, can we do this every flu season?
Can we do this every flu season?
We can't.
And we lose tens of thousands of people every year from the flu.
But a pandemic like this, you know, this, you know, we've never seen anything like this.
Yeah, right.
Look, I mean, here's the key.
All right, Sean, we've got to be able to keep our businesses alive through this.
We've got to defeat this virus as quickly as we can with a minimum loss of life.
And then we've got to have a V-shaped recovery.
We've got to get the economy back booming as soon as it's safe to do so.
That's really the key.
And, you know, there's so much urgency, so much admirable urgency in the private sector and our medical professionals and everyone who's dealing with this, except the Democrats in Congress.
Nancy Pelosi was gone for the whole week.
There was a negotiated agreement in the Senate between Democrats and Republicans.
She came in at the last minute, blew it up with her thousand pages of totally ridiculous, obscene, every political wish list item Democrats could ever want, stalled it out for several days.
They ended up with a bill pretty close to the original Senate bill, although Pelosi was able to get a few plum things she wanted, some of which are very unfortunate.
And then they finally got it passed in the Senate late last night.
And you know what she did?
She said, we're taking the day off in the House.
And they're not voting on it in the House today.
They're going to vote on it tomorrow.
They have zero urgency, zero sense of how bad the situation is right now.
And we've got over 3 million people who've had first-time jobless claims this week.
It is a really, really bad situation economically.
They've got to get this emergency relief out the door.
And, you know, that's why Republicans were willing to swallow some of this stuff.
But it is still pretty outrageous that they had to.
Let's talk about, and one of the questions I had, first I warned my audience that this shift show would happen.
Told them, I said, watch, it's not going to be a clean bill.
Guarantee it.
But you're right.
They did.
I will tell you, a lot happened with this audience yesterday.
I'm not sure if you're aware of the late minute changes that were made.
Are you aware of that?
I mean, up to the minute.
But a lot of it, the lines melted down in Washington.
Rightly so.
Now, the thing is, how do we best invest this money?
First of all, we don't have an option.
You've got to help American workers.
You got to help hospitals.
You got to protect the frontline people with the right equipment.
You got to prepare for a worst case.
That's all mandatory in this.
But setting up the other monies beyond that for the quickest rebound with the economy is complicated.
Yeah, it's not easy.
Well, first of all, you've got to keep the businesses alive and you've got to prevent them from liquidating their assets.
And this bill, I hope, will largely do that.
We've got a lot of really good businesses that are solvent, that have a lot of assets, where if they didn't get this emergency relief, they'd have to go start selling all their assets to meet their liquidity needs.
And then you'd have another big downward spiral in prices.
And you'd have a lot of insolvency and a lot of businesses going out of business.
They didn't want that to happen correctly, especially because none of these businesses did anything wrong, right?
I mean, they didn't create the virus.
They didn't create the shutdown.
They're just dealing with the situation.
And we shouldn't want them all to fail, small business or large business.
So the lending facilities are really the key part of this thing.
And also the tax relief on the business and individual side will also help.
And so, look, we're going to be fairly set up to have a pretty strong recovery if this can be short.
That's the key.
If it's long, it's going to be very, very hard to put things back together.
So the success in limiting the virus as quickly as possible, I think the president's already ready to move towards a tiered system.
They're going to designate different parts of the country, high versus low risk, and try to get people back to work where it's safe to do so.
Because if we don't have products and services being created in this country, no matter how much money you put out there, there's not going to be anything to buy with it.
Well, so we've got to do that.
So please frame that.
Because I've been saying that everyone's saying, oh, shut the country down.
Okay, you shut the country down.
Who's going to deliver your groceries?
Who's going to get the medicines to the pharmacies?
Who's going to get the foods?
Who's going to, you know, I mean, it's a little more complicated than, oh, let's shut it all down, which is what some dopey people are recommending.
Right.
And, you know, even trying to do the essential versus non-essential distinction breaks down after a while because even the essential things need a lot of non-essential things to get by.
It's all sort of interrelated.
By the way, I have an official letter saying that I'm essential, just in case.
And for New York City, I have an official letter, if you can believe it.
I didn't apply for it.
Somebody handed it to me.
Well, no, it's good to have that because we're already seeing some mayors and governors like threatening to arrest people and stuff like that.
So it's good to do it above board and have the certification.
You don't have to worry about it.
But it's going to be a bad situation if we can't find a way to defeat the virus while also being productive economically.
And I think that's going to be the next phase we're going to see from the president some of the details on how to do that.
But to answer your question on what they were able to get in this bill, I mean, you ran through some of it, the $25 million for the Kennedy Center.
There was $75 million each for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to make grants, I guess, so people can do artwork about the virus.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, your friendly competition over at NPR, they got $75 million.
Oh, the same NPR that's not going to run the task force briefings on a couple of those stations?
Right, right.
Well, I think those grants are supposed to be for like local stations that are suffering or something like that.
I don't know exactly how they're going to spend it, but the $25 million for House of Representatives, staff salaries and expenses, they have to take care of their own.
Quarter of a billion dollars.
You know what?
I want to bust the blood vessel.
And I've been reading it all myself.
I'll tell you, it so angers me.
Hospitals have been waiting, workers waiting, small business waiting, and this is the crap.
I want to tell everybody, too, this was all the Democrats.
I saw Susan Collins more animated than I've ever seen her in her life.
Where is your urgency?
That was like a week ago.
Mitch McConnell screaming on the Senate floor.
They have dragged this country through all of this for that crap that you're listing.
All right, Phil, I got to let you go.
Listen, you stay safe.
Appreciate you being with us.
All right, hour to Sean Hannity Show, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza, just breaking Wall Street Journal, they are mandating in New York, number one, pharmacies are not allowed to prescribe off-label use of hydroxychloroquine.
Not sure why.
I know they have a trial going on, but well, what if somebody doesn't want to be a part of the trial?
You can't just let them also have access to the medicine.
Pharmaceutical companies have ratcheted it up based on the anecdotal information.
We'll have more with Dr. Oz later in the program.
I won't reiterate the good things that are a part of this bill that passed yesterday.
I can go over chapter and verse, all the horrific things that they stuck in there.
You know, we've now forced hospital workers on the front line in helping cure, helping the sick, helping those people that can't help themselves anymore, risking their own health in the process.
We've now waited a week.
They need the money desperately.
We know that American workers have needed the money desperately.
We know that small businesses have needed the help desperately.
We know that big businesses that are shut down through no fault of their own, they have needed help desperately.
But we have seen, we have witnessed one of the most shameful displays of pure, ugly, despicable, disgusting partisanship that I've ever seen in my life.
Now, we've also seen the best in humanity.
You know, I can't say enough good things about every American company, you know, including now our friend Michael and Dell.
I think I said respirators in the last hour.
It's masks.
Well, the Walmarts, the Walgreens, the Targets, the Quest Diagnostics, the CVS, the LHC Group, Bechton-Dickinson, Roche Pharmaceuticals, Signify Health, LabCorp, Google, Tesla, General Motors, Anheuser-Busch, Apple, Microsoft, Bloom Energy, Fruit of the Loom is helping.
Los Angeles Apparel is helping.
You know, all these, I can't even name them all.
We've seen the best.
You see, amazing reaction of a president.
He has redefined, and now we have a new paradigm moving forward for how we will, as a world, deal with future pandemics.
10 days, first case in the U.S., travel ban.
Call a racist, xenophobic, called hysterical, called a fearmonger.
How many tens of thousands of Americans likely did not contract this disease?
How many lives were saved?
Then, of course, we go from there to quarantine.
Then we move into, okay, well, we got to ratchet up testings.
All right, let's ratchet up testing.
How do we do that?
Okay, well, we'll have public-private partnerships.
That's new.
We're going to have home tests coming up maybe in the next week.
I read today.
That'll be amazing also for Corona.
Contest it right in your house.
Now we have all the financial monies put in place, et cetera.
You know, new paradigms are being set left and right.
Telemedicine is now the future.
There's no doubt about it.
Drive-up testing will be the future.
Home testing will be the future.
You know, record time breaking the sequence of a virus six weeks.
It used to be years before we were able to do that.
Now we're in stage one trials of a vaccine.
That's all happening.
Then you look at the FDA rules, off-label use, things like that.
And, you know, hydroxychloroquine.
Again, we'll get an update from Dr. Oz today.
Anecdotally, wow, the stories are amazing.
Everything's changed.
In the meantime, you have your price gougers, you have your hoarders, and then you have those in Washington.
Never miss a crisis.
You'll get things done you can never otherwise get.
They made the hospital workers, they made American workers, they made small business, big businesses wait for funding the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, you know, for a Green New Deal provisions, you know, greenhouse gas emissions.
It is so repulsive.
Words can't describe it.
The best and the worst.
Newt Gingrich is back with us.
And by the way, there's a new book which is now on sale called, interestingly, Shakedown.
And it is part of, it's now the second in a series of rip from the headlines political thrillers.
When you wrote this book, because what we've been watching the last week is a shakedown, basically saying to all these people, we're going to hold you hostage, we're going to put a gun to the Republicans' head, and we'll wait.
You either give us what we want that's not related, or we're not passing your bill to help people that need help.
You just gave me a whole new ad campaign, which is to say, Shakedown, not a novel about Nancy Pelosi.
Yeah, exactly.
That is so good.
This is exactly what she did.
She had a brief moment of deciding that she could blackmail the American people.
It was absurd.
It was, frankly, I think, infuriating, unpatriotic, and insulting.
And the country reacted accordingly.
And you would see within two days that the Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumann thought, well, that didn't work.
And he promptly cut a deal.
But it was, you've got it exactly right.
You've changed all the rest of my marketing campaign.
We have to have Shakedown, not Nancy Pelosi, as part of our theme.
I will say to you that the last couple days, when people sometimes wonder about America, they forget that when it really gets to a crunch, we are an astonishing country.
So with Mitch McConnell's, I thought, brilliant formula of setting up five different working groups, bipartisan, having to solve things together, then the brief period of Pelosi coming in to be a blackmailer and failing.
And then finally they got to the deal.
Well, they got it.
They got some.
A lot of it was killed, but they got way too much.
Yeah.
Look, this is the nature of a free society.
You know, if you're going to let somebody once said they're watching people make sausage and legislation is equally repulsive.
It's just, it's the process that is at the heart of how our system works.
And the fact is, in the end, the President, Mitch McConnell, and I think Kevin McCarthy have achieved an important bill.
It's got flaws, no question about it.
It's got flaws.
But this is like World War II, or like the Civil War, when you're in an extraordinary moment where every single American is threatened by this virus.
Having a big, clumsy response is the American model.
It's how we've always done it for our whole history.
And what I'm proud of is when you can get to a 96 to zero vote, and I have a hunch that tomorrow morning we're going to see the House vote by voice vote and pass it.
And we'll probably either tomorrow night or Saturday see Trump sign it.
Well, everybody else on the planet who said to themselves for the last couple of years, gee, can the Americans get their act together?
This is the third emergency bill in a row.
It is gigantic.
It's bigger than the gross national project of most countries.
That's how big it is.
And it is going to pass by enormous margins.
Now, that's just one more step in a long fight against the virus, which would like to kill all of us.
And so I think you've got to recognize this is like World War II.
This is an initial response.
There's a long campaign ahead of us.
We will succeed.
We will come out the other end bigger, stronger, and more capable.
But there's going to be a lot of work between here and there.
Do you agree that Donald Trump, and I actually asked him, and he's going to be on my show tonight.
And I just asked him briefly.
He didn't have any time.
I was just asking, you know, at one point when I was doing an interview, it might have been around the Super Bowl time.
And I just said, what made you it was 10 days after the first known case.
The first known case in America was January 21st, January 31st, he put the travel ban in effect.
Now, I didn't like what I was reading, and I actually have an interview with Anthony Fauci about this on January 27th.
And I said on January 27th and January 28th, I don't like this.
These people are asymptomatic for a long time, and they're literally contagious at a very high level.
But I asked him, I said, you know, why did you put that travel ban in effect?
And he said, well, everyone told me I shouldn't.
It was too early.
Just my gut.
That was his answer.
I'll ask more about that tonight.
Do you agree that we have now created and we're rewriting the book on how to deal with pandemics, not just here, but worldwide?
Absolutely.
I actually had Tony Fauci on my podcast.
I think it was about February 7th.
And we were talking through how big a deal this was, how hard it was, how to think about it.
And look, as you know, I'm talking to you tonight from Italy, where Callista is the ambassador of the Vatican, and we're both currently working from home.
Her entire embassy is working from home.
The Italians have not quite caught up yet.
They're getting closer.
We have hope.
We all have hope that we're very close to the peak here.
But a lot of people have died, I think, unnecessarily because they weren't tough enough.
You look at how fast Trump got it.
He intuited it.
And there's an Italian virologist who wrote an article the other day that said, you know, we were so worried about being politically incorrect that we did not stop the flights from Wuhan.
There are 100,000 Chinese who are in northern Italy because when the Chinese companies bought the Italian high-brand companies, they wanted to be able to say made in Italy.
So they just brought in Chinese.
So it's made in Italy by Chinese.
But the government couldn't, the Italian government couldn't quite bring itself to just slam down and stop the flights.
So they allowed, for a couple of weeks, more people to keep coming in.
Trump had this intuition, which I think was historically astonishing.
Didn't matter what the experts said, didn't matter what the news media said.
He just thought to himself, if I'm responsible for defending and protecting Americans, why am I going to take this risk?
And he did the right thing.
And my guess is he bought us three to seven weeks to begin to try to fight this thing that we would not have had if we had behaved like a normal country.
So, I mean, sitting here talking to you from Rome tonight, I can tell you, I think this has made a huge difference.
Now, we still have huge problems.
I mean, nobody should kid themselves.
This thing is real.
This is a brand new kind of virus that came out probably out of, oddly enough, bats and pangolins.
Humans have never had it before.
We don't fully understand it yet, but I have great confidence that the scale of science we can bring to bear worldwide, we will presently get this thing under control and we will presently reduce it to being more of a nuisance than a mortal threat.
I've just gone over, I kind of went through a whole laundry list of all the things that the president has done, and the list is long, starting with the travel ban, every single thing that he has gotten done.
And I looked at the, I went over the very specific list of everything that he's done, particularly for New York.
And I look at all the money wasted by the mayor of New York, and I've chronicled that, and the governor of New York.
And they sit there and they have their press conferences and scare the crap out of everybody every day and demand, we need more of this, we need more of this, maybe we need more of this, more of this.
President has said yes to everything, and at hyper, you know, supersonic speed, it's been getting to New York.
4,000 ventilators this week, all of the four hospitals being built.
You got a medical ship, Navy ship in the New York harbor, and they still complain.
And yet, I can't believe New York is so ill-prepared considering it's target number one for the entire United States.
How is that possible?
Well, I think, first of all, that New York is so central to all the different things we do as a country.
It's just central in communications.
It's central in finance.
It is an extraordinary place.
And I think that sometimes we underestimate how vulnerable it is.
I mean, I've been thinking for a couple of days, as you know, Chris and I are here in Rome, and we're looking at Italy and what's happening in Italy.
I look up at Milan, which is in some ways the center of the whole epidemic in terms of Italy.
And then I look over at New York, and I think, you know, how can you organize a city of that size in the metropolitan area going out to Westchester and Long Island, part of Connecticut, part of New Jersey, to deal with a kind of thing like this?
And I think that's what makes New York uniquely complicated and uniquely vulnerable.
And I'm very, this will surprise you, Sean, because I'll say it first.
I'm very sympathetic to the scale of the problem that Governor Cuomo has.
So am I. First of all, so is the president.
And it's all hands on deck.
And then they just scream at you the rest of the day.
And we don't have this.
We don't have this.
You guys didn't even have masks for anything.
But on the other hand, look, he's a New Yorker.
I mean, look, you're a New Yorker.
So you're saying I have a big mouth and a short temper.
I hear you.
I got it.
You said that.
I did not say that.
No, no, no.
You implied it.
Boom.
I'll tell you what, stay there.
Newt Gingrich is with us.
Hannity.com is new book shakedown.
We're going to take calls in the next half hour.
800-941.
Sean, Dr. Oz coming up.
25 now until the top of the hour, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza.
All right.
So I'll tell you another part that I'm really angry at today, and that has to do with your wonderful, great, crazy, insane media mob.
And the media mob is at it again.
You know what?
It just is like, doesn't matter.
Donald Trump doesn't even get credit for the travel ban.
Just that one issue.
Now the mob and the media is now, again, they're one voice.
They're an extension of all things radical, extreme, Democratic Socialist Party.
But anyway, oh, Trump's coronavirus briefings, see, big ratings.
Now the media says, some of that's bad.
You have NPR stations.
Oh, they got money in this bill yesterday, bailing on the task force coronavirus updates.
Can you believe that?
Then you got NBC CNN saying they will stop broadcasting.
That was tweeted out by Eric Trump and the president.
That's, you know, during a time of national emergency, you don't want to know why, really, because he's doing his job and they don't want the people to see him do his job so well.
And then you've got his free airtime people tweeting out on the left, media people.
You know, Rachel Manna wants Trump briefings filtered through her, apparently.
And fake news, CNN, and MSNBC, DNC, conspiracy channel pushback airing these hearings.
And it goes on and on and on.
You know, one MSDNC host fearing during the pandemic, Trump's rising poll numbers.
How could this be?
You know, Scarborough is out there, Liberal Joe.
Yesterday, a thousand Americans died in Trump's New York City.
Wrong fake news.
And it goes on.
And I have example after example of the media that downplayed the virus.
And we've told you all about that.
Don't worry about the coronavirus.
Worry about the flu.
That was BuzzFeed.
Remember them?
NBC News, January 23rd, too early to declare this a global health emergency.
And it goes on in a Washington Post, how our brains make coronavirus seem even scarier than it is.
And the Washington Post, again, the flu is a much bigger threat.
This is in February than coronavirus from now.
President already implemented the travel ban.
Then again, the Washington Post, past pandemics proved fighting coronavirus with travel bans is a mistake.
Then they went on, why we should be wary of an aggressive government response to coronavirus.
Then Politico, coronavirus, quarantine, travel ban could backfire.
Then you got the Daily Beast.
By the way, all these publications hate me.
Coronavirus with zero American fatalities dominating headlines, while the flu is the real threat.
Then you got on CNN fake news, what's spreading faster than coronavirus in the U.S.?
Racist assaults and ignorant attacks.
And then, of course, my favorite one, let's call it the Trump virus.
This is February 26th.
If you're feeling awful, you know who to blame.
Well, NBC News, president's right to compare coronavirus prevention to the flu.
Well, really?
It's not that bad, said the Washington Post on February 28th.
So far, I have the coronavirus.
It's not that bad so far.
And I can keep going.
You know, for the media to say they don't want to take the president's coronavirus task force briefings every day, this is a national emergency.
The American people need facts.
They were wrong from the get-go.
President was right from the get-go.
Mr. Speaker, Newt Gingrich is with us, former Speaker of the House.
And he just happens to have released his brand new book called Shakedown.
And these are a series of novels, now the second ripped from the headline political thrillers.
But why would the media in a national emergency ever do this?
First of all, they hate Trump.
I mean, they hate Trump a lot more than they care about saving Americans.
Watch about a quarter of them defend the Chinese communists on the whole origin of this thing.
Look at the ones who said early on when President Trump, with enormous courage, cut off all the flights from China.
And all of the elite media went crazy.
They said, oh, it's xenophobic.
It's racist.
Well, no, it turned out it bought us, I'll bet you, six weeks of being able to get this thing fixed, which Italy, where Clist and I are right now, did not have because the Italian government allowed the planes to keep coming.
So I would say to you, there are two things going on that are fascinating.
One is the true dedicated left-wing media get up every morning and they say, I know he did something horrible.
I wonder what it is.
And that's how they spend their day.
But you've been saying this now for a long time.
How do they do this during a national emergency?
Go ahead.
Well, they have no shame.
I mean, why do, Sean, why do lions behave like lions?
Why do zebras behave like zebras?
These people are left-wing cuckoos who hate Trump.
I mean, to ask them to quit being a left-wing cuckoo just because there's a pandemic may be beyond their genetic capabilities.
But there's a second thing going on, which I didn't understand for a while.
I think you'll find it interesting because you know him so well.
Donald J. Trump is a pure entrepreneur.
He's a guy who gets up in the morning and he wants to get things done.
And he's not a great theoretician.
He doesn't want to bring in 17 people with fancy theories.
He wants to know, if I want to get X done, how do I get X done?
And he pushes and he shoves and he kicks.
Washington is so unused to seeing a pure achievement-oriented person that they don't appreciate what he's doing.
So when he says, you know, I'd love to be able to get the economy back up again by Easter, that doesn't mean it's an order.
It means he's sharing with everybody a desire he has, which he's then going to modulate by the advice of people like Tony Fauci and Dr. Bricks and others.
But it tells you the direction he wants to go in.
He's very comfortable thinking it through, working it out, living it.
But the news media wants to know, well, who briefed you?
What's plan number one?
How can we keep score?
These people are just in Klau Tucker land.
And I think one of the greatest tragedies in modern America is that in a moment in time when we needed a really serious, systematic news media, because we were faced with a worldwide pandemic from our major rival, the Chinese, and nobody has been prepared to cover it in an honest, serious way.
And it is truly a tragic weakness for America to have a news media this out of touch with reality.
Let me just play some of it.
This is the short version.
We have numerous montages.
We can go on for a full hour just playing how bad it is.
This is just some of it.
More people are sick in America tonight because Donald Trump is president.
More people are dead and dying in America tonight because Donald Trump is president.
This crisis seems to have been designed to bring out the worst of Trump.
Do you think it's cost people their lives?
When he's saying don't test people because then the number of cases will go up.
I mean, that's Chernobyl level gaslighting.
I mean, when coronavirus broke out in China, people said this is China's Chernobyl.
Actually, it's Donald Trump's Chernobyl.
You've called this his Chernobyl.
What the Iran hostage crisis was in the final year of Carter's presidency.
This may be Donald Trump's Katrina.
Looks like a Hurricane Katrina moment.
What happened to Katrina?
That's where we are now.
An event like this, just like with Katrina.
I mean, you think back to Katrina, it does harken back to Katrina.
We're in the middle of a pandemic, and every time this president comes out, he gives inaccurate information.
The worst emergency response to a pandemic that we have ever seen in this country.
And Donald Trump should take the next month off and golf while someone else handles it.
I mean, that's just a small sampling, Mr. Speaker.
I know.
I mean, you know, someday, many years from now, historians will look back at this stuff and they'll try to figure out what was going on.
Here you have a president who I think at that key moment, and people need to understand this.
Thanks, and I can say this from sitting in Italy and having lived it out, and frankly being locked up in our house today in a country which is desperately trying to recover and trying to defeat the virus.
When I look at the moral courage he had, looking up, getting a quick briefing and saying, We're not going to take the risk.
Cut off the flights.
Now, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC News, I mean, every left-wing cuckoo in the country promptly started screaming, this is racist.
No, it had nothing to do with race.
It had to do with where's the virus.
And I think he bought us at least six weeks to try to gear up, get ready, and move.
And then again, the news media doesn't want to admit it, but he did two amazing things.
He picked Pence, Vice President Pence, who'd been a governor, who had handled two epidemics while he was governor, said, you chair the task force.
And then he brought in some of the best people in America.
I had done a podcast with Tony Faust in early February.
I've known Tony since the mid-80s when he was working on HIV/AIDS.
I mean, this is a world-class person, Dr. Brits, who had done so much in Africa.
She's a world-class person.
And Trump had the courage to say, I'm going to surround myself with people who know vastly more than I do.
And then we're going to have arguments, and we're going to try to think it through.
And he's exactly right to have arguments because their job is the vertical of public health.
His job is the horizontal of leading the entire nation, worrying about the economy, worrying about national security.
I think historians are going to look back and go, this guy is so much bigger than his opponents are willing to concede that it's amazing.
You know, we do have an election in 222 days, and the ultimate jury, the American people, I'm pretty sure that factors in, oh, we don't want to carry these coronavirus task force press conferences of the president.
He looks too good.
That's what they're really thinking.
They won't admit that.
Let me play, well, my favorite Joe Biden, let me just remind everyone of Joe Biden, my favorite.
This is my favorite of all, and there's a zillion of them now.
Listen, we hold these truths to be self-evident.
All men and women created by the, go, you know, you know the thing.
Created by the thing.
You know, that would be God, the creator of everything.
Anyway, so he has these daily, he has these daily press, you know, I don't know what you want to call them, his own press briefings.
It is technologically so inferior, and it is a shift show.
The whole thing is a disaster.
Look, just from today, I want to play you the...
Oh, okay, go ahead.
All right.
Hi, Spanish.
You and I, I think, have known each other for 30 years, right?
I'm going to go straight out on the limb here tonight.
You'll laugh at me later.
But I'm just telling you, I'm telling you this instinct.
They're going to find an excuse because Biden is so clearly.
I mean, if the average American says, do I think Biden could have managed this entire virus attack?
It's just an absurdity.
I believe they're going to find an excuse to dump him for Cuomo.
I wouldn't doubt it at all.
How do they do it?
That's up to them, but it'll be corrupt.
And oh, I have a lot on Andrew Cuomo, the world doesn't know.
This is just from today.
This is only these, these four cuts are just from today.
And his ridiculous briefings, it's unbelievable.
Listen.
And what we have done is the reason why most of the world has repaired to us, particularly after World War II, is because of who we are as a nation.
We the people, we hold these truths, et cetera.
Sounds corny, but it's real.
If we were setting up an education system for the first time in our history, as we did at the turn of the last in the late 1800s, we would not say 12 years was enough.
12 years is not enough to live in the second quarter of the middle of the 21st century.
None of us want to be cooped up in our homes just as the weather is turning nice, just as spring break travel plans were approaching, just as the campaign for the presidency is kicking into high gear.
It's unfair to all of us, and it's unnecessary for all of us, but it's necessary in fact.
It's necessary for all of us to have to deal with it.
And so there's a lot we can do, but, you know, when I left the United States Senate, I became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
And I've spent a lot of time in, and the University of Delaware has the Biden School there as well.
So I spent a lot of time on campus with college students.
Okay.
Number one, we hold these truths, et cetera, et cetera.
12 years of school is not enough to live in the second quarter of the middle of the 21st century.
Social distancing is unnecessary, but no, it's necessary.
Claims he was a professor at the University of Delaware.
Yeah, false.
Last 30 seconds, Mr. Speaker.
I'll let you deal with that.
Be careful.
I have a funny feeling you're on the edge with this.
No, no.
No, no.
No, Chlissa's glaring at me.
I can't be too risky.
I can't take too many risks.
All I can tell you is, given what we've seen of Joe Biden, who's a guy I've known for many, many years, I don't think he's going to get there.
I think it's going to be obvious to the Democrats they couldn't possibly suggest he's capable of being president.
And I just think watching the last week that Governor Cuomo has been brilliant at becoming a national figure on the right issue at the right time.
And my prediction tonight, you can laugh at me.
You can play with the people.
I'm not laughing at all.
A lot of people have been saying it.
I'm listening to everybody.
All right.
I got to take a break, though.
I just looked at the clock.
Listen, Newt's new book, Ripped Out of the Headline, second in a series of thrillers, shakedown.
Perfect.
We've lived through a week of a shakedown, basically.
Thank you for joining us from Italy.
I know it's late there, and I hope you get some rest.
And we appreciate you being with us.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
All right, news roundup, information overload.
Forget that part occasionally.
Glad you're with us.
By the way, we're just finding out.
Oh, Washington Post, let's see, just like Cuomo in New York and Blasio, the comrade.
Oh, let's see.
H1N1, 2009-10, the largest deployment in U.S. history, strategic national stockpile of drugs and medical supplies and 85 million N95 respirators, along with millions of other mask gowns and gloves.
And under the, well, I'll use Joe's words, the Obiden-Obama administration, the stockpile reserves were never significantly restored after that pandemic.
Limited budget, $600 million.
Officials in charge of the stockpile, after they wasted it, they focused on what they say was a more pressing priority.
In hindsight, it appeared to be short-sighted.
Anyway, oh, just like Cuomo, how did New York not be prepared for anything?
And the president, with all that he has done, you know, it's a daily, you know, laundry list and still the constant complaining of the comrade de Blasio and the governor, who's obviously paying, you know, trying to trying to be the replacement for Quid Pro Quo Joe.
Anyways, this monstrosity was pushed through yesterday, finally getting there, taking out a lot of calls went into the Senate.
Senator Tim Scott, and Senator Rick Scott, and Senator Lindsey Graham, and what's it, Ben Sass, who say, we're not going along with this bill because you're going to pay people more money to not work than work.
That and some of the other provisions, that provision ended up staying in, but only temporarily.
A lot of the stuff that you called about was taken out of the bill, which I chronicled earlier in the program today.
Senator Tim Scott is with us, the great state of South Carolina.
Senator, how are you?
Sean, it's always a good day to be on the radio with Sean Hannity.
Oh, man.
See, I like you.
You're my favorite South Carolina senator.
It's not a Lindsey Graham.
Not even close.
Let me ask you this.
At some point yesterday, did your phones blow up?
They did.
Absolutely.
Lindsay did a great job of making sure that the American people and the conservatives understood the power of lunacy in this attempt to pay people more money while they're on unemployment than they were making while they were working.
That is lunacy.
And frankly, Ben Sass, myself, Lindsey Graham, Rick Scott all took a stand together and decided that this cannot stay.
As you said, it's only for 16 weeks.
But this is what the Democrats have always wanted.
Sean, you know it.
They want this maximum minimum wage that is above what anyone would ever be able to stay in business to pay it.
And they were trying to shove this down our throats.
We brought it to everyone's attention.
We were able to keep our Republicans together by and large.
And we're going to have another bite at this apple.
We cannot pay people more to stay home than they do at work.
This is the number.
Sean, this is the number.
$30,000 a year.
If you're making $30,000 a year, you just got out of college.
You're trying to make your way up the food chain.
You get unemployed.
They'll pay you $50,000 to stay home or $30,000 to return to work.
What are you going to do?
You know, although I will say this about the American people, there'd be a few people that always will take advantage, but everybody I know, they're dying to get back to normal, dying to get back to work.
Americans don't want a handout.
Now, Lindsey used the word: listen, we want to make people now.
Listen, this is one of the most shameful, repulsive, disgusting displays of partisanship because while they have now held this money hostage and put a political gun, not a real gun, political gun to Republicans' heads fighting for this crap, the National Endowment for Humanities, the Arts, the Opera, whatever the hell, JFK Opera Center, whatever you guys call that place.
And, you know, we did get some things out of the bill, correct?
Is it because of people calling?
Because I like to tell the American people that their calls mattered, if it's true.
John, your listeners changed American history as it was going to be written.
1,400, I think it was 1,100 pages coming out of the House, Nancy's wish list.
It was $600 million for the arts and humanity.
It was forgiveness for all the debt at the post office.
It was the green new deal coming into a coronavirus relief package.
It was solar grants.
It was taking over corporate boards.
Now, she wanted to make sure that every board had to have women and minorities on it, no matter whether they knew what they were talking about, whether they were qualified, were they confident.
She just wanted a quota system, and she also wanted to tell corporations, if you're going to lay somebody off, let's have a federal government bureaucrat come to your company and make the decisions for you.
We were able to strip all of that out.
For example, mandatory early voting, ballot harvesting, requiring voting, yes.
Yeah, the usage of, quote, requiring usage of minority banks and attempts to curb airline carbon emissions and a demand that she still got the endowments for the arts and the endowment for the humanities.
All right, you knocked $10 million off the JFK Performing Arts Center, whatever that place is called, and everything else.
But they still got a lot of crap in there.
What I don't like about this is the whole time they've been doing this, Senator, those hospital workers needed this equipment.
They needed the money.
Absolutely.
These workers needed the monies.
Great people in your state.
I'm kind of guessing Hall Steakhouse ain't working right now and they're not having and their workers and their waiters and their cooks and their busboys and bartenders could use some more money and making them whole.
We're all cool with that.
Every American understands.
Small business owners, big businesses, it's unconscionable to me that you would hold every one of these people hostage and do this.
Sean, you hit the nail on the head.
On Saturday, we had a bipartisan coalition.
There were 28 items that Schumer himself had been working on through his team to get in the legislation.
But then Nancy Pelosi and those fuel in her plane flew her back to D.C. and everything changed.
So Sunday, we had no bill.
She took a private plane?
I'm almost sure how she got there.
However, she got there, she got there quick, fast, and in a hurry.
That's a good question.
I want to know the answer to that.
That's why you're doing it now.
Let's do that together.
I want to know, too.
I want to know.
But Sunday, no bill.
Monday, no bill.
Tuesday, no bill.
Why are they off today?
Why aren't they passing it today in the House?
They won't even come back to Washington to do their jobs.
She wants them to stay home and just do a pretend voice vote.
Listen, I can live with that.
Maybe I'm nuts here, but only in emergency circumstances.
But everyone has to go on the record.
We need to know how they are voting.
They don't get away with, well, I did, but I didn't, and not answering it.
I don't think anybody's going to get away with not answering that question.
Do you?
I hope not.
The bottom line is I like recorded votes.
Something this significant is important to be recorded.
But because the American people actually need the resources, whatever gets it done expeditiously is critical.
I had hoped that they would have all been on planes yesterday when we were teeing this up, when it was obvious that by midnight we would be voting.
I would hope that they were coming back.
But here's the good news.
The American people will get the resources because President Donald Trump stood before the podium and made a commitment to sign the legislation, which gave those of us in the Senate even more ammunition to go to the mat to make sure we protected the American pocketbook and dealt with the health care crisis and trying to prevent an economic tsunami that is heading our way if we don't open back up as the America.
INC.
Well, I mean, there are a lot of parts of the country that aren't New York.
I mean, by the way, guess where I am?
New York, right in the middle of it all.
You know, the lack of preparation by the city and state is appalling.
I mean, it is shocking how ill-prepared not only the city is, the state has been, even hospitals ill-prepared for even what can be, I think, a pretty predictable something happening here, knowing that New York is always a target.
Here was the insidious part of it from a political standpoint, is everybody was waiting.
Now, you see, all of this waste, fraud, and abuse they try to stick in.
We have an election in 222 days.
And if somebody said, I can't vote for this bill, you courageously did it.
Lindsey Graham courageously did it.
He's up for election this year.
It just so happens.
This is what the ad campaign would be like.
You'd hear really scary music.
And then you'd hear an announcer.
You'd hear the music.
It'd be when Senator so-and-so, no, when you needed help in the middle of a pandemic, Senator so-and-so voted no.
No to help hospitals.
No to help those workers that are, through no fault of their own, not working.
No to helping small and big business vote no against this senator.
I'm so-and-so, and I approve this message.
Right?
I mean, that's what they do.
That's how sick that is.
100%.
Sean, I couldn't have said it any better.
The bottom line is what we know on one side is we're trying to find a way to make sure that solvency is not just a corporate reality or a business reality.
It's an American reality.
We don't need to spend money we don't need to spend.
But if we need to spend it, let's do it in the most judicious, the most competent, and the most frugal way because we're also trying to protect the next generation of Americans.
We're making sure that the next pandemic is planned for.
We're making sure that the next emergency is a part of our process and of our strategy to make sure that we are in better shape coming out of this administration than we were coming into this administration.
And that's why I'm thankful to have a businessman as a CEO of America.
I've been talking about this because, and by the way, yesterday's bill is historic, just like the other monies allocated are historic, just like the loans that the Fed has put aside are historic.
But I'm also, Donald Trump, 10 days after the first known coronavirus case in America, that's when the travel ban started.
That's when the quarantine started.
That's when he started to be called racist and xenophobic and a fear-mongerer and hysterical even by Joe Biden.
That's when he first started doing it.
And then I look at everything else that the president has been doing since the beginning of all of this, straight on through.
Okay, well, now we're rewriting the book.
I think travel bans are the future.
I think quarantines will be the future, and that'll save lives.
I think drive-up testing will be the future.
Getting rid of burdensome regulations so that you can build an in-home test.
That's the future.
Public-private partnerships are the future.
Off-label use of drugs that show hope that might be able to treat people without the clinical trial testing years that it would otherwise take.
That is now the future.
I mean, the whole book has been rewritten.
There's not a nice thing said by either a Democrat or by the media that hates him.
It's unbelievable to me.
It truly is.
And one of the points I was doing research this morning on how much has changed.
Researchers said that what used to take five years from a medical perspective to get to where we are now, they did in three months.
Unbelievable.
The president pushed and pushed to make sure that not only vaccines, not only medicine that's already on the market, but also antibodies, looking for ways to understand what's happening in a body that's already been through the coronavirus.
And can we take the antibodies out of one person and put it in another person?
Convalescent plasma.
Breakthroughs.
Well, listen, I want to just say this to you.
I was glad what you did yesterday.
And I know we didn't get everything out of it we wanted, but we got the help that we needed.
And we did get some of this crap out of there because of people like you and your partner, Lindsay and Rick Scott, and even Ben Sass, who I don't particularly like anymore.
But anyway, thank you for what you did.
And I still, when Halls opens, we're going to have a big party.
I want to help those guys out too.
They're good guys.
Thank you.
Thanks for the podium task force getting together.
Here's the president.
What you're doing, look at all those empty seats.
Never seen it like that.
Oh, boy.
How the world has changed.
How the world has changed, right?
But it's going to end up being better than ever.
I want to thank you very much for being here, and I'd like to update you on the steps we're taking on our ongoing fight to defeat the virus.
This morning at 7.55, I spoke to the leaders of the G20, had a great meeting, and we have a lot of different ideas, a lot of good ideas.
We're working together.
The leaders gathered virtually around the world to discuss the whole subject of the problem that right now 151 nations.
Just to let our stations in the Sean Hannity Show Network know we are going to stay with the President through the bottom-of-the-hour break.
We will check in and get a health update in the next half hour with Dr. Oz.
Back to the President and the Coronavirus Task Force.
Subject of the problem that right now 151 nations have got.
We had President Alberto Fernandez of Argentina, Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia, President Jerub Alsonaro of Brazil, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, President Xi of China, President Emmanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Modi of India,
President Widaldo of Indonesia, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy, Prime Minister Shinzo Abbey of Japan.
Congratulations to Japan on making a great decision on the Olympics.
We're going to make it next year, 2021.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico, I want to thank the President of Mexico for having done such a great job with respect to the military.
We have 27,000 Mexican soldiers on our southern border, and very few people are getting through.
I can tell you that.
We've got to keep it that way.
And we have a great relationship with Mexico now.
President Putin of Russia, King Solomon of Saudi Arabia, President Ramposa of South Africa, President Moon of, as you know, a country that we spend a lot of time in, South Korea.
We're working very hard on that.
Prime Minister Sanchez of Spain, President Erdogan of Turkey, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom, President of the European Commission, Ursula Vander Leyen, President of the European Council, Charles McCall, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, World Health Organization Director, Tedros Ed Harnsom,
World Bank President David Malpass, and the International Monetary Fund Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva.
So that's a big group, but it's a great group.
And they were all there, every one of them, and we talked about the problem, and hopefully it won't be a problem for too much longer.
The United States is working with our friends and partners around the world to stop the spread of the virus and coordinate our efforts.
We discussed how vitally important it is for all of our nations to immediately share information and data.
And we've been doing that to a large extent, but we'll do it even more so and to inform our, I guess you could say, form each of us on the fight that we've got going one way or the other.
It's a little bit different, but we're handling it a little bit in different ways.
But there is great uniformity, I think.
It was a terrific meeting.
Tremendous spirit among all of those countries.
You had 20 countries plus the other people that I mentioned and tremendous spirit to get this over with.
After the meeting with the world leaders, I spoke with the governors of our 50 states and territories.
Our team has been in constant communication with the governors and we had a terrific meeting.
Somebody in the fake news said that one of the governors said, oh, we need Tom Brady.
I said, yeah.
He meant that in a positive way.
He said, we need Tom Brady.
We're going to do great.
And he meant it very positively, but they took it differently.
They think Tom Brady should be leading the effort.
That's only fake news.
And I like Tom Brady.
Spoke to him the other day.
He's a great guy.
But I wish the news could be real.
I wish it could be honest.
I wish it weren't corrupt.
But so much of it is, it's so sad to see.
Just so sad to see.
We had a great meeting.
I tell you what, I'm sure you have tapes of the meeting.
I'm sure that you were able to get tapes very easily.
So you had 50 governors plus.
And if you had tapes, you'd see it was really, I mean, there's no contention.
I would say virtually none.
I would say maybe one person, there was a little tiny bit of a raising of a voice, a little wise guy, a little bit.
But he's usually a big wise guy, not so much anymore.
We saw to it that he wouldn't be so much anymore.
But he is, we had it, I mean, I would rate Mike was there.
A lot of the folks in the back were there.
And it was a great meeting.
It took place at about 12 o'clock.
So we went from the G20 to the governors.
We also spoke about the economic relief with the governors and the package that we're moving through Congress to deliver much needed financial assistance to hardworking families and small businesses.
I want to thank Democrats and Republicans in the Senate for unanimously passing the largest financial relief package in American history, 96 to zero.
And I have to say it's the largest by far.
And I'm profoundly grateful that both parties came together to provide relief for American workers and families in this hour of need.
The House of Representatives must now pass this bill, hopefully without delay.
I think it's got tremendous support when you're at 96 to nothing.
And as you know, a couple of those people are quarantined.
And one, Rand Paul, is he's actually got it, but he'll be better.
He's been a great guy.
He's been a great friend of mine, actually.
The massive $2.2 trillion relief package includes job retention loans for small businesses with loan forgiveness available for businesses that keep their workers on the payroll.
It's pretty good.
Loan forgiveness, keep the workers on the payroll.
It's pretty good.
Direct cash payments will be available to American citizens earning less than $99,000 per year, $3,400 for the typical family of four.
Expanded unemployment benefits.
The average worker who has lost his or her job will receive 100% of their salary for up to four full months.
These are things that, by the way, we have plenty more to go, but they're things that nobody's ever had any package like this done.
And I just want to thank them.
Hopefully it'll get approved equally easily in the House, really.
I think it will go through pretty well from what I hear virtually everybody.
There could be one vote, one vote, one grand standard maybe.
You might have one grand stander.
And for that, we'll have to come back and take a little more time, but it'll pass.
It'll just take a little longer.
But let's see whether or not we have a grandstander.
Critical support for the hardest hit industries with a ban on corporate stock buybacks and tough new safeguards to prevent executive compensation abuse.
Over $100 billion for our amazing doctors, nurses, and hospitals.
$45 billion for the disaster relief fund, more than doubling the amount available.
This is tremendous stuff.
$27 billion for the coronavirus response, including $16 billion to build up the strategic national stockpile with critical supplies, including masks, respirators, and all sorts of pharmaceuticals.
$3.5 billion to expand assistance to child care providers and child care benefits to health care workers, first responders, and others on the front lines of the crisis.
And these are really brave, incredible people, I have to say.
And some of them are getting sick, and some of them are getting very sick, and some of them don't even recover.
They're incredible people.
$1 billion for Defense Production Act procurement.
We are, as you know, using the Act, but we use it only when necessary.
We use it as leverage.
We generally don't have to use it to accomplish what we want to accomplish.
As of today, FEMA has shipped over 9 million N95 masks, 20 million face masks, 3.1 million face shields, nearly 6,000 ventilators, 2.6 million gowns, 14.6 million gloves.
And we're sending more every day, and we've got tremendous amounts of equipment coming in.
A lot of great companies are making equipment right now.
The ventilators, obviously, they take a little longer to make, but we have a lot of companies making them.
And we're going to be in great shape.
We took over an empty shelf.
We took over a very depleted place in a lot of ways.
As you know, the testing is going very, very well.
And that was obsolete and broken.
And we fixed it.
And it's been going really good.
And I think, very importantly, the stockpile, we're really filling it up, and we fill it up rapidly, but we get it out.
Sometimes we have it sent directly to the states instead.
And again, the state has to be doing this kind of a thing also.
We're sort of a we we look we look from behind a little bit and we look at how are they doing and if they need help we do it but it's their first responsibility.
Sometimes they just can't get it.
But we load it up and we send it out.
But if we can we have it sent directly to the state.
We want it to go directly to the point where we want it.
I can now announce something that I think is incredible what they've done in the Navy because the incredible naval hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, which is incredible actually when you see it inside, will be underway to New York City on Saturday.
So it's going to be leaving on Saturday rather than three weeks from now.
They did the maintenance quickly and it was going to be there for quite a while longer, another three or four weeks.
And it should be arriving.
I told the governor 20 minutes ago, Governor Cuomo, that the ship will be arriving at New York Harbor on Monday.
I think I'm going to go out and I'll kiss it goodbye.
I'll go to, it's in Virginia, as you know, and I will go and we'll be waving together because I suspect the media will be following.
John, are you going to be following?
Maybe.
You never know.
Great ship.
It's a great vessel, is right.
So if you want to go, I'll see you there.
And if you don't, that's okay.
After being fully loaded with medical supplies, it's going to be, it's loaded up to the top.
And it's over at the Dorfolk Naval Base.
That's where it departs.
It is expected then to, I mean, we're saving about three to four weeks by the incredible work done by the Navy.
And I actually look forward to Saturday to see it go.
The ship will arrive, and I believe it's going to get a little bit of a ceremony.
It's just something very beautiful about it.
It's an incredible piece of work.
Going to be landing at Pier 90 in Manhattan to provide hospital surge capacity for the New York metropolitan area.
So it's a surge capacity.
They may use it for this, or they may have other people coming in from hospitals unrelated to the virus, and then they'll use those hospitals on land.
They'll use those hospitals for the virus, but we'll see how they do it.
They could do it either way, one way or the other, whichever one is best.
But it could be because it's set up so well for a regular hospital that they may take people out of hospitals and then use those rooms for the virus.
The National Institute of Health and the private sector, working closely with the FDA, continue to collaborate to discover and test treatments and therapies that can effectively reduce the duration and symptoms of the virus and help very much help people to recover.
And I'm firmly committed to bringing these treatments to market very quickly.
We have a lot of tests going on with regard to different medicines.
And I hope we get lucky.
I hope we hit.
A lot of talented scientists and doctors are working on therapeutics, a cure, vaccines.
I think we're doing very well.
Well, Tony may speak to that a little bit later, but I think we're doing very well with regard to the vaccines.
I think we're doing well with regard to a lot of the things I just mentioned, but we'll have to see what happens.
We're going to know fairly soon about a lot of them.
But it's very advanced, and the vaccines are very advanced prior to, as you know, a fairly reasonably long test period of, in that case, over a year.
Every American should be proud of the incredible spirit our country has brought to this effort.
It's been incredible.
Citizens from all walks of life have come together to turn the tide in this battle.
We're witnessing the extraordinary power of American unity like a lot of people have never seen, even getting a vote.
You're talking about trillions of dollars and you get a vote of 96 to nothing.
We are waging war on this virus, using every financial, scientific, medical, pharmaceutical, and military resource to halt its spread and protect our citizens.
I want to express our tremendous thanks to the American people for continuing to practice social distancing like you people are practicing right here.
I don't know, this room may never be the same.
Maintaining good hygiene and follow government guidelines.
Vice President Pence lifts up that card every time.
And it's not very complicated, but hopefully you can do that.
And your commitment will make all the difference in the world.
And that's one of the big ones will be for a while.
Stay home.
Just relax.
Stay home.
Making a lot of progress.
As we continue to gather more information and accelerate the testing, where we're doing record numbers of tests now, far more than any other country has done.
I told you yesterday, eight days here, because you heard so much about South Korea.
The media kept talking about South Korea, South Korea.
We have a great relationship with President Moon and South Korea.
But when I hear so much about South Korea, so in eight days, in eight days, we do more testing than they did in eight weeks.
And it's a very highly sophisticated test.
We'll be able to deploy even more data-driven and targeted approaches to slow the ultimately, you know, it's a very devastating thing, but we will vanquish this virus.
And a lot of progress has been made.
That's why earlier today I sent a letter to America's governors describing how we will be using the data to update existing guidance on social distancing, which will be developed in close coordination with our nation's public health officials and scientists.
Because of the sacrifices of our great doctors and nurses and healthcare professionals, the brilliance of our scientists and researchers, and the goodness and generosity of our people, I know that we will achieve victory and quickly return to the path of exceptional health, safety, and prosperity for all of our citizens.
We have to get back to work.
Our people want to work.
They want to go back.
They have to go back.
And we're going to be talking about dates.
We're going to be talking with a lot of great professionals.
But this is a country that was built on getting it done.
And our people want to go back to work.
I'm hearing it loud and clear from everybody.
So we'll see what happens.
We're going to have a lot more information early next week and we'll be reporting that back.
But I just want to leave it with you.
We have to go back.
This is the United States of America.
They don't want to sit around and wait and they'll be practicing.
And by the way, a lot of people misinterpret when I say go back.
They're going to be practicing as much as you can social distancing and washing your hands and not shaking hands and all of the things that we talk about so much.
But they have to go back to work.
Our country has to go back.
Our country is based on that.
And I think it's going to happen pretty quickly.
I think it's going to happen pretty quickly.
A lot of progress is made, but we've got to go back to work.
We may take sections of our country.
We may take large sections of our country that aren't so seriously affected, and we may do it that way.
We've got to start the process pretty soon.
So we'll be talking to you a little bit more about that next week.
And with that, if you have any questions, you could ask.
And then I'm going to have Vice President stay behind.
And he's going to take questions and also introduce some of the people.
You could ask them some questions.
John, please.
Mr. President, okay.
Unemployment numbers outstate 3.3 million.
I take it not a surprise, but still a staggering number.
I'm wondering about your perspective on that.
Well, it's nobody's fault.
Certainly not in this country.
Nobody's fault.
We got very lucky when we made a decision not to allow people in from China at a very early date.
I say that because some people don't want to accept it, but this was a great decision made by our country.
Or the numbers that you're talking about, we're a big country.
They'd be far greater, far bigger.
So when I heard the number, I mean, I heard it could be 6 million, could be 7 million.
It's 3.3 or 3.2.
But it's a lot of jobs.
But I think we'll come back very strong.
The sooner we get back to work, you know, every day that we stay out, it gets harder to bring it back very quickly.
And our people don't want to stay out.
So I know those numbers, John, but I think you'll see a very fast turnaround once we have a victory over the hidden enemy, as I say.
It's a hidden enemy.
Sometimes a hidden enemy is a lot tougher than somebody that stares you in the face, right?
So we'll see what happens.
But I mean, they're fully expected numbers, at least.
I mean, at least.
Just to reestablish here, we're going to continue with the President's Corona Task Force and his daily press briefing on the Sean Hannity Show Network.
The U.S. proposal to deploy some troops along the Canadian border, and Prime Minister Chugo was complaining about that.
Why is that necessary?
Well, we have very strong deployments on the southern border, as you know, with Mexico.
And we had some troops up in Canada, but I'll find out about that.
I guess it's equal justice to a certain extent.
But in Canada, we do have troops along the border.
You know, we have a lot of things coming in from Canada.
We have trade, some illegal trade that we don't like.
We have very strong sanctions on some.
We have very strong tariffs on dumping steel.
And we don't like steel coming through our border that's been dumped in Canada so they can avoid the tariff.
You know, I charge a lot of tariffs for the steel.
And it's been great for our steel companies because now they can really go.
You look at what's happened with steel.
It's been pretty incredible.
But we've taken in billions and billions of dollars in tariffs on steel.
And much of it comes in from China, but they can come through the Canadian border too.
So we're always watching for that.
The numbers correctly, the United States now has surpassed China as the country with the highest number of virus cases.
Does this surprise you at all?
Is it following a predictable trajectory?
No, I think it's a tribute to our testing.
You know, number one, you don't know what the numbers are in China.
China tells you the numbers.
And I'm speaking to President Xi tonight, I believe.
We'll have a good conversation, I'm sure.
But you just don't know.
You know, what are the numbers?
But I think it's a tribute to the testing.
We're testing tremendous numbers of people.
And every day, the way the system works, and I want to thank especially Roach has been fantastic, great company.
They've done a tremendous amount.
Deborah was telling me before that they were really, they've really stepped up to the plate and done great, as have other of the companies, but it seems that they're really doing it particularly well.
So, you know, we'll see what happens there.
But it's a tribute to the amount of testing that we're doing.
We're doing tremendous testing.
And I'm sure you're not able to tell what China is testing or not testing.
And I think that's a little hard.
Mr. President, on the 3.3 jobless claims, you just suggested it could get $6 to $7 million.
A lot of those were both.
No, I didn't say that.
No, you're wrong.
I didn't say that.
I said some people were projecting that it would be 6 or 7, and it's, I believe, 3.3.
Millions of Americans out of work.
Some of them will be losing their insurance.
What's your plan to make sure, through no fault of your own, as you just mentioned, if they stay insured, are you willing to plus up the subsidies for some of the exchanges under Obamacare, expand Medicaid?
What's being considered?
So, well, I mean, the things I just read to you are being considered, and other things are being considered.
People are going to be getting big checks, and it's not their fault.
What happened to them is not their fault.
So we're doing a lot of different things on health insurance.
We have meetings on it today.
We're taking care of our people.
This is not their fault what happened, and we're taking care.
We're starting off by sending them very big checks.
I think for a family of four, it's about $3,000.
And we're taking care of our people.
We're taking care of our workers.
This was not, you know, as I say, this was not a financial crisis.
This was a health crisis, a medical crisis.
We're going to take care of our people.
Please.
Please.
The National Restaurant Association came out, National Restaurant Association came out with a survey this morning saying that 3% of all restaurants in this country have shuttered for good in the past three weeks.
And the projection is that 11% more are going to close in the next 30 days.
So what do you say to a restaurant owner who is looking at his sheets and thinks he has to close within the next 30 days?
Well, I hate to, I know the business very well.
I understand the restaurant business.
It's a very delicate business.
It's a business that is not easy.
You know, I always say in a restaurant business, you can serve 30 great meals to a person or a family, and they love it.
One bad meal, number 31, they never come back again.
It's a very tough business, but they're great people that run restaurants.
And I've heard 3% could be lost, and you could go as high as 10 or 11%, but they'll all come back in one form or another.
It might be a different restaurant, but it's going to be a great business for a lot of people.
And we're making it easy for people to, look, what we're doing, what we're doing in terms of loans, what we're doing in terms of salaries, they'll all come back.
It may not be the same restaurant, may not be the same ownership, but they'll all be back.
Yes, sir, please.
Sir, you mentioned the pledges from American companies to provide supplies, but does it get, as we top 81,000 cases in the U.S., does it make sense to re-look at using the Defense Production Act?
Well, I talked about the Defense Production Act a lot, and I've, you know, I've enacted it.
I have it.
I can do it with a pen.
And we have actually used it on two minor occasions, and then we could withdraw it.
But for the most part, the companies, we don't need it.
We say we need this.
And they say, don't bother, we're going to do it.
I mean, we're dealing with Ford, General Motors, 3M.
We're dealing with great companies.
They want to do this.
They want to do this.
They're doing things that, frankly, they don't need somebody to walk over there with a hammer and say, do it.
They are getting it done.
They're making tremendous amounts of equipment, tremendous amounts.
And when this is over, we're going to be fully stockpiled, which they would have never been except for a circumstance.
This was something that nobody has ever thought could happen to this country.
I'm not even blaming.
Look, we inherited a broken situation, but I don't totally blame the people that were before me and this administration.
Nobody would have ever thought a thing like this could have happened.
But the Production Act, Defense Production Act, is a wonderful thing, but I just haven't had to use it.
They know it's activated.
They know I can use it.
Maybe that frightens them a little bit.
You know, it's got tremendous power, but I haven't had to.
Please.
Thank you, sir.
A question for me and then another question, if you'll let me, for some of my colleagues who are social distancing.
Where are they?
They're raw outside trying to get in.
I know.
The first question has to do with cruise liners like Carnival and Royal Friar.
They want this relief aid, but they're worried that because they offshore to places like Panama and Liberia, they might not qualify.
Senator Hawley has said that they should move back to the United States before they get a check.
Do you agree?
Should they pay U.S. taxes to get U.S. taxpayer relief?
So I'm a big fan of Senator Hawley, and I also like the idea.
There were some senators that didn't want to do anything, like Carnival, great company, but they're based in different places.
I won't tell you why.
I could tell you exactly where they're based, but I won't do that.
But they're based in actually more than one place, as you know, ships are registered at different locations.
I do like the concept of perhaps coming in and registering here, coming into the United States.
It's very tough to make a loan to a company when they're based in a different country.
But with that being said, they have thousands and thousands of people that work there, and maybe almost as importantly that work onshore, filling these ships with goods and products.
And the cruise line business is very important.
And I know Carnival, what a great job they do, Mickey Erison.
And I would think that we could stick with Senator Hawley and maybe really look at that very seriously.
Look, it's a big business.
It's a great business.
It's a business that employs tremendous number of people outside of the ship itself.
I mean, you look at these ports.
It's loaded up with shops and people that are involved with the ship.
So we're going to work very hard on the cruise line business, and we're going to try and work something out.
But I like the concept.
Yeah, go ahead.
Thank you, sir.
The Senate bill includes aid that's directly tied to the airlines.
And since before the pandemic, Boeing was already suffering from the losses of 737 mashed airplanes.
Do you think it's appropriate to use this legislation?
All right, this is the president leading his daily coronavirus task force press briefing.
By the way, apparently angering many in the mob.
The president will be with us on Hannity tonight, 9 Eastern on the Fox News Channel.
We'll pick up a lot on what you just heard there, what is being done, what will be done, what we expect, and every health-related issue that you could imagine.
Wish we had more time to continue this.
We do not.
As always, thank you for being with us.
We'll see you tonight.
Donald Trump, the president, our guest, thank you for being with us.
