Lets do here and there next, okay . Were all set. You talked about your meeting together with Governor Cuomo you mentioned. Is there a reason hes coming down here . I dont know. We believe it or not, we get along. He was very generous in yesterday in particular. He did a, quote, phenomenal deal. I dont know if anybody wrote that, but he said that and i appreciate it, but oats not about me but its about these people and the thousands behind mike and the admiral and all the other people working with us. And you see i dont understand when i see polling and Approval Ratings for the job, i mean this group should get a 95, they really should. And were really helping the governors a lot, and the governors call me, the ones i know or the republicans and they say its incredible the job youre doing. Again, not me, the job this group is doing. And you sit here and i just am
watching from the corner, and im just saying, boy, its incredible stuff when you watch the general get up, the general and talk about boom, boom, boom, you dont see that. You dont see that when you hear the admiral speak about the testing how good it is, and yet people dont like to say but remember it was all about ventilators a month ago, and then we fixed it. You dont hear about ventilators. You havent asked about ventilators recently. Whats going on . What about ventilators . Were helping other countries now because they cant have theyre very hard to come by, and they take a long time to make like years. Its incredible the job theyve done, our people have done and also private companies have done. You know, you talk about the act, we dont like to use it unless we have to. A lot of times just the fact you have it gets you everything you need. So we dont want to embarrass any of the companies, but we have used it on a number of occasions but it work and it
worked just as well before you have to use it. And i dont want to embarrass them because theyve done a great job. Please, go ahead. No, i think right behind you. I promised. I cannot tell a lie, so well get you next. Well, thank you so much, mr. President. My question i have two questions. The first one is on testing. You talked about the idea first it was ventilators and now its testing. You seem to maybe possibly implying personal testing is a personal attack. Can you explain given that the access to testing has been an issue for a long time . Theres bipartisan outcries still today theres not enough testing. Why do you think its a personal attack on you . Well, its not bipartisan. Its mostly partisan, but more importantly than mostly partisan, its incorrect. You have the experts look at these maps. You have the maps with so many different locations. In the case as an example Governor Hogan, he didnt really
know. It was very obvious to any of those listening on the call today even though you werent supposed to be on it, im sure some of you were or representatives were. He really didnt know about the federal laboratories. Would you say thats correct, mike . He didnt know. And mike doesnt like to get into this stuff. Hes less controversial than i am, but he didnt know about it. And if he did know about it, he would are have been happy. Weve done a good job in testing. With that being said we have tests coming out perhaps in the next two weeks that will blow the whole industry away. A lot of people love the abbot test, so do i i. The abbot test is great because its boom, they touch, they put it in and five minutes you have the problem is that doesnt do massive numbers like the big machine. But the big machine takes a day, takes a day and a half, you know, with delivery and everything else. But we have tremendous testing, tremendous testing capability. Remember this, weve testing
more than any country in the world by far. In fact, i think i read where if you add up every other country in the world weve tested more. But remember this were dealing in politics, were dealing a thing called november 3rd of this year. Do you know what it represents . You know better than anybody in the room. November 3rd of this year, its called the president ial election. No matter what i do, no matter where we go, no matter how well we do, no matter what, if i came up with a tablet, youd take it and this plague is gone. Theyd say trump did a terrible job because thats their sound bite. Thats the political sound bite. They know the great job weve done. But with all of that being said, and also there is a thing that somebody could talk to if they want, but i dont want to bore you with it. Not everybody believes we should do so much testing. Were talking about maximum. The reason democrats and some others maybe because they dont know, they want maximum because they want to be able to criticize, because its almost impossible to get to the maximum number and yet weve been able to do it already. But with that and youll be seeing this i think over the next couple of weeks or sooner, we have it a test if it comes out itll revolutionize the whole world of testing. I dont view it as a personal at all. What i do say its something not fair to thousands of people that have done such a good job. The second question i have about your language and how you approached the coronavirus at the beginning. I interviewed someone who says his family got sick, they went to a funeral in midmarch and they said mainly because the president wasnt taking it seriously. If the president had a mask on and he was saying stay home then i would have stayed home, but he said his family members were sick because they were listening to you. Do you feel like maybe
downplaying the virus thats what people got people sick in. A lot of people love trump, right . And guess im here for a reason. To the best of my knowledge i won, and i think were going to win again. I think were going to win in a landslide. But just so you understand youre talking about march, right . And yet excuse me, excuse me i understand. And yet in january, a certain date. You know the date better than i do, we put on a ban on china where china cant come in. And before march we put in a ban on europe where europe cant come in. So how can you say i wasnt taking it seriously . You know, i put on a ban on china before anybody in this country died, i put on a ban. So you tell me, nancy pelosi was having she wanted to have a street party in china town in San Francisco at the end of february. Thats a month later. And then they tell me its only a political talking point, but you feed into it because youre
too good a reporter to let that happen. Really, you are a good reporter. Youre too good of a reporter to let that happen. At the end of january i put on a ban. People that were in that room will tell you, i think there were 21 people, i was the only one in the whole room that wanted to do it, fortunately i was the one that counted for that purpose. We put on a ban because i was reading bad things about china. World Health Organization should have told us, but i was reading it with or without them. They didnt even have to be there, but tried to cover up for china, world health covered up for china. But you cant say this, look, i put on a ban, in other words i stopped china from coming to the United States. I stopped europe from coming into the United States long before the march date that youre talking about. So people should say i acted very early. That was a very hard thing to do. Doing that was a very hard thing. I didnt want to do that, but i did it because i thought and dr. Fauci said that by doing it
president trump saved tensf thousands of lives. So i did take it very seriously. There were rallies in february and march i dont know about rallies. I really dont know about rallies. I know one thing i havent left the white house in months except for a brief moment to give a wonderful ship the comfort. Did i hold a rally . Let me till you in january when i did this you had virtually no cases and no deaths and yet i put it on. So how could i not . Nancy pelosi is holding a street fair, she wants a street fair in San Francisco in china town to prove you know what the purpose of it was to prove there was no problem. Many other politicians did the same thing and wanted to prove while i was of course not. No, no, no. People are amazed how early i
acted and where did act early. With that being said its very hard to say lets close down the greatest economy in the history of the world. I had to close down, and a everybody else that works with me and close to 350 Million People built the greatest economy in the world, best stock market numbers, best numbers in virtually any category, even good manufacturing numbers. Even great manufacturing numbers. And you know what, i did that and somebody walked into my office and said, sir, youre going to have to close down the academy. Youre going have to close the country. What you know what i say to you, were going to rebuild it and better and its going to go faster than people think. I built it once, ill it is a second time. Please . Mr. President , thank you. Go ahead. We have going back to the topic of friendship and bipartisanship americans with the exception of pelosi, schumer
and even romney americans have seen an unprecedented chapter of bipartisanship and cooperation on a political landscape. On a personal note what has been the most significant signal that your relationship with democrats have changed for the good of america . I think its a great question because there is bipartisanship. Look, were getting the paycheck plan, its already 350 billion was approved essentially unanimously, and we have another 250, which i think youre going to find out is going to be a higher number than that. I wont say it now, but its going to end up being more than 250 billion, and is going to Small Businesses and going to workers. And these are really bipartisan plans. Its a great thing thats happening. So i think the fact were able to do all of this in a bipartisan way is great. Now, the tax cuts the republicans did we had no help
from the democrats so you cant say thats bipartisan, but this whole thing getting our country back, and, you know, nancy pelosi shes been very nasty. She wasted a lot of time on an impeachment hoax. It was a total hoax, went nowhere. And that was not good. And schumer i guess the same thing and he accepted it and he didnt do very well with it. But that was not appropriate. That was a bad thing for our country, but it was fine. I understand the game. They have a little bit of a majority, so they say lets do something and lets try and stir it up. But they wasted a year. We could have been doing things that would have been great for our country. They could have been looking into china. They should have been looking into china as an example. A lot of people are blaming the democrats for waesting all that time because it was during that time period as you know it was
fomenting. I wouldnt say were going to set records throughout the world, but things are happening that are very good. The country is coming together. And ill tell you what, the people are coming together. The people are really coming together. I think youre going to find our country is much more unified. I do think that the presds, ts, media foments a lot of this anger, foments tremendous anger. Ill be asked a t trueneda trem hostile question but a lot of these questions asked by Certain Networks are so hostile and theres no reason for it. Theres no reason for it. We are in a war. This a world war ii, this is world war i, where by the way the war essentially ended because of a plague. That was one of the worst ever, they lost almost 100 million
people, but were in a big war. And ill say one thing about because i think its important the last person i did it early, but i was the last person that wanted to close down one of the great economic you cant call it an experiment but everything in life is an experiment. But one of the great economic stories in history. Im the last person that wanted to do it, but we did the right thing. Because if we didnt do it you would have had a Million People, a million and a half people, maybe 2 Million People dead. Now, were going toward 50 im hearing or 60,000 people. One is too many. I always say it. One is too many, but were going for 50 or 60,000 people. Thats at the lower, as you know the low number was supposed to be 100,000 people. We could end up at 50 to 60. Okay, its horrible. If we didnt do what we did, we would have had, i think a Million People, maybe two Million People, maybe more than that. And you look theres one country in particular that decided lets wing it, lets just keep going, they are being inundated with death. Now, if you take a look at some of the hospitals where one of them i knew growing up in queens and im looking at the bodies laying in hallways, being brought into refrigerator trucks. These massive trucks, bodies going in. Multiply that times ten, its not sustainable. And many of the people that have this theory, oh, lets you know, maybe we could have gone right through it, i was somebody that would have loved to have done that, but it wouldnt have been sustainable. You cant lose a Million People. Thats more than thats almost double what we lost in the civil war, i use that as a
guide, civil war 600,000 people died. So its not sustainable. But it could have been much more than a Million People. If you took a number and cut it in half and half again youd end up at 500,000 people, okay if you want to make a very conservative guesstimate. 500,000 people is not acceptable. Is that correct a sort of analogy . So i see it all the time. But people i have Great Respect for. Well, we could have done this, we could have done and remember this when we say 50 and they compare 50 to the average of the flu, over a ten year period thats a lot, who would think that . But were not talking about with the flu. Thats just it just goes. Were not locking ourselves in our units. Were not locking ourselves in our apartments and not moving and not touching anybody and just saying the world. In this case we are and were
still going to lose between 50 and 60. But if we kept it going on a normal basis which is really the only standard you can compare to with the flu, because that was a normal baesz you get into an airplane, travel to floor, go to texas, go wherever youre going. But in this case if we didnt do anything the number wouldnt be 50 to 60,000, the number would be a Million People dead, a million five, a million two, maybe 700,000. It would have been a number like that. And the number is so important. You cant compare because ill tell you what the people of this country what theyve done the way theyve lived its not great. Its terrible. Maybe the first three days then all of a sudden you see whats going on, they want to get going. And i get that fully. But i just say this. If we would have done that we would have lost anywhere from a million to more than 2 million
people. Now, with all of the death that weve seen in 50 or 60,000 people heading toward right now its at 40, but 50 or 60,000 people, probably over 50, but thats with our guard up. We took it down and say okay were going to keep this open, we would have lost millions of people. Can you imagine . Look how bad it looks now when you look at the bodies, when you look at long island in new york where they have the mass grave and all the things you see, can you imagine if we had the guard down, we didnt do anything and we just said lets ride it out . It would not have been sustainable in any way, it would have been an atrocity. So weve done the right thing. Weve really done the right thing. And the people that have worked so hard and dangerously again i say it but i watch those doctors and nurses and medical
people running into those hospitals and they dont even have their gear on. Forget about whether its great gear or not, and were bringing in the best gear in the world, but theyre running in with open everything, and i mean the job theyre like warriors, the job theyre doing. But if we didnt do the moves we made, you would have had a million, a million and a half, 2 Million People dead. So multiply that times 50 youre talking about you would have had 10 to 25 times more people dead than all the people weve been watching. Thats not acceptable. The 50,000 is not acceptable, its so horrible. But can you imagine multiplying that out by 20 or more . Its not acceptable. So its a very good question. I appreciate it. Well see you tomorrow. Well see you tomorrow. All right, good evening. Im erin burnett. You have been watching members of the Coronavirus Task force
giving the latest update on the pandemic. You were just listening to the president there. And this comes as the president is making the argument it was right to do the shutdown or the death toll could be 10 to 25 times more than it is now, comes as georgias governor is just announcing hes ready to go ahead of the white house and is doing so, a very aggressive plan to reopen the economy there, gyms, salons, massage therapists can reopen this week even as georgia reports hundreds of new cases. Tonight the death toll in the United States has doubled in the past week. Now more than 41,800 people. John king, jim acosta, daniel dale, dr. Sanjay gupta join me now. Sanjay, i want to start with you just because the president wez laying out this case. And one thing he was basically saying obviously this would be 10 to 25 times worse if the shutdowns werent happening. Im asking a question looking back in history whether or not they happened earlier and how much better this could be than
the situation were in now. Were almost at 42,000 people in this country who have died in the past month or so from the coronavirus, and theyre still sticking by numbers by august it will only be 50,000 to 60,000. Does that make sense to you . Those numbers, they dont make sense. And weve been following these models very closely, and, you know, i think up until now the models sort of tracks. I cant remember exactly what the university of washington model had around this time, but i think it sort of tracks. As you mentioned the numbers doubled, erin, over the last week. The numbers of deaths, you know, i think they predicted around 63 or 64,000 by august 4th, and were in april 20th right now. So i think its a little bit hard to reconcile that. Obviously different places in the country have different sort of waves and different peaks as people have described it. So we are going to see numbers
come down in some places but maybe go up in other places. It doesnt really track right now going out still another couple, three m