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Cuomo Prime Time
Pence: Not Enough Coronavirus Tests Exist To Meet Demand; Warren Ends Presidential Run, Holds Off On Endorsement; Trump: If Republican Said What Schumer Did About Justices, They'd Be In Jail. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired March 05, 2020 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[21:00:00]
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's not good news though for Nathaniel Woods.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Manuel (ph) need to follow that this evening. Thank you very much.
The news continues right now. Want to hand it over to Chris Cuomo for CUOMO PRIME TIME. Chris?
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: All right, Anderson, thank you very much. I am Chris Cuomo. Welcome to PRIME TIME.
It's an important night. The threat to us is not Coronavirus. It's how we handle it. The latest, the VP says there aren't enough tests. It's unacceptable. The President said he had it under control. He doesn't. And apparently, there is no cure for this President's viral lack of veracity.
But we have something special for you tonight. A doctor who believes there could be a quicker way to identify the virus that you don't have to do it through the test kits. He's brought the X-rays to show us what he discovered.
What do you say? Let's get after it.
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TEXT: CUOMO PRIME TIME.
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CUOMO: All right, listen, you got to give the Vice President this much. He's applying a rare antiseptic to this Administration. He's telling the truth.
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MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We don't have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward.
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CUOMO: Not enough testing kits to meet the demand, in the richest country with weeks to prepare. No wonder we only know of 227 cases. And the President, what does he say? "It'll all just go away. And if it doesn't, it's Obama's fault."
Now, look, we know the kits are valuable so much so that they just airdropped some onto this cruise ship that we're showing you right now. It's sitting off the Coast of San Francisco because some on board are showing symptoms.
You have to know what you're dealing with, so you can give people the symptomatic treatment, so we can see how many people get better, and who need more help.
Good news. We have someone who thinks they know another way to diagnose the virus without the testing kits. This is about medicine. It's not some mumbo jumbo, all right? Maybe it's quicker, maybe it isn't.
The Doctor's name is Adam Bernheim, OK? He's been studying the spread with a team of doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital here in New York. Google that, Mount Sinai, and you'll see this place is no joke. He is a Cardiothoracic Radiologist.
Doc, for the laypeople, cardio, heart, thoracic, the lungs and the upper portion of the body, and the interplay, this is your specialty.
DR. ADAM BERNHEIM, CARDIOTHORACIC RADIOLOGIST, MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL: That's right, Chris. Thank you very much for having me tonight. I am a Cardiothoracic Radiologist. I've dedicated my professional life to looking at scans of the heart and lungs. I look at 25,000 cases a year.
And I've been very fortunate enough to be on a team at Mount Sinai we were - where we have a unique partnership with multiple Chinese colleagues, and we got hundreds of scans over the course of the past six weeks, in patients that are positive for Coronavirus.
CUOMO: Now, before you tell me what you're about to tell me, what is your level - obviously, on national television, you're putting your name and your reputation out there. What is your level of confidence in what you think that you and the team have discovered?
BERNHEIM: We're confident about our findings. They're published in the peer-reviewed literature. In medicine, we have a standard of - a standard threshold of peer-reviewed acceptance in medical literature.
CUOMO: So, this is not a guess.
BERNHEIM: This is not a guess.
CUOMO: It's not something you've seen once, and maybe it can be repeated on other scans.
BERNHEIM: We systematically tabulated hundreds of scans from four different hospitals in China, in different provinces, and I think that we feel very confident that our data does add some value to the role of CT scanning as sort of a complementary tool for diagnosis.
CUOMO: CT scanning, CAT scans.
BERNHEIM: Yes.
CUOMO: So, you don't have to have a testing kit. Why? What do you think you can see?
BERNHEIM: Sure. I just want to take you just on a brief introductory tour of the chest. One of the benefits of the CT scan is that it gives you a great look at the anatomy of the chest.
CUOMO: What am I looking at?
BERNHEIM: So, this is a patient from China. This is a 44-year old male who had fever, and cough, and some shortness of breath. I want to show you just one slice through the middle of their chest.
This is their lung, which I'll show you here is, this lung is normal. And normal lung is black on a CT scan. It contains air which shows up as black on the scan. You just see a few white lines which are just normal vessels.
But when the lung becomes diseased with the pneumonia, which is what COVID-19 is, all of a sudden that normal black lung, instead of containing air, it contains other things like cells, pus, debris, and fluid, and it starts to become gray and white. So, that's the abnormality here that we're seeing in this patient.
CUOMO: All right, so - this is similar like can I circle these?
BERNHEIM: Please do.
CUOMO: So, this is what you're talking about. You're looking at this.
BERNHEIM: Exactly.
CUOMO: You're looking at this, and the other ones that they see here. And what does this tell you that it's just pneumonia but how do you connect that to COVID-19 or Coronavirus?
BERNHEIM: So - so, I have to tell you. It's really fascinating. When we first started looking at these cases, we didn't know what to expect. This is a new disease.
We thought that maybe the pattern would look like other pneumonias that we see like the influenza or other viral pneumonias. However, you might notice that the shape of a lot of these spots in the lung is very round.
CUOMO: Yes.
BERNHEIM: And they're kind of arranged around the edge of the lung.
CUOMO: Yes.
BERNHEIM: So these gray--
CUOMO: Let's do this. Let's give it to them where they can look at them. You see these? Let me - and let's go to pneumonia, so you can see.
BERNHEIM: Sure. This is the same image. These really blotchy gray and white spots arranged around the outer part of the lung, that's not a typical pattern that we're used to seeing.
CUOMO: So, round is not. Now, what is this one supposed to? Is this more typical pneumonia?
[21:05:00]
BERNHEIM: So, this is in contrast. This is a patient from Mount Sinai who does not have Coronavirus. This is a more garden-variety bacterial pneumonia where you see just one focal spot that's very, very white, and this is a patient who has a more typical strep pneumonia pattern.
So, this - so one of the things that's really helpful--
CUOMO: How many scans, by the way? How many different Chinese patients?
BERNHEIM: We looked at hundreds, close to 500 scans.
CUOMO: OK. So, this is not two or three, all right I got you.
BERNHEIM: This is not two or three. This is--
CUOMO: All right. And how many doctors--
BERNHEIM: --this is a large--
CUOMO: --are looking at this on the - on the team?
BERNHEIM: So, we have two fellowship-trained cardiothoracic radiologists and another supporting team of researchers that are in our group.
CUOMO: All right, now the reason I'm asking those questions is because for me and the people watching, I don't know if you're right.
BERNHEIM: Sure.
CUOMO: But the level of vetting, how other doctors take what you say, now have you gotten pushback?
Do you have people with your kinds of credentials who are saying "No, no, no, no. You're way early on this. You're way wrong. We don't think like," the peer-reviewed study, how many of them say "No, you don't have it right?"
BERNHEIM: To the trained eye of a radiologist, we have a very systematic way of looking at the scans, and looking at the lungs. And when data is published in a reputable journal, it's a way of educating our entire field. So, I don't think there's been any pushback at all.
In fact, one of our goals is to try to educate our colleagues throughout the country, so that they will be able to recognize the--
CUOMO: So, you think you could get a CT scan of my chest, and tell me whether or not I have this?
BERNHEIM: You know, after looking at hundreds of cases, there are - the pattern has become so characteristic that there are many cases where I could tell you with a lot of confidence that this is Coronavirus or not.
CUOMO: Now, the important question is this. It's OK if you think I have Coronavirus, and I don't, because it's not like you have a treatment protocol anyway.
The only problem would be if you think I don't have Coronavirus, and I do. How big a risk is that with this method of analysis?
BERNHEIM: So, that is a risk. One of the things that we found actually is that within the first two days of symptom onset, about half the CT scans were actually normal.
It's valuable to know that because we know that early in the time course of the illness, CT scan does not rule out disease. So, that's important for decision-making in terms of taking patients off isolation.
CUOMO: But it's the same thing with the tests we heard--
BERNHEIM: Correct. There are also false negatives.
CUOMO: --is if you test me too soon--
BERNHEIM: Correct.
CUOMO: --you don't - and I'm not showing what I need to show, I guess, and what do you call the sputum or something like that--
BERNHEIM: Rights, that's right.
CUOMO: --to find it out. So, this is no more variable than that?
BERNHEIM: This--
CUOMO: Or is it comparable?
BERNHEIM: This is a powerful tool that's complementary. I think that the test is of tremendous value. But you're right there are also false negatives there, and false positives, and the tests often take time.
CUOMO: You say complementary. Here's the - here's the urgency for me. We don't have enough tests. Put it - put it to the side. Why? It's not - it's not worth it because that's where you are. BERNHEIM: Right.
CUOMO: Is this something that you have tried to alert to authorities to incorporate into the let people do these tests on people, we'll be catching more cases.
BERNHEIM: CT scan is part of the diagnostic algorithm for the workup of suspected patients, especially anybody who displays a history of travel to an endemic region, or they have moderate to severe respiratory symptoms.
In practice, CT scanning is done all the time. So, a lot of the cases that we think we might pick up are patients that the index of suspicion is fairly low, especially in light of the fact that we now have community spread.
CUOMO: That's good.
BERNHEIM: Yes.
CUOMO: I mean, you know, obviously we - it's all bad, right? We don't want to have this thing spreading.
But what I'm saying is this. They say there aren't enough tests. I have you here because you say, "I don't need the tests necessarily." Let's do these. We'd rather have the tests and have the full set--
BERNHEIM: Sure.
CUOMO: --of protocols. But the idea that we do nothing unless we have a test, you say that that's too conservative, there's more that can be done.
BERNHEIM: I think that we can learn a lot of information off the CT scan both--
CUOMO: So like what are we seeing here?
BERNHEIM: --both in ruling and not ruling out.
CUOMO: This - is this regular pneumonia? Or is this the bad stuff because of this?
BERNHEIM: So, this is a nice case. It's actually a patient in their mid-40s from China who had an initial CT scan that was completely normal. I'm showing--
CUOMO: This is normal?
BERNHEIM: Yes. I'm showing you a cut through the lung bases. You're catching the diaphragm and the liver here.
CUOMO: OK.
BERNHEIM: And part of the spleen here. This is just the very bottom of the lungs here, and you'll see that they're normal. They contain black, just containing normal air, and a few vessels, entirely normal, negative scan.
The same patient was imaged three days later. And here we see for the first time one of these rounded gray spots on the edge of the lung. This is the typical hallmark - hallmark feature of Coronavirus.
So, it's a nice way for us to look and see "Wow, this is what it looks like early on." This is the earliest manifestation of disease.
And I think it's really helpful in terms of diagnosis that a radiologist who's reading in anywhere in this country can recognize that, and alerts the team that this might be a possible positive case.
CUOMO: Two--
BERNHEIM: This is - this is very--
CUOMO: Two questions.
BERNHEIM: --atypical for other pneumonias.
CUOMO: OK. So, that's the important part. So, if you saw this, what percentage confidence would you have that this is not normal pneumonia, this person, we should quarantine?
BERNHEIM: I'm completely confident this is not a typical pneumonia. My confidence in COVID-19 specifically, depends on the disease prevalence and the index of suspicion. But in the right patient--
CUOMO: It's too complicated. What does it mean?
BERNHEIM: --in the right - in the right patient, maybe who's traveled to, or lives in an area where there is disease, and they have symptoms, then this is highly suspicious, and this patient should be on isolation.
CUOMO: Does the CDC know about this?
BERNHEIM: The CDC is aware. They are aware. They are certainly very much versed in the latest medical literature, which is being updated all the time. This is a very fluid situation that's developing. We're all learning about this new disease for the first time.
CUOMO: Have you called them and say "You should be letting people do this. Don't worry about if they don't have the tests?"
[21:10:00]
BERNHEIM: We have been in touch with the CDC about developing their protocols, and algorithms, and whether or not CT should be incorporated into algorithm of working up patients. There are a lot of factors that go into these decisions. It's not that easy to screen large numbers of patients, efficiently with CT scan.
CUOMO: Expensive too.
BERNHEIM: Right. So, there are a lot of factors that go into-- CUOMO: But you think this is something--
BERNHEIM: --to the making.
CUOMO: --that could be done that will tell you who has this with reasonable certainty without the tests.
BERNHEIM: Correct. And ensuring prompt diagnosis is so important, not just for the patient themselves to have them treated, but to have them isolated to prevent disease spread further.
CUOMO: All right, so what we'll do is we're going to follow up with the CDC. We're going to call into the different people who are doing it, ask what they know about this, if they need information they say not, I don't know why they would, I don't even know why they need to tell me, but I don't know why we haven't heard about this.
So, Doctor, thank you, first of all, for letting us know.
BERNHEIM: My pleasure.
CUOMO: It's not hopeless.
BERNHEIM: Thank you.
CUOMO: Even if there aren't tests, there are other ways that they already know about that they can deal with this. Why aren't they dealing with it that way? Is it about money? Is it about access? Is it about poor Administration? That we'll get on.
Doctor, thank you.
BERNHEIM: Thank you so much.
CUOMO: All right, look, that's the job. Information is the power here. How we handle it is the threat, not Coronavirus. That we'll make it through.
Elizabeth Warren didn't make it through. She's out of the race. But she didn't endorse. Why not? The Wizard of Odds and The Professor say the answer is in the numbers, next.
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TEXT: CUOMO PRIME TIME.
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(END VIDEO CLIP) CUOMO: The facts, Elizabeth Warren is out. No endorsement. Why? Where are her supporters likely to go? The questions and answers are linked. Who says? Two of the best brains in the business, The Wizard of Odds and The Professor, Ron Brownstein, here.
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Gentlemen, thank you very much.
I don't buy it. Let's say my contention is--
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Which part you didn't buy?
CUOMO: --she didn't endorse because she's trying to figure out what's best for her. What do we see in the numbers that explains her indecision? Ron, first.
BROWNSTEIN: Well I think - I think the big question is whether you believe her support is ideological or sociological, right? I mean the--
CUOMO: What does that mean?
BROWNSTEIN: --the assumption has been that it's - she has a liberal base of support. And therefore, if she got out of the race, most of it would go to Bernie Sanders.
But the fact is that I believe her support was more sociological, which by the end she was essentially a candidate of college-educated White voters, almost entirely, especially college-educated White women who were drawn to her more because she was brainy, she was in command, she was fluent on issues.
And those are voters that Sanders have struggled with. There're only two states, I looked at it, on Super Tuesday, where he reached 25 percent among college-educated White women.
So, I think the - I mean, the - certainly the Sanders campaign, I talked to them today, they believe that if - if she leaves the race, you know, if she - now that she's left the race, they will get most of her supporters.
But I don't think you can guarantee that because so much of her support are among those suburban White women who have not been that warm to Sanders.
Today, two of the best examples, you know, Elissa Slotkin and Haley Stevens in Michigan both endorsed Joe Biden. I think it's more of - I think it's more going to fractionate.
CUOMO: Wiz?
HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICS SENIOR WRITER AND ANALYST: I happen to agree with Ron. And, you know, we saw that in the exit polls, coming out of Super Tuesday. You know, yes, she does very well among very liberal voters. But she
also does well among those White college-educated women. But we also see it in the actual polling. I think this is so important.
So, it was an Ipsos/Reuters poll today that asked the question "Who would you vote for?" This was just before she got out, but after Super Tuesday. And it showed essentially that their voters split.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes.
ENTEN: So, Biden had a 10-point lead when Warren was included. When you got rid of Warren, he was still up by 10.
CUOMO: Yes, oh, good, they have the numbers up there, good.
ENTEN: Yes.
CUOMO: I don't know. So, she doesn't endorse. Why?
BROWNSTEIN: Why? Why endorse, right? I mean the--
CUOMO: Well she keeps power going into the Convention.
BROWNSTEIN: And - and, you know, last time she - she did not, you know, weigh in right away. I mean, look, she's going to have influence no matter who is the nominee.
And, at this point, I think if she endorses Biden, which would make the most sense from, I think, from her point of view, in terms of maximizing her personal leverage, she is going to alienate a lot of her supporters, that - that part of her base who likes Bernie Sanders.
CUOMO: Very liberals.
BROWNSTEIN: And if she endorses Sanders - she did endorse - endorsing Sanders now when he may - if he loses Michigan not be a, you know, a very viable candidate--
ENTEN: Yes.
BROWNSTEIN: --don't make - doesn't make a lot of sense either.
CUOMO: So, let's throw up some numbers. You guys make your point, obviously. But very liberals, Sanders, 50 percent say that, Warren, 20 percent, almost the same as Biden, 18.
That's the point you guys are making, which is even though she echoed Bernie's positions, it doesn't mean the people who follow her--
ENTEN: Right.
CUOMO: --feel the same way. White women with college degrees.
ENTEN: That's the number of Bernie's (ph).
CUOMO: All right, so 32, 25, 20. Now, where her voters go, Harry, how much does it matter?
ENTEN: She - well I'll say this much. By the end, she wasn't getting that larger percentage of the vote, right? So, they basically all have to go to Sanders based upon the latest numbers that I see for Sanders to catch up to Biden, nationally speaking.
But I would argue that it's not just sort of why - I would argue that the endorsement is important because it tells us something about the process going forward, right?
Biden's been getting all these endorsements recently, right? And it seems to me that he's building momentum. We saw that in the Super Tuesday results. We've seen in the endorsements afterward.
If Bernie Sanders was able to get that endorsement, maybe Elizabeth Warren would be saying "Hold on, let's put the brakes on a second. We're not going to have a coronation here," and that sort of extends the primary process.
CUOMO: I'll tell you when it becomes a problem for her. If Michigan is everything next Tuesday, if whoever wins and loses feels the difference was what happened with her--
BROWNSTEIN: Yes.
CUOMO: --she's in a pinch. But that's what we're going to have to see. I'm out a time on this.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes, all right.
CUOMO: Unless this is something that we just have to know, Ron.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes.
CUOMO: If we have to know, then tell us.
BROWNSTEIN: She's not the solution to his problem. If he has a come- back with this--
CUOMO: Who's he?
BROWNSTEIN: Bernie. If he has a second act--
CUOMO: Right.
BROWNSTEIN: --it's through blue-collar Whites in the Midwest, where he ran well last time, and that's where he's got to find a path forward this time in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri, and she can't help him with that.
CUOMO: We'll all be together watching Michigan, and I think it matters the most of any state we've seen so far. Gentlemen--
BROWNSTEIN: Consensus.
CUOMO: --thank you very much. ENTEN: Shalom!
CUOMO: This, nice new look, Wiz.
ENTEN: Thank you.
CUOMO: Bernie or Biden, who is stronger? That's the way we think about it, right?
No. Let's look at it another way. Who has the worst weaknesses? Why? What do you think is going to happen in this general election? You think it's going to be a battle of policy plans? It's going to be a blood fest.
Let's bring in a supporter from each side, Bernie and Biden, and test them on their toughest problems. You decide who could deal with weaknesses best, next.
Well done.
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[21:20:00]
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CUOMO: Let's start with this general understanding. Whomever the Democrats choose ain't going to be in a policy debate with President Trump. It's going to be about the ugly.
You're not hearing much about it these days for both, Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders. I argue the media does these campaigns no favors by not picking at the problems because it's coming in the general. Why make it seem like it's new when it happens then, when you know it now?
How you handle the hits can often be the key to victory. Let's see how their supporters deal with the heat.
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CUOMO: Nina Turner, obviously of the Bernie Sanders campaign, welcome, good to see you. Hilary Rosen, CNN Contributor, good to have you, as well.
HILARY ROSEN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Hi guys.
CUOMO: I am assuming that you are taking the Biden side of the debate because?
ROSEN: I am. I'm endorsing Joe Biden today. It's new for me. I've been neutral in this primary. But, you know, I've been holding out hope for a Woman President since 2008. That's not happening.
But I'm really comfortable with Joe Biden. I trust him. I've known him for many years. I think he will be a great President, and I'm totally happy to endorse him today.
CUOMO: Thank you for announcing on this show. It is good to have it be transparent.
ROSEN: Yes.
[21:25:00]
CUOMO: I'm going to put up the lists of problems for both of your people, and we will go point for point. I do not care what either of you has to say about the other campaign. Justify your own. That's what tonight's about.
Hilary, I'll start with you.
ROSEN: OK.
CUOMO: First point on Biden, past prime, nice guy. As Meghan McCain said on The View, maybe he is the Grief Whisperer.
He was certainly great to my family when my pop passed. But he's not who he was. We don't see it in the energy, and people lack confidence because of that. How do you respond?
ROSEN: Look, I think we are now facing a prospect where one of, you know, 70-plus-year old man is going to be the next President of the United States. And I - I think that they're all pretty comparable in that regard.
I'm confident that, you know, Vice President Biden has vigor. He's shown it on the campaign trail like I think that he is, you know, going to be a solid and stable choice. I'm not - I'm not worried about that.
CUOMO: The moments where he seems to not remember to be on message, where he seems to not be able to say things the right way?
ROSEN: You know, look, he himself talks about that his old stuttering gets in his way that he, you know, has a lot of legislative issues that have come up in his campaign, and - and career over the years. Every one of them isn't perfect.
The thing about Joe Biden though, when he gaffes, because we all know he does--
CUOMO: Yes.
ROSEN: --you never believe he's lying, right? You - you just believe that--
CUOMO: Well we'll get to that.
ROSEN: --he's moving it across the - the lane.
CUOMO: We'll get one problem at a time. Yes, he makes mistakes. But there's more than that. We'll get to it in a second, arguably.
Nina Turner, your problem.
NINA TURNER, SANDERS CAMPAIGN CO-CHAIR: Chris?
CUOMO: Your man is a socialist. He calls himself a socialist, doesn't matter if you put Democrat in front of it. It scares people in the country. He refuses to back away from it. And he will be beaten about the head and faced with it by the President every day.
TURNER: Well it shouldn't scare people. I mean it's very much in the tradition of President FDR. That is the kind of Democratic Socialism that he's talking about, even though FDR didn't necessarily call it that.
CUOMO: That's the difference.
TURNER: When Senator Sanders talks about the economic - well, Chris, it's in the same spirit, is - is in the spirit of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who in his letter to the Birmingham jail--
CUOMO: Yes.
TURNER: --warned us, us being the Black community, about White moderates.
You know that FDR, the 1944 Economic Bill of Rights, what do the American people have a right to? A decent job, decent housing, being able to take care of people when they have - when they're unemployed or old age, disabilities, these are the things that FDR put forward and the Elites--
CUOMO: True.
TURNER: --or the Corporate Dems of his day came after him, which caused him to say he welcomes their hatred.
CUOMO: OK.
TURNER: Senator Bernie Sanders is adding to that the Green New Deal, Medicare-for-All.
CUOMO: That's right. And that's the key--
TURNER: So, those are the--
CUOMO: --that you have to deal with Nina. He is adding to it.
And the way that'll be used as a cudgel is we have never seen spending like this since the New Deal. His attempts to pay for it are incomplete, at best. They scare people, Nina that he is going to change their economic reality, for the worse, in the tens of trillions.
TURNER: Give me a break. I mean we don't talk enough about corporate welfare, you know, in this country.
We don't talk about how we pay for cuts and subsidies to the wealthiest people, the wealthiest - wealthiest companies, in this country. But yet, when it comes to putting a down payment on Main Street, folks want to raise that issue.
Chris, people are suffering in this country. Senator Bernie Sanders is asking them to imagine, to dream a bigger dream, plus, since we are a hegemon nation, we are a wealthy nation. We're not a poor nation.
President Trump gave a $1.6 trillion tax cut to the wealthiest people in this country. That same tax cut could have been used to pay for canceling student debt, what Senator Sanders is pushing for too. So, we have the money. We just need to find the wheel.
CUOMO: And you need to find the way--
TURNER: And testing (ph) afford it too, Chris.
CUOMO: --to explain to people that it won't be on their back because that is the fear that you may say it's going to be the rich.
TURNER: It's not on them.
ROSEN: That's really the key, isn't it?
CUOMO: But they won't be with.
TURNER: Those - those cuts are on their backs. The cuts for--
ROSEN: They--
CUOMO: Well but they think they got a tax cut from Trump.
TURNER: --the corporate welfare is on their backs.
CUOMO: And they think you're going to take it back, and then some. That's the--
TURNER: They did not.
CUOMO: --that's the challenge. That's the challenge. Now, back to you.
TURNER: Yes, I hear you, but they didn't.
CUOMO: I hear you. But I'm saying that's what you got to deal with.
And Hilary, on your side, what you have to deal with is decades of controversial votes that look bad and that go along with stories of commitment to social justice, and moments in his past that may not be accurate, and each one will be pointed out by the President.
You did the Crime Bill. Obama was thinking about it when he was like 11 or whatever the President said today that Obama was thinking about the Crime Bill too. I know it's BS. But it's how Biden deals with it.
You said you were arrested when you were with Mandela. I don't think so. You say that you were trained to be a protester and suffered. We don't think so. How do you deal with the record of votes and of stories that don't hold up?
[21:30:00]
ROSEN: You know Nina referenced Dr. Martin Luther King before saying that he said from the Birmingham jail that we should be concerned about White moderates. That's actually not what Martin Luther King said.
TURNER: He did say that.
ROSEN: What he said is we should be worried about the silence of White moderates.
TURNER: Are you going to tell me about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?
ROSEN: What he--
TURNER: Are you kidding me?
ROSEN: Nina, wait.
CUOMO: No. She's making a language point, Nina.
ROSEN: What - what he said was we should worry about the silence of White moderates. And what we have in Joe Biden is a man who is not silent. He - he has a long record.
And many - many votes that, in today's world, feel like the wrong thing were the wrong thing, and he has discussed that over and over again, as Bernie Sanders did on the gun votes, and other things.
So, we can be talking about votes from 20 years ago or we can be talking about people's values--
CUOMO: All right.
ROSEN: --and who they trust.
CUOMO: Last quick point.
ROSEN: And that's what Joe Biden's going to be talking about.
CUOMO: Last quick point to you, Nina.
TURNER: What the Reverend - Chris, what Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was talking about, he said it is the point that the White moderate wants things to be comfortable, and instead of focusing in on that, the bigger threat is not necessarily the White KKK member, but more the White moderate that is more comfortable with keeping things--
ROSEN: You know what? Don't - don't use--
TURNER: --the same or pretending like there is no tension, than then to deal--
ROSEN: --don't use Martin Luther King against Joe Biden. You - you don't have that--
TURNER: First of all, nobody--
ROSEN: --you don't have that standing.
TURNER: --first of all - first of all, Hilary--
ROSEN: I'm sorry. You don't.
TURNER: You don't - don't tell me what kind of standing I have as a Black woman in America.
ROSEN: You - you because--
TURNER: How dare you?
ROSEN: You have a lot of standing as a Black woman in America.
TURNER: First of all, you're dipping into something that I have to say--
ROSEN: You don't have the standing to attack Joe Biden using Martin Luther King's words.
TURNER: --you need to - you need to - I did not interrupt you. I--
ROSEN: That's my point.
TURNER: I didn't attack anybody. You're taking it - you're taking it that way. Listen, don't dip into what I have to say about the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. How dare you as a White woman--
CUOMO: Hold on. All right, listen.
ROSEN: No, no, no, I'm not going to own that.
TURNER: --sit up here, and try to tell me--
ROSEN: No. That is not what I said.
TURNER: --no, no, trying to tell me what I'm--
CUOMO: Listen, Nina, Hilary--
ROSEN: Don't you do that.
TURNER: --what I'm supposed to feel and what I'm doing right now.
CUOMO: --I'm out of time on this. But let - listen--
TURNER: That's something - Chris, I didn't jump in on her go.
CUOMO: Nina, well--
TURNER: And then she wants to jump in on me.
CUOMO: First of all, it's not--
ROSEN: OK. Make--
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ROSEN: Make your point.
CUOMO: Nobody's jumping in on anybody. You guys are in the same Party. This is what you guys have to figure out.
TURNER: I'm not using the word of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at all.
CUOMO: You're in the same Party. And let me tell you, you better keep that same energy when you're up against Trump that you have against each other because he is bigger and badder than I think you guys are ready for. But let's agree on this about Dr. King.
ROSEN: I agree with that.
CUOMO: Only light can drive out darkness, only love can drive out hate. That is the challenge for the Democrats--
TURNER: Well Amen to that!
ROSEN: Sure.
CUOMO: --to show that that's what you represent--
ROSEN: I'm with you.
TURNER: Amen, Chris.
CUOMO: --against this President. I wish you both, good luck going forward.
TURNER: Amen.
CUOMO: You are always welcome here to make the case to my audience. Nina Turner, be well.
TURNER: Thank you.
ROSEN: Take care.
CUOMO: Hilary Rosen, thank you for the announcement.
TURNER: You too.
ROSEN: Take care, Nina.
CUOMO: Be well.
All right, listen, I mean what I say, and you're looking at the state of play, so you figure out what it means to you.
Now, on the other side of the ball, the President is playing his game already on you. Chuck Schumer, taking him on, "He's got to - he's got to go down for what he did. If we did something like that," and it's working.
There is a sickness spreading in our political climate. You know who sees it? Someone who looks to history, someone who understands its context today, Dan Abrams, OK? He just wrote the book on respect, civility, and the rule of law, through one of the most famous things you've never heard of, next.
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CUOMO: Dan Abrams, you know him, ABC Legal Guru, Host of Live PD on A&E, Founder, Law & Crime Network.
His new book is in front of my face. "John - Adams Under Fire," this is it. You have to read this book to understand what needs to be done today. We'll get you there with the discussion.
DAN ABRAMS, LEGAL ANALYST, AUTHOR, "JOHN ADAMS UNDER FIRE", FOUNDER, LAW & CRIME NETWORK: So good to see you.
CUOMO: Brother, congratulations, always.
ABRAMS: Thank you.
CUOMO: First, William Barr, a federal judge today says there are questions about the candor of the Attorney General on how he dealt with the Mueller report redactions. How big a deal is that for a judge to say it?
ABRAMS: It's a really big deal because it's exactly the issue in this case. The question is "Were the redactions proper?" And, in essence, the judge is saying "I don't know that we can trust the Attorney General who made the redactions," and that's a big statement.
I mean, and he's doing it by saying that the Attorney General's characterization of the Mueller report was, let's just say, lacked candor, that it didn't reflect what the Mueller report actually said. So, that's quite a rebuke.
CUOMO: Especially in a case that's about what information gets to the American people, and this is the judge's commentary on how it might have been processed.
ABRAMS: And he's being - but let's be clear. He's saying "I don't trust you."
CUOMO: That's right.
ABRAMS: "I don't trust you. And, as a result, I don't trust the Justice Department."
CUOMO: Now, let's flip it. Chuck Schumer, someone we both know well.
ABRAMS: Yes.
CUOMO: Senate Minority Leader. "You will face the whirlwind, Gorsuch, and you, other Justices"--
ABRAMS: Yes.
CUOMO: --"if you don't give us the decision we want in this case." "I didn't mean it. I'm from Brooklyn." He apologizes for what he said.
ABRAMS: Sort of apologizes.
CUOMO: I give - I give you.
ABRAMS: Yes.
CUOMO: I give you. It gives - so, I don't like the Brooklyn part.
ABRAMS: Yes, I mean, yes.
CUOMO: You said it because you thought it would work for you.
ABRAMS: Yes.
CUOMO: Now, it's not working for you, so you apologize. But what does it represent?
ABRAMS: Well like, first of all, it was a huge mistake, I mean, and he should be criticized, he should be condemned for it. This is exactly what we shouldn't be doing. And also, the disrespect with which he treated the Justices. CUOMO: Yes.
ABRAMS: He didn't refer to them by their formal names of Justice. He referred to them by their--
CUOMO: Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
ABRAMS: Right, right, by their - right, by their last names, as if they're just. The bottom line is there should be respect for the Justices of the Supreme Court.
CUOMO: Don't have to like the decision.
ABRAMS: No.
CUOMO: You don't have to respect the decision in terms of on the merits. You must respect its enforcement. But the Judges.
ABRAMS: Critics - criticize the opinions.
CUOMO: Yes.
ABRAMS: Criticize the reasoning.
CUOMO: Yes.
[21:40:00]
ABRAMS: Criticize the rule, all fair game. That's very different than making it personal to the Justices. He - and he initially claimed "Well, you know, obviously that's not what I meant." That sure what it sounded--
CUOMO: That's right. And - and to be fair--
ABRAMS: --like what he was saying.
CUOMO: --didn't apologize. Didn't say I was wrong to - he said "I didn't use the right words. Didn't come out the right way."
ABRAMS: Right. Right.
CUOMO: He gave a political answer. Now, talk about playing politics with the same thing. The President comes out. "If a Republican did this, they'd be in jail."
ABRAMS: Right.
CUOMO: He does it all the time.
ABRAMS: Yes.
CUOMO: He did it about two Justices by name the week before. What's that play?
ABRAMS: Well look, so I think it's different for him to say that Justices should recuse themselves. I don't think that's comparable to what Schumer did. I think what Schumer did is worse. But I think what the President has done about other judges is worse than what Schumer said.
CUOMO: "That's an Obama judge."
ABRAMS: Well or - or "It's a Mexican judge," you know, that's been--
CUOMO: "Mexican judge."
ABRAMS: Right? I mean, those are the sorts of things that are even worse.
CUOMO: Right.
ABRAMS: And so - so we have to provide context here. And the point is all of these attacks on judges, the personal attacks, not on the ruling, not on the reasoning, undermine our faith in the rule of law.
It's why Justice Roberts last time came out and said "We don't have Obama judges." And I was glad he did it. And you know what? Chuck Schumer deserved a spanking, and he got one from Justice Roberts.
CUOMO: Now, the Democrats will say, "What are you talking about?"
ABRAMS: Right, right.
CUOMO: "Trump does it all the time. Nobody spanks him. Roberts doesn't say anything to him."
ABRAMS: Well he--
CUOMO: "McConnell doesn't get on the floor and talk about him."
ABRAMS: No. But - but Roberts did do it previously.
CUOMO: Said "We don't have Obama judges or anything."
ABRAMS: Right. Right, right. But, look, it is fair to say that it's not equal, right?
I'm not saying, "Oh, we always got to say one side and then the other side." The bottom line is very often, and I think the number of times President Trump has done it, Amy Berman Jackson, and judge after judge--
CUOMO: How about the Flores Settlement?
ABRAMS: Yes.
CUOMO: He thought Flores was the judge.
ABRAMS: Right.
CUOMO: So, he said, you know, "This is some Mexican judge doing the Flores Settlement." ABRAMS: It's--
CUOMO: The Flores was the name of the plaintiff. It was the person involved.
ABRAMS: Look, and so - so we can make quantitative and qualitative judgments about what's worse. But that doesn't mean Chuck Schumer gets off the hook. That happened today. As a result, we're going to talk about it today.
When Trump said those things about those judges, I was all over him at the time, and he's had more - more incidents than Schumer's had. But here we are today with Schumer.
CUOMO: Got to call them all out. Otherwise, it doesn't stop. Because, obviously, you see it from Schumer because people thinks - think it may work.
ABRAMS: But people like us have to fight for the rule of law.
CUOMO: 100 percent. That's why you wrote the book.
ABRAMS: Yes.
CUOMO: And let me tell you something. I'll tell you, look, I don't sell books on the show. You know that. And yes, Dan's a friend of mine. But I wouldn't do it if I didn't believe in the book. Today is the 250th anniversary, OK--
ABRAMS: Of the Boston Massacre.
CUOMO: --of the Boston Massacre. John Adams, OK, young lawyer at the time, this book takes the transcript, 217 pages?
ABRAMS: Yes.
CUOMO: And goes through it with his Co-Author. John Adams takes the case of British soldiers shooting American colonists. They wanted to kill them, tear them up, send the message to England. He was in the exact situation we are, far more exacerbated at the time, pre- Revolution.
ABRAMS: Yes.
CUOMO: Adams says the Revolution might have started that day if we didn't stand up for the rule of law. How meaningful today?
ABRAMS: Oh, absolutely. Look, it was the faith in the legal system that prevented the Revolution from happening six years earlier. Think about it.
Five colonists shot, cold-blood, by British soldiers, and they're tried, and people wait, and calm down, and wait for the trial, and follow the trial, and read the transcript, and say, "OK, you know, we may not agree with this. But as the - as the Governor at the time of Massachusetts said, we will live and die by the law." And people accepted that. And that's why it's so important today to not be undermining our judges and not be getting personal with them. It's exactly, I think, what John Adams would be saying today.
And it - his - his defense of these British soldiers was terribly unpopular. I mean this is a guy who got rocks thrown through his window. He lost half his law business because he's representing the enemy.
CUOMO: And he didn't even politicize the case. You know, a lot of lawyers try to make it about something bigger.
ABRAMS: Right.
CUOMO: Certainly Trump does that all the time, right?
ABRAMS: Yes.
CUOMO: "It's Deep State."
ABRAMS: Yes.
CUOMO: "They're out to get me. It's all corrupt."
He stuck to the facts because he didn't want to raise the kinds of passions and invective that would cloud the law.
ABRAMS: He wouldn't do it. He wouldn't go after the citizens of Boston. Even though the argument was "The British soldiers were acting in self-defense. These people came at them," Adams was very careful not to attack them, but to simply talk about the perspective of the soldiers who were there, getting rocks thrown at them, snowballs--
CUOMO: We see a President today, obviously John Adams would go on to be President, but the - you have a President today, and you have a lot of people around him, and even with what we saw Schumer, he's got to get some stink on him--
ABRAMS: Yes.
CUOMO: --they're doing the opposite of what Adams did.
ABRAMS: Oh--
CUOMO: And what's the risk?
ABRAMS: Oh, it's a huge risk. And again, I come back to "We have to be able to have faith in our judges."
And I know there are people out there who want to say "Oh, we should expand the Supreme Court. I don't - I don't trust these nine justices. And, as a result, we should get more." You know, I don't think that's the answer. The answer should be "Look,
we have a system in place. You want a new President to appoint justices, vote for a new President."
[21:45:00]
In the meantime, we've got judges who need to be respected, no matter who appointed them. I hate it when there's references to "This is a Trump judge" or "This is an Obama judge."
You know, they should be treated as judges. Their rulings matter. And we have to have the same kind of faith that John Adams had in our legal system as - today, as he did then.
CUOMO: Dan Abrams, you know. David Fisher, his Co-Author. "John Adams Under Fire," the title is like the longest part of the whole book, "The Founding Father's Fight for Justice in the Boston Massacre Murder Trial." It is a referendum on what matters today. Bravo!
ABRAMS: Sir.
CUOMO: This is a public service. I hope it kills it with sales, all right.
ABRAMS: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
CUOMO: This one is inscribed. We did the radio show today. He didn't bring one. It was a huge thing.
ABRAMS: Yes.
CUOMO: Now, we're good. I love you. Congratulations on all the success.
ABRAMS: Thank you.
CUOMO: All right, now, Coronavirus. What's the risk? The risk is not being told the truth, OK?
It's not about fewer cases. It's about knowing what's going on. It matters with this more than what we're dealing with, with politics. If you can't trust what you get from the President, and the people around him, that's more of a virus spreading than anything else.
Time for a truth, next.
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(END VIDEO CLIP) CUOMO: Listen, Coronavirus may get bad. But if we don't trust how it's being handled, and if we don't trust what we're being told, it will be much worse. What do we know right now?
Hundreds of Americans have Coronavirus. A dozen people have died in this country. It's a shame. By comparison, it is nothing. In this moment, we should be able to trust but - but verify, trust but verify. Why? Because we know the cases are underestimated. Why? Because they're not testing.
The bigger problem is this. You cannot rely on what this President tells you. That's not me saying it. It's what you get from what comes out of his mouth.
Exhibit A.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I think the 3.4 percent is really a false number. Now, this is just my hunch.
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CUOMO: Listen, scientists believe it's probably too low too. But he uses his hunch to tell you, you know, people think that it's too high. 3.4 is too high.
They think it's going to be less than half of that. Why? Because we're only hearing about the worst cases. And when you test more, there'll be more cases, and more positive outcomes. That's why you need the truth.
But his hunch also tells him that this toxic talk works for him and that if he says it's not a big deal that means it won't be a big deal. But that's not the truth. Instead of trusting information from doctors and scientists, he wants you to trust his hunch.
But the truth is he knows nothing to an expert degree, let alone this. He claims otherwise. Exhibit B.
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TRUMP: We're down to - we're really down to probably 10. Most of the people are outside of danger right now.
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CUOMO: He doesn't know what he's talking about. Look, you don't want to increase panic. But you don't do it by lying about the reality in a situation that is a pandemic that is just beginning. Nobody's going to buy that.
His hunch is that artificial case numbers and false suggestions that it's nothing are better for him. But what about us?
He should have prepared. He should have been straight with us. He should have done things more quickly. He made cuts that look good then, and they're a problem now. They slow-walked testing. That's the fact. It's also the past.
Going forward, what do we need? No more excuses from him, like this.
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TRUMP: The Obama Administration made a decision on testing that turned out to be very detrimental to what we're doing.
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CUOMO: It's just not true. I don't even know what he's talking about. Let's give him the best read. There was a rule in 2004 that added some red tape to lab testing. Is that what he's talking about? OK, maybe. It was five years before Obama took Office.
He did the same thing today with the Crime Bill. "There's some people say Obama liked it." It was 1994 at the time that had happened.
This is what he does. Give you a boogeyman, blame somebody else, he's the victim. But we are getting sick.
Listen to him last night, railing on this controversial '94 Crime Bill.
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TRUMP: This was a Biden-Obama law.
I guess Biden was a Senator then, and pushing it hard. Obama was, somebody said, he was talking about it, but he had to be pretty young if that were the case.
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CUOMO: "Somebody said." The same person who told you about everybody dancing on the roofs at 9/11? This isn't something to play with, man.
Coronavirus needs the confidence of the American people that you're taking care of them, not yourself. I'm not worried about the virus. We don't have that science telling us that. I'm worried about how you make people feel about it.
Go after Biden. He's going to have to defend his own record. Primary contenders have said the same thing. Obama, in 1994, he was a few years out of law school. He was teaching constitutional law in Illinois. He had something to do with it? He hadn't even run for Office yet. It's a lie.
More proof. Senator Schumer, look, you heard us go after him on the show tonight, and rightly so, all right? "They will pay the price, the whirlwind for their decisions," Trump then said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: It was a terrible thing he said. I was - I was amazed by it. And if that were a Republican, you would see really bad things happening. It's very, very unequal justice. And it's a disgrace that he was able to say something like that.
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CUOMO: Wrong! You would see me talking about it, and you would hear McConnell say nothing, unlike today when you basically gave him another set of walking orders.
What Schumer said was wrong. You have to respect justice. This President never respects the administration of justice, unless it's on his side.
[21:55:00]
The truth matters more in this situation than ever before, OK? You have to demand it. Do not excuse what Trump does as just more of his mouth. "I wish he'd stay off Twitter." Not with Coronavirus. Demand the truth. Expose what isn't true, and let him know you hear it all.
All right, when we come back, got a BOLO for you, you're going to want to hear it.
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TEXT: LET'S GET AFTER IT.
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CUOMO: BOLO, Be On the Look-Out. Disinformation online, not just Russian bots, the President's own reelection campaign.
Take a look, posts like this all over Facebook this week, directing users to take the official 2020 census. It's BS. You click on it, and it redirects you to Trump's fund-raising site, and asks you for personal information.
Civil Rights groups are worried, why? Well the ads could interfere with the actual census which begins next week. Remember, the President not so big fan about the census, wants certain questions asked, certain ways, remember?
Facebook says it's going to remove them. See how that goes! We could see cyber tactics like this again and again. Be On the Look-Out, my brothers and sisters.
All right, thank you for watching me.
Up next, we've got Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. They have such an important CNN Global Town Hall for us all. "Coronavirus: Facts and Fears," please tune in right now.
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