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Trump Stands by Refusal to Commit to Peaceful Transition; CDC Projects Up to 23,000 More COVID-19 Deaths in U.S. By October 17; Twenty Three U.S. States Seeing Increase in Coronavirus Cases; Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Lie in State at U.S. Capitol. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired September 25, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:35]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A good Friday morning to you. It is quite a morning in this country. I'm Jim Sciutto.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Poppy Harlow.

Just moments from now, the trailblazing late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is set to make history again. Soon she will leave the Supreme Court for the final time and she will be taken to the U.S. Capitol rotunda. She will lie in state.

Remarkably, it makes her the first woman and the first Jewish person to receive such an honor. Considered the highest in the nation.

We will be bringing those ceremonies to you live. It's going to be a really meaningful morning and you'll see it all right here.

SCIUTTO: Yes, I think you want to witness it. We all do. Also this morning, and this is disturbing. President Trump is digging in, refusing remarkably to commit to a peaceful transition of power if he loses in November. And unrelenting in his mission, based on no evidence according to the FBI director, to sow doubt about the integrity of the election.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So we have to be very careful with the ballots. The ballots, that's a whole big scam. We want to make sure the election is honest and I'm not sure that it can be. I don't -- I don't know that it can be with this whole situation, unsolicited ballots. They're unsolicited. Millions being sent to everybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: I'm not sure the president says this could be a fair election. Well, despite the president's unfounded attacks on mail-in voting, requests for such ballots across the country are skyrocketing to unprecedented numbers in the midst of the pandemic. According to a CNN survey of election offices in 42 states and the

District of Columbia, 28 million ballots have already been requested, another 43 million are set to be automatically mailed to voters. More than half a million ballots have already been cast in just 12 states reporting. The voting has already begun. You can say election day has already begun in this country.

Let's begin with CNN's Kristen Holmes in Washington for more on these record-breaking numbers.

This of course taking place during a pandemic here. Do we have any sense of how this is split among the parties?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We do. And I'm going to break that down in one second but I do want to really give some context here, Jim, on just how extraordinary these numbers are. For example, in North Carolina, one million absentee ballots have been requested as of now.

At this point in 2016, that number was 85,000. In Pennsylvania, the number of absentee ballots and ballots that have been requested is eight times the number of people who even voted pre-election back in 2016.

And of course, as you say, there are some party discrepancies here. I want to pull up here. This is in the key swing states, and you see here that 1.3 million more ballots have been requested by Democrats than Republicans. But there is a very important caveat here. And that caveat is that this is not that surprising. We know from all of our data, all of our polling that Republicans and particularly President Trump's supporters they prefer to vote in person on election day. So that number could be made up here. So, again, not that surprising.

The other thing that I really want to point out here because it's important is that just because we're seeing all of these ballot requests doesn't mean that they're all going to be mailed in or all sent in. This is not an indication of that. What this is an indication of is the enormous amount of interest in this election.

SCIUTTO: No question. So there's another effort under way and this in state legislatures who have enormous power under the Constitution, right, to validate the vote. Republicans in key states, they're taking their own steps to threaten the -- threaten to undermine the integrity. Tell us what those are so people understand.

HOLMES: Yes, it's not even just state legislatures, it's Republican officials across the country, and we found that it falls into two categories, sometimes both. One of two categories. Cast doubt on election integrity which we've heard President Trump do time and time again, or two, make it more difficult for voters to vote and for states to actually count the ballots.

So let's jump right in with what we saw yesterday in Pennsylvania when the Justice Department, the U.S. Justice Department announced it had the investigation into, quote, "potential issues" with a small number of ballots. This is incredibly important because it gives you a preview here of the Justice Department possibly being dragged in more than just in this case to prove election fraud in some cases.

Now, also in Pennsylvania there was a report that a Republican state official suggested the state legislature, which is also a majority Republican, could appoint electors to determine who won the election in the state instead of going with the state's popular vote if results took too long to be counted. So clearly, casting doubt there just on the power of the vote.

[09:05:18]

Now, in North Carolina, and this gets a little bit detailed so bear with me. Two Republican members of the state board of elections abruptly resigned over a settlement to allow voters to fix absentee ballots with missing information. Just to give you some context here, this settlement was reached with these board members. They agreed to it with the Democratic attorney general.

Now they are saying it undermines the state's absentee ballot. It undermines it to allow people to fix their ballots. And now the lieutenant governor, also a Republican, is asking the Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate this.

Now let's take a look at Florida. And this is the last one. There's a little bit of nuance here, too. The Republican state attorney general is requesting an FBI investigation into Michael Bloomberg's efforts to reinstate the voting rights of felons by paying their fees.

President Trump has said that this is a felony. There's no indication that this is illegal in any way. And just to give the context here, in Florida, if you are a felon you are eligible to vote but only if you have paid up all of your debts like restitution and court fees. Bloomberg is trying to help do that to get more felons able to vote.

SCIUTTO: Yes. A large majority of Florida voters by referendum granted felons the right to vote again.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: And then there was a subsequent law passed that required them to pay fees before they exercise that right.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Kristen Holmes, listen, thanks so much.

I mean, so much of this is going on, folks, and we're going to keep you aware of it because it gets down to, will your vote be counted?

Let's keep in mind that the president's own director of the FBI appointed by him said there is no evidence of widespread mail-in voting fraud. He said this just yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI DIRECTOR: Now, we have not seen historically any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election. Whether it's by mail or otherwise.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Those are critical words from Wray and don't forget them. This morning, though, the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, criticized him and his comments saying, quote, "Perhaps he needs to get involved on the ground and he would change his testimony on Capitol Hill." Not so sure about that.

Let's bring in our White House correspondent John Harwood and our chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Good morning to you both. I'm not holding my breath for Wray to change his testimony because he's testifying to the fact that there is no widespread evidence of voter fraud, but the fact, John Harwood, that even after senators like Ben Sasse responded to the president saying, you know, the president says crazy stuff, the Senate still felt the need to pass a resolution by unanimous consent re-affirming the commitment to orderly and peaceful transfer of power.

How significant is that, that they felt the need to do that?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It's very significant. It shows how far President Trump went beyond the bounds. It is true that the president says crazy stuff all the time. Most of the things the president says are not true.

And so people in the political world have to decide when to react to them. Republicans try to avoid reacting as much as possible to avoid endangering their own political futures, but this was a case where it was so egregious and they were getting so many questions about it they felt they couldn't avoid it.

I think on the set-up it's important to say that Christopher Wray was telling the truth, but everyone who has any knowledge of the facts knows it's the truth. It's why Ben Ginsberg, the leading Republican election lawyer, has sort of defected from his side this year and said my party has been looking for election fraud on a broad scale for decades and we have not found it because it does not exist.

The White House is attacking Christopher Wray because he is telling the truth, because the truth in this case is not Donald Trump's friend. The public opinion is not Donald Trump's friend and all the signs that we have about the -- where the American people are going in the election is that the majority of the American people are not Donald Trump's friend.

SCIUTTO: Let's be straightforward, Jeffrey Toobin, about what's happening here. Right? Because there is an effort by the president and others to invalidate -- I mean, the president said it in so many words the other day about getting rid of ballots that don't arrive by -- really aren't counted by November 3rd.

Now, just for folks at home, we should note in most elections, ballots come in -- military ballots come in sometimes days after and are counted after the election. But I want to play some words, Jeffrey Toobin, from the president's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, this morning and just ask if the way he said it is significant. Have a listen and I want to get your reaction.

[09:10:10]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK MEADOWS, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: Hopefully, we'll be able to make sure that this election goes off like every other election and that the winner on November 3rd will certainly be the new president sworn in on January 20th.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Jeffrey Toobin, the winner on November 3rd.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Right.

SCIUTTO: Notable qualifier there?

TOOBIN: Yes. That's a big tell, what he said, because on November 3rd, in most states, not in every state, but in most states, all we will know is the results of the people who voted in person on that day. We will not know in many states all of the mail-in ballots because it will take much more time, several days or perhaps even longer, to count them.

You know, as you were discussing earlier in the program, mail-in ballots favor the Democrats enormously. This is what's known -- this is a phrase I think we're going to be hearing a lot over the next 40 plus days, the blue shift. There is a shift in outcomes over time as mail-in votes get counted. But another phrase you may hear is the red mirage. The red mirage is what you hear on election night because the mail-in votes haven't been counted.

Republicans are favored on election day. The later votes favor Democrats. What Mark Meadows was saying is let's stop the count in effect on election day during the red mirage. That's a big controversy to keep an eye on as we think about, you know, how the votes are going to actually be counted.

SCIUTTO: And therefore disenfranchise those voters, right? Which include, we should note, soldiers deployed overseas.

TOOBIN: And as we've heard millions upon millions more people than in the past because people don't want to risk their health by voting in person. So we're going to have many more mail-in votes than we have in the past including states like Nevada and New Jersey that are having in effect all mail-in votes which they've never had before.

HARLOW: Jeffrey, help us connect the dots here because the president has repeatedly said in the last few days that he needs a full bench on the Supreme Court in case the election ends up there. Help us connect the dots, a rush for a nomination, a rush for confirmation, the president's words and, you know, trying to illegitimize the election. TOOBIN: You know, I was thinking about that as John was saying, well,

the -- you know, the public is against Trump. The polls are against Trump. What's not necessarily against Trump are the courts. That he has filled the courts with a lot of very conservative Republicans. He is looking to confirm his nominee to the Supreme Court which could give him a 6-3 conservative advantage in the Supreme Court.

So, you know, if the vote count turns out to be not to the president's liking, it is entirely possible that there could be legal challenges and as in 2000, they could wind up in the Supreme Court. And the president wants a supporter there, wants a third nominee -- a third justice that he appointed there.

So, you know, connecting the dots is very important because it's not just that he -- that the president wants a president -- a justice who will vote to overturn "Roe v Wade," who will vote to end Obamacare. It was who will vote to uphold his position in the election.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Listen there's precedent here. Right? We just got to go back 20 years.

Jeffrey Toobin, John Harwood, thanks to both of you. I have a sense we'll be speaking to you on this issue more than once.

TOOBIN: Maybe more than once.

SCIUTTO: In the coming days and weeks.

Still to come this hour, as the United States approaches seven million coronavirus infections, Dr. Anthony Fauci says we have never left the first wave of the outbreak. What that could mean heading into this fall.

HARLOW: We are also watching Capitol Hill this morning where moments from now, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will lie in state in the Capitol rotunda, becoming the first woman ever to do so. A special ceremony to honor her life will take place there. You'll see it live right here. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

SCIUTTO: Well, this morning, nearly half of the U.S. is trending in the wrong direction on coronavirus. States you see there in red, orange, experiencing a rise in new coronavirus infections. This as the CDC now projects up to 23,000 more Americans could die from the virus in the next three weeks. That's more than a 1,000 per day.

HARLOW: Let's go to our Lucy Kafanov, she joins us in Denver where interestingly, there has been an outbreak at a university that has caused this jump in cases. LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Before I get to

Denver, I mean, the numbers nationwide are --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

KAFANOV: Extremely dire at the moment. We're averaging 43,000 new cases per day. That's up 23 percent over the last two weeks. Most of those increases are in the Midwestern states as Jim points out, and here in Colorado, Governor Jared Polis has sort of described the outbreak as being a significant outbreak among college-aged people.

And the epicenter of the crisis here in Colorado at least is the county of Boulder. Now, Boulder is the home to a number of universities including the University of Colorado Boulder, that school has seen a significant outbreak since they opened doors for classes in August 24th. Yesterday, county officials actually banned gatherings of any size for 18 to 22-year-olds to try to curb the spread of the virus.

[09:20:00]

They tried a number of things in the past like taking classes online, getting people to voluntarily stay at home, but you know, kids kept gathering, and so they had to put out these more stringent measures including this ban on gatherings for at least the next few weeks. Meanwhile, the CDC nationwide is now predicting up to 20 -- pardon me, 226,000 deaths by October 17th.

That number is just hard to fathom. It's incredibly big. And you know, Dr. Anthony Fauci was asked, are we in for a second wave with all of these numbers going up, with the numbers trending in the wrong direction? And he actually said, we're still in the first wave. You need to see numbers go down in order to get out of the first wave and we simply haven't seen that.

Another thing that top health officials are warning that even if we do get a vaccine this year, and it's not likely to come until the end of the year, masks, social distancing, that's going to be so important for the months ahead until we get that going.

HARLOW: Lucy Kafanov in Denver, thank you for that reporting. With us now is Dr. Leana Wen; emergency room physician at George Washington University and also formerly the health commissioner for the city of Baltimore. Good morning, doctor, and let's begin with Lucy's reporting, OK. So Dr. Fauci says we're not out of the first wave, Europe got out of the first wave, is now living through what appears to be potentially detrimental second wave. Is that foreshadowing what is to come here?

LEANA WEN, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: You're right, Poppy. We never got over the first wave. We are in that first wave still, and that unlike Europe, unlike Asian countries, we are starting off this Fall-Winter with a very high level of infection. So think back to May when we had reopening after Memorial Day. We were at about 20,000 new infections every day, and then we jumped to 60,000, 70,000. Health care systems were overwhelmed at that point in certain parts of

the country. Now, we're starting off at 40,000 new infections. So, if we have a doubling, if we have a tripling, we could be over a 100,000 new infections every day coming into Fall or Winter when we have the convergence of quarantine fatigue, people being indoors, restrictions being lifted, students, kids being in school again.

And we also don't have sufficient testing to be able to sort out what's the flu, what are just normal cold viruses, what are other respiratory pathogens and what's COVID-19? And so, I really worry about what's ahead and I think it's a reminder to all of us, we have to keep on wearing masks, keep on physical distancing, avoid indoor gatherings as much as we can, certainly, avoiding crowds, and also get a flu shot now before the end of October is the best time to do that.

SCIUTTO: Dr. Wen, so data from Europe shows rising infections, but a falling death rate which officials there attribute to some extent to the fact that many of the new infections are among young people who generally experience a lower death rate, but also hospitals are getting better treating these infections, right? I just wonder, are we here in the U.S. seeing a similar thing, rising infections? I mean, because the death rate has stayed fairly consistent, seems to be rising again above a thousand a day.

WEN: That's right, we are getting better at testing, in particular testing of asymptomatic individuals. And so, if that's the case, then your denominator number, the total number of infections that you're detecting is going to be increasing and while the death rate is staying fairly stable. And so I think this is a good thing, but we should not though overlook what it means when young people are infected.

The CDC reports are now showing that it's young people who are driving this most recent increase in the number of infections, but about one to two weeks after young people are infected, we also see the infection rate among older individuals rapidly rise as well. Because what starts with the young does not stay in the young.

HARLOW: Dr. Wen, I'm really worried about the fact that there's not a single vaccine trial in this country for COVID-19 being done on children. There's one AstraZeneca, one in Europe, but not in the U.S. So, you know, does that mean that our kids are just going to get whatever the FDA approves for adults, and if that's true, is that safe or is it not safe to give a vaccine to our kids until there is a completed trial on children?

WEN: So children are not little adults. Kids' bodies are different. Their immune systems are different. And I don't think any of us will think it's responsible to give kids a vaccine, to millions of kids unless we fully test it in children as well.

But then there's the other side of it, it's hard to do testing in children. We probably would want to wait until there's safety data at least for adults before then testing it on children. And I think that's what many of these vaccine manufacturers are waiting for. They want some type of safety data first. And it -- SCIUTTO: Yes --

WEN: Is true that by the time that we get children vaccinated, it may not be until Fall of 2021. And so, we really need to be living with COVID-19 and thinking about other ways for us to get our kids back to school safely including with widespread testing.

[09:25:00]

HARLOW: So just to be clear there --

SCIUTTO: So --

HARLOW: You're saying that our kids are not going to get this vaccine when we get it, right? Like they're going to wait --

WEN: Correct --

HARLOW: Maybe six more months --

WEN: Correct.

HARLOW: OK, I didn't know that, yes, OK --

WEN: Correct. Yes, I mean, because the vaccine trials are not currently being done on children -- and we're not going to be vaccinating millions of kids until that safety has been proven absolutely. I mean, I know that for me, for my kids, I would have had much higher barrier, a much higher bar for vaccinating them than for me --

HARLOW: Yes, of course --

WEN: And my husband to be getting the vaccine.

SCIUTTO: That's a big deal, right? Because a lot of families, Poppy, are waiting for a vaccine --

HARLOW: Yes --

SCIUTTO: Not only for themselves, but their families so kids could go back to school, travel, et cetera. Notable. We'll stay on top of it, Dr. Leana Wen, thanks very much.

WEN: Thank you --

SCIUTTO: Well, immigrants in U.S. custody faced widespread failures just debilitating failures in medical care including some that led to death. This according to a new congressional investigation.

HARLOW: Let's go to our justice correspondent Jessica Schneider, she joins us now. I mean, Jess, I was reading this last night, and my jaw was on the floor. I mean, we know about what the treatment has been, but the fact that the lack of medical care has actually resulted in deaths.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It has, Poppy. You know, this congressional investigation really painting a grim picture here about the care that these immigrants in U.S. custody are facing. Really facing widespread failures in medical care, and also, like you said, some of these resulting in deaths. Now, this was an investigation that was done by the House Oversight Committee.

They launched this investigation because they found that the Trump administration was increasingly using for-profit facilities, in fact, they looked at two contractors that provide more than 80 percent of the care here. So, here's what the report found. It found that detainees often do not receive critical treatment or they face delays, plus, many of these for-profit facilities lack sufficient medical staff and failed to provide care for chronic conditions.

Now, senior DHS official Ken Cuccinelli, he has called these findings appalling. He said that he will be appointing an outside group to really look into this. Now, this is the response though we got from the ICE director of Public Affairs.

They seemed to be critical. So this is what they said. That the agency is fully committed to the health and safety of those in our care, and will review the committee's report. However, it is clear that this one-sided review of our facilities was done to tarnish our agency's reputation as opposed to actually reviewing the care detainees received while in our custody.

But I'll tell you, Jim and Poppy, this is not the first time that ICE has come under fire. It was just last year that the DHS Inspector General found some widespread issues at four ICE facilities including dilapidated bathrooms, spoiled food. And then it was just in the past few weeks that a whistleblower at an ICE facility in Georgia talked about a high rate of hysterectomies as well as medical neglect. And Jim and Poppy --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

SCHNEIDER: Finally, you know, this report says that because of the coronavirus pandemic, the situation is only getting worse at these facilities. Guys?

HARLOW: Wow --

SCIUTTO: Jessica Schneider, thanks very much. Well, here's a moment we promised to bring you, and it's happening shortly. This of course, the steps of the Supreme Court where until this morning, the body of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was lying in state, and now she's taken a short trip just across the street to the capitol building.

That is our Ariane de Vogue there. She will make history one more time today. She's made history so many times as the first woman to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol. A rare honor afforded so few Americans. Rosa Parks was the first woman to lie in honor, that for a civilian. But to lie in state is for former government employees. She's also the first woman of the Jewish faith. The first person of the Jewish faith to receive that honor.

You can see there, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer there preparing to receive her as her hearse arrives. Our Suzanne Malveaux I should note is at the capitol witnessing as this takes place. Suzanne, tell us what you're seeing now.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're actually seeing the hearse approach the U.S. Capitol. We're on the east side here. This is where it will be received. We expect to see Ginsburg's family emerge as well from the motorcade.

Her son, her daughter, her four grandchildren, two step-grandchildren and a great grandchild as part of that motorcade, and of course as you know, Jim, this is a ceremony that is timed to the exact minute in terms of how they will pay tribute, and it is a historic one. She is making history today as the first woman to lie in state as well as the first Jewish person to lie in state. And she's also the second justice to lie in state as well.

It was President William Taft who was first president before becoming chief justice who had that honor. We are just seeing the motorcade now as well as the hearse pulling up here to the capitol as they move slowly along the procession here.