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Contact Tracing Study Findings; Trump Won't Denounce White Supremacy; Rule Change for Next Presidential Debates. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired October 01, 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]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Of its kind in the world about contact tracing. It was done in India. Here's what some of the top line findings are.

The study, based on a giant contact tracing effort involving more than 3 million people in India shows most Covid-19 patients never infected anyone else. The researchers found that 70 percent of infected people did not infect any of their contacts, while 8 percent of patients accounted for 60 percent of observed new infections.

That's fascinating. In other words, a very small fraction of people are spreading a lot of the virus. So we used to think of super spreaders as events, you know, big parties where people were close together.

Are some humans just super spreaders themselves? Is that what we're learning?

DR. ALI KHAN, DEAN, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA MEDICAL CENTER'S COLLEGE OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Absolutely, Alisyn. So this is a second way to look at this outbreak, which we've known for a very long time with these coronaviruses. So people like to talk about something called the r-not (ph), and it's a techy little term that tells you how many new cases you get from each infection. But there's another term which you just described called the k -- which is called k (ph), which is a dispersion factor. And we've known for a long time that these individuals cause more than 10 -- usually I think the cutoff is usually about 10 cases themselves. So there's a small number of individuals that drive this whole outbreak. And we've seen multiple episode in the U.S., you know, the -- in Massachusetts, what happened at the conference in Massachusetts. So you can probably track the whole outbreak over the world by these large, super spreading events, a handful of people.

CAMEROTA: But -- but just to be -- just because I'm curious, are these people -- do they have more viral load, do they know, these people, or are they more active? Are they singing more? Why are these people super spreaders?

KHAN: It's probably a combination of all of those. We've never been able to pin it down to one specific thing. But when you look at these individual cases, it's a combination of those things.

Now, remember, often for these super spreaders, you -- it's -- you also need some sort of mass gathering, right? You need an event that puts enough people together for them to infect them during the time that they're infectious, which is another reason why you want to limit mass gatherings and increase social distancing.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I will say, this study also found that kids do spread the virus pretty substantially, particularly among other children right there. That was one of the key findings as well.

Dr. Khan, always a pleasure to have you with us. Mask on, my friend. Mask on.

KHAN: Mask on, as usual.

BERMAN: Fantastic.

CAMEROTA: That's a nice one.

BERMAN: Fantastic. Thank you, Doctor.

KHAN: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: All right, President Trump's debate comment about the Proud Boys is not the first time he's caught the attention of far right groups. We have a "Reality Check," next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:36:51]

BERMAN: So we were talking about the words "white supremacy" and how the president can't seem to say them out loud, like the Fonz in "Happy Days" who couldn't say "I'm sorry."

John Avlon has a "Reality Check."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It should be the easiest question for a president to get.

CHRIS WALLACE, MODERATOR: Are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists?

AVLON: But, of course, President Trump couldn't quite bring himself to do it.

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Proud Boys.

WALLACE: (INAUDIBLE) militia (ph).

TRUMP: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.

But I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, somebody's got to do something about Antifa and the left.

AVLON: The Proud Boys, a far right group with a pension for political violence, immediately saw Trump's comments as an endorsement and started celebrating online. Now, the next day, Trump said he didn't know who they were and then said this.

QUESTION: White supremacists, they clearly love you and support you. Do you welcome that?

TRUMP: I want law and order.

AVLON: You should be shocked, but you should not be surprised because there's a long pattern of Donald Trump refuses to denounce his white wing extremists or white supremacist supporters.

In 2016, former KKK leader David Duke praised Trump. And here's what happened when Jake Tapper asked Trump to denounce him.

TRUMP: I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists.

AVLON: Sound familiar?

OK, so how about neo-confederates and neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville.

TRUMP: Very fine people, on both sides.

AVLON: Now, to this day, some Trumpers will argue that he didn't say what you just heard him say, but white nationalists heard him loud and clear and they praised Trump's remarks. We've seen the same dynamic with the fringe conspiracy QAnon.

TRUMP: They like me very much, which I appreciate.

AVLON: Or Trump's continued support of senior adviser Steven Miller, found to have emailed anti-immigration articles from white supremacist websites back in 2016. Or his defense Trump fan Kyle Rittenhouse, caught on camera shooting protesters in Kenosha. Two died.

But team Trump acts like none of this ever happened.

HOGAN GIDLEY, TRUMP CAMPAIGN: He's condemned white supremacy by name on multiple occasions.

AVLON: It's kind of like Trump's very occasional condemnation of Russian election interference, done reluctantly, under duress, to compensate for constantly refusing to confront Vladimir Putin.

For example, after his "both sides" comments, Trump did give a good speech in which he condemned racist groups. Afterwards, according to Bob Woodward, the president said that was the biggest (EXPLETIVE DELETED) mistake I've made and the worst speech I've ever given.

Look, from the Trump family's apparent refusal to rent to black families in the '70s, to Michael Cohen hearing him say of post- Apartheid South Africa, Mandela (EXPLETIVE DELETED) the whole country up, to his defense of confederate flags and monuments, it's easy to see an ugly pattern. Even noticed at DHS, where some are concerned that political rhetoric used by the president has been viewed by some violent white supremacists as a call to violent action.

And now that you know the pattern, listen to this.

WALLACE: You go first.

TRUMP: I'm urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully.

AVLON: A blatant attempt at voter intimidation says Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. And we're already seeing reports of various armed militias and vigilante groups pledging to watch Election Day polls on Trump's behalf.

But this is not a reason to be afraid, it's a reason to be determined, because there's still time to show that our democracy is stronger than demagoguery.

[06:40:08]

And that's your "Reality Check."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Our thanks to John for that.

So, this morning, new calls to flat out cancel the presidential debates. We'll have that debate, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: The bipartisan commission on presidential debates says it will change the rules of the remaining two presidential debates to ensure a more orderly discussion. But does that go far enough?

Our next guest thinks Joe Biden should refuse to debate President Trump again.

Joining us now is CNN contributor Frank Bruni. He's just published a new column about this in "The New York Times." We also have David Frum. He's a staff writer at "The Atlantic" and a former speech writer for President George W. Bush. He disagrees with Frank's idea.

So, Frank, make your case.

FRANK BRUNI, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I mean, what we saw on Tuesday night was not illuminating. It was a degradation of the presidency. It was a degradation of the process and, by extension, it was a degradation of all of us.

[06:45:04]

And we saw Donald Trump basically use that built-in, enormous national audience to try to subvert democracy. You know, to kind of continue saying that this election is fraudulent, that it's rigged, to kind of send the signal to people that they should not trust anything. I don't know why we would continue collaborating in that. I feel like we're committing a form of civic suicide. You know, and after -- after three and a half years of watching this president smash traditions, trash norms and kind of gasping and sighing and say, look at that, we don't need to continue collaborating in that. And I think it's time to stop.

CAMEROTA: David, why is he wrong?

DAVID FRUM, STAFF WRITER, "THE ATLANTIC": I don't think you can put a drapery or curtain over the truth that Donald Trump is president of the United States and all these behaviors are going to continue whether or not the president is on Twitter, whether or not the president is on TV, whether or not he is -- he is in public, he commands the government of the United States, he has the nuclear codes.

And I think you can have confidence in your friends and neighbors to be as thoughtful as you are. We all saw what happened there and that debate was damage to President Trump. His own people know that. That's why they're on your air trying to tidy things up and say the president didn't say what millions of people saw him say.

There is no way to make -- to expunge the shame of this presidency. It's going to be on the history books forever. And I understand the impulse to say that wasn't us, we didn't do that, that didn't happen to us, but it did. It's part of American history. You have to -- if you're going to do anything about it, you have to see it.

CAMEROTA: How about that, Frank, eyes wide open that in some ways watching that mess reveals, I mean, obviously, as David would say, who President Trump is?

BRUNI: I don't think the verb "reveals" makes any sense anymore with President Trump. I mean after more than three and a half years of this presidency, preceded by a campaign that was rapidly covered, there's not been a president in my adult lifetime who has saturated the media and saturated people's consciousness like Donald Trump. I mean he is not omnipresent at this point, Alisyn, he's ambient.

We do not need that 90 -- we did not need that 90 minutes on Tuesday night. We don't need two more 90 minutes -- minute events to have Trump revealed to us. I think voters have fully taken his measure.

And all we're doing is we're abetting this message of his that the process is not to be trusted, that American democracy is broken. He is trying basically to drag us all down and particularly Joe Biden into the mud with him because he feels if everybody's soiled, you can't make distinctions between him and everybody else.

And I just don't think we're serving anything illuminating, you know, to continue having these debates. I don't think it's about putting a curtain over the president and the presidency and pretending he's not there. We know he's there. Everybody knows who he is and what he's about. And I don't think not doing further debates is a sort of masking or vailing of that.

CAMEROTA: David.

FRUM: The damage to American democracy is not a message, it's a truth. It's a fact. That's the plan.

The only way -- the only way that you get a smooth transition away from Donald Trump is Donald Trump loses the popular vote by some number so enormous that it deters any of his collaborators from enabling him. That -- and that's -- that number, we know what it is, is not 3 million, because that was the number last time and it wasn't enough. It's going to have to be 5, 8, maybe 10 million. And that's possible, according to the polls, but it's only possible if you get voter turnout.

What happened in that debate was not that anyone's mind was changed. We're all pretty dug in. But what happened in that debate was that people in the anti-Trump majority, more than 50 percent of the country, were told by the president, I'm not participating. And they're (INAUDIBLE) the president's challenger. You will go if you speak out in large enough numbers. That, to me, was the central moment of the debate. The president saying, I won't go even if I lose. Biden saying he will go if he loses by enough. And now, American people, it's over to you.

And we all needed to see that because it's easy for commentators to say it's (ph) damaging democracy. Maybe he won't go. When the president says it, it's like when the president said on tape, I deliberately underplayed the coronavirus. We all saw it happen. I wrote that article dozens of times and two major -- two major stories and many minor stories for "The Atlantic," but it didn't become true to people until they heard it in the president's own voice, yes, I downplayed the coronavirus on purpose knowing how deadly it was. And in the same way they heard him say in the debate, I'm not going unless you make me. That's useful. Make him.

CAMEROTA: How about that, Frank, the value of hearing something with your own ears in a debate setting?

BRUNI: I mean I agree that's valuable, but I want to respond to something else David said. And, by the way, David is far smarter than I am so he's probably right and I'm probably wrong. He is -- he said that Joe Biden needs a landslide just to win essentially. And that was the headline on a column I wrote not long ago. And he mentioned crucially that voter turnout is important.

[06:50:00]

I think what Trump used the debate Tuesday night to do and what he'll use additional debates to do is to suppress turnout. He's trying to make you feel so bad about the process, he's trying to make this whole thing so ugly that Americans turn away from it so that the turnout Joe Biden needs doesn't happen.

I mean he's what really struck me, Alisyn. In the moments after the debate, when I -- you know, after the debate was over, the first kind of five minutes of commentary, I didn't hear commentators right out of the gate say Trump was awful. They said, that was awful. "That," the whole spectacle. Trump dragged Biden down with him and that's an effort to suppress turnout. And I agree with David, we need big turnout because Joe Biden needs -- I mean crazily, because of our system, he may need a margin of 7 million, 8 million in the popular vote to be assured a victory in the Electoral College.

CAMEROTA: One more question for you, Frank, because I was just wondering this as I read your column, what about just the tradition of preserving the debate, that if you let President Trump break it this time, this year, you cancel them, you might never get it back?

BRUNI: Well, what -- are we not breaking the tradition to let it be degraded like this? I mean you can argue that both ways.

I think we'll get it back. I mean I think once -- once Trump is gone, if we have two normal candidates, you know, in 2024, you know, bring back a robust cycle of debates. Make it five debates. But to have him treat the debate format this way, to have him savage the debate format this way, I don't think is any way to preserve it.

CAMEROTA: David, we only have ten seconds left. Your final thoughts?

FRUM: I would say Frank is right about the first ten minutes of commentary. But that's a comment on the terrible quality of the commentators, that they -- they -- they were unwilling to say what was in front -- what they had just seen because they wanted to preserve some illusion of two handedness. In the Trump presidency, there's only one true hand.

CAMEROTA: David Frum, Frank Bruni, thank you both very much for the debate.

FRUM: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: All right, a sad announcement overnight from Chrissy Teigen and John Legend. We'll tell you about their loss, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:56:04]

CAMEROTA: Forty-one people have died in the raging wildfires on the West Coast of the United States. A pair of wildfires in northern California have scorched more than 100,000 acres and more than 140 homes have burned in wine country. Another 26,000 structures are threatened this morning. Thousands of Sonoma and Napa County residents have been forced to evacuate. There's a red flag warning that is issued today because of high winds there.

BERMAN: A Kentucky judge has given prosecutors until tomorrow to release grand jury recordings in the case involving the killing of Breonna Taylor. The judge had originally ordered the recordings released yesterday, but the state's attorney general, Daniel Cameron, said the extension was necessary to redact identifying information for anyone named in the recordings. The grand jury did not indictment any of the police officers directly involved in Taylor's death. A member of the grand jury has suggested Cameron is misrepresenting to the public whether jurors were even given the option of charging officers with Taylor's death.

CAMEROTA: Sad news overnight. Actress Chrissy Teigen and her husband, John Legend, suffered a miscarriage of their third child. In a Twitter post Teigen says, quote, we are shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about. The kind of pain never felt before.

The couple says they had already begun calling their future son Jack. Their first two children were conceived with invitro fertilization but this pregnancy occurred naturally, something Teigen says she never thought would happen.

Really sad. And, you know, John, this is a couple that like lives part of their life on social media.

BERMAN: Right.

CAMEROTA: And so they're grieving on social media, which is, you know, I mean some people do it, obviously, privately and silently. I think that they are doing a service to people because so many people do suffer in silence and seeing a couple like that do it out loud and in public I know will help other families that grieve in the same way.

BERMAN: And I think it's super important to do that. And I applaud them. And I send them, you know, our love, honestly. And it's part of, I think, the healing process for them as well to do this publicly, since they do live their lives like this.

CAMEROTA: NEW DAY continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After turning the first debate of the 2020 campaign into a dumpster fire, President Trump is trying to put out the flames.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: By every measure we won the debate easily last night.

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The president of the United States conducted himself the way he did, I think it was just a national embarrassment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New York City and other parts of the state see upticks that are concerning.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Unlike Europe, unlike Asian countries, we are starting off this fall/winter with a very high level of infection.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI DIRECTOR, NIAID: We've got to now double down and make sure that we're very conscientious without shutting down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman. CAMEROTA: I'm going to stop typing right now.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to our views in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY.

President Trump has the hardest time condemning white supremacists. It's almost like he can't say the words. The president told reporters he did not know who the Proud Boys are despite having told the far right group to, quote, stand back and stand by during the debate this week.

Other Republican leaders were forced yesterday to try to translate those comments and telegraph to the president what they would like him to say. Even more importantly, President Trump still will not commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election.

David Sanger writes in "The New York Times" this morning, quote, the most direct threat to the electoral process now comes from the president himself. Mr. Trump's unwillingness to say he would abide by the result and his disinformation campaign about the integrity of the American electoral system went beyond anything Russian President Vladimir Putin could have imagined.

BERMAN: This morning, nearly 207,000 Americans have died from coronavirus.

[07:00:03]

Yesterday alone another 946 new deaths reported. Twenty-seven states have had an increase.