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States Report Increase in New Cases; Americans Pay more Taxes than Trump; Pelosi Prepares House for Tie. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired September 28, 2020 - 06:30   ET

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

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[06:33:42]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Developing overnight, new warning signs about coronavirus cases in the country. Twenty-one states are seeing cases rise. Florida becomes the third state to surpass 700,000 cases, but at the same time, the governor there is lifting restrictions on all restaurants and businesses. In New York City, officials warn that cases are growing at an alarming rate in some neighborhoods.

CNN's Brynn Gingras is live in New York City where schools are set to open this week.

What's the situation, Brynn?

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, good morning.

Yes, and, remember, schools were canceled twice for this in-person reopening. So hopefully this happens again this week. And it comes at a time where this city is seeing a thousand new cases on Friday for the first time since June. So health officials have their eyes on this, especially in two boroughs, particularly, Brooklyn and Queens, where hospitalizations are up in three hospitals in those two boroughs. So health officials really not saying that they won't necessarily not bring back those openings, making sure that they can curb this little surge that they're seeing in New York City.

Well, like you said, it's just the opposite in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis has essentially said he will never shut down anything ever again. This as the state is seeing a 10 percent positivity rate.

[06:35:00]

So, of course, now we'll see in the next couple of weeks how all these openings sort of impact those numbers. And that's something that local health officials down there have been expressing, especially here to CNN.

And then across the country, the positive -- or 21 states, rather, are seeing cases go up 10 percent increase week-to-week. Eighteen states are holding steady at this point. But, of course, we are now moving into the colder months in most parts of this country.

John and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Brynn, thank you very much.

All right, joining us now is Dr. Peter Hotez. He's the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Dr. Hotez, great to see you, as always.

You know, obviously, these numbers fluctuate, but this morning feels different. How worried should we be about the spikes that we're seeing?

DR. PETER HOTEZ, DEAN, NATIONAL SCHOOL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE AT BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Yes, Alisyn, I'm really worried. You know, we've been talking for -- all during the summer that we're anticipating a big fall rise in part because people will be moving indoors in the colder climates. And sure enough now we are seeing a sharp increase up in the northern Midwest area, the Dakotas, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota. So that's already happening. So that's -- that's a real worry -- worrying -- worrying sign for me.

And then the fact that we are seeing now this in Missouri and Arkansas and Oklahoma, in the middle of the country. Then we just heard about the increase in New York. So all signs are point to -- pointing for me to something very ominous as we start to the fall.

And -- and there's one other reason why we have to be concerned. And it's not gotten a lot of attention, but it's been written about in a paper over the summer, in July from a group in Europe, and David Ruben's group at the policy lab at -- in Philadelphia, at Penn and Chop (ph) have been looking at this, that in the colder climates, not only can the cases go up, but the severity of the illness can go up and the mortality rate can go up.

If you remember, that horrible situation we faced in March and April, when we heard sirens day and night and the death rates were so high, that may have been linked to the fact that it was a colder time than in the summer when the cases were high but the mortality was not as high in the southern U.S. So that's something we're watching as well.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: One of the charts that I watch is hospitalizations. The seven-day moving average of daily hospitalizations as Scott Gottlieb, who used to run the FDA, was talking about this yesterday. You can see that the daily hospitalization rate had been dropping since July, when things got bad again. But now it leveled off at best and it looks like, Gottlieb is worried, Dr. Hotez, that it is beginning to rise again. And hospitalizations are a precursor for something much worse.

HOTEZ: Yes, you're absolutely right. And this, again, goes along with this concept of worsening severity of illness in the winter months -- in the fall and winter months. So none of the trends are going in the right direction. You could argue, OK, it's not really going down as much, maybe it's just leveling off, but it's clearly starting to go up in some parts of the country. And that, with the predictions and everything we know about this virus says to us that we better be ready for the fall. And that's why I get very upset when you hear the comments from the governor of Florida being very dismissive, saying he'll never do this and never do that. We can't be in that kind of a position. We have to let the science guide us, let the epidemiology guide us, and let the virus tell us what it's doing because -- because they're not going to follow political guidance.

CAMEROTA: Yes, I think that one graphic that we have that illustrates this is the positivity rate in New York versus Florida. So we can pop that up. And what you'll see is that New York's has been flat under 1 percent. And then Florida's is, obviously, much higher, bouncing around, up around 10 percent.

And yet, you know, DeSantis -- I mean I want to play what DeSantis said for everybody because I think that he's doing this thing where it's black and white. It's all or nothing. You know, there's no nuance in what his policy could be.

So let me play what he said on Friday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): Some people say, well, you can never do, you know, full -- what you want to do until there's a vaccine. Well, we don't know. Hopefully. But now people are saying, hey, even if there's a vaccine, it's still going to take another year before you can operate appropriately. And, you know, I don't think that's viable. I don't think that that is acceptable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Such a false choice, Dr. Hotez, that, well, you know, until -- for another year we're not going to be able to open. Nobody's saying that. They're saying, do it carefully the way New York is, but that's not how Governor DeSantis is doing it.

HOTEZ: That's right. And -- and people don't want to hear that. People are want to hear that their leaders are worried, they're concerned, they're looking after their safety and in this kind of ideological or political defiance around masks and opening and statements around -- false statements around herd immunity and tying it to political allegiance, we've never done that before in the United States.

[06:40:00]

We're a science-driven country. We're a nation built on great universities. And so when we hear things like that, it goes against the American character, actually.

So I hope we can fix this and get ready for the fall. I'm extremely concerned. Right now, in the middle part of the country, we're seeing it. I'm worried about New York, and I'm worried about the greater severity of illness. And this is something I'm following very closely.

BERMAN: Let's talk about specifically about New York, where there is now a warning of an outbreak in specific communities on this week when public schools are set to open in the city. What do you see happening going forward?

HOTEZ: Well, that's a big concern, right, because now on top of that we are opening up classrooms and we are opening up schools. And everyone understands the importance of having kids going back to school, not only for educational purposes but for food security in the low-income neighborhoods and for mental health counseling of adolescents. Nobody disputes that. But we're going to have to be very nimble and flexible and watch and see what happens and follow those trends very closely. And if we start seeing outbreaks in the classrooms and in the schools or if teachers start getting sick, we have to be very quick to respond to that.

And so this means a lot of situational awareness, not only from our elected leaders, but also parents, teachers, stay close to the news, follow this very closely, because things can turn on a dime. We've seen that with Covid-19, how the way it works.

When Covid -- remember, when Covid-19 comes back to your community, it's not like a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. The way it works is things stay flat for a long time and then it -- when it goes up, it -- things go bad very quickly. There's this what we call exponential curve or rise. And we have to recognize that behavior and the virus and the epidemic and then be ready to respond. So any little hint that things are starting to go up, we have to respond very quickly.

CAMEROTA: OK.

Dr. Peter Hotez, thank you very much.

HOTEZ: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: All right, we now know what's in President Trump's taxes. And, guess what, you pay a lot more than he does. And you have for the past 20 years. We will explain the details in a must-see "Reality Check," next.

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[06:46:15]

BERMAN: All right, breaking overnight, this is what "The New York Times" say the president paid in federal income taxes his first two years in office, $750. This is what the average American pays, $12,000.

John Avlon with much more in a "Reality Check."

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JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Question, who pays more in federal income taxes than President Trump? Answer, basically every American that works hard and plays by the rules. Because according to "The Times," Trump paid no federal income taxes 10 out of 15 years starting in 2000. And, get this, during his campaign in the first year of his presidency, "The Times" says Donald Trump paid only $750. That's not a typo. But it is evidence of a broken system.

Because it means that Donald Trump, with a tower on Fifth Avenue and an estate in Palm Beach paid less in taxes than the average household in America, which makes just shy of $69,000 a year. In fact, Trump paid less in federal income taxes than the average single grade school teacher, nurse, cop, farmer, firefighter and truck driver.

And that's not all. Trump's $750 in federal income taxes is less than the monthly average rent families pay in Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan or Wisconsin, according to a 2017 survey.

This is real man of the people stuff here.

And just to make it more relatable, "The Times" reported that Trump claimed more than $70,000 for getting his hair styled. Again, that's more than the average family makes in a year for his hair.

And he and his companies paid more in taxes to Panama, India, and the Philippines than his own country.

Now, he was able to pull this off because of his astronomical losses. Between 2000 and 2018, Trump companies lost hundreds of millions of dollars. If you ran a small business that lost money each year, you'd go bankrupt, but Donald Trump kept living a lavish lifestyle while losing millions and parlayed it into becoming president, in part by assuring people he was a successful businessman. He isn't.

In fact, "The Times" calculates that this time around he is personally responsible for loans and other debts totaling $420 million. Should he win re-election, his lenders could be pressed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president.

That creates a thicket of conflicts of interest, says a report by the watch dog group Crew. All while "The Washington Post" calculates Trump's company has charged the U.S. government at least $970,000 for things like room rentals and resort fees.

So while Trump rails against elites and campaigns as a law and order campaign, his actions remind me of infamous words from another New York real estate magnate, Leona Helmsley, only the little people pay taxes, except this time. The contempt for hard-working men and women who pay their taxes comes straight from the president of the United States.

And that's your "Reality Check."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Our thanks to John for that.

So, the House of Representatives could end up deciding the presidential election. It's not impossible and this is 2020. And, Nancy Pelosi, she wants to get ready for it.

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[06:53:35]

CAMEROTA: Here's a story that's developing overnight. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sending a letter to fellow Democrats for what to do in the unlikely case that Biden and Trump tie in electoral votes.

CNN's Kristen Holmes is live in Washington to explain.

So what now?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Well, look, this scenario is one that hasn't happened in more than a century. So the fact that we're talking about it at all just goes to show you where everyone's head is at given President Trump's rhetoric.

So in this letter, Nancy Pelosi describes a scenario in which neither candidate wins the Electoral College. Then the election goes to the House to decide. But, see, it is not so simple as whoever controls the majority, their candidate wins. It's actually all about state delegations. Every single state only has one vote. So all the lawmakers from the state, they will get together, they will vote on a candidate. And whoever has the most lawmakers will get the vote. That will go to their candidate.

So it sounds very confusing, but essentially they want to have more state delegates, delegations, than Republicans have. And that's just not the case right now. So just another scenario that we're hearing about, that Democrats are preparing for -- before that seem improbable. But, again, given President Trump's rhetoric, it seems a little bit more likely to them. They want to make sure that they are ready.

And we have learned this morning that there is a giant Democratic legal apparatus that is gearing up for these kinds of scenarios.

[06:55:04]

Whether it be being in court and disputing state counts, or the potential of federal law enforcement officials being deployed into states, which is something President Trump himself has mentioned.

And it is important to bring up that election officials, election experts, this is what they're concerned about, that there's going to be all of this conversation around the election being decided, but not having anything to actually do with the voters, so that voters will feel like, oh, well, it's going to be decided in the courts, it's going to be decided in the House, it doesn't really matter if I go out there and vote.

So I -- I want to point to one really important thing here, which is that these experts also say that the more people who vote, the less likely these improbable scenarios will be. So it is still important to cast your ballot.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Kristen, thank you very much.

All right, well, this morning we finally know what's in President Trump's taxes. So what do his crushing debt and his tax avoidance mean for every American? We have all the details, next.

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