Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden Criticizes President Trump for Fanning Flames of Division; President Trump Compares Police Who Commit Shooting to Poor Short Game in Golf; Report Indicates Department of Health and Human Services to Spend $250 Million on Public Relations Campaign Concerning Coronavirus; HHS Plans $250 Million to "Defeat Despair & Inspire Hope" Over Virus; Trump 2016 Voters on the President's Handling of Racial Tensions. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired September 01, 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]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And Kyle Rittenhouse. That's the teenager accused of murdering two protestors in Kenosha. He's also giving props to the Trump supporters who shot Portland protestors with paintballs. Mr. Trump now compares police officers who use excessive or deadly force to golfers who, quote, choke missing a three-foot putt.

Coming up on NEW DAY I am about to speak with a group of 2016 Trump voters who the president is going after. These are all white suburban women. How do they feel about his message of law and order and what they're seeing?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I want to make one thing clear about that message, and that's what it is not. It is not about the pandemic, intentionally, specifically, deliberately not about the pandemic. Six million Americans with confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States, 183,000 Americans dead. There's even in a rise in cases in the Midwest, where the president will be today. But his trip is not about that. Joe Biden hitting the president hard, accusing him of stirring things up and making it all worse just for politics.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Fires are burning and we have a president who fans the flames rather than fighting the flames. But we must not burn. We have to build. This president long ago forfeited any moral leadership in this country. He can't stop the violence because for years he's fomented it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: And this development this morning, "Politico" reports that the Department of Health and Human Services is spending $250 million, taxpayer money, on a coronavirus PR campaign to, quote, defeat despair and inspire hope about the pandemic.

Joining us now is CNN political director David Chalian and CNN senior political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson. David, I want to start with you with this question. There's rise in coronavirus cases in the Midwest. The president is going to be there today. What do you anticipate to hear from the president about the pandemic in Kenosha today?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Nothing. I don't expect him to address it to at all, John. And the reason is pretty simple, right. The president in the eyes of the American people has failed on his leadership through this pandemic. And so that's why you see him looking every which way to find something else to direct the conversation towards, to grab on to, and try to sort of program the context for this fall campaign in a way that defies what is plainly in front of the American people every day, because they're dealing with it, whether they're dealing with their kids going back to school or not going back to school, or they've dealing with not being able to live their lives as they normally would, or they've lost their job. The things that are impacting them every single day, almost every American is touched by this, that's what the president doesn't want to address because he has not been seen by the American people as being able to do so successfully.

CAMEROTA: Nia-Malika, the local officials, the Kenosha mayor, the governor of Wisconsin have implored the president not to come. The situation is just too chaotic right now, and they think that it could have the opposite effect and stirring up problems. The president said, quote, he's going to increase enthusiasm. That's why he's going to Kenosha. For what? For rioting? For racial tension? What's the enthusiasm?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: It's unclear. Is it enthusiasm for his campaign, because he does think this is a strategy for him? You'd think particularly about a state like Wisconsin, he won that state by about 22,000 voters, Kenosha is an area he won in 2016. Obama won that area in 2012. It's an overwhelmingly white area. So these are I think the kind of people he needs to connect with if he is to win in November. So we will see.

I agree with David. There won't be much mention of COVID at all. This is not something he wants to talk about. He does think this idea of pointing to this violence, which, again, is on his watch, and as we know, at least one of the accused people is somebody who backed his campaign and backs Donald Trump. So this is a president who wants to go -- he's a photo-op president, so we'll see what sort of photos come out of this. He is somebody who understands the world in images, wants to create this image likely of him with police officers there in Kenosha, and I'm sure there will be supporters who want him there.

But typically, presidents don't like to do these kind of things because it does redirects resources from what's really going on there, cops and authorities want to pay attention to that situation that's on the ground, and so having a president there redirects this.

But listen, this is a president who isn't someone who likes to do what other presidents have done. And you saw Joe Biden really hammer him over the ways in which he really is stirring up this violence, embracing some of it, and seeing it, ultimately, as something that's good for his reelection.

[08:05:04]

BERMAN: I want to get to Joe Biden's statement in just a second. But first, David, one more thing the president said, and I think it's widely agreed that the Republicans had a successful messaging convention, which is to say they delivered the message that they intended to, tightly hewing to the script that they wanted. The president is off-script now, I think, dealing with issues of racial justice and policing. He did an interview last night on FOX TV where he equated the death of black men at the hands of police to his golf game. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They choke. Just like in a golf tournament, they miss a three-foot --

LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: You're not comparing it to golf, because of course that's what the media --

TRUMP: No. I'm saying people choke.

INGRAHAM: People make -- people panic.

TRUMP: People choke.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So, George Floyd was choked to death, literally. Jacob Blake, I don't think will ever get to play golf because he's paralyzed from the waist down. So clearly that statement is grotesque. I guess my question, David, is what risk does the president run? Is he happy just talking about this no matter grotesqueness at all, or does he run a risk at actually slipping in the very area that he wants to promote?

CHALIAN: You know how you know it was instantly an offkey, grotesque comment? Laura Ingraham tried to save him from himself and actually tried to correct the president. You don't really mean what you just said, did you? You don't really mean to make that comparison, because the media will pick up on that. But it was clear instantly how off- kilter that was to compare this to not being able to have a good short game on the golf course.

Listen, John, I take your point. He may be off-script now, and it was a carefully crafted message last week. What is not yet clear to me is if what he's doing is working at all for him. I know he thinks it may, as Nia was saying. But I don't think we have any evidence yet in polling or in any kind of metric, and we'll wait to see more come out, that indicates this is actually altering his position in the race, that somehow, he's automatically catapulted into being the frontrunner in command of this presidential race. No. He's still behind, and he is still in a very troubling position for an incumbent president.

CAMEROTA: Well, I invite you to tune in my Pulse of the People voter panel in a few minutes because you'll see if it's working with those Trump voters who are white suburban women. But Nia-Malika --

CHALIAN: I'm just here to tee you up, Alisyn.

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: Thank you for that.

BERMAN: That's what I'm talking about in terms of the tease.

CAMEROTA: Nia-Malika, it is working in terms of the messaging. It is working. Look at what we're talking about. Look at what so many news networks are leading with this morning, the president is going to Kenosha. We are mentioning, obviously, the coronavirus deaths here on this program, but we're talking about this, and in in fact, it's working so much that former vice president Joe Biden had to address it unequivocally front and center. So there is what he has now said about looters and about protesters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'll be very clear about all of this. Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It's lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: How about that, Nia-Malika? Does that put an end to whatever the Trump campaign tries to claim about Joe Biden?

HENDERSON: No, absolutely not. We know that Joe Biden has said this before, the speech he made yesterday, he's condemned looters, he's condemned violence, Democrats have. The family of Jacob Blake, the family of George Floyd has as well. Black Lives Matter protesters and leaders have throughout this. They don't want any sort of violence or looting, either, distracting from their really important cause.

But Joe Biden clearly thought he needed to come out yesterday. You had Donald Trump essentially a week of branding Joe Biden as somebody who would be a puppet of radical socialists, of the radical left, and somebody who didn't necessarily care about the violence. You saw him come out, a pretty strong speech there. Not only talking about criminal justice and some of the violence we're seeing in some of these cities, but also saying, listen, your Social Security isn't safe in Donald Trump's America. Soldiers aren't safe overseas in Donald Trump's America.

So I thought he was trying to really kind of broaden it out and turn this idea that Donald Trump and his allies like to push, this idea that you're not safe in Joe Biden's America. Obviously, it's not Joe Biden's America right now. It's Donald Trump's America. So I thought it was a very effective speech, and clearly a speech they thought was necessary given what we saw from Donald Trump and his allies last week.

[08:10:01] BERMAN: Nia-Malika Henderson, David Chalian, great to have you on the show. Thanks so much for being with us here this morning.

CHALIAN: Thanks, guys.

HENDERSON: Thanks.

BERMAN: So the Department of Health and Human Services wants to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, taxpayer dollars, your dollars, on a campaign to inspire hope about the pandemic. What does Dr. Sanjay Gupta think about that? His answer, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: The United States surpassing 6 million cases of coronavirus. As of this morning, more than 183,000 Americans have died. "Politico" reports that the Department of Health and Human Services is planning to spend $250 million of taxpayer money on a public relations campaign to, quote, "defeat despair and inspire hope," end quote, on the virus.

Joining us now is CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. We talked about this in the last hour, John and I. And defeating despair, that's a good goal. But defeating coronavirus would be even better. There could be a public service announcement about wearing masks and social distancing. That money could be spent for that.

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, there's no question that the basic public health practices that we've been talking about for so many months in this country are still -- there's still a lot of mix messages, amazingly, around the country. A lot of people still not seeing the value of masks, still not seeing the value of physical distancing, despite the fact that there's countries around the world that have returned to a pretty good sense of normalcy through all this. They don't have a vaccine. They don't have a therapeutic.

[08:15:00]

This is really surprising to me. There's a crisis of confidence that's going on right now, I think, within the medical establishment.

The medical establishment outside of the federal government, pretty much in lock lockstep. They're very concerned about some of the decisions that have been made recently, and there's real divide now with many federal health officials, not all of them, but many federal health officials.

So, you know, these type of campaigns I think can be important perhaps, maybe instill some confidence. But I think as you're saying, we got to earn the confidence in the first place, and that hasn't happened. You know, we see the numbers on the right of the screen, and wonder what did we do or not do in order to get to this awful place in this country.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Sanjay, so there's a discussion this morning, going on for some time, about the issue of herd immunity. What that means is basically, you let enough people get the virus so that enough people have immunity so that the infection stops on its own, another reason people are talking about because Scott Atlas, the president who listens to more than anybody else now about the pandemic, seems to believe in aspects of this.

A lot of people refer to Sweden as an example where they seemed to be promoting the idea of at least more herd immunity, but we're also hearing an outcry from some respected public health officials saying, wait a second, maybe we shouldn't be looking at Sweden as this bastion of success. What do you think?

GUPTA: No, we shouldn't be looking at Sweden as a model of success. It's really interesting, though, if you look at things at a macro level, leave aside what the policies were that were put in place. Actually, as it turns out, the United States and Sweden aren't that different. I mean, even though our plan was not herd immunity in this country, in so many ways, we didn't really lock down and do the things to prevent the virus from really spreading around the country.

Sweden, they sort of adopted the stance of herd immunity, but so many of the citizens still stayed home. So, despite the sort of government's policies in Sweden, many people said, look, we think it's still safer to stay home.

So the end product, if you look at Sweden, you look at the United States, in some ways very similar, despite that they started from a different place. And what happened? We have some of the highest death counts in the world, with respect to similar countries. The economy is still very much slowed down as a result of what's happened.

And we're not -- we're way behind the curve, still, compared to many other countries. If you -- if you think 10 percent of the country has been exposed to the virus -- and those are estimates -- start to think about 70, 80 percent of the country being exposed to the virus, which is what herd immunity would require. That means, you know, 1.5 million would die in order to get there and it would take years to actually achieve some sort of herd immunity.

So, it's a terrible idea. Most people in public health sort of agree with that and the idea that it's still being whispered into the president's ears, I mean, it shows again just how far backward we're still going. I mean, we're talking about a propaganda campaign with a quarter of a billion dollars, we still got to get the basics right and we're not there yet.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Sanjay, on a different topic, I want to ask you about Chadwick Boseman. He's the beloved movie star, star of "Black Panther", Jackie Robinson, and he died of colon cancer at such a young age, at 43. I mean, you know I think that surprised a lot of us, we sometimes hear that colon cancer is one of the curable cancers. What's the truth about this?

GUPTA: Yeah, I mean, it's super sad. You know, I will say that, Chad Boseman's story is untypical, he was diagnosed when he was 39 years old. We don't know about his family history, if there was some particular risk factor for him, but that's obviously young.

Having said that, as you point out, Alisyn, if colon cancer is caught early, we know that a chance of survival is much higher, you know, it's close to 90 percent. If people catch colon cancers early.

But as things stand now, only 39 percent of colon cancers are caught early. That's part of the issue.

The screenings, you know, in the past it was recommended that everyone gets screened at the age of 50. Start your colon cancer screenings, colonoscopies, they moved that back to 45, some of the agencies did. And there's certain populations including African-Americans where the risk is even higher. So, you know, they may recommend screening even earlier, again, depending on family history.

But it's tough. About 10 percent roughly of colon cancers are now in people under the age of 50. So, you know, again, his story is unusual because he was so young, but it just shows the value of trying to catch this early, if there are any symptoms that you're having, you don't think colon cancer causing stomach cramps or unusual G.I. symptoms. But, you know, if it's persistent, you got to get it checked out.

[08:20:03]

CAMEROTA: Really a good reminder. Sanjay Gupta, thank you very much. Nice to talk to you.

GUPTA: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: OK. Back to politics, how does the all-important voting bloc of white suburban women, how do they feel today about President Trump and racial tensions?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's no way this is a black/white thing. No way.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, it is.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm sorry you feel that way, but you're wrong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: We'll bring you our latest pulse of the people, next.

BERMAN: But, first, murals wearing masks in this week's "Impact Your World."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're not seeing digital cues of a pandemic. Turning the murals that people have been looking at for the last few years into a statement saying, hey, put on your mask and stop the infection. It's just another form of visual messaging, and I feel like it's an underused tool.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Big Facts Small Acts is 100 percent volunteer campaign. We have a series of murals across the city being outfitted with vinyl masks, and they're vinyl because actually painting over various murals because the idea is, this is not permanent. We're disproportionately black and brown people being impacted by this disease. We wanted to target people who are hourly workers, essential workers, people who we knew had to be out and about.

We also put out about a hundred masks in the community. Our hashtag is #BigFactsSmallActs. And anything that you see that we put from our yard signs to our murals, to our promotional videos, how that hashtag which then drive back to either our webpage or social media challenge. So that people can find those tips on how to stay safe and keep others safe.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) we're going to be all right. It's a song from Kendrick Lamar. It's true, like we're going on get through this.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:26:15]

CAMEROTA: We are 63 days away from the election. So we wanted to check in with the all-important voting bloc of suburban white women in battleground states. The women you're about to meet all voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Three of them, the three on the bottom row now regret that vote. All of them have very strong feelings about the racial tension in the country and President Trump's role in quelling it or stoking it.

Here's our latest polls of the people.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about Kenosha.

Lori, I want to start with you because you live in Wisconsin.

LORI MCCAMMON, VOTED FOR TRUMP IN 2016, VOTING FOR BIDEN IN NOVEMBER: I have no explanation for it. Being shot in the back to me is one of the worst things, because that means that you're retreating and to shoot seven times in the back -- I don't understand it. I don't understand -- and he was shackled to his bed -- his hospital bed and his children were in his car, there's no explanation for it other than if he were white that would not have happened.

L.A. KEY, VOTED FOR TRUMP IN 2016, VOTING FOR TRUMP IN NOVEMBER: OK, let's look at what really happened here. They had a warrant for his arrest, the police were looking for him the police tried to apprehend him peacefully, he fought with them.

JESSICA FREEMAN, VOTED FOR TRUMP IN 2016, VOTIGN FOR BIDEN IN NOVEMBER: Let me ask you something, had the boy be white would you feel that way sf.

KEY: Absolutely.

FREEMAN: I don't believe that. I don't believe that for one second.

KEY: Bless your heart. I'm sorry you don't believe that. I am no racist.

CAMEROTA: Jessica, who do you hold responsible now for the violence that we're seeing in Kenosha?

FREEMAN: I hold that at the highest level of government. Say something. Stop something. Admonish their behavior. Ahmaud Arbery was shot in the street in South Georgia, are you going to sit there and tell me that that's not a racial thing. He was hunted down and shot like an animal --

KEY: Is that the case for --

(CROSSTALK)

FREEMAN: And I'm done with that.

KEY: No, ma'am, not at all. We're talking about the case at hand.

CAMEROTA: But this in the past few months, there have been so many cases. And so, the violence we're seeing in Minneapolis or in Kenosha or Portland is not about any one case. It's about the feeling that black men get different treatment than white men.

Show of hands, how many of you like the idea of President Trump going to Kenosha?

OK, the top row likes the idea of him going to Kenosha.

How it will help Kenosha and the country for him to go there?

KEY: To go there as the president, as a unifying factor, to help unify the country.

FREEMAN: I'm going ask you a question, when he goes to Kenosha, is he going to go to unify the community or is he going to threaten to bring in the national guard? And his militia?

KEY: Well, my goodness, well, I will answer that. He'll go for number one unity and number two, if they can't get it under control and if he's asked, like he has been in other areas, yes, he'll bring them in.

MICHELLE MORROW, VOTED FOR TRUMP IN 2016, VOTING FOR TRUMP IN NOVEMBER: There's a double standard. Why doesn't he go in and stop this? Now, he says don't bring in National Guard. This is ridiculous. You can't have it both ways.

CAMEROTA: OK, fair, fair, let me let Jessica respond to that.

MORROW: And then you want him to say something.

FREEMAN: Pick a side of the fence. Either stay in your house and keep running your mouth, or unify the country. You don't get both. You don't get to go to Kenosha and you don't get it both ways.

(CROSSTALK)

MORROW: It's ridiculous.

FREEMAN: -- is false.

CAMEROTA: But on this, can you explain how -- since the violence is happening right now in cities since the social unrest is happening right now, how would re-electing President Trump.