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Vice Pres Pence Tests Negative, Biden Awaiting Results; Pres. Trump Tests Positive For COVID-19; WH: Trump Has Mild Symptoms After Positive COVID-19 Test. Aired 12-12:30p ET
Aired October 02, 2020 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:00:00]
JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Her positive results before the President travelled to New Jersey yesterday. Republican Senator Mike Lee who tested negative at the White House earlier this week, today reports a positive test result.
Separately outside of Washington, the Chairwoman of the Republican National Committee also confirming today she too positive for COVID- 19. The timing adds to the crisis atmosphere here.
The public get-wells and words of support from leading Republicans today masking private worries that the president testing positive at this moment is a damning development in a campaign defined by his management of the coronavirus pandemic. It is indisputable that coronavirus statistics right now are heading in the wrong direction.
Cases are climbing in half the country. That's the red and orange you see across that map there. The daily new case number on Thursday 43,000 plus new infections. The president is now part of the data, he repeatedly tells you to ignore.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I just want to say that the end of the pandemic is in sight and next year will be one of the greatest years in the history of our country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: We begin the conversation this hour with our White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, Dr. Amesh Adalja from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and CNN's Nia-Malika Henderson.
Kaitlan Collins, a crisis atmosphere at the White House today. The Chief of Staff coming out for a few minutes to tell us the president has mild symptoms, but he says, he's on the phone and on the job. What more do we know?
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it was notable that the Chief of Staff who came out to give that brief update to reporters because of course you know typically, we see the Press Secretary as we did yesterday and there were questions being raised about what she knew when she came out to brief reporters yesterday since we've now learned a small group of White House officials were aware yesterday morning that Hope Hicks had tested positive for coronavirus.
But John we are told that Kayleigh McEnany was not aware of that positive diagnosis when she held that briefing. Actually, several senior staffers did not find out about this diagnosis until later on last night. That's really notable because what Mark Meadows said when he came out is that they found out when the president was leaving on Marine One to go to an indoor fundraiser in Bedminster yesterday at his New Jersey club that Hope Hicks had tested positive for coronavirus.
And despite that - finding that out at 1:00 PM Marine One went on to joint Base Andrews and the president got on Airforce One and traveled with staff to New Jersey for this indoor fundraiser where we were told he was not wearing a mask during that fundraiser despite the fact that they knew he had come into contact with someone who had tested positive.
So this is raising so many questions, not just about what the president has said in the past about wearing a mask and how they've flouted these social distancing rules and precautions that medical experts have said you should take but also about the chain of command happening inside the White House and when everyone found out that a colleague of theirs that they interact with obviously in a pretty cramped West Wing had tested positive for coronavirus.
And now we're seeing them deal with the fallout where now the President and the First Lady, both have mild symptoms. We're finding out about other lawmakers who have now also tested positive.
People who have interacted with the Supreme Court nominee and whatnot so there are just a lot of questions being raised of course about the level of spread that has happened here, where it started and the level of contact tracing that they're doing to try to at least in some shape or form contain this.
KING: And Dr. Adalja, help us understand the scope, the complexity, the enormity of that challenge. We have had this conversation after clusters at meat packing plants. We have had this conversation after coronavirus outbreaks as people go back to college campuses.
This is the highest levels of the United States government. Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, leadership of the president's campaign team, West Wing workers, military aides, the secret service, people he came in contact with at the debate, at these political rallies, put into context the enormity of the tracing challenge here.
DR. AMESH ADALJA, SENIOR SCHOLAR, JOHN HOPKINS CENTER FOR HEALTH SECURITY: We know that even just to contact trace in a simple household get together can be complicated. When you think about the number of contacts these individuals have and where they've been traveling to, how long they were in contact with people, how many of them were masked, how many of them were not masked, what the time frames were between negative test and positive test. It is going to be very hard to do that and it's going to be impossible
to understand what's going on unless you actually have the data in front of you and it goes to show that this virus doesn't really care what types of precautions you put into place because it's going to find a way in and you have to be very, very careful even with the testing regimen at the White House had in place.
It's not surprising that this virus found a hole, it's infected the national security adviser in the past and this is what we're going to continue to see until we have you know outbreak is under much better control in the community because people from the White House do interact with the community and they can bring it into the White House just like they can bring it into anywhere.
KING: And a very important point that this virus can find a hole but Nia-Malika Henderson, it's easier for the virus to find a hole when you repeatedly ignore the advice of your own top scientists and I would just want to play a little bit of a collection here. We know the president for weeks and months has mocked mask use, that they think it's a bad look inside the West Wing, that it somehow shows you are defensive and that you have a crisis.
This is the president's team just recently.
[12:05:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, CDC DIRECTOR: Facemask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine.
VOICE OF ADM. BRETT GROIR, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR HEALTH, HHS: This is a critical moment that we all have to double down on the mask wearing and avoiding indoor crowded spaces.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I was out there telling the American public how difficult this is, how we're having a really serious problem. You know when the president was saying it's something that's going to disappear which obviously is not the case.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: It's important say over and over and over and over and over again on this day, we wish the president well and we wish him a speedy recovery but it is just a fact, it is just a fact that his behavior, the way he has conducted himself in recent days and weeks is directly contrary to the advice of his own experts.
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: We're all praying for the president, praying for the First Lady and any of other folks that may end up testing positive as well but it is also true that the president in many ways with his behavior and his rhetoric opened the door to the White House to this virus and remember the White House is both a place of business, it's a workplace and it's also a residence, right? So if you think about those people who come to work every day, they
were left very vulnerable because it was a president who didn't really like the look of masks. He thought mask were essentially ugly and didn't want folks around him wearing them and so that is the kind of environment that was created.
And listen, a virus is always looking for host and so this is what ends up happening. Again thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who might end up being affected by this and the folks who already are. But the president obviously did himself no favors, he did his family members no favors and the people who work around him.
He's the boss of those folks and he set a real I think leadership pattern and they followed because that is what they thought that this president wanted and the same with his supporters, the same with his family members who went to that a debate and were asked to put on masks and apparently refused to put on masks because that is what those sort of Trump way was in terms of wearing masks.
Maybe it'll change, maybe this will be a wakeup call off for this White House and for this administration. We certainly hope so because you know Americans all over you know since March have been changing their ways, their way of life in terms of mask, I've got a mask right here and when I go on to the hallway in CNN, I'm getting my temperature checked and the idea that this White House was so well sort of lackadaisical in their approach to folks who were coming to work every day.
They essentially seem to think that the testing mechanism made them immune somehow and obviously we find out today sadly that that wasn't the case for the president, for the First Lady and those folks in the White House.
KING: And what are we expecting Kaitlan and I said this earlier and I'll say it again, you have to give any White House some grace. You have a crisis now involving the health of the president of United States but at some point, both in terms of the operations of the United States government and now voters who have to make a choice 32 days from now by an election, you need some transparency.
We got a letter from the White House doctor overnight essentially just confirming the positive tests and saying both the president and the First Lady would stay in the residence during a convalescence period of time. I want you to listen here, the chief of staff at the White House a short time ago when he said this morning that the president has mild symptoms, he was asked to put some of the pieces together, the timeline and he mostly declined. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK MEADOWS, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: I'm not going to get into the tick tock, I can't tell you in terms of Hope Hicks, we discovered that right as the Marine One was taking off yesterday. We actually pulled some of the people that had been traveling and in close contact.
The reason why it was reported out just frankly is that we had already started the contact tracing just prior to that event.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: He says they pulled some aides off the helicopter, but they didn't cancel the trip and put the president back inside. He had been in contact with Hope Hicks. Getting on that helicopter, traveling to New Jersey was in direct violation of his own team's guidelines.
COLLINS: This is a textbook example of how medical experts have said not to handle this situation by having someone who's come into contact with people, those people despite believing that Hope Hicks was symptomatic on Wednesday night, they still came to work yesterday.
Of course we all know what happened after she got tested and how the president continued to go to that fundraiser anyway but speaking about giving the White House grace and Chief of Staff saying he's going to give us regular updates, you know he only took about three questions from reporters there and he said he wasn't going to get into the tick tock meaning the timeline of how this happened.
Though that is crucially important for them to know who came into contact with whom. We should remind our viewers. They did not tell the reporters who were also in Air Force One with Hope Hicks on Wednesday that a staffer had tested positive. They don't have to reveal their identity, but they could at least let reporters know.
They didn't do that. A lot of reporters found out from the media last night and even people who work inside the White House found out from when it was first reported by Bloomberg and confirmed by other outlets last night, that Hicks had actually tested positive.
[12:10:00]
So we would not, we don't even know if we would know about this if it had not been first reported by the media and by the press because the White House had not been forthcoming about that at all.
And then of course, we were waiting on the president to get tested last night and then they did eventually tweet out that he was positive but they really did not have any other option because he'd already revealed that he had undergone testing and they were going to make a decision about whether or not he was going to travel to Florida today.
And so we're just waiting to see what the repercussions of this are but so far they have not been clear or forthcoming with the information about this and hopefully that changes over the next few days because this is obviously a very serious matter.
KING: Kaitlan Collins at the White House, Dr. Adalja, Nia-Malika Henderson, grateful for the reporting, the insights and expertise. I will try to stay on top of this and as we do when we come back, the President of United States is now a coronavirus patient. We'll look into the treatment options.
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[12:15:00]
KING: More now on this day's dramatic breaking news. The President of United States and the First Lady Melania Trump, both testing positive for coronavirus. The White House confirming the president has mild symptoms and the First Lady tweeting she also is experiencing mild symptoms of COVID-19.
Let's bring in our Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. So Elizabeth, what are the treatment options and are they different for the president and the First Lady?
ELIZABATH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: John, let's talk a little bit about the president's health status. We know that he's 74 years old so that puts him in the elderly group, the group at highest risk for having complications from COVID-19. He weighs 244 pounds which means he is clinically obese, that is another risk factor for having complications from COVID.
He's also being treated for high cholesterol. Now let's look at treatments. When someone has mild to moderate illness and as you mentioned, the president and his wife are said to both have mild illness then you take medications just for fever, for pain, just for the symptoms, you're not doing anything to the virus, you're just helping with the symptoms.
If the illness is so bad that it requires hospitalization, then there are other options. Remdesivir which an IV antiviral drug. There's convalescent plasma which is blood products from people who've recovered so then you get there antibodies and also steroids but again, to emphasize, we are nowhere near those options from what we've been told, this is mild disease and we wouldn't be near those options just yet.
KING: We know from past history, the whole hydroxychloroquine debate that has been largely debunked but are there other treatments being discussed, being proposed maybe undergoing trials. Can the president raise his hand and say, I want that. Something that most patients can't get yet.
COHEN: Well, you know it's interesting, he doesn't even have to raise his hand for some of them John because some of the drugs that are being studied are available. His doctor could prescribe them. Some of them are even over the counter so if he chose to, here his doctor could go get them.
Now there are some which as I think is what you were thinking of that are experimental, that haven't been used for anything else, they were just developed for COVID-19 so his doctor could call up at the pharmaceutical company and say hey, I got the special patient, his name is Donald Trump. He wants to try the drugs that you are studying it and I can't get it. It's not on the market.
It would be difficult to think that that pharmaceutical company would say no.
KING: Hopefully we'll get some answers from the White House medical team. A, more on the president's condition and the First Lady and then more on the options they are looking at. Elizabeth Cohen, grateful for the reporting on that. I know you'll stay on top of it. When we come back, the president is now a COVID patient. He's also a candidate seeking reelection diagnosed. We are now 32 days away from election. The campaign fallout next.
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[12:20:00]
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KING: It's an important breaking news into CNN. Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee was tested this morning for coronavirus because he was in such close proximity to the president of United States at Tuesday night's debate. The president obviously tweeting out last night that he is positive for the coronavirus. Let's get straight to CNN's Jessica Dean.
She's in Grand Rapids Michigan. She's learned this information from the Biden campaign, Jessica.
JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right John. They have released a statement from the Biden primary care physician, Dr. Kevin O'Connor. I'm just going to read it to you briefly. Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden underwent PCR testing for COVID-19 today and COVID-19 was not detected.
I'm reporting this out in my capacity as both Vice President Biden and Dr. Biden's primary care physician. Again, that is verbatim. The statement from the Biden campaign this afternoon. We know that both Jill and Joe Biden were tested this morning after finding out about the Trump's diagnosis.
We also know John, that the Biden campaign was not given any heads up by the Trump campaign or the White House that they had potential exposure. I am here in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Vice President Biden was scheduled to be here at 1:20 eastern time to give remarks and have some campaign events.
We're still waiting to hear. Obviously he's not going to be able to make it here by 1:20 but we're going to wait to hear what they're going to do with that trip as it has been delayed by many hours as they awaited these COVID test results but again the top line here, Vice President Biden negative for COVID. The same for Jill Biden as well. John.
KING: Jessica Dean on the ground for us with the breaking news in Grand Rapids. Jessica, thanks for the hustle. Let's continue the conversation now with CNN's Jeff Zeleny and national political correspondent at New York Times, Jonathan Martin.
In this year of disruption, this is a giant disruption. The president of United States, a candidate for reelection positive for COVID-19. 32 days Jonathan Martin, from an election in which he has repeatedly tried in recent days and months to turn people away from the pandemic, to try to get them to look elsewhere.
Look at Joe Biden, look at protests across America, it is going to be very hard now when he is under quarantine in the White House to turn voters' attention anywhere else.
JONATHAN MARTIN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I make two points to you. First, this has been an extraordinary year, a year filled with turmoil. What it has not been out is a year that has impacted the contours of the campaign. The campaign has proven impervious almost to outside events.
Joe Biden's had a lead since he got the nomination effectively in March. That lead has not really changed despite event after event during the course of the last six months.
[12:25:00]
And I think it's not clear to me that this is going to change anything given how dug in people are in their corners, red and blue.
That said, this is an order of magnitude more extraordinary than the previous event. A sitting president, a month out from the election being diagnosed with a very serious disease so there is uncertainty and last thing I would say, four years ago, we had a knock over surprise that we all thought was going to reshape the election and perhaps lock in the election. It was the Access Hollywood tape and guess what, it was not the last October surprise. We still have 32 days to go John.
KING: Right so that is important to remember that we do have 32 days to go. We have 32 days to go and the words, I don't know are not spoken a lot in Washington, need to be spoken.
MARTIN: It's OK.
KING: We simply don't know. We don't know how this is going to play out but Jeff Zeleny, we do know it will disrupt things. I just want to put up the calendar. The president was supposed to be in Florida today. That rally canceled. The president was supposed to have two rallies in Wisconsin over the weekend, canceled.
Still on the schedule for Arizona next week, most likely to be canceled because he is in quarantine. Maybe they'll send a surrogate or send in the vice president. The vice presidential debate we believe will still happen. There's also supposed to be another presidential debate 13 days from now. The president would still be in quarantine if it's a two-week quarantine.
The schedule has been disrupted and what strikes me is most important Jeff, at least at this moment is look, the president plays to his base. The enthusiasm and turn out of the Trump base was absolutely critical if he's going to have come back odds. He cannot now do that in person at least in the short term.
JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: He cannot do it in person John but I have no doubt that we're going to see and hear from the president during this 14 day period. I would not be surprised if we see or hear from him before sunset tonight, either calling into one of his favorite shows or doing those phone rallies with some supporters.
But you're absolutely right, this has disrupted his plan. First and foremost about trying to change the subject. He is tried every which way to change the subject. Of course he got an opportunity with that with the Supreme Court vacancy which was also not expected to try and change the subject.
He spoke last night at the Al Smith dinner. He delivered a videotaped message to the New York Charity dinner. He said you know that the coronavirus is in the past. Nothing he has done has been able to change this conversation and this certainly refocuses the debate on coronavirus.
I agree with Jonathan, isn't going to change any minds. I do not think it will except for those voters who were you know not blaming him necessarily but were beginning to look at a broader picture, were beginning to look at economy or the Supreme Court vacancies or other judges here.
So we say it's 32 days until Election day John. I'm here in Michigan. It is Election Day. Yesterday was Election Day, tomorrow is Election Day. Millions of people will be voting here in the state and across the country, certainly tens of thousands here but by the election some 3 million people are expected to vote absentee.
So this race is quickly diminishing in terms of the days in which the argument and narrative can sink in here so that is a challenge for this president. He did not reset the race during the debate some of his advisers had hoped. Now it is locking in and every passing day, more votes are being sent in John.
KING: And we're having this conversation, the president's diagnosis coming out late last night. 48 hours essentially plus a few hours so maybe 50 or so hours after he stood on a debate stage with Joe Biden and essentially belittled the former vice president for wearing masks so often. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I mean I have a mask right here. I put a mask on it when I think I need it. I don't wear masks like him every time you see him, he's got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from me and he shows up with the biggest mask I've ever seen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: The president thought that was clever in the debate. Jonathan, the question is in the fall out here Joe Biden testing negative today and he will be out. The President has mocked Joe Biden's campaigning because he does smaller events with people spread out.
Joe Biden will be on the campaign trail when the president's in quarantine. MARTIN: Yes and look, he's been mocking Joe Biden for wearing a mask
dating back to Memorial Day when Joe Biden put a mask on to go and lay a wreath at a monument. That was in May and you know as recently as Tuesday before 70 million plus viewers, he's making fun of Biden for wearing a mask again.
And now the president himself has the virus. Look, the president has tried to sort of talk about other issues. It's going to be unavoidable for him to focus on this and I think the critique of Biden for you know running a basement campaign, which has been a favorite talking point of the president is going to look a lot different now because having won more in the basement campaign especially given Biden's testing negative today is going to look significantly smarter in the eyes of a lot of American voters.
