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Trump Signs Coronavirus Spending Bill; Rep. John Garamendi (D- CA) is Interviewed about the Coronavirus. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired March 06, 2020 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[09:30:00]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Other countries are paying zero and less than zero, you know very well. And we're paying interest, which is a very conservative approach, but it's not a good approach, because we're also competing against other countries, whether we like it or not. Even our friends, we're competing against.

QUESTION: Mr. President, so on Afghanistan, are you afraid that once the U.S. pulls out, that the Taliban will basically just overrun the --

TRUMP: Well, you know, eventually countries have to take care of themselves. We can't be there for the next -- another 20 years. We've been there for 20 years, and we've been protecting the country, but we can't be there for the next. Eventually they're going to have to protect themselves, you know. It should have been done a long time ago. But you can only hold somebody's hand for so long. We have to get back to running our country, too. So you understand that.

QUESTION: Sure. Do you think the Afghan government will be capable, in the long term, of defending itself?

TRUMP: You -- I'll let you know later. You know, we'll have to see what happens. I hope they are, but I don't know. I can't answer that question.

QUESTION: Mr. President, any concern that the coronavirus is --

TRUMP: It's not supposed to happen that way, but it possibly will.

QUESTION: Any concern that the virus is more widespread than originally thought because of the lack of testing? Is that any reason why you're not going to Atlanta today?

TRUMP: No, no, no. They had one person who was potentially infected.

And speaking of that, I'd like to go. So you guys are trying to work that out. I was going to Tennessee first, in any event, and then I was stopping in Atlanta, then going down to Florida for meetings.

I think that they are trying to work it out that I do go. No, I hadn't heard that. I heard one person, and because of the one person, at a high level -- because of the one person, they didn't want me going.

But I would prefer going. And now that the person -- the test came out negative, we're going to try and go.

The most powerful man in all of media

(AUDIO GAP)

TRUMP: Has a little something to do with "The Wall Street Journal." I don't know if you know. This is real power, right?

You used to do what they did.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

TRUMP: Right? And I did it -- he did it so well that he's the boss at News Corp. Of course, Rupert has something to say with that, I guess, right? And Lachlan (ph). It's good to have you. It's good to have you.

They treat me very nicely, the media, right? Except for "The Wall Street Journal," but that's OK.

QUESTION: How do you keep people from panicking?

TRUMP: I don't think they're panicking. I don't think people are panicking.

I said last night -- we did an interview on -- on Fox last night, a town hall. I think it was very good. And I said, calm, you have to be calm. It will go away.

We do have a situation where we have this massive ship with 5,000 people, and we have to make a decision. You know, it's a big decision. Because we have very low numbers compared to major countries throughout the world. Our numbers are lower than just about anybody. And in terms of deaths, I don't know what the count is today. Is it 11? Eleven people.

And in terms of cases, it's very, very few. When you look at other countries, it's a very tiny fraction, because we've been very strong at the borders.

But then you have a ship with a lot of Americans on it. It's got 5,000 people on it. It's a massive ship. And, you know, they want to come in. So we have to make a decision. We're working with the governor of California on that.

QUESTION: Are you meeting with President Bolsonaro this weekend, sir?

TRUMP: Yes, I am. We're having dinner at Mar-a-Lago. He wanted to have dinner in Florida, if that was possible, the president of Brazil. So we'll be doing that today.

QUESTION: Do you think the financial markets are overreacting?

TRUMP: I think financial markets will bounce back as soon as this -- really bounce back. Don't forget, they're down probably 10 or 11 percent from, you know, where they were, but they were up 70 percent, so, you know, it's only -- it's a relatively small piece.

I don't like to see it happen because I was looking for 30,000 very soon. You were -- you were -- it seemed days away from 30,000, and now we have a little more room to make up.

But I think financial -- I think the country is so strong, we're so strong as a country now. We have never been like this. The consumer is generating so much because of the tax cuts, the regulation cuts and, you know, the things we've done. So I think we're in great shape. I mean, I think we're in great shape.

This came unexpectedly a number of months ago. I heard about it in China. It came out of China. I heard about it. We made a good move. We closed it down. We stopped it. Otherwise the head of CDC said last night that you would have had thousands of more problems if we didn't shut it down very early. That was a very early shutdown, which is something we got right.

Yes?

QUESTION: So looking at the Super Tuesday results, are you -- do you worry the Democratic Party is unifying around Joe Biden and that will take away your argument about them perhaps being too left-wing and too socialist?

TRUMP: Well, he's left-wing and he's got all people that are left- wing. And, in many ways, he's worse than Bernie. Look at what he did with guns. He put Beto in charge of guns. Beto wants to get rid of guns, right? So that's a bad -- that's a bad stance.

And he's got a lot of people that are left-wing, and they'll be running the government. He's not going to be running anything. If he ever got in, they'll be running the government.

TRUMP: They've got people further left-wing than what Bernie has, so --

QUESTION: Do you think --

[09:35:05]

TRUMP: Not going to be good -- it wouldn't be good for Wall Street, I can tell you that.

QUESTION: Do you think sexism --

TRUMP: Plus, if you look at his taxes, he's going to raise taxes incredibly. He's going to raise taxes more than Bernie. I looked at -- and he's open about it. Bernie just like -- doesn't like to talk about it. I mean, Joe Biden, his tax increases are -- they're staggering. It's ridiculous. He'll destroy everything that's been built.

QUESTION: Do you think sexism was a factor in Elizabeth Warren pulling out? And do you believe you will see a female president in your lifetime?

TRUMP: No, I think lack of talent was her problem. She had a tremendous lack of talent. She was a good debater. She destroyed Mike Bloomberg very quickly, like it was nothing. That was easy for her.

But people don't like her. She's a very mean person and people don't like her. People don't want that. They like a person like me, that's not mean.

OK. I'll see you guys.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Thank you, everybody.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: You've been listening to the president there discussing the administration's response to the coronavirus.

We have Dr. Sanjay Gupta with us here.

You heard him say, Sanjay, say, I'm quoting here, we closed it down. We stopped it, of the coronavirus outbreak here in the U.S. Is that a true statement?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we clearly didn't stop it. You know, this virus is spreading in the United States. And, to be fair, public health officials that I've been talking to since sort of middle of January, they expected that, John -- Jim, sorry.

This is not a surprise, you know, that this is spreading here. I think the idea that maybe it helps slow it down, not only that, but I think even more significantly the quarantine in China, that had an impact. But the idea that it stopped, I mean, that's clearly not the case, as we know.

SCIUTTO: And we do know that more -- millions more preparations now to test millions more and the expectation is that you do find more positive cases.

So, hold that thought, Sanjay.

We're going to take a very quick break, come back and discuss more of the president's comments on coronavirus.

Please stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:41:39]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back.

We just heard from the president on the coronavirus response. And we learned in that meeting that he may bring his visit to the CDC today back on. We learned that the reason he wasn't going is that there was the possibility of a case there with an employee of the CDC. That now appears to have been a negative test.

Back with us, John Harwood, Christine Romans and Mike Rogers.

Mike Rogers, if I can begin with you because you served in Congress, you helped pass legislation in Congress to prepare the country for pandemic response like this. You heard the president say this came out of nowhere. It was unforeseen. Of course that's true. You don't know when it's going to come. But the possibility of a pandemic has been a concern for some time.

Based on what you've seen, was the country prepared for this sufficiently?

MIKE ROGERS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY COMMENTATOR: Not in the way that we need to be prepared. One of the things -- after we passed the BARTA (ph), which was a bipartisan piece of legislation in 2006, getting Congress to pay attention and fund it properly has always been a problem. Remember --

SCIUTTO: In advance, right?

ROGERS: In advance, because thinking over the horizon is just damn near impossible in modern politics for some reason.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ROGERS: So they didn't have -- but they -- the CDC and others are doing yeoman's work here. And if the president lets them do their thing -- and my agreement is, let them talk to the country. If that would change anything the way they're dealing with this -- and I'll tell you where you get in trouble, when the vice president says, oh, everyone's going to get tested. Then you go to the place where they help build those test kits in masks and they say, well, not really. That inconsistency --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ROGERS: That mixed message causes confusion. And people will hunker down.

Remember, when you're well protected in a bubble, this is great stuff. But when someone you know or you've seen on TV that someone gets sick and dies --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ROGERS: This is a whole new ball game.

So my argument is, be up front about this. It is serious. It is -- we don't have a vaccine yet. There are ways that we can be prepared for this. We don't have to panic, but we have to be serious and then be consistent on that messaging.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

John Harwood, you're, of course, at the White House. You've been covering this from the beginning.

The fact is, we've seen contradictory messages, right? Even, for instance, as -- on testing. Do we have sufficient tests? Vice President Pence yesterday being very straightforward saying, actually, we're not going to have tests as quickly as possible. Do you see the White House bringing that message more -- to a more consistent tone going forward?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, what we saw from the president in that exchange a few moments ago in the Diplomatic Room of the White House was he continues to want to paint a sunny side up picture of this situation. As you were discussing with Sanjay, he said, well, we stopped it.

We talked about the economic fallout, and he said the country's in great shape, did you see those job numbers. I asked him, do we need fiscal stimulus to avert a recession? And he said, oh, that's the Fed's issue. They -- they need to stimulate. Did not indicate that he felt any need to do that.

So the president, as he runs for re-election, wants to paint a picture of, we're on top of this. It's not going to be so bad. And we're going to come out the other end in great shape.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARWOOD: And the problem is, when you've got a major problem like this, people need to understand exactly where we are.

And relevant to the point that Mike Rogers just made, remember, President Obama left behind a pandemic response post within the National Security Council that the Trump White House eliminated a couple years ago.

[09:45:00]

SCIUTTO: Christine Romans, the president, in the White House there, said the coronavirus may actually have a positive economic impact, saying that people are staying here at home, spending more money at home to businesses here. But we also heard the -- for instance, the CEO of Southwest Airlines --

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

SCIUTTO: He was on CNBC this morning saying he has not seen a drop in domestic air -- domestic air travel like this since 9/11.

Is the president's claim there an accurate statement based on what we know?

ROMANS: I think it's wishful thinking. I think the president would like to cast this as something like, stay home, a bit of an isolationist approach, and that will be good for Americans at home.

But when you have, you know, Costco telling us that they've got -- you know, honestly, panic shopping. Kroger saying that people are stocking up. You talk about sort of the nesting and prepping mentality that we're seeing in some of these numbers, it's a little bit troubling here in the near term, especially for the airlines.

When you have so many of these conferences and corporate meetings that are being canceled, what that will do to local communities who rely on that kind of revenue.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ROMANS: South by Southwest, for example, so many people -- companies pulling out of that. That's going to be revenue that won't be -- that's going to be something that is really felt. You can be staying home, but that's not good for domestic kind of travel spending.

And you can see this in the stock market. I mean today another down day. And I'll tell you, one thing I hear more than anything else is that there needs to be a unified, confident but realistic message coming from Washington. You can't just expect the Fed to fix this because lower interest rates won't kill a virus. Lower interest rates won't guarantee a better, coordinated response from the federal government. Lower interest rates don't fix a coronavirus economic crisis.

SCIUTTO: Well, you heard the president there say that he wanted the Dow to go to 30,000. At this point, where it stands now, that would be 20 percent up. 5,000 points up, give or take, from where it stands today.

Thanks to all of you.

We're going to hear from a California congressman, of course, California one of the hardest hit states dealing with a cruise ship full of people off the coast of San Francisco. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:50:55]

SCIUTTO: Right now, more than 3,500 people are on a cruise ship off the coast of California, waiting to find out if any of them have coronavirus. Test results expected today after news that a passenger who was on board that same ship two weeks ago died from the virus. Cases in the state of California spiked to 49 overnight. Of course the concern that as more are tested, that number rises.

With me now, Democratic Congressman from California, John Garamendi.

Congressman, good to have you on the air.

REP. JOHN GARAMENDI (D-CA): Good morning.

SCIUTTO: Just, very quickly, we heard the president just a moment ago saying, I'm quoting, we closed it down, we stopped it, talking about the spread of the coronavirus.

Is that true in your view? GARAMENDI: Well, if only it were true. The facts are quite different

and since we've had very, very limited testing, we really don't know.

In a public health emergency, you have to know what's going on. That requires testing in this situation. And, unfortunately, we have been very, very slow to the testing and even to this day only 45 people on that ship are going to be tested. That leaves some 3,000 untested.

My sense of it is, test them all, and then we can go forward with that.

SCIUTTO: Do you have, though, the tests necessary to do that, because Vice President Pence, he conceded yesterday, after initially saying that there would be millions of tests getting out there into the system, that they don't have the capacity to do that at this point.

Does California have the test kits that it needs to properly assess this?

GARAMENDI: Well, let's keep in mind that it was only last Friday a week ago, that the CDC unleashed the laboratories here in California to undertake testing. They delivered the test kits, that is the necessary samples. Those labs are in the process and, as I understand it, some of them are, in fact, doing testing. That is where we are slow to the fight here.

I don't think there is anybody that can tell you exactly how many tests are going on. But what we do know is that testing is absolutely essential. We do know that there are ten labs, I think now perhaps 20 labs in California that can do testing. And so, in the days ahead, I don't know what day it's going to be --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GARAMENDI: More testing will be done and that is absolutely essential.

SCIUTTO: Let me ask you this, and I don't want you to look into a crystal ball, but I imagine you sat in on briefings because experts are trying to assess this. When the state does test more, how many more cases are they preparing to find out here? Is it thousands? Is it tens of thousands? Do we even know?

GARAMENDI: The fact is we don't know, and that's where the early testing would have been very, very important in controlling this. We really don't know.

I represent Travis Air Force Base and Vacaville, the two epicenters here in the northern California area. Of course, San Jose, Santa Clara County is the other one. It's in our community. We know that. And, therefore, we must assume that it is prevalent. That's where we need to go with the testing.

How many, I wouldn't estimate a thousand, 10,000 or any other number. But what we do know, that if we do test, particularly these hot spots --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GARAMENDI: Then we can begin to get it under control by isolating. And, by the way, if you want to be patriotic in America, wash your hands, don't cough on people, you know, use your coat to cough in, those kind of things, that's how real patriotism is going to be shown right now.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Those small steps matter.

Next step, you test, a number of people are going to test positive, that is a fact. Does California have the resources? Does it -- is it prepared to then, as you say, to then quarantine those people, to respond, to treat those people? What happens then?

GARAMENDI: Well, this is where the legislation that the president just signed is so critically important and really the work that was done by Speaker Pelosi in making sure that the federal money would be available to the states, to provide so that the states and local communities could gear up now and be prepared to deal with perhaps a surge of people that need to be isolated.

[09:55:10]

There's clearly going to be a shortage of isolation rooms in the hospitals. The hospitals are going to need the resources to expand those should this be a major outbreak. And so that's where that money is critically important and needs to flow to the states immediately.

In conversations with Governor Newsom's chief of staff, the state is gearing up. They've set up the office of emergency service here, which is well exercised with all of the disasters we've had in California, fires and floods and the rest, to really get control of the total public health system, the hospitals, all of the support, first responders and the rest.

SCIUTTO: And we should note the president said he's been speaking to the governor of California, of course a Democrat, Gavin Newsom.

GARAMENDI: Yes.

SCIUTTO: But they're discussing, they're sharing information and I'm sure that's what people at home want to see.

Congressman John Garamendi, great to have you on. We look forward to keeping up the conversation.

GARAMENDI: We'll do that, Jim. Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, across the country, thousands of Americans are now under coronavirus quarantine. So what's the next phase in the fight against the virus? How much will those numbers rise? What happens then? We're going to have much more. We're going to speak to the experts. That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)