Good morning, Mr Vice President.

Thank you for joining us.

Oh, thank you for having me on your show.

I appreciate it.

And I wish you well, sure thing.

We just heard President Trump.

They're talking about you at his press conference yesterday, but his His team also said he also said this week that he be open to taking a phone call from you Has that phone call happened?

And if it does, what's the most important thing you want to tell him to do right now?

Well, it hadn't happened.

I'm happy to talk to him, and I just tell him what we found is important to do when we went through.

Not as bad with a similar crisis.

And that is Thio.

You have to move swiftly, and then we have to move more rapidly.

You have to remember, implement the defense production.

Active power supply supply commander, create a you know, ah Defense production act for banks that get out.

Small business loans ramp up, testing the whole range of things.

You got to go faster than slower.

And we started off awfully slow.

He indicated that I complimented him on dealing with China.

Well, you know, 45 nations had already moved to keep block China's personnel from being able to come in United States before the president moved.

S O.

This is It's about pace.

It's about it's about the urgency, and I don't think there's been enough of it.

The president has said many times, and he's worried that the cure is going to be worse than disease does that.

Does that concern you at all?

And isn't there a point there that if this lock down goes on for too long, the public health concerns could be could be grave?

Well, the public health concerns can be grave.

And, you know, you saw what's happening in Singapore.

They move very rapidly, toe bring down the Corona virus down to zero, and then they began to open up.

They had very, very tight restrictions in terms of social distancing, etcetera, stain in place.

Now it's coming back, and so you know, we've got what we need.

Most of all, it's not the president fault at all, but we need most of all vaccine.

But in the meantime, we have to take all the efforts we can to make sure we prevent the spread, lower that curve as they talk about and and move from there.

And that's why I think, George, we're going to need not only these last, uh, cares act that that the Congress passed.

We did a great deal.

We're gonna need at least two more it orations of that, I believe.

And also these new guidelines from the CDC sick saying that they believe that the public now should wear masks in public.

President Trump said he doesn't want to do it.

He's not going to do it, but so but several other leading politicians are.

When you go in and public going forward, will you be wearing a mask?

Yes.

Look, I think it's important to follow the science.

Listen to the experts, do what they tell you.

Ah, it's you know, you may not look how he may not like how he looks in the mask, but the truth of the matter is that follow the science.

That's what they're telling us.

So if I go out in public and I have not gone to commercial places of late, I haven't gone to my local church, et cetera, um, we're no service is actually.

But my my generic point is that you should follow the science and your campaign videos have been quite tough on the president.

You say his failures isn't confidence.

We're gonna cost lives.

Is that what's happening now?

Well, look, what I have been saying is that he's moving too slow.

The Kona the virus is not his fault.

There's but, but the response is his responsibility.

Look, there are few things he can do.

He could immediately fully implement the Defense Production Act, which I and many others call for a long time ago.

And he's just getting underway with it.

There's still no Defense Supply Act, production act for gloves.

Mask all the things first responders need.

We should create a bank defense production act.

We've got to get those small business loans out.

You saw what what American Express did.

I'm Excuse me, Bank in America did.

They came out and said, Unless you already have loans with us, unless you've already worked with us, let's have a credit card with us.

We're not gonna We're not gonna.

Even though their government guaranteed loans were not gonna process those loans, we got to save jobs.

We've got to save people businesses.

They have to exponentially ramp up testing.

We've been talking about four million tests were going to be available.

Look, work.

Where's all this?

Where is it?

What's being done?

You gotta open up enrollment for Obamacare.

A lot of people don't have insurance.

This president is trying to take away obamacare across the board was leave people naked to this problem that that we're facing and and we have to finally get some data.

How these how this Corona virus is really hurting African Americans and minority communities.

These are things that should be done now, but you need a supply commander in charge of it all and right out of the White House, right out of a direct response to the president.

So we know where to get what we have to get and get it quickly.

Back in 2014 President Obama's department Homeland Security warned that a devastating pandemic was the highest homeland security risk from a natural cause.

Should your administration have done more to prepare.

Well, we did a lot to prepares.

You know, George, we set up an office within a pandemic office within the White House way we expanded CDC, the in other countries, so we could be, in fact observed, See, when things were coming, how things were moving, we put people in China.

We I mean, we did a whole lot of things, and they got a very detailed breakdown on this.

Bye.

Ah, a briefing to the Trump administration when we transitioned out of office.

But the president dismantle almost all of that, and he drastically cut the the budgets for the C D.

C Hey, drastically cut the budget for the, uh anyway.

So he didn't follow through on any of what we see.

We suggest it was a real problem, and it's going to continue to be a problem.

We've gotta learn lessons from this.

We can do much better than being done now.

And we can eventually get to the place where we can know these.

These viruses.

You know, George, they have no borders.

You can't build a wall you can't put up.

You can't have, You know, people at the border trying to stop it.

It's not, is it Beyond that capacity, you have to know what's coming.

Words coming from and how to deal with it.

Let's deal with the situation with Captain Bread.

Crozier from the USS Theodore Roosevelt, as you know, is fired earlier this week.

The president said yesterday he 100% supports that decision.

Your response?

I think it is.

I think it's close to criminal the way they're dealing with this guy, not his not his conduct.

The idea that this man stood up and said what had to be said, got it out that his his his troops, his his Navy personnel were in danger in danger.

Look, how many have the virus?

I think the guy should be.

He should be.

Have a commendation rather than be fired.

Finally.

Certainly, I want to turn to some politics before we go.

As you know, Wisconsin now having its primary on Tuesday, your opponent, Senator Sanders, said that should be put off.

But and the governor now joined that course as well, but it looks like it's gonna happen.

Is that wise?

Well, look, I think they should just follow the science.

I and you know what I've been hearing?

I've been following like you have, like everybody has watching the court.

Action is still in court now.

And but I think whatever, whatever the science says is what we should do and does that hold for the convention as well.

If they are, you open to the idea that it just may not be possible to do the convention in August.

Well, we're gonna have to do a convention, may have to do a virtual convention.

I don't think we should be thinking about that right now.

The idea of holding the convention is going to be necessary, but we may not be able to put 10 20 30,000 people in one place, and that's very possible again, let's see where it is.

What we do between now and then is going to dictate a lot of that as well.

But my point is that I think you just gotta follow the science, listen to the experts, listen to the FAO cheese of the world, and if that's the case, it's the case that we cannot let this we've never allowed any crisis from a civil war.

Straight through to the pandemic is 17 all the way around 16.

We have never, never let our democracy six second fiddle way that we can both have a democracy and elections and at the same time, corrected public health.

But I think it's time we start thinking about how we're going to hold elections, whether we're gonna have to and spend a lot of time figuring whether we do is they're gonna mostly be by mail, which is not the preferred route for everyone.

Are we gonna How we're gonna do that, how we're gonna make it available to everybody.

And I think that has to be on.

I know you talked to Bernie.

Smart people thinking about Now I know you talk to Bernie Sanders about your vice presidential pick and tell us a little bit about how that's going.

Is he ready to unify behind your candidacy?

And has he given you any recommendations?

Well, look, um, what I've said about the vice presidency, I was apologizing because they're so bit Presumptions for me to be setting up a committee to go through the process of and you've been through it before in your other life of deciding doing the background checks on potential nominees.

And I was apologizing to him by saying, Bernie, I I don't want it anyway and not any way to demean your effort.

But if we don't start now, we're not convey able to get there.

And he was very gracious that he understood it wasn't about asking him for recommendations of who he or I would pick.

Where were the nominee for vice president?

It was about saying to him, burning, I feel somewhat foolish sense.

Although it's likely I'm the overwhelming likelihood to get the nomination that, in fact it's not officially done yet.

And I'm moving forward with a committee for a vice presidential selection and to be able to set up a circumstance where the background checks could be done.

As you know, they take a lot of time.

And if we don't start now or shortly in the month of April, it's gonna be hard to get it done.

I was basically apologizing and making it clear I wasn't trying to be Presumptions in any way.

Um, push him.

And he said he appreciated that.

That was the extent of our discussion about the vice presidency.

Mr.

Vice President, Thanks for your time this morning.

Thank you.

Thank you, George.

Good luck to you, man.

Hi, everyone.

George Stephanopoulos here.

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