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New Day
A Death Toll Approaches 200,000, Trump Claims Virus 'Affects Virtually Nobody'; Graham: Republicans Have Enough Votes to Confirm Trump Nominee. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired September 22, 2020 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The U.S. approaches another grim milestone: 200,000 lives lost to coronavirus.
[05:59:27]
DR. PETER HOTEZ, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SCHOOL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: We may be in for a very apocalyptic fall.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We may be at 300,000 by New Year's. This is not necessary. This is not deaths that need to happen.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: President Trump says he'll announce his pick to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court by the end of the week.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator Chuck Grassley, as well as Senator Cory Gardner, both coming out saying they will support moving forward on a vote on a potential nominee.
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): They all set this new rule. When it's an election year and especially when it's this close, you let the people decide.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Tuesday, September 22. It's 6 a.m. here in New York, and it's an almost unimaginable day in U.S. history. This is the day we will pass 200,000 deaths from coronavirus. Two hundred thousand mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, lives cut short, not just by the virus, but by the U.S. response.
This country has suffered more death in the pandemic than the European Union and the entire continents of Asia and Africa: 200,000 in just 227 days. Two hundred thousand. Or, as President Trump referred to them overnight, nobody.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Now we know it. It affects elderly people. Elderly people with heart problems and other problems. If they have other problems, that's what it really affects, that's it. You know, in some states, thousands of people, nobody young, below the age of 18, like nobody. It affects virtually nobody. It's -- it's an amazing thing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Nobody. Two hundred thousand is the opposite of virtually nobody. Two hundred thousand is the opposite of amazing.
Even if you take the most charitable interpretation of his word salad, that it has little impact beyond the elderly -- which is a lie, by the way -- the elderly are not nobody. How can you dismiss or minimize their deaths? Except for all the dead grandmothers and grandfathers and the parents, aside from them, it's great? That's victory?
Overnight, Dr. Anthony Fauci made clear this is something to mourn, not celebrate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We have in this country now, you know, close to 200,000 deaths. We have 6 million-plus infections. You can't look at that and say, That's terrific.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: But that is a direct contrast to the president, for whom 200,000 dead appears to be a badge of honor.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP (via phone): We've done a phenomenal job, not just a good job, a phenomenal job.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. So more on that throughout the program.
We also have new developments in the Supreme Court vacancy. Senator Lindsey Graham, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, now says the Republicans have the votes to confirm President Trump's nominee to fill Justice Ginsburg's seat before the election and, strangely, before they know who the nominee is.
Yesterday, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a top contender, met with the president at the White House.
Meanwhile, 20 million Americans could be on the verge of losing their healthcare during a pandemic.
So let's begin with CNN's Brynn Gingras on the pandemic's huge death toll -- Brynn.
BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, good morning.
From day one, he's downplayed this pandemic, and he remains steadfast, the president, that he's done, as you just heard, a phenomenal job in handling this crises, even as we're still in it.
This as we're seeing cases go up in nearly half the states in this country. The infection rate is also going up. And we are getting, inching closer to that grim milestone of 200,000 lives, 200,000 lives lost due to this pandemic.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GINGRAS (voice-over): As the United States approaches another grim milestone, President Trump continued to downplay the pandemic's impact, saying that in some areas --
TRUMP: It affects virtually nobody. It's -- it's an amazing thing.
GINGRAS: But the coronavirus has killed nearly 200,000 people in the U.S.
FAUCI: The numbers are telling. We have in this country now, you know, close to 200,000 deaths. We have 6 million plus infections. You can't look at that and say, That's terrific.
GINGRAS: Trump once again claiming without proof that the pandemic will soon be over.
TRUMP: By the way, we're rounding the corner, in any event. But we're going to have a vaccine very soon.
GINGRAS: In Wisconsin, Joe Biden urging Americans to avoid becoming numb to the staggering toll of the pandemic.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: You can't lose the ability to feel the sorrow and the loss and the anger for so many lives lost. You can't let the numbers become statistics and background noise.
GINGRAS: The Democratic nominee also blaming Trump for mishandling the crises.
BIDEN: He froze. He failed to act. He panicked. And America has paid the worst price of any nation in the world.
GINGRAS: This morning, at least 24 states are seeing an increase in new cases over the past week.
DR. CELINE GOUNDER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: After previous holiday weekends, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, now Labor Day, we have seen increases in cases.
And in addition to that, over the last several weeks, students have been returning to college and university campuses. And those have also become super-spreader settings. GINGRAS: Meanwhile, the CDC added, and then reversed, new information
from its website, saying the coronavirus could be spread, quote, "through respiratory droplets or small particles, such as those in aerosols, produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, sings, talks, or breathes." The agency claiming the information was a draft posted in error.
[06:95:17:]
DR. RICHARD BESSER, FORMER CDC DIRECTOR: It feeds into the issue of trust. I worry about people questioning great science that CDC puts out, because they're not sure what's great science and what -- what has the fingerprints of -- of politics all over it.
GINGRAS: Dr. Anthony Fauci stressing how important it is to keep guidance like wearing masks out of politics.
FAUCI: Wearing a mask or not is a political statement. And that's really very unfortunate. Totally unfortunate, because this is a purely public health issue.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GINGRAS: And health experts are trying to decipher if the surge in cases that we're seeing, is that the fallout from the holidays, from the summer, people going back to school, or this ahead of the flu and fall season?
Regardless, the CDC has put out guidance for the upcoming holidays. First up, of course, Alisyn, is Halloween. The CDC essentially says kids should avoid going door-to-door trick-or-treating and remind them that a scary mask or a costume mask is not a substitute for a cloth mask -- Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: OK, Brynn, thank you very much for all of that.
Now to the pallet to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Supreme Court seat. The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lindsey Graham, says the Republicans have the votes to confirm a nominee before the November election.
CNN's Joe Johns is live at the White House with more. What's the latest, Joe?
JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.
This is moving very quickly. It was only Friday when Justice Ginsburg died. We still do not have the name of a replacement from the president of the United States, but Senate Republicans do appear to be lining up the votes in order to move very quickly on this issue.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, Lindsey Graham, the chairman of that committee, says he does have the votes if they choose to go there before election day.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JOHNS (voice-over): With just six weeks to go until election day, the battle over filling Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Supreme Court seat is intensifying. President Trump, whose campaign could benefit from a swift confirmation, says he will announce his nominee by the end of this week, after memorial services for Ginsburg have concluded.
TRUMP: Well, I'd much rather have a vote before the election, because there's a lot of work to be done. And I'd much rather have it -- we have plenty of time to do it. I mean, there's really a lot of time. I'm just doing my Constitutional obligation. I have an obligation to do this. So I would rather see it before the election.
JOHNS: Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, campaigning in Wisconsin on Monday, insisting the winner of the election should fill the vacancy.
BIDEN: We're in the middle of an election. By the time that vote comes up, if it comes up, it will have been close to 40 percent of the people that have already voted. It's a violation of the spirit of the Constitution to suggest that he should not wait for the outcome of the election.
JOHNS: Trump says there are five women on the short list. And a source tells CNN that among those thought to be in the running, one apparent frontrunner, Amy Coney Barrett, met with President Trump at the White House on Monday.
Most Republican senators, led my Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, falling in line and saying they want to proceed with a confirmation vote.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): There's even more overwhelming precedent behind the fact that this Senate will vote on this nomination this year.
JOHNS: But it was McConnell himself who blocked a Senate vote on President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland before the last presidential election.
KLOBUCHAR: It was in 2016 that they all set this new rule, the rules of the game, and that rule is, when it's an election year, and especially when it's this close, you let the people decide.
JOHNS: Two more Republican senators, Cory Gardner and Chuck Grassley, are now both saying they're comfortable with proceeding with a vote, despite voicing a different opinion previously. Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham telling his Democratic colleagues in a letter he supports a quick nomination process, adding, "I am certain if the shoe were on the other foot, you would do the same," a blatant 180 degrees from what he said in 2016.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): I want you to use my words against me. If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say, Lindsey Graham said, let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
JOHNS: Justice Ginsburg is expected to lie in repose at the top of the Supreme Court building's steps on Wednesday and Thursday. Then on Friday, she's expected to lie in state in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol, a high honor for the Supreme Court justice. She'll be the first woman to lie in state at the Capitol -- John.
BERMAN: Historic, to say the least. Joe Johns for us at the White House. Joe, thank you very much.
[06:10:04]
Developing overnight, Tropical Storm Beta causing major flooding in Houston after making landfall overnight. Heavy rain left cars submerged. You can see people wading through the waist-high water.
Tropical Storm Beta is forecast to bring heavy rain and thunderstorms along the Texas and Louisiana coastline today and tomorrow.
So on the day the U.S. will cross 200,000 dead from coronavirus, new guidance from the CDC on what should happen for Halloween. The guidance is out. We'll see if they're forced to reverse it now. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAMEROTA: This morning, the U.S. will reach the horrible milestone of 200,000 Americans killed by coronavirus. Two hundred thousand people across all races and all ages, but President Trump did not recognize that loss at his rally last night. Instead, he said it affects, quote, "virtually nobody."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[06:15:03]
TRUMP: Now we know it -- it affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems and other problems, if they have other problems. That's what it really affects. That's it. You know, in some states, thousands of people, nobody young. Below the age of 18, like nobody. It affects virtually nobody. It's -- it's an amazing thing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Joining us now, CNN political correspondent Abby Phillip and CNN political commentator Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. He's an epidemiologist and public health expert.
Dr. El-Sayed, it does affect people without underlying conditions. It does affect young people. It does affect family members and people that we love. How can President Trump say -- I mean, particularly in light of what we now know in the Bob Woodward tapes of what he knew, how can he say it affects virtually nobody?
DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, this is in line with his politicization of this pandemic from the very beginning. We're talking about a disease, as you rightly noted, that killed
200,000 of our country people, sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons. These people are dead. They've left a hole in the hearts of their families and the people that they leave behind. To say that this disease doesn't affect anyone, virtually nobody, I think, is just in keeping with that politicization. That's what he wishes; that's what he wants.
And if you're a president who failed to act in the midst of the worst pandemic in over 100 years, you may just tell yourself that fib, but it doesn't make it true. And unfortunately, too many families bore witness to just how badly it affected their loved ones.
BERMAN: Imagine having a mother or a father who died from coronavirus, or a grandmother or grandfather, or a son or a daughter, and being told they're nobody. You know, 200,000 people are dead as of today.
What about the 7 million people who have been infected by this virus? Many of whom will have conditions, Abby, that will last, we don't know how long? How can they feel this morning, being told they're nobody?
And before you answer that question, it's almost as if Dr. Anthony Fauci anticipated this last night, because he did an interview with Trevor Noah -- we played it once, but let's play it again -- where he makes clear, this is just bad. Listen. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FAUCI: What have, in this country, now you know, close to 200,000 deaths. We have 6 million-plus infections. You can't look at that and say, That's terrific.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Abby.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean, there's no other way to look at this other than as a national tragedy. And the president is having a rally as if it's not happening and telling his supporters that they don't have to worry about it.
And I think it's really -- it really encapsulates why we are where we are today, which is that this is a president who is flailing to convince the American public that he has this situation under control. And until he starts viewing this from the realm of reality, that's going to continue to be the case.
There's no question that 200,000 people did not have to die over the last, you know, five or six months. And the idea that President Trump would grade himself with an "A"-plus, you know, we don't have to wonder how this is going to play. It is obvious.
This has been the most traumatic thing to impact most Americans' lives in a very, very long time. I don't think that we have to stretch ourselves to understand that they're not going to believe the president when he says, We did an exceptional, fantastic job with the coronavirus. They know better, because they're experiencing something that is completely different from that.
CAMEROTA: Abby, one more political point on this. If President Trump were critiquing this of any other leader and his job of trying to control this virus, he would say he choked. He choked like a dog. That would be President Trump's lingo.
PHILLIP: And he says that about President Obama, when we -- he talks about the H1N1 virus, which continues to perplex me, that he -- he blames Obama for not handling H1N1 well, when tens of thousands more people have died from the coronavirus in a shorter period of time.
CAMEROTA: So Joe Biden used his version of that yesterday in language that, you know, I think is stronger than we sometimes hear from Joe Biden. Here it is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: Trump panicked. The virus was too big for him. All of his life, Donald Trump has been bailed out of any problem he faced. With this crisis, a real crisis, a crises that required serious presidential leadership, he just wasn't up to it. He froze. He failed to act. He panicked. And America has paid the worst price of any nation in the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: What do you hear there, Abby?
PHILLIP: He's using the president's words against him. I mean, this is clearly Biden taking the message that President Trump actually reiterates regularly on a number of different topics.
[06:20:05]
Biden even talked about, you know, Trump describing, you know, fallen soldiers and those who are captured in war as losers. And he sort of tied these things in.
Biden is using the president's own kind of rhetoric against him in this situation as part of a strategy to say to the American people that when Trump had the opportunity to act, when he had the opportunity to be a leader in the situation, he didn't.
You know, I think it's a -- it's a -- it's a strategy that has been used against President Trump in the past, but I don't think we've ever seen President Trump give so much ammunition to his opposition at such a critical time. I mean, you see it every single day, and it's astounding.
BERMAN: So Dr. El Sayed, the CDC has new guidance on Halloween, right, suggesting that kids really should think twice about going to trick- or-treat, that costumes aren't masks, that parties are a bad idea. It begs the question: will they be forced to change that now?
Why am I asking? Because we've seen this spate of CDC walk-backs over the last several months. The most recent is over the weekend, where they posted new guidance, saying that coronavirus is airborne and aerosolized. Then they walked it back.
Now, they said that was some kind of a clerical error, where it was posted before it was ready, but it's hard to know at this point. It's hard to believe. Because they've been forced to walk back guidance on social distancing in schools. They were forced to walk back guidance on everyone being tested. At first, they said everyone should be tested, even if they're asymptomatic. And then they said, no, asymptomatic people don't need to be tested. Then they changed that.
So what do we believe, and how much faith at this point can we put in all this?
EL-SAYED: Stepping back, the CDC used to be one of America's most trusted institutions. And that was because you know that they were leading with the science. It didn't matter what was happening in Washington, D.C. In fact, the CDC is physically in Atlanta. They were looking at the science and making recommendations to the American people that had nothing to do with politics and had everything to do with protecting those people's lives and their families.
What we're seeing now, though, is the politicization of the CDC. Literally, Washington, D.C., reaching into Atlanta, changing what the CDC is saying, so as to borrow their name and likeness and throw away all the substance that has led it to be so trusted.
And it's sad now, because you have to second-guess everything that you see coming out of the CDC, because you don't know if that is what the CDC scientists who have dedicated their lives to protecting us are saying, or some political hack in Washington, D.C., wants them to say.
And to see that happen over and over, in the midst of the worst pandemic in over a century, it is really heartbreaking for the institution, but really dangerous for the American people. And we need to know that that CDC is going to be given the kind of substance and objectivity that has made it a hallmark of American public health and, frankly, the world's public health.
CAMEROTA: Dr. El-Sayed, Abby Phillip, thank you both very much.
EL-SAYED: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: Senator Lindsey Graham says Republicans have the votes to confirm President Trump's Supreme Court nominee before the election. So is this a done deal? Why go through the process? We discuss, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:27:31]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRAHAM: The nominee is going to be supported by every Republican in the Judiciary Committee, and we've got the votes to confirm the judge, the justice, on the floor of the Senate before the election; and that's what's coming.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: That's Senator Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who will run the hearings to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Abby Phillip and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed with us.
And Abby, he's right on the votes, right? Cory Gardner from Colorado came out overnight. Chuck Grassley came out overnight, saying that they support the confirmation process. They will support, or they will vote on whoever the president picks.
At this point, what open question does that leave, aside from the fact that, I think, as Alisyn correctly points out, Lindsey Graham basically just said, the Republicans are going to approve whoever the president puts up without even knowing who it is.
CAMEROTA: I mean, spare us the confirmation hearing at that point. If you're going to rubber-stamp it --
PHILLIP: Yes.
CAMEROTA: -- then let's just do that today. You know, why go through the confirmation hearing?
BERMAN: But aside from that, though, are there any open questions at this point about the process?
PHILLIP: Well, first of all, they would approve a Supreme Court nominee today if they could. I mean, I definitely think that that's where Republicans are.
And in terms of the open question, I do think it's a question of timing. Do they do it before the election, or do they do it after? I think that the vote situation gives McConnell both options. It gets maybe a little bit more tricky, because of that Arizona special election after the election, but ultimately, they have the votes to push this through.
And I think it's a question of, do they have the time to do it in the -- you know, I think we're roughly 40-something days before the election at this point? Or do they want to allow their members to have time, especially the ones who are in tough races, to go back to their states and campaign?
For some of these, you know, embattled Senate Republicans, this is going to be an important vote. It's going to be a boon for their base. But for others, you know, they have tight races. And they want to just survive by not really shaking the boat. And perhaps, a vote after the election would allow them to do that.
CAMEROTA: Dr. El-Sayed, you know, obviously, we talk a lot about the politics of this, the naked hypocrisy, the ever-shifting, you know, principles of it. But you're focused, of course, on the healthcare impact that this will have. And chances are that, if the Republicans get their way, very soon, 20
million people who rely on the Affordable Care Act will be thrown off their health insurance.
EL-SAYED: It really is devastating. I was the health director in the city of Detroit, and in that city, 50 percent.
