Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump gave a televised speech from the Oval Office where he addressed COVID-19, the diseased caused by the coronavirus. According to The Wrap, the recording was first noticed by journalists Robbie Pitts, who tweeted out a video of the pre-speech audio. Of course, social media has already had a field day to the remarks.
“A what? Ah, f–! Uh-oh. I got a pen mark,” the president can be heard saying. “Anybody have any white — do you have any white stuff?” Trump’s speech came just hours after the World Health Organization declared the spread of COVID-19, which is the disease caused by coronavirus, as a global pandemic.
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“We have been in frequent contact with our allies, and we are marshaling the full power of the federal government and the private sector to protect the American people,” Trump said in the speech. He went on to state that “this is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history,” before attempting to assure Americans that he is “confident that by counting and continuing to take these tough measures, we will significantly reduce the threat to our citizens and we will ultimately and expeditiously defeat this virus.”
“A what? Oh fuck… Uh oh” pic.twitter.com/QFt4IWvief
— Robbie Pitts (@pittst3r) March 12, 2020
After recapping the “sweeping travel restrictions on China” and the “the first federally mandated quarantine in over 50 years,” he went on to list some additional “strong but necessary actions” would be taken to ensure the safety of U.S. citizens.
“We are all in this together. We must put politics aside, stop the partisanship and unify together as one nation and one family,” he said as he began to wrap up. “As history has proven time and time again, Americans always rise to the challenge and overcome adversity.”
On Thursday, Trump went on to suggest that the upcoming 2020 Olympics, slated to be held in Tokyo, Japan, should be canceled as well.
“Maybe they postpone it for a year,” Trump told reporters. “Maybe that’s not possible. I guess it’s never happened with the Olympics. If you cancel it, do it a year later. That’s a better alternative rather than having it with no crowd and having empty stadiums all over the place.”