POTUS was asked about the financial markets. He said: “I think financial markets will bounce back soon as in really bounce back. Don’t forget they’re down probably 10 or 11% from where they were but they were up 70% so it’s a relatively small piece. I don’t like to see it happen because I was looking for 30,000 fairly soon. It seemed days away from 30,000 and now we have a little more room to make up.
“I think the country is so strong, we’re so strong as a country now. We have never been like this. The consumer is generating so much because of the tax cuts, the regulation cuts and the things we’ve done. So I think we’re in great shape. I think we’re in great shape.”
He added: “This came unexpectedly a number of months ago. I heard about it in China. It came out of China. I heard about it and we made a good move, we closed it down, we stopped it. Otherwise the head of CDC said last night that you would have had thousands of more problems if we didn’t shut it down early. That was a very early shut down, which is something we got right.”
Your pooler asked whether Joe Biden’s emergence as the Democratic front runner on Super Tuesday will take away POTUS’s argument that party is too leftwing and socialist.
POTUS replied: “Well, he’s leftwing and he’s got all people that are leftwing and in many ways he’s worse than Bernie. Look what he did with guns. He put Beto in charge of guns. Beto wants to get rid of guns, right? So that’s a bad stance and he’s got a lot of people that are leftwing and they’ll be running the government. He’s not going to be running anything. If he ever got in, they’ll be running the government. They’ve got people further leftwing than what Bernie has.
“It wouldn’t be good for Wall Street, I can tell you that, plus if you look at his taxes, he’s gonna raise taxes incredibly. He’s gonna raise taxes more than Bernie and he’s open about it. Bernie doesn’t like to talk about it. Joe Biden, his tax increases, they’re staggering. It’s ridiculous. He’ll destroy everything that’s been built.”
Your pooler asked if sexism was a factor in Elizabeth Warren being forced to pull out of the race and whether he believes he will see a female president in his lifetime. POTUS said: “No, I think lack of talent was her problem. She had a tremendous lack of talent. She was a good debater, she destroyed Mike Bloomberg very quickly, like it was nothing, that was easy for her. But people don’t like her. She’s a very mean person and people don’t like her. People don’t want that. They like a person like me, that’s not mean.”
He finished: “OK, I’ll see you guys.”
POTUS stood up and left the Diplomatic Room just after 9am.