"These Are A Lot Of Friends Of Mine"

Donald Trump, White House Press Briefing, April 14, 2020:

... the American Farm Bureau Federation — Zippy Duvall, Cisco Systems, Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland Company, Corteva, Tractor Supply Company, Seaboard Corporation, Grimmway Farms, Mountaire Farms, and others in the agricultural business.

In banking, it's: Bank of America — Brian Moynihan has been great; JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon; Goldman Sachs; Citigroup; Wells Fargo; U.S. Bancorp; Morgan Stanley, James Gorman; Grand Rapids State Bank; Southern Bancorp ...

The construction labor workforce: International Union of Operating Engineers, Jim Callahan; North America Building Trades Union, Sean McGarvey. These are a lot of friends of mine. The Laborers' International Union of North America, Terry O'Sullivan; International Brotherhood of Teamsters, James Hoffa; National Electrical Contractors Association, David Long; Bechtel; Fluor; National Association of Homebuilders; Association of Builders and Contractors; Associated General Contractors; Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO; G.H. Palmer. ...

In defense, we have: Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, Northrop Grumman. These are all the top of each company — CEOs, chairmans, presidents. Raytheon, General Dynamics. ...

OPEC Plus. That's OPEC Plus, meaning some nations outside of OPEC. ...

On the energy front, we had: Exxon Mobil, Continental Resources, Chevron, Southern Company, Alabama Power, ConocoPhillips, Occidental Petroleum, Kinder Morgan; Hess Corporation, Pearl Group, and a few others. Big ones. Great ones.

Financial services, we have: Blackstone, Stephen Schwarzman; Paulson & Company, John Paulson; Citadel, Ken Griffin; Elliott Management, Paul Singer; Vista Equity Partners, Robert Smith; Fidelity Investments, Abigail Johnson; MasterCard; Visa; Chubb; Sequoia; Stephens, Warren Stevens — great; Charles Schwab, Chuck Schwab ...

Food and beverage: National Restaurant Association; McDonald's; Darden Restaurants; Coca-Cola; Pepsi Cola; Chick-fil-A; Subway; Bloomin' Brands; Yum! Brands; Papa John's; Wendy's; Waffle House; Starbucks; Wolfgang Puck; Thomas Keller; Jean-Georges, my friend Jean-Georges; and Daniele. You know them.

From the transportation world: FedEx, Fred Smith; Allegiant; United Airlines, Oscar Munoz; UPS, David Abney; J.B. Hunt; YRC Worldwide; Crowley Maritime — incredible, big, powerful shippers and transportation companies.

In telecommunications, we have: the legendary John Malone of Liberty Media; Verizon; T-Mobile; Charter Communications; and Brian Roberts of Comcast. ...

Healthcare: New York Presbyterian, Jerry Speyer — a friend of mine; HCA Healthcare, Sam Hazen. Thank you, Sam. Just met with Sam. Ascension Health, CommonSpirit Health, Community Health Systems, Trinity Health, Cardinal Health, McKesson, 3M. ... Procter and Gamble, Abbott Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Thermo Fisher Scientific ... Gilead Sciences, AbbVie, Regeneron, Biogen, Roche ... Anthem; United Health Group; Aetna; Cigna; and Humana — all the big ones.

The tech companies — we have the right ones: Apple, we have Tim Cook; Google, Sundar. Thank you, Sundar; Oracle, Larry Ellison and Safra Catz; Salesforce, Marc Benioff; SAP — SAP, Jen Morgan; Microsoft, Satya — great job he's done. Thank you, Satya. Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg; IBM; Intel; Qualcomm; Cisco; Advanced Micro Devices; Broadcom. Incredible companies. Companies that no other country will catch, if they're smart. They have to be smart.

But I've dealt with a lot of different countries and I will say that ... there's nobody even close to our tech companies. They can't catch them. So they try and buy them, but we sort of put an end to a lot of that. ...

I'm tired of watching baseball games that are 14 years old. But I haven't actually had too much time to watch. I would say maybe I watch one batter and then I get back to work.

The NBA — Adam Silver. The Major League Baseball — we miss our base- — well, this is baseball season right here. Rob Manfred, thank you very much. NFL — Roger Goodell. Thank you, Roger. UFC, Dana White. Great Dana White. PGA, Jay Monahan; LPGA, Michael Whan; USDA, Patrick Galbraith. Major League Soccer, Don Garber; WWE, the great Vince McMahon; NASCAR, Lesa Kennedy. Thank you, Lesa. NHL, Gary Bettman; from the New England Patriots, Bob Kraft; Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones; Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban.

And some of the thought leaders that we're going to have ... John Allison; Heritage Foundation, Kay Coles James — great person. Hoover Institute, Condoleezza Rice — another great person. Art Laffer; Steve Moore; Steve Forbes; Larry Lindsey; Katherine Reynolds; Scott Gottlieb — just spoke with Scott; Jim DeMint — and Jim has been a terrific friend; Bill Haggerty; and Ray Washburne. ...

We have incredible people ... And we'll be talking about churches and we'll be talking about opening. And we'll be talking about things that are very important to a lot of people, including me. ...

So those are the names that we have on our list. They're the names that are, I think, the best and the smartest, the brightest.