Sunday School 7/19/20

Today, Fox News Sunday aired an exclusive interview with the president, hosted by Chris Wallace.

I was going to just print the entire transcript, but it's much too long. Instead, here are some highlights, starting with coronavirus issues.

On the expanding virus hotspots being worse than burning embers, instead it's a firestorm:

No, no. But I don't say - I say flames, we'll put out the flames. And we'll put out in some cases just burning embers. We also have burning embers. We have embers and we do have flames. Florida became more flame-like but it's - it's going to be under control. And, you know, it's not just this country, it's many countries. We don't talk about it in the news. They don't talk about Mexico and Brazil and still parts of Europe, which actually got hit sooner than us, so it's a little ahead of us in that sense. But you take a look, why don't they talk about Mexico? Which is not helping us. And all I can say is thank God I built most of the wall, because if I didn't have the wall up, we would have a much bigger problem with Mexico.

On whether Trump takes responsibility for not having a national plan for the various aspects of the virus:

Look, I take responsibility always for everything because it's ultimately my job too. I have to get everybody in line. Some governors have done well, some governors have done poorly. They're supposed to have supplies they didn't have. I supplied everybody. Now we have somewhat of a surge in certain areas and other areas we're doing great. But we have a surge in certain areas. But you don't hear people complaining about ventilators. We've got all the ventilators we can use; we're supplying them to other countries. 

On the increase in testing (up 37%) and cases (up 194%) and positivity:

Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day. They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test. Many of them - don't forget, I guess it's like 99.7%, people are going to get better and many cases, they're going to get better very quickly.  If we go out and we look and then on the news - look if you go back to the news, all of your - even your wonderful competitors, you'll see cases are up. Well, cases are up - many of those cases shouldn't even be cases. Cases are up because we have the best testing in the world and we have the most testing. No country has ever done what we've done in terms of testing. We are the envy of the world. They call and say the most incredible job anybody's done is our job on testing, because we're going to very shortly be up to 50 million tests. You look at other countries, they don't even do tests. They do tests if somebody walks into the hospital, they're sick, they're really sick, they test them then or they'll test them in a doctor's office. But they don't go around have massive areas of testing we do. And I'm glad we do, but it really skews the numbers.

On the possibility that other countries don't have the virus as bad as we do:

It's possible that they don't test, that's what's possible. We find cases and many of these cases heal automatically. We're finding - in a way, we're creating trouble. Certainly, we are creating trouble for the fake news to come along and say, "Oh, we have more cases." Look, we did something that nobody's ever done. Not only the ventilators, where were supplying them all over the world. We did a testing program the likes of which nobody's ever done before.

On whether he would consider a national mask mandate:

No, I want people to have a certain freedom, and I don't believe in that. No, and I don't agree with the statement that if everybody wear a mask everything disappears. Hey, Dr. Fauci said don't wear a mask. Our Surgeon General - terrific guy - said don't wear a mask. Everybody who is saying don't wear a mask - all of sudden everybody's got to wear a mask, and as you know masks cause problems, too. With that being said, I'm a believer in masks. I think masks are good. But I leave it up to the governors. Many of the governors are changing. They're more mask into - they like the concept of masks, but some of them don't agree.  I do say this - schools have to open. Young people have to go to school, and there's problems when you don't go to school, too. And there's going to be a funding problem because we're not going to fund - when they don't open their schools. We're not going to fund them. We're not going to give them money if they're not going to school, if they don't open.

Moving on to whether he thinks the Confederate flag is offensive:

It depends on who you're talking about, when you're talking about. When people proudly have their Confederate flags, they're not talking about racism. They love their flag, it represents the South, they like the South. People right now like the South. I'd say it's freedom of many things, but it's freedom of speech.

And, finally for today, on whether he'll veto the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which funds the country's military operations, if it contains language removing the names of Confederate heroes from military bases.

Because I think that Fort Bragg, Fort Robert E. Lee, all of these forts that have been named that way for a long time, decades and decades - excuse me, excuse me. I don't care what the military says. I do - I'm supposed to make the decision. Fort Bragg is a big deal. We won two World Wars, nobody even knows General Bragg. We won two World Wars. Go to that community where Fort Bragg is, in a great state, I love that state, go to the community, say how do you like the idea of renaming Fort Bragg, and then what are we going to name it?  We're going to name it after the Reverend Al Sharpton? What are you going to name it Chris, tell me what you're going to name it?

So, there's a whole thing here. We won two World Wars, two World Wars, beautiful World Wars that were vicious and horrible, and we won them out of Fort Bragg, we won them out of all of these forts and now they want to throw those names away. And no, I'm against that, and you know what, most other people are. And I even - I don't believe in polls because I see the fakest polls I've ever seen, but that poll is a 64 percent thing, which actually surprised me. We won World Wars out of these military bases. No, I'm not going to go changing them, I'm not going to go changing them.

One more time, is he going to veto the NDAA over this?

I might. Yes, I might.

We'll have more in tomorrow's Extra Credit. Meanwhile, stay safe, wear your mask (even without a national mandate), and I'll see you around the virtual campus.