Trump: Not everyone can afford to 'lock ourselves up in a basement like Joe does'
"He has the ability to lock himself up – I don’t know he's obviously made a lot of money someplace. He has this thing about living in a basement" – Trump on Biden at final 2020 presidential debate
Defending his response to the coronavirus, President Trump said Thursday at the final 2020 presidential debate that everyone cannot afford to lock themselves in a basement like Joe Biden, his Democratic challenger.
Biden criticized Trump's handling of the virus and said certain areas with a spike in COVID-19 cases should consider keeping bars and gyms closed until cases go down.
"We can’t lock ourselves up in a basement like Joe does," Trump responded. "He has the ability to lock himself up – I don’t know he's obviously made a lot of money someplace. He has this thing about living in a basement. People can't do that. By the way, I, as the president, could not do that. I would love to put myself in a basement or in a beautiful room in the White House and go away for a year and a half until it disappears – I can't do that."
"Every meeting I have, and I meet a lot of families, including gold star families and military families – every meeting I had – and I had to meet them. It would have been horrible to cancel everything. I said, you know, this is dangerous. You catch it. You know, I caught it. I learned a lot. Great doctors. Great hospitals, and now I recovered; 99.9% of young people recover; 99% of people recover. We have to recover. We can't close up our nation. We have to open our schools, and we can’t close our nation or we’re not going to have a nation," Trump also said.
Biden responded, saying, “He says we’re learning to live with it. People are learning to die with it.”