Press Briefing by Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany | December 2, 2020 | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Q Yeah. Thanks, Kayleigh. I have just two quick questions, if I could. Georgia officials have said election workers there are facing threats because of the President's false claims on winning the state and his rhetoric around the election. Does the President condemn threats against election workers, or does he take any responsibility for those threats?

    MS. MCENANY: We condemn any threats against anyone. There's no place for violence. What I will say, though, too, is that the President's lawyers - they were doxed by a left organization; their private information put out. So we're seeing that happen to people on both sides of the argument, and there's no place for that ever, anywhere.

    Q And then just real quick: The CDC Director today said that the next few months could be among the worst public health months in American history. I wondered, does the White House - is it setting a good example for the public - for White House to be doing in-person holiday parties at a time when the CDC and other organizations are asking Americans to forego those kinds of celebrations for their own safety?

    MS. MCENANY: Yeah, so, you know, if you can loot businesses, burn down buildings, engage in protest, you can also go to a Christmas party, you can celebrate the holiday of Christmas, and you can do it responsibly, which is why the East Wing has noted that they'll have smaller guest lists, masks are going to be available, social distancing is going to be encouraged, hand sanitizing stations, among other measures. But we will engage in the celebration of Christmas, and there will be a Hanukkah celebration as well.

    Yes. Yes, Meridith.

    Q Thanks. Does President Trump - has he had any kind of conversations with allies on Capitol Hill about challenging Joe Biden's Electoral College votes? With Congress, we saw one of his allies today said he plans to do that. Is that a conversation that the President has had at all?

    MS. MCENANY: Not that I'm aware of.

    Eunice.

    Q Yes. The White House Coronavirus Task Force is privately telling governors that Americans under the age of 40 who gathered with people outside their households at Thanksgiving are dangerous to others and should isolate immediately. Why is the White House not publicly sharing that same information with Americans?

    MS. MCENANY: You said that was in a - what document was that?

    Q The White House Coronavirus Task Force is privately telling governors.


    MS. MCENANY: That those that had Thanksgiving celebrations -

    Q That Americans under 40 - yeah.

    MS. MCENANY: There is CDC guidance out there as to when you should and should not isolate, so I would point you to that. That's all been publicly available since the beginning of all this.

    Christian.

    Q Yeah, thanks, Kayleigh. So if some version of the Defense Authorization makes it to the President's desk with language that terminates Section 230, will he sign it into law, even if there's language in there that renames bases bearing Confederate, you know, names or - named after Confederate officials?

    MS. MCENANY: Yeah, he said before he's very much against the Warren amendment, and public polling is with him on that. How that intersects with the 230 tweet, I will have to follow up with him about. I don't know if that position has changed given what he tweeted recently, but I will follow up on that.

    Q And then on China -

    MS. MCENANY: Yes.

    Q - Joe Biden told the Times that he doesn't want to roll back the China tariffs or the phase one trade deal. Do you know if the President plans on reaching out to Mr. Biden to talk about, you know, China trade, since it's been such a hot policy issue - or any other policy really - before January 20th?

    MS. MCENANY: I'm not aware of any plans of that at the moment, but if I - if I do, I'll let you know.

    Yeah. Meridith.

    Q You gave some examples of, you know, lawmakers who've been talking about COVID. But I am curious, where has President Trump been in offering public leadership on this topic of the coronavirus, especially as we've seen cases surge? We haven't seen the President make any sort of public comments, or even tweets, about this surge in cases. So I'm curious what sort of examples you have.

    MS. MCENANY: Yeah, quite a bit. I mean, he's created the greatest testing system in the world. He gave a press conference about two weeks ago, I believe, on the vaccine, which he has done at warp speed because he's torn down bureaucratic barriers. He's been hard at work. He's done I don't know how many coronavirus task force briefings from this podium. But the work he's done speaks for itself.

    The fact that now the case fatality rate in this country is 2 percent; it was 6 percent in April. And what that means is, it's a testament to our therapeutics.

    Another thing that happened recently, in fact, mid-November - it got almost no attention but it's, again, a testament to the President - is the two new therapeutics. They are renditions of mon- - one is a monoclonal antibody, another one is a Regeneron therapeutic. And these two therapeutics are given to people with mild to moderate COVID symptoms that are at high risk for severe COVID or hospitalization.

    So the fact that we've got to the point where we now have therapeutics we can give you in advance to try to prevent you from going to a hospital, and we've sent out 169,000 vials of one and 36,000 vials of another just in a few weeks - he's hard at work at this with the task force behind the scenes.

    And when we talk about, you know, his public leadership, just on COVID generally, I think it's a fitting time, given your question, to note Dr. Fauci now says that we should keep the schools open. He said that this Sunday. This is something the President has said for months.

    It caused me to go back to July and look at one of my briefing books from July 16th, 2020. And what I found in there was this: The science was always on our side about keeping schools open way back in July. It's being acknowledged now, but in July you had Dr. Redfield saying, "Unlike flu, kids are not driving the transmission cycle." You had Dr. Atlas, who has been a leading voice on keeping the schools open, saying everyone else in the Western world - "our peer nations are doing it. We can do it." This is back in July.

    We had a study from the Netherlands, about few reports of infections from schools that had stayed open. This was back in July. You had a Yale School of Public Health professor, named Albert Koh, saying that the bottom line is the impacts of COVID-19 on children is "minimal or very low compared to other groups." There was a Lancet quote to that same effect - this was back in July - when the President was saying, "Keep the schools open. I'm looking at the science. It's detrimental to keep kids out of school."


    But what were Democrats saying? When the President was following the science, here is what Democrats were saying: You had Governor Gavin Newsom say this: "I'm not taking pressure from Trump on opening schools." You had Governor Cuomo saying, "It's not up to the President about opening schools," as schools were shut down. You had Mayor de Blasio - who, interestingly, reversed himself this week, and now kids can go back to school. But back in July, when the science was on our side, he was saying, "What we won't do is ignore the science and recklessly charge ahead like our President," who was always following the science.

    You had Jennifer Rubin tweeting that "Now he wants to kill your kids." I'm not sure how that's responsible reporting.

    And then you had Anderson Cooper saying that he actually just doesn't care about kids at all, nor the health of their teachers and parents.

    And you had the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association railing against the President as well.

    The President has followed the science. He's also kept in mind we have a Constitution. And he will be unashamed in always advocating for the science and the best interest of the children of this country.

    Thank you very much.

    Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.

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