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President Trump's Failure to Specifically Condemn White Supremacy Draws Criticism from Senate Republicans; President Trump Makes Controversial Statements about Representative Ilhan Omar at Campaign Rally in Minnesota; Trump to Hold Rallies in Wisconsin Despite Alarming Figures. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired October 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]

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Any form, any form of any of that you have to denounce.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, after refusing to do it at the debate, now the president says he's always denounced that, refusing to say what "that" is, and conveniently forgetting that he didn't do it Tuesday night. Moreover, at a rally in Minnesota overnight, the president used language that will thrill white supremacists, warning that that state could turn into a refugee camp, the language of invasion, and hurling a racist attack against a member of Congress from Minnesota.

There's also new debate fallout this morning. The bipartisan debate commission is planning changes to the final two debates that could include a mute button to prevent interruptions.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: I wish I had one of those.

BERMAN: For me?

CAMEROTA: For anybody. Anybody. Not you, of course. I mean just some of our guests.

BERMAN: OK.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Exactly. You said that out loud. And they can hear you.

CAMEROTA: It does seem useful.

All right, meanwhile, coronavirus, it continues to surge across the country, 27 states seeing an increase in cases this morning. Nearly 1,000 more Americans died just yesterday. Wisconsin is seeing a sharp rise in new cases. The state posted single-day records for hospitalizations and deaths on Wednesday. Despite those numbers, President Trump is planning to hold two campaign rallies in Wisconsin this weekend.

But let's begin with the debate fallout. Joining us now, we have CNN contributor Scott Jennings, he's a former special assistant to President George W. Bush, CNN political commentator Van Jones, he's a former adviser to President Obama, and CNN political commentator Joe Lockhart, he is the former press secretary under President Bill Clinton. Great to see all of you guys this morning.

Let's just start there, Scott, with the fallout from the debate, and I mean for Republicans. It seems like the clean-up on aisle eight on Capitol Hill is falling to Republican senators. Let me just play some of them who were forced to explain President Trump's lack of denouncement for white supremacists.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TIM SCOTT, (R-SC): I think he misspoke. I think he should correct it. If he doesn't correct it, I guess he didn't misspeak.

MITCH MCCONNELL, (R-KY) SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: I want to associate myself with the remarks of Senator Tim Scott. He said it was unacceptable not to condemn white supremacists, and so I do so in the strongest possible way.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Should the president condemn white supremacy?

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS, (R-ME): Absolutely.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was it a mistake for him to leave that hanging out there?

COLLINS: Yes.

SEN. BILL CASSIDY, (R-LA): He should he unequivocally condemn white supremacy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Scott, do you worry this morning that the president's comments will come back to haunt some of those Republicans at the polls?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, look, they all said the right thing yesterday. And, by the way, it's not a hard question to answer. If somebody asks you do you condemn white supremacy, you say yes, I condemn it in the strongest possible terms. And that's exactly what you heard out of all the Republican senators.

So if you want to be fair about it, Donald Trump had a bad moment in that debate, he made a huge mistake. These Republicans said the exact right thing, exactly what you would expect them and want them to say. And so I would just say to voters who are thinking about it, you have to treat people by their own words, and these Republicans I think got it right.

BERMAN: Are you drawing a distinction, Scott, between the president and Republicans who are running for office, again, and Republicans in the Senate, because that seems to be what's happening now?

JENNINGS: Well, I think in October in an election year, everybody is accountable for their own words. Donald Trump is accountable for his words in the debate. These Republican senators are accountable for their words on Capitol Hill and when they're campaigning. And I think when we have weighty issues like this that require a clear, concise, precise language, and people give it to you, folks ought to take notice of that.

CAMEROTA: It wasn't just the debate, Van. He had -- President Trump had another opportunity yesterday. And you saw that moment, we just played it. It was so interesting to see the wheels turning. He said, I've always denounced, I've always denounced, I've always denounced -- he's searching for some sort of word he can use that isn't white supremacy, and he says any of that. He can't say it.

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You know, this is a real, I think, problem. It's not just a problem the way we talk about it, politically he should have done this, he should have done that. The problem is that people are watching. We have a massive terrorist movement in the country, massive. The biggest terrorist movement in this country is this white supremacist movement. It's violent. It's killed people. It continues to kill people. And we've got to be able to confront it head on. The fact the president of the United States continues to kind of wink and nod at it is very dangerous.

BERMAN: And Joe, if you can bear with me one second, because, Van, I want to get your take on something else here, which is not only did the president say that at the White House, but then at a rally in Minnesota he used language that seems very carefully chosen.

[08:05:03]

It's the language that is relatable to white supremacists. He's talking about Ilhan Omar, who is often attacked by Republicans, and there are political ways to state your disagreements here. You can call her a liberal, which she is. You can talk about her positions. But he attacked the idea of refugee camps in Minnesota, which is the language of an invasion. And then he says this. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What is going on with Omar? I've been reading these reports for two years about how corrupt and crooked she is. Let's get with it, let's get wit.

How the hell -- then she tells us how to run our country. Can you believe it? How the hell did Minnesota elect her? What the hell is wrong with you people?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: And it's the "run our country" language, Van, that language of other which is something that is very much a part of a lexicon of these white supremacist groups. JONES: He has got to stop doing that, and Republicans have to go --

listen, it's one thing for Republicans to condemn white supremacy, which they should. This is the party of Lincoln, after all. That should be pretty much a no-brainer. At some point you have got to start being more direct and condemning the president for doing stuff like this.

You don't have to like Ilhan Omar, you don't have to like anything that she's ever done, but she is an American citizen. E pluribus unum, OK. Out of many, one. She's an American citizen. It's not our country versus some foreigner, outsider, whatever. Once you're a citizen, you're a citizen. That was true for Trump's ancestors. It should be true for the present generations.

Once you start putting that kind of stuff out there, people are watching. Somebody will come from that rally or see that, we don't know. They may see a woman in a hijab, and they may say something. They may feel a certain way. They may mistreat that person. They may hurt that person. And you've got to watch your language. You've got to be careful. You've got to take responsibility. You're giving aid and comfort and encouragement to a terrorist organization, a terrorist movement in the United States.

For some reason we say white or racist, then people go to their corners. This is the biggest terrorist movement in the United States. The president of the United States is giving aid and comfort to that movement by what he's saying, by what he's not saying. At a certain point the Republican Party, not just senators saving their own seats, have to stand up and say we don't want that happening in the Republican Party.

CAMEROTA: It's already happening. It's happening, Joe, in terms of we don't have to hope that nobody is going to act on it in the future. They have acted on it in the past. In fact, that was the point that Elizabeth Neumann was making. She was the assistant secretary of counterterrorism in President Trump's administration. She's now no longer in there, and she had this whole Twitter thread that she already has seen evidence of the president's rhetoric translating to real violence in the country from people who are activated by it. What she wrote was "I concluded after the attacks in El Paso that the president of the United States was complicit in the deaths of Americans for his refusal to recognize his language was in the shooter's manifesto. Tonight, he was given the opportunity to condemn white supremacy. He refused." That's, of course, she is referring to a mass shooting in our country.

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Listen, I think Van and Scott are right and in denouncing that kind of language. So I want to come at this from a political strategy point of view. The president in the debate needed to change the dynamic of the race. He needed to focus it more on Joe Biden and make it a referendum on Biden. Make it about Joe Biden being a wild socialist and Marxist and tax hiker and weak on China. He didn't do that. What he did was he made it about himself. And he cannot win if this election is a referendum on him.

He needs to make it on Biden to get those last undecideds to put him over the top. So it was not only a missed opportunity for him. Politically it was a disaster because not only did he not change the dynamic, he cemented the dynamic. He reinforced what all of his people think, but much more importantly, what the other 60 percent of the country thinks. And that is very hard to see him coming back with 30 days left. We'll see what he does in the debates, but he's a very weak position right now.

BERMAN: Thirty days is 30,000 lifetimes, so who knows at this point. We've been through a lot before. I will say, Joe, it is notable if you watch some of the conservative stations, you see Republicans going on and pleading with the president for how to do things differently. I saw Ari Fleischer yesterday holding up a chart with big, clear letters, I think hoping that maybe the president was at least flicking through the stations so he could figure out a way to dig himself out. Joe, you've also talked extensively about the debates themselves at this point.

[08:10:00]

The debate commission yesterday came out and said we're going to change things. We have to change things. It was so bad what the president did -- they didn't say that, although that's clearly why they're changing things, including maybe figuring out a way for the moderator to cut off the microphone of people. What do you think about these changes? What does it tell you? And what should the Biden campaign do with this?

LOCKHART: Well, I think they have to make some changes, and I think the changes are relatively simple in the next debate, because it's a town hall format. And that is a completely different dynamic than two guys close up yelling at each other. There are some techniques as far as separating them, as far as separating the questioners, and keeping people in an area.

And then as you say, turn off the mic when the other people is speaking. That's hard to do when they're right next to each other because you can hear the other people over the -- over their mic. The third debate is going to be the hard one. But what it says is that, once again, Trump has trampled on a norm. We always do these debates. They are relatively civil, but he proved on Tuesday that he can't do that.

I actually think Biden's in this for good. He actually got something out of the debate and is very happy with it. I have a sneaking feeling that because the campaigns have to approve the changes that the commission does, that the president's team may say, oh, we're not going do that. And then to launch a major campaign against, saying the commission and Biden and the media are all in league together against me as a way to whip up his troops, because they know the debate was a disaster, and they know they can't change Donald Trump. They just can't change who he is.

CAMEROTA: Scott, we're almost out of time. Do you think that both candidates will show up for the next two debates?

JENNINGS: I think the odds favor it, but I wouldn't bet my kids' college education funding on it. You start telling candidates we're going to mute your microphone, especially when one is the president of the United States, I can imagine the negative reaction they would have to that. So I think probably, but not a sure bet.

BERMAN: Alisyn threatened to mute all of your microphones. I don't know if you heard the intro here.

CAMEROTA: And yours. And yours.

BERMAN: And she did not.

(LAUGHTER)

JENNINGS: We can hear everything you say before we come on. We can hear it.

CAMEROTA: Then I apologize in advance.

BERMAN: We know what you're saying about.

JENNINGS: I just accomplished more in 47 seconds than Joe Lockhart has accomplished in 47 years.

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: Gentlemen --

LOCKHART: I am a raving socialist.

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh. This is actually very entertaining. We can go on with this if they weren't wrapping us. Scott, Van, Joe, thank you all very much.

The head of the FDA pledges to stick with its vaccine guidelines despite pressure from President Trump. But who does have the ultimate authority here? Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:16:37]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Nearly 1,000 Americans died yesterday from coronavirus. We saw another 42,000 new cases. Wisconsin set new reports for daily deaths and hospitalizations and the state is seeing a huge surge in new cases. It is now ranked as the third highest state in the U.S. for new cases.

So why is President Trump planning to hold two campaign rallies there?

Joining us now is CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

It's almost like he couldn't choose any other place that would be more dangerous for a rally right now, Sanjay. I mean, this is what his own White House Coronavirus Task Force calls a red zone because it has the highest level of community spread.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Super red zone because this is -- this actually really exceeds the criteria, even that qualifies for a red zone.

You know, it's interesting, you have Wisconsin. You're seeing evidence of exponential growth over there. We're seeing evidence now that opening colleges in some of these cities in Wisconsin has definitely seems to be linked to community spread.

And everyone sort of back and forth in this. How much of an impact is it going to have, people waited a few days or a couple of weeks, it doesn't look like it's much impact, but the reality is you have to think about time of this pandemic. You can start to see impacts several weeks later.

I think people need to pay attention to what's happening in Wisconsin. I think the real question is, if you're in the area right now, you're out and about, what's the likelihood that someone you come in contact with has coronavirus. The likelihood is much, much higher in Wisconsin versus other places in the country and it's also much higher that they won't know it because they're not doing enough testing.

So it's the kind of place where if this is a storm you'd tell people not to shelter in place. Not to aggregate in large numbers.

You know, I've always wondered if we could see this virus, if it was actually visible, we saw it, it was tethered by the six foot strings out of your nose and mouth, people would keep their distance. People would see a lot of people are carrying virus, time to stay indoors for a while.

Unfortunately, we can't see it so you have to rely on the data to say that that's a bad idea to have a rally right now in Wisconsin.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Look, the data, it's so crystal clear. We saw that hospitalization chart, which is just the data that can't be interpreted any other way, that this is getting significantly worse. There are a lot of sick people who need care.

You can see the steep increase in Wisconsin right now, and, by the way, if you look at the national chart for hospitalizations, it has been upward again. We are trending in the wrong direction there.

One other piece of news -- actually a lot of news on the pandemic today. There's some vaccine news from Moderna where that company is now saying that they expect their vaccine, if it's approved to be available for wide distribution some time in the middle of late next year. There was also news, Sanjay, though, which seemed to move back the earliest point when they think the vaccine would be ready for emergency use approval. They say not until I believe November 25th at the earliest, which is obviously after the election and later than I think we had been at least told by the president.

GUPTA: Yeah. So this is very interesting again we have been following this very, very closely. There's a couple things at play here. One is that the FDA has signaled and it was a contentious issue again, but the FDA signaled that they wanted to wait around two months after people received their shots to basically see if there was any side effects that are emerging.

[08:20:02]

When you look at the calendar, two months did you put you, as you say, John, at the end of November, early December. So that sort of tracks with that and we know that Dr. Hahn, the FDA commissioner, said, yesterday, we're sticking with those guidelines despite any political pressure. So, I think that's what we're talking about.

But you know what's interesting, and we have been doing a lot of reporting on this, is that nobody really knows when the authorization may happen, no one knows if an authorization will happen. There's the only one small independent entity that's even getting a chance to look at the data. Everyone else is guessing.

Now, we had a chance, they don't -- this entity called the DSMB, they don't talk very much because they don't want to be pressured. We were able to talk to one of the board members who agreed to speak to us and describe what was happening here.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: By the way --

(CROSSTALK)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I spoke to the scientists that are in charge, they will have the vaccine very soon.

GUPTA (voice-over): Despite promises like these, the vaccine timeline may not be up to the president alone, or even the FDA for that matter, because there is a small secretive group that sees the vaccine data before anyone else.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: This all gets decided by a group called a Data and Safety Monitoring Board.

GUPTA: The DSMB, as it is known, is a group of experts and all sorts of areas like statistics, ethics, vaccine development. They are the only ones to get a few, quote, unblinded looks at the data as it starts to come in.

COLLINS: They know who got the vaccine, who got the placebo. They're the ones who figure out whether it's time to say this is working. That's not a political decision.

GUPTA: They are the ones that can advise the companies to apply for FDA review or they might bring a trial to a halt. And right now, they have one of the most monumental tasks in the world.

DR. ERIC TOPOL, PROFESSOR OF MOLECULAR MEDICINE, SCRIPPS RESEARCH: We want to know they're fully independent, that they have no prior, you know, relationships with the company so that they're not conflicted any way.

GUPTA: The members of the board, they go through a fairly exhaustive vetting process but these are the biggest questions. Can the DSMB be trusted? Do they have financial or political conflicts, can they be pressured?

SUSAN ELLENBERG, PROFESSOR OF BIOSTATISTICS, PERELMAR SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT UPENN: They don't want the members to be besieged by other people trying to figure out what's going on in the trial.

GUPTA: Typically, their names remain confidential while the study is ongoing. But Susan Ellenberg, who serves on COVID-19 DSMBs, agreed to talk to us.

(on camera): How would you characterize the power of this board?

ELLENBERG: I don't think you feel powerful. You feel responsible. You know that everybody's trusting you with this data.

GUPTA: When you're looking at data, I think there's always a perception certainly among laypeople that it's totally objective. Is it really that objective?

ELLENBERG: Of course, there's some degree of subjectivity. It's a judgment call and that's the way these committees work.

TRUMP: I don't see any reason why it should be delayed further.

GUPTA: The FDA basically said that it's very reasonable to wait and observe for two months before authorizing anything. The president has said, you know, they may not approve those guidelines. So what happens then? What's the role of the DSMB in a situation like this?

ELLENBERG: We have certainly never been in a situation where the national leadership has seemed to be so involved, directly involved, in these kinds of processes. What will happen, I don't -- I don't know.

GUPTA (voice-over): It was a DSMB that made the call to pause the AstraZeneca trial when a previously healthy 37-year-old woman developed a neurological condition in the U.K. And it was a critical decision.

ELLENBERG: Even an adverse event that happens as infrequently as one in 10,000 people or one in 20,000 people, that would be a lot of people that would have a serious adverse event.

GUPTA: The country's top doctors assure they won't be cutting any corners on safety. But for now, it's in the hands of Ellenberg and other members of the DSMBs to make sure that's the case.

ELLENBERG: I think we're in unchartered territory here. This is -- who knows what the administration is going to do.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: So totally unprecedented situation to put it lightly. But again keep in mind, that this board, the DSMB, they're the only ones who unblind some of this data. The people who are getting the vaccine or placebo they don't know which they got. The companies which are administering these, they don't know either.

So there's a lot of pressure on the DSMB and I want to give you a little bit of a look at how that process is going to unfold.

BERMAN: Sanjay, this is really helpful about the way things should work. Emphasis on should.

GUPTA: Right.

BERMAN: Let's hope. I appreciate it.

So a laptop and USB drives stolen, stolen from a warehouse dealing with voting in Philadelphia. More on the mystery, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:54]

CAMEROTA: Police investigating the theft of a laptop and memory sticks stolen from an elections warehouse in Philadelphia.

CNN's Kristen Holmes is live with the details.

What have you learned, Kristen?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Alisyn, and these USB drives, these memory sticks, they were election related. Now, that sent Pennsylvania officials scrambling to make sure that no voting machines were tampered with. So far, they haven't found any results of tampering because of the theft.

And the company says that there are levels of protection on those flash drives that would make it impossible for someone to access these machines, but seriously raising some big concerns.

Now the Philadelphia deputy commissioner, they issued this statement. He said, we are confident that this incident will not in any way compromise the integrity of the election, but just for a little bit of context here, this comes just days after early in-person voting in Philadelphia got off to an incredibly rocky start. The state database shut down, there were long lines, and we know at least one point, a Trump supporter was turned away for trying to be a poll watcher at a location that did not allow poll watching, which we then saw blew up during the debate. We've seen President Trump really latched on to this.

And we cannot be more clear here.