Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States. Pres. Trump thank you very much. It is a great honor to have everybody here. I know the press was not quite expecting this, so i appreciate your being able to attend. We have a terrific number of things and positive things to tell you tonight. I want to give an update on the economy. Economic health is vital to public health. That is why our strategy to kill the china virus is focused on protecting those at greatest risk, while allowing younger and healthy americans to safely return to work and school, very important. We added 1. 8 million jobs in july, exceeding the predictions, and in may. I will say the job growth we have seen over the last three months, 9. 3 million, is the single best in u. S. History. That is big news and great news. Over the past three months, the u. S. Has surpassed Market Expectations by a total of 12 million new jobs. Over the last three months the u. S. Has added 623,000 manufacturing jobs. Remember, you would need a magic wand to get manufacturing jobs, and we are getting them even in a pandemic, which is disappearing. It will disappear. 639,000 brandnew construction jobs. Over half of the new jobs are fulltime and wages are up by 4. 8 , which is terrific. Unemployment has fallen by nearly 30 since april. Think of that, 30 since april. Hispanic american unemployment has decreased by 32 . Jobs held by africanamericans, that were hit especially hard by the shutdowns, incredibly hard, increased by nearly one million over the past three months. That is also a job record. Africanamericans it is a job record. We must ensure that the progress continues. My administration has enacted over 3 trillion since china allowed the virus to infect the world. We contributed 3 trillion. My administration continues to work in good faith to reach an agreement with democrats in congress to extend protections against evictions. A terrible thing happens with evictions, not fair. It was not their fault we were infected with this disease from china. And get relief to families. Tragically, nancy pelosi and Chuck Schumer continue to insist on radical leftwing policies that have nothing to do with the china virus. Nothing to do with it at all. So you have a virus that comes in, and you have people in congress that do not want to help our people. If democrats continue to hold this critical relief hostage, i will act under my authority as president to get americans the relief they need. What we are talking about is deferring the payroll tax for months until the end of the year and i can extended at a certain period. Hopefully i will be here to do the job. We have been doing the job like nobody could. Nobody would, actually. We are going to have the payroll tax go until the end of the year and it will be retroactive to july 1. We will go back to july 1, and payroll tax will go to the end of the year. It may be extended. We will enhance Unemployment Benefits through the end of the year. Unemployment benefits will be that is a big one, will be brought out to the end of the year. And deferred student loan payments and Deferred Interest until further notice. Students paying student loans, in many cases not allowed to go back into their colleges. Extend the eviction moratorium. We will be extending that so people are not evicted. It is not their fault. We had a lengthy discussion this morning with president macron of france concerning numerous subjects, but in particular, the catastrophic event which took place in beirut, lebanon. Horrible, horrible event. At 3 00 p. M. I spoke with president aoun of lebanon to inform him three large aircraft are on the way, fully loaded, fully loaded, with medical supplies, food, water and many other things. Also, first responders, doctors and nurses are on their way. This was an event like the world has not seen in a long time. Horrible event. We will have a Conference Call with president macron and leaders of lebanon and leaders from various parts of the world. Everyone wants to help. People and a lot of they all went to help. The u. S. Is with authorities on the ground right now in lebanon to identify further health and humanitarian needs and we will offer further assistance. We are working closely with their government and leaders. On behalf of the United States, i want to extend our condolences to all of the families. Much larger numbers of families than anyone would have thought. All of those families who lost loved ones, relatives, friends, in this horrible tragedy. We stand firmly with the people of lebanon and offer our full support through this difficult time. We have not seen anything like this in a long time. As you know, earlier this week, i met with American Workers at the Tennessee Valley authority, who had been laid off by the authority. As you know, this is a form of utility that has been around a long time, since fdr. The head person, not controlled by government, but it is semipublic, gets paid the highest salary in the world of government. Gets 8 million a year. That is not a bad amount of money. 8 million a year. We are not accepting that, even though we are not the ones that appoint him or her, in this case him. We are not accepting someone being paid 8 million a year. This has been going on many years. We will do something about that and are already in negotiations right now, including possible termination. They and hundreds of their fit fellow american tech workers at the tba were being terminated from their positions on top of all of this, and on top of the 8 million salary and a chief of staff who makes much more than 1 million a year. On top of all that, they were being terminated from their positions, these incredible people, in order to train the lower cost Foreign Workers imported to replace them. How is that for a long . Aw . For a l this was set up originally to create jobs and economic development. And now they are getting fired and are supposed to train people for you get a much lower salary. It is crazy. This was a grave injustice. I fired the chairman of the board in response. On friday i fired the chairman of the board, along with one other board member. That is the one thing we have, the right to fire board members. I made it clear that if they did not swiftly reverse course, i would continue with these firings of the board members. We just were informed that they have agreed to change course totally. Today i am proud to announce a major victory for the workers of tennessee and kentucky and other areas that are covered, great states. That the leadership of the tva has canceled the layoffs and given hundreds of American Workers their jobs back. They are being rehired as we speak. In this administration, well americanwo rules, buy and hire american. You cannot fire all our workers andhire workers from faraway parts of the world, especially when they have to train it the people. They can never train them as good as you have, and they love the tva. A lot of people in the office the other day, a lot of media covering it. They love the Tennessee Valley authority. So proud to work for it, but it happened and it is a terrible thing. Now they are going to get their jobs back. They will all be getting their jobs back. Nearly every nation on earth continues to combat the virus. The number of countries are seeing a surge in new cases, including japan, the philippines, major parts of europe. Cases continue to surgeon latin america surge in latin america. They more than doubled in recent days. Latin america is doing very little testing, they are not equipped to do that. In the u. S. , more than 80 of jurisdictions report declining cases. We are doing very well. You do not hear that often from the media, but we are doing well. We have a large country, complex country. More than half of americas counties reported less than 20 cases last week. More than half of americas counties report fewer than 20 cases last week. We have to remain vigilant. We are doing very well, but we have to remain vigilant. Nationally, the amount of the percentage of emergency room cases with coronavirus symptoms is down to almost half what it was in july. The Southern States that were strong hotspots not long ago, arizona, texas, florida, show significant improvement, including increased availability of hospital beds. Arizona has the smallest number of coronavirus inpatients since mid june. The governor was up and we had a great meeting, governor ducey. The meeting was terrific. Since mid june. They are doing well and it is heading down rapidly. Texas is stabilizing and improving rapidly with progress in the rio grande valley. Other communities along the border with mexico that had shown the biggest increases in hospitalizations and deaths. Florida is also stabilizing its statewide positive test rate. Fromntinues to decrease 13 to 8 this week. Florida has done very well. It is heading down quite rapidly. Even miami, which was the hottest spot in florida, is heading downward. But florida has done very well. Texas has done very well rapidly and arizona has done incredibly well. Arizona has a rapid drop. New jersey and new york remain stable with less than 1 of emergency room visits due to the china virus, the illness took a devastating toll on both states. While both states really took the brunt of the infection earlier this year, thankfully, we have not seen a resurgence. They have been doing a good job, everybody working hard, both governors working hard. We are in touch with them, supplying them with a lot of supplies, if needed. They are needing very little right now. They are in good shape. We will continue to monitor the cases throughout this crisis. My administration provided extraordinary support of people, equipment, medical supplies, to the people of new jersey, new york, and every state. We are carefully monitoring californias Central Valley as well as san diego, los angeles, sacramento and san francisco, which are starting to stabilize and go down. We are carefully watching regions from increasing cases, including boston and chicago as well as the midwest. It is vital all americans Work Together to protect the vulnerable. For this reason, we have delivered vast amounts of protective equipment and testing supplies to Nursing Homes across america. We are focused very much on the elderly, especially when they have heart problems or diabetes. Diabetes is a big problem. Approximately half of all deaths have occurred in Nursing Homes and longterm care facilities. That is an incredible number, half of all deaths have been in Nursing Homes and longterm care facilities. I met with owners and representatives of Nursing Homes. They are very vigilant. They are doing a very good job now. They have done something i think is special. They are doing very well in terms of the virus, working very hard, a lot of forces came together and hit the Nursing Homes very hard, but the representatives of Nursing Homes, and in some cases the ownership, are working very hard. The federal government and private sector have delivered more than 9 million n95 masks, 3 masks, 3 million face shields, 20 million gallons gowns andion 668 million gloves to new jersey alone. Think of that. We provided 3. 4 billion to the state of new jersey in emergency relief funding. We happen to be in new jersey right now, so those are great numbers. The governor is working very hard. Governor murphy is doing a good job. We are working very closely with him. We also provided nearly 5 billion to new jersey hospitals and health care facilities. And through the paycheck action Paycheck Protection Program that you all know so well, we provided 23 billion to support more than 250,000 new jersey Small Businesses. A lot of the Small Businesses you see that are opening and going to do well, they are there because of what we did with paycheck protection. On therapeutics and vaccines updates, three vaccine candidates have moved into phase three trials, years ahead of schedule. We have done wonders with the fda. I want to thank the fda, dr. And all of the great people there, dr. Hahn. We have phase three trials already going on, which most people would have said impossible to think about. Pfizer announced it will create it will manufacture gileads drug remdesivir. Last week alone, my administration procured and distributed over 120,000 vials of remdesivir, enough to treat more than 19,000 patients. Plausible treatments continue to show incredibly encouraging results, really incredible what is going on. If you can go to a blood bank if have had this disease and beat it, go to a blood bank and donate. That would be a tremendous help. The United States is only 5 of the worlds population, but we have conducted over 25 of the worlds testing. Think of that. Any Global Analysis of confirmed cases must really take this into account, because we are constantly showing cases, cases, cases are up. The reason cases are up, we are doing a lot of testing, more than anyone else. Close to 65 million tests, where other countries have done very little testing. They test people if they get sick, going to the hospital. They will test certain people. We are doing tremendous testing and especially at the Nursing Homes. Over the last week, the testing turnaround times have declined significantly as major commercial labs have begun to pull samples. We have been able to send out many more tests, the fiveminute to 15 minute result tests. Testing samples from multiple patients in one batch is something we are focusing on in the not so distant future. If you figure it takes a day to send and receive and a day at the laboratory, that is three days right there. The other tests you can have in five to 15 minutes. I will pursue a major executive order requiring Health Insurance companies to require all preexisting conditions for all customers. That is a big thing. I have always been very strongly in favor, we have to cover preexisting conditions. We will be pursuing a major executive order requiring Health Insurance companies to cover all preexisting conditions for all of its customers. This has never been done before, but it is time the people of our country are properly represented and taken care of. This follows a series of executive orders to lower drug prices and Prescription Drug prices. Significantly, we have the only year, last year, where drug prices went down, in 51 years. We are talking about going down to a level nobody thought possible, even though the Drug Companies are running very big ads. That is usually a reason they are not too happy, but they have made a lot of money over the years. The prices go up, it is not fair. This includes a landmark executive order requiring companies to charge americans no more than they charge the foreign countries. They have to charge americans no more than they charge foreign countries. That means our country cannot be charged more. If germany gets drugs at a very low price and we are paying many times that price in the u. S. Because we pay for all of the research and development, promotion and other things, we will get what is called a favored nations clause, so that the United States, which is the number one purchaser of drugs, by far, in the world. We have other countries that are bigger, if you look at india, china. We have countries that are bigger, but not even close in terms of ordering drugs. We are the number one country in the world. If somebody has a drug, in many cases it comes from a plant, the same plant. It is the same pill, same medicine or medication. Whatever the lowest country charges if germany charges . 10 and we charge two dollars, and i only use germany as an example, then we get that for . 10. What is going to happen, that is going to go up a little bit and ours is going to go down a whole lot. Big pharma is not happy. For too long we have been forced to subsidize cheaper drug prices in countries, to a level nobody believed. Nobody talked about it. Everybody wondered, how come every president says they will lower drug prices and never do . They go through the roof. Administration, they were skyrocketing. That is biden. Biden will not be able to do it. He has no clue. So what is happening, we will be working to get rid of all the subsidy to foreign lands and we will give essentially all of the benefits that frankly they have as great negotiators, those benefits will go to our people. It is called a favored nations clause. You can look it up and see. Nobody has had the courage to institute it because it is a very big step. But it is something that will drive drug prices down 50 , 60 , maybe 70 . Numbers that are unbelievable. I also signed an executive order stopping middlemen from taking advantage of medicare patients by charging higher prices to them and pocketing the discount for themselves. These are some of the richest people in the world. Everyone talked about middlemen. I have heard of them for years on Prescription Drug prices. I guess you would have to say to be politically correct, middlemen and middlewomen. Say what you want about the Drug Companies, at least they produce a product, the medication. These people make billions and billions of dollars. I dont know who they are, but they are very rich. They wont be so rich anymore. This executive order requires this 30 billion in discounts to go straight to the american patients. The middlemen will be knocked out and i will lose a lot of friends, even though i have no idea who these people are. On opioids, i am pleased to announce my administration invested an additional 100 million to fight Opioid Crisis in rural america. In the midst of the china virus pandemic, we are fighting to end the Opioid Epidemic and we have done very well. Prior to the virus, we were down 20 . That means if you have 80 , that is