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Donald Trump And Coronavirus Task Force Daily Briefing; Contamination At CDC Lab Likely Cause Of Early Testing Delays; U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Nears 38,000; WH To Give Funding To 13,000 Sites In Medically Under-Served Areas; Virus Affecting African- Americans And Latinos At Alarming Rate. Aired 6-7p ET
Aired April 18, 2020 - 18:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[18:00:00]
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And I say AOC plus three, add them on. You have -- I mean, the things that they say about Israel are so bad, and I can't believe it.
Now, just a minute, so I would be interested to see that. Because they go after Christian churches but they don't tend to go after mosques. And I don't want them to go after mosques. But I do want to see what their bent is. Yes, please in the back.
QUESTION: Mr. President that --
TRUMP: Go ahead, please.
QUESTION: -- suggesting that imams wouldn't follow social distancing?
TRUMP: I think that -- I just had a call with imams. I just had a call with ministers, rabbis. We had a tremendous call with the faith leaders. No, I don't think that at all. I am somebody that believes in faith. And it matters not what your faith is. But our politicians seem to treat different faiths very differently.
And they seem to think in -- I don't know what happened with our country. But the Christian faith is treated much differently than it was. And I think it is treated very unfairly. Yes, please go ahead in the back.
QUESTION: I just want to ask though --
TRUMP: OAN, please? OAN.
QUESTION: Mr. President, the Paycheck Protection Program saved an estimated 15 million jobs and ran out of money. The Democrats specifically Nancy Pelosi have been blocking that funding. Do you know why Speaker Pelosi is dragging her feet on that?
TRUMP: Well, she thinks it is politics. I don't think it is good politics. Nancy Pelosi has been blocking it. Schumer has been blocking it. And I think they think it is good politics. I don't think it is good politics. I think it is bad politics. But I don't care about the politics. It is so great for our country
because we're going to have all of these companies. You know, it is a bigger employer. Let's say it is the same, but essentially, the same power all of these small businesses added a together as the big companies. It is about 50/50.
And it is so important, and they will be scattered if we weren't able to do what we're doing. And essentially we're giving these small businesses that won't make it. They can't because they are closed.
We're giving them money to take care of their employees. So when we open, they can get back into business. It has been a very popular plan even with Democrats.
I think it basically passed unanimously twice. The first section which is $350 billion. So we're trying to get $250. Nancy Pelosi is blocking it. She sits in her house in San Francisco overlooking the ocean, and she doesn't want to come back. She doesn't want to come back.
She doesn't want to come back to D.C. She has got to get back and get this thing approved. It is very important. Please go ahead.
QUESTION: If I may, you again praised the American people for doing their bit in the past few weeks. But what goes through your mind when you see photographs of crowded beaches in Florida? Is that a concern for when we start to see some of these restrictions are going to be lifted?
DR. DEBORAH BIRX, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR Well, as I described, we go metro by metro, county by county. And so I'd have to link that with a specific county and look at their case rates.
I believe the governor and the public health system that Florida has, they have some of the best county public health individuals I have ever had to deal with. They are amazing because I had to work with them under HIV-AIDS.
So, if the health -- if the county health directors believe that that is appropriate for their county, then I'm not going to second judge an individual's approach to this. Because every -- I can't see into every single county and though with the low rates. I can just see there is no cases, so I don't know if that is a county with very small cases or not. But I think the county health official would know.
TRUMP: And many of the counties as you know are really free of this horrible enemy, so we're opening up. You will be seeing a lot of this country start to open up fairly quickly. Yes please.
QUESTION: Mr. President, you've mentioned the importance of social distancing, for example, Stephen Moore, someone you appointed to your Open the Country Taskforce is organizing a protest in Wisconsin, but aren't they in a sense protesting your very own guidelines?
TRUMP: Well, we have a flexibility. I didn't see what Stephen said. I can tell you he is a very good economist. He's been calling shots right. QUESTION: Sorry, he said, we need to be the Rosa Parks of government
injustices.
TRUMP: Well, there is a lot of injustice. When you look at Virginia where they want to take your guns away. They want to violate your Second Amendment. When you look at -- I mean, look I'm getting along very nicely with the Governor of Michigan, but she has things -- don't buy paint. Don't buy roses. Don't buiy -- I mean, she has got all these crazy things.
I really believe somebody sitting in their boat in a lake should be okay. They shouldn't arrest people. Some of them are being unreasonable. I really believe that. They are being unreasonable.
But I think Virginia is a great case though because they are using this. They are trying to take your guns away in Virginia. And if people in Virginia aren't careful, that is what's going to happen to them.
So yes, I mean, I could see where he is coming from. I think it is a strong statement -- a strong statement because hopefully this will be over very soon for all of us. But some have gotten carried away. They have absolutely gotten carried away.
[18:05:17]
QUESTION: Some of these protestors are protesting your social distancing guidelines?
TRUMP: I don't know. I mean, I notice there are a lot of protests out there. And I just think that some of the governors have gotten carried away.
You know we have a lot of people that don't have to be told to do what they are doing. They have been really doing everything we've asked them. We have a few states where frankly, I spoke to the governors, and I could have gotten them to do, if I wanted to do what would have been perhaps politically correct.
But they have been doing incredibly anyway. And as one of them said, everything is doing exactly the same. In fact our record is better than states where they are under a mandate or you know where they have agreed to do certain things.
Now, we have some great states out there. We have incredible people in our country. And for the most part, it is a strong statement, but I understand where he is coming from. And I think one of the greats would be -- one of the really important places that people really have to start looking at is what's going on in Virginia because that is a mess with really a governor that's under siege anyway. Yes. Please. Now, with the beautiful head of white hair. Go ahead. I'll tell you if I like his hair in about a minute after he asked the question.
QUESTION: -- "Wall Street Journal." On that point though, does the tweeting about, in the case of Virginia, linking the Second Amendment to some of these issues about lifting some of these restrictions in these states.
Not potentially a concern for the governors and civil unrest and potentially on those stages, I have a second question, too.
TRUMP: Well, I think just for that question, I think that is an easy one. That's not even politics. We're entitled to a Second Amendment and he is trying to take the Second Amendment.
Meaning the state is trying to take -- the Democrats in that state, the Republicans are fighting it. They are trying to take that Second Amendment right away. To me that is liberty. That is when I say liberate, Virginia, I would say liberate Virginia when that kind of thing happens.
And when does it all stop? So, I think it is a very good analogy. Go ahead?
QUESTION: I mean, is this the right time to kind of bring in a Second Amendment issue?
TRUMP: I think when they talk about taking your guns away -- and if you notice, at the beginning of this pandemic, there were more guns sold I think than at almost any time in history. Because -- so it is obviously a big issue.
And then you have them working and signing documents trying to take your Second Amendment away essentially. So I do think it is an appropriate time to bring it up. Go ahead, go ahead. Second --
QUESTION: This past week we have kind of had extraordinary slew of events from adversaries, North Korea, Russia, China and Iran, all kind of pushing back on U.S. policy or toying with U.S. Military forces. What is your message to some of these countries who may be trying to take advantage?
TRUMP: I don't see it. No, I don't see it. We have a very good relationship with Russia. We worked on the oil deal together. I was with -- by telephone, the King of Saudi Arabia and the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, we worked out a deal on oil. That was a very important deal to them and to us and to Saudi Arabia. It was in a deadlock. You know it. You covered it very well.
Actually, "Wall Street Journal" covered that very well. I worked with Putin and with the King on that. And President Putin was a total gentleman and it was very important to get that done and the King was great. And we actually had to bring in Mexico because Mexico was a lone holdout and they showed great flexibility. You know the story.
No, I think we're doing fine. Yes, sure, North Korea is either testing short range missiles -- and you know, they've been doing it a long time.
I received a nice note from him recently. It was a nice note. I think we're doing fine. Look, if I wasn't elected, you would right now be at war with North Korea. Okay? I'll tell you for your people that don't understand the world and they don't understand how life works. If I wasn't elected, you would right now, maybe the war would be over.
Hopefully with a victory. But if you remember when I first came in, we didn't have ammunition. Not a good way to fight a war. President Obama left us no ammunition. Okay? And he left us virtually no medical -- and ventilators. He left us -- the cupboard was dry. Right? The cupboard was dry.
Now, I think right now you would be at war, essentially in some form. It would be over. It would be raging with North Korea if I weren't President, and we're doing just fine with North Korea. Just fine. We'll see how it all ends up.
You know, in the meantime, they said, oh Trump has given up. And then they say, oh, really what's he given up? And they said, I don't know. And then they said, he met -- oh, I met, I met.
No, I have a good relationship with Kim Jong-un. That's not a bad thing to have a good relationship. Obama wanted a relationship. He wouldn't meet with Obama. He wouldn't meet with him. Okay. I have a good relationship with him.
We met at the line. I stepped over the line. The first time anything like that's ever -- it's all good. It is just -- it's good.
[18:10:10]
TRUMP: But when they say, the stupid people -- I call them "stupid people" or the haters. They say Trump has given up so much. Really?
I've actually increased the sanctions. China has been very good on the border. In fact right now, the border is stone cold -- closed between China and North Korea.
Our relationship with China was good until they did this. Once we found out about this. Once we found out -- look we just made a Trade Deal where China is going to have to buy $250 billion a year in our product. $50 billion from the farmers -- $40 billion to 50 billion from the farmers. The relationship was good when we were signing that. But then, all of a sudden you hear about this.
So it is a big difference. You know the question was asked. Would you be angry at China? Well, the answer might very well be a very resounding yes. But it depends. Was it a mistake that got out of control or was it done deliberately? Okay, there's a big difference between those two.
In either event, they should have let us go in. You know, we asked to go in very early, and they didn't want us in. I think they were embarrassed. I think they knew it was something bad and I think they were embarrassed, but you know, no, I think we're doing very well.
So you said Russia. You said china. You said North Korea.
QUESTION: Iran?
TRUMP: Iran. When I came in, Iran was terror. We had 82 points of fighting. We had 18 points of major confliction. The first week, I said, tell me about Iran? Sir, we have 18 points of confliction. Meaning, Yemen, Syria -- Iraq. They are going into Iraq all over the place.
They are a much different nation right now. I stopped that horrible deal. Horrible deal. And they want to talk. Except that Kerry violated the Logan Act.
He made the deal and he doesn't want them to make a deal because -- I would have made a deal in my opinion. Except that John Kerry who made the deal originally, which is a stupid deal to make. They gave them $150 billion dollars. Gave them $1.8 billion in cash. That would be more than this room ten times with hundred dollar bills. You could fill up this room ten times with hundred dollar bills and it is not that small a room.
And I say he violated the Logan Act. I think it was a major violation. I think we would have had a deal if it wasn't for John Kerry. But he doesn't want to be number one, embarrassed. Number two, he said, let's wait until after the election. Maybe Sleepy Joe Biden is going to win.
And if Sleepy Joe Biden wins, you'll own the United States. And China will own the United States. China has paid us, you know, from "The Wall Street Journal," hundreds of billions of dollars. Isn't that right? Tariffs. And we gave a lot of that money, a small percentage, but a lot of money to the farmers and it kept the farmers going great.
All right, but hundreds. We're getting tens of billions of dollars in tariffs. And by the way, for those that say oh we're paying -- China devalued their currency in order to pay these. We didn't pay. China paid. They don't like to write that.
They also added a money into their system. So they paid for that. No. I think you have numerous countries waiting to see whether or not Sleepy Joe wins because if Sleepy Joe won, they own our country. They will take our country.
You know, we had -- go back two months. We had by far -- and China was supposed to catch us. You know better than anybody, "Wall Street Journal."
For years I've heard by 2019, China will catch us. There is only one problem, Trump got elected in 2016. That was a big difference. And we were going leaps and bounds above China. And before the problem, with the plague, right, China was having the worst year they have had in 67 years. That was before the plague.
Now, they are they are getting really hurt, and so is everybody getting hurt. I don't want them to get hurt. But they are all getting hurt. Everybody is getting hurt. It is a horrible thing that's happened.
But we had the greatest economy in the world by far. China isn't even close. Go back two months. And we are going to keep it that way.
But when you mention Iran. Iran is a much different country than it was. When I first came in, Iran was going to take over the entire Middle East. Right now, they just want to survive. They are having protests every week. They are loaded up with the plague, which I don't want. I've offered to help them if they want.
If they need ventilators, which is they do, I would send them ventilators. We have thousands of excess ventilators coming in, and here, we have a stockpile of ventilators, and we're starting to send them so that hospitals can fill up their stockpile. Which they should have.
New York had a chance to get 16,000 ventilators and they chose not to do it and I understand that. It is a hard decision for a thing that may or may not happen. I fully understand that. I'm not even complaining about that.
I'm only saying this. Iran was a terror when I came into office. Right now, they don't want to mess around with us. They don't want to mess around with us.
[18:15:08]
TRUMP: Two things. North Korea, same sanctions we've always had except more. We haven't given anything. I think you will hopefully take that back to "The Wall Street Journal" because they really don't understand it. They really don't.
And with Iran, I mean that is a different country right now. And they want to make a deal. The only reason they don't, they are being shamed in -- because the guy that gave them the sweetheart didn't want to meet with them many times. He should have never met with them.
And in my opinion, he is telling them don't, wait, maybe Trump will lose and then you can negotiate with a patsy, with a weak guy and he will take over, between you and Russia, nobody has been tougher on Putin. He knows it better than anybody.
Nobody had been tougher on Putin than me. Look at the sanctions. Look at what I did with their pipeline going into Europe. Nobody even knew about it. I exposed it.
Now everybody talks about it. I think it is a terrible thing for Germany to do. But at the same time I have a very good relationship with Putin, and I was able to get -- I was able to make a deal with Russia and Saudi Arabia and Opec Plus. They call it Opec Plus.
That's going to save us Texas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, other states, energy states, it is going to save us hundreds of thousands of jobs.
And in fact, your paper wrote an incredible editorial for a change that Trump made a great deal for our country. That was a nice thing. I was shocked to see it. Coming out of "The Wall Street Journal."
Thank you all very much. We'll you tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you very much.
ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Well, you have just been listening to a briefing by President Trump and his Coronavirus Taskforce.
I want to bring in CNN Reporter, Daniel Dale, Anchor of "INSIDE POLITICS," John King, CNN's Chief Political Analyst, Gloria Borger. Also with us, the former Acting Director of the CDC, Dr. Richard Besser and the President of American Medical Association, Dr. Patrice Harris.
John King, I have to start with you because I heard a lot of politics there, not a lot about public health and safety issues and information that is going help protect the American people. What did you hear?
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, there was quite a bit there, and Daniel and his fact check team are going to have to brew a couple of extra pots of coffee tonight because from John Kerry to the details of some of the negotiations the President talked about, there's a lot I can say that he could veered and fell from the actual truth.
But let me follow up on two others, and I'll leave the fact checking to Daniel. Accountability and consistency are important at a time of crisis and this President doesn't want them.
He doesn't want them. Yes, the world trade -- the World Health Organization -- excuse me -- made some mistakes here. Yes, China is not being transparent here.
The President is using them as pinatas, if you will, because he doesn't like the criticism of his own actions and inactions at the end of January into February where the United States government, yes, banned travel from China, but then didn't do much else and the President said it is not a pandemic. It is not going a pandemic. It is going to go away when it gets warm.
If you want a test, you can get a test. You played some of that sound earlier.
The President's very defense about his own inaction and weak actions in late January throughout February, so he is trying to blame other people. Not that they are not to blame, but he is trying to blame them, and then it is the accountability thing where now he is inciting these protests against governors who are doing what the President asked them to do, and the President said this is your call now.
And the President said the other day, I will have your back. This is all up to the governors, and now he wants to look t Virginia, the Great State of Minnesota and liberate Michigan because his base is stirring. Because he sees his poll numbers are slipping and when -- say, hey, everybody back off -- give this to your governor. These are tough decisions. Let them beg. Speak your mind, but don't violate social distancing rules and run up the steps of the capitals.
Don't chant "lock her up." Now, the President could be helpful here, instead, he will not stand up to his base because his sees his poll numbers going down and we're in an election year.
CABRERA: Gloria, the President hit his usual targets, the media, China, Democrats, but then he somehow -- he found a way to use a hypothetical response to social distancing to draw a line between faiths. Anything to read into his bizarre comments about how mosques and imams will handle social distancing while somehow linking that to attacks he saw in Israel and Christianity?
GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Look, I think this is all part of a portrait he is drawing about division. And in time of crisis, as John was saying, you know what the public is looking for is somebody to bring the country together and what this press conference was about today was about anything but unity, and quite honestly, it wasn't even about the coronavirus.
CABRERA: No.
BORGER: I sat there and I was sort of scratching my head saying what is he doing? So what it was, was a parade of sort of self-pity, grievance, self-congratulation because it is very clear that this is a President who has been frustrated by the lack of adoration that he has gotten around the country and particularly from United States senators whom he criticized as being nasty to the Vice President, and I found that a little rich coming from Donald Trump calling anybody else nasty.
[18:20:18]
BORGER: But then he was -- he called himself, you know we are -- I'm the King of Ventilators. We have a great testing capacity.
But did he come up with a national plan for testing which is I think what a lot of people might want or say that we're providing the testing that the states are asking for, that were asked for on that phone call? No, he did not.
Instead he just went chapter and verse, chapter and verse about how terrible Virginia is and how they are trying to take away your guns, which is of course they are not. They passed a Red Flag Law that 19 over states have passed saying that if somebody is deemed to be dangerous to themselves or to anybody else, they can temporarily lose their firearm. But he did not explain that. So, it was on and on. Much of what we've heard in the past.
CABRERA: Daniel, you are our fact checker. The President went with his usual attack on the Obama administration claiming the cupboard was bare when it came to what was needed to fight this pandemic more than three years into Trump's administration.
And yet according to new reporting from "The Washington Post" U.S. manufacturers with encouragement from the Federal government shipped millions of dollars of facemasks and other protective medical equipment to China in January and February despite the early warnings about this pandemic and the growing threat in the United States. Anything else jump out to you from this press conference?
DANIEL DALE, CNN REPORTER: Yes, honestly, it is hard to know where to start with this press conference. I counted at least four false claims related to Obama in particular.
He said they inherited broken junk with regard to coronavirus testing from the Obama administration. There is no inherited test for the coronavirus from the Obama administration.
This is a new virus and the faulty test was developed by the CDC under Trump this year.
He claimed that Obama left us no ammunition. This is a gross exaggeration of the fact that there was a shortage of particular kinds of munitions, particular kinds of precision guided bombs because of the intensity of Obama's anti-ISIS bombing. It is never true that the U.S. Military had no ammunition.
He also claimed that Kim Jong-un refused to meet with Obama. He said this before. Obama never tried to meet with Kim Jong-un. He never called. As Trump has said, his strategy was non-engagement with the Kim regime.
Trump also insisted that Americans are not paying his tariffs on China and that China is covering all of this. Again, we hear this at his rallies. It is not true. Study after study has made clear that Americans are covering these costs.
And he also baselessly asserted that "The New York Times" and/or other media outlets are making up the sources in his administration. At one point, he accused a "New York Times" story of being fake about Mark Meadows because he supposedly cried.
And then admitted, well, Mark Meadows may have cried and they may have taken the crying out of context, so again, he is railing against the media even in cases where he is more or less admitting that the story was more or less accurate.
Can I just add one more thing? The President also asserted that it's only been a few weeks since everybody knew that this was such a big problem. That is extremely incorrect.
You know, we already have more than a thousand U.S. deaths three weeks ago. We had a pandemic declaration more than a month ago. We had a public health emergency declaration more than two months ago.
So, the idea that this just jumped on us a few weeks ago again is not even close to true.
CABRERA: And Democrats have pointed out not even as far back as February they were in Congress asking the administration to pay more attention to the coronavirus and were asking for more resources to help combat it.
Dr. Harris, let me ask you a question, because even though there was very little medical information -- public health information that we got out of this press conference, there was a moment which Dr. Birx was putting up charts and explaining some of the data she was analyzing and she said this about Seattle. Let's watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. DEBORAH BIRX, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR: This is Seattle. So you can see they had a much lower peak, and this is when we talk about flattening the curve, this is what flattening the curve looks like.
It becomes a longer slower decline, but then, it never gets very high, and then goes back down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CABRERA: So she said, this is what flattening the curve looks like. What did you see there? And based on that data, what does that tell us about how long it might take too flatten the curve?
DR. PATRICE HARRIS, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION: Well, Ana, we have to keep our focus on public health even though in some areas, the number of cases are decreasing, we still see hot spots every day, particularly in plants and in nursing homes, and in the black and brown communities.
So we are very glad -- we know that social distancing has worked. It worked in Seattle, and so we've made good progress there.
[18:25:10]
HARRIS: But we have to make sure that we maintain a laser focus on public health so we can build upon the progress we need to ramp up our testing capacity.
We need to ramp up our ability to do surveillance, and certainly, we need to see the number of cases and the number of deaths decrease.
So let's make a commitment. I think all of us should make a commitment to maintain a focus on public health.
CABRERA: Dr. Richard Besser, you are the former acting Director of the CDC and one thing that stood out, you know, the President did not want to talk about testing. Governor Cuomo here in New York made clear earlier today, the labs can't even get all the components needed to do mass testing, specifically reagent chemicals. Can you explain what is still missing?
DR. RICHARD BESSER, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR OF THE CDC: Well, you know when we saw the chart comparing countries and the number of people who've died per population, one of the reasons the U.S. numbers look as good as they do is there's been such a shortage on testing.
And most places apply an approach to testing where the only people who are getting tested are people who have severe illness or people who are healthcare workers, individuals who might need to be hospitalized.
If we're going switch from an approach where everyone is sheltering at home and doing social distancing, to one where we're opening up society, we need to have the ability to test everybody. And so, test everybody who has any symptoms, so that even mild cases
are detected. And what you do then is you isolate those individuals. Public health comes in and does basic public health work.
They identify every person, the sick person who has been in contact with. Those people go into quarantine. If these people don't have a place to stay, you have to be able to provide that.
Millions of people in America are living in conditions where isolating at home actually puts their family members at risk and we shouldn't allow that to happen.
But if we're going to control this, when we switch from where we are now to opening up society, we have to be able to test on a wholly different scale than we are right now, and we need to make sure that testing is done fairly and that communities of color are getting tested as well as communities where right now testing is much more available.
CABRERA: So, Dr. Besser, I mean, what is your sense about how long that could take to get to the point where testing is at the level where you feel is necessary in order to safely start to reopen the country?
BESSER: Well, you know, testing is just one piece of it. Your other pieces that are really important is you have to have excess hospital capacity, so lots of empty beds.
The reason for that is that when you move from social distancing like we're in right now, you are going to see more cases. That is going to happen until the disease has gone through a population and there is enough protection that the disease no longer transmits.
So you want to make sure there is a lot of room in hospitals. That there is plenty of personal protective equipment. Not just for healthcare providers, but for people working in other settings where they may be coming in contact with people who could be infectious.
We're far from being able to open up safely from a public health perspective.
The other piece is the sense of what's already gone on in the community and the talk about serologic testing. That means checking people's blood to see if they have protective factors.
But we still have do some basic science to see what levels of protection in the blood meaning that someone has already had it and is safe, and couldn't get this again or spread it to somebody else.
CABRERA: John, we keep hearing from medical experts that we're a long ways away from getting to the point we need to be and yet it seems like this President wants credit for social distancing, as well as credit for taking on those that enforce the rules to keep people safe and keep the social distancing intact. I mean, does what we just heard from the President even make sense to you? KING: Well, it's missing -- it's missing a Federal commitment to step
in and do everything possible to get the testing to the point that Dr. Besser is talking about and that Dr. Harris speaks frequently.
It is the broken record of the story, if you will. It is the constant. The story changes every day. The numbers tend to keep going up, you see progress in some places. You see setbacks in other place. We're learning remarkable personal stories about the frontline workers.
We are watching the economic pain play out. Throughout all of this change, what is the one constant you hear whether you are talking to a public health professional, whether you're talking to a mayor, whether you're talking to a doctor in an emergency room or a doctor in a research institution? Every single one of them says testing. We need more of it. We need more of it now.
And the President -- you had Sarah Murray on earlier today, CNN had some great reporting today in the early misses at the CDC mistake happen.
We don't need to run to the administration with a flagpole and say it was a mistake, but when a mistake happens, they should be candid and fess up about it and they should say, here is what we're doing. We are pouring resources to make up for the mistake.
[18:30:10]
And then they should work (inaudible) and the profits (inaudible) and ramp this up (inaudible) say they're doing that (inaudible) Dr. Fauci on Friday was candid. He said we were way behind the curve getting started here and we made some mistakes.
The President doesn't like to embrace that. He keeps saying this is the governors' responsibility and we're here to help. Maybe that's the way it plays out. I'm not smart enough. But when you talk to people like Dr. Besser and Dr. Harris and the public health professionals, they will tell you that only the federal government can ramp this up at the scale necessary to get it done as soon as it needs to be done, if you're going to start sending people back to work.
And Ana, just the last point I will make, as we go through this and it's necessary, you can't leave an economy shut down forever but just look at the public evidence before us. We're going to start to send more people back to work, right?
Look at all of these meat processing plants, a hostile work. Look at the bus driver. Look at the police department. Look at the grocery store workers. The people who are working who have no choice but to work, especially those who have to work in close quarters keep getting sick.
CABRERA: Yes.
KING: And when you ask people what can be done for them, the people are out there today on the front lines, they say we need more testing and more screening. It is the broken record Groundhog Day of this story and the fact that we keep talking about it tells us there's a problem. When you have a problem, you look to your leaders for solutions.
CABRERA: Right. You need more testing and more screening. And we keep hearing from health professionals and public officials saying they still don't have enough personal protective equipment, either to help keep people safe.
Gloria, I don't want to normalize this. Let's be clear. More than 3,700 people died just yesterday. That's 1,000 more people then died on 9/11. I mean, imagine President George W. Bush, for example, getting up there after 9/11 and pointing fingers at Al Gore.
BORGER: No. And the enormity of all of this is sinking in around the country and around the world, because people are dying in unbelievable numbers everywhere. And I think Gov. Cuomo of New York never forgets to say it every single day even when you see his curve flattening or heading on the downslide. I mean, that is the key to everything everybody is doing or should be the key.
And while the President does express it, what we hear more from him is the sort of don't blame me. And one thing that really struck out to me today and I don't know if it struck out to John and the others, is that when he is talking about reopening, he said some of the governors, I'm looking at my notes here, some of the governors have gotten carried away.
I'm not quite sure what he means by that. I know he's criticizing Virginia and a couple of other Democratic governors. But does getting carried away actually mean? Does it mean that they put in place protective measures to save lives of people? Does it mean that they're erring on the side of caution in order to save lives? Does it mean, as you point out, that they don't have enough of the protective equipment or enough of the testing in order to ease up on the restrictions that are in place?
I'm not quite sure what the President meant by that. Because if they got carried away, to use his words, for what reason would it be? It wouldn't be political people want to go back to work. It would be because they want to protect their citizens.
CABRERA: Dr. Besser, CNN has been reporting this evening that contamination at a CDC lab was likely behind those critical early delays in rolling out the testing for the coronavirus. As the former Acting Director of the CDC, what's your reaction to this?
BESSER: Well, I ran emergency preparedness at the CDC for four years. And there was never a response that I was involved in where mistakes didn't happen, where things didn't go the way we wanted them to go. But we had the opportunity every day to talk to the public and explain what we were doing to answer hard questions from the media.
And I think one of the big issues right now is we're not hearing from the CDC, we're not understanding what they're learning. How they're thinking about us reopening society, what they're seeing from other countries that have tried different strategies so that we can get a national will for a way forward.
At the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation where I am now, our big concern is that everyone in America should have the opportunity to protect them themselves and their health and their families and their communities.
[18:35:04]
And right now, we're not even seeing the data to give us a clear picture of which people, which communities are being hit hardest. We should be hearing from CDC every day. If we were we would understand more about testing and what happened early.
But right now testing is not an issue from CDC. It's getting the federal government to ramp up testing through the private sector and develop assays and get them out there so that we can really move forward to the next phase of this.
CABRERA: How do you explain why we're not hearing from the CDC? I mean, we do hear from Dr. Burks, we do hear from Dr. Fauci pretty regularly. But you're right, we haven't heard very much from the CDC although we have a little bit, Dr. Redfield was on our air I think it was maybe two town halls ago.
BESSER: Yes. I mean, if you think back to the Zika crisis, your everyday Dr. Anne Schuchat was there and was telling us where the mosquitoes were traveling, where the virus was traveling. And while the nation was really, really frightened because that was a new virus that was causing great harm, we understood what the agency was doing.
This is the first crisis I've seen, a public health crisis where CDC hasn't been doing a daily briefing to explain the public health science, the great work that's going on at the state and local level, what they're seeing, why we might see a different approach in Seattle to what's being seen in Detroit or New York. Getting a good understanding of that will help us all understand what we need to do going forward as we transition.
CABRERA: Dr. Harris, it was back in February, I just want to remind everybody of when this testing issue came up and when the contamination at the CDC lab was the likely cause of the early delays in rolling out the testing. This was the President in early March, when he visited the CDC in Atlanta. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Anybody that needs a test gets a test. They're there. They have the test and the tests are beautiful.
I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Everyone of these doctors said, how do you know so much about this, maybe I have a natural ability, maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.
(END VIDEO CLIP) CABRERA: To be clear, a month and a half later, everyone who wants a
test still cannot get a test. Dr. Harris, what do you think was lost as a result of not only not having that testing ready, but then not warning the public that they had a big problem and needed to protect themselves?
DR. PATRICE HARRIS, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION: Well, I agree with Dr. Besser that we need clear, consistent messaging from our public health officials, including CDC and a principle that should be now and in the future without any political influence. I do note that there will be time to do a deep dive in an after action review to really look into what happened, but at this point we really need to move forward.
And several weeks ago, the AMA called on the President, of course, to use all levers of federal government to activate the Defense Production Act so that we can really get our testing capacity up to speed. And testing is hard and that's all the more reason to have the federal government in charge, because it's not just the testing kits. It's also the swabs. It's also the reagents.
And so we continue to call on the President to use all the levers at his disposal, because we are really going to need an increase in that testing capacity before we are able to loosen restrictions and open up our economy.
CABRERA: Daniel Dale, I'll give you the last word. A final thought on what we just saw.
DALE: The President has been lying incessantly about and through this crisis. He's lied consistently about critical matters like testing from the time he said anyone who wants a test can get a test to today when he continued to blame the Obama administration. But he's also repeating his old lies. He's repeating the lies that I fact check incessantly from his campaign rallies.
So I think these have become kind of substitute rallies with all of the attendant dishonesty. So I think we all need to watch with a very critical eye because a very high percentage of what we're hearing from the President is just not true.
CABRERA: Thank you all for being here to help break down this briefing.
Another topic the President talked about during the briefing, coronavirus, disproportionately impacting minority communities. I'll talk to Van Jones about that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:43:21]
CABRERA: Welcome back. The President just gave the latest briefing on the coronavirus response. I want to go to CNN's Jeremy Diamond who was in the room. And Jeremy, what stood out to you? JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ana, the
President today clearly was focused on really an airing of grievances. That was kind of the main takeaway it seems from today. He didn't really come out to announce any major news and provide any real new information about the U.S. government's response to this coronavirus crisis in the United States.
The President, instead, focusing in large part on blaming some of these Democratic governors, the questions of testing again were at the forefront and the President focused on the fact that some of these governors in these states are not using all of the testing capacity that they have. Suggesting even at one point that they don't want to use all of the capacity that they have.
The president there seems to be talking about Democratic governors. Of course, the reality is that both Democrat and Republican governors, namely, for example, the Republican Governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, the New York Governor, Chris - sorry, Andrew Cuomo. Both of them have talked about shortages in some of the critical supplies that they need to actually ramp up the testing in their states. Both the swabs, for example, that they use to conduct some of those tests, as well as some of the chemical reagents, which are monitored by the FDA, by the federal government, so that was one part of it.
The other part of this briefing that I think was important was the President really focusing a little bit more in providing some data to try and back up his claims that China was responsible for what we see now happening across the world.
[18:45:00]
The President casting doubt in particular on some of the mortality figures that have come out of China, which suggests that they have far lower mortality than other developed countries around the world that have faced this coronavirus pandemic, really something that suggests that China is undercounting which, of course, we know that there have been reports of.
But again, Ana, I think that this is once again an instance where what we have seen from the President is a desire to cast blame on everyone else who he possibly can, whether it is China or whether it is these governors of various states who are not able to ramp up testing because of critical equipment shortages. The President focusing on that rather than what the federal government is doing and what the federal government didn't do that could have made this crisis far less severe.
CABRERA: Jeremy Diamond at the White House for us. Thank you.
Now, during his briefing tonight, the President did announce that the government will be providing assistance to 13,000 community health sites in medically under-served regions with African American and Hispanic communities. And joining us now is CNN Political Commentator Van Jones who served as President Obama's Green Jobs Adviser. He also worked with the Trump administration to pass the First Step Act which focused on criminal justice reform. Van, the criticism that we had been hearing is that not enough
resources were being directed to these minority communities even though the numbers show that coronavirus is affecting blacks and Latinos at an alarming rate. Is this announcement tonight a step in that right direction?
VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's a step in the right direction, but we need to be racing in the right direction. I am very glad, I love hearing the President and governors and others acknowledging this is not playing the race card, this is just the data card. The hotspots where you need to be rushing masks, tests, ventilators, respirators are in black and brown communities.
And now, the Navajo community is being decimated. On a per capita basis, the Navajo community is as bad or worse than New Jersey or New York. So it turns out in this situation, whether you want to talk about race or not, the hot spots from Native American world to the African-American to Latino people of color are suffering. And so you got to have to, if you want to beat this plague, do you want to beat this pandemic, you've got to rush the resources to the hotspots, and that is black and brown and Native American communities.
I like the announcement, but we need to see results quickly before the thing gets completely out of hand.
CABRERA: Van, this was the President moments ago addressing racial disparities and the coronavirus.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: These centers provide care to 28 million people living in medically underserved urban and rural regions, including many African- American and Hispanic communities. We're taking care of them. And it's so important because you've all been reading about the disproportionate numbers on African-American and you're reading a little bit less about Hispanic, but like Hispanic communities, the number is a disproportionate. In fact, we're doing big studies on it right now. We don't like it. Not right.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CABRERA: Van, what are the biggest obstacles for communities of color in the U.S. in terms of battling this pandemic?
JONES: Well, a number of things. First of all, the so called essential workers. Certainly, all of the low-wage workers who have tough jobs and are underinsured, now we call them essential workers. They weren't essential when they were asking for minimum wage increases, when they were asking for family leave policy than health care. Now suddenly they're essential.
You look at those jobs and you see it yourself, it's overwhelmingly people of color who are standing in those grocery stores, who are the nurses, who are driving the trucks, who are dropping off our Amazon packages, overwhelmingly people of color. So our communities are on the front lines, there should be statues to nurses and to grocery store workers when this is over, because that's where the frontline casualties are happening. Number one.
So you've got people who are - we got an epidemic of tough jobs in our community in the first place. And then secondly, you do have an epidemic of underlying bad health problems. I say all the time, if you take a pill every day for high blood pressure, if you got an inhaler in your pocket, if anybody in your family does, you are vulnerable, you can die.
It's not just 80-year-old people, you're seeing 30-year-old, 40-year- old, 20-year-old people in the black and Latino communities and now Native American dying because of the underlying health is tough. So you got to protect yourself and we also are going to have to start taking better care of our own immune systems. People of color are going to have to own our own health, eat better and deal with that.
But there's an emergency now for the government to rush these supplies forward. The last thing I'll say is this, you got a lot of people in communities of color or from communities of color that cannot self- isolate, because they are in jails, they're in prisons, they're in detention centers, they're homeless shelters, women's shelters and in those cases you've got to really rush to get the tests there and the masks there and the PPE there and we just aren't doing it fast enough.
[18:50:07]
I applaud the President for making that announcement, for talking about this. But we've got to go faster than we are to solve this problem.
CABRERA: Van, you wrote in a CNN opinion piece about trying to warn your own family, your extended family about this expected wave of coronavirus cases. And you talk about hitting resistance based on an inaccurate myth, explain what happened.
JONES: Listen, because of the way this thing started, it was people who were traveling overseas and coming back, mostly those were white tourists. And then you had a wave go through a lot of white nursing homes.
And a myth got started that people of color couldn't catch it, that it was kind of an old white disease. Therefore, if you're a younger person of color, if you're a person of color in your 50s, your 40s, your 20s, your 30s, you shouldn't have to worry about it. Nothing could be farther from the truth and what's happened is, this disease is devastating communities of color.
This virus acts like it hates black people. It acts like it hates brown people, because even though it is completely neutral in the way that it spreads, the underlying health issues, the social congestion, the kind of jobs that we have means when it hits us, it hits hard. And so I think we're now starting to get through, I think we're breaking through and I think it's important.
I'm very glad. I want to say I'm very glad to hear the President speak to this. I'm glad to hear governors speak to this, but we got to match now the words with the actions, because when you talk to communities of color, they are not getting the test. They are not able to get tests even when they are sick and if you look at Facebook, as a person of color, it's like a drive by shooting every three hours, somebody else has died, somebody else has died, somebody else has died.
I'm talking about people in their 30s, 40s and 50s. And so there is an urgency in terms of we need the government to respond. Communities of color got to take this seriously. And long-term we need a revolution of health practices, of good food, that kind of stuff, that's got to become as trendy in the black and brown community as a healthy lifestyle as anything else. Otherwise, we're going to be set up for the next pandemic and the next pandemic.
CABRERA: Van, I mentioned your work on criminal justice reform. I know it's a passion of yours and you continue to do great work in that arena right now. We have seen a lot of federal prisons and county jails release inmates during the coronavirus because of concerns of spread within those jail settings. Do you see that having a long-term impact in terms of America's approach to who remains locked up going forward after this pandemic?
JONES: Well, we should begin to rethink this excessive reliance on incarceration that exists only in the U.S. We have a quarter of the world's prisoners hit this country and only 5 percent of the world's population. We have way over relied on incarceration and we've been too willing, especially when you're dealing with poor folks and black and brown folks to take people's liberties for minor reasons.
The problem now is a minor arrest for any little thing, a probation violation, a parole violation, some minor drug charge could be a death sentence. As you're putting people in prisons where the virus is spreading at five to 15 times the normal rate because people in there like sardines.
And so what we're saying is two things; get as many people out as you can. The people who are elderly, the people who are sick, the people who have minor charges, people sitting there waiting for bail, people in there on probation violation charges that are not even new crimes, move them out to home confinement as safely and quickly as you can and then rush in a medical supplies, masks and PPE.
Because if you don't, if this pandemic rips through the prisons, you got 2.4 million people who could all get sick at the same time. Those people knock out your public health system. They knock out all your hospital. The guards and the staff and the food services people got to come in and out.
You cannot beat a plague on the outside of the prison if you don't beat it on the inside. And the best way to beat it on the inside is to get everybody out that you can, have them home confined, rush in supplies and make sure you don't have a pandemic in the prisons. And the numbers in the prisons right now, there is no flattening of the curve, it is going up.
So we're calling on governors and Department of Justice to do simple things, compassionate release, get people out of harm's way or we're all going to pay the price. CABRERA: Van, I only have about 30 seconds left but you have an hour
long CNN special tonight with Don Lemon taking a look at how this pandemic is affecting communities of color. Give us a preview.
JONES: Listen, you're going to be shocked at the big names that are coming out tonight to try to raise the alarm about what's going on, but also to put forward good hopeful solutions, groups to support, positive practices that we can do. We need to be sleeping more. We need to be eating better. We need to be boosting our own immunity, owning our own health.
[18:55:02]
It's got to be an amazing show of force.
Famous people like P. Diddy Combs, you've got will.i.am, all kinds of people coming out, America Ferrera coming out to talk about this and I'm so proud to see it and doing this Color of Covid tonight.
CABRERA: All right.
JONES: I'm doing it with the great Don Lemon and so you know it's going to be amazing.
CABRERA: Now, we see Lin-Manuel Miranda there as well. Van Jones, we look forward to your special tonight. Thank you for taking the time. I appreciate the conversation.
Make sure you tune in to tonight's special Van Jones and Don Lemon have a special conversation about coronavirus and communities of color along with messages of hope from people like Sean Diddy Combs, America Ferrera, Charles Barkley and many, many more.
THE COLOR OF COVID live tonight at 10 Eastern here on CNN.
That does it for me this evening. I'm Ana Cabrera in New York. Thank you for joining me. A special edition of THE SITUATION ROOM with Wolf Blitzer is next after a quick break. Goodnight.
