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Coronavirus Cases Continues to Rise in Parts of U.S. as Cases Plateau in Others; Progressive Activist Cori Bush Interviewed after Winning Missouri Democratic Primary in Upset; Pandemic Creates Election Safety & Security Challenges; 100 Dead, Hundreds Missing After Massive Explosion in Beirut. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired August 05, 2020 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: You said I've known you since 1999, when I was six and you were 12. I appreciate you being with us this morning. The book is "It Was All A Lie, How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump." Appreciate it, Stuart.

NEW DAY continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The U.S. is the fourth worst performing country in the world. We have four percent of the population yet we account for 25 percent of the world's deaths.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have done an incredible job in testing. Nobody in the world has done the job.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It saddens me that we are still headed in the wrong direction.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The White House now weighing whether to take executive action as stimulus aid negotiations stall in Congress.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we don't see some change here, the virus will cause some businesses to close.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We all have agreed that we need to have an agreement, but we're not going to do it at the expense of America's working families.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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

BERMAN: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. this is NEW DAY.

You are more likely to die from coronavirus in the United States than almost than any other country in the world. That claim comes from the former coordinator of the Ebola crisis response in the United States -- 1,400 new deaths in the country reported in the last 24 hours. That marks the tenth day in the last two weeks with more than 1,000 fatalities. The nationwide death toll is now approaching 157,000. The country is on track to surpass 5 million confirmed cases this weekend.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: But President Trump thinks the rise in case has not led to the significant rise in deaths, and he thinks the U.S. is doing great on testing. Both of those claims are false. And for the first time since April President Trump attended a briefing with his Coronavirus Task Force. Why has he not gone to one in months?

As for the economy, President Trump has not been able to make a deal with Congress, so now he's floating the idea of using an executive order to extend unemployment benefits to millions of Americans. Congress and the administration have struggled to find common ground on a massive economic relief package.

Joining us now is CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, great to see you again. The way that Ron Klain has phrased it, basically that you're more likely as an American to die from COVID than you are in almost any other country, it's like sometimes we report -- we report the death rate every day. We report the cases spiking in different places every day, but sometimes somebody just frames it in a way that gives you a new outlook on it. And that one was one of those this morning from me in the idea that it is now more dangerous to be an American because of COVID than to be living somewhere else. That's just -- I don't know, it put it in stark relief somehow.

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, there's no question. I think the way to look at this, if you just dial the aperture back a little bit more, is that this disease and this virus does -- we're all humans living on this planet, so we're potentially susceptible to this. We know that there are some people who are elderly, have preexisting conditions, are more susceptible. But if you just accept that there is a certain susceptibility to this virus, why would the United States be a riskier to live than other places?

It's not that the virus is different here. It's just that there's a lot more people with the virus. I think that fundamentally I guess people probably understand that, but you're much more likely to come into contact with somebody with the virus. You're much more likely to get infected, and as a result of that, much more likely to get sick or die from this.

So it really comes back down to the original problem here, which is that we just have a lot more infections in this country. You look at the right side of the screen, you see that we have 20 to 25 percent of the world's infections. We have 20 to 25 percent of the world's deaths also. And as you look at the numbers that you showed earlier, you say you have around 1,400 people who died over the last 24 hours. The reality is that we expected that because deaths are a lagging indicator behind the significant uptick in cases that we've had in the few weeks previously. If the cases continue to go down, hopefully hospitalizations and deaths will continue to go down as well. But what we have seen so far is this sort of rollercoaster ride. BERMAN: And I will note that cases are going down in some places

including Florida, Texas, marginally, but they're going up in other cases. In Mississippi the cases are going up, the hospitalizations are going up. In Louisiana the cases are going up, the hospitalizations are going up. Which is why it's striking, Sanjay, to continue to hear the president, as he did a few seconds ago, claim that the virus is under control. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You look at a map, and white means good. Most of the -- most of the map is in the white color. The red color is the corona or potential, and it's a very relatively small portion. But it's coming down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:05:05]

BERMAN: Your response?

GUPTA: These statistics are sort of an interesting thing. You get up to the high level in some of these states, and then if they plateau a little bit or they go up a little bit more incrementally after that, they may look better. I think that it's not necessarily the -- it doesn't make a lot of sense to people when they look at that, they say, well, these states are fine now, they're in green. Well, in part that's because they already got to such a high level. they're red lining up there and they're starting to plateau. That doesn't necessarily make them fine in the sense that they're now fine. It's just that they're not as bad as they once were a couple weeks ago.

So I think the right side of the screen probably tells a story of this country, reminding people that we are all in this together. And I don't think there's a state that you can look at on the map and say that that state is not vulnerable in some way right now. We need to bring the virus counts down in this country. Everything else good will follow from that. And we start looking at death rates per 100,000, death rates per population of the country, death rates within a certain community, this is a contagious virus. We have got to bring the numbers down overall in the country, otherwise we're just going to keep ebbing and flowing. We're going to keep redlining in various places, finally wake up in the places, make some changes, get complacent again. And that's not a strategy anymore.

CAMEROTA: Sanjay, tell us about the promising, it appears, news out of Novavax. Yet another possible vaccine on the horizon.

GUPTA: Yes, there's a lot of vaccine trials going on. And this is a bright spot. If you look around the world, you have close to 150 vaccine trials now. But three within the United States we have been keeping a close eye on, Novavax, as you mentioned, Moderna. So the Novavax one there you see, it's 106 participants. These are early results. They're comparing this against the placebo. What they're looking for are the specific neutralizing antibodies. These are the types of antibodies that will bind to the virus and hopefully neutralize it, preventing it from infecting human cells.

We don't know still how effective this is, and this sort of data hasn't even been peer reviewed yet. We don't know, at least neutralizing antibodies, are they going to prevent infection very robustly? How long is that protection going to last? We still have to answer those questions.

But Alisyn, all along, we have been talking about the vaccine, and I haven't seen any data yet that makes me say, OK, you know what, this got derailed. We went in the wrong direction with this. I think it's still forward moving data that we have seen. But it's early data, and I think over the next couple of months, few months, we'll see data that actually says, yes, look, this is preventing infection in large groups of people of different ages of different preexisting medical conditions.

Another thing to keep an eye on, because we talk about vaccines, is antibody therapy, using the antibodies from people who have recovered, giving it to people who are newly infected, who are sick from the infection, and seeing what happens. That's looking very promising as well. And you can imagine that, look, if you can get an antibody therapy that lasts a few months, you say we're going into the coronavirus season right now where things are going to get more -- the spread is going to increase, if I get an antibody therapy, could this protect me for the next several months? Keep an eye on that. That's starting to look promising.

GUPTA: I don't want to end in the down note here, but I noted what happened in New Jersey over the last several days where Governor Phil Murphy is back tracking on reopening in some cases, and this morning I woke up, I read the news from Massachusetts every morning because that's where I'm from, the positively rate there has crept up from a very low two percent to a still low but higher 2.9 percent, and people in Massachusetts and the governor there who is watching this very closely, there's concern.

GUPTA: There is concern. And it's a reminder, John, this is a very contagious virus. I know we have been saying this for six months now. And even in places that had things under control, you look at Israel. Israel was down to dozens of cases a day only in the entire country, and then they reopened the schools and then they had these significant super spreading events and they had to shut things down again.

There's no question that we're going to see this sort of ups and downs, even in places that say, look, we're doing everything right. What happened? How did we have a significant increase in cases? I think the key is, what do you do at that point? Do you -- can you really quickly respond, can you test very quickly, can you contact trace and bring things down again? So instead of seeing the huge up and down fluctuations, you're going to see some of this. I think the smaller ebbs and flows are inevitable. We have a contagious virus. Until we have significant widespread immunity, we're going to have that. It's just a question of how big are those spikes and then those ebbs going to be?

CAMEROTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you very much for all of the information, as always.

[08:10:01]

And you can join Sanjay as he joins Anderson Cooper for this new CNN global town hall. You can watch "Coronavirus, Facts and Fears," that's tomorrow night, 8:00 p.m. eastern.

BERMAN: Now to the stunning political upset out of Missouri overnight. Cori Bush, a progressive activist and veteran of the racial justice protest movement, defeated 10 term incumbent Congressman William Lacy Clay in the Democratic primary for Missouri's first congressional district. Clay's father held the seat before him, so Bush just toppled a 52-year political dynasty.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CORI BUSH, (D) MISSOURI CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: It is historic that this year of all years we're sending a black, working class, single mother --

(APPLAUSE)

BUSH: Who's been fighting for black lives from Ferguson all the way to the halls of Congress.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: And Cori Bush joins me now. First of all, congratulations. I'm sure you didn't sleep very much last night. Just so people know a little bit more about you, you're a nurse, single parent. I think became much more politically active in Ferguson in the protests there after the death of Michael Brown. So what does it say to you and what does it say for the future of the Democratic Party that you were able to topple this political dynasty in Missouri?

CORI BUSH, (D) MISSOURI CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: It says that it's time for regular, everyday people to have a voice. People are looking for a fighter right now, a champion. And that's something that I have exhibited for years. And the community is ready for this. St. Louis said it's time.

BERMAN: How much of a warning should this be to the Democratic establishment around the country?

BUSH: Oh, my gosh, you know, with my brother Jamaal Bowman winning recently out of New York, it's just saying, look, do some things differently, because the old ways of doing things, let's retire that and let's start making sure that our -- that these districts are taken care of and that the people are being -- that the goals are being met of regular everyday people, because we're the ones that have to walk through and live this out. So now they're saying that this is not -- it's not impossible anymore. These machines, we have a machine, and it's called the people. BERMAN: You called for change. One of the things you want to change

is you are active in the defund the police movement. Now, this is an area where your party's presidential nominee, Joe Biden, disagrees with you. So how does his position affect how hard you're willing to work for his election?

BUSH: We have to have -- we can't continue with Donald Trump. We cannot live under a Trump administration. So we can disagree on an issue, but that won't stop me from fighting for -- to have a Democrat in that seat.

BERMAN: How hard will you work, assuming you win in November, and this is a Democratic seat, fairly safe Democratic seat, so the likelihood is you will, how hard will you work starting next January as part of the national movement to defund the police?

BUSH: So the same energy that I have put in on the streets of Ferguson, for more than 400 days while we were out there, the same energy that I had after -- and I got back up and I started fighting for people who are victims of crime, and the same energy I have had fighting on the streets for justice for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, that same energy is what I will have to make sure that defund is, first, understood, and that bring that home to our communities, because our children's lives depend on that. The safety of the community depends on that.

BERMAN: One other thing I did not mention about your biography, you're also a COVID-19 survivor. You had it bad. What do people need to know about this?

BUSH: Yes. Yes. Well, so, one thing is, I became sick very early on. It was in the middle to late March. And I just -- so my test came back negative, but I had all of the symptoms of it. And I was actually off my feet for two months. I was very sick, could barely breathe. Every moment it was traumatizing. Every moment I thought that this could be my last one. I was making myself inhale and exhale every second of every hour of the day. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't eat. So weak I couldn't pick up a cell phone.

People need to know this thing is real, that it doesn't care how well you think you take care of yourself. If it hits you it hits you. And it's going to hit you like a train, and then it will go away a little, then it will come right back. We were ill-prepared for COVID-19 when it hit, when this hit the St. Louis area. North St. Louis and north St. Louis County, we didn't have what we needed in predominantly black areas. We were lacking. We didn't have those resources.

[08:15:00]

I want to make sure that we change that, but the way we change that is we have to have every -- we have to have access. Everyone has to have access to health care. That's what I have been pushing Medicare for all.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Given what you went through, when you hear the president as he did yesterday say that the death toll from coronavirus is what it is, how does that make you feel as a survivor?

BUSH: As a survivor and as a registered nurse myself who works in community health, that is absolutely reprehensible. A hundred and fifty thousand people, you know, we're talking about lives. People that could have been that -- as of January, those people were here and they were expected to be here by December.

You know, our president has to do better. But that's OK, we'll do better and we'll vote him out in November.

BERMAN: Cori Bush, thank you for being with us. Congratulations on the biggest political upset of the night to be sure.

BUSH: Thank you.

BERMAN: Thanks for being with us.

BUSH: Thank you.

BERMAN: President Trump calls the blast that killed 100 people in Beirut a terrible attack. He called it an attack. But at least three Defense Department officials don't know what he's talking about.

Former defense secretary and Republican senator, Chuck Hagel, joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: The coronavirus pandemic will make it more challenging for election officials to carry out in-person voting this November. So, they are expanding mail-in ballot capacity but President Trump is fighting that by launching a lawsuit last night against the state of Nevada.

[08:20:01]

Election Day is now just 90 days away.

Let's bring in Chuck Hagel, former secretary of defense under President Obama. He's also a former Republican senator from Nebraska.

Senator, thanks so much for being here.

We have -- we do want to talk to you about voting which we know is so important to you, but can we start with the breaking news from last night about what happened, that huge explosion in Beirut.

President Trump at a press briefing made his -- gave his assessment which is quite different than what Pentagon officials are saying. So let me play for you what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This was not a -- some kind of a manufacturing explosion type of event. This was a -- seems to be according to them they would know better than I would, but they seem to think it was an attack. It was a bomb of some kind.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: We're not sure who the "they" is in that statement. But Lebanese officials are saying something different. Pentagon officials.

So what -- just explain to us why the president would be on a different page than the rest of the folks talking?

CHUCK HAGEL, FORMER U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: Well, thank you for having me on this morning.

First of all, I have not spoken with anyone at the Pentagon. So I don't have all of the facts other than what I have read and what I know and what I hear.

But that said, the president's statements were reckless, were irresponsible, first because that part of the world, Lebanon in particular, is very volatile, very dangerous, so much going on over there right now.

The country is bankrupt. It really has no functioning government. Hezbollah is in the south. It's got problems everywhere.

And to make a statement like that with no facts is just irresponsible. Where he got that, I don't know. He said my generals told me.

Well, according to reports, sources out of the Pentagon, we didn't tell him that. So I don't know where he got it, but it's consistent with what the president does all the time. He kind of makes these things up.

But in this case, it's very dangerous and irresponsible.

CAMEROTA: OK. Let's move on to what's happening here in the United States in terms of 90 days away from the November election.

Last night, President Trump and the RNC launched a lawsuit against Nevada. Nevada was trying to expand its mail-in voting capacity. And President Trump doesn't want them to.

I mean, he basically explicitly said in a tweet that it's primarily because he thinks it would be unfair to him and they have a Democratic governor.

What do you see happening?

HAGEL: Well, I think it's a bigger story than just that and that's just one chapter of it. A couple of weeks as you may know, more than two dozen senior former national security and intelligence officials, including a number of former cabinet members in both Republican and Democratic administrations sent letters to each of the United States senators, asking them to support the House bill which adds $3.6 trillion to help all our election officials across this country, local/state officials, that's where elections are held and they're the once responsible for elections because of what's going on. And to further degrade and confuse mail-in voting, again, it's just

irresponsible. Five states, that's the only way they vote, mail-in. We've been having mail votes, absentee votes since after the civil war. There's never been any big issue on fraud.

So I don't know what he's doing other than I think it's a general campaign to suppress the vote, confuse the vote. He's saying that it's going to be most fraudulent election ever. We need to assure the people of this country that this election is going to be safe, secure, reliable.

The essence of democracy are our elections, and if people can't have confidence in those elections and those results, we're no better than Venezuela or Russia or China or any other authoritarian government.

CAMEROTA: And as you have pointed out, Secretary Hagel, you cast your first vote sitting atop an armored carrier in Vietnam in 1968 and that worked. Why can't it work in Nevada?

HAGEL: Well, the president votes that way as well and I find it astounding why they would single out one state, Nevada, when like I said, you've got five states. That's the only way they vote, by mail. Every state has some form of mail-in voting, especially now with the pandemic, with people at risk -- health risk. We saw the problems in the primaries with a lot of states. We've got to do better come November and prepare.

[08:25:01]

We've got less than 90 days to go before the election. So, we've got a lot of work to do and they're going to need -- these people are going to need resources because they need to prepare with people, with ballots, with postage, with technology.

Then you add to that the subtle choking of the post department, Post Office Department in cutting back their services and funding I think it's very clear to me, it's intentional. So it will have an impact on getting those mail-in votes in on time and getting them in by the postmarked deadline for their votes to count.

CAMEROTA: I mean, on that point, very quickly -- you think that the man who president Trump has installed who is a big, you know, donor to Republicans and President Trump, you think that he's intentionally slow rolling the mailing -- the postal process?

HAGEL: I do. I have no other way to look at it because there's nothing more important right now than our Post Office for a lot of reasons, as far as getting the votes in, getting them counted, getting them in on time, and then why do you, all of a sudden, a few months before the election say, well, no, we're going to defund some of the post office and pull back until they reform.

Well, reform is good. Reform should be throughout the government all the time. There's no question about that.

But why are you doing it now when the Post Office is vital to the election process. One of the most vital avenues to getting votes in and voting -- and votes counted.

CAMEROTA: Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, we really appreciate your perspective on all of this this morning. Thank you so much for being on NEW DAY.

HAGEL: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: It's not just parents with back to school questions of course. Teachers have a lot of concerns. So, we're going to speak to one who says she has to go back to work in the building very soon. It's making her question her life choices, all of that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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