President Trump has claimed that despite his executive order on Friday requiring General Motors to start producing ventilators, the U.S. will likely not need them all and will instead donate them to other countries. At a White House briefing Friday, Trump said he thought there was a “great chance” the country will not end up needing the thousands of ventilators being produced amid the pandemic. “I think frankly there's a great chance that we won't need that many—but you know what? There are gonna be a lot of other people gonna need it,” he said. “We're in a position to do things that other countries can't... We're going to be making over 100,000 pretty quickly.” He went on to suggest the country could donate ventilators to other countries battling the pandemic. “We can help Italy, we can help U.K., Boris Johnson, specifically,” he said. “I mean, I say, ‘How you feeling?’ and the first thing Boris said to me was, ‘We need ventilators,’” Trump said.

When asked about New York’s estimate of needing 30,000 to 40,000 ventilators to fight the pandemic, the president said he thought Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s estimates are “high.” “I hope they're high. They could be extremely high. If they do not need them, that would be wonderful,” he said.