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U.S. Hits Highest Unemployment Rate Since Great Depression; Vice President's Press Secretary Tests Positive For Coronavirus. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 08, 2020 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

MAX FOSTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And we never really hear that sort of sense of personality from her really in public.

But I think it affected her so much, that moment, which is why that -- that bit of tape really is so lovely to hear.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: It really is. It really is.

Max Foster in beautiful Windsor.

Max, thank you.

We continue on. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being here.

I want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. You are watching CNN's continuing coverage of this coronavirus pandemic.

And what we have right now is that President Trump has just confirmed that the press secretary of Vice President Mike Pence has now tested positive for coronavirus. This is one day after she had taken the test and she had tested negative.

This is also the day we learned one of the president's own personal valets was also infected. So, we will get to all of that in just a moment, like right now.

To the White House and to our correspondent Kaitlan Collins for this breaking news.

And, Kaitlan, the office investigating the whistle-blower complaint of former vaccine chief Richard Bright has determined there is reason to believe he had been removed as retaliation, and is recommending that he is reinstated during the investigation.

That's according to his lawyers.

Kaitlan, tell me more about that.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is a statement we just got from Rick Bright's attorneys. Of course, he was the vaccine chief who was leading that government

agency, then was removed from his job, tried to be put in a different job. But then he filed that complaint this week, saying that basically he believed he was moved out of that job as retaliation.

Now, he wants to get his job back. That's why he's filing this complaint. And this is a notable development, because the investigative office that has been looking into this complaint he filed says that, early on, they have determined they have reason to believe that he was removed as retaliation.

So what they are going to HHS and asking them -- HHS is, of course, the department that oversees where Rick Bright's office was -- they're asking them that he'd be reinstated as the director of BARDA for the next 45 days as they continue their investigation into the allegations that he's made.

Now, this would be significant if this does happen, given that, of course, that has been what was the cause for such concern. Really, HHS has been incredibly quiet about this complaint so far, because they knew he was going to file a request. They know he's going to be testifying next week.

But now the Office of the Special Counsel, which is looking into this allegation, now says they believe Rick Bright should be reinstated to that position as they continue their investigation.

So, we're still waiting to see how HHS responds to this, or where this goes from here.

BALDWIN: So, as we wait for that, the other huge piece of news out of the White House today. You and I had already talked this week about the personal valet of the president testing positive for COVID.

Now you have not just any staffer of the vice president. You have the press secretary testing positive. And tell us who the press secretary is married to and then the proximity to the president.

COLLINS: Yes, the vice president's press secretary is Katie Miller.

And it's notable that she is the staffer of his that tested positive for coronavirus, because she's a very visible figure in the White House. She's very often in the West Wing with the vice president and accompanies him to a lot of the Coronavirus Task Force meetings.

So she's not a staffer, like some of his other staffers who only stay mainly in the building next door to the West Wing. She's actually very often in the West Wing. She's also married to the president's senior immigration adviser, Stephen Miller.

So, of course, that's going to raise other questions about whether or not that means there needs to be more tests done for those staffers in the West Wing. Stephen Miller is already one of those aides who's tested regularly because he is a senior staffer who often meets with the president. So the question about that still remains. But we're seeing just how

quickly the ground can shift underneath us here, Brooke, because what we were told earlier before the president identified it as Katie Miller being the one -- the staffer who has coronavirus, a senior administration official said that the person had tested negative yesterday, they were not showing any symptoms, and they were just tested as part of the regular testing that's now happening on a daily occurrence today.

And that's when she tested positive. So, when you saw earlier Air Force Two sitting on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews waiting to take off to go to Iowa, that's because some staffers on the plane, Brooke, were getting off because they may have had contact with Katie Miller.

And so they needed to go be tested again, out of an abundance of caution. And so it's really changing a lot of the dynamics in the West Wing now that a very notable figure who was around the vice president very often is now positive one day after someone who's around the president very often, that valet, is also positive.

So, the question going forward is, what protocols are they going to change? And how does this make life different in the West Wing?

BALDWIN: OK, Kaitlan, I am sure it feels the dynamics are changing the West Wing because of this. Kaitlan, thank you very much on those two pieces of news.

So, let's digest all of this.

With me now, I have our chief political analyst, Gloria Borger. And Dr. Pritesh Gandhi joins me now from Austin. He is a primary care doctor treating COVID-19 patients and he's also running for Congress in Texas' 10th Congressional District.

So, welcome to both of you.

And, Dr. Gandhi, let me just -- just with your M.D. hat on for me, when you hear that not only this personal valet of president's has tested positive this week, but this press secretary of the vice president, who had tested negative one day, tested positive the next, and then her proximity, because of her husband, to the president, what precautions should the president and vice president be taking right now?

[15:05:19]

DR. PRITESH GANDHI, INTERNAL MEDICINE/PEDIATRICS SPECIALIST: Well, look, I think this virus doesn't really care whether you're rich or poor, whether you work in the White House or not.

The president and the vice president need to continue to be tested on a regular, routine basis. But, perhaps more importantly, if, in the West Wing, they aren't practicing social distancing, this would be the time to do it. Folks need to make sure that they're no closer than six feet in proximity.

And their tests need to be done on a regular and routine basis.

BALDWIN: Gloria, you and I were just talking about how the president has been downplaying this need for testing. We know he's -- yesterday, he talked about, all right, I'm getting tested every day.

And now this additional COVID-positive press secretary of the vice president's, what do you think of this?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, and you saw that and people had to deplane from traveling with the vice president today because they could be infected with this.

BALDWIN: Had come in contact.

BORGER: And, apparently, a test that was negative one day can be positive the next.

And, as Kaitlan was just saying before, I think people watching this, it's kind of a lesson to all of us that you can't be careful enough here. And despite the fact that people in the White House now may be wearing masks, whereas they weren't before, and now may be being tested every day, that this can still occur.

And so the question is, now that it is -- has come to the White House this way, whether it will change the president's attitude on the need for testing.

I don't know the answer to that, but it seems to me that now they understand firsthand the need for tests.

BALDWIN: Yes.

Let me also ask you separately, Gloria, about the other piece of news that Kaitlan was reporting about Dr. Bright, right?

BORGER: Yes.

BALDWIN: He was the head of BARDA working on vaccines.

BORGER: Yes.

BALDWIN: He was also the doctor who -- President Trump really liked the idea of hydroxychloroquine as something that could help COVID patients. Turned out that really wasn't something that would be helpful. And he was the one saying, essentially, Mr. President, this isn't going to help.

He lost his job. And now they're saying this is retribution. What say you?

BORGER: Well, I say that, if they believe that there's...

BALDWIN: Or retaliation.

BORGER: Enough evidence right now to say, stop, this could be retaliatory, and you have got to hold on this transfer, then, in fact, when he goes to testify next week before the Congress, you can be sure he's going to tell his entire story and the American public will be able to judge whether he was kicked out of his job because he said, I don't think hydroxychloroquine is safe.

I think the American public will be able to make that judgment. And I think that, again, this is evidence of the science not being first in line here...

BALDWIN: Center stage.

BORGER: ... whether it's politics or whether you disagree with me or whether -- it is something else other than the science.

And I think that if we have learned anything throughout this entire process, it is that the science needs to take center stage here. And that is what I believe we will hear from Dr. Bright

What I'm interested is hearing the HHS response and what Mr. Azar says about Dr. Bright, because they have been throwing things out there like, oh, we didn't like the way he managed and this really wasn't about hydroxychloroquine.

We will have to see what their response is.

BALDWIN: Dr. Gandhi, what do you think of this whole situation with Dr. Bright?

GANDHI: Look, I think it's a mess.

I think what we have seen the very beginning is a desire for the Trump administration to not listen to experts, to not elevate the voices of scientists. And now we see the outcomes.

And the narrative that's being pushed is one that is a false choice. Do you open the economy, or do you invest in public health? That's not a choice that we need to make.

In fact, if we invest in public health, we build trust in the very consumers that are going to kick-start the economy. But because we're already behind the eight ball, we didn't start to invest in January and February, the president's in a tough position.

BALDWIN: Let me play this clip. Dr. Gandhi. This is for you.

This is the president this morning.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You look at some cases, some people think they're doing it for politics. Here we go again. But they think they're doing it because it'll hurt me the longer it takes to -- to hurt me in the election, the longer it takes to open up.

And I can see some of that, because some of these -- some of these people are being unrealistic. They're being ridiculous.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

[15:10:01]

BALDWIN: So he's talking about certain states being perhaps a little slower to reopen. And he's worried that is because they don't want him reelected as president.

And I'm just curious your reaction to that, just both as a doctor on the front lines, and also someone who's running for Congress?

GANDHI: Brooke, we crossed 1,000 deaths today in the state of Texas, where that's a likely underreported number, if you take this period and compare it to the period last year.

There's probably an excess of around 800 deaths. Last Monday, when I was in clinic, I saw a number of patients that had COVID symptoms and were suspected for having the virus. These are folks that are having trouble breathing in real time.

And their very next sentence is, I'm afraid that I'm not going to be able to afford to go to the hospital, or I can't leave my car here because that's actually my home, and I sleep in my car.

And so Monday was my busiest day in respiratory clinic. The state of Texas hasn't met the very guidelines that the White House has put out. And now we're being forced to choose between this narrative.

It doesn't have to be this way. If we invested in the very fundamentals of public health, expansive testing, enhanced contact tracing and provision of PPE, we'd be able to move forward.

Unfortunately, we're failing at the federal level at all three of those levels.

BALDWIN: Dr. Gandhi, thank you for the work you're doing there in Texas.

Gloria Borger, thank you very much for all of that.

The news hitting us fast and furious on this Friday, this crushing jobs report another example, confirming that we are living in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, more than 20 million jobs lost last month.

And the president, as we have just been discussing, getting tested every single day, despite rejecting the need for it, right? He's been downplaying it. Now scientists say we need to triple the testing rate in America to safely reopen.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:16:20]

BALDWIN: We're back. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

The month of April turned into the worst jobs report in U.S. history. More than 20 million Americans lost their jobs last month. Unemployment now stands at a devastating 14.7 percent.

That is a number we haven't seen since the Great Depression. Today, the president's senior economic adviser was warning the worst is actually just yet to come.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEVIN HASSETT, CHAIRMAN, COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISERS: The next one should be around 20. I was thinking this one might be as much as 20. But we had a big decline in the labor force as well.

And so the numbers are going to be probably -- it's probably going to be best to look at, as you said, the U6. So that's at 22 percent. It'll probably be 25 percent in the report.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN HOST: OK. Wow.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Dan White is the director of public sector research at Moody's Analytics.

And, Dan, as I was reading about all this morning, just a reminder to all of us that this unemployment rate today, you are only counted as unemployed if you are actively looking for work, but so many people aren't actively looking, right, because they're stuck at home, because of lockdowns.

And so the real number may be so much higher. You heard Hassett talking to Poppy from this morning. He thinks the next month's numbers will be worse.

Are you bracing for the same thing?

DAN WHITE, MOODY'S ANALYTICS: Absolutely.

I think, in terms of the unemployment rate, what you saw today was really just the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot of (AUDIO GAP) there who aren't really being counted in this number.

And so that unemployment rate could be north of 20 percent next month.

BALDWIN: How about we learned the state of California has become the first state to borrow money from the federal government to cover jobless benefits? And you said this is just the beginning of it all. How do you mean?

WHITE: Yes, so this is not something that's uncommon when we go into a recession, especially for states like California, who had underfunded unemployment insurance benefit funds.

However, the magnitude of these, as you mentioned, this is the worst that we have ever seen. The amount of borrowing that states are going to have to do to help replenish their U.I. trust funds is really going to be immense. And that carries with it, obviously, consequences down the line. These

are not grants that are made to states. These are loans that they're going to have to pay back eventually. And these loans are going to be so huge that this is going to be just kind of another thing for state and local government policy-makers have to worry about in the years ahead.

BALDWIN: So then, given all of this news today, explain to me why the stock market is all in the green.

WHITE: Yes.

Well, it's always important to remember that the stock market is not the economy, right? The stock market is expectations about the economy. And so if there's any silver lining about this, it's really that the investors think that we're starting to get out of the woods. They might be trading a little bit as well on the unemployment insurance claims yesterday, which were three million, again, record high number, but significantly less than we have seen in previous weeks.

So, as we start to get a better picture for countries around the world and certain states in the U.S. beginning to open up their economies, I think there's a lot of folks who are investing who are starting to think that, even though the job numbers are still going to get worse, we might be kind of getting through to the tail end of the initial shock from this.

BALDWIN: OK, Dan, thank you.

My next guests, married couple, both musicians, both out of work, waiting for their unemployment benefits to kick in.

Mike Szuter and Bianca Hernandez play together in two bands, Rock and Roll Rebels and All Requests Live.

So, there you are in Las Vegas. Nice to see both of you on. At least you're looking healthy. But I know -- you tell me. I mean, so you're musicians, Mandalay Bay, corporate events. When's the last time either of you had a gig?

MIKE SZUTER, MUSICIAN: The last gig that I had was the last day the Strip was open, on the 15th of March.

BIANCA HERNANDEZ, MUSICIAN: Yes, March was the last....

[15:20:01]

SZUTER: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Wow. March.

And so what other options in terms of music, in terms of jobs do you have right now? SZUTER: We don't really have anything. We're looking at online

possibilities, but...

HERNANDEZ: We mostly do live performances. And that's all gone.

SZUTER: It's all gone, yes.

HERNANDEZ: My backup job is being a server, and that's gone too. So, I mean, recording, like, recording music here at home would be an option. Those are just not connections that we have, because we usually do live performances.

BALDWIN: I had read that your agent said, hey, how about playing a gig on a cruise ship? You want to do that?

SZUTER: Yes, I guess the cruise ships are starting to book things for when they're going to be ready to go, but, like, yes, we need the money, but that's a ridiculously tough call.

How could we say, yes, I'm going to go and do this and possibly come home sick?

BALDWIN: Right. Right. And you have a 13-year-old daughter at home, I was reading.

Just what does she understand about, A, just you know what's happening with coronavirus and, B, with the two of you not working, in a tough spot?

HERNANDEZ: Well, she understands a little bit because of CNN 10, which she watches for school. So she's -- and we do talk to her. We don't keep her hidden to the truth and everything about it.

But...

SZUTER: She's -- I think she's just really bored not being able to see her friends, because we're on a lockdown.

HERNANDEZ: Yes.

SZUTER: We're definitely not seeing anybody else.

So...

HERNANDEZ: Yes, she's bored.

BALDWIN: So, OK. It's OK for her to be bored, I think, because she's -- a lot of kids are feeling that right now.

But for the two of you, you aren't bored. You're frustrated. You want to work. Where are you in terms of savings? Did you get a stimulus check? How long can you live with whatever funds you have?

SZUTER: Well, basically, we took our savings and put it...

HERNANDEZ: It's already been used. SZUTER: Yes, we put our savings into three months' worth of rent.

BALDWIN: Your savings is gone?

SZUTER: And I got a grant.

HERNANDEZ: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

SZUTER: Savings are gone, yes.

We got a -- I got a grant from Music Cares from the Grammy Association $,000, which helped out. One of the bands I'm with started a GoFundMe, which got us a little bit of money, but looking at going into next month, by the end of this month, we will be out.

BALDWIN: What do you do? Are there other jobs?

I mean, anything else in Las Vegas, safely?

SZUTER: Not that we know of.

I mean, I will be honest, we have been looking at, hopefully, the Nevada unemployment will come through, which is supposed to -- we're supposed to be able to file on the 15th. And they're going to give us some backdated pay back to March.

(CROSSTALK)

HERNANDEZ: Well, he didn't give us an exact date. It was mid-May.

SZUTER: Yes. So we don't know when that's going to start. But that's the only thing that would basically save us at this point.

(CROSSTALK)

SZUTER: Yes.

BALDWIN: What is your -- do you have -- just final question.

For people who aren't in your same situation and see these numbers and just see them as numbers and not just human lives on the line here in terms of getting money to survive, really, can you -- how would you describe what this feels like at this moment for you?

SZUTER: Well, it definitely feels surreal, this entire time, thinking that the job that we have done for years, over 10 years, it doesn't exist anymore, and probably will be the last thing to come back.

So we're definitely looking at, what else can we do to pay our bills?

HERNANDEZ: I was really scared at first, but now it's like, I have been living in this weird space for so long. I don't even know how to...

(CROSSTALK)

SZUTER: Yes, it's pretty surreal.

BALDWIN: Mike Szuter and Bianca Hernandez, best of luck. Let's stay in touch with the two of you, and hopefully things start opening safely and you can get those gigs in Vegas.

SZUTER: Thank you.

HERNANDEZ: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Appreciate both of you.

As millions of Americans lose their jobs, a new report warns that tens of thousands more may not die of coronavirus, but from despair.

We will talk to a doctor about that.

And as Italy slowly reopens in one of the world's hardest-hit places, the mayor of Milan is furious. We will show you what happened.

And breaking news: The city of Boston is canceling all summer festivals and concerts through Labor Day.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:29:10]

BALDWIN: I was just talking to that couple in Las Vegas who have already burned through their savings.

They're unemployed. Today's jobless numbers underscore another consequence of living during this pandemic, the mental and emotional toll just associated with financial loss. Families are stressed out, not knowing where their next meal or paycheck are coming from.

Many therapists are working overtime with people struggling through isolation and uncertainty. And now the public health group Well Being Trust says tens of thousands more people could die from what they call deaths of despair due to drug and alcohol abuse or suicide, because the pandemic has exacerbated their current plight.

And one group, Volunteers of America, is helping to address the despair with a program that will first target health care workers.

So, here to talk about this is Dr. Rita Brock. She's the senior vice president with Volunteers for America and the director of the organization Shay Moral Injury Center.

So, Dr. Brock, thank you so much for being on with me.

And what do you say? How can you help folks who are so in need --

[15:30:00]