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New Day

Uncertainty over Trump's Condition After Joyride Around Hospital; Melania Trump Has No Plans to Leave the White House, Source Says; Voters Sue Texas Governor over Limit on Ballot Drop Boxes. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired October 05, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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

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[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day.

And this morning, we would like to be able to give you a reliable update on the president's condition, but we can't, because his doctor has admitted lying to the American people and the White House is withholding key information. So we just can't be sure about anything.

But what we do know is that seven months into the pandemic and 209,725 deaths later, the president now, all of a sudden, says he's learned a lot about the coronavirus, but not so much that it prevented him from getting in a sealed SUV with Secret Service agents for this photo op outside Walter Reed Hospital. One veteran Secret Service agent calls that stunt reckless and irresponsible and unbelievable.

The Washington Post reports this morning that the president is pushing for a return to the White House today, but there is some fear, The Post says, among his advisers, that it is a political decision and that he could relapse and have to return to Walter Reed.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: At least ten people in the president's circle are now infected, including the first lady, three senators and governor Chris Christie. We believe he is still in the hospital this morning, but we have no word on his condition. At least three journalists assigned to cover the White House have also tested positive. And we will speak to one of them in a moment.

The pandemic itself is surging again. 22 states report rising case numbers. Cases are dropping in only five states this morning.

So joining us now is Michael Schear, CNN Political Analyst and New York Times White House Correspondent. He is one of the White House journalists who tested positive for coronavirus. We also have Jonathan Wackrow, CNN Law Enforcement Analyst and former Secret Service agent for President Barack Obama.

Before we get to everything the president is doing, Michael, how are you doing this morning? MICHAEL SHEAR, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I'm feeling okay. I mean, this is definitely an uncomfortable thing to have. I wouldn't recommend it to folks. It feels like you have the flu, the, you know, aches and pains and chills and I still have a low-grade fever that I've had for several days. So it's definitely not comfortable.

But it's also not, you know -- I mean, I'm here. It's -- you know, you sort of get through it. And I'm not in the hospital. And I certainly feel lucky when compared to all the people that have had this far worse than I have.

BERMAN: And you are doing your reporting, you are doing your work, because the story itself right now is so important and you're able to do it, which is great.

Jonathan, to you. You have served in presidential protective detail. So I want to know what you were thinking when you saw those pictures last night of the president in the enclosed SUV with those Secret Service agents, driving by Walter Reed, for really nothing more than a photo-op.

Now, I knew -- I know that agents -- they'll do their job. You know, their job is to just barrel ford, protect the president the best they can, and that's what they're focused on. But I have to believe there are other feelings going on as well.

JONATHAN WACKROW, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: John, good morning. I was shocked when I saw the images of the president in the SUV, just going around the block, essentially for the optic. But what this speaks to, it literally is the proverbial exclamation point on the complete disregard for basic health security measures.

And, you know, we have to look back seven months ago, when the rise of this pandemic was entering into our country, basic health security protocols from the White House, White House military office, specifically the medical unit, and the Secret Service needed to be implemented and followed so we didn't have this situation.

We are in a 100 percent avoidable situation. The president should not be in the hospital. We should not have political leaders who are -- you know, who have contracted this virus. We should not have been here. And, broadly, we shouldn't have had so many Americans get the disease and unfortunately die from the disease.

[07:05:06]

We have disregarded the basic health security elements from the very beginning.

CAMEROTA: The president is supposed to be quarantining. That's what we have all been told, for the past nine months, when you have symptoms, you stay by yourself, you avoid even your family, you don't go out in public, you don't expose other people. I mean, that's one of the consistent messages that every doctor has told us, for all of these nine months. And that raises the issue, Michael, of what you're suffering from, because maybe it was the Amy Coney Barrett event inside, indoors, and out, it was the super spreader. But then, the president kept going to all sorts of events from the debate with Joe Biden to all of these fundraisers. And why is it a state secret when he was last tested negative, when he last got tested negative? Why can't Kayleigh McEnany answer that? And don't the American public deserve to know the answer to that, because that would help us explain why you got it and why so many other people have gotten it?

SHEAR: Right. I mean, look, there's two things here. One is that the president is, you know, following a completely different set of rules than everybody else in America. And I think that undercuts, that sets him apart and I think it probably makes people angry that, hey, we're, you know, moving about our lives, having all of these terrible impacts to our mobility and to our children's education, which is shut down in places. And yet the president can sort of evade the kind of rules that we are having to live by.

And, look, I think the other thing that has been said to us repeatedly is that that thing that's going to stop this is contact tracing. It's finding out every minute detail about where and when somebody was infected, so you can go back and contact all of those people.

And I will say, it's now, you know, ten10 days, 11 days or whatever since I think that I was probably infected on that Saturday. I have not been contacted by the White House. Nobody from the White House has said, boo, and asked anything about where I was or who I talked to or who else I might have infected. And so I think that that just shows you that they're not -- you know, they're not taking it seriously, at least as it pertains to themselves.

BERMAN: That's a big deal, Michael. Talk about that some more. First of all, you think maybe you were infected Saturday night, by whom, it's unclear. But you did go on Air Force One. The president came back and spoke to reporters off the record. So, if he was infectious, it's not impossible. And was he wearing a mask when he spoke to you?

SHEAR: He was not. He was not wearing a mask and he spoke to us for about ten minutes off the record. Look, it's hard to know, right, if he had just been infected himself that day, the medical experts, I think, that you guys have been playing would suggest he probably wasn't very infective himself at that point.

I was also at the White House earlier that day, not in the Rose Garden, for the event, but when you fly on Air Force One, the White House requires that you take a COVID test earlier in the day, which I did. So I was at the White House campus. It's possible I ran into somebody else there who was infected. But it's -- but that was the last time I was at the White House. And last time, really, I was out and about. So it's pretty clear, I think, somewhere along the course of that day was where I got infected.

BERMAN: And just to be clear, no contact tracing. You haven't been contacted yet. And we're hearing that from other people who were at that event as well. That's astounding. I mean, what does that tell you about the White House level of seriousness and concern about -- I can't -- it's a microcosm of a larger story here. I mean, if they're not concerned about an outbreak at the White House, what does that tell you and make it a bigger issue?

SHEAR: Right. Well, look, I mean, it is -- it is the result of the politics that have driven their response to this virus from the very beginning, right? Whether it was the testing fiascos early on and not having enough testing because President Trump didn't want to have more cases or whether it was the vaccine development and the pressure and leaning on the CDC, it's all been driven by politics. And I think that even gets down to the White House itself, where people in the building didn't want to offend the president by wearing masks.

And so reporters have, for months at the White House, worn masks all the time, we never take them off, I mean, unless you're taking a sip to drink or something. But, you know, very few of the White House staff, Mark Meadows would always come around without a mask. None of them do until the last couple of days.

CAMEROTA: And so, Jonathan, you know, as I said, the president is supposed to be quarantining, but he didn't. And he exposed those Secret Service agents, we think, to the virus, even though we don't know if he's still shedding the virus. We don't know when his last negative test was, we don't know if he's still testing positive.

[07:10:00]

There's just so -- we don't know if he has a fever. We just don't know what's happening.

And so, obviously, the Secret Service agents are professionals, but I know that you've talked about how all of these things chip away at the morale. So what do you think is going on there this morning and going forward?

WACKROW: Well, listen, I think it's really important and I've said this all weekend long. Actions have consequences. And now we're seeing these consequences come to bear. When Secret Service agents are exposed to this virus, you know, by their protectees or in the environment that they're operating in, yes, they are affected.

But also their families are affected. There's a second and third order of consequence. There's a ripple effect, you know, both within the Secret Service operations, but also external to the Secret Service, with their families and people in the environment that they operate in.

So, again, we shouldn't be here, but the impact to the Secret Service, that's what's starting to chip away at the morale, as you said. And this is the first time that I have actually seen active duty officers, agents and supervisors speak out against what is going on. And a lot of it has to do with the strategy that was put forth.

No one knows who is in charge of the health security policies around the White House. Is it the Secret Service? Is it the White House medical unit? Is it White House operations? Every day, it seems like there's somebody else in charge. We shouldn't be here. We should have had a very solidified strategy on how to operate the White House in a global pandemic that was strictly adhered to by staff and the senior officials.

And, clearly, we see that that was not done, and, again, the action of not following that has led to the consequences that we're living with today.

CAMEROTA: That is such an important context, Jonathan Wackrow, thank you very much for your experience and sharing it with us. And, Michael Shear, good to see you doing fairly well. Hang in there. And thanks so much.

SHEAR: Thank you very much. All right, thanks, guys.

CAMEROTA: Obviously, there are so many questions about coronavirus and what's happening today. New York City, the early epicenter of the pandemic, is facing another round of shutdowns because cases are spiking in some neighborhoods. So what's the plan?

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[07:15:00]

BERMAN: All right. we have some breaking news on the condition of the first lady, Melania Trump. It comes from our reporter, Kate Bennett, who says that the first lady is not considering leaving the White House at any time, according to a White House official.

But listen to this. This is a quote. Melania Trump is aware of the dangers of COVID. Potentially exposing others is not a risk she would take, the official said. It's almost as if she's cosmically sub- tweeting the president.

So, Melania Trump will not leave the White House because exposing others is not a risk she would take. This comes less than 24 hours after the president got in the car, potentially exposing Secret Service agents.

CAMEROTA: I guess she gets her news somewhere other than where the president gets his news. And good morning, First Lady.

Joining us now is Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent. I mean, Sanjay, of course, she's right. I mean, the idea that the president broke quarantine, he left quarantine. I mean, of all of the things that we have all been taught, that everybody agreed to, it's that when you're sick and you have that diagnosis, you stay in quarantine for, I don't know, Sanjay, anymore, 10 days, 14 days?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, no doubt. I mean, some of that's based on his own testing, but, yes, at least ten days since you first develop symptoms. And as you know, incubation period is typically 14 days. So it's -- and in his case, it's isolation. Because once you're diagnosed with COVID, the term is isolation. Quarantine is for the people you may have exposed, which may be the situation now with those agents. It's interesting, in a hospital, if a patient is going to leave against medical advice, which is what this is here, you would have to sign forms, people would be involved, oftentimes you might have another service involved, even psychiatry, to say, are you sure you want to do this, because this is against medical advice. Obviously, I doubt any of that happened here. But it breaks all sorts of protocols within the hospital itself.

I'm curious, and, again, we may never know the answer, did the doctors try and council him out of that because of the fact that he is carrying the virus, but also for his own health? I mean, you know, he made the video, he looked pretty good.

But he is also somebody who is on steroids. He's on remdesivir. He got a dose of the monoclonal antibodies, twice he needed supplemental oxygen. What if he had had an event some sort while in the car? I mean, these are all consideration. That's why you're in the hospital, right, in the first place, because there was worry, that there was a period of instability in terms of the vital signs. So this was a bad idea on every level that you can imagine.

BERMAN: And I think it also informs where you are right now. You said, we may never know if the doctors tried to overrule him. And one reason we may never know is because they've lied to us already and we really can't fully trust everything they say. That's just a fact at this point.

But we do know that politics has superseded in some cases the science here, which informs us a little bit about this possible return to the White House today. We don't know if the president will get out. That would be the big news event of the day. We don't know if he will get out. But we do now know there's been evidence of politics superseding medicine. And even if he is sent back to the White House, it may not tell us that much about his condition, Sanjay.

GUPTA: Right. I mean, I was very surprised. I was listening to those press conferences all weekend. And they did say, as you point out, he may go home as early as tomorrow. They said that yesterday. That sets expectations now, you know, that that's going to be the thing. And if anything less than that, I mean, the patient will be disappointed, the public will think, well, what's going on?

[07:20:02]

So I was really surprised that they said that.

A couple of basic reasons. One is he's getting an I.V. medication. That is a five-day course that's given via I.V. in the hospital, the remdesivir. That's the protocol on that medication. So he would require at least two more days of that medication, is my understanding. So he got one dose Friday, Saturday, Sunday, should be today and tomorrow, at least.

But, again, he is in the throes of this disease. We have some knowledge of typically how it might progress and, again, we hope it doesn't, but, typically, day seven to ten tend to be the worst. That's when you have a significant amount of inflammation in the body. And, you know, you've got to just make sure he doesn't have declines during that period. So why you would possibly go home during the period of time that may be the worst, it makes no sense. So that's not a medical decision at that point. That's a purely political decision.

Also, I'll point out, just the dexamethasone medication, the steroids, it's a medication that's commonly used. We use it in neurosurgery a lot, as well, to help decrease inflammation. It also does give people sort of a sense that they feel a lot better all of a sudden. It gives people a lot of energy, they often feel a lot of hunger, things like that. So it can be an artificial sense of feeling better, when, in fact, the disease is still progressing.

So the doctors know all of this. I'm confident of that. We've looked at their backgrounds. These are very, you know, well qualified doctors. So it's just a question of is, as you point out, the politics going to supersede the medical decisions.

CAMEROTA: And how long can somebody stay on dexamethasone?

GUPTA: Well, they can stay on it for some time. But what you typically do is you have higher doses and then start to wean it down. But this is a steroid, right? This is the high-dose steroid medication. It can lead to, besides its intended effect, which is a decreased in inflammation, it can lead to behavioral changes, it can lead to hunger, people don't sleep. They have this thing called roid rage sometimes. So all of these things are reasons you would want to keep someone in the hospital and sort of gradually wean their dose.

They may be able to go to an oral dose, a low dose even outside the hospital. But at this point, that's typically given in the hospital, along with, again, the remdesivir, which is definitely a hospitalized drug. And they did get that dose of the antibodies.

BERMAN: But, Sanjay, 209,734 deaths now in the United States with more than 7.4 million cases, which now includes the ten growing number of cases that come from the White House itself. We are seeing the numbers not go down as we head into the fall. The case rate is going up. These are new case reported in the past week and you can see a number of states in the red, still, and there are some states alarming in the red, states like Wisconsin, Indiana, and others. Where are we?

GUPTA: Well, you know, one thing, when you look at that map, sometimes it can feel a little bit misleading, because you say, well, there's a lot of yellow, those are stable case. But if you go back and look, you realize that they've gotten to the top of their peak of cases and they may be stabilized, but they're stabilized at a very high level.

There have been more than 85,000 cases that have occurred since the president was admitted to the hospital. So I'm glad you raised this point, because, obviously, we're talking a lot about the president, but the concern is that the trajectory of growth of the pandemic is increasing.

This is a conversation we were all having on your program back in March, where we say, okay, it's just not the number of people who are becoming infected day-to-day but the pace at which the new number of people are becoming infected is also growing. So 54,000, I believe, yesterday or over the last couple of days, we had a significant high in terms of the number of people.

I'm worried, you know, as we go into the colder weather, we already anticipated that the growth was going to increase, because people are more likely to be clustered in smaller spaces inside. We still don't have adequate testing in many places to quickly identify cases.

And right now, you're getting an idea, even looking at what happened in the Rose Garden, how difficult it is to then go back and contact trace, which is one of the basic health principles of controlling a pandemic. There's just still too much viral load and the spread is accelerating at this point.

BERMAN: You say it's difficult. We don't even think they're trying to contact trace from that event. We haven't heard any reports of contact tracing there. So it might be hard, but it's really hard if you don't do it at all, which is a concern this morning, Sanjay.

GUPTA: Yes.

BERMAN: Thanks so much. I appreciate your thoughts.

GUPTA: Yes, that's a good point. People should be getting those calls now to say if they got exposed, absolutely.

BERMAN: All right. Sanjay, we'll talk to you again in a little bit.

So, voters in Texas suing this morning over an order from the governor that could make it harder for thousands of people to vote. The latest on the case, next.

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[07:25:00]

BERMAN: This morning, Texas voters suing to overturn an order from the Republican governor, restricting the number of ballot drop boxes in each of the state's counties to just one, one box per county. Democrats say that Governor Greg Abbott's move is voter suppression.

CNN's Ed Lavendera has the very latest from Houston.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Welcome to Harris County, Texas. There are 2.4 million registered voters in this county. And if you're one of those voters who is skeptical of voting in person because of the coronavirus pandemic or your concerned that the Postal Service won't get your ballot to the elections office in time, county officials here had set up 12 satellite drop boxes, where people could drive their mail-in ballots and then drop them off at these 12 locations across the county.

But the governor of Texas has ordered all counties across the state to close all of those down and that they can only have one of those satellite drop boxes open in the weeks leading up to the election.

[07:30:04]

So this is the story of what it will take to get to that ballot box in.