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New Day

Trump's Niece Claims He Cheated on SAT Test; Trudeau Backs out of Meeting; Storms in the Southeast; Duration of the Coronavirus; Coronavirus Update from Around the Country. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired July 08, 2020 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, if he was, that's great. And if he wasn't, that's great. I was a very good student.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, my. Oh, my.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Yes. Donald Trump loves to brag about what a great student he was. And I think this is such an interesting portrait because Mary Trump, of course, is giving this view from inside the family. Now, granted, there's a lot of bad blood within the Trump family, but she's also, as you point out, giving her view as a clinical psychologist. So for anyone who's ever kind of wanted to play armchair psychologist to the president or has been curious about playing this role, I think this book kind of gives you an avenue in to do that.

And she does pick at the things the president likes to brag about. You know, that he was a really good student, that he had really good grades. You know, she also, of course, digs into the family's wealth and the notion that Donald Trump, you know, was not actually this big, self-made billionaire. You know, he didn't match the aura that he was giving off. And, actually, it was all of this family money and all of this money from his father that was helping to prop him up.

So I think there are a lot of moments in this book that are the kinds of things that really bother the president.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Maybe this will make him release the transcripts of his college career. That would be interesting to see.

You know, back to the fact that she's a clinical psychologist. She labels him a sociopath, which means no conscience, no empathy, and does she -- I mean we don't have much time, Sara, but does she say what caused that?

MURRAY: You know, she basically says that he has no disregard for other people and she ties a lot of this to the way that he was raised and to the way that Fred Trump raised him. You know, the notion that your value is all your monetary value and what you bring to the table. Your value is not, you know, your life as a human being. CAMEROTA: Sara, thank you very much. We will talk more about the book

and its revelations in the program.

Thank you.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau backing out of a big meeting with President Trump today. Details, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:35:54]

CAMEROTA: This afternoon, President Trump will meet with Mexico's president to celebrate the new North American trade agreement, but Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, turned down the invitation.

CNN's Paula Newton joins us to explain.

Paula.

PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, good morning.

Yes, Mexican President Manuel -- Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is already in Washington (INAUDIBLE). So this was supposed to be a reprise of those three amigos summit, Mexico, the United States, and Canada, really marking the beginning of a new trade deal. But given the viruses and the differences in the way these men are handling the pandemic, it's not hard to figure out why Justin Trudeau took a pass.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

NEWTON (voice over): He would have likely been forgiven for skipping the handshake, but in declining an invitation to the White House, Justin Trudeau is sidestepping a minefield of Covid etiquette and politics.

For starters, President Donald Trump and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have refused to wear a mask in public. Trudeau doesn't seem to leave home without one.

And it's no trivial thing, but insight into how each country is fighting the virus. For Trudeau, it would have been like risking a lunch with neighbor you know aren't taking the virus seriously.

SCOTTY GREENWOOD, U.S. CANADA BUSINESS COUNCIL: The opportunity for awkward moments is endless with a potential trilateral meeting with world leaders right now, and particularly these three world leaders, given their different value system and their different approach to the pandemic.

NEWTON: The Covid curves are moving in opposite directions in the U.S. and Canada. The surge in cases in the U.S. means Canadians are on edge and even more cautious. One poll shows the vast majority of Canadians want the U.S./Canada border to remain closed to nonessential traffic. Anyone who does enter Canada has to quarantine for 14 days, and, yes, it's enforced by both health officials and police.

Trudeau might have been exempt after attending the trade meeting at the White House, but not his staff. Health and safety were a concern, and he said as much last week.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: We're also concerned about the health situation and the coronavirus reality that is still hitting all three of our countries. We're going to continue to work with -- with the U.S. on seeing whether that summit makes sense for us and we will let you know as soon as we've made a decision.

NEWTON: The decision was "no." In a statement to CNN, Trudeau's office said he would be in Ottawa this week for scheduled cabinet meetings and the long-planned sitting of parliament.

For weeks, Canada has been logging just a few hundred new positive cases of Covid-19 per day. Just like the U.S., though, some younger Canadians are skirting rules. Twenty people have so far been infected after this night out near Montreal.

But here's the difference. Contact tracing at such low numbers is viable, and in most cases, thorough. Add to that a growing list of cities and towns now making masks mandatory.

Skipping a trip to the White House was arguably an easy call for Trudeau. And like most Canadians, he won't be crossing the border unless absolutely necessary.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: And I really want to point out the issue with the contact tracing. Canada is about to launch an app. It is going to contact trace and actually ping you when you've come into contact with someone who has tested positive. Obviously, they're trying to work out some privacy concerns.

But, John, it's worth bringing up the graph, again about the moving average of positive new cases between the U.S. and Canada. Look, the fact remains, when you've got so many new cases, contact tracing via app or any other manner, experts have told us is literally impossible. Canada, having less than 300 cases yesterday, John, back of the envelope numbers here, that would mean about 3,000 cases throughout the entire United States. It means contact tracing can actually happen and a better chance you contain the virus.

John.

BERMAN: That graph is stunning, Paula. These countries border each other and it's as if they are on different planets. Really stunning to see that difference there between the United States and Canada.

Thanks so much for that report. Appreciate it.

A low pressure system expected to dump heavy rain in the southeast today.

[06:40:02]

CNN meteorologist Chad Myers with the forecast.

Chad.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: John, in places that don't need more rain. We've just been having so much rain down here across the southeast. And another low that moved over Florida and Georgia, into the Carolinas, may move on up toward the northeast for the end of the week.

This weather is brought to you by Tractor Supply Company, providing pet food, animal feed and gardening supplies.

So here's the next storm we're talking about that may kind of run up toward the East Coast. A 50/50 chance of actually becoming something tropical. That is North Carolina. That is the Delmarva. And maybe on up into New England. We'll have to watch that storm system as we work our way into Friday and into Saturday.

Here's what the rain's going to look like across the southeast. Very heavy rain. At times it could be one to two inches per hour. In some spots higher than that could cause flash flooding. The ground around here, trust me, is saturated. Don't have to tell anybody who lives here.

Here's the weather here across parts of the Midwest. Duluth, Minneapolis, all the way down towards Salina, Kansas, there will be some severe weather popping up. This is a future radar, what the radar will look like. Notice, though, the East Coast, too. There will be some storms that pop up in New England and also upstate New York, maybe even as far south as New York City. We'll keep watching that. Certainly was going to be happening over the next couple of days is that things will be hot again. Had a couple of nice days out there, but then all of a sudden, here we go, back into the 90s across the northeast.

Now, think about this, the forecast for Phoenix for Saturday is 117. So I guess we'll deal with 90.

John.

BERMAN: All right, I'm thinking about that. I'll process that.

Chad Myers on the case for us this morning.

Chad, great to have you.

So is coronavirus here to stay? And what are the implications of that for how we live our lives? We'll talk about the future, next.

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[06:46:25]

BERMAN: So this morning the coronavirus pandemic is growing at an alarming rate. The U.S. smashed its all-time record for new cases with more than 60,000 new cases on Tuesday. Eight states setting records for hospitalizations.

So, is this virus here to stay? What are the implications if it doesn't go away?

Joining us now is William Haseltine, he's a former professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health and the author of "A Family Guide to Covid: Questions and Answers for Parents, Grandparents, and Children."

And, Professor, you've been talking about just this thing, how we need to come to grips with the fact that this pandemic is here and really not going away as fast as we'd like. I want to start on the more grim end of this discussion and work our way to the positive, because you do see positives.

There's a study out of Spain which says that 14 percent of people who got sick, who got coronavirus and developed antibodies actually lost those antibodies within a fairly short period of time and presumably that means also losing immunity. So correct me if I'm wrong here, but what are the implications of that?

WILLIAM HASELTINE, FORMER PROFESSOR, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: Well, the implications are something we've known about coronaviruses, this family of viruses, for a long time. There's some viruses that you get and you remember forever and you're protected forever. There's some that you get, like HIV, that get into your body and you never get rid of them.

This is a little bit different. Coronaviruses -- and this is one of them, go into your body, you get it, you generally clear it, and then you forget you ever had it. And it comes back again. We know that from the cold viruses. We've followed them for 60 years. And every year, exactly the same virus comes back.

Now, people know about influenza. That influenza will come back. But it has to disguise itself. Think of it as coming back with a hat, glasses, and a raincoat, so your body doesn't see it anymore. This virus doesn't even bother to disguise itself because when it goes in, it's clever enough to make you forget you ever had it. That's coronaviruses. And we didn't know that was going to be true for the virus that causes Covid, but we are now pretty sure that's happening.

There's a study out of China that shows that not only antibodies, but neutralizing antibodies, the kind that fight the virus, decrease. And now out of Spain, the fact that many people, all antibodies.

And if that weren't bad enough, there's another thing that happens in a fair proportion of people, is that they never make antibodies that you can find, even though they've recovered. So this is a very different kind of virus. And it's one that's here to stay. So we have to find medical means to prevent it and we have to have behavior change to make sure we don't get it.

BERMAN: Now, the positive side of this, though, is you think that there's promise on both of those fronts. Let's talk about therapeutics.

HASELTINE: Well, with therapeutics, when SARS and MERS came along, the biomedical community was fully activated. They found good drugs and antibodies to stop the virus that looked like they were very promising in animal studies. And then the plug got pulled because people thought it wasn't going to be a threat.

Well, all of that has been reactivated. And there are a number of very exciting, new therapeutics coming down the pike, that if you are identified early, they can stop you from being sick. They may even slow the course of the disease. But even better than that, they can provide protection, I think, for those people who are regularly exposed.

[06:50:06]

Or, if you know you've been exposed, somebody has contact traced you and said, you were with somebody who's Covid positive, you would very likely be able to take these drugs and not get infected. These would be a bridge to a safe and effective vaccine.

It's going to take a while. We may have vaccines, but we're not going to know how safe and effective they are for some time. This is going to be a good bridge. This isn't going to happen tomorrow, but could well happen before the end of the year. Not, unfortunately, in time to stop this massive, new wave of infections. But, eventually, we will have these. I'm virtually certain we're going to have these. Antibodies, I'm a little -- I mean vaccines I'm a little less certain, but these, I'm pretty sure, we're going to have.

BERMAN: Obviously, this is something that you have learned over the years in your experience in the battle against AIDS. You also note that our behavior, much like in the battle against HIV and AIDS, it needs to change. And people will come to grips with that.

In some ways, you note, though, that changing the behavior or at least how we act may be harder with Covid than it has been with AIDS. Explain why.

HASELTINE: Well, we know that AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease. And we know that Covid is transmitted by much more casual contact. Now, people getting together is a fundamental need. And how do we handle that? I think the way we learn to do that for HIV/AIDS is know your partner. Know your sexual partner. Today, we have to know our partner even before it becomes intimate. I would say a canoodling partner. You have to know the people you're with. How they behave.

And the other thing that's happening that I think is going to make it possible to be more careful is they're coming down the pike very rapid tests for the virus. Is somebody infected or not? And by a simple saliva test in about five or ten minutes, maybe 20 minutes, you will know if the person you're thinking of becoming friendly with is infected or not. That will be a big change. And they -- they should be cheap, they should be widely available. It's technologies that are being worked out for sensitivity. But I think that is going to change our behavior. I think the -- the question is know your partner. You know, I saw a program the other day where a guy was saying, I've

been extremely careful. I stayed at home. The only people I went to see -- he was in the hospital, by the way -- are my neighbors across the street. Well, that was too much. If he had had tests available, he would have known whether his neighbors were infected or not.

BERMAN: You've got to --

HASELTINE: And so that is a change that is coming and it's very positive.

BERMAN: Until you know for sure, you have to assume that anyone and everyone you come in contact with has it. And you have to behave accordingly.

William Haseltine, great to have you on this morning. Thanks so much for this.

HASELTINE: You're welcome.

BERMAN: So in Arizona there are only 167 ICU beds left in an entire state and one doctor tells CNN he's already making tough choices about who will receive treatment and who will not. We have a live report, next.

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[06:56:55]

CAMEROTA: This morning, 35 states are seeing increases in new coronavirus cases. States like Florida and Arizona are facing critical ICU bed shortages.

CNN has reporters all across the country covering these angles for you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Evan McMorris-Santoro in Tucson, Arizona.

The latest daily numbers in Arizona show a situation that's only getting worse. The highest daily recorded number of deaths and the highest number of ICU beds in use, 117 dead and only 167 ICU beds left in the entire state. Here in Pima County, home of Tucson, that number has gotten as low as six, as public health officials urge people to wear masks and obey social distancing rules as this state tries to get a handle on a growing pandemic.

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Brynn Gingras in Hoboken, New Jersey, where a group of movie theaters is now suing the governor of this state for his decision to not allow them to reopen. In the suit, the group says, it has a right to reopen and takes issue with the fact that fitness centers and malls and places of worship are now open at a limited capacity. They wonder what makes them different. Now, on Monday, the state says it don't have any plans to reopen

anything more anytime soon considering the Covid-19 transmission rate in this state is at a level it hasn't' seen in a couple of months. Governor Murphy had no comment on this suit.

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Randi Kaye in Palm Beach County, Florida.

Just a few hours north of here, in Jacksonville, Florida, the mayor there, Lenny Kearny, is now self-quarantining with his family. This after learning that he came into contact with someone who has now tested positive for Covid-19. The mayor so far has tested negative.

Jacksonville certainly in the news because the Republican National Convention will be taking place in that city later this summer. We're just about six weeks away from that. The city has also mandated masks and we will continue to watch the mayor's progress.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Our thanks to all of our reporters.

And NEW DAY continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As cases climb, nearly half of states now slowing rolling back reopening.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If people will follow the face mask rule, we will not have to shut down. If they don't follow the face mask rule, it may be necessary to shut things back down.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE: There's so many things that are very dangerous and bad about this virus. Don't get yourself into false complacency.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, for most people, they're going to be fine. But some people are going to be really sick and some people are going to die.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can get out of this. We have the tools to do it. And we have to be serious.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Even the states that are doing well right now should be on guard because they could be next.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

BERMAN: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY.

And, overnight, stunning new numbers from the coronavirus pandemic. More than 60,000 new cases in a single day. That's a record. That's the highest number we've seen. Triple -- triple the number from just a few weeks ago. And it is putting pressure on the entire system.

In Florida, at least 56 intensive care units are now at full capacity.

[07:00:03]

Zero beds available. In Arizona, fewer than 200 ICU beds left in the entire state.

END