Pool Reports of August 12, 2020

In-town pool report #1: Conway gaggle

Good morning from the White House. I'm your print pooler for the day.

Pool has been tested for COVID-19, and the president has a sparse schedule today. The only event at the moment is on "Getting America's Children Safely Back to School" at 3 p.m., which will be live-streamed via the White House website.

I will send an update if there are any changes to the schedule.

In the meantime, Kellyanne Conway took questions from reporters on the White House driveway for about 20 minutes after a Fox News hit. Some highlights below, audio available upon request. CSPAN video here: >https://www.c-span.org/video/?474735-1/white-house-criticizes-senator-ha...On today's POTUS event on schools:

"We are interested in helping schools, helping students return safely to school soon, whatever that means in different jurisdictions. Obviously not every state and every area within even a certain state has been hit the same way. I have noticed that parents in many of these surveys are overwhelmingly saying I feel safe if my son or daughter gets back to school. And that's being big-footed by one county health official over here, or a school board over there or teachers' unions over there. And we really ought to think about that."

"I think this president is on the side of parents who are saying I'm really worried about my child falling behind even more academically. I'm worried about them not socializing with others. I'm worried about them not getting fresh air in school, maybe not participating in athletics a little bit. And just this sort of social-emotional-mental well being for students."

"We know that there's relatively low risk -- not no risk, but low risk -- for kids of this age, thank god, to contract and to be hospitalized and worse from COVID-19. But we know the risk is very high if we keep these kids in lockdown and out of schools indefinitely. So today we're going to be announcing some additional measures to help schools reopen safely in addition to what the president expects Congress to do and wants Congress to do when it comes to the schools in addition to what's already been allocated resource wise."

"We're the federal government. We're not telling school district's what to do, we're providing guidance and resources to the school districts."

On Kamala Harris as Joe Biden's running mate:

"I think that this country, we can do two things... I think we can stand up and take a moment to applaud when history is made, and then take a moment to say why somebody who seems forward looking would actually bring us backwards as a nation through her record, and her policies and her beliefs. But she's part of a ticket that has that problem. Sen. Harris cannot cure the flaws and the inadequacies at the top of the ticket."

She credited Biden with picking a running mate that may overshadow him, saying Hillary Clinton "picked one of the five people in the country who could not overshadow her."

"Somebody that wants to be vice president of the United States or president of the United States regardless of their gender, whether they are male or female, they ought to be able to answer the tough questions without saying, 'Oh no you can't speak about women a certain way.' Look, was this country in 2016 ready for a female president? Absolutely. Just not the one that was running."

She painted Harris as "hard left," citing her Senate record, her support for abortion and support for Medicare for All. Harris "left nobody happy when it came to law and order," Conway said.

"She called herself a criminal reformer and she also called herself a top cop."

On coronavirus legislation:

"We've made very clear what needs to be in it. We were hoping they would give that one week extension two weeks ago. They failed to do that so the president took executive action. We want School Choice Now passed. I actually want to go bigger and bolder, I think the money should follow the student."

"So we want that. We want economic relief. We want to make sure our small businesses and aspiring small businesses can continue to survive and thrive. This is why the president took executive action. He said if you're looking at your rent bill I want to make sure you're not evicted. You're looking at your student loan payment, I want to make sure you don't have to worry about that for the rest of the year, the rest of 2020... he suspended the payroll tax because he wants to make sure that these businesses continue to flourish."

"So I have no idea, other than Nov. 3, why the Democrats left the negotiating table."

Will Americans blame the president if unemployment money runs out next month?

"I think they're going to blame the Congress because they saw Congress absent from their job most of the last several months. Voting virtually, they're not here when they do show up. I mean, some of them are on TV more than they're in the negotiating room or in the hearing room."

In-town pool report #2: Lunch lid and Kudlow

White House has called a lunch lid until 1 p.m.

Larry Kudlow spoke to reporters on the White House driveway a short time ago, telling reporters the White House would like to see the capital gains tax go as low as 15 percent, but denied that the administration is considering cutting it via executive order.

Full video here, and quotes below: https://www.c-span.org/video/?474735-101/white-house-pushes-capital-gain...

Asked if White House is looking at cutting business taxes unilaterally:

"We are looking at middle class income tax cuts and capital gains tax cuts to spur investment and jobs and liquidity. We've been looking at that. Those things surfaced a while back. In another era we used to call them tax cuts 2.0. The president has never lost those thoughts. He is a tax cutter in direct contrast to the Biden team, which are tax raisers."

Is it your belief that you need legislation to do capital gains cut?

"Yes. I stand with the Secretary (Mnuchin) on that. I didn't say it was an [executive order]. It's not part of the EO. This is just something we're looking at closely."

"If you go back, Steve Mnuchin and I and some others, we had the economic committee during the campaign. And we originally had a 15 percent capital gains tax rate. And I wouldn't mind going back to that."

He argued the Biden campaign will raise the capital gains tax to nearly 50 percent, "because they're raising the individual rate and they're raising the corporate rate, and you've got to put in the Obamacare surcharge."

"We'd like to take it back to 15 percent, where it was for quite a long time because it helps jobs, investment, productivity and wages. But not through executive order," he said.

In-town pool report #3: Schools event starting

Pool is gathered in the State Dining Room for the president's event on getting kids back to school. This is being live-streamed here: https://whitehouse.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c97630621baff8c44f...

The president entered the room at 3:03 p.m. About two dozen guests are seated around the room. Chairs are spaced maybe a foot apart, and no guests are wearing masks. Kellyanne Conway and Education Sec. Betsy DeVos are here.

Two sets of seats are on risers on either side of a television screen in the middle of the room. Each riser has roughly a dozen American flags behind it.

Ten chairs are set up in the back of the room.

There are roughly 30 American flags in total set up behind chairs on either side of a television screen in the middle of the room.

I will send additional color and highlights, including any background from the White House.

In-town pool report #4: Schools event background

The White House passes along the following on today's event:

Today, President Donald J. Trump will participate in an open discussion with parents, students, and teachers on the safe reopening of America's schools and announce best practices to protect the well-being of children and teachers.

President Trump believes America's schools should reopen because he stands on the side of science, which shows that children are at extremely low risk of harm from the coronavirus and are actually at greater risk when forced to stay home. The President stands with parents, by empowering them to make the best decisions for their children. The President stands with States as they navigate this challenge by securing $13 billion to support K-12 education and calling on Congress to approve an additional $105 billion, $70 billion of which is for K-12 schools.

The following individuals are expected to attend:

The White House
President Donald J. Trump
Vice President Mike Pence
Kellyanne Conway, Assistant to the President and Senior Counselor to the President
Dr. Scott Atlas, Advisor

Trump Administration
Secretary Betsy DeVos, Department of Education

External Participants
Paul Peterson, Ph.D., Director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow at Stanford University
Melanie McGraw Piasecki, MD, FormerNeonatologist and Mother of Three
Richard Corcoran, Commissioner, Florida Department of Education
Nilsa Alvarez, Parent from Tennessee
Elisa Macia, Mother and Son from Waukesha, Wisconsin
Janie Neeley, Mother from South Carolina
Lindsay Ammons, Mother from Virginia
Claudia Valladares, Teacher from Texas
Lynne Gronseth, Special Education Resource Teacher from Arkansas

In-town pool report #5: Schools event ends and briefing later

The president said there would be a press conference at 5:30 today. He left the room at 3:37 p.m. without taking questions, saying he had "too much respect" for his guests to answer one shouted question about families who feel unsafe returning to school.

He closed by saying he spoke with Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence and LSU coach Ed Orgeron about playing college football this fall.

Other details from the event, which was live streamed:

Kellyanne Conway called on guests around the room one by one, with each one explaining why they support returning to in-person learning. Some were parents and teachers who said they favor in-person classes.

After each speaker the president chimed in to reinforce the idea that children should return to in-person learning.

When one attendee described how her district was pursuing a hybrid model with some in-person classes and some online, Trump said the concept sounded "ridiculous" and "very strange."

Trump at one point swiped at Joe Biden when one guest argued digital learning could not replace the benefits of in-person learning.

"If you're a presidential candidate and you're sitting in a basement looking at a computer that's not a good thing?" Trump said.

A few guests spoke about how the lack of in-person learning was a particular burden for students with special needs and their parents.

Richard Corcoran, the commissioner of the Florida Department of Education, said of the districts that opened up there this week there is "almost 100 percent teacher participation" and that they expect roughly 70 percent in-person participation among students when more districts open at the end of the month.

"It is interesting because one thing we've learned during this horror show of the China plague is virtual is not as good as being there," Trump said.

In-town pool report #5a: Unidentified individual who spoke during schools event

For those wondering, your pooler is told that the man off to the side of the room who spoke during the schools event is Christopher Neeley. He spoke after Janie Neeley, and he was previously appointed in 2018 to a two-year term on the President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities.

Also, please feel free to send any questions you'd like me to try and ask at the briefing later.

In-town pool report #6: Two minute warning

The White House just gave the two minute warning for the president's news conference, which was scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. It is being live streamed here: https://whitehouse.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c97630621baff8c44f...

In-town pool report #7: POTUS begins briefing

President Trump entered the briefing room at 5:56 p.m. and began speaking about the coronavirus pandemic and the economy.

Treasury Secretary Steen Mnuchin, economic adviser Larry Kudlow and Scott Atlas entered the room a moment earlier and are now seated to the side of the podium.

In-town pool report #8: Briefing concludes

The president exited the briefing room at 7 p.m.

The president delivered remarks for just over 30 minutes that touched on: the state of the economy, the payroll tox, mail-in voting, the state of the postal service, recommendations for schools amid the pandemic, his desire to see athletes (college and professional) stand for the national anthem, his belief that school districts can and should reopen safely with some mitigation measures in place, that the administration will provide 125 million masks to school districts, that it could be safer for college aged kids to live at school than with their parents or grandparents and praise for Scott Atlas.

Atlas made brief remarks before ceding the podium back to the president.

POTUS then took several questions, including on the following topics:
--His executive orders on the economy and concerns about the strength of the economic recovery
--Whether Biden/Harris should denounce antifa
--Whether he watched the Biden/Harris event before this briefing
--His tweet this morning warning of an "invasion" of the suburbs with low-income housing
--Whether he had words of encouragement for kids readying to go back to school
--His criticism of the post office and whether it's intended to sabotage the USPS ahead of the election

The briefing can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kso8pPPuc6E&feature=emb_title

In-town pool report #9: Lid

White House called a travel/photo lid at 7:13 p.m. Have a good rest of the evening.