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Trump Tests Positive; World Reacts of Trump's Diagnosis. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired October 02, 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]

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Pain to the economy or talking about contrasting his policy vision with Joe Biden's vision and -- and moving on from the coronavirus. The fact that he himself has caught this virus and has not been able to keep himself safe, it makes it much harder for him to tell the country, you know, rest easy, I'm going to keep you safe. Let's talk about some of the other issues and how 2021 is going to be the best year ever. It just makes the coronavirus, which was already top of mind for so many voters, it allows that to remain one of the top things that people are going to be focusing on and talking about over the next couple of weeks.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, yes. Oh, yes, he wanted to talk about anything besides coronavirus. Now they will not be able to talk about anything but coronavirus.

Let me just put up the debate schedule so people can see it, so people can know what I'm talking about when I say I can't imagine these debates will gone on.

October 7th, which his in the middle of next week, is the vice presidential debate. Remember, Mike Pence was with the president as recently as Tuesday. Hard to see how he'd be cleared for something like that.

The next presidential debate is October 15th, which is less than two weeks away. Again, that is not outside the window where the president, who has coronavirus, you would think would be cleared to do something like that. So this is just going to upend the calendar completely.

Jeffrey Toobin, I want to talk to you about something, and I've waited to talk about this because I -- I don't want to give people the sense that we -- we are necessarily here yet. Jonathan Reiner pointed out, there's no reason to panic. That our government has systems in place to make sure that there is smooth operation.

But, when we talk about the 25th Amendment, it isn't necessarily succession, it just deals with how the country can be run should the president not be up to doing his presidential duties, which you could imagine might happen if you have a bad case of Covid-19, even just to be flat on your back for a few days.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Right, or even a few hours. The -- the -- you know, the -- the 25th Amendment deals with, very directly, the issue of, if a president is ill or incapable of -- of performing his duties, even for a short period of time. President George Herbert Walker Bush, twice, invoked the 25th Amendment. And by when I say invoked the 25th Amendment, it means he wrote a letter to the president pro tempore of the Senate, who is Chuck Grassley, and the speaker of the House, who's now Nancy Pelosi, and said, I am temporarily giving my duties as president to the vice president, Dan Quayle. He did it because he was getting pa routine colonoscopy. And I think he was under anesthesia for less than an hour. And then he wrote a letter revoking his original letter. But that's what the 25th Amendment has a capacity for, is if a president knows he is going to be incapacitated, he can write a letter and say, I am temporarily transferring the duties to -- to the vice president.

Obviously, you have situations like when President Reagan was shot, there was no chance to write such a letter and that -- that's when, you know, the authority issues can get somewhat murky. But, you know, here we have a situation, as you point out, this is not a crisis now. There is no -- there -- there is no evidence that the president is incapable of performing his duties as he's been doing them. But if he gets sicker, like Boris Johnson, the prime minister of Great Britain, who was in intensive care for a while, there is a constitutional provision that allows him to temporarily transfer his authority to the vice president.

BERMAN: Right. No reason to panic. There are systems in place. But you absolutely have to ask these questions now and lay out what the facts are now.

If for no other reason, we just can't be sure what the truth is about what's going on inside the White House. We cannot rely on the information from the White House. And that's a situation that they have created. And we are now dealing with the consequences of that with the most serious health situation facing a president since Ronald Reagan was shot.

Friends, stand by. Much more to talk about.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to talk about all of the medical questions, the things that we do know about coronavirus, how it could potentially impact the president, those around him. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is with us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:38:25]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

HILL: Joining us now, as we continue to cover, if you're just joining us now, President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have tested positive for coronavirus.

CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta back with us now.

Sanjay, so many people waking up to this, this morning, obviously. I'm putting you a little bit on the spot here, my friend, but I know you can take it.

As we think about how all of the top health officials in this country are either waking up to it or perhaps woken with a phone call in the middle of the night, over the last several months, have you -- as you have been in touch with people at these top agencies and on the coronavirus task force, was there ever a discussion, to your knowledge, of what -- what the plan was if the president were to test positive and how that would be handled? Do you know if that came up?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I -- I -- I don't know for -- for certain, Erica. I -- I would imagine that it did, as part of national security discussions even. I don't know if it specifically came up with the Coronavirus Task Force. You know, they're not -- they're -- they're -- they're advising the country. They're not his medical doctors, necessarily, although I'm sure there's a lot of overlap there, to your question. But it is -- it is, just as you say, there -- there -- I know that the members of the Coronavirus Task Force are waking up. They're probably watching now, listening to this, hearing about this for the first time and trying to understand what this all means. And I think they're piecing things together as well.

What does it mean for the president? What does it mean for all the people around him?

One thing I want to emphasize, and I think we should make sure to do it as often as we can is that, I mean, this is stunning news for people to wake up to, shocking, even unsettling.

[06:40:05]

But, you know, it is still -- the odd that statistically are very much on the president's side in terms of recovery from this, even with his age, we can put up some of the background medical information. He's 74 years old. We know he is defined as clinically obese. Those are both things that increase your risk. But even with that, greater than 90, 95 percent chance that he will recover from this still. So that's important, I think, to keep in mind. But he's going to need to be monitored. We don't know if he has symptoms. If he does, we don't know how sick he may become and we don't know all the people that he may have had contact with and spread this virus. And that's of great concern because that's going to be a lot of people, potentially, and their families who this morning are now waking up saying, OK, now we've got to get tested, now we've got to be quarantined, all those things that, you know, people are familiar with, with this disease.

BERMAN: Honestly, Sanjay, it is the magnitude of the contact tracing and the level of officials that we're talking about here. It's almost impossible to get your arms around.

And one example I'll give you is Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who is nominated to be on the Supreme Court, she was at the White House yesterday. I mean not only this big, unmasked event on Saturday where her family, full family, was in the Oval Office with the president, but this is yesterday. She's been, I think, working out of the White House, which is not untraditional in some ways, as you meet with officials and senators on Capitol Hill during the process. But here she is. She was in the building yesterday when we know there were, well, we don't know that Hope Hick was in the building yesterday, but the president was in the building yesterday, and Hope Hicks has certainly been in contact with people who have been in the building.

So now you have this Supreme Court nominee, who's been on the premises in a hot zone, who's going to Capitol Hill. I mean I have to believe she's going to have to stop meeting with senators. And I don't know what this means for the hearings.

GUPTA: No, absolutely, John. And that's the kind of thing that should have been happening regardless, right, because when Hope Hicks had symptoms and tested positive, and we don't know exactly when that was, Wednesday night or Thursday morning, but wherever it was, at that point anyone who had contact with her, including the president, regardless of what a test may have shown for the president, at that point he needed to have been quarantined. You know, it -- without a positive test. Once you have a positive test, then you're in isolation, when you are suspicious because of exposure, you're in quarantine. He should have already been in quarantine. The fact that he had a known exposure on Thursday morning and then went to another event definitively put a lot of people at risk at that other event. And, frankly, you know, where were the doctors advising him on this at that point? I mean there -- there's -- I don't understand where the medical accountability is here because at some point that's just a national security issue, not only his -- his health, but the health of all of the people that are around him.

So there's going to be a lot of questions that need to be answered here. But the contact tracing now taking place at the highest levels of government is going to be extraordinary. And I -- and I think by -- within the next couple of hours, we're going to hear about a lot of people who are going to need to be quarantined for the next two weeks, John.

HILL: Yes.

I mean can we just say, too, you know, Sanjay, you correctly point out, where were the doctors on this?

Here's the bottom line. The doctors, for months, have been there and there have been plenty of doctors who have been telling the president and the administration what they know and what they learn as they learn it and how the president and the administration and the country, frankly, should act on that information.

GUPTA: Yes.

HILL: And we have seen what the president has done with it.

BERMAN: Right. We're getting new information.

Sanjay, don't go far.

GUPTA: Yes.

BERMAN: We're getting new information here by the minute on the president and the White House.

GUPTA: OK.

BERMAN: We're also getting fresh reaction from around the world.

Our special, live coverage continues after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:47:46]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: And the major breaking news this morning, we are told by the White House that both the president and first lady have tested positive for coronavirus.

Our reporters at the White House are there on the scene watching to see who comes and goes this morning and to see if any work is being done at all in the West Wing. One of the open questions is, what will happen inside the U.S. government over the next few days?

Well, there is an example from overseas. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson dealt with a serious case of coronavirus.

I'm joined now by international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson, live in London for that, plus just the international reaction to this major breaking news.

Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, John, there's absolutely been an outflowing, an outpouring of support and sympathy for the president and the first lady from Vladimir Putin of Russia, from the Turkish president, the president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, to the head of NATO. You name the world leader pretty much and they are offering their support and sympathy, including Boris Johnson, who's wishing Donald Trump and Melania Trump the best and speediest recovery.

And this is a guy who knows what it's like. And I think there were -- you know, from our experience here in the U.K., when the prime minister got sick at the end of March, ended up in hospital for a week, three days in ICU in hospital, the experiences here -- there were three major takeaways. One is the spin that comes from the back office. Two is the sympathy from the public-- from the public, and then there's the struggle.

So, the spin, Number Ten Downing Street was telling the country the prime minister was still going through his ministerial papers, yet the very next day he goes into ICU in the hospital. So the back office was really trying to present a very rosy picture.

Then there was the sympathy. And that was -- that was quite noticeable. This was the prime minister who had failed to have enough PPE for medical workers. He was already being heavily criticized for his handling of Covid-19. But the notion turned that moment that the country found out he went into hospital, they turned. There was a lot of sympathy for him, a lot of support. Everyone wishing him well. And that sense for the nation of what's going to happen. But then, when he got out, and he was on that road to recovery, that sympathy fell away again because there were so many problems.

[06:50:02]

And then there's the struggle. And the struggle was that when the prime minister came out of hospital, this was about a period of 12, 13 days after he first became -- well, a period of two weeks, really, after he first became ill, he wasn't himself. He was weak and he really struggled to put in the hours that were -- that were required. He went to a country retreat, one of the prime minister's homes in the countryside, for a little while to -- to recover with his partner.

What he did during the period when he went into ICU, I think, was the real worrying period for the country. He remained prime minister, but he delegated the powers of government to the first minister, Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary.

Erica.

HILL: Nic, boy, certainly gives you a lot to think about. And, as you mentioned, we are hearing from leaders around the world as they react to the president's diagnosis.

Nic, thank you.

What does President Trump's coronavirus diagnosis mean to national security in this country? We just heard what happened in the U.K.

Joining us now, CNN contributor Miles Taylor. He is the former chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Miles, this morning as we look at this, there are serious national security issues here that we need to talk about which are related to, as John has pointed out, the scope of the contact tracing that will need to be done, the number of people who the president has been in contact with and also what that means for their jobs. If there are people who are working in very secure areas, who may have somehow been in contact, it's a little more difficult to say, OK, go quarantine and work from home.

What is your biggest concern this morning, Miles?

MILES TAYLOR, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, look, there's the -- there's a few concerns, but the immediate concern, Erica, will be the Secret Service and it will be what protocols they have to put in place to protect the president.

Now, the Secret Service was within the Department of Homeland Security. These were the types of things that the agents around the president would prepare for. But this is a challenge because you have key agents that are responsible for protecting him that now likely have to also go into quarantine. So you have new shifts of agents coming in. Like you said, there's going to have to be an extensive contact tracing effort. And this isn't just a contact tracing effort for anyone. It's a contact tracing effort for the commander in chief. And the people that he comes into contact with are the people that run the federal government. So then, from the immediate concerns around the president's bubble, you have those larger national security concerns about who did the president interact with and who will be out of pocket because of this.

Now, we, of course, hope that other people around the president weren't infected. We do know that some senior advisers were. It's unclear whether they were before the president or after the president and because of him. But there's a broader issue here regarding continuity of government.

Now, we did a lot of exercising and training in government to prepare for situations where senior leadership might be affected or removed from their jobs. Those types of plans are being put in action right now.

Now, unfortunately, this White House wasn't terribly interested in continuity of government exercises when I was there, but I do hope that at this moment the National Security Council is springing into action and thinking through the worst-case scenarios so that the country is prepared and so that there's a smooth continuation of leadership in any crisis situation.

The last thing I would add, Erica, is, of course, right now, senior national security officials are watching to make sure that our foreign adversaries don't find a way to exploit this health crisis that's reached the highest levels of the U.S. government and to make sure again that those key functions continue smoothly.

BERMAN: So, Miles, you make a really interesting point here, which is, obviously, there's a plan in place on paper. There are probably books after books of plans in place and there have been training exercises by many people in place. None of that matters if the political leadership doesn't believe in the virus itself. Olivia Troye, who I know you're close with, who is working on the Coronavirus Task Force, as recently as, you know, a month and a half ago, told me the other day that there were people in the White House who still didn't believe, more or less, in this virus.

So what impact, I suppose, has that had to bring us to this point? And how might that color the reaction now going forward?

TAYLOR: Well, look, I mean, we've seen the broader public health impact. And that's, of course, 200,000 plus Americans who have died because of this crisis, and because the White House has taken a lax approach. But the thing that very few of us have talked about publicly and hoped never happened is that that lax approach to the Covid-19 pandemic might actually have an effect on the stability of the federal government. We are now in that situation. I mean as people have talked about on your show this morning, the closest parallel we have is, you know, Ronald Reagan potentially having to sign away the duties of his office temporarily after, you know, he was shot in the 1980s. Of course we hope that the president has a speedy recovery and that the virus doesn't affect him --

BERMAN: Right.

TAYLOR: But we have to consider the possibility that this may affect, again, his ability to carry out the duties of his office.

[06:55:01]

BERMAN: OK.

TAYLOR: That's a big concern. It's something that this White House wasn't preparing for, in my view.

BERMAN: Miles, don't go far. There's a lot of breaking news all morning long. We may have to check back in with you as the information comes in.

Thank you very much.

TAYLOR: Thanks.

HILL: And stay with us, the latest on this diagnosis for the president and the first lady, both testing positive for coronavirus. The vice president, we know, was there in the White House just a couple of days ago. What does it mean? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. John Berman here, along with Erica Hill, who's in for Alisyn.

The major, breaking news, the White House says that both President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have tested positive for coronavirus. They are said to be in isolation this morning in the White House residence. These are live pictures of the White House this morning. We are trying to see what kind of activity is going on there behind the scenes.

Now, the president's doctor says that both are doing well, but there's a lot that we don't know.

[07:00:02]

They didn't tell us what that means, for instance. What does it mean they're doing well? Is the president showing any symptoms? One of the issues is.