Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Trump to Deliver Convention Speech from Gettysburg or White House; Twenty Seven CEOs Launch the New York Jobs CEO Council; Coronavirus Cases Surge Among Children in U.S. As Schools Reopen. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired August 11, 2020 - 07:30   ET

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


[07:30:00]

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Eighty four days to go now until election day. President Trump says he's now considering accepting the Republican presidential nomination in a speech at the White House or -- and this is a new one, possibly the civil war battlefield of Gettysburg. Joining me now is CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, he's a professor of history at Rice University. Always good to talk to you. I mean, just your gut reaction to this. I'm curious. When you heard possibly Gettysburg.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, RICE UNIVERSITY: I thought, what an utterly terrible idea that is. I mean, Gettysburg is sacred ground to all Americans. It's where over 40,000 Americans died or left on the ground and were casualties during the civil war. People go there for solitude and contemplation about Americans -- America's past. So, it should not be a place that becomes politicized. It should not be able to be Donald Trump's going to grab Gettysburg by the scruff of the neck and give a red-meat speech to his base, which is divisive. So, I would say leave Gettysburg alone and find another venue.

HILL: I have to say, it's not the same thing, but when we heard this, one of the first things I thought of was an interview that the president had at Normandy, and when we saw him there with all of those crosses in the background. And that really struck a chord with a number of people as well because it became so politicized. To think that now we're looking at Gettysburg, where the president has in recent weeks, really taken it upon himself to do his best to shore up the confederacy, right? That we keep confederate flags and monuments to confederate generals going -- that, too, leaves you scratching your head.

BRINKLEY: It's all a bit nutty. I mean, here is Donald Trump defending Confederate monuments, staying up, refusing to strip the name of rogue traitors like Bragg from federal forts, now talking about speaking at Gettysburg -- remember, not giving a speech there about public policy, but self-aggrandizing himself, making that the center of the Republican National Committee, the middle of the battlefield and cemetery at Gettysburg.

I can't think of a worse idea. Going to places like Normandy is important on anniversaries, and I would urge Donald Trump to go to Gettysburg and reflect on the battle there at the appropriate time, but this is deeply inappropriate. The White House isn't much better, but at least with these weird times with COVID-19, one could say, that is the residence of the president. It might be fitting for him to do it from the White House, but Gettysburg is just grossly misguided.

HILL: Do you think that in floating Gettysburg, it's a way to make the White House seem more palatable?

[07:35:00]

BRINKLEY: I do. I think it's sort of a canard. You know, he went to Mount Rushmore, he's saying he'd like to see his face on Mount Rushmore. Pennsylvania is the all-important swing state. So if he can get in, give a speech in Pennsylvania, but really, it forces people like me to say that if I have a -- choice between Gettysburg or the White House, I would say, historians would say do it from the White House. Do not denigrate Gettysburg in such a crass fashion.

HILL: You know, he also -- Gettysburg, of course, you can't ignore the connection to Abraham Lincoln. And President Trump likes to put himself in the same camp as President Lincoln. He's done it often. I just want to play some of those moments for folks at home.

BRINKLEY: OK.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I can be more presidential than any president in history except for possibly Ab Lincoln with a big hat.

I did more for the black community than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln.

I am greeted with a hostile press, the likes of which no president has ever seen. The closest would be that gentleman right up there. They always said Lincoln, nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: What do you think that infatuation is with Abraham Lincoln?

BRINKLEY: Well, I think all presidents fall in love with Abraham Lincoln because no matter how bad they have it, Lincoln had it worse. And yet, he ended up being number one ranked as presidents. Remember, Barack Obama was very interested in the presidency of Lincoln, and George W. Bush called him his favorite president. What's different here is Donald Trump is trying to say, I'm as great as Lincoln. I'm the equal of Abraham Lincoln, which is just preposterous.

If he is a one-term president, Donald Trump will be remembered with James Buchanan towards the bottom of American presidents. Two-term president, it could become a different story. So, he's trying to elevate himself by -- as his Mount Rushmore speech indicated, Donald Trump's running saying, I am George Washington, I am Lincoln, I am Buffalo Bill, while all of these Democrats are trying to tear down American heritage monuments.

I stand for them all. I'm the representative of them all. I even want a garden of statues, he called for. So, he's feeling insecure. So by saying, I am of the quality of Abraham Lincoln, it makes him feel big and important and special in history, but most people see it as self- aggrandizing and a sign of narcissism.

HILL: Speaking of history, I'm just curious your take on this moment. Let me play it for you. It happened yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: But the closest thing is in 1917, they say, right? The great -- the great pandemic. And it certainly was a terrible thing where they lost anywhere from 50 million to a 100 million people, probably ended the Second World War. All the soldiers were sick.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: I'm not sure who "they" are, but I do know that the pandemic was definitely not in 1917, and that World War II, of course, didn't happen until decades later. But that to me is remarkable also because it's not the first time.

BRINKLEY: No, he constantly says 1917. It's like a tick he has that he can't say 1918. I mean, without exaggerating, there are 50 times that he's done that, nobody's either corrected him or he's stubborn. And then it got all convoluted, that talk, with World War II, and then it became just a muddle of nonsense there. The bottom line is Donald Trump has no historical memory. He doesn't understand what our democracy is. I'm not just saying that. I met Donald Trump at Mar-a- Lago to ask him about other presidents.

He told me he never read anything on Lincoln. I even said, did you read a children's book on Lincoln? He had not. He does not read American history. He said he operates from his guts and has learned from watching television. So he knows the TV president of his lifetime, and particularly like Ronald Reagan style, but then said Reagan's a terrible negotiator to me. He liked things about Nixon.

But the idea that he understands anything that happened during the civil war in any real way is just not there. So, he's just hijacking celebrity names from history and using them in a self-serving way.

HILL: Douglas Brinkley, always great to speak with you. Thanks for being with us this morning.

BRINKLEY: Thanks, Erica.

HILL: President Trump has spent weeks falsely claiming mail-in voting is rife with fraud. CNN takes you to one state that has now counted millions of mail-in ballots. We're taking you there for the facts, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:40:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CO-ANCHOR, NEW DAY: This morning, fire crews sifting through the rubble of a deadly house explosion in Baltimore. At least, one person was killed, seven others injured. Witnesses recall seeing a blinding light, then hearing the thundering sound of the blast. Authorities are still searching for additional survivors. Investigators say they have to pinpoint the cause of the explosion, but say there were no known gas leaks.

HILL: President Trump continues to falsely claim that mail-in voting can't be trusted because of fraud. One Colorado official, though, says that is not the case. In fact, his state has a track record to prove it. CNN's Lucy Kafanov has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GEORGE STERN, CLERK & RECORDER, JEFFERSON COUNTY: This machine here processes 20,000 ballots an hour. It's really loud. We would not be able to be talking this closely right now to it.

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN REPORTER (voice-over): George Stern is an elections administrator for Jefferson, Colorado's fourth largest county located in the western suburbs of Denver. So, everything here is out in the open?

STERN: Everything is out in the open.

KAFANOV: He's invited the president and CNN to tour the county's mail ballot processing facility. His message?

STERN: There's no massive fraud that our elections are secure as much as they are accessible.

[07:45:00]

KAFANOV: All registered Colorado voters automatically receive a ballot in the mail. You can still vote in person, but an overwhelming majority of ballots, including 99.3 percent in this year's state primary have consistently been returned by mail or ballot drop box.

TRUMP: Everyone knows mail-in ballots are a disaster.

KAFANOV: This week, the president sued Nevada to contest the expansion of mail-in voting, tweeting in July, mail-in ballots will lead to massive electoral fraud and a rigged 2020 election.

STERN: We've been doing universal vote by mail in Colorado for seven years, and we can say with certainty that, that is not the case.

KAFANOV: that's because of what Stern says is a rigorous system of checks and balances. For a mail-in ballot to be counted, the envelope must be signed. A bipartisan team of election judges, trained by FBI handwriting analysts, then compares the envelope signature to those stored on file. STERN: If there isn't a signature that matches, that's getting pushed

off to the side and it's going to be investigated by the district attorney's office.

KAFANOV: Data from the Conservative Heritage Foundation shows nine instances of voter fraud out of millions of ballots cast since Colorado began voting by mail in 2013.

STERN: Nine's too many, right? We want that number zero. But that's nine out of 16 million. That's literally less than one in a million.

KAFANOV: In June, the president falsely claimed that millions of mail-in ballots will be printed by foreign countries and others. But Colorado election officials say that's also not a concern. An adversary would have to mimic everything perfectly from a signature on file to the ballot's size, style, paper weight and even the envelope it's mailed in, all of which differ from county to county and change in each election cycle. Another bonus?

STERN: Everything is paper, right? When you have mail ballots. You've got paper ballots. And we've got a paper trail and we store that paper trail for two years after the elections. Our voting equipment, our voting machines never connected to the internet. They never have been. They never will be. Our counting equipment never connected to the internet.

KAFANOV: Which helps prevent hacking.

TRUMP: It would be a total joke.

KAFANOV: Another false claim by the president, that mail-in voting benefits Democrats, tweeting, "Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to statewide mail-in voting. Tremendous potential for voter fraud and for whatever reason doesn't work out well for Republicans."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tonight, we shook up the Senate.

KAFANOV: In a 2014 general election, the first election after Colorado switched to mail-in voting, Republicans flipped a U.S. Senate seat, won a majority in the state Senate, gained seats in the state house and won three of four state-wide offices.

STERN: We've seen that there is no partisan advantage. We've seen record voter turnout from Democrats and Republicans and unaffiliated voters in our elections.

KAFANOV: The president has also suggested that election results could be delayed for months.

STERN: We actually deliver most of our results on election night every time because of this vote-by-mail system.

KAFANOV: So in some ways, the mail-in voting actually makes the process faster?

STERN: In Colorado, unquestionably makes it faster. KAFANOV: And how easy is it to fake a ballot from someone who is

deceased?

STERN: So dead people cannot vote and they do not vote in Colorado. We regularly update our voter registration lists.

TRUMP: Somebody got a ballot for a dog.

STERN: My dog walks to vote with me every single election, but he's yet to get a ballot or turn one in himself.

KAFANOV: Lucy Kafanov, CNN, Golden, Colorado.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: This is such a great piece --

HILL: Yes --

BERMAN: This is such an important piece. People need to find out the facts here about mail-in voting because there's so much crap that's being said out there. People need to know that fraud in voting is incredibly small in general. It's a little bit higher in mail-in voting, but incredibly small still, and there is literally a paper trail.

HILL: Yes --

BERMAN: And people need to separate -- I'm sorry, because I care a lot about this.

HILL: No, I agree with you.

BERMAN: People need to separate fraud with the issues of the Post Office being overwhelmed with a lot of people mailing in their ballots. It may be a concern that a lot of people mail in ballots and the Post Office will be taxed. Then help! Then figure out a way to help the Post Office to process the ballots more. That in and of itself is not fraud, and people like the president who say it is, they are lying. People have got to go learn about this. Your lives may depend on it, not to mention your votes.

HILL: Absolutely. No, it's so important. It was such an excellent piece by Lucy and her team out there. And I agree with you 100 percent. It's so important to not only call out the lies and let people know, right, what's true and what's not. But also to highlight just all of the security measures that Lucy went through in her piece there, that the election official went through with her about how they are secure. And the FBI team that trains people to recognize the signature? I mean, seems like they've figured it out.

BERMAN: It is. It is one thing that you and I, the media, and all the American people need to start to do to prepare for election day, which is to get ready to be patient.

HILL: Yes. BERMAN: It's OK if it doesn't get counted super quickly. It can take

some time. You want it to be right, it doesn't matter whether it's fast.

HILL: Totally agree. Also, can we just say that dog's adorable.

BERMAN: Yes, most importantly --

HILL: Yes --

BERMAN: What a cute dog.

HILL: Yes, my dog might come with me to vote this year. Who knows? Get ready, Dakota!

[07:50:00]

BERMAN: All right, coming up, Christine Romans sits down with one of Wall Street's top bankers to talk about how quickly the U.S. can recover from the economic crisis. What Jamie Dimon has to say about this. You want to hear it, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Obviously, the coronavirus pandemic has led to this huge global recession, and while there is a national reckoning, at the same time of economic inequality. So Christine Romans; CNN's chief business correspondent just interviewed the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon and she joins us now with more. And Romans, I have been looking forward to hearing --

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes --

BERMAN: What Jamie Dimon has to say about the situation.

ROMANS: You know, look, there's a real reckoning happening here right now. And John, the American economy just doesn't work the same for everyone. This stat for you, a college-educated black household has less wealth than a white household headed by somebody without even a high school diploma. Now, some of the biggest names in business want to build a jobs pipeline to hire 100,000 black, Latin X and Asian New Yorkers for highly paid jobs post-pandemic.

[07:55:00]

I asked Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and the City University of New York Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez, do companies have a moral responsibility to fix racial inequality in capitalism?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMIE DIMON, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, JPMORGAN CHASE: No, I think it's far deeper than that. As you pointed out, this has been going on a whole lot. So while COVID pointed out and the murder of George Floyd made it more obvious, it was there before -- business has to work with government, civic society, educators, unions, whoever to solve society's biggest problems. Government alone can't do it. The pace is quick. The world will become more complex and these problems of education and jobs, infrastructure, immigration, have you fixed these things, we will have a far more just society, a happier society, more jobs and more -- you know, more growth which can pay for better safety nets, et cetera.

FELIX MATOS RODRIGUEZ, CHANCELLOR, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK: Yes, they have to build new networks, right, and to make those connections happen. And in our case, half of our students are first generation college, so that apprenticeship, that internship is going to be the beginning of those building of networks, and then everybody is going to see what kind of talent there is. So I think that the idea is to broaden the networks and expand on who gets to participate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: John, this is a 10-year goal. For the right now, Dimon says the shape of the coronavirus recovery depends on what Congress does next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DIMON: I think it's critical, yes. Most of the economies have built- in a trillion and a half to $2 trillion of another program which will help get small business individuals, you know, kind of to the end of the year and early next year. And I do think you're going to need that to stabilize this, and then hopefully, you can start a state recovery after that.

As people start to go back to work, get more comfortable, the cases come down, the hospitals can easily handle, you know, people of COVID inside the ICUs, et cetera. So, yes, I'm hopeful we'll get our hands around it. The real questions is how bad is the base and does recovery take two or three years or you know, could it possibly just take one year?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Again, he's assuming more stimulus, another stimulus package from Congress. And there are -- you know -- they're not really talking right now. He expects the jobless rate to decline to 9 percent this year, 7 percent next year. Again, it depends on more support from Congress to families and out-of-work Americans, more small business loans, though this time with flexibility, he says for how small business owners spend it.

Now, Dimon also acknowledged that the rally on Wall Street, John, has been driven by $12 trillion of global stimulus and doesn't reflect the pain on main street.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DIMON: You have 13 million people out of work and you got people suffering and small business suffering. That's far more important than you know, the vicissitudes of Wall Street, and you know, I think -- so I'm much more sympathetic there. That's what we should worry about. (END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: The vicissitudes of Wall Street. Right now, you've got the Nasdaq up some 40 percent. You know, near record high again. The S&P 500 higher on the year, so people with money, investors have been doing very well. But 55 percent of people own stocks, either directly or indirectly in this country. There's a lot happening on main street that needs to be fixed, John.

BERMAN: I'm curious, a guy like Jamie Dimon, does he see a distinction between the health response and the economic response, the separation that the president tries to make, but public health experts and others say this doesn't exist.

ROMANS: Look, he says we're going to get our hands around this, and he says we are getting control slowly of this virus, and that is incredibly important. The vaccine also incredibly important here. You know, he says that we can't look at the near-term data very carefully because just the gross flows, the big moves of these numbers make it difficult as he said to figure out where we are in this base line, but he says we're going to get through this OK.

He's long-term bullish on America. You know, you never want to bet against America, and he hopes by the end of next year, we're down to 7 percent on the jobless rate. But again, stimulus, more stimulus from Washington is key to that forecast.

BERMAN: Yes, and not necessarily coming, so interesting to hear. All right, Christine Romans, terrific interview.

ROMANS: Thank you.

BERMAN: Thanks so much for being with us. NEW DAY continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This virus is proving exceptionally difficult to stop.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Average daily deaths nationwide have topped a 1,000 for the past two weeks, several states are seeing record hospitalizations.

TRUMP: I think at the end of a fairly short period of time, we're going be in a very good shape all over our country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There should be universal wearing of masks. It should be the extent possible, social distancing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not against having a mandate, but a mandate alone will not fix your problem.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We know that if the virus has an opportunity to spread, it will, and it hasn't gone away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right, welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world, this is NEW DAY, Alisyn is off, Erica Hill back with me this morning, great to see you.

HILL: Good morning my friend.

BERMAN: So, for those who believe children are somehow immune from catching or spreading coronavirus, this morning, we're learning that cases in children have increased by 90 percent in the last four weeks, 90 percent. But these facts, these numbers don't seem to matter to the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Don't get very sick. They don't catch it easily. They don't get very sick, and according to the people that I've spoken to, they don't transport it or transfer it to other people, or certainly not very easily. So, yes, I think schools have to open.

[08:00:00]