Remarks by President Trump in Press Briefing | September 16, 2020 | Eastern North Carolina Now

    In other words, I said, "No, I want a big chunk of that money to go to the United States government because we made it possible. And the lawyers come back to me and they say, "Well, there's no way of doing that." You know why? Because nobody has ever heard of that before. Nobody has ever said that before. Nobody has ever said, "Well, we'll approve the deal, but we want a lot of money to go to the government because by approving the deal, we're making the deal valuable." They've never heard of that before. Okay? Can you believe that? Right? Hard to believe.

    Yeah, please. Go ahead.

    Q Just a quick follow-up on TikTok. You had said earlier that it was really important to you that a U.S. company buy TikTok. And according to the proposal submitted by ByteDance, ByteDance would keep a majority stake and Oracle would have a minority stake.

    THE PRESIDENT: Well, we're going to find out about that. We're looking into that from the standpoint of ByteDance. We don't like that. I mean, just conceptually, I can tell you I don't like that. That has not been told to me yet. That has been reported, but it hasn't been told to me. It could be very accurate reporting for a change. So if that's the case, I'm not going to be happy with that - assuming that ByteDance is China, which I think it probably is.

    Yeah. Yeah, in the back, please.

    Q Thanks, Mr. President. Bill Barr told prosecutors that he wants to charge violent demonstrators with sedition. And you told Judge Jeanine that if there's violent demonstrations on Election Night, "We'll put them down very quickly if they do that. Look, it's called the Insurrection." So I'm wondering why you want to use that kind of rhetoric when there's such a volatile (inaudible).

    THE PRESIDENT: Well, the question was asked to me about if you have violent demonstrations: Yes, we will put it down very, very quickly if there is. Absolutely.

    Q Are you making plans -

    THE PRESIDENT: And I think the American public wants to see that.

    Yeah. OAN, please.

    Q What preparations are you making for violence on Election Night?

    THE PRESIDENT: OAN. Yeah, please. Go ahead.

    Q Thank you, Mr. President. With regards -

    THE PRESIDENT: No, just to finish - look, if there's any kind of demonstration or violence, there will be nothing that interferes with this project - product - this - this vote. There's going to be nothing.

    The biggest problem we have right now are the ballots. Millions of ballots going out; that's the biggest problem. When you talk about other countries, whether it's China, Russia, or many others that get mentioned, they're in a much better position with these paper ballots to do something than they would ever be under the old system. And that's our biggest problem.

    Our biggest threat to this election is governors from opposing parties controlling ballots, millions of ballots. To me, that's a much bigger threat than foreign countries, because much of the stuff coming out about foreign countries turned out to be untrue.

    What is - what is true is that many elections have taken place over the last year and a half, using this ballot system. They've been off by 5 percent, 10 percent, 15 percent; I think I read one at 40 percent - 40 percent. And these are small, easy-to-control elections.


    This whole ballot system where you can send it in, and it's not even requested - we're not talking about it solicited; they're unsolicited ballots, and they're sent in - is very dangerous for our country. And you know who knows that better than anybody? The Democrats. Look at what happened in Manhattan, where they had this kind of an election, and it was so fraudulent that it should never have been allowed to be called.

    We could have 5, 10, 15, 20 percent off; we could have more than that. The ballots will be stolen. Who knows where they're going. Who knows where they're coming from. It's not just the counting of the ballots, which - by the way, which will take forever. It'll take forever. You think November 3rd? You might not have - I guess, at a certain point, it goes to Congress. You know, at a certain point, it goes to Congress. You know that.

    This is a disgrace. This is being done on purpose. They know it's no good. They know it's - it's going to be fraudulent. It's going to be fraud all over the place. Who's getting the ballots? Who's sending the ballots? They have people saying you don't need a verified signature. This is a serious threat to our democracy, and the Democrats know that.

    All we're asking: If you solicit the ballot - you go through a process - you ask for a ballot because you can't be there for a large number of reasons, for whatever re- - I'm doing it myself. I won't be able to be in Florida. You solicit and they send it back. You do it, and you send it back. That's a process that you go through. And it's pretty secure. I use the word "pretty" secure. I guess nothing is foolproof.

    But what's pretty close to what - the most foolproof thing, the thing that really works is you go to the ballot box. It's going to be very safe. I think by that time, COVID will be even lower. It's going to be very low. It's going to be a very safe process. We did it during World War One. We did it during World War Two.

    The biggest threat to this election is these unsolicited ballots sent out by the millions, controlled by governors like in Nevada, who is a political person - very political, far beyond being governor - where they tried to stop you from making a speech, unsuccessfully, but we had to move around a lot, had to move quickly.

    So the same guy that tried to stop you from making free speech outside - outside, not inside; outside - they forced us inside because of what they did - but outside. This is the guy that's controlling ballots.

    Then you look at Pennsylvania. You look at other places. It is a big threat. And as far as China is concerned and Russia and they say North Korea, they say Iran, they say places. Who knows? Who knows? But they say all these different places.

    They can make forgeries of these ballots. They can do things that will blow your mind. And the Democrats know it's wrong. They know it's going to end up being a disaster. Just take a look at what's happened. Take a look at what's happened over the last year with this same kind of thing, except in a very small setting with very few ballots going out, so that's much easier; not 53 to 80 million going out. A very small number.

    And you know what's happened? Fraud like you've never seen. Missing ballots. Ballots that never showed up. Ballots with bad signatures. Ballots with no signatures. And in the case of Nevada, they don't even want verification of the signature. It's a disgrace.

    Now, the hope for our nation is: It's before judges. In Pennsylvania, it's before judges. In Nevada, it's before judges. In other places it's before federal judges. And hopefully they'll do what they did the other day in Pennsylvania where we had a great victory.

    Open up your state. It's unconstitutional to close it. Because what they were doing is closing it, and they're closing it for political reasons. It'll open on November 4th. It'll open up right after the election. But they want people to - they want our numbers to be as bad as possible, but the problem is our numbers are so good with or without various states opening up. With or without.

    But we had a big legal victory, as you know, three days ago. A federal judge told them to open up their state. "It's unconstitutional what you're doing." That's in the case of Pennsylvania.

    Now the big cases are going to be the cases on these unsolicited ballots. And we'll see what happens.

    All right. OAN, please.

    Q Thank you, Mr. President. On the grounds that the Chinese Communist Party has been using slave labor in Xinjiang, your administration has imposed a limited ban on certain products coming out of Xinjiang, stopping short of a full region ban. What is your response to the Chinese Communist Party's spokespeople who are saying that this is an outright lie. Xinjiang does not have forced labor.


    And number two, have allies expressed interest in standing with this administration in taking action against forced labor imposed by the Communist Party?

    THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, we don't want to see that. We've been very strong on that. We're getting reports in. Over the next two or three days, we'll know very accurately what the story is, and we'll then take action one way or the other.

    Go ahead.

    Q Yes, I just wanted to ask you about the WTO's recent ruling against the United States over $200 billion in tariffs on China. Should the U.S. remain part of the WTO?

    THE PRESIDENT: Well, I have real questions about it. Look, the U.S. - we just won a seven-and-a-half-billion-dollar lawsuit, which - nobody used to sue before I came along, you know - or they used to lose them every single time. Now they haven't been losing them.

    But we're getting reports on the WTO. It's - it's not good. Never been good to us. The WTO, as far as I'm concerned, was created to suck money and jobs out of the United States to the benefit of China and other countries - that's what my opinion is - whether it was created or it just turned out to be that way.

    But the World Trade Organization has been not good for the United States. It's been good for everybody else, but it's not been good. It was a method, in my opinion, of taking advantage of the United States. So we're looking into what happened, and we'll let - we'll get back to you fast.

    Q Two questions. One, you said you spoke with Dr. Redfield earlier, and you said that he made a mistake. Did -

    THE PRESIDENT: I think he made a mistake. Yeah, but we didn't - I didn't go into any great dif- - I was - I was very surprised to hear it. It doesn't really matter.

    Here's what does matter: We're all set to distribute immediately. As soon as that vaccine comes out that's safe and good and works - whether it's Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, or anybody else - we are ready to distribute it very rapidly. As Scott said and as our team knows - and they're ready. And that could be on - it could be in October, sometime in October or November. I don't think it's going to be much later than that. But I think it could be sometime in October. We're ready to move, and it'll be a very full distribution.

    Q So you all had the call. You said that you told him that he had made a mistake. What was his response and did he acknowledge that?

    THE PRESIDENT: No, I didn't tell him anything. I said, "What happened?" And I got the impression that he didn't realize he said what he might have said. I didn't see him say it. But if that's what he said, it's a mistake because here's - so, ready? We're ready to distribute immediately to a vast section of our country - and then beyond, because we want to help other countries also. But we're ready to distribute immediately.

    Q But the timeline that he gave, saying that it wouldn't be ready for the general public until the middle of next year, sounds very like the one that you, kind of, just offered.

    DR. ATLAS: No. No, I said that there'll be 700 million doses by end of Q1, and everyone in high risk will have it some- - no later than January.

    Q Yeah, he was talking - he said the general public -

    DR. ATLAS: That's what I said.

    Q - for next year.

    THE PRESIDENT: No - we are focused, as you know -

    Q He wasn't talking about high-risk or the healthcare (inaudible) workers -

    THE PRESIDENT: Kaitlan, we're focused on high-risk, but we're going to focus also on general public very much. But we are - our immediate aim is elderly people, and especially elderly people with heart, diabetes problems. But we will have it - this is - we're not looking at a small distribution program; we're looking at distributing to the whole United States with an immediate focus of the elderly.


    Now, under no circumstance, will it be as late as the doctor said. But I think that, frankly, if he analyzes - you know, they hit him with that question. He said that. We are ready at a much faster level than what he said. We will have rapid distribution. We're set up - our military and others are set up to do it, and we think it could even start taking place in October, but certainly during November, December would be the latest. Because, based on what we're hearing, results are - based on what I'm hearing, results are very good. So we'll see what happens.

    Q Okay. So my last question is: You told Bob Woodward the problem with a vaccine is a vaccine will take 13 to 14 months once you have because you have to test a vaccine. So do you want to clarify what you told Bob Woodward?