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Trump Blocking Postal Service Funding; Push to Reopen Schools; Popular Vote and Trump's Strength; Historic Deal between Israel and UAE. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired August 14, 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]

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Or not decision, but filing last night that we reported on. Basically it says that the state wants to be able to accept ballots after Election Day up to three days because they have been informed by the Postal Service that the Postal Service's delivery speeds will not get ballots back to them in time to meet these deadlines of a receipt by Election Day. That's really significant and it's something that the Trump campaign, on behalf of President Trump, has been fighting in court, not just in Pennsylvania, but also in other states.

Look, there are two main things here. One, we can either improve the way that the Postal Service works so that these ballots get where they need to go and this process has a chance to go more smoothly, or you can get in the way of that. And it seems very much like the Trump campaign and the president is interested in getting in the way of that. And so it leads to real questions about whether he has any desire at all to let this -- to allow people to cast ballots that in many of these states they are legally permitted to cast these ballots just like he is when he requested his ballot in Florida, and it will be arriving to him probably in the next few days via the mail.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Which is so important to point out.

You know, the other thing is, we can't ignore the fact that all of this is happening, as John pointed out at the top of the hour, with the backdrop of the pandemic. And that is why we are seeing more states address the need for mail-in voting or an increased need in their states for mail-in voting. That's why they need more money, to make sure that each American's vote is counted if they choose to vote by mail. And yet the president yesterday, when he was pressed by our colleague, Kaitlan Collins, in the briefing, she asked him specifically, what happens about Americans who may not feel comfortable voting in person, and, Abby, he was very clear, well, they should just get comfortable with it. That also is telling in terms of not only how he looks at voting, but also how he is, again, addressing the pandemic and its impact.

PHILLIP: Absolutely. This idea that the pandemic is simply going to go away in the fall is not true. And, in fact, there are even more concerns that it could be worse because we could be dealing with the flu -- the seasonal flu on top of the pandemic. I've talked to so many voters who are concerned because this is really

life and death for them. They have immunocompromised systems. They are cancer survivors, cancer patients. They do not want to be going out and standing in line to vote by ballot and states don't want that either. The president doesn't seem to care about that at all. And we know why, Erica. He has said he thinks that mail-in voting will hurt Republicans.

There is also no evidence of that. The evidence suggests that mail-in balloting is a neutral -- it's a wash when it comes to partisanship. But the president is convinced about this as it relates to his own election prospects. And that is why all of this is happening. He is not -- he claims he's concerned about fraud, but there's really no evidence of the kind of widespread fraud that he's been talking about. He's been making up all kinds of scenarios that have no basis in fact.

Again, this is about how he feels about his chances. This wouldn't be happening, Erica, if the president didn't think that he was at risk of losing this election.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Abby Phillip, we appreciate you being with us. And I think everyone should note, you would certainly note, we haven't talked about the ridiculous claims that President Trump made about Kamala Harris' birth. Why not? Well, because the voting issues are about you, all of you and your ability to participate in democracy. It's big. The statements that the president made about Kamala Harris are about his smallness, racist smallness, and they're just simply not worth spending that much time on because there's nothing to it.

Abby, we appreciate you being with us this morning. Thank you.

So, this morning we are learning new details about Michael Cohen's upcoming tell-all book on the alleged scandals involving President Trump. In a foreword, the president's lawyer, former lawyer, long-time confidant, accuses him of being a racist and a predator and a conman and refers to himself as a demented follower who tried to ingratiate himself into Trump's world. This is some of the stuff Cohen writes, quote, I stiffed contractors on his behalf, ripped off his business partners, lied to his wife Melania to hide his sexual infidelities, and bullied and screamed at anyone who threatened Trump's path to power.

HILL: The White House issuing a statement on these developments. Michael Cohen's book is fan fiction, it reads. He readily admits to lying routinely but expects people to believe him now so that he can make money from book sales. It's unfortunate that the media is exploiting this sad and desperate man to attack President Trump.

But Cohen says he plans to release the book in September. He has not disclosed whose publishing it. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to multiple crimes, including lying to Congress. He was released last month to home confinement after suing the Justice Department alleging that he was taken back into custody in retaliation for writing the book.

[06:35:01]

BERMAN: So here's the thing, right? Two things can be true at the same time. Number one, to say Michael Cohen is a deeply flawed messenger is an understatement. However, there is almost no one who had the access and was as close to Donald Trump in certain ways and in certain moments than Michael Cohen over a few years. So there is a perspective there that certainly no one else has.

HILL: Yes. Absolutely true. And as you point out, both those things are true at the same time.

BERMAN: It will be interesting to see what is in that book.

All right, parents and students in limbo as districts lay out wildly different plans on reopening schools. What you need to know, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield breaking with President Trump, stressing he does not want to pressure schools to reopen. Schools, teachers, staff, students continuing to grapple with whether they can reopen safely.

CNN's Lauren Jarrett joins us now with more.

I mean this is the number one conversation, I feel, right now.

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR, "EARLY START": Among all parents, right, Erica? It's been a really rocky start for students going back to school this week.

[06:40:02]

And what's notable is that even with all the time that schools had to prepare for this fall, technology hiccups are still bogging kids down.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JARRETT (voice over): For some, starting the school year remotely has been anything but smooth.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I went to the website, tried to log into the e- class portal and was getting an error message for the most part.

JARRETT: The first day of virtual school in Gwinnett County, Georgia, began on Wednesday with many students unable to get online.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For only half the kids to be logged on is a problem.

JARRETT: The district asked students to stagger their log ins in the hopes of solving the problem. While in Humble, Texas, the superintendent said a cyberattack on their district's server kept some students from accessing their first day of classes on Tuesday. And Thursday, Atlanta's mayor also had technical issues, tweeting, it's noon and I still haven't been able to get the twins logged in. Equal access to technology is one reason the Glendale Unified School

District in California is offering its elementary age students to do their distance learning from inside their own school buildings under the supervision of substitute teachers.

VIVIAN EKCHIAN, SUPERINTENDENT, GLENDALE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT: This is an opportunity for us to close our digital divide. We would have never ordered so many devices so quickly and done incredible amount of through, professional development to really allow our educators to successfully deliver instruction and distance learning.

JARRETT: The decision between in person and virtual learning still a contentious issue across the country after initially deciding to start with a four week period of distance learning, Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida backtracked and will now offer the choice of in-person learning just one week after they start the school year on August 24th.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will have to return to school.

JARRETT: The change comes after a warning from the state's department of education that funds could be withheld from the district if in- person learning isn't offered. And a Wisconsin school district's decision to open their buildings five days a week with a mask mandate for students who choose to come to school still didn't satisfy everyone.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Six foot distance and masks are a pagan ritual of satanic worshipers.

JARRETT: Meanwhile, the pan to hold in-person classes in the Phoenix suburb of queen Creek has led to some teacher resignations.

MATTHEW CHICCI, TEACHER WHO RESIGNED: It's like I'm letting them down, but what am I going to do? Do pick the 150 kids or do I pick my kids?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JARRETT: Erica, these issues surrounding teachers' safety are not likely to get resolved any time soon, and yet at the same time, with all the discussion about college football this week, one high school in Haraminia (ph), Utah, held the country's first football game since the pandemic began. It just shows you how eager some people are to get back to normal, even when everything is not normal.

HILL: Yes, no, it is far from normal. We'd all like to get back to normal, but we need to get there safely. Laura, thank you.

JARRETT: Sure.

HILL: So could we see a repeat of 2016 this November. Joe Biden winning the popular vote, President Trump wins the Electoral College. Our good friend Harry Enten is here to break it down, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [06:46:29]

BERMAN: So this morning we're proud to announce an epic CNN event that gets to the very heart and foundation of our republic. Tomorrow night I present "Count on Controversy." This is a look at all the questions surrounding the Electoral College. It deals with the issue in ways you have never seen before, including a musical number.

Here now to talk about some of the most pressing questions about our entire electoral system, CNN's senior politics writer and analyst Harry Enten.

Harry, thank you for helping me explain what's going on here. You know, a lot of people have heard that Donald Trump has this hidden advantage when it comes to the Electoral College. How so?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER AND ANALYST: Yes. So, you know, let's take a look back at what happened in 2016, right? What did we see? We saw that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by two points, but in the state that contained the median electrical vote in the Electoral College plus one, Wisconsin, which is also known as the tipping point state, Donald Trump won it by one. That means that there was an Electoral College bias of three points. That essentially means that Trump could have lost the popular vote by up to three points and still won the election. So that's a hidden advantage for him for sure, at least in 2016.

BERMAN: A lot of people are obsessed with polls on a daily basis and they see in the polls that Joe Biden is leading and leading by a fair amount right now. But -- but show us how it could be that he would win the popular vote again and Donald Trump would emerge as the Electoral College winner? And what would it take?

ENTEN: Yes. So, you know, take a look. This is a universe, the CBS News/YouGov universe. And we're sticking within one pollster and I think this will sort of tell the story.

CBS News/YouGov had a national poll last night that had Biden ahead by 10, and he was leading in the state that had the median electoral vote plus one, Wisconsin, by six points. But again you see that same bias, right, where Trump is doing better in the state with the median electoral vote plus one than he is doing nationally. In fact, it's larger than it was in 2016. He's doing about four points better.

And, indeed, if you were to convert that to a number of votes, right, remember last time around, Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. This time around, given the math of the CBS News/YouGov polling, as well as the expected increase turnout, Trump could lost the popular vote by over 5 million votes and still win in the Electoral College, John.

BERMAN: And I think that's the number that blows a lot of people's minds, that someone could lose the popular vote by 5 million and still win in the Electoral College.

Dive into that a little bit more because, again, I think this is something that people will really care about. How can you get to -- from 3 million to 5 million and still win a national election?

ENTEN: Yes. This is so important. So take a look at the polling, right, in the four most populated states in the union, right, California, New York, Texas, and Florida. And this, I think, tells the story, right? Joe Biden is so far ahead in New York and California, he's going to pile up votes there, get a lot of extra votes that truthfully he doesn't really need. While in the state of Florida and Texas, while Biden's ahead in Florida and he's barely behind in Texas, those are much closer than the nationwide vote. So it's quite conceivable that Trump could win by small margins in Florida and Texas, the two big states he wins, while Biden wastes a lot of votes in New York and California. So, essentially, start getting 3 million, 4 million vote edges, while, in fact, in the Electoral College it may still be quite tight.

BERMAN: Yes, the math is actually pretty easy. If you think about California and New York, it's easy to conceive of Joe Biden doing even better than Hillary Clinton in those states. And certainly in Texas, where Donald Trump won by nine points, you expect Joe Biden, if he closes the margin there, he may not win, in which, again, it would build up that popular vote total.

There's some another interesting facts about the Electoral College, Harry, which is that in battleground states, and depending on how you look at it, candidates spend more than 90 percent in -- more than 90 percent of their time in a small number of battleground states because of the Electoral College.

[06:50:05]

But those states are different demographically than the rest of the country.

ENTEN: Yes, so, I think this is so important. So take a look at the breakdown of whites and whites without a college degree in the core six battleground states. Those are the six closest states that Trump won in 2016 that Joe Biden is very competitive in right now, Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. And, take a look, they're just so much whiter than the nation as a whole. Seventy-eight percent white versus 71 percent nationally, and non- college whites, Donald Trump's base, 50 percent whit eon average in those core six battleground states, just 40 percent non-college white nationally. So Trump's strength, again, is expanded upon in these core six battleground states.

BERMAN: Very quickly, Harry, where are we today in this electoral contest?

ENTEN: Yes, so, you know, it's still important to point out that even though Biden, you know, may not be as strongly ahead in the Electoral College as he is in the popular vote, he's still ahead in the Electoral College if the current poll averages are the results at this point. Biden still has 353 electoral votes to Trump's 185, but we still have a little under 90 days to go, so we'll have to see what happens. BERMAN: Harry Enten, I really appreciate you being with us this

morning, diving into the numbers. I know you will be watching tomorrow night at 10:00 for this epic CNN event. I appreciate it, my friend.

ENTEN: Thank you. I look forward to the musical number.

BERMAN: Join Harry and me tomorrow night for a CNN special report, "Count on Controversy: Inside the Electoral College." That's 10:00 p.m. Eastern only on CNN.

So the White House is announcing an historic agreement that could be a game changer in the Middle East. What does it mean for peace in the region? We'll discuss, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:56:02]

HILL: Israel announcing it will temporarily suspend plans to annex the West Bank, all part of a new peace deal with the United Arab Emirates, which was announced by the Trump administration. So what does it actually mean for peace in the Middle East?

CNN international anchor Becky Anderson joins us now.

What does this really mean, Becky?

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Well, it would be easy to write this agreement off as a stunt orchestrated by the Trump administration, a foreign policy win coming as it does just weeks before the U.S. election. But I'm going to argue that would be to understate the importance of this deal. It is an open secret that the UAE and other Gulf countries have been strengthening ties with the Israelis for some time now, not least in the areas of security and intelligence. And it is no secret that the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is eager to formalize those ties for a myriad of reasons, not least those of economic benefit to Israel.

But the UAE has made it absolutely clear in the past couple of months that Netanyahu's plans to annex the West Bank would nix any further formalization of ties. In an op-ed, an unprecedented op-ed, penned for the Israeli press in Hebrew back in June, the UAE ambassador to the U.S. specifically said that the Israelis need to choose between normalization and annexation. The UAE has made it absolutely clear that they back a two-state solution. And the suspension of annexation, they say, would diffuse a ticking time bomb, allowing for negotiations, allowing for the two parties to get back to the table. They say this is about the Israelis and the Palestinians. It is about paving the way for those negotiations to get underway once again.

And let's remember, this is an historical conflict littered with failed initiatives. I spoke to the minister of state for foreign affairs for the UAE, Anwar Gargash, just last night, just after what was this surprise announcement, people very surprised that it hadn't been leaked. And he said, look, the prospects are dim at this point, but getting the two parties back around the table is important. And they will have the support of Israel's moderate Arab neighbors.

So, I mean the -- you know, ultimately, this has got a long way to go. Anwar Gargash told me, this isn't going to happen in weeks, it's likely not to happen by November, alluding, one might suggest, to the U.S. elections. But he said this is a start and the UAE is absolutely determined they will play a part in leveraging any potential for a solution for peace in the Middle East.

Erica.

HILL: We know you'll be continuing to follow it closely.

Becky, thank you.

NEW DAY continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NIAID: We're starting to see the inkling in the upticks in the percent of the tests that are positive. That's a predictor that you're going to have more surges.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Reasonable people can disagree on it. Our board believes in our scientists.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel like the Titanic, we have hit the iceberg and we're trying to make decisions of what time should we have the band play.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trump fueling allegations he is trying to manipulate the postal system for political gain.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Voting by mail is wrought with fraud and abuse.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): The president knows that on the legit it'd be hard for him to win.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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

[07:00:03]

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 with me again.

Great to have you here this morning.

END