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mahatmakanejeeves

(56,909 posts)
Fri Sep 18, 2020, 09:28 PM Sep 2020

Trump's Remarks in Press Briefing; September 18, 2020

PRESS BRIEFINGS

Remarks by President Trump in Press Briefing | September 18, 2020
Issued on: September 18, 2020

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

3:09 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, everyone. So a lot of work has been going on with respect to the vaccines — very successful work, I might add. We have three great, great companies doing somewhat different variations, but they’re all looking very good.

From the beginning of the China virus, all nations have understood that our top priority must be to develop a vaccine as quickly as possible to end the pandemic and get life back to normal. The successful vaccine will not only save millions of lives, it will put an end to the restrictions and some of the things that go on and have to go on in the meantime.

Today, I want to discuss the historic progress we’re making to deliver a safe and effective vaccine in record time. And there’s never been anything like this ever. In our history, there’s never been any — in history, period — world history.

Since January, America’s brilliant doctors and scientists have been working around the clock. These are the best medical minds in the world, by far. And the vaccines are going through the gold standard of clinical trials, and very heavy emphasis placed on safety. Three vaccines are already in the final stage.

Joe Biden’s anti-vaccine theories are putting a lot of lives at risk. And they’re only doing it for political reasons; it’s very foolish. It’s part of their war to try and discredit the vaccine, now that they know that we essentially have it. We’ll be announcing it fairly soon.

{snip}

Yeah. Go ahead.

Q The Postal Service had planned on sending 650 million facemasks to Americans back in April. That never happened. Why not? And was it because you were —

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t know. I — I don’t run it, to be honest.

Q Were you running —

THE PRESIDENT: That’s run — as you know, that’s run by a commission, and they run it. I think, frankly, if they would raise the price of packaging, you’d end up making a lot of money, or breaking even, or doing something.

The Post Office has been a mess for many, many generations, but for certainly decades. And it loses a lot of money. It’s always lost a lot of money. And one of the reasons it loses a lot of money now is that it’s delivering all these packages. And every time they deliver a package, they lose $3 a package or whatever the number may be.

So I would suggest that they raise the price of packages. And you might get something where it loses very little, or maybe broke even, or maybe even made some money. Would — can you imagine a thing like that? And whether it’s Amazon or any of the other Internet delivery services, if you did that, you’d have a whole different Post Office. So hopefully, they’ll be doing that.

In the meantime, I know so many people in the Postal System, and I’ve known them over the years. They’re incredible people. And they’re very secure. They’re going to be very secure.

You know, the problem they have with the ballots — not the Post Office — the problem they have with the ballots is the people sending the ballots and the people counting the ballots. And who are they sending them to? Where are they being sent? Are they being sent to the wrong areas? Are they not being sent at all?

There’ll be tremendous corruption if they don’t do something about it. Now, one big hope is that we’re in front of numerous federal judges in Nevada. We’re in front in Pennsylvania, as you know. We’re in front in Michigan. We have numerous court cases out there that are very well advanced, and you’ll start seeing decisions. Just like we won the case on opening up Pennsylvania. That was a great decision by a judge that came down two days ago, and that was a very important decision.

So — but we have a lot of very important decisions coming down on this, on the scam of unsolicited ballots, where they’re sending out tens of millions of ballots to everybody — people that didn’t expect them. People are getting inundated with bal- — they’ll be showered with ballots.

Everybody in this room knows it’s a scam. Okay? Everybody in this room, even Jon. Don’t say it, Jon, because —

Q What’s a scam? What’s a scam?

THE PRESIDENT: It’s a scam.

Q What —

THE PRESIDENT: Sending ballots — sending ballots —

Q Voting by mail is a scam?

THE PRESIDENT: — at a level — they are never going to be able to count them. Let me ask you —

Q Don’t your officials vote by mail, sir? People in the White House vote by mail. Are they part of the scam?
THE PRESIDENT: They do, but that’s different. That’s called “solicited.” When you solicit, when you go out — it’s called “absentee” or “solicit.” When you go out and you request a ballot — you want to say, “I want to vote because I can’t be in Florida or I can’t be someplace.” You request. So you’re sending something in, it’s handled professionally, they send it back — it’s a whole thing. That’s much different than “unsolicited,” when you get millions of ballots. I heard numbers like 80 million ballots.

Now, just this week, they had another one — another one of the disasters that took place — an election. But look at what happened in New Jersey. And they had another one in New Jersey — very, very bad — different than Paterson. Look at what happened in New York with Carolyn — Car- — your congressman — Murphy.

Q Maloney.

THE PRESIDENT: Maloney.

Q Maloney.

THE PRESIDENT: Carolyn Maloney. Look at that. I mean, look at that race. Carolyn Maloney had a race; it was a disaster. Ballots are missing; ballots are fraud.

These are small races. These are — look at what happened in Virginia. Look at what happened at various other parts of the country, even over the last short period of a while. And these aren’t 80 million or 50 million or 20 million votes; these are small elections. These are congressional elections where, in theory, it’s easy.

So what’s going to happen on November 3rd when somebody is leading and they say, “Well, look, we haven’t counted the ballots; we have millions of ballots to count”? It’s a disaster. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows it’s a disaster. And I don’t expect people here to say — although some people will. Some people would say it. Everyone knows. You don’t even have to know politics to know.

And this has nothing to do with Post Office, by the way. Where are these ballots going? Who’s sending them? Who’s signing them?

You have — in Nevada, you have a governor that signs something where he doesn’t even want verification of the signature. So what does that mean? So he doesn’t even want verification of the signature.

So I think it’s going to be a terrible time for this country. And we’re counting on federal judges to do a great constitutional job when they are — they’re right now analyzing it — many, many federal judges — many, like, I think five or six — but many federal judges.

I can tell you, in Pennsylvania — big. In Nevada — very big. I believe it’s in front of a judge in Michigan. We have — a lot of judges have not yet ruled on this. But if it’s ruled in a different manner or it’s ruled where these millions and millions of unsolicited — people that aren’t even asking. There’s such a difference. You write in, you ask, they send it to you, you sign it, you send it back — that’s perfect. That’s “absentee.”

There’s nothing like going to the voter booth, by the way — nothing — where they check you as you go in. There’s nothing like that. But that’s absentee; that’s okay.

But this scam of sending millions and millions of ballots –and you know who knows this better than I do? The Democrats. They know it’s going to be a mess. They know it’s going — there are going to be millions of missing ballot or tremendous numbers of missing ballots.

You could be talking about large percentages of these ballots are going to be missing. There’s going to be fraud. It’s a disaster.

Q So, let me follow up on that, sir.

THE PRESIDENT: And everybody — and it’d be a lot easier for me not to bring it up. But everybody knows I’m right. And you don’t have to know a lot about elections. You don’t have to know a lot about politics. This is going to be the scam of all time.

And hopefully, the federal judges — all respected, all highly respected — hopefully, they’ll be able to see this clearly and stop it.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, thank you very much, everybody.

So I want to congratulate Puerto Rico. And I think you’re going to have a great period of time. I think you’re going to see a rebuilding of Puerto Rico.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

END 3:40 P.M. EDT
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