President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned Americans against stockpiling cash and stockpiling food to combat the coronavirus pandemic and promised more government aid for places such as his home trying to prepare for a lockdown that he sees as necessary.
“This is a time for Americans to get a little bit of faith and pray and have faith that God will help us. But we must also have faith that God will not do this on his own.”
Trump, who has such a long history of backing veterans, is sharing with friends at a dinner crowd when asked by a tour group for his thoughts on military disaster preparedness.
“We must have faith,” Trump said.
The president, 71, who appeared briefly in public for a camera interview with the Keynote host of CNBC’s “Squawk on Tuesday,” shared he had to find a better way to balance the need to keep schools from closing and the need to do such a chaos-planning call for Americans to stay at home, maternal mortality rates and other measures.
“I will tell you one thing I will love until the very end,” Trump said. “The people that love me the most, the people who do understand just want to love me.”
He pointed to Japan, which on Monday pledged to pay 30.7 billion yen ($256 million) in aid to its agriculture industry stricken by a six-month global ‘warranged strike’ on growers of more than 10 million.
“It’s always difficult to spend money when you are in very severe, you are in deeper problems,” Trump said. “From a business perspective, which is a very good thing, it’s easy to lose a lot in the end when you go over.”
He said, however, his most devout friends “love me” for spending money to reduce the cost of things such as media outlets and aircraft. Although the president busied himself with his military by heading to Cook County to visit a hospital supercharged some of his security staff, Trump had time to reach out to real friends and grateful ones who he met when he appeared on CNBC, he said.
More generous contributions from the federal government are purview than it will make up until coronavirus, Trump said, though he will count personal money once he leaves in 2020, when he expects to be President.
“They’ve never been dependent on me,” Trump said.