Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Dr. Birx Warns 9 U.S. Cities about Rising Positivity Rates; White House & Congress Push for Stimulus Deal by Tomorrow; Dr. Fauci Warns COVID-19 May Never Be Eradicated; Twitter & Facebook Remove Trump Video Over Virus Misinformation. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired August 06, 2020 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Absolutely. No question in my mind, it will go away. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

[05:59:33]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Daily death counts still rising.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Numbers don't lie. The United States has suffered as much or worse than anyone.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Members of Congress don't sound like they'll be voting on a coronavirus relief bill anytime soon.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): The speaker and the Democratic leader continue to insist that federal unemployment assistance should pay people more not to work.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): We cannot agree to an inadequate bill and then go home while the virus continues to spread.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Thursday, August 6, 6 a.m. here in New York.

And this morning, several major U.S. cities experiencing warning signs in the fight against coronavirus. The White House task force coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, highlighting nine cities and California's Central Valley for dangerous spikes in positivity rates. The list includes Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, and Washington, D.C.

Dr. Birx says some states in the Sun Belt appear to be doing better, although Texas did just add another 11,000 cases in the past 24 hours. And Florida now surpassing a half a million cases. The death toll across the country rising by nearly 1,400 yesterday. In

total, almost 160,000 Americans have been killed.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: In a new interview, Dr. Anthony Fauci says coronavirus may continue to smolder in that we may never fully eradicate it. We will speak live with Dr. Fauci in our next hour.

Now, his assessment directly contradicts the president, who keeps repeating a silly claim that the virus will just go away, because he says, things go away.

Breaking overnight, a sign of just how uncoupled from reality the president's words are. For the first time, Facebook took down a post from the president's page because it was spreading misinformation on the virus. This has to do with claims of immunity that he made, though immunity just doesn't exist. Twitter took down a similar post, as well. More on this extraordinary social media rebuke shortly.

First, CNN's Stephanie Elam live in Los Angeles.

And you want to talk about extraordinary there, Stephanie. There's a threat from the mayor in Los Angeles that, if you disobey pandemic rules, you're going to get your power cut off.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And your water. It's very hard to have a party if you're doing that, John.

And this is very much the situation we are in right now. You take a look at what Dr. Anthony Fauci said, he said that the virus going to smolder across America unless Americans have a unified response. Dr. Deborah Birx saying that there are new hot spots popping up that need to be attended to.

All this as we're seeing nearly 1,400 Americans dying from the virus. And the president saying, everything's under control.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELAM (voice-over): President Trump once again insisting the coronavirus will just disappear.

TRUMP: No question in my mind, it will go away. Please, go ahead. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

ELAM: But the pandemic is still devastating the country, and coronavirus-related deaths are increasing in at least 15 states.

FAUCI: When you look at the number of infections and the number of deaths, it really is -- is quite, quite concerning.

ELAM: Here in Los Angeles, county health officials report adults ages 18 to 49 make up nearly 60 percent of new coronavirus cases.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is also the age group that's most likely to be attending the large parties that we keep seeing.

ELAM: Most gatherings are now banned. And Mayor Eric Garcetti says he's ready to take action against people throwing large parties.

MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI (D), LOS ANGELES: I am authorizing the city to shut off Los Angeles Department of Water and Power service in the egregious cases.

ELAM: In New York, the city will be setting up checkpoints to identify people traveling from hot spots.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK CITY: They'll be reminded that failure to quarantine is a violation of state law. And it comes with serious penalties.

ELAM: Meanwhile, the president is continuing his push to send children back to the classroom.

TRUMP: I'd like to see the schools open. I think many of the schools, most of the schools will be open.

ELAM: Chicago public schools announced the nation's third largest school district will begin their academic year online.

MAYOR LORI LIGHTFOOT (D), CHICAGO: The fact of the matter is, we are seeing an increase in cases. Combined with the trends that we're seeing, the decision to start remotely makes sense for a district of CPS's size and diversity.

ELAM: Over 100 students in one Mississippi school district are in quarantine, after six students and one staff member tested positive.

GOV. TATE REEVES (R-MS): Those who want to attack everyone look at that as a negative. I actually look at it as a positive. The system is working, whereby we've identified positive cases, we've contact traced those back, and we're trying to protect those kids.

ELAM: But some health officials say opening schools will be dangerous.

DR. AILEEN MARTY, PROFESSOR OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE, FIU: Children have high viral loads. They can transmit the virus to other people. There are many adults that can be infected by these children. That's the point.

ELAM: Dr. Anthony Fauci sending this warning to anyone who chooses to ignore guidelines like social distancing, washing hands, and wearing masks.

FAUCI: As long as you have any member of society, any demographic group, who's not seriously trying to get to the end game of suppressing this, it will continue to smolder and smolder and smolder.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[06:05:11]

ELAM: And to Dr. Fauci's point, a group of infectious disease experts is calling on the federal government, calling on the White House to issue a mask mandate for the entire United States. They're also asking for more testing capabilities to bolster contact tracing.

Just going to show that more people here in this field feel like more needs to be done to get the virus under control here -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Stephanie, thank you very much for all of that reporting.

Now, this morning, still, no agreement on another round of economic relief for millions of Americans. Congress and the Trump administration say if a deal is not done by the end of tomorrow, hope for a new stimulus package will fade.

CNN's Joe Johns has the latest from the White House. What does that mean, Joe? They'll give up if it's not done by tomorrow?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: It doesn't mean that they'll give up, but it certainly means that the negotiations between Democrats up on Capitol Hill and the White House are at a standstill.

The White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, essentially signaling that he is losing optimism on these talks, that the two sides are trillions of dollars apart, but if they don't reach agreement by some time tomorrow, he says, the president could go it on his own with executive action. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK MEADOWS, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: By Friday, if we haven't made significant progress and we're just too far apart, the president's prepared to take executive action on those two items that you're talking about: making sure that eviction protection is done. He will do that with -- through executive action. Making sure that those enhanced unemployment payments that stopped because Democrats refused to say "yes" just a few days ago.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: OK. So where does the president get power to do this? He has said over the last few days and weeks that a recent decision by the supreme court gave him extended power to put into place executive actions. And this, of course, relates to issues that have essentially expired over the last couple of weeks or so.

We've talked a lot about unemployment insurance, but there's also that issue of extending the federal eviction moratorium. That's also very important to both sides. It affects more than 12 million Americans, renters who are living in federally subsidized apartments. Also, it affects people who have federally subsidized mortgages. So it's very important to both sides.

Democrats have been pushing for more than just extending in these two areas. They want more assistance for people in need at this time. So it's going to be very important to see what happens over the next 24 to 48 hours. The president today heads out to Cleveland -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: And absolutely, Joe. I mean, millions of people are on the precipice, as you point out, and some have already gone over the cliff there. So we'll see what happens today. Thank you very much.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says it is unlikely the world will ever be without coronavirus, even with a vaccine. What does that mean and how do we prepare for that?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:12:41]

FAUCI: If you get a vaccine that has a moderate to high degree of efficacy, and you combine with that prudent public health measures, we could put this behind us. I don't think we're going to eradicate this from the planet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right. So that was Dr. Anthony Fauci, saying it is unlikely the coronavirus will ever fully disappear, even with a vaccine and proper safety measures. His comments follow President Trump again claiming the virus will just, quote, "go away."

Let's bring in Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

Dr. Hotez, great to see you. I don't know if President Trump has a great track record on predicting when the virus is going to go away. He thought it was going to magically go away in April. So I don't think we need to put much stock in him thinking that it's going to go away.

But the fact that Dr. Fauci says, it will be with us virtually forever, I mean, how does that change how we approach it now?

DR. PETER HOTEZ, DEAN, NATIONAL SCHOOL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Yes, I mean, Tony's absolutely right. Dr. Fauci absolutely right. This is -- Remember, this -- Alisyn, this is our third major coronavirus epidemic, pandemic of the 21st Century. We had SARS 1 in 2003, then MERS in 2012, now COVID-19.

We're going to also, in addition to COVID-19 being around for a long time, we're also going to have other coronavirus infections. So one of the things in our lab we're doing is we're working to develop a universal coronavirus vaccine, so we don't have to keep chasing down brand-new coronaviruses as they emerge.

So we have a COVID-19 vaccine that we're accelerating for India and elsewhere, but also, now, we're looking at this universal coronavirus vaccine, because this is a new normal for us, and we have to confront it. And the president is -- just doesn't seem prepared for that.

BERMAN: So Dr. Hotez, Deborah Birx issued this warning overnight to a group of cities. I don't know if we still have the map for that. But it includes the whole Central Valley of California, but then cities like Detroit; Washington, D.C.; Boston; Kansas City, Omaha. You can see, it's all over the country here. New areas of concern.

What do you think she sees, and how close or what is to keep those cities from becoming the next Miami or Houston?

HOTEZ: You're absolutely right, John. She sees what I see, which is that over the last seven days, the United States still leads the world in the number of new coronavirus cases. And the United States still leads the world in coronavirus deaths. And the week before that, we led, and the week before that, and so on and so forth.

[06:15:12]

So this is still -- Tony used the word "smoldering." I would -- you know, I understand what he means, but it's really still a raging forest fire, especially right now in the southeast, in part of the United States. And we're trying to open up schools in the middle of a raging forest fire in many parts of the country, and we can't do that.

So we're going to have to come to terms with developing containment strategies for all the states. Many states are already there; we don't have to do much. But others have a lot of work to do. And until we do this, we're just -- people use different metaphors. Some use the word whack-a-mole. We're just knocking one down, and it pops up elsewhere. But it's beyond that now. This is a raging forest fire, and we need to contain it.

CAMEROTA: And Dr. Hotez, we do keep getting mixed messages about what's happening in the Sun Belt and in Texas where you are. Is -- are things getting marginally better there?

HOTEZ: Things are stuck, at least in Houston, for instance. So people say, Hey, we've plateaued. Yes, we've plateaued at a hundred miles an hour. We -- we have 1,700 new cases a day. Those are confirmed cases. And what that really means is 5,000 to 6,000 new cases a day.

Now, the hospitalizations seem to be going down or at least plateauing now. So that's potentially good news. But you still can't open schools in the Houston Independent School District when you have 1,700 confirmed new cases a day.

So it's -- things are plateauing in the Sun Belt, but at a very high level.

And the big question that we're all asking is whether now, you know, enforcing masks and the social distancing, closing the bars, whether that's still going to be enough, because you still can't open schools when you have that high level of transmission, or whether you still have to go to shut-down in many of our southern states.

And this idea of a containment strategy. Some states, fine, it's business as usual. Others, we may have to go to shut-down for a few weeks.

And the point is, if we could bring our whole nation down to that same reset point, then we can open up schools safely. Teachers can feel safe going back to work. And staff and bus drivers and even opening up colleges, maybe even having sporting events. But we can't persuade the White House to bite the bullet and really do this for the whole nation and lead a federal strategy. And it's very frustrating.

BERMAN: I don't think you can convince any governor at this point to shut down again. It just doesn't seem like any governor is even considering that at this point. And on the issue of smoldering, I actually don't think you and Dr. Fauci are far apart here. Because I think --

HOTEZ: No, no. We agree. You guys, you know, it's just a bit of a nuance in the word. We -- Tony and I totally agree.

BERMAN: Smoldergate. Let's call it smoldergate. Let's play the sound right here from Dr. Fauci, because I want you to expand on this point a little bit.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAUCI: As long as you have any member of society, any demographic group who's not seriously trying to get to the end game of suppressing this, it will continue to smolder and smolder and smolder.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: See, he says smolder in a very threatening way.

HOTEZ: Yes.

BERMAN: You're actually saying it's not threatening enough. But what I think Dr. Fauci is saying something he has said consistently, which is, we have never in this country suppressed the virus enough. We didn't do it in May and June, which is why we saw this huge resurgence. And I think he's saying, we better make damned well sure we do it now, which is when you're saying. That it's not just enough to stall at 100 miles an hour.

HOTEZ: Absolutely. We're -- we're totally in alignment. And we've got to do this.

And the problem is, you can't just -- we can't do it as we've been doing it. It's been a failed strategy so far.

The strategy so far says, put the states in the lead. Let the states figure it out and the federal government will provide the backup FEMA support, the PPE, the manufacturing. It doesn't work.

We need the federal government out in front. We need the full horsepower of the Centers for Disease Control put directives to the states what to do to bring us all to containment mode. And until we do that, the deaths will continue to mount. We'll be at 160,000 deaths in a few days. We'll be at 170,000 deaths the week after that.

The Institute for Health Metrics says we'll be at 230,000 deaths by the end of October, and we'll be at 300,000 deaths by the end of 2020. We'll double the number of deaths. And we've got to stop it. Because it's gone beyond even just a public

health problem. People feel scared. And they should feel scared. Teachers are worried. Teachers don't want to go to work under those kinds of circumstances. And we should not make them go to work.

Remember, in terms of deaths, right, we heard from meadows, the president's chief of staff saying, it's only people under 75, but 20 percent of the death occur from people under the age of 65. All of these schoolteachers, 45, 50 years old, their health is at risk. And if they try to go back to work in communities where there's lots of transmission, some will get sick, and some will be hospitalized and that will be incredibly destabilizing and the the whole thing will fall apart.

And there seems to be this tone deafness to the White House about all of this. And not understanding that it's in their hands to fix this, and only they can fix it. And if they continue to do as they're doing, the -- whether we smolder or we have a raging forest fire, this thing is still going to continue.

BERMAN: Dr. Peter Hotez, thank you very much for being with us this morning. Appreciate it, as always.

HOTEZ: Thank you.

BERMAN: We should note Dr. Anthony Fauci will join us live on NEW DAY coming up in about half an hour.

CAMEROTA: We are looking forward to that.

Meanwhile, Facebook and Twitter taking action to remove a video of the president talking about children and coronavirus. What was it that was so misleading and so offensive that they finally took this action? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:25:22]

BERMAN: So breaking overnight, for the first time ever, Facebook took down a post from President Trump because of something he said about coronavirus. Twitter did roughly the same thing with the Trump campaign. This had to do with claims the president made at a live interview he did on FOX TV.

CNN's Daniel Dale is here with the details.

Daniel, first of all, great to have you on NEW DAY. Thanks so much for getting up. What did the president say exactly, and how did Facebook and then Twitter respond?

DANIEL DALE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the president went on FOX News, "FOX & Friends" yesterday morning, and declared that children are, quote, "almost immune" from the coronavirus. And as we've reported and others have reported, that's just not true. Children are less likely than adults to get seriously ill or die, and

early research suggests they may be less likely to get it in the first place, but they are not at all immune. They do get it. They do transmit it. Some of them do get seriously ill, and some of them do die.

So the president's campaign account posted this clip on Twitter. The president's own page posted this on Facebook. And these comments violate both social companies' policies about harmful COVID-19 misinformation, so they removed it. Or they asked the Trump campaign to remove it and threatened them with a ban on tweeting if they didn't. And they -- they quickly put it down.

BERMAN: So interesting. Because Facebook is so squeamish about taking on the president directly over anything he says. It tells you something that they removed this post.

Daniel, the White House response to this overnight?

DALE: So we had a couple of responses, both from the White House and a response from the Trump campaign. So listen to what White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said about the situation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MEADOWS: I don't think he's giving a false sense of security at all. If you look at the risk of children going to school, there's a six times greater likelihood of -- of children dying from the influenza then there is from this disease.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DALE: We also had a response from the Trump campaign. We had a spokesperson saying, "The president was stating a fact that children are less susceptible to the coronavirus. Another day, another display of Silicon Valley's flagrant bias against this president, where the rules are only enforced in one direction. Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth."

Another thing here is that this is not what the president said. If he had just said, Children are statistically less susceptible to serious illness or to getting it, this post would not have been removed or threatened with removal. The president said something else, that children are almost immune. And again, that is simply factually incorrect.

BERMAN: There's a big difference, obviously.

Overnight, something else that came to light because of the dogged reporting of you and others at CNN, backlash over an ad from the Trump campaign using or manipulating pictures of Joe Biden. What went on here?

DALE: Yes, so I have to credit our colleague, Andrew Kaczynski, who spotted one of these. The new Trump ad attempts to portray Joe Biden as stuck in his

Delaware basement. He's hiding; he's alone. And to make this point, it use three misleading images, one of which is egregiously altered with, probably, Photoshop.

So that first Image shows Joe Biden speaking at a campaign town hall in Iowa, in a nature preserve, outdoors in September 2019. And what the ad does is remove the microphone from Biden's hand and remove the trees from the background, replacing it with a wall of some sort, to make Biden seem like he's inside alone, not talking to anyone.

Now, there's a second image they used to make this point that he's hiding alone. It shows Biden sitting on a floor in what looks like a basement. There's like an empty recliner behind him.

That photo was taken at a holiday bowl watch party, a house party in Iowa, as well, in December of 2019. There were a bunch of people in the room, including a bunch of reporters, one of which was from CNN.

And in a third misleading use of -- of an image in that ad, they also show Biden sort of looking down, hands clasped, looking defeated. Well, he was actually praying at an African-American church in Delaware after the death of George Floyd. So this wasn't him, you know, looking -- looking downcast because he's being beaten by Donald Trump or he's a diminished figure. It was a solemn religious moment that the Trump campaign is trying to use to make him look bad.

BERMAN: Really interesting. Very, very advantageous to have people like you and Andrew Kaczynski point out these things. Thanks so much for being with us, Daniel.

DALE: Thank you.

BERMAN: Joining us now, CNN political analyst and "New York Times" White House correspondent, Maggie Haberman.

Good morning, Maggie Haberman.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning.

BERMAN: So we woke up to this news that Facebook, for the first time -- they have never done this before, with a post on coronavirus or anything the president said on coronavirus -- took down an interview that the president did where he said that children were immune to coronavirus. It's interesting that this is where Facebook jumped in.

END