Kellyanne Conway took questions for more than 15 minutes in the driveway from reporters.
Kellyanne Conway took questions for more than 15 minutes in the driveway from reporters who did their best to keep the gaggle spread out. It was, at times, hard to hear. Overall, she seemed optimistic about legislation making its way through Congress and about White House efforts to combat the coronavirus.
Asked about POTUS referring to coronavirus as “Chinese virus” on Twitter, Conway said “I think what the President is saying is that is where it was first started.”
Asked about allegations that a White House staffer had called the coronavirus the “Kung Flu virus,” Conway said that the journalist who reported that quote should name the aide–”Why don’t we go to the source?” That alleged remark, she added “is highly offensive.”
“I’m married to an Asian,” she continued, before saying that she wasn’t going to engage in hypotheticals when the source was not known. Her own children, she noted, are of Asian descent.
Asked how long the proposed direct payments to adults affected by coronavirus might last, she referred reporters back to Treasury Sec. Mnuchin’s remarks from yesterday. She said that the payments “would be means-tested.”
Asked about restrictions on travel between the US and Canada, she said calling it a closed border was “charged language.” The action was, instead, she said, the result of “a mutual agreement between Canada and the US to stop non-essential travel.”
These types of restrictions, she said, should not be thought of as “a punishment to any country.”
Asked about POTUS highlighting West Virginia’s lack of coronavirus cases, Conway said that “there is an acceleration of testability testing going on in this country.” She was careful to note that as more testing begins, as the task force has said, more cases will be discovered.