at risk particularly the ones who are elderly and the ones who have compromised conditions he said fauci said it would be several weeks and maybe longer before it could be known whether the new white house guidelines and other measures were working to slow the spread of the virus trump defends calling it a chinese virus trump defended his use of the term chinese virus as very accurate in tuesdays press conference saying he started using that phrase in reaction to china spreading disinformation that the us military was behind the virus i did not appreciate the fact that china was saying our military gave it to them our military did not give it to anybody trump said trump says political attacks selfdefense questioned by abc news chief white house correspondent jon karl about his continued attacks on democrats in spite of his call in his national address last week to put politics aside trump defended his attacks as selfdefense when they attack me im not going to let them get away with it i cant do that he said asked about his continued attacks on democratic figures despite his call in his national address last week to put politics aside pres trump tells jonkarl i only do that when i have to respondand i will continue to do that pictwittercomn1gfheblju abc news politics abcpolitics march 17 2020 asked by karl what actions the administration is taking to ensure elections are able to be protected amid the coronavirus outbreak trump said its very simple were getting rid of the virus what i am doing jon is very simple were getting rid of the virus trump said thats the only thing we can do for the markets for everything its very simple simple solution we want to get rid of it trump said the best thing we can do is get rid of the virus once thats gone its going to pop back like nobody has ever seen before thats my opinion i think it will pop back like nobody has seen before trump says fda allowing states to approve tests trump began the news conference by saying the fda has made a regulatory change to give states the ability to approve tests developed in laboratories in the states all states can now authorize tests developed and used within their borders in addition to the fda trump said the states are very much involved they have been involved from the beginning but were stepping it up as much as we can and the testing procedures are going well today were also announcing a dramatic expansion of our medicare telehealth services saying they will not enforce penalties on doctors either medicare patients can now visit any doctor by phone or video conference at no additional cost including with commonlyused services like facetime and skype pentagon to provide respirators and ventilators defense secretary mark esper announced that the pentagon will provide civilian health authorities with 5 million