Vice President Mike Pence told Fox News' Sean Hannity in an exclusive interview Thursday that "the risk of the spread of coronavirus in the United States of America remains low" and credited what he called "decisive action" by President Trump earlier this year.
"We continue to prepare for whatever may come, but the reality is that because of the actions that President Trump took ... literally, you know, ending travel, closing our borders to people coming in from China, establishing a quarantine process, setting up a task force," Pence said. "I mean if the president hadn’t taken those unprecedented steps we’d be in a very different place today, Sean."
At a news conference Wednesday, Trump announced that Pence was in charge of coordinating the federal government's response to the outbreak, nearly one month after Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declared the coronavirus to be a public health emergency. They said to the president, 'Look ... what we ought to do is, we ought to end air travel, we ought to close our border and we ought to establish a quarantining process for any American citizens that we allow back in.'
"And they said, 'No president has ever done this before, but we’re recommending out of an abundance of caution that you do it.' And President Trump didn’t hesitate for one second. He said, 'Do it.' ... Our health experts told me again yesterday when we huddled right after that [Wednesday] press briefing for the first time -- they said we would be in a very different place today if President Trump hadn’t taken the decisive action that we had.
Pence also said the White House is hopeful that Republicans and Democrats will put politics aside to deal with the outbreak. Click here for more on our top story.
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