Dr. Josh Umbehr, of Atlas MD, has been a leading and vocal voice in the fight for Direct Primary Care. His practice gives the control back to the patient, why shouldn’t we all have more control over our health and well being? Dr. Josh talks about his ability to take on more patients via teleconferencing during this crisis, and help people who may have concerns about COVID-19. Plus, Dr. Josh discusses the HCQ therapy and the pills coming into the US for treatment of COVID patients.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.
There is a ton of anecdotal stories about the greatness of the American people, American corporations.
I mean, it just keeps expanding out in massive ways.
I'll get to that part of this.
The politics are what the politics are always going to be.
That is who they are.
That is what they are.
We have a lot of medical news that we will be passing on to you today.
By the way, we're starting a new segment tomorrow.
Tomorrow, final hour of the show.
Dr. Oz will take your calls and questions about anything you want to ask them.
Health related, obviously.
Betsy McCoy also.
We're going to put to rest.
There is now a report in the New York Post.
Can you imagine this?
The ground zero.
You know, we've already confirmed how many times that, you know, I mean, it's so repulsive and despicable, to be very honest.
You know, you get this uh we actually have a 32 how many page report is it?
Um let's see.
Oh, this is from the the health commission report, actual task force in 2015 in New York.
Then governor, that was Governor Cuomo's administration, still.
This is his third term at this point.
Uh task force document that said there there would be a shortfall.
Cuomo's governor, in other words, if there's a pandemic in New York, I'll give an exact quote, page uh 30 of this thing.
During a severe influenza pandemic, there is likely to be a projected shortfall of ventilators.
15,783 during a peak week of demand.
Wow.
Unbelievable.
And what did he do?
Goes back to the task force.
Well, how could we only have 2,000 ventilators?
Can you please tell us um how do we ration that?
Anyway, now we're learning.
Apparently, the New York Post obtained a memo sent out to New York City ambulance workers advising them not to bring cardiac arrest patients to the hospital if they can't get a pulse at the scene.
Now, such patients previously would be brought to a hospital.
Doctors would try to revive them.
And in some cases, I have a lot of friends that are doctors.
They're they're able to pull it off.
These cases are being deprioritized during the coronavirus outbreak.
No word yet from the governor, all hands on deck.
I mean, it was such a dereliction of duty.
And then the lectures and then the photo ops.
And I need this and I need that.
And meanwhile, uh Donald Trump is building hospitals everywhere, sending in all the equipment that they should have had available for themselves.
He sends 4,000 ventilators.
I need 40,000.
What did he do with the 4,000?
He put them in a warehouse.
Oh, yeah, they're in a warehouse.
Yeah, that's what that's right.
They're in a warehouse.
Well, we're just leaving them there.
That's what warehouses are for.
So when we need them.
Unbelievable.
And even worse.
I'm put together timelines.
I am going to slowly be releasing information that the media mob will never get to you.
As it relates to uh how did people on the left, the media.
I got a lot on the New York Times, Washington Post, fake news CNN, MSDNC.
Oh, how did he he he he said it was a hoax.
I never said it was a hoax.
And said, Oh, you're politicizing a virus.
You're weaponizing a virus.
Oh, it's your it they were using it as their next uh hoax to bludgeon Trump.
What were they doing during the beginnings of the pandemic when Trump was implementing the travel pen?
That travel ban, incalculable numbers of people were pre in this country, did not contract this virus.
Uh can't calculate exponentially mathematically out how many people would have otherwise died, but for the travel pen.
And then the quarantine, then the other travel pens, and then finally the European travel pen.
Um anyway, so we will get to all of this.
Let me start with our facts without fear segment, and there are a lot out there.
China is rejecting U.S. intelligence claims that they hid the virus.
They're just lying.
So we know that already.
There's a top Japanese official wants to rename the World Health Organization to the China Health Organization and use Wuhan virus.
So that's breaking out.
Everybody in the world is mad.
There was a proposal by Senator Marsha Blackburn.
Yeah, maybe China now can uh forgive some of the debt that they have of ours to make up for the cost of what they caused.
We had that European uh great uh study in Great Britain, and 95% of all of this would have been prevented had they only told the world the truth.
All hands would have been on deck to head to Wuhan province in China to help them out.
Anyway, intelligence officials concluded China's been concealing the true extent of the coronavirus outbreak within its borders by underreporting total cases and deaths, and of course, hiding it for the longest period of time.
New York Times science and health reporter, a guy by the name of uh Donald McNeil went on uh Roswell Rachel Matto's conspiracy channel, MSDNC, and quote, it sounded like a paid infomercial from China.
I'm actually reading this.
Uh that was sort of like the outrage of the day.
Anyway, he talks about in China there are 40,000 doctors, nurses, respiratory technicians uh that went from all over China to Wuhan and helped Wuhan doctors fight the virus.
There's no more virus in Wuhan, and the doctors have all gone home.
There have been a victory parades for them.
Gratitude and flowers and everything, and they're heroes, and they have skills in fighting COVID 19.
I don't see why we wouldn't hire our pandemic.
You know, the doctors that tried to warn the world, guess what happened to them?
They're dead.
Because they went on the front lines, they tried to warn everybody, and they were excoriated within the country of China.
And Blackburn's saying, yeah, China should waive some of our debt because of what they did with this global pandemic.
I don't disagree with that at all.
We have coronavirus deaths in the U.S. Again, facts without fear.
We're giving you the news.
Uh top 5,000 in the U.S. Uh more states are adding uh and issuing stay-at-home orders.
Florida more recently.
Uh finally Michigan and Nevada have released hydroxychloroquine, which they were forbidding pharmacies from distributing, and the only way you could get it is like in New York.
If you we now have all the anecdotal evidence we can give you.
Dr. Roz is updating us daily on radio and TV about hydroxychloroquine, and we now have all the doses that we could need with the help of uh Tesla, I think is the company in Israel, the pharmaceutical company.
They've been giving us, they gave us six million doses.
It's here.
They're giving us four million more doses.
And now we know that uh Novartis is donating 130 million doses, and Bayer is doing the same.
Uh why are you sending people to a hospital?
The last place you need to be.
And if you don't have the virus, but maybe you think you have the virus and you want to take hydroxychloroquine because you've done your own research and your doctor agrees with you.
You can't.
That is despicable without going to a petri dish.
What do you mean, a petri, what do you call it?
What do you call those PET Petri dish?
Yeah.
Uh sadly, Anthony Fauci's security had to be stepped up.
You always get the crazy people.
You see the good and bad in people.
Nancy Pelosi, oh, she wants another stimulus bill.
Thank goodness Mitch McConnell hit the brakes on that crap.
Uh, interesting, I was surprised that this cruise bookings are on the rise for 2021.
All right, that's good for the cruising industry.
I don't want to see them go out of business.
People I know love it.
I don't like cruising.
I've been on, I just, it's not my thing.
I mean, you I can't because of my diet.
I'm going to look at food all day.
It's like, you know, putting drugs in front of a drug addict, saying, here, but don't touch it.
Forget it.
I wouldn't survive.
Uh a California engineer derailed the train over.
Suspicion about coronavirus.
I don't know.
That was a weird story that I saw out there.
And uh, look, the economy is scaring everybody.
John Harwood, you know, he actually said we have, you know, we lost 6.6 million jobs, do jobless claims this past week.
Doesn't surprise anybody.
And he said we dropped a nuclear bomb on the economy.
He's right.
This thing is not complicated.
He said it's not subtle.
We pulled the plug out from the American economy, and the results is what we see.
It is what it is.
6.6 million.
That is record breaking.
The countries demanded this response.
They're getting the response.
We want to save every life possible and the money, albeit delayed because the Democrats doing what they always do.
Played politics because they cared more about funding the national endowment for the arts than they did about getting the hospital workers the monies they need for the supplies they need on the front line.
We know that there are now enhanced uh narcotic counter narcotic operations.
Apparently, people trying to profit off this with drugs, and the government is now producing and procuring and delivering medical supplies all over the country in mass numbers.
17,000 National Guard personnel have jumped on board.
FEMA, Health and Human Services, literally now working together to get everything to where they need when they need it.
They've ordered the ventilators, they got 10,000 ready to go now.
They're holding them to somebody says, okay, we need them now.
They're gonna get them there the next day or that day.
Uh the Treasury, if you're interested in Social Security, they backed off a requirement where if you are a Social Security recipient, uh that you'd have to take an extra step to get the $1,200 the check that in the relief package that was finally passed after the Democrats betrayed American workers and small business and hospital workers.
The Fed has temporarily eased capital requirements for big banks.
Uh, one bit of bad news on the health front.
Italy's coronavirus death toll, apparently now we're believing is far higher than reported.
Why we can't get accurate numbers is unbelievable.
Um the answer, it's sort of like what I said about that movie.
Solve the problem.
You solve people dying, you're gonna go a long way.
Carnival crews still has 6,000 passengers at sea.
Uh the Coast Guard says, no, they got to stay there because they got sick people on board.
Uh, I think we probably can come up with a better answer than that if we think through it.
Um, and much, much more.
Now, we have uh have so much to get to today in terms of the politics, good and bad.
Best in people, worst in people.
We have a lot of medical news we're gonna share with you today.
We'll get to that.
Uh there are I have a stack so high of great Americans.
I mean, everybody, except the predictable mob in the media and the Democrats.
You know, they just they cannot get over.
They're now they are now advancing right now, in the middle of a national emergency.
You've got groups trying to silence the media from covering Donald Trump.
You got fake news CNN and MSDNC uh not wanting to cover the president's during the national emergency.
The facts and information he's giving to the American people that they want.
How do I know they want them?
Because the ratings for those two-hour long press conferences every day are through the roof.
And they don't want they're thinking, oh no, we can't have this.
Uh, even during a pandemic, they're playing politics just like Congress and Pelosi and the Democrats did.
Now they they want to now start their investigation in the middle of the pandemic.
In the middle of what is the single biggest effort ever to stop people from getting sick.
If they want to play that game, I want an answer from every Democrat.
Do you now support travel bans?
Did Donald Trump do the right thing on January 31st, 10 days after the first known case in the U.S. by putting a travel ban from China in effect and quarantine and then future travel bans.
Let them answer that.
Does this not alter your views on borders?
For example, you know, we have 90% of America's heroin crossing the southern border.
Well, what about people getting a health check?
Maybe we would want to check everybody for the safety of the American people.
We don't care, you know, just little things.
You have to be able to take care of your own health care needs.
That, You know, it's uh do you now support sanctuary city policies?
You want to release all these criminals like these states are so much madness.
Best of best in people and worst in people.
The mob in the media, the worst.
Democrats, socialists, radicals, they have been the worst.
Anyway, uh, but the American people have been at their best.
Unbelievable stories I'll share with you.
All right, interesting continuing facts without fear.
I got a lot in the political front.
Some good, some interesting, some bad.
Comments of Gavin Newsom I found very interesting.
David Plough, Obama's ex-advisor saying Trump will get historical turnout, dangerous if you're Joe Biden.
And of course, the rumblings that Andrew Cuomo, well, when you look at Andrew Cuomo, when America becomes familiar, when New York becomes familiar with Andrew Cuomo, the truth about Andrew Cuomo, and what he was telling New Yorkers and the dates he was telling them.
I don't think they're gonna be too fond of Andrew Cuomo.
You know, you know, the photo ops in front of, oh, let's see, the hospital of the Army Corps of Engineers built for New York at the Javit Center with 3,000 beds, or photo ops in front of the USNS Comfort uh the day that it pulls up to port.
Donald Trump sent that too, and he's building uh a hundred hospitals around the country, but for New York specifically, uh, we have Westchester, Nassau County, Suffolk Counties, all getting, you know, special hospitals.
They're being built.
Uh also now Louisiana, we're looking at Florida, we're looking at elsewhere around the country, wherever the need is.
Uh and what did Andrew do with the 4,000 ventilators?
Because he only had 2,000 because he rejected rejected the recommendation to get 16,000 in 2015.
They're in a warehouse.
You can't make this up.
Uh, we'll get to all of that.
I when we come back though, and we have Dr. Oz and uh Dr. Josh and Betsy McCoy today.
This good news list is so big, it's it'll blow you away.
It's inspiring in the tough times, people step up.
Stay home.
Stay home.
No reason in the world for you to run.
We're all in this together.
No, friend, you ain't alone.
All you gotta do is stay home.
We're all about half crazy.
Kids are bouncing off the wall.
Jokes done got cancelled, mama's pacing down the home.
Homeschool's now session, and I'm pulling out my hair.
It's halfway through the morning.
I'm still in my underwear.
Stay home.
Stay home.
No reason in the world for you to wrong.
We're all in this together.
No, friend, you ain't alone.
All you gotta do is stay home.
After real the scan bomb off my hands.
Alright, big and rich, a brand new song, Stay Home.
I love these guys.
You know, at times you just gotta let loose a little bit and just I noticed that the sale of alcohol is up like 50%.
There's little things that yeah, people by the way, the people on Twitter are so politically incorrect, so irreverent, but in many ways, you if you read it, you laugh.
You're not allowed to say it publicly, but you laugh.
And you know, some stuff against me.
It's it's funny as hell.
And the memes and you know, everything that people do, and I guess we're gonna have a lot more activity on social media with all these, you know, uh keyboard warriors in their underwear in their basements.
There's more of them now, and they're probably bored and they don't feel like really working, and they're acting like they're working, and they act like they're on their work computer, but they're really not.
It's like students probably aren't watching all of the lectures as they do teleschool and everything else, but whatever.
Some people are predicting this side note stuff, a baby boom, and then on the other side of it, well, there might be a divorce boom because people don't do well when they're actually together, they need to be separate.
Uh, I hope not on the second one.
On the first one, I could see that happening.
Absolutely.
We'll see.
Nine months from now.
Uh anyway, there are great stories.
Um, you know, I like I watched the concert that Elton John hosted on all the Fox and iHeart properties.
They happen to be both of my my partners, my radio partner, iHeart uh radio, and my obviously I work for Fox.
And I I thought it listen, I thought it was great.
I don't remember too much politics in it.
And they were kind of like I the best song I thought was Tim McCraw was like sitting on his diving board, and he you had his band playing in other locations, and he had his earbuds in, and it actually worked really well.
I thought that was a great performance.
Um there is in times of crisis and trouble, and you just it's sort of like it's different, but remember the reaction after 9-11.
Here we have 3,000 fellow Americans.
We we got belted.
We have this terrorist attack.
We had the the Trade Center, two of them we watch collapse as a nation, watch these planes crashing into towers.
Uh we see what happens in the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, and it just is like, you know, unbelievable courage and heroism.
All these firefighters, policemen, EMTs, first responders, everybody else is trying to run down the trade center stairs and get the hell out of there, and you can't blame them.
That's what they're supposed to do.
Although there were at times we now know that people, well, just stay in your offices.
No, don't stay in your office.
People tell you to stay in your office, and your gut tells you to leave, leave.
Um, but then these guys are going up in the other direction to save human lives.
They know.
They knew when they went in those towers, it was not good.
And you know, a lot of them actually said, uh, yeah, uh, just want to say, if anything happens today, I love you.
Those calls are still out there.
It's heartbreaking.
And with the virus, same thing.
I mean, and but but after that, it was beyond that.
It was um it was the whole nation.
Uh I know this may sound silly, but I remember like every restaurant opening up and staying open for those working to find any human life and then later, you know, lost lives uh in in the rubble of of ground zero, and but all these restaurants opening up, feeding all these guys for free.
Never forget Campbell's soup set up, like the biggest soup kitchen thing that you've ever seen to give everybody just feed them.
And it was that type of response, and and everybody all over the country doing everything they could do to help.
We see this happen time and time again when there are hurricanes.
More recently, tornadoes in Nashville.
Uh, you just see the best in people.
You know, and America's all in for the fight.
Now we've got, you know, you look at the bravery every day.
We now have the National Guard called up.
We now have the national, our military involved.
You saw the U.S. Navy prepared their hospital ship for New York, the USNS Comfort.
They did that in three days.
Army Corps of Engineer helped build a 3,000-bed hospital at the Javit Center.
They did that in three days also.
Similarly, there are now plans and and in the process of building these hospitals all across the country where they think it's going to be most needed.
You see, don't you see all of these big companies.
If I make the list now, it's so long.
I mean, starting with the public-private partnership and the Walmarts and the Walgreens and the Targets and the CVSs and the right aids and oh, I'm gonna forget everybody, Lab Corps and Quest uh diagnostics.
I mean, everybody, Roche uh pharmaceuticals, uh, we know for example that Novartis, okay, we have all this anecdotal evidence going on that hydroxychloroquine is working, and and now they stepped up.
I mean, the first company uh the reason I took really close issue.
I mean, Israeli scientists are amazing, and their medical professionals are amazing.
And there's a pharmaceutical company called Teva in Israel, and they sent six million free doses of hydroxychloroquine, and now they're sending four million more, and it was like they they basically were saying we know this works, this is the best thing we found.
That's how I took it.
And and they did it.
And now Navartis, 130 million doses for free.
And other pharmaceutical companies as well.
They've all stepped up.
And you see, even the psychos in the entertainment industry.
Uh, you know what, a lot of them stepped up, and I'm sure some of them don't agree with me politically, but I I tip my hat to them.
Uh I can't believe they attacked poor Mike Lindell and MyPillow.com.
That was awful.
Look at the look at the production now, Abbott Abbott Laboratories, they're going to have 50,000.
50,000.
Test that you, you know, in five minutes, you're going to get an answer if you're positive for COVID-19.
You know, look at the FDA draconian rules, all gone.
All these companies stepping up, one after another after another after another.
And it is American ingenuity and innovation and compassion and generosity and goodness and greatness.
And I mean, you know, you see, for example, spirit makers are now making hand sanitizer.
Wow.
That's pretty cool.
Because I think you have to have like 90% alcohol, 60% alcohol.
I don't know what it is to make it, you know, kill known to kill viruses.
There's so many of them, I couldn't even begin to list all of them that are willing to do that.
And GM and Ford and they're making the ventilators.
They kept hearing we need ventilators.
Yes.
You've got a Pennsylvania Toy Maker.
Um, I guess it's called Crazy Erin.
They're now beginning to produce hand sanitizer.
Uh thank you for that.
Uh NASCAR 3D is printing face shields for coronavirus response for those on the front lines.
And I didn't mention all the medical professionals.
Look, all these doctors, all these nurses, all these people working in hospitals.
There was a viral video that I saw today where people that do janitorial services for the hospitals, they're all masked up, gloved up, and they go in to these rooms.
You know, they're contaminated, and they walked out, and all the nurses, all the doctors started clapping for them.
And at one point, one of the people that was being clapped for, involved in the janitorial service, you know, started clapping.
They thought they were clapping for something else.
You just wanted to join in.
And then when one woman recognized that they were doing it for her, started crying.
Amazing.
Now, those doctors and nurses and medical professionals, they were thanking them and making them feel good about what they're doing.
Uh, I know Disney parks have been closed.
They now donated 100,000 N95 masks.
Good for them.
Uh 3D printed coronavirus fighting products.
Um, I mean, people are so innovative.
I saw this on Fox Business, and manufacturer produces the first ever washable, reusable 3D printed N95 masks.
The president was talking about this the other day.
They're washable and reusable, and I guess I'm gonna use the wrong word here, sanitize, desanitize, you know, whatever.
They make it reusable, which is good.
And you don't need the massive amounts that people have been suggesting we need.
You got chefs donating gourmet uh gourmet meals to hospital staff.
How cool is that?
Take care of them.
They deserve it.
They're risking their lives every day.
There was a story front-page uh New York Post today about how hospital workers that got coronavirus, they're now getting well and going right back into the fight.
I know uh I gotta give a lot of credit.
I know uh NYU medical students, NYU Langone.
Now, NYU Langone, if you get in, you are the top of the top of the top.
It is a free medical school because of monies and donations and whatever fundings they that somebody had had left them.
And anyway, so they they now are graduating those students early, offering them a two, three-month contract or something to that effect, uh if they are willing to go into the hospital system early and start helping.
By the time you're three months away from graduating, or two, I guess now two.
Uh I think it's a smart idea.
And every student I heard signed up, everyone.
They signed up.
They well, why do you become a doctor?
You want to you want to help others, and it is at times risky.
But that did they all signed up.
I was like, wow.
Washington, D.C. woman's uh starts a charity to support restaurants and healthcare workers in a coronavirus fight.
Remember a couple of Sundays ago, I tweeted out, you know, a couple of my favorite restaurants, and I I got excoriated on Twitter.
Oh, you can afford it.
Okay.
The restaurants I go to, maybe the exception of one is like really inexpensive, like $10 for a plate of pasta.
I mean, give me a break.
Uh, But now they're all doing it.
I'm actually buying more food than I can ever eat just to kind of keep everybody working and checking in with my.
I know every I know the entire staffs because I go to four places.
The same four places.
The Mass Singer, the TV show, he purchased 10,000 surgical masks for New York hospitals.
Arnold Schwarzenegger donated a million dollars in masks and gears to hospital workers fighting corona.
Dolly Parton did the same for coronavirus research after learning about exciting advancements.
Good for her.
Hawaiian Airlines is offering free island flights to medical workers fighting COVID-19.
That's that's awesome and pretty cool.
I love original recipe.
Love it.
KFC, they're giving a million pieces of chicken away to franchise so that they can distribute them to the local community.
Bill Belichick had words of strength and wisdom.
It'll take teamwork, discipline, commitment to do the right things all the time.
And he goes out and gives a strong.
We're facing a difficult opponent.
It's gonna take these disciplines to do it, includes staying at home.
I encourage everyone, shelter in place as long as necessary so we can end it and get back to normal.
Corona Eastern Airlines.
I didn't even know they existed anymore.
Apparently, Pennsylvania-based carry up, good for them.
They've now repatriated more than 5,700 Americans since March 13th.
I know for a fact, because uh let's just say I passed on information to important people at the State Department, Mike Pompeo.
He's getting information they had a bunch of mission students in Peru.
They got them out.
I know of people in numerous countries.
You haven't heard a word about it, but they're getting all Americans out and getting them back and getting them home.
Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, uh Tiger Woods and uh Mickelson are gonna have a golf shootout for charity.
That's pretty awesome.
I mean, everybody's doing everything they can.
The good people.
Then of course, you got the jackasses in the mob in the media.
They don't want to take Donald Trump's press conference.
Then you have leftist organizations.
Yeah, they don't want to either.
I gotta give props to Gavin Newsom.
Yep, I never thought I'd be saying a lot of good things about him.
He's he was on fake news CNN, and he said, you know, about the president that they they have been extremely responsive to California's needs.
I've talked to officials throughout the country who said that, you know, that um they have to temper their remarks about what they say about the president.
You and the president seem to have a work been working collaboratively.
Like, for example, I have I had no intention of going after Andrew Cuomo until he became a bit of a jackass.
And, you know, we put him on this program.
I told him I'd do anything I can do for New York.
You tell me whatever you need, I'll go to war for New York.
I will help you.
Anything I can do.
Then he has to go out there and start.
I need 30,000.
I'm like, okay, well, why didn't you buy the 16 they told you thousand they told you to buy in 2005?
If you want to politicize it, he's building your hospital, sending in all your equipment, sending your ventilators, you're storing away, you know, and kind of hoarding just for New York.
And I was like, how about thank you?
Anyway, but then Gavin Newson said I'd be lying if to say Trump hasn't been responsive to our needs.
He said, Uh I've been consistent.
Know this, we've been dealing with historic wildfires, droughts out here in the West in California.
I said it back a year ago.
This is not a time to bicker.
I don't care who's up and down, whose polls are where, uh, looking better than someone else's who wants to run for president, who doesn't?
When it comes to a time of crisis, we need to rise above partisanship.
And I've extended always an open hand and not a closed fist in these circumstances, and this is no different.
And let me be candid.
I'd be lying to you if I said uh to say that he hasn't been as responsive as to our needs as he has been, because he has.
Good for him.
Andrew Cuomo, you might want to learn something from him.
You might.
Because your response and lack of preparedness is shocking, considering you're the number one target in America for a terrorist attack, and there's a pandemic, uh, pandemic.
You got the smallest geographical area with 10 million people.
Yeah, you would be at risk.
And up to, You know, two weeks ago he said, Oh, it's not going to be bad.
And I have that full timeline.
But I mean, it's just pathetic.
It really pissed me off.
And I do wish Chris Cuomo well.
That's sincere as can be.
I've known Chris.
He used to work at Fox.
Um and strong guy, he's going to recover.
I know he's going to be fine.
All right, glad you're with us hour two, Sean Hannity Show.
We have our facts without fear.
A lot of medical updates we're going to give you throughout the program today.
Well, it can't get sicker than this.
Now you have a group of people.
They are actually left-wing officials that are suing to prevent the media from holding from uh uh from covering the president's daily press conference during a national emergency.
They don't think it's fair.
I I mean it doesn't get any sicker than this.
Then they're playing politics in New York.
Uh Comrade de Blasio.
I mean, the single the most I mean, as bad as the governor's bed, and it's pretty bad.
I mean, the the mayor of New York has been even worse.
So Franklin Graham's Samaritan Purse, they're running a makeshift hospital in Central Park.
Now, uh de Blasio apparently is uh now saying he's very concerned that this is an anti-gay evangelical relief organization.
Now, I've known Franklin Graham for years.
Franklin Graham helps people all around the world.
And yeah, he he always likes to pray with people, but everything's free for anybody.
They're not asking your sexual orientation.
And as a matter of fact, uh Samaritan's Purse, this this hospital they built specifically for coronavirus patients, fully staffed.
All the equipment that they need.
You know, no cost to the city of New York.
None.
None none to the state either.
Anyway, and they work with Mount Sinai, and they even signed a pledge that they will treat any patient equally.
I already knew that about Franklin Graham.
It's not the time to play politics here.
We're going to be sending people over from the mayor's office to monitor.
I mean, really?
Now you're gonna now the mob and the media doesn't want in the middle of a national emergency when the president of the United States of America wants to give pertinent information that people need for their health and well-being and the safety and security and keep them updating, updated on what efforts are being, you know, used every day.
We can't hear this.
Fake news CNN when the president starts the press conference.
Now, multiple days in a row, they won't carry his part.
Well, that's when he makes all the big announcements about exactly what it is that they they are doing and updating the situation.
And he's sat there for the last two days, two and a half hour press conferences, to the point where, you know, there's like no more questions left.
But he's there and available as he's ever been, and they don't like it.
You know, you can hear the media mob, the worst people in all of us.
I just spent a half hour telling you all the good, and then we're gonna get to Dr. Josh and then Dr. Oz and Betsy McCoy, the medical updates.
You know, the media mob have been awful.
They can't stand Donald Trump even not even to help a country in the middle of a pandemic.
Unbelievable.
It's unreal.
And you get, and then you've got the Democrats, they they hold up relief aid for over a week for hospital workers, needed supplies, monies for needed supplies, for workers all across the country through no fault of their own.
The help that the American people want to give them.
Holding that money up, holding money, small businesses so they don't have to fire employees during this time.
And big businesses just you know, look at the airline industry, the cruise line industry.
Unbelievable.
Now that 80, 90 percent of Americans have been unbelievably inspiring.
The rest, unbelievably repulsive.
Listen to this.
Listen to the media mob.
You know, coronavirus pressures of the president should not be aired.
Listen.
But these daily briefings from the White House are a litany of things from the president that would be awesome if they were true, if they were happening, but they're not.
And so the sooner we come to terms with that, I think the better for all of us.
If it were up to me, and it's not, I would stop Putting those briefings on live TV.
I have said I don't think that you should really listen to what he says.
You should listen to what the experts say.
I'm not actually sure if you want to be honest, that we should carry that live.
I think we should run snippets.
I think we should do it afterwards and get the pertinent points to the American people.
I personally can't help but feel these daily sessions are are bad for the country.
Uh even dangerous from a public health perspective.
It's obviously above my pay grade.
I don't make the call that we take them or not, but it seems crazy to me that everyone's still taking them when you got the my pillow guy uh getting up there talking about reading the Bible.
Sarah and I have been talking about this.
It just seems to me that networks should not even be at this point broadcasting his 90 minutes of misinformation.
I understand what Cuomo's on, that's one thing, but I I I just I I almost think it's a disservice to the country at this point.
We'll take Cuomo.
You mean the guy that rejected the recommendation that if you have a pandemic, you're gonna need another sixteen thousand ventilators, and he said no.
That guy?
The guy that is not allowing people to get in their own pharmacy, hydroxychloroquine.
Wow.
You have to go to a hospital in New York to get it.
Even Michigan and Nevada started it, they stopped.
When is New York gonna stop?
Dr. Josh Umber is with us uh with the latest on l let me ask you, because we've been you've been very helpful sending us and giving us information every day.
Uh Dr. Josh, how are you doing down there in Wichita?
Excellent.
And thank you for the opportunity to be on and uh explain how everything's working.
You have known a lot about hydroxychloroquine.
This surprised me.
You had secured doses, extra doses.
Now, for people that don't know, you have uh concierge health care for everybody service, and that is a cooperative.
And if you couple it with a uh uh catastrophic plan for an accident or a heart attack or cancer, God forbid, but you have fifty bucks a month adults, ten bucks a month kids, uh every medical service, doctors on call 24-7, and you walk out with your prescription at a 90% reduction, 95% reduction because you negotiate directly.
Now, why what made you decide not bulk, but you you you secured a lot of hydroxychloroquine?
Why?
Well, um, you know, one, we full scope family medicine, so we have a lot of uh rheumato uh rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, chogrin type patients who are on these medicines uh normally.
Uh but we also know from just you know being kind of fully trained family physician, uh quinine, hydro hydroxychloroquinine, um, is routinely studied when it comes up for viral infections like this um or other types.
Uh malaria is a a different type, but um that's the reason we use these meds as a prophylaxis, is they are effective against certain types of infection.
Well, let me ask you anecdotally about that, because Dr. Oz and I have been talking about this uh fairly regularly, and that is people that are using uh chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, uh or what is the uh the plaxal yeah, plaquinyl, sorry, uh which is pretty much the same thing, right?
Okay.
Um that those that are using it for lupus and those rheumatoid arthritis, we're seeing far less incidences of them contracting corona.
Is that true?
Well, that that would make a lot of sense, uh, especially considering how they would normally be at increased risk because a lot of the rheumatology medicines decrease their immune system because it's their immune system attacking themselves.
So they are normally more prone to these types of infections.
Um so it would be a very, you know, unique subset uh to study if they are now because of this medicine resistant to this infection.
Okay.
Now, what about countries that have high incidences of malaria?
Do we have any data about that?
And Dr. Josh had mentioned anybody that is taking hydroxychloroquine for either lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, we could do a very quick study and find out if they are far less likely to to contract the disease because of hydroxychloroquine.
I think the areas most prone to malaria are probably the areas that uh won't have as much robust public health, and so maybe not doing as much corona testing and looking for that.
So, you know, in the short term might be hard to get that data, but I think in the long term, and I think that's the important part is what do we look at for after this?
Because there will be an after, and I think a big part of our job as family physicians is is helping people see you know the full view here, not lose the force for the trees, and and I think there's an economic recovery that the healthcare system can embrace after this.
Uh you know, some back in the envelope math.
Um Wall Street Journal reported in September that the average employer health insurance premium is $2,500.
Uh if you save just a fraction of that, 38%, roughly seven, eight thousand dollars a month, that would be equivalent to a trillion dollars put into the the hundred and twenty-eight million households in the U.S. So in one year we could give people back half the equivalent of this stimulus package.
And we could do that every year.
And I think that's that's a platform that you know we need to talk about as we get ready for the next phase of this, which is the wind down of the infection and how do we build up the the economy?
Because if we don't build up the economy, we see more domestic abuse, we see more uh drug and alcohol addiction, more depression, sadly a lot more suicides because uh of this hardship.
So there's a lot of phases to the public health side of this, um, but healthcare is uniquely positioned to help.
See, you you have been in the forefront of something that I think is going to now be the future, and that is uh you've had these health care cooperatives.
I abuse have abused our relationship, and as much as I keep putting you on, it frustrates the living daylights out of me that people don't listen.
You are offering concierge care, access to a doctor 24-7, um $50 a month, and you get the discounted medicines, you walk out with them, you don't even have to go to the pharmacy.
That's the future.
Telemedicine is the future.
Off label use of drugs uh like hydrochloroquine is the future, getting rid of draconian FDA regulations, compassionate use is the future, right to right to try is the future.
And it's so hard to get people to change.
Well, I I agree.
Uh, I think the government's often been uh heavy-handed on restrictions uh and the medical community is slow to adapt new business models, but what we're seeing now is is we have to adapt.
Is telemedicine means less infectious risk, means more care, faster care, uh, and what we're gonna see is a a world a lot more receptive to this this change.
Employers will probably not be able to go back to the same rate of employees at the cost of health insurance.
So if they could decrease the cost of their insurance premiums by fifty percent easily using a direct care model, then that's six to seven plus thousand dollars a year that could be put back into every household.
So now employees can say, look, I I do want insurance and I need it for the coronavirus ICU type infection, but now I can do telemedicine with my doctor, I can get meds for pennies uh a pill.
I mean, the the uh plaquinale type medicines are are cheap.
Uh so now we could say we have a high level of employment.
We need to have you know the White House talking about this uh and getting the heads of Starbucks and Elon Musk and and you know Home Depot in a room and say, how do how are you going to ensure employees going forward and increase their paycheck?
It's very well I want to ask you, you have known for years because you proc procure a lot of the medicines on your own.
At a deep, deep, deep, deep discount.
You're buying directly from manufacturers.
You've known about the outsourcing of a lot of our pharmaceuticals being produced in China.
Now we we can't allow that to happen again.
So that's got a fix.
Uh we'll come back.
I want to ask you about that on the other side.
Dr. Josh is with us.
Uh also, why wasn't New York prepared?
How is that even possible?
After 911, how is it possible?
But we'll get to that.
Information that might scare you.
Anyway, uh more with Dr. Josh than later, Dr. Roz, Betsy McCoy coming up.
All right, as we continue, packs without fear, medical update.
Dr. Josh is with us.
All right, so Linda tells me that you are crazy enough that you will want to give you want to give out your email and answer people's questions, which I think is amazing.
And I know how committed you are to your your craft.
You were born to do this.
This is your calling in life.
You really want to do that.
You know, uh what we know is there's a ton of people with questions, there's a ton of doctors with questions, there's employers, there's politicians.
The faster we can show them the answers to either uh calm their medical concerns to some degree, you know, basic information, Um, but then also to say how how do you keep your company alive?
How do you fix your insurance premiums so that you can hire your people back?
Insurance companies support this.
Um how do we go forward in a way that um teaches uh that we learn from the lessons that COVID has taught us that we can be use streamlined faster, easier, higher quality, use technology.
Um healthcare's stuck in a a insurance model of fifty years ago, and we need to bounce forward because if we don't, then the economic health of the country is gonna suffer.
Uh but if we need to find a trillion dollars every year to help small businesses, it's right there.
It's in their insurance premiums.
Now people can have high quality insurance for half the cost.
They can have unlimited access to their doctor for less than an iPhone every month, ten dollars a month for kids.
Um this is how we get America running again.
Uh you know, call it the Heartland plan.
Um, but I I yeah, I believe that there is a a very viable solution uh that will come out of this uh this unfortunate scenario.
Um all right, next question.
You buy medicines direct from pharmaceutical producers and companies, correct?
Mm-hmm.
And you get a ninety ninety five percent discount, correct?
Correct.
And you sell it at cost to your to your patients.
Correct.
Okay.
Unbelievable.
And for example, if I leave your office, I have high blood pressure or high cholesterol, you I walk out with medicine.
And some of those blood pressure, we have over a hundred medicines under four cents a day.
Um, about twenty or thirty under a penny a day.
So you could treat your blood pressure for a year for under three dollars and sixty-five cents.
Unbelievable.
All right.
Now you're willing to give out your email.
I I I have I have given you ample warning.
You did.
Okay, what is it?
Uh DR Josh at Atlas.
MD.
So just Dr. Josh at Atlas.md.
DR Josh Atlet at at Atlas M D. Atlas.md.
Atlas.md.
All right, we'll put it on Hannity.com.
And John Richard's song.
We'll do our best to help everybody direct to other direct care doctors.
Yep.
All right, Dr. Josh.
Good luck.
We'll put that with uh email address on Hannity.com.
Why was New York so ill prepared next?
We're all about half crazy.
Kids are bouncing off the wall.
Jokes done got canceled, mama's pacing down the home.
Homeschool's now session and I'm pulling out my hair.
It's halfway through the morning.
I'm still in my underwear.
Stay home.
Stay home.
No reason in the world.
All right, take it, Rich.
We put the uh link up on Hannity.com.
Uh love those guys.
They're just awesome.
Uh and it's actually pretty funny.
There are people funny videos, viral videos of people going home, they're ready to go nuts that come in out of the they're going crazy.
And uh the sooner we get back to regular life, everybody's gonna be happy.
Oh, uh let's see, the ever confused, confounded quid pro quo Joe is calling on Donald Trump to resume aid to Iran, blaming the US for Iran suffering.
I guess if he becomes president, uh we give them a what, another hundred and fifty billion in cash and other currencies so they can continue their nuclear program unchecked and uh chant death to Israel, death to America some more.
Unbelievable.
Um really crazy political stuff.
I'm gonna get into our facts without fear stuff in New York.
Um I mean, the story, for example about Samaritan's purse.
American's Purse is Franklin Graham's group.
They they they go all around the world.
They have Operation Christmas, whatever I forget what it's called, every year.
I actually went with Franklin Graham.
Uh we went to Haiti and we where else did we go?
I don't remember.
Dominican Republic.
And you give these Christmas boxes out, people will pack them and they donate millions of them every year.
And it's got you put in things like toys and toothbrushes and you know, toothpaste and and stuff like that.
Stuff they need and stuff to have fun with, a doll, truck, for you know, you say if you if it's to go to a boy or a girl.
And it's unbelievable how kids react to what is just basically a little box full of stuff, and people are smart.
They put a ton of stuff in it.
And the kids are so happy.
I saw it up close and personal.
It was unbelievable.
And but they go all over the world whenever there's these types of incidents, natural disasters, pandemics, they go right into the heart and soul of where it's happening.
And they'll help anybody.
They don't ask you to convert to Christianity.
They say they'll pray with you if you want to pray.
Okay, is that so bad?
Anyway, well, de Blasio, as if he hasn't screwed up everything enough with zero preparation.
Probably the only one that was more ill-prepared for this pandemic, which is amazing considering, you know, the first Trade Center attack and considering the 9-11 attack.
Yeah, New York is a target for terrorism.
One of the top two, DC and New York.
Fact.
And so you would think they'd have emergency preparations in place.
They don't.
They didn't have anything.
And so now, so Marin's Perth opens his hospital for coronavirus patients specifically, and they do it in conjunction with Mount Sinai to a hospital right adjacent to Central Park in New York, one of the few trees, treat areas you'll ever see in New York City.
Anyway, so they're, and there's all the workers, all the equipment, everything you need, and they're doing it all free for New York City.
Now, Mount Sinai made sure Samaritan's Purse, hey, will you sign a pledge that you know you treat every patient equally?
This isn't about no, they said, of course.
Anyway, we're going to send people over from the mayor's office to monitor them.
Very concerned that this gets done right.
This is what de Blasio's saying.
I'm like, don't you have anything else to do?
De Blasio's going to the gym.
De Blasio's, I have the whole timeline.
He's advising people to go out, you know, into the middle of this pandemic.
He's so stupid.
And you got the corrupt media.
I mean, I'm not even going to get into it.
You know, can we leave, you know, the pictures of Andrew Cuomo out of this?
Even I'm saying that.
I mean, it's so ridiculous.
Now, I told you about New York EMTs, according to the New York Post, obtaining a memo sent out to New York City ambulance workers advising them not to bring cardiac arrest patients to the hospital if they can't get a pulse on the scene.
No, those patients previously were always brought to the hospital where doctors would do everything to revive them.
And sometimes we're successful.
These cases are being deprioritized during the coronavirus break.
And I'm like, looking at this, and I'm saying, you've got to be kidding me.
You gotta be kidding me.
And you're worried about Samaritan's purse building you a free hospital because you didn't do anything to prepare.
Now, uh, that's a little, you know, insane.
By the way, that's in Business Insider and elsewhere.
And the New York Post has that story.
Um, so we're now, you know, asking a lot of questions.
Why wasn't New York prepared?
And I've been very critical of this.
I actually have in front of me a 240-page document, ventilator allocation guidelines from the New York City task force on life and law, the department, uh New York State Department of Health.
It's in November of 2015.
Uh, the person in 2015 that was uh the governor was Andrew Cuomo.
Have a report in front of me.
We didn't have to have a ventilator shortage.
Leaders chose not to prep for pandemic.
This is an actual task force document I have in front of me.
Said that there would be a shortfall in New York if there's a pandemic, specifically predicting exactly how many ventilators short New York would be if they had a pandemic.
Now, geographically, you've got the smallest area with the largest amount of people.
That would make them the most vulnerable, not only most vulnerable for terror attack, but also the most vulnerable if there is a pandemic.
So you think New York after the first Trade Center attack and other terror incidences, and 9-11, of course, that they would have thought to prepare.
They did not.
The task force told them exactly how many ventilators they estimated that New York would need.
Cuomo, governor at the time, current New York Health Commissioner was on this task force.
I'll go to page 30.
During a severe influenza pandemic, there is likely to be a projected shortfall of ventilators.
15,783 exactly.
That's the shortfall.
New York at the time only had 2,000 ventilators.
What did Cuomo do?
He goes back to the task force.
Not to buy them.
How do we ration the 2,000 that we have if in fact we need them?
Well, the person that has been writing about it.
Nobody wants to listen when the president said it.
Ventilator allocation guidelines.
New York State Task Force on Health and the Law, New York State Department of Health.
Betsy McCoy, former Lieutenant Governor, chairwoman of the committee to reduce infection deaths.
Am I correct?
And you have all these doctors.
You are absolutely correct, Sean.
In fact, it says right in there that they considered buying them and decided they'd rather spend the money on other things and write the rationing rules instead.
So it's not as if they suddenly got caught short without the ventilators.
They planned on this shortage.
They planned it and devised a rationing system to accommodate it.
That's what I find so shocking.
And that's only one of the reasons why New York is falling victim worse than any place else so far, unfortunately.
Look, the coronavirus is nobody's fault, certainly not Andrew Cuomo's.
But New York's vulnerability, there is fault there.
I see Andrew Cuomo earning high grades right now for his telegenic leadership, his daily briefings.
But if you look at his records...
It's all talk.
No, no.
It's all talk.
Who's the case?
And by the way, the photo ops in front of Trump's, you know, uh Navy hospital ship when it comes.
Then the photo op at the Javits Center that the Army Corps of Engineers built, like all the other hospitals.
And the 4,000 ventilators that Trump gave him in a warehouse.
You gotta be kidding me.
I need 30,000.
Why didn't you buy what your own task force recommended instead of waste fraud and abuse that is obscene, which I'll get to in a second?
That's right.
In fact, they that's the very same time.
They that they could have spent approximately 500 million dollars stocking up on ventilators.
They spent well over that on a boondoggle solar uh 750 million dollars that has been boondoggle.
Correct.
That money wasted.
Another 600 million wasted, another 90 million wasted.
Unbelievable.
Because he has also presided over a severe bed shortage in New York.
He's complaining now that New York City and the Metropolitan Area doesn't have enough hospital beds.
But who caused that shortage?
It was deliberate, and year after year, the number of hospitals in New York and the number of beds decreased because of Andrew Cuomo's policy decisions.
And then you've got something else.
Uh, and this is, as you know, right in my wheelhouse, a New York hospitals have poor infection control.
They are their people are not as well trained as they should be.
Year after year, hospitals in New York have higher infection rates.
You know the kind of infections everybody fears, C. diff and VRE and MERSA.
But when the CDC came into New York several years ago and tested, are the hospitals here ready?
Do they do the right thing when somebody might have measles or or another communicable disease?
And believe it or not, 69% of the hospitals flunked at least once, and they found that about three-quarters of the hospital employees, as heroic as they are, weren't Trained properly to wash their hands every time they should be.
So you see all these heroic doctors and nurses falling victim themselves to the coronavirus, blame the State Health Department's lax infection control standards.
Well, what the what the state health person has been saying is ridiculous.
The health care commissioner is just an idiot.
And that's like the mayor is, you know, telling people up until like the end of February, oh no, go out, go out, go out.
Um and Cuomo said, We're prepared.
He kept saying over and over, we're prepared.
It's not going to be bad here.
Not going to be bad here.
Not going to be bad here.
Emotions don't have to be fact-based.
Part of my job is to say to people in this state what the reality is.
And first, this is not going to be a quick situation.
It could be a couple of weeks.
You know, he kept saying, no, it's not that bad.
But it's all through March, not that bad.
That the hospitals were not ready.
They didn't have the equipment.
Their doctors and nurses and other employees weren't sufficiently trained and drilled to protect themselves and other patients in the hospital without coronavirus from getting this when it starts to race through the hospital, which as you can see it's doing in one hospital after another.
And of course, the deadliest decision is the one we talked about on the air earlier in the week.
The nursing home decision.
That is going to cause the deaths of unfortunately many elderly people.
Hydroxychloroquin.
I've been having doctor after doctor, study after study.
Dr. Oz is going to give us an update at the top of the next hour.
Um showing incredible, promising anecdotal.
And now we have a clinical study that that Dr. Roz referenced yesterday.
Yes, I'm telling you, if I were unlucky enough to get this disease, I'd want to be a drug.
But here's what Cuomo's now, an executive order.
The only state in the in this country where you cannot go to a pharmacy to get it if if you want it.
You have to go to a hospital.
Now, the last place somebody that is not in need needs to be is the is a hospital right now.
Absolutely so dangerous.
And your physician, your personal physician, should have the discretion to prescribe this off label.
Unbelievable.
And you know, and the thing is the media phones over this guy.
Oh, I think we'll maybe he can replace Joe because Joe's losing it.
He's confused and confounded, and it's awful, and these press conferences online are a mess, and he can't answer a question and he loses his trend of thought every second.
Maybe Cuomo's the answer.
That's what they're all saying.
Well, one thing we're watching, he's getting a lot of press now, and I I pay tribute to him for that.
But governors and glass mansions shouldn't throw stones.
And his record on health care in New York, unfortunately, sadly, made this situation worse.
And your show is so powerful, so influential.
I hope that people in New York State are listening and will tell Andrew Cuomo to read retract that order that every nursing home in the state must take patients being discharged from the hospital with colours.
That's insane, too.
Just like his decision to release no bail.
You're a criminal.
Just get you go in, and then you see like all these articles about like bank robbers are like, yeah, I got they rob seven banks in a row and they don't get bail, they get released.
How stupid is that?
That's terrible.
But you see, Massachusetts, they're having dedicated coronavirus nursing homes and then other nursing homes that are being spared that illness to protect their residents.
That's the way to do it.
And many states are following that laudable example.
All right, Betsy McCoy, thank you for being with us.
We appreciate it.
We have a lot of medical updates coming up.
Dr. Oz.
Now tomorrow, I said five o'clock earlier, I meant four.
Uh for the full hour, Dr. Oz will take your calls.
And uh we'll get to that uh tomorrow.
He'll be with us to update us.
He had good news yesterday.
We're gonna follow up on that next.
Stay right here for our final news roundup and information overload.
All right, news roundup and information overload 800 nine-four one.
Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza, just a few headlines are medical facts without fear.
There is a political article, the Hanam Province in Central China now taking measures putting a mid-sized county in a total lockdown.
There is concerns the virus might be re-emerging there.
Uh ex FDA chief warning parts of our lives will shut down without a coronavirus drug by the by the by the fall.
Uh nations with mandatory, this is a Bloomberg piece, mandatory TB vaccines show fewer coronavirus deaths.
Uh something I think we should pay attention to.
Uh We now, the administration working with the pharmaceutical group Abbott now have developed a test that will tell you within five minutes, there'll be 50,000 of them a day in all 50 states uh that'll be able to do this, but they're they're now clamoring for the quick test, and they're now going to the virus hotspots first.
Uh we have Fauci security sadly had to be stepped up because of politics, which is insane.
Um not surprising though.
Uh this um well, we have one infectious disease specialist uh that was on Fox News from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
Uh Katie Kellner uh saying that this is the beginning of the end of the pandemic.
I'd say that's a little early from my perspective.
More evidence indicates healthy people can spread the virus.
European experts ready smartphone technology to help stop coronavirus spread, something they did in both South Korea and Israel.
Uh oddly, in 2017, the Pentagon warned about the uh before Donald Trump was ever sworn in about a shortage of ventilators, f uh face masks, and they specifically mentioned a coronavirus.
That was 20 at the very beginning, like early before Trump was sworn in.
Uh hospital is not allowing nurses to wear masks if you can believe it in Chicago.
Well, I mean, that is insane.
Uh French student doctors are thrown in the front line of coronavirus.
I mentioned earlier that NYU medical school uh Langone is now graduating their students now.
They offered them two month contracts.
Every student signed up to help in New York.
Hospitals uh were now looking at shortages on certain things and who's getting what, where, and when now a big report.
Uh the CDC has said COVID 19 can be spread one or three days before onset of symptoms.
Uh and let's see.
I guess it's time for Dr. Oz, our medical aid team, the medical aid team.
Well, great news yesterday.
Uh how are you, sir?
You never sleep, do you?
Well, last night was pretty busy getting ready for uh the all the work today, but I tell you, there are those times in your life, those moments that define actually your life.
And when I got that pre pinned paper of this Chinese study that we've been sort of like a sleuth, we'd have a whole team looking for it.
I knew it was out there.
We finally got our fingers on it, and I read it because you don't actually know what the paper is going to say.
Again, it's not a peer reviewed yet.
It's so early.
And I saw they had taken these 62 people and and randomized them.
Now you wet word randomized, everyone should remember because that's what you have to do.
It has to be completely random, so you no one fixed it, no one biased the results.
And we saw the benefit of the hydroxychloroquine that you've been speaking about so eloquently.
Uh to me, by the way, I'm getting the crap beat out of me because I'm looking for a treatment answer.
I'm talking to, you know, the best medical professionals in the country, including yourself.
I'm looking at every anecdotal bit of evidence.
So uh so wh why why do why do I care about this?
So people won't die, Dr. Oz.
That's why.
Well, I'll tell you, I was having an interesting discussion with somebody, and we're fighting over this.
And there's no question that there was a lot of resistance to this being possible.
It just seems too good to be true, right?
You've got this inexpensive uh drug with a 60-year history of safety that's used widely for malaria and lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, and then the Chinese figure out that it might save lives.
Uh and it's just, you know, come on, really.
And so people have a natural reluctance.
But I was having a conversation with someone, and they said, is what's bothering you?
Because you know, there's a big debate about maybe go public, right?
People think they're going to embarrass you, they're gonna come after you as yes, you've experienced yourself.
And in medicine, it's even worse.
And you know, Kissinger's famous for many things, but he was being reviewed to be Secretary of State under Nixon.
And one of the senators looked up and looked at looked at him and said, you know, Mr. Mr. Kissinger, you don't have any experience in politics.
What makes you think you can do this job?
And he put his glasses down, he said, I'm on the faculty at Harvard.
That's politics.
If you were to see politics, you you just go look at top-notch medical institutions, and there's politics there.
People they'll eat each other a lot because they're smart.
You know, they they know how to hurt you because they they don't want bad things to happen.
They're all motivated.
I I do maybe naively, but I do believe for the right reasons, but they'll start saying, hey, listen, it's too early, go public, don't mislead people.
Folks will, you know, not understand the nuances of what you're saying.
And I'm that's why every time we've spoken about this, I clarify we do not have peer reviewed data.
This just doesn't exist.
It won't exist.
That's the problem.
By the time you get clinical data, this thing, you know, how many people might have died when there might have been a uh a potential treatment that saves lives.
And you know, I I've looked at all the risks as you have.
I've asked I've asked you questions on air and I've asked you questions off air.
I think I'm pretty informed on hydroxychloroquine and it's uh what's the other one?
Uh plaxaquin quill.
Uh plaquinol, I'm sorry, you you said it right.
And I'm and I know it's but it's been around since nineteen forty-five.
I mean, I'm sorry, for forty-five years, not nineteen forty-five.
And they use them for rheumatoid arthritis.
They use it in instances, what, for lupus, and they use it as an anti-malarial drug.
And the risk that is a possi we've gone over the risks, which possible arrhythmia, and then long term if you use a lot of it, uh you know, you can use it.
And you know this really well, doctor I call him Dr. Hannity, by the way.
Now you well you because your nur your nurse sisters try beat medicine into you, and it's actually you have a natural aptitude but interest in it.
But uh, you know, i every study done has looked at side effects.
I mean, the one thing you can't argue about is that.
And it has proven in these studies to be remarkably effective.
Even when it's used with antibiotics.
And that they can just randomized trial, you can argue about the what the what the results are, although they're pretty clear, but it no one got hurt from it.
I mean, you think they get a little rash.
That's enough.
I'll take a rash if the payoff is I might reduce the chance of my getting a bad version of coronavirus, or if I can convert the coronavirus, which is what the Chinese think they're doing, into a more benign version of what it is.
And that's all we need.
Imagine nudging the virus in the right direction by treating patients early in the course of their illness, and one day maybe have been treating them ahead of the illness to reduce the chance of getting it.
That's that's the dream.
We have to prove it.
But there are a lot of naysayers who I mean it's weird almost, they're sort of rooting against it, not on purpose, but they're trying to be such purists like we should be in most situations.
But we're at war.
And it's that's the one.
That's what it is.
It's a war to say and it's a war to save lives.
And it's a it's a war worth worthy of the fight and worthy of like I loved the when the president did right to try.
I love the idea of off label use if it's gonna save lives.
I love the idea of the FDA and getting pushing aside draconian rules and and people, you know, compassionate use.
If you want to try it, I w I would, based on all I know, Dr. Hannity for Dr. Hannity, I'm my only patient.
I would absolutely use it if I got this.
Well, Ian Lipkin, the famous virus hunter, who was on my show today, and I brought him on on purpose to talk about this topic because it's so delicate, because I know there's gonna be a lot of people who instinctively just bristle at the idea of it.
Uh, but it's the data is the data, right?
The Chinese people are human beings.
They did a clinical trial, we have to respect it.
And he came on and he actually got the the uh he went to China to help them.
He was there, he never got COVID nineteen, came back here, quarantined himself, did all the right things.
He's in the hospital helping.
Last week he gets the disease he gets the virus.
So what's the first thing he does?
Call all the world famous virologists to see what they would do.
And then he did what they said, which is to take hydro hydroxychloroquine.
I'm thinking the world the world leading researchers and doctors told him to do what we're asking people to consider talking about with their doctor.
So I'm not uncomfortable sharing with you and with your audience what I tell my own family.
Why wouldn't I?
It doesn't mean it's gonna work for sure, but I've got enough information that I give the people they I care about the most of my life this advice.
You ought to hear it from us, and then you decide as you talk to your doc, because you can't get it without a doctor anyway.
Well, I mean that and that's the important part.
Um you have been now looking as you dig into these new these studies, the new data, and again, every day on your program, and if you know it's must see TV now, uh, because you're bringing on patients that have recovered that have used hydroxychloroquine and plaquinol, and you're bringing on and with it is ithromycin and in some cases zinc, and you're bringing on doctors that are prescribing it, and you're talking to these virus experts.
I mean, it's hard to imagine that people study viruses their whole life.
It's crazy.
And they're pretty darn good at it.
But you know, that's it is the ex it is the existential threat.
I mean, well, our our human civilization will never be destr destroyed by each of us.
We can hurt ourselves badly.
But there's no way we'll kill each other in any real way, other than letting a virus wipe us out.
That is the threat that that has always been able to take out huge swaths of humanity at once.
You have to worry about biological terrorism in some ways.
And the you know, I know there were conspiracy theories that I don't believe all over the web about this is manufactured in a in a lab.
Uh I don't believe that because this is what ninety-eight percent.
Um it's the equivalent of the previous s uh coronavirus, which was SARS.
Yeah.
I I don't think so either.
And and that same doctor I mentioned Ian Lipkin when he went over there, he helped sequence the virus.
And uh again, these are the top guys in the world, and they all excuse me, they all agree there's no way that a man would first of all, you wouldn't have built this if you could do it yourself.
I was gonna play with you.
How long have you had that cough?
Do you have a fever?
I'm kidding.
Go ahead.
Dr. Hannity, please quickly prescribe me hydroxychloroquid.
I agree.
You know, I'm gonna say this, people are gonna sue me.
I am not a doctor.
No, but I want I like you, and I do have many of my friends that are doctors.
I've actually been in I watched um brain operations.
It's unbelievable.
What we do.
I love it.
I'm like I there's an operation on TV, I watch the whole thing.
Knees, hips, everything.
I'm a nut.
My mother wanted me to be a doctor.
Well look, I just ended up with a big mouth.
Can you imagine?
A total failure.
Uh not at all.
Um, but so what do you give us some hope.
What do you think?
You know, I'm I mean, I wanna give uh realistic I what is your realistic analysis of these numbers.
Like if we didn't have the travel ban and mitigation efforts and the quarantine stuff, you know, the the estimates, the charts that they showed this week could have been as many as two point two million Americans died.
We now have five thousand six hundred Americans we know died.
Over a million people worldwide have contracted this virus.
Now, sixty point eight million in the U US got H one N one and but it wasn't as deadly.
Well, I'll tell you, it we th there were at least hundreds of thousands of lives saved by the brave decisions made all along the road.
And I tell you it it's uh it's reassuring that our country could could flip on a switch like we l like we just did.
I mean, how many of you a month ago would envision we'd be here right now?
But most of the country's saying, another month, not so good, but we can do it.
Whereas a month ago we were mo moaning and groaning because they were you know closing down restaurants and bars.
And I think the society has coped with it nicely.
We probably delayed some of these decisions, like you have very human response.
You don't you're making drastic moves is difficult, but they moved the ship of state in the right direction pretty quickly.
I wish we had better testing.
That really really hurt us in ways unimaginable.
None.
And it's also things get complicated too.
South Korea, they just shut everybody down.
I mean, they then the you have the virus.
Oh, if modern they they're watching where you go every second of every day.
We we have something called the constitution here.
Not as easy.
You know, stay uh you know, uh national stay order, well that would violate uh the rights of states to make decisions.
Yep.
We we're we've got to some there are plenty of good things about democracy that all of us are gonna de fight to the death to defend.
And one of the limitations is you have to ask people to do things you can't tell them sometimes.
And tr and with the things they did in Korea where they would go they would go to the people you had seen because they had technology tracking you and go to the butcher at the shop you bought stuff from two days ago and quarantine the guy.
You know, we don't do that here.
And you probably don't want them doing that because they could do other things if they knew that, but quarantine the guy so he doesn't contaminate fifty more customers is a good move.
And that's what they did.
Now Germany, which has more of a approach to ours, was just draconian what they did.
If they you know, a guy came back from Wuhan to his factory and he was sick, they closed the factory.
And that's what we're gonna have to do now.
We're gonna have to be bold in our decision and aggressive and encircling people who are sick and and continue.
But you asked me my opinion on numbers.
I think the estimates that the that the White House task force is giving, and Dr. Brooks was on my show today, so I quizzed her pretty much on them.
The hundred to two fifty, it's a big range, right?
Uh that's a lot of folks who could die.
Hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand potential deaths.
That's after the mitigation efforts, travel ban, etcetera.
And if we didn't do those things it was two point whatever million.
Two point two million was the estimate.
So that now that you see those numbers, you probably are all cheering for decisions that were made.
But it was still hard to make 'em because when you first started making them, people said, What are you talking about?
We don't do that kind of stuff in in America.
No one's gonna do that.
And now, of course, in retrospect, it makes sense.
There'll be some other bold decisions that have to be made.
But I do believe a month from now, we won't be through it.
But a month from now, we'll have a pretty good vision of what the lighting of the tunnel looks like.
And maybe some parts of the country that don't have a lot of virus would be good places to experiment.
To do the things you're just talking about.
If you live in West Virginia, which doesn't have the kind of hospital backup that New York has you don't want to let the virus go loose there.
But if you don't have many cases, and you can meticulously uh travel with people and track them down and we need more people to mitigate yes.
You know, they have 9,000 public servants uh in I think it was there was an Asian country looking at it.
But all they do is trade like detectives trace who the sick person was close to.
I know it's uh and by the way, it worked.
But I think uh that's not gonna happen here.
Uh all right.
So Dr. Oz tomorrow, in our second hour, four Eastern, one West Coast time, is gonna just take calls.
Any calls, questions that you have on the virus, how to protect yourself and your family.
And we'll see you on TV tonight, Dr. Raz.
You've been very generous as always with your time and you're doing great work.
Thank you.
Thanks for all you're doing, Dr. Hannity.
I'll see you tonight.
Oh, geez.
My fell my fellow doctor.
Uh God help us all.
800 941 Sean is our number.
Uh quick break.
Oh, the politics of this is getting more repulsive than ever.
The President's task force uh likely when we get back.
All right, 25 to the top of the hour.
Time for the President's Daily Coronavirus uh press conference, which uh the media and others are saying we shouldn't be carrying this in a national emergency.
It's really sick.
Pretty ugly.
Anyway, here's the president.
The President: ...
resources at SBA and us to make sure there's additional capacity.
As I said, we heard a lot of good feedback yesterday to simplify this process.
Uh it's gonna be up and let me bring this to the beginning.
We're a few seconds behind here, and I just want to make sure the president comes out with his opening remarks and comments, and then you're gonna hear from the um uh SBA loans and administrator Steve Minuchin is there in the economy, Vice President Pence is there.
Um because the President, when he comes out, again, fake news CNN doesn't want to cover it, as well as the conspiracy theory Area 51 Roswell Rachel Matt MSDNC channel.
Anyway, here's from the uh opening remarks.
Good to be with you all.
We're in a very critical phase of our war against the coronavirus.
It's vital that every American follows our guidelines on the 30 days to slow the spread.
The sacrifices we make over the next four weeks, we'll have countless American lives saved.
We're going to save a lot of American lives, and we're in control of our own fate very much so.
Maintaining social distance, practicing vigorous hygiene and staying at home are your most effective ways to win the war and to escape danger.
While you're fighting this battle from home, we're working with the best scientists, doctors, and researchers anywhere in the world.
We're racing to develop new ways to protect against the virus, as well as therapies, treatments, and ultimately a vaccine, and we're making a lot of progress.
I think medically a lot of progress.
At the same time, we're also racing to get relief to American workers and small businesses, as you know.
I want to remind small business owners across America that the paycheck protection program is launching tomorrow.
Nearly $350 billion in loans will be available to small businesses, including sole proprietors.
These loans are up to 100% forgivable as long as employers keep paying their workers.
Gotta take care of your workers.
Furthermore, we want Social Security beneficiaries to know that if they are typically not required to file a tax return, they don't have to file one in order to receive the direct cash payments that will soon be distributed to American citizens.
The Treasury will deposit the money directly into the bank accounts, and don't forget I will always protect your social security, your Medicare, and your Medicaid.
We're protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and I always will.
I'd like now to invite SBA administrator Jovita Carranza is doing a fantastic job.
She's gonna be very busy in the next little while.
And Secretary Steve Minuchin to say a few words about these vital initiatives, and then we'll get on to the attack of the virus itself.
And please, if I might, Steve and Jovita.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. President.
And Mr. Vice President, Secretary Minution, Ivanka Trump, and all who I have been working closely with in this effort.
Small business is the backbone of the American economy, and the President has put the nation's 30 million small businesses front and center in the response effort, and we are working hard to get money to them quickly.
This is an unprecedented effort by this administration to support small businesses, and we know that there will be challenges in the process.
Secretary Manution and I are working in tandem to ensure that feedback from our partners is being heard and implemented.
The private and public sector must work closely together to ensure that small businesses and their workers across the country are put first.
This administration believes wholeheartedly that if you are a small business, you are a critical part of the economic fabric of this country.
And your viability is critical to the economic well-being of your employees.
At SBA, we are working around the clock to support small businesses, ensuring that we are prioritizing emergency capital for small businesses that are suffering economic harm as a result of this unprecedented situation.
This relief will help stabilize the small business sector by providing businesses with the financial resources they need to keep their workers employed and keep up with their day-to-day operating expenses.
Today I want to ensure that small businesses all over the country know about the paycheck protection program and how they can benefit from this.
Simply put, the paycheck protection program is to help keep employees on payroll and small businesses open.
SBA will forgive the portion of the loan that is used toward job retention and certain other expenses.
We are working closely with lenders so that businesses can go directly to their local lenders.
Paycheck protection program is in addition to substantial work that the SBA has and will continue to do to help small businesses, including providing advances on SBA disaster loans and forgiving existing SBA loan payments over the next six months.
Additional details on these critically important programs can be found at SBA.gov, and we will be updating these resources regularly.
Our hearts go out to those affected by this terrible virus.
Our communities around the country are stepping up, and we will get through this together.
At SBA, we know that every phone call, email, or application submitted has a small business owner, their employees, and the communities they support are on the other side.
Our most important objective is to allow small businesses to keep their employees on board and keep their businesses viable through this unprecedented disruption.
I want to reiterate the importance of patience in this process as we work together to ensure that businesses are able to access needed credit.
We will continue working around the clock as we've done with our federal and private sector partners expanding capacity and working to make our systems as robust as possible to meet the needs.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you, Mr. Vice President.
Thank you, Jovita.
Mr. President, you've made clear to us we now need to execute.
We need to get money to small business and American workers, and that's what we're doing.
The SBA and Treasury committed to get this program up and running tomorrow.
And when Jovita says people working around the clock, they literally, we had both teams working until 4 o'clock in the morning and start working again today.
We've heard feedback from lenders, community banks, regional banks, and we spent the last 24 hours making this system even easier.
So this will be up and running tomorrow.
I encourage all small businesses that have 500 or fewer people.
Please contact your lenders.
Any FDIC institution will be able to do this, any credit union, existing SBA lenders and fintech lenders.
You get the money, you'll get it the same day.
You use this to pay your workers.
Please bring your workers back to work.
If you've let them go, you have eight weeks plus overhead.
This is a very important program.
I'm pleased to announce uh we are going to raise the interest rate on these loans, and again, the interest rate is paid for as part of the program.
The borrow doesn't have to pay this to one percent.
Uh we had announced it was going to be 50 basis points.
We've heard from some smaller community banks that their deposit costs, uh, even though the government's borrowing at three or four basis points.
This is on average a 90-day loan to make this attractive for community banks.
We've agreed to raise the interest rate.
Again, I encourage everybody to take out the paycheck protection program.
I'm also pleased to report the economic impact payments.
Uh I had previously said this would take us three weeks.
I'm pleased to report that within two weeks, the first payments will be direct deposit into taxpayers' account.
And as the president said, last night, the president authorized me to say that anybody that has Social Security recipients won't need to file a new tax return, and we'll have that.
If we don't have your direct deposit information, we'll be putting up a web portal so that you can put that up.
Uh it is a very large priority.
The President has made clear we want to get this money quickly into your hands.
I'm also pleased to report that we continue to work closely with the Federal Reserve.
We're in the process of designing a new facility that we call the Main Street lending facility.
We're also looking at facilities for state governments as well.
And I'm also pleased to report the employee retention credit.
It's up and running.
The first 10,000 dollars of wages, you get a 50 percent credit.
That's $5,000 per person.
For everyone who's kept someone, you can immediately get that money.
You can deduct it from what you owe the IRS immediately.
If you don't owe us money, you'll get a refundable tax credit.
So that is up and running.
I'm also pleased to report we have the program up and running.
We're taking applications from the airlines, from the cargo companies, and from national security companies.
So thank you very much, Mr. President.
Thank you, Steve.
For Giovanita or Steve, any questions, please?
Mr. Secretary, Chase Bank sent a letter to its business clients today saying that they don't have necessary guidance from the SBA, from the Treasury Department, to be able to accept loan applications starting tomorrow.
The need is clearly enormous.
But at least one major bank says they're not fully empowered yet to be able to help their own.
As I spoke to all the CEOs yesterday, I had a conference call with them.
We got very good input from them on what they needed.
As I said, people were working till four o'clock.
I believe we just put up the Federal Register with the new guidelines for lenders.
Um I've been assured that the banks will be in the process starting tomorrow.
Now, again, it's going to take a little bit of time, but we committed that this will be available tomorrow, and I encourage all companies go to SBA.com, go to Treasury.gov.
You can see the information you need immediately.
Mr. Secretary I just want to follow up with the small business owners.
A number of them saying that they were on that conference call and that there's a tremendous power struggle going on between the Treasury and SBA.
And that it's over processing forms is what they tell me that lenders are actually opting out because they can't make enough money to even service the loans.
So how are you going to make sure these small business owners get the capital they need to survive right now?
Well, first of all, I can assure you, Jovita's here.
Jovita used to work for me as the treasurer.
There's no power struggle.
Uh Jovia and our team, as I said, worked together till four o'clock in the morning.
It started working at 7 o'clock again.
We've made the form simpler.
And uh I can assure you at five points.
Uh I've told these bankers they should take all their traders and put them in the branches.
So it's there'll never be another opportunity to earn five points on a 90-day government, fully government guaranteed loan.
And those checks right into direct deposit IRS now saying it could take four to five months.
You're saying two weeks.
Let me be clear.
I don't know where you're let me be clear.
I don't know where you're hearing these things.
I told you this would be three weeks.
I'm now committing to two weeks.
We're delivering on our commitments.
The IRS, which I oversee, within two weeks, the first money won't be in people's accounts.
But the question is not about the first checks for folks who have direct deposit.
Sounds like those will go up pretty quickly.
The question is then for folks who don't have direct deposit, and there was a staff memo that was released by the House Ways and Weeds Committee today saying that that process could take up to five weeks.
That takes you to mid-August.
Is that how long is that?
That is not going to take five weeks.
Again, let me just say, when Obama sent out these checks, it took months and months and months.
I am assuring the American public they need the money now.
What we're going to do is again, if we have your information, you'll get it in two in within two weeks.
If you have Social Security, you'll get it very quickly after that.
If we don't have your information, you'll have a simple web portal, you'll upload it.
If we don't have that, we'll send you checks in the mail.
How many checks do you process a week, though?
How many checks can you again?
We can process a lot of checks, but we don't want to send checks.
In this environment, we don't want people to get checks.
We want to put money directly into their account.
All right, we'll continue our coverage for stations along the line in our Sean Hannity Show network.
Up until the exact second end of the show.
As the President's task force continues, I'll see everybody back here tomorrow.
Dr. Oz will be taking your call hours to the full hour tomorrow.
Any questions you have about coronavirus?
Hannity tonight at nine news information the mob won't give you.
Thank you for being with us.
We'll continue our coverage.
There have been some anecdotal reports that uh business people trying to get uh access to the online site to submit the applications.
The website's been crashing.
I've heard of webinars uh going offline because there are just too many people on them.
So how are you guys going to be ready, you know, tomorrow to get these loans out?
Uh we've brought in a lot of external resources at SBA and us to make sure there's additional capacity.
As I said, we heard a lot of good feedback yesterday to simplify this process.
Uh it's going to be up and running.
Now, let me just be clear, that doesn't mean everybody is going to get their loan tomorrow.
But the system will be up and running.
We encourage people over the next week, sign up.
You can go on right now, you can go on the web, see what information you need.
Very simple process.
Mr. Secretary, on a separate subject, have you been in touch with Leader McConnell and Speaker Pelosi about their differences right now about another stimulus package?
Uh I I I spoke to I've spoken to the leader, I've spoken to the speaker.
Um I've spoken to the president constantly.
Uh when the president's ready and thinks we should do the next stage, we're ready.
The president's talked about uh the issue of infrastructure since the campaign.
I think you know that's a big priority for HIP.
And uh again, if we run out of money on the small business program, we'll be back right away to Congress to get this increased.
Does the unemployment numbers today increase the urgency of doing a phase four?
Well, let me just say, you know, we're going through something that we've never done before, where the government has shut down big parts of the economy because of health reasons.
Our economy was in great shape.
Our companies were in great shape.
There are three ways that Americans are going to be protected.
For small business, they'll get paid by their business through this program.
Uh the direct deposit, there's also enhanced unemployment.
So we realize unfortunately there are a lot of companies that because they aren't in business over a short period of time.
Again, we're working with the states on enhanced unemployment.
And as soon as the medical professionals uh and the president give the the all clear uh we're we're gonna have a ton of liquidity.
We have about six trillion dollars.
This has never been done between us and the Fed to put into the economy to support American workers and American business.
In addition to the jobless numbers we saw today, phase three was signed before the social distancing guidelines were extended for another month.
So, what additional relief are you gonna give to Americans as they stay out of work for all these extra weeks?
I mean, what are you waiting for?
Well, we we in the designing this program, we thought that we had liquidity for about 10 weeks, and and that's what we've designed.
And uh again, I think the president's been very clear.
If we need to go back to Congress to support the American economy and American workers, we will be doing that.
Mr. Secretary.
Secretary Duchin, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has formed a select committee to oversee the distribution of recovery funds.
And she says she wants to make sure that those funds are wisely and efficiently spent.
Do you think that select committee is something that's necessary?
I don't.
I mean, you know, the uh both both parties wanted us to have oversight, wanted us to have transparency.
We have full transparency.
We have a oversight committee that uh the speaker gets to pick someone, the leader gets to pick someone.
I believe there's five people on it.
And uh again, that that committee will review the money that we're spending.
And again, we support full transparency.
Taxpayers should understand how we're gonna support this economy and jobs.
Mr. Secretary, uh the secret Senator McCowski has asked you to consider uh providing loans to energy companies under the CARES Act, the phase three bill.
Um what are your thoughts on that?
Would you consider providing those loans to energy companies?
So th thank you, and let me clarify.
I have very limited ability to do direct loans out of the Treasury.
I can do them for passenger airlines, cargo airlines, contractors, and national security companies.
Outside of that, we work with the Federal Reserve to create broad-based lending facilities, which we will do.
So our expectation is the energy companies, like all our other companies will be able to participate in broad-based facilities, whether it's the corporate facility or whether it's the main street facility, but not direct lending out of the Treasury.
A question for clarity about the direct uh payments to Americans.
For those folks who don't have bank accounts, who don't have direct deposit information on file with the IRS, how long would they have to wait uh for their check?
Well, for people who don't have direct deposit, again, we'll have an easy way they put it up.
We can on a rolling basis, I think you know, within a couple of days when they give it to us, we'll send the money out.
We do realize there are people who are underbanked.
Um and again, we're working with all the digital companies, prepaid debit cards, we're working with all of them to make sure we have a process that every American gets their money quickly.
This money does people no good if it shows up in four months, and we will deliver on that promise.
Then perhaps, not months.
Quickly is a matter of weeks and not months, that's correct.
Would you consider a moratorium on the Mr. Secretary?
One area where you can make direct loans is to the airlines.
How much do you expect that the Treasury Department and the Federal Government will be involved in overseeing the operations of airlines as it pertains to which routes get cut back, how much they operate, what they do about their employees, and the like.
So there are there are very strict requirements that's built into the bill.
Again, this was a bipartisan requirement.
One, anything we do with the airlines, they have to maintain substantially all of their employees.
So again, any money that we provide them will go to pay their employees.
We're gonna be working with the Secretary of Transportation.
There are requirements to maintain certain routes.
So again, we have a very clear process.
We've hired three outside advisors, we'll be financial advisors, and three law firms will be releasing that information shortly.
And uh, I want to thank them.
They're all working for basically very, very little money.
They couldn't work for free, so they've agreed to basically work for what they would sign up to work for charitable organizations.
So again, no big fees to bankers.
We got a great team of three lawyers and three financial advisors that will assist us.
Mr. Federkate, just to follow up on that, will you give us a list of the names of those people who are advising you when you release the information?
Of course we will.
We give you the names as well as the the contracts.
So again, names right now other than Black Roth?
So uh again, I'm happy to announce it's uh we have PG the PJT partners, okay, is gonna do the passenger airlines.
MOLIS and company is gonna do the cargo and contractors, and Perella Weinberg will handle the national security.
And there'll be three law firms which will announce shortly that we'll be working in each one of those sectors.
And again, let me just be clear.
We need to get this done quickly.
The airlines need money, we're gonna work very closely with the Department of Transportation and get this done quickly.
We've actually already received contracts from a lot of the people.
Uh again, there's guidance up on the web.
Full transparency, we've asked for applications.
Um On the airline issue again, uh, Speaker Pelosi and others have said that the government taking stakes in those airlines should not be a condition uh for the federal government to provide payroll support specifically.
Um what's your response to that?
I spoke to the speaker last night about that.
Um this was something that was highly negotiated between the Republicans and the Democrats.
The President was personally involved in this.
He was on the phone with us many times.
Mitch McConnell, Mark Meadows, Senators on both sides.
There is a specific line in the bill that says that the Secretary, meaning me, will determine proper compensation.
So this is not a bailout for the airlines.
And I will be working once we get our advice from our financial advisors, we get the applications from the airlines.
I'll be working very closely with the president, and we'll make sure that we strike the right balance, not a bailout.
