los angeles and cheer for the rams. >> dana: fox has all the games on sunday, which we're excited about. isaac bruce, a real pleasure. thank you. >> thank you. >> dana: thanks for joining us. i'm dana perino. i'll see you on "the five." bill hemmer will have a presidential press conference. >> bill: thanks, dana. it will be interesting tonight. so good afternoon. i'm bill hemmer. here we go. awaiting to hear from the president. he will be in the briefing room. he's defending his coronavirus response. the president said he didn't prevent panic on a national scale. also, this hour, senator kamala harris is in south florida. president trump is there on tuesday and joe biden will visit there next week. tonight the president heads to michigan to make a pitch to voters about a day after biden spoke. all of the areas getting attention.

brett bear reporting from jacqui heinrich in delaware with the biden camp. first, john roberts from the north lawn. john, what are you hearing about what we're going to hear about? the briefing room? >> good afternoon. we expect the president will field a lot of questions on the woodward book. this was sold as the normal coronavirus briefing. but the woodward book is probably going to take up the bulk of the question and answer session. the president insisting that he wasn't trying to mislead the american public on coronavirus. he was trying to be a force of calm and avoid panic. here's what the president said on "hannity" last night. >> what i want to show, i want to show calmness. i'm the leader of the country. i can't be scaring people. i don't want to scare people. i want people not to panic. that's what i did. if you look at the representatives of joe biden, you see what they were saying. they say no problem. this wouldn't be a problem. >> the house speaker, nancy

pelosi, charging that people died as the result of the president playing down the virus. listen here. >> the president knew what he had been saying a long time, the whole thing was a hoax. his delay, denial and distortion of what was happening has caused many deaths. >> but bob woodward is coming in for criticism. people saying that if what the president told him was so concerning, why didn't woodward report on it back in march instead of waiting till now to release it when he's trying to sell books? the president even tweeting about that. bob woodward had my quotes for many months. if he thought they were so dangerous, why didn't he report them in an effort to save lives? didn't he have an obligation to do so? no, because he knew they were good answers. calm and no panic. other topics the president will be asked about, for example, did the president reveal to bob woodward the existence of a secret nuclear weapon and the president's thoughts on white

privilege. mohammed bin salman, the crown prince of saudi arabia and other things coming to light as more details come out. >> bill: thanks. we're on stand by mode for that. thank you. team fox coverage continues. jacqui heinrich reports live in womilmington delaware. what's going on with the biden team? >> joe biden has criticized president trump for his mishandling of the virus. he issued warnings himself. biden and other democrats are being reminded that even their messaging in the early days of the pandemic was sometimes muddled. biden held rallies until march when the world health organization declare add pandemic. today they shifted the blame on the president saying they were making decisions without information the president was withholding. >> these are decisions that look differently in hindsight. maybe if the president of the

united states wasn't lying about the extent of the crisis, we would have had different information. president trump was holding five megarallies between the conversations that he had with bob woodward and the beginning of march. >> yesterday after a stop in michigan where biden hammered trump on the economy and job losses, biden sat down for an interview responding to the president's reasoning for playing down the virus aiming not to create a panic. >> okay. he says he does want to panic people. at least make sure that they have the equipment they need. he didn't even do that. >> the rest of that interview comes out today at 4:00. senator kamala harris is in florida right now trying to draw up latino support after a new poll put a spotlight on potential weaknesses with the campaign among hispanic voters. harris made a quick stop at a venezuelan restaurant after landing in miami, spoke to

people about the importance of voting. notably the campaign is sending press updates in english and spanish today, which is new. she's also meeting with black community leaders this afternoon. >> bill: thanks, jacqui. i want to bring in special anchor report, brett bear. good afternoon to you. we were told 3:00. just saw a tweet. it's now 3:30. we'll have a chance to talk. good afternoon. thanks for being here. how do you assess before i get to some things in "the new york times," how do you assess this on an electoral level at the moment? >> tough to see yet. the fall-out has yet to be really seen. the biden campaign will try to use it in 30-second ads, digital ads around the country. they're pushing the early vote. so using the president's words i'm sure will be used in a way to say that he misled or lied to

the american people in some ad and could have saved lives. does that move the needle? maybe in some places, in some states. if it's very close, it could. this president has a unique ability to get beyond these moments. it's curious why he sat for 18 interviews with bob woodward, maybe he will talk about this today. but it doesn't look like that is a benefit in any way, shape or form. >> bill: you had robert o'brien on your program last night, national security adviser. the question came up about a meeting in the oval office on january 28 in which robert o'brien is quoted as telling the president, this will be the biggest national security threat to face your presidency. you asked him if it was true. here's robert's response. >> it is true. i was in one of the oval intelligence briefings. it was something that we were concerned about at the nsc. our job is to look around the corner and see threats that i

see or other folks are seeing. we saw it and conveyed it to the president. he took prompt actions. he banned travel from china within 48 hours of us giving that advice. >> bill: that chinese decision is something that we're going to hear a lot about. what did you make of o'brien's response? >> overall he's a good defender for the president. he should be put out more if you're a trump supporter. he's saying look at the actions, not the words. o'brien himself was on a sunday show just after that meeting saying that things were going to be okay. you can say that you don't want to panic people, but there is something about being honest or truthful with the american people. the problem for critics, there was a lot of evolution of what we knew and what people were saying even at the expert level. what dr. fauci was saying, what

dr. birx was saying. what the biden advisers on the medical staff were saying. it was not that everything had to be locked down right away. >> bill: what are you hearing about woodward's response? he said he wouldn't do any interviews because of the "60 minutes" interview. how is it all being received now? >> he's saying that he wanted to find out if it was true, that his m.o. or how he's done all of these books is to do many interviews and wait till the end to relief the information. obviously when the president tweets about it, it gets a lot of attention. we'll see what he says on "60 minutes." >> bill: he said that he didn't confirm the oval office meeting until may. "new york times" writes the discrepancy what true knew, the virus was bad, it's all good,

was reported in april. trump loudly refused to let passengers disembark in march because i like the numbers being where they are. >> that struck you in a certain way. >> "the new york times," obviously, is zero fan of donald trump as president. here in this book review, they're essentially saying, okay, you know, where is the there there? where is -- we knew a lot of this is what they're saying in that book review. i was struck by it. if that is the case and i may be, baked in the cake, that this is donald trump and how he operates, then you're not going to see the needle move much with this book. >> bill: thank you, brett. see you later tonight at 6:00. we'll see what we get from the president when he begins in the briefing room. awaiting the president.

the meeting was moved from 3:00 to 3:30. we'll stand by. and tonight, back to michigan as joe biden attempts to rebuild the blue wall. the president will campaign there this evening. rnc chair ronna mcdaniel on the president's plan for key midwest states coming up here. deadly wild fires in the american midwest. 3 million acres burning in california. thousands of homes and buildings destroyed. there's growing fear now over what comes next. it's been 75 years since your ancestors served in world war two. many of their stories remain untold. find and honor the veterans in your family. their stories live on at ancestry.

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>> michigan last auto jobs before covid hit. what about offshoring? has trump delivered on stopping companies from shipping jobs overseas? american jobs? you already know the answer. >> bill: there's joe biden speaking yesterday in michigan zeroing in on a swing state. president trump heads there later tonight. the election 50 some odd days away. she's from michigan. rnc chair woman, ronna mcdaniel. welcome to our program here. we have a press conference at 3:30. glad you came today. we'll squeeze this in an address the following battleground states in the upper midwest. you put all the averages together, michigan, joe biden leads, same for wisconsin, pennsylvania and minnesota. if that's how things go on election night, this would be the what if scenario. you need 270 to win.

if he were to take minnesota, wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania, he's knocking on the door at 270. your reaction to the polling right now in those critical states. >> we see the president in a very strong position in these states. we know they'll be tight. we've seen a lot of movement on the plus side for the president in minnesota. we see him doing very well in michigan right now. you saw an article in pennsylvania that showed we outregistered democrats 7 to 1 since 2016. joe biden just showed up in wisconsin for the first time in two years. he didn't go for his convention. so the president has a message. usmca, jobs, economy, energy. he's coming to these states and these voters are dialling in because they care about these things. joe biden made trade deals that made jobs flee the country. he cares more about china than the auto worker in michigan. as the president goes to the states, he will win them back. >> bill: so it's true that the polling in the battleground states are getting tighter.

we'll watch that. take this off of the sake of our viewers and go back to the zero balance for our polling today. all the battleground states. bill steppian, the campaign manager, laid out a scenario how donald trump can win a second term by losing michigan and pennsylvania. it's tough to do. this is what it looks like. you defends the states in 2016 like florida and georgia, north carolina and ohio. you can see the numbers rotate here. lock down texas, arizona. come to iowa. at that point, you're at 259. you flip maybe a keeper, wisconsin, flip a minnesota and then you've got new hampshire hanging out here and also that -- well, the second congressional district of maine that could put you under 270. point is, it's not easy but if you do it, you get a second term. >> yeah. there's other states in there, too, which i'm going to put

nevada in that list. as you mentioned, new hampshire. there's other states that we're playing in that are coming in to focus where the president almost won in 2016. nevada, we've seen very strong numbers. we feel very good about where we are. here's the difference right now, bill, between us and the biden team. they have no ground game. they have no army of volunteers to turn out their vote, this is what the trump campaign and the rnc have been building for years now. this is why we're outregistering them in states, this army of volunteers is knocking on doors a million a week. this is the difference makener the late stages of campaigns as to who will vote. i think it's the edge that gives trump the presidency again. >> bill: you can't make a mistake under this scenario, ronna. >> pennsylvania is still there. you're adding states. you have pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin. then you add minnesota, you can add nevada. you can add new hampshire. there's a lot of paths for us to

win. the president flipped the map in 2016. he pulled in michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania. we're not talking about ohio anymore because ohio is so republican and so supportive of president trump. we're expanding the map and democrats map is shrinking. by the way, we've been in these state for two years. joe biden is playing catch-up. >> bill: one last question. how do you measure the effect of these woodward tapes that are now public and will get a lot of attention at least another week. >> oh, i think we know that the press is out to get this president right now. bob woodward had no intension of writing anything nice about this president just like anybody in the media. they've done everything they can from day one to be an arm of the democratic party. but i think this is disgusting. i think it's disgusting to say that the president should have gone out and panicked the american people and have a run on the banks and a run on the stores and scare people. the president did everything

right. he caught down travel in january. he created the coronavirus task force in february. he initiated private sector early on to get ppe to ramp up testing. to see democrats politicize a time of crisis in our country and actually use the language that joe biden used, i think it's going to backfire. i think a lot of americans are disgusted by the rhetoric and the shameful accusations coming from democrats. >> bill: pending what else may go public and we'll wait on that. 18 interviews. could be a lot of material there. we'll see what the president says in a matter of moments. thanks for coming back, ronna mcdaniel. congressman dan kilde will be here. a divided senate. failing to advance a new covid-19 relief package. what that means for americans trying to pay their bills. a growing number of police chiefs stepping down since protests started over the death

of george floyd. geraldo will weigh-in on that in a moment next.

>> bill: as we mentioned, watching the briefing room with the white house expected at 3:00. it's been pushed to about 3:30. so we will see the president in the briefing room. we expect more comments on covid. so stand by for that we'll bring it to you when it gets underway live. meantime, two protesters in rochester, new york charged with assaulting officers. one hit an officer with a wooden shield and the other set off fire works at the officer. this started after a police officer pinned down a black man in handcuffs and putting a hood over his death. he's later died. the death has been ruled as a prom side.

27 police chiefs have stepped down or retires after nationwide protests took place after the killing of george floyd. that list includes atlanta, seattle, portland, dallas and richmond where police chiefs resigned twice. i want to bring in our team today. geraldo rivera and host of "the road kill" podcast and leo terrell. good day to you. from dallas, the first black woman to leave the police force is out. >> from rochester new york, an african american gentleman has retired as well. seattle, as you know, the woman first african american woman to leave that department is gone also. geraldo, what is the effect of this in these big cities? >> it's terrible and ironic. you had renee hall in dallas, carmen best in seattle. the three highest profile women in policing, women who had attained their rank through achievement and through

competence. they were the misguided costs of these riots and looting and everything else that happened. they were accused falsely of excessive force. i don't believe that they used excessive force. i think that it is a tragedy that thinks minority and female cheers have forced to retire or resigned. these are collateral damage to black lives matter. the reason that we want minorities as police chiefs is the thought that there's more sensitivity, shareded experiences, increased trust. yet here they are. they were the focus of these intense protests. protests that became violent. and to take them out is a tragedy to the communities -- >> bill: that case in rochester, that man was high on pcp, naked, threatened cops. that's why he got the hood over

his head. now the police chief is out of a job. leo, what do you make of this. >> so glad you showed the pictures. show the pictures of people of color. black lives matter and antifa talking about racism, systemic discrimination. black police chiefs. they're following procedure. here's the game. you can't make a deal with the extremists. doesn't matter what your color is. doesn't matter if you do the right thing. any type of homicide involving a black person they're going to call racism. systemic discrimination is a buzz term used by them and does not apply. this is just a con. it's very, very frustrating as a civil rights attorney to see this going on. so black police chiefs are racist. you cannot please antifa and black lives. >> bill: and there's a poll put out in wisconsin. all the matters that we dealt with in kenosha. if you approve or disapprove,

the numbers have barely changed. >> they have tightened a bit. wisconsin is very close. there were three million votes cast there and the margin was something like 23,000. >> bill: to be clear, that was about the approval or disapproval of the protests. that wasn't a poll on the presidential election. continue. >> but it tracks the biden-trump poll. they have tightened. we're one riot away from the president sweeping the midwest or an outbreak of covid tilting it towards joe biden. it's razor sharp, the distinction here. i'm in your old native state of ohio. who would have thought that ohio, which has determined the president in over 90% of the races since the turn of the last century, you know, ohio is now solidly red for the president. so i think that this thing is

too close to call. how people are being affected by these various scandals. the woodward book and et cetera remains to be shaken out. >> very simple, bill, when president trump went to wisconsin, he spoke to law enforcement officers. he spoke to victims that lost their businesses. those are voters. biden, who did he speak to? are they voters? i submit to you there's a lot of trump supporters very quiet. they're voting for trump and they don't reflect in the polls. because trump talks to voters. biden talks to rioters. that's the difference. >> bill: gentleman, thank you. the president is now at the podium. >> jonathan carl, phil rucker. hi, phil. how are you? kaitlyn. we have the all-stars, a lot of all-stars today. you too. you too. that's good.

thank you very much. the past four months, we've added 10.6 million jobs. including 643 manufacturing jobs in 658,000 construction jobs. far beyond expectations. we've experienced the smaller contraction of any western nation. meaning we've been affected less than any other nation, western nation and probably you can put it in -- i just saw numbers, you can put it to any category anywhere. the fast recovery by far anywhere. nobody has recovered like we're recovering. if we follow joe biden's strategy, we'd shed down the country after having set records on growth. we also did have tremendous retail growth as you noticed. we're witnessing the fastest labor market recovery from an economic crisis in our history. by contrast, the obama-biden

administration had the slowest, weakest and worst recovery in american history, as you know. we continue to make progress in our fight against the china virus. new weekly cases have declined by 44% since july. deaths declined by 20% compared to just last week. it's going down very rapidly. really rapidly. this is in contrast to nations in the european union, which have recently experienced a sharp increase in cases. they're having a very big spike over there. we're hopefully beyond our spike. we'll see. we're doing well all over our country. in the past five weeks, per capita cases doubled in france, surged to over 300% in spain, which i've been hearing about and speaking to some of the leaders of spain. they're having a hard time. increase more than 400% in italy again.

as you remember, i stopped -- i put a ban on people coming in from europe after the ban i imposed on china, wuhan. but because of wuhan, primarily. that area was very infected. we also put a ban on europe. so spain is being heavily impacted. france. 400% in italy. yesterday european nations experienced 50% more deaths than the united states. you don't hear these things. you don't hear these statistics. the united states has done really well. very proud of everybody that worked on this. i really do believe we're rounding the corner and the vaccines are right there. but even -- not even discussing vaccines and not discussing therapeutics, we're rounding the corner. we have therapeutics out there, by the way, which are having a very big impact. look at that. look at the way people are recovering, it's so much better than in the past before we knew

about the disease and had anything to fight the disease. on schools, as part of our science-based approach, we want schools to safely open and stay open. children are extremely low risk of complications from the virus. less than .2%. .2% of the coronavirus deaths have occurred in those under the age of 25. most had underlying conditions where there was a problem. there's no substitute for in-person learning. using online education compared to in-person or campus education. so online, we think of so many things online and how great it is. nothing like being in the classroom. that's what we've learned from this whole ordeal. according to the cdc school

closures, disproportionately harm low income children and those were disabilities. you see slides behind me that very new, very current. it's also crucial for colleges and universities to stay open. we hope that they do indeed stay open. we want to see big 10 football. we hope it's coming back. we have a lot of the colleges that we're talking about. they want to come back. we hope michigan agrees. we hope -- i know the governor will have a lot to say about it. we hope she's approves it. we have a couple that -- maryland is another one. we hope the governor puts pressure on. i have a feeling they may do it without having everybody. but i think they'll have maybe michigan, maybe maryland. a couple of states that might

not participate. but people working very, very hard to get big ten football back. i'm pushing it. it will be a great thing for our country and the players and the coaches want to do it really badly. the players are missing -- only have so many years of this. the players are miss ago big opportunity including a chance in some cases to have some of the best players, college players in our country. they want to get to the nfl and make money in the nfl and they cannot do that too easy if you don't get to see them play. it's much safer for students to live on campus and low risk young people would rather than the alternative. the alternative is no good. them going home, spreading the virus to hi risk americans. they want to be on campus. they want to go back to school. the parents want them back in school maybe more than they want to be back in school. they want them back safely and they want to go back safely but they have to go back. based on the recent data from more than 20 colleges, not a

single student that tested positive for the virus has been hospitalized. that's a lot of people. a lot of students. not one has been hospitalized. z as we continue to follow the science-based approach to protect our people an vanquish the virus, joe biden uses the pandemic for political gain. every time i see him, he's reading the teleprompter about the pandemic. i'm not allowed to use it. why is that, phil? they ask questions and he reads the teleprompter. he says move it closer, please. if i did that, i would be in big trouble. that would be the story of the year. when i took early action in january to ban the travel and all travel to and from china, the democrats and biden in particular called it xenophobic. remember that? joe is willing to sacrifice lice

to placate the radical left, open border extremists. we saved tens of thousands of liveses and millions of lives by doing the closing and now the opening the way we did it. joe's decision to publicly attack the china ban proved he lacks the character or intelligence or instinct to do what is right. now biden's launch a public campaign against the vaccine, which is so bad. because we have some vaccines coming that are incredible. scott was telling me about some of the things that are happening. it's very exciting, scott. thanks for being here. you don't want to have anything having to do with political purposes being an anti vaxer. you don't want to be talking about the vaccines in a negative way, especially when you see the statistics that we're starting to see. they're incredible actually. biden is perfectly happy to

endaningter lives of other people by doing something that he thinks will help him politically because his polls are getting very bad, very shaky. this was an election that was going to be easy, quick. the china virus had to go back in. i had to go back to work politically. it looks like we're going up very rapidly. more rapidly than the media wants to admit. biden has had to go out. he's gotten out of his basement and working. let's see what happens. we have to talk about how great the convenience are if in fact they're great. you'll see numbers that will be very impressive. the approach to the virus is a very unscientific blanket lockdown by the democrats. that's what they're talking about, which takes all of these

incredible statistics, records and throws them out the window. now they did say it would be based on the recommendation of the experts. you know, expert or not, we're not doing anymore shut downs. we did the shut down and now we're doing the opening. no more shut-downs. there could be a small section we'll have a breakout but we're not talking about shut-downs like they were talking about depending on experts. we're not going to be doing that. the swine flu was a disaster. you remember that. not nearly as deadly. not the same world. when joe biden was vice president, his failed approach to the swine flu was disastrous. he called it -- he called it n1-h1. it's easy to remember. it's h1-n-1.

his own chief of staff said that when he helped manage the swine flu in 2009, they "did everything possible wrong." at 16 million americans got h1-n1 in that time. a quote from his chief of staff. it's just purely a fortuity that this is not one of the great mass casualty events. had nothing to do with us doing anything right. it was a disaster. now he's telling us -- he can't manage himself. 270,000 americans were hospitalized during this attack. the outbreak was so rampant that the obama administration told states to stop testing. we don't want any tests because they don't want to show all of the things that tests show. by the way, we're setting a record on testing. our testing is at a level that

nobody has ever seen before. we're substantially greater than the second country, which is india, by the way. has 1.5 billion people. we're 50 million tests ahead. 50 million ahead. and they ordered the cdc to stop counting tests and stop counting cases. then left us a depleted stockpile, which is what i inherited. i inherited a depleted, badly depleted stockpile. in other words, biden's record demonstrates that if he had been in charge of this very serious, highly contagious epidemic, pandemic, the china virus, countless more americans would have dried. if we departmeidn't dough what and i say it because the media belittles what we've done. it's incredible. you can look at europe and other

places and start comparing. biden is weak on china. yesterday it was revealed a fund owned by joe biden's son, hunter facilitated the sale of a michigan parts company to china. you don't want to write about that. now the biden family is selling out our country directly to the chinese military which has to do with this company, hunter. he didn't have a job. now he's selling companies from michigan to china. china's military got american manufacturing jobs. the biden family got paid a lot of money. and i say it, if joe biden ever got elected, china will own america. they will own america. finally, i can announce with

great pride that secretary state mike pompeo will be departing this evening on a historic trip to qatar for the beginning of intra-afghan peace negotiations. we've been negotiating with them for quite some time. getting along with them. moved a lot of soldiers out. i got a report this morning nobody has been killed in afghanistan since february, a lot of progress being made there. we'll be down to 4,000 soldiers in a very short period of time. like-wise, iraq will be down to about 2,000 soldiers in a very short period of time. in syria for the most part, we're out other than we kept the oil. we have soldiers guarding the oil. small number. they're guarding the oil and

helping the kurds. we're making their lives much more pleasant was of the fact that we have the oil. so we're pretty much out of syria. we're pretty much out of iraq. we're down to the smallest force that we've had and will be very shortly down to that number in afghanistan. the negotiations are a result of a bold diplomatic effort on the part of my administration in recent months and years. the united states will play an important role in bringing the parties together to end the decades long war. going on 20 years. long before i got involved. i can tell you that. had they not been wasting our time with all of the phony witch hunts and all of the things, we probably could have done this faster. a lot of time had to be spent wasted like that. the parties are together right now and we're negotiating and

we're really making tremendous progress. next week at the white house, we'll be having the signing between uae and israel and could have another country added in to that. countries are lining up that want to go into it. as you know, uae is headed by a very highly respected gentleman. respected by everybody. he's a warrior, too. a great warrior. mohammed is very excited about this. you'll be hearing other countries coming in over a relatively short period of time. you could have peace in the middle east. what will ultimately happen, you'll have quite a few countries come in, the big ones will come in. i spoke to the king of saudi arabia. so we're talking. starting -- we just started the dialogue. you'll have them come in. i think -- two things will happen. iran will -- if we win the

election, iran will come and sign a deal with us very rapidly within the first i'd say week but let's give ourselves a month. because their gdp went down 25%, which is like an unheard of number. they'd like to get back to having a successful country again. so i think that will happen. very importantly the palestinians will get back in to the fold. when they see all of these countries that frankly had been supporters of the palestinians and financial supporters. we used to pay them $750 million a year. i ended that some time ago on the basis that they didn't seem to want to make peace. we'll think about it once we have a deal. i've ended that quite awhile ago. i'm surprised that they haven't been to the table earlier. but this is the best way, a way

that will be great. this is really bring the middle east together. again, since february, we haven't had a death in afghanistan, which is a record for many years. not a death. we're getting along very, very well with the well with afghanistan. it's representatives. we'll see how it goes. it's a negotiation. secretary state mike pompeo will be departing in a little while. so i think it's very exciting news. a lot of people thought that my natural instinct is war. no, my natural instinct is actually peace. when we were in the debate stage, people said will it be one week or two weeks when president trump gets into a war. i did rebuild our military. we have a military 2.5 trillion, new jets and rockets and tanks and ships and a lot of things we have. we have the newest best military

we've ever had. hopefully we won't have to use it. our nuclear program has been put into gear. in particular hopefully we won't have to use that. that is a whole new level of destruction that we never want to -- just have to pray to got not to use that. go ahead, john. >> why did you lie to the american people and why should we trust what you have to say -- >> that's a terrible question and the phraseology. i didn't lie. what i said, we have to be calm. we can't be panicked. i knew that the tapes were -- these are a series of phone calls, mostly phone calls. bob woodward is somebody that i respect just from hearing the name for many, many years. not knowing too much about his work, not caring about his work. i thought it would be interesting to talk to him for a period of calls. so we did that.

i don't know if it's good or bad. i don't know if the book is good or bad. certainly if he thought that was a bad statement, he would have reported it because he thinks that, you know, you don't want to have anybody that is going to suffer medically because of some fact. he didn't report it because he didn't think it was bad. nobody thought it was bad. wait a minute. and your question, the way you phrased that is a disgrace. it's a disgrace to abc television network, a disgrace to your employer. that's your answer. you ready? i love -- of course i didn't -- >> you said it was deadlier than the flu and told the american public this was just like the flu. you told everybody else -- >> no. five times, right? five times. you ever hear the expression five times? we had flu years we lost 100,000 people. the flu is a serious problem for this country also. we've been losing them -- scott,

what kind of numbers in the years with the flus? the hundreds of thousands. >> the last five years have been something like 35,000, 80,000 every year even with the anti-viral drugs. >> you said this is deadlier than the most strenuous flu and then you said it's just like the flu. >> what i said was very simple. listen. what i said was simple. i want to show a level of confidence and i want to show strength as a leader. i want to show our country will be fine one way or the other whether we lose one person -- we shouldn't lose any. this shouldn't have happened. this is china's fault. nobody's fault by china. whether you have one person, 180,000 people or 2.5 million or 3 million people, which it could have been if we didn't make the moves. if you look at the opposition where they said oh, why did he put the ban on?

dr. fauci said we said hundred of thousands of lives. there is no lie here. what we're doing is leading. we're leading in a proper way. if frankly somebody else was leading it, they wouldn't have closed it. if you look at nancy pelosi, you look at cuomo, you look at de blasio, look at biden. months later, they said there's no problem. they're talking about me. months later. before any statement was made, you have to remember, i put the ban on china. so obviously outwardly i said it's a very serious problem. it's always a serious problem. that doesn't mean i'm going to jump up and down in the air and say people are going to die. people are going to die. no. i'm not going to do that. we're going to get through this. we're rounding the final turn. a lot of good things are happening with the vaccines and with therapeutics. but there's no lying. the way you asked that question is very disgraceful.

bill, go ahead, please. i think we did a great job. people that did that, our generals, admirals, mike pence, all of the people that worked so hard. no dr. atlas, dr. fauci, dr. birx. they should be respected for the job that they have done. >> so you won't down play it again. you down played it. >> no, i don't want to jump up and down and start screaming death, death. because that's not what it's about. we have to lead a country. we're leading a great country. we're doing a great job. the people that have done such a good job should be given the kind of credit that they deserve. we've done the best jobs. you look at what we're doing with the vaccines and therapeutics and ventilators. we make thousand as month now and supplying them to the whole world. the job we've done is the best

job. don't give me credit. give the people that have done this the credit. yeah, phil. >> mr. president, you talked about the need to stay calm and not jump up and down and scare people. a lot of other world leaders were calm. german chancellor angela merkel was calm as she presented information to the german people to stay safe and protect their families. why if you as president of the united states did you not level with the american people, did you not share the information you knew at the time -- >> if you look at the european union right now, they're having breakouts like you've never seen before. frankly, their numbers are level that are much worse than the numbers here. we have done -- phil, we have done much, much better than the european union. i just read your numbers that are not good, very good open ours and we have rounded the final turn and we have -- we're going to have vaccines soon, maybe sooner than you think.

but we have done a phenomenal job. the people that have done this job including the american public that has had to put up with a lot, with the lock downs and all of the things that they had to do. they have to be given credit. >> you knew in was a deadly virus, how it transferred from person to person in the air. how deadly it was. >> let me ask you this. if bob woodward thought this was bad -- there there's a report here someplace where china said it was airborne earlier than the statements i made.people knew this was airborne. this is no big one. when i say it was airborne, everybody knew it. read the reports. china came out with a statement that it was an airborne disease. i heard it was an airborne disease. i assumed it early on. the fact is, there has to be a calmness. you don't want me jumping up and down screaming there's going to

be great death. really causing serious problems for the country. if bob woodward thought what i said was bad, then he should have immediately right after i said it gone out to the authorities so they can prepare and let him know. but he didn't think it was bad. he said he didn't think it was bad. he actually said he didn't think it was bad. the only one that said is bad were the fake news media because they take it and they true to put it a certain way. if bob woodward thought it was bad, he should have immediately gone out publicly, not wait four months. he's had that statement for four months, maybe five months. he's had it a long time. series of interviews by telephones. not long ones. i did it out of curiosity. i wonder whether or not somebody like that can write good. i don't think he can. let's see what happens. >> thank you, mr. president. we're just about 50 days out from the election.

we have not seen a lot of the germ investigation yesterday. where is that? you have confidence in the investigation. >> i can't tell you that yet. i stay uninvolved. i'm considered the chief law enforcement officer of the country. i could be involved in i wanted to. i thought it would be better if i wasn't. i think it's bitter if our great attorney general handles it. he has durham, which is a very, very respected man and we're going to see what it is. i can't tell you that. i can tell you this, i can tell you this, they lied, they cheated, they leaked, they got caught, they spied on my campaign. never in history has there been anything like this. and i guarantee if the roles were reversed and i was on the democrat side, people would have been in jail at the highest level. people would have been in jail for two years already. nothing like this has ever

happened. the term would be for many, many years. it's treason and other words can be used also. >> so you think there should be more indictments as a part -- >> on what i read in your wonderful papers and see -- looking at the media, not even what i know. i think comey is a disgrace to our country. i think strzok that just wrote a book, which is a total fake, is a disgrace. lisa page is a disgrace to our country. i think that when you look at mccabe where his wife got $700,000 in campaign contributions from hillary clinton, right? then hillary clinton is under investigation and yet she paid the head of the fbi one of the top people, but the head because he took over for the other guy that fortunately i fired. i made a good move. a smart move. they were looking to take down this administration.

duly elected administration. so i fired him. that was a great move when i fired him. maybe if i didn't, i wouldn't be here talking to you as president. when mccabe's wife gets $700,000 in campaign contributions when she was running for whatever office she was running from from virginia and yet he's in charge of the investigation of hillary wasn't really in charge. of course he was in charge. he knew exactly what was going on. these people got caught in the -- probably the biggest political scandal in the history of our country. they got caught. what the durham report is going to say, i can't tell you. if they say half as much as i already know just from seeing it -- you have people. i watch some of the shows. i watch liz mcdonald. she's fantastic. i watch fox business. i watched lou dobbs last night. sean hannity last night. tucker last night.

laura. i watched "fox and friends" in the morning. you watch these shows. you don't have to go too far into the details, they cover things that are -- it's really an amazing thing. they got caught in the biggest political scandal in the history of our country. they were spying on their opponent's campaign. not only spying, they were making up fakes dossiers. you have the dirty dossier. they made up the dirty -- it was all made up, all fiction. turned out to be fiction. they used it in the fisa court, this revered court. it's not so revered anymore. general flynn is still being hurt and hurt >> i spoke to general milley about general flynn two weeks ago and i said what do you think of general flynn? he's a great soldier sir, he's a

wonderful human being. he's been destroyed. no, i think without knowing anything about what term is going to release, the durham report we will call it or maybe it will be more than a report, maybe it will be much more than a report, but when i look at the things, it is a disgrace to our country. i think if people don't pay a very, very substantial price, it will happen again. and this should never, ever happen to another president. thank you very much. >> you been listening to donald trump take questions, from the field, and that's the book that's out right now. a lot of conversations and a lot of taped conversations