President Trump Appoints VP Pence As Coronavirus Czar, Stocks Slide
Update (1845): In his long-awaited press conference, President Trump defended the White House’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, insisted that he would accept whatever amount of crisis-response funds approved by Congress and appointed VP Mike to be his “Coronavirus Czar”.
In the middle of Trump’s presser, the Washington Post dropped a bombshell report, claiming that the latest US coronavirus case has been confirmed in Northern California, and that it was the first case with no clear path of origin. That case would be the US’s 16th.
Trump started with an update on the 15 confirmed US cases that weren’t infected aboard the Diamond Princess or in Wuhan, claiming that 8 of 15 have returned, only 1 is still in the hospital, and 5 have fully recovered.
On the subject of the emergency spending package, Trump said that “if Congress wants to give us more, we’ll take it.”
“We’re requesting 2.5. Some Republicans would like us to get 4 and some Democrats want 8.5,” he said.
Though he added that “hopefully we won’t need too much because we’ve done a tremendous job,” Trump said.
In one of the funnier moments, Trump remarked about the flu: “The flu kills between 25,000 to 60,000 people a year – that was shocking to me.”
The president also stressed America’s readiness for anything.
“We’re very, very ready for this, for anything, whether it’s going to be a breakout with larger proportions or whether we stay at that very low level,” Trump said.
Moving on to the subject of a vaccine, Trump said he expected one would be finished “fairly rapidly.”
“We have a lot of great quarantine facilities we’re rapidly developing a vaccine and speaking to a the doctors we think this is something we can develop fairly rapidly.”
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