“To the people that have lost someone … I don’t sleep at night thinking about it … But at the same time, I have to get this enemy defeated, and that’s what we’re doing … I want to be, aside from everything else, and I’m going to use a term, and some people love it and some people hate it, but I love it, I want to be a cheerleader for our country.” -President Donald Trump via The Epoch Times
Caitlin Burke : May 6, 2020 CBN News
[CBN News] President Trump says it’s time for the focus of the country to shift. His administration is now working to find a way to get the economy back up and running—while also protecting people. (Image: Flickr-The White House /Public Domain)
“I think that as far as the task force, Mike Pence and the task force have done a great job, but we’re now looking at a little bit of a different form and that form is safety and opening and we’ll have a different group probably set up for that,” President Trump told the media while touring a Honeywell factory in Arizona. His first trip out of Washington since March.
Administration officials say the task force will probably end in late May or early June, but doctors Birx and Fauci will continue to advise the president.
“It’s the balance of something. That’s a very difficult choice, how many deaths, how much suffering are we willing to accept to get back some form of normality sooner rather than later,” Dr. Anthony Fauci recently said during an interview with CNN.
Some 38 states are now in the process of reopening. Among those, COVID cases are on the rise in at least 19 of them.
A model from the University of Washington predicts the number of deaths could increase to nearly 135,000 by the beginning of August. Still, in an exclusive interview with ABC News, the president questioned the accuracy of that kind of model and expressed confidence in his decision to move forward with reopening.
“We’re going to practice social distancing, we’re going to be washing hands, we’re going to be doing a lot of the things that we’ve learned to do over the last period of time. And we have to get our country back,” Trump said.
The president expressed sympathy for the families who have lost someone to the virus and told ABC’s David Muir that the elderly need to continue to take extra precautions.
“I want to say: ‘I love you,’ I want to say that ‘we’re doing everything we can.’ I also want to say that ‘we’re trying to protect people over 60 years old. We’re trying so hard,’ and—everything I’ve said today—I’d like to preface it by saying if you’re 60 years old and especially if you’re 60 or even less than that and you’ve had a heart condition or you’ve had diabetes or a problem of any kind—it seeks out problems,” Trump said.
The president also cited progress on the administration’s push to get a vaccine ready by the end of the year. As to opening up the economy and getting people back to work, Trump is predicting a turnaround and a strong third-quarter.