also, chapman university's joel kotkin talks about how urban centers in the united states could be effected by the pandemic. watch c-span's "washington journal" live at 7 a.m. eastern and join the discussion.

hisresident trump says administration has improved the announcement his during the rolling thunder said thefor pows and cdc would be re-advising placing places of worship as essential. pres. trump: thank you very much. you are my friends, you have been supporting me from the beginning. i appreciate you are here. we are here for you. when you want to come back with your 600,000, we are ready to take you. you're going to give us a little display of those beautiful bikes. i've never seen anyone do that, actually. you must have special privileges. i want to welcome you, and i want to welcome my friends. you are the rolling to remember.

we will be commemorating memorial day. it is a big thing. together, our nation pays immortal tribute to the extraordinary courage, unflinching loyalty, and unselfish love and supreme devotion of the american heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice, and that is what you are here for. the ultimate sacrifice, and it is indeed. they laid down their lives to ensure the survival of american freedom. their names are asked for reverend to the hearts of our people in the memory of our nation. with some of you, it's been very close. very, very close to your heart. we cherish them and our gold star families. they are very special to us. just as we will remember the nearly 82,000 americans missing in action. we are joined by robert wilkie. where is robert? great job you are doing, robert. [applause] we got the veterans' choice and accountability. before, they had to wait. now it's a few hours, they get

taken care of. you don't hear bad things about the v.a. anymore. used to turn it on every night, you would see a horror show. you have done a fantastic job, robert. accountability, also. when you have civil-service and unions and all of this, for 40-50 years, they've been trying to get rid of it. they don't take care of our vets, we fire them. before, you couldn't. they were sadists, they were thieves. i think you have let go of more than 8000 people. we have been trying to fire them for years. they were horrible. now, they are gone. we got them out. that is a big thing. robert wilke, thank you very much. national commander of amvets, jan brown. thank you very much. good job you have done here. [applause]

you got this very special group. they will be doing a special ride. i will get to watch you, i hope. i don't know, sometimes i look at those bikes, i don't know, they are very tough. and actor, robert patrick, who has been in many films and television shows. in "terminator 2," that is not too bad, huh? i want to remember the writers who made the riding possible. the rolling thunder. we are going to continue that onward. the rolling thunder people were terrific. we had a good relationship with them. you know that, right? i heard they were giving them a hard time a couple of years ago. i said, "nope." but people get a little older.

the whole group is terrific. thank you for keeping this tradition alive and preserving the memory of those who are mi my administration will spare no effort or resource to support the men and women who defend our nation. we have secured over $2.1 trillion in funding to completely rebuild american military. and think of that, $2.1 trillion, not billion, it used to be million, than about 10 years ago, you started hearing billion, and now you are starting to hear trillion. it is good when we are spending $2.1 trillion in funding on our military. completely rebuilding the military. our american military now has the greatest equipment, the finest equipment it has ever had. it has been entirely rebuilt. some of the equipment is still

coming, all made in america. everything. you do it better than anybody. our military was depleted, just like the shelves were empty for medical equipment. we did not have ventilators, testing, we didn't have anything. now we have great testing, the best in the world, we have great ventilators, we are making thousands and thousands of them. we are actually now so loaded with ventilators, that we are helping other countries. and therefore, saving lives also. our american military, with the 281 planes, ef-35 fighter jets, the best in the world, 453 tanks, 14,400 tactical combat vehicles, two aircraft carriers, 36 additional battleships, and much more, all made in the usa. importantly, we are giving the service members the resources and tools that they need. we are even getting brand-new, beautiful uniforms.

the army has new uniforms, and they are gorgeous. we passed the largest reform of the department of veterans affairs in the history of the department, including v.a. accountability. and i said, v.a. choice, we moved 8500 v.a. workers who were not doing their job, who were taking advantage of our country and hurting our vets. the department of veterans think of that. they trust services. the report the trust services have reached the highest in the history of the v.a. that is a big statement. the percentage of veterans reporting they trust the v.a. and v.a. services is now the highest in the history of the service. satisfaction with the v.a. outpatient care has reached 89%. we are not going to rest until

we have it at 100%, robert. i also formed the prevents task force. force. big difference between now and the way it used to be. big difference. i also formed it. that would go in the fake news immediately. i have to be very careful. i also formed the prevents task force to fight the tragedy of veteran suicide, which is an unbelievable strategy. we have medications we are working on. we have one from johnson & johnson, which is an inhaler. it's been very effective. we have ordered thousands of units of that, thousands and thousands. we are using it. when the invisible enemy struck our country, our administration secured materials, we are

protecting those who protect us. i was very early, in fact, out of many people i was the only one that wanted to do it, i guess i was the only one that matters, but i kept china out of the united states. i put a ban on china in january. i took a lot of heat. joe biden said, "he is xenophobic." but a month later, he said i was right. dr. fauci, a good guy, he said, "you don't need to do that." later on, when he saw that i did it and we kept tens of thousands of people out, he said, "donald trump saved tens of thousands of lives." and we did. we did a very early. the ban on chinese people, people from china coming in. i was seeing how badly infected the one area, wuhan, was.

everybody thought nancy pelosi was in chinatown in san francisco, dancing in the streets of chinatown saying, "it is ok to come to the united states. bring your infection with you." these people are sick. anyway, last year, i signed the national pow mia flag act, which requires all federal buildings fly the pow mia flag additional to the american flag. [applause] you see them all over washington now. they could be separate from the flag, you can do a separate placement, or you can do it under the flag. in the months since that righteous flag has flown over the white house, probably noticed it today, that reminder is the work left -- and we have work left -- but we have to get

it, we have to win the white house. we are going to do great with our economy. you already see it starting to happen. we are trying to get some governors that are not opening up to open a pretty quickly. i spoke to the cdc today. we want churches and places of faith and worship, we want them to open. i believe today, they are going to be issuing a very strong recommendation. i am going to be talking about that in a little while. they are going to be opening up very soon. we want our church is open, we want our places of faith that is going to start happening. i consider them essential. we are going to make that essential. they make places essential that are not essential, and they opened, and the places of faith are not allowed to open. you have been tremendous

supporters of mine. the bikers, i call them the bikers, for whatever reason, you liked me from the beginning, i liked you from the beginning. i remember, i went to places where there would be thousands of bikes outside, and they were all in support. they actually said, because there was no room, we have never had an empty seat from the time i came down the escalator with the future first lady. who would have thought? there were a lot of people that thought we would not win, and we won pretty easily, too. we went through a primary, it was tough. you were there with me. we went to one election. it was tough, you were there with me. always there, the bikers. what do i have, 98%? we are looking for that 2%. i will never forget, i made a speech, and the place was packed, you couldn't get in.

i said, "i will do a second one," they said, "no, we know where you are about, we know where you're coming from, sir, we are here to protect you, we are not here to listen." i never forgot it. i never felt so safe. there were a lot of rough guys in that little group of about a thousand bikes, maybe more than that. a lot of rough people, but i tell you. it's amazing. we are not here to hear you speech, we are here to protect you. i thought it was an incredible thing. you have been my friends. i want to thank you very much for it. get those engines started. i want to see you guys drive around. drive as fast as you can, but don't get hurt. [laughter] [motorcycles revving] ["sweet child of mine" by guns 'n roses playing] ♪

♪ >> the white house did not release a weekly address from the president, however tammy duckworth of illinois delivered the democratic weekly address, discussing the federal response to the coronavirus outbreak ahead of memorial day.