Good morning. It’s a chilly, gray day at the White House. The pool has been tested for Covid and is awaiting POTUS departure at 11 am for campaign travel to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
While the pool was getting tested, Alyssa Farah briefly answered a few questions on the driveway. The clip is here and the transcript below.
Potus is campaigning in Rochester, MN – what are you saying about the 250 person limit that’s been imposed?
Alyssa Farah: “I don’t speak for the campaign, and I’m not privy to the planning around that.”
We’re coming up on Election Day, and Potus has said he expected a vaccine by election day.
Alyssa Farah: “We’ve got nearly half a dozen vaccines that are in Phase Three clinical trials, which is record time to get it there for a novel virus, like we’re dealing with. We’re still highly confident we’ll have one by the end of the year and be prepared to deploy it to a hundred million Americans. His goal has never—Election Day is kind of an arbitrary deadline. Americans are still suffering from this virus. The sooner we can get it, the better. That’s his goal.”
Is the president missing an opportunity by not talking more about trade, more about the GDP?
Alyssa Farah: “Listen, his closing message is going to be the economic message. Coming out of the pandemic, who’s the best person positioned to rebuild this economy? So you’re going to hear a lot of that. These other issues matter but our closing message is we’re going to defeat the virus, we’re going to defeat the economy.”