Trump says economy will stay open as coronavirus cases close in on 5 million

President Trump said Tuesday that the economy will not shut down again to try to get the spread of coronavirus under control, despite tens of thousands of new confirmed cases everyday.

“We got hit hard and we did close up. We had to close it up and we did the right thing,” Trump told FOX Business’s Lou Dobbs. “So we closed it down and we're now opening it up. And it looks like it's a V. It's absolutely a V. But we're not going back to shutdowns. Now, we understand the disease. We understand the problems with elderly, especially elderly, with heart or diabetes or other problems. And we're able to take care of them. We understand it now, but we're not shutting down. We've done really very well.”

The U.S. recorded more than 45,000 new coronavirus cases Tuesday, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. That’s the smallest daily gain since July 6th. As of Tuesday, there more than 155,000 deaths and more than 4.5 million confirmed cases.

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A NPR-Ipsos poll Tuesday found that 59% of Americans support a nationwide two-week shelter-at-home order, and 55% support a temporary ban on all travel between states.

Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, said on Sunday that if the nation shut down for at least a month, then the economy could possibly safely reopen.

“I mean if we were to lock down really hard, I know I hate to even suggest it, people will be frustrated by it, but if we were to lock down hard for a month or six weeks, we could get the case count down so that our testing and our contact tracing was actually enough to control it the way that it's happening in the Northeast right now,” Kashkari said on CBS’s "Face the Nation."

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Several of Trump’s top advisers on the coronavirus pandemic have warned that pandemic is not slowing down. Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, warned Sunday on CNN that coronavirus is now “extraordinarily widespread” and that the U.S. is entering a “new phase.” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said Monday during a video conference with Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont that he agrees with Dr. Birx’s assessment, and that community spread is incredibly hard to contain.

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Despite that, President Trump claimed Tuesday that politicians in blue states want to keep the economy closed for political reasons.

“We are opening the economy very rapidly. And frankly, some of the blue states, we wish they'd do it and do it fast,” the President said Tuesday. “We're asking them to do it. But they like to keep it closed. It will probably open up on November 4th. You understand that they'll announce that they're opening on November 4th. There's a lot of politics involved in some of these states that are closed.”

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