Fresh off of his appearance at the Vice Presidential debate with Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) in Salt Lake City Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence made a pair of campaign appearances in Central Florida.
With 24 days to go until the election, Pence is trying to shore up support for Trump's re-election campaign – and after a "Latinos for Trump" event in Orlando, he spoke exclusively to Spectrum News' Ybeth Bruzual.
In their interview, Pence was focused on two major topics: Jobs and Health Care.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the country, with 7.7 million cases in the U.S. and over 728,000 of them in Florida alone, Pence urged optimism.
"The encouraging news is we’re opening up America again,” Pence said, when asked about the unemployment rate in Osceola County, which led the state at 15.1% unemployment in August. Two major Orlando-area employers, Walt Disney World and Universal Studios Orlando, announced layoffs in the thousands in recent weeks.
“But maybe the most encouraging news is that we may well be just a month or so away from having the first safe and effective corona vaccine in the world,” Pence claimed, adding that five vaccine candidates are in late-stage clinical trials through "Operation Warp Speed."
Pence said he believes that a vaccine will be key to putting Americans back to work.
“While we grieve the loss of lives in this state and the hardship the coronavirus has imposed on many people," Pence said, "we really do believe that going forward, as we develop the new medicines, many of the same medicines that contributed to the president’s swift recovery this week, that those are available to the American people, and we drive toward a vaccine, we’ll be in a place where we can put this coronavirus some day in the past and put every American across this state and across this nation back to work.”
Pence then turned his attention to the Affordable Care Act and protecting preexisting conditions, which are key focuses for Florida voters, and are top of mind with the coronavirus pandemic.
The Vice President claimed that a major reason why he and President Trump were elected in 2016 was because the Affordable Care Act was a "disaster," and said that "repealing the individual mandate was our top priority."
Pence said that Trump wants to protect preexisting conditions, and cited the executive order the president signed last month to that effect.
However, experts have said that executive order lacks teeth, according to a Politifact fact check.
Pence slammed Trump's opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, saying, “what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want to do is set us on a path toward a government takeover of health care. With the so-called 'public option' in his version of Obamacare, that sets us on a path towards socialized medicine.”
Though Biden's health care proposal does call for a public option, it is a far cry from socialized medicine. While some Democratic presidential candidates, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), supported Medicare for All, a "single-payer, national health insurance program to provide everyone in America with comprehensive health care coverage, free at the point of service," Biden's plan calls for building on the Affordable Care Act.
“President Donald Trump has made it clear that any future health care reform will protect Americans with pre-existing conditions, but we don’t have to set our nation on a path to socialized medicine to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions," Pence said.
Florida and its 29 electoral college votes are critical for Trump's re-election hopes. Expect both Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden to campaign heavily in the Sunshine State, and especially along the I-4 corridor.
Trump, who had to postpone a Sanford rally on October 2 after being infected with the coronavirus, has rescheduled his rally for Tuesday. Meanwhile, Biden was in the Tampa and Central Florida areas several weeks ago.
Watch the full interview with Pence above.