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Texas Police Officer Charged with Murder in Shooting of a Black Man; Biden Draws Contrast from Trump By Encouraging Mask- Wearing. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired October 06, 2020 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

LORENZO PALADINO, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN: The president is not the first one to get it. Regeneron recently released some data of 275 people they tested it on, and didn't have much side effects. We are getting, however, the general population similar treatment to what Trump is getting other than the monoclonal antibodies.

We're getting a different flavor of it. We're getting convalescent plasma which is basically a bunch of random antibodies less targeted that are made by a survivor, and then they donate the plasma and we get it. But I think the targeted antibodies that Regeneron is making is going to have a lot more success.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, really interesting and good to know. Next, remdesivir. Most people don't get it on day two of their symptoms, it has to be administered in the hospital. Should -- from what you've seen in the emergency room, people be getting it earlier. Does that help turn the illness around?

PALADINO: Absolutely. So remdesivir went through a little bit of controversy. And in the beginning, there was a negative study in the Landsat(ph), a study that was done out of China, it showed that there was no benefit to it, no mortality benefit, no benefit to decrease in symptoms.

And as it's also the problem, it could cause liver inflammation and maybe even liver failure. Based on that, many people were hesitant to give it during the pandemic. However, after that, a "New England Journal of Medicine" study came out that was done here in the United States that showed that there was a benefit.

It decreased symptoms from 15 days to 11 days. And there was a decreased viral load. So, the way remdesivir works is a nuclear tight analog. What that means is it's kind of a monkey wrench in the machinery for replication.

Once, you get remdesivir and the virus gets in a cell, it's unable to make copies of itself because of it. You want to do that as early as possible. Once it's made several copies, probably the damage is done. And that's probably the problem in a lot of the trials. In a lot of trials, people got it at seven, ten, or greater days out. And theoretically, if you gave it on day one or two, it would probably work better.

CAMEROTA: Yes, I mean --

PALADINO: I think that's what happened --

CAMEROTA: I'm so -- I'm so interested to hear you say that. Now that you're in the emergency room, are you able to give remdesivir earlier to people? I mean, are you -- have you changed that since March and April?

PALADINO: Yes, we've changed that since March and April. We've given remdesivir to many of our patients.

CAMEROTA: I want to ask you about -- I want to pull up this graphic that we have of all of the things that President Trump was given over the past four days. And the right side of the screen that you're about to see are sort of common pharmaceutical things that we can -- many of us can get over the counter, zinc, vitamin D, the famotidine, that's pepcid basically, and then aspirin and melatonin. So those things -- should people have those on hand and should people just now, you know, sort of prophylactically take vitamin D and that pepcid because we know that they might then have a better chance of survival?

PALADINO: Well, that's a difficult thing to say because there's not very good research. To be honest, there's not very good research on most of the things that are out there, including the things that the president got. As you can see, the convalescent plasma didn't pass the FDA yet -- I'm sorry, the monoclonal antibody didn't pass the FDA yet.

So the research on that is still out, but yet it was given to the president. Vitamin D, Zinc, they have theoretical benefits, but I haven't seen any studies that showed that they really do work. I don't think that there's a downside to taking them, and with the lockdown, a lot of people are not getting to go outside, so it's probably not a bad idea to get some vitamin D if you're not getting much sun from being locked in all the time.

CAMEROTA: Great point. Vitamin D can't hurt and it might be able to help. Dr. Lorenzo Paladino, thank you --

PALADINO: Well, as long as you don't take too much of it.

CAMEROTA: OK, fair. But just whatever the stipulated dosage is on the bottle, people should take that every day. OK, well, thank you very much, really appreciate you telling us where we are with what the rest of us could expect.

PALADINO: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: John?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we want to remember some of the more than 210,000 Americans lost to coronavirus. First grade teacher Olga Quiroga was a 30-year veteran of Chicago Public Schools, and colleagues and students just adored. She loved to dance.

She did Tik-Tok dances with her 14-year-old granddaughter. Family members told the "Chicago Sun Times", she was a hilarious goof ball. Seventy-three-year-old Rebecca Cryer was a district court judge at the Choctaw Nation, a survivor of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. She leaves behind a husband of 56 years, three children, and five grandchildren.

[07:35:00]

Former Major League outfielder Jay Johnstone played 20 seasons for eight teams starting in 1966. He was an elite pinch hitter in one of the league's best known pranksters of the era. He once locked Tommy Lasorda in a motel room. His best moment on the field itself, homerun, he hit for the Dodgers in game four of the 1981 World Series that helped them beat the Yankees in six games. Jay Johnstone was 74 years old. May their memories be a blessing. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: This morning, still so many questions about President Trump's coronavirus battle, just how bad was his condition when he arrived at Walter Reed? How did he get out of the hospital so fast? John Avlon here to shot it out -- sort it out with what we now and what we don't. John?

[07:40:00]

JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Hey, guys, look, in the Trump era, a day is a long time in politics, but even by this dizzying standard, mind the gap between these two states.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's been a very interesting journey, I learned a lot about COVID. I learned it by really going to school. This is the real school. This isn't the let's- read-the-book school. And I get it and I understand it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: Yes, on Sunday, it seemed like Trump might have learned something, even if it took personal experience to make him relate to more than 210,000 dead Americans. Then came Monday with Trump tweeting, "don't be afraid of COVID.

Don't let it dominate your life. I feel better than I did 20 years ago." Now, perhaps fortified with chemical courage, courtesy of steroids, Trump defied medical norms and returned to the White House. Despite the fact that his doctor admitted that he's not entirely out of the woods and that the president is still likely contagious. Make no mistake, the Trump White House is a COVID-19 hot spot.

We know of more than a dozen people in his orbit who have tested positive. But they're not even doing thorough contact-tracing contrary to their own guidelines. And it's far from the only pandemic protocol they've broken. From the beginning, the Trump White House has not been honest with the American people about COVID-19. And I'm not just talking about Trump calling it totally under control and praising China's response while privately telling Bob Woodward it was deadly stuff and the plague.

Americans learned that Hope Hicks came down with COVID from reporters at "Bloomberg News", not the White House. Her colleagues reportedly found out from media as well. And according to a source from the "Wall Street Journal", when Trump found out an adviser had COVID, his impulse was obstruction, don't tell anyone. But a handful of White House officials didn't know about Hope Hicks' diagnosis before Trump potentially exposed some 200 of his donors. We still don't know when Trump's last negative test occurred.

His doctor says he doesn't want to look backward, which seems to be Trump's speak for telling the truth will get me in trouble. But Trump reportedly has already received a positive test when he told Sean Hannity he was still waiting.

By Friday morning, we were told the president had mild symptoms and was in good spirits before he was airlifted to Walter Reed after being put on oxygen. The next day, Trump's doctor tried to put a positive spin on the situation while his chief of staff admitted the president's vitals over the last 24 hours were very concerning. Now, Trump's reaction to someone telling the truth was furry. Who the "f" said that? He said according to a source in the "Wall Street Journal".

Then, as the president was bolstered by a cocktail of drugs, but notably not hydroxychloroquine that he couldn't stop boosting all Summer. We were fed pictures of Trump getting back to work at the hospital and footage of him driven around outside to wave his supporters. Trump apparently decided, he didn't like the optics, so he decided to leave after three days and he filmed a video saying --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Maybe I'm immune, I don't know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: Yes, strongly suggesting he didn't learn so much after all. Promising that vaccines are coming momentarily by trying to overrule new guidelines for safety checks. But this is all more of the same. Donald Trump doesn't care about the safety of his staff or donors, he doesn't care about science. He cares about himself. Remember that recent study that suggested Trump is likely the largest driver of COVID misinformation, it doesn't look like he's going to be knocked out of that top spot any time soon. And that's your reality check, guys.

CAMEROTA: John, I'm just curious, I mean if you're taking a cocktail of ten different drugs, experimental drugs and vitamins, is -- does that make you immune?

AVLON: It puts you in perfect equilibrium, you're immune before the crash, and then that's when things get really odd. CAMEROTA: I mean, the absurdity of having to go to the hospital and

getting the best care in the world and thinking that, that made you immune.

AVLON: I don't know about you.

CAMEROTA: Thank you very much, John.

AVLON: Take care Al.

CAMEROTA: OK, also developing this morning, a Texas police officer arrested and charged with murder in connection with the shooting of a black man. The family attorney says 31-year-old Jonathan Price was trying to break up a fight before he was shot. CNN's Ed Lavandera is live in Dallas with the latest. What do you know, Ed?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning Alisyn. Well, Saturday night, according to the family of Jonathan Price and their lawyer, Price had noticed at a gas station in the small town of Wolfe City about an hour's drive northeast of Dallas, a man and a woman engaged in a fight, a man striking a woman. Price's family says he intervened to break up that situation, and that's when an officer arrived at the scene shortly after Price was tased by officer Shaun Lucas and shot. He died later at a hospital.

Texas Rangers, the state police force that is investigating this shooting says that the officer attempted to detain Price who resisted in a non-threatening posture and then began walking away. Lee Merritt, the lawyer for Jonathan Price's family says that the entire situation had already been resolved before the officer arrived, and that Price had his arms raised and was trying to explain what was happening. The Texas Rangers in a statement last night said that the officer's actions were, quote, "not objectionably reasonable".

[07:45:00]

Now, one of the things that the Texas Rangers statement that they put out last night, detailing what happened does not say why the officer was trying to arrest Price, how many times he was shot or where he was shot. So all of this -- all of these questions still remain out there. But this officer used his taser and then fired shots at Jonathan Price.

And, as I said, he later died in a hospital Saturday night. Shaun Lucas, the Wolfe City police officer involved in this shooting was arrested Monday night last night by Texas Rangers police, has been charged with murder and is being held on a $1 million bond. Lee Merritt, the attorney for the family says Jonathan Price's family is cautiously relieved this morning about this arrest. So many more questions still unanswered how -- to understand how all of this unfolded. It is a story that is still developing. John and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Absolutely, Ed. Obviously, we will all stay on this. Thank you very much for the reporting. Joe Biden is reacting to the president's coronavirus recovery. Why he says Mr. Trump is responsible for this. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE FOR 2020: He said, don't let COVID control your lives. Tell that to the 205,000 families who lost somebody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:50:00]

CAMEROTA: Time for CNN business now. It was the best day for stocks since mid Summer yesterday as Joe Biden pulled further ahead in the polls and the president prepared to return to the White House. CNN's chief business correspondent Christine Romans joins us with more. Is that what sent the stocks up?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: You know, yes, as those polls widen, Alisyn, the fears fade of a contested election, that's a big part of it, and also Wall Street is starting to become more comfortable with the notion of a Joe Biden win and even a blue wave in November. Now, contrary to the warnings of the president who says Democrats will destroy the greatest economy in history that he has built, on Twitter, Monday, he wrote this, "Democrats would shut our economy and jobs down if they won in November".

But Alisyn, Goldman Sachs disagrees. A Goldman analyst wrote Monday, Democrats gaining unified control of Washington raise the chances of a fiscal stimulus package of at least $2 trillion and longer-term spending on infrastructure, climate, healthcare and education. Goldman acknowledges a blue wave of course could mean higher corporate taxes which Wall Street would not like. But a Democratic sweep would mean easier U.S. fiscal policy, fewer trade tensions, those are things that are good for investors. And JPMorgan told its clients, Monday, quote, "a potential Biden victory should not be seen as a negative for markets."

But what really matters here right now is stimulus. A growing number of Wall Street analysts don't expect action until next year. Meantime, the U.S. is in a jobs crisis down 10.7 million jobs since February, the latest round of stimulus has been allusive. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, they spoke for an hour on the phone Monday, they did not reach agreement. And John, another call is planned for today on stimulus.

BERMAN: All right, Christine Romans, millions of Americans watching --

ROMANS: Yes --

BERMAN: And waiting and hoping may be in vain. So new this morning, with just four weeks -- four weeks from today is election day, and the message that Joe Biden, we're learning will use today is unity. That is what he will deliver when he goes to Gettysburg -- significant, why? Well, Gettysburg is in Pennsylvania, a key swing state, also, it's the

battlefield where President Lincoln gave his historic speech. This comes as a brand new CNN national poll shows Joe Biden with a 16-point lead. Joining us now, CNN political commentator Joe Lockhart; former White House press secretary for President Clinton, and CNN political commentator Karen Finney; former senior spokesperson for the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Friends, the poll speaks for itself, so I don't want to dwell on that, it is what it is as President Trump might say. Joe, what I want to focus on is what you think the Biden campaign should do now. We got a taste of it last night with Joe Biden at a town hall in Florida talking about unity, talking about the need to wear masks, and today, going to Gettysburg to talk about unity. Is that the right message?

JOE LOCKHART, FORMER CLINTON WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: It is the right message. Biden really only has one job over the last four weeks, which is to make people comfortable. The undecided is with him as president. And you do that by drawing a contrast. So that's everything he's trying to do. And it doesn't have to be a negative contrast. He doesn't have to say Trump is bad because people know that, they see it every day.

He can talk about masks, but I think the way he closes this campaign -- and I think it's one of the reasons why they are more positive in their rotation on ads is just making sure that people see that contrast, see that, you know, you can do better in the White House, you don't have to have this chaos, we can have an economic plan, an education plan, and that's what I think you will hear over the next four weeks.

CAMEROTA: But Karen, now that the president is back in the White House and basically declaring himself cured, is -- are all bets off? I mean, is it time for Joe Biden to put the negative ads that he had pulled back on the air? Is it time for reporters to once again begin poking around in what we now know about President Trump's taxes? I mean, are we just -- did the four -- the past four to five days not happen and we're just going back to where we were last week?

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think we'll ramp up back into it. I mean, we still don't -- as you've been reporting this morning, we really don't know if the president is really out of the woods. And I think to what Joe said, there is a way to draw a contrast around showing what competent leadership looks like, calling on people to wear masks because it is patriotic, because it saves your life and it saves others lives.

[07:55:00]

And the irresponsibility of Trump's behavior which we've seen from -- you know, in our poll and others that people are feeling and people are feeling divided, and they're feeling chaotic and they're tired of it. I've done a number of focus groups over the last several weeks and you hear it over and over and over again. People are just exhausted.

BERMAN: Yes -- FINNEY: And so, I think some of it was a calming voice speaking to

that, it's very important. That doesn't mean that underneath that, you can't start to ramp back up on some of the sharper, shall we say, critiques.

BERMAN: You know, it's so interesting on masks because mask-wearing is good public health. It will save lives. So the president's assault on masks, the most important thing is it's bad public health and people will die if they pay attention to him, but again, not for nothing. It's just bad politics. It's not going to help him and it's so clear that it gives Joe Biden and the campaign a window. Just watch Joe Biden last night at this town hall. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: It did. It was a little disconcerting. You look out and see that his whole section no one had masks on, when my wife was sitting farther down, having mask on, the people who were with us had masks on. All the tough guys say I'm not wearing a mask, I'm not afraid. Well, be afraid for your husband, your wife, your son, your daughter, your neighbor, your co-worker. That's who you're protecting having this mask on, and it should be viewed as a patriotic duty to protect those around you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: You know, it's like I said, it's good public health and it's just easy politics. And Joe, he was talking about the first presidential debate where the Trump family proudly like Donald Trump did last night, whipped their masks off when they walked into the debate hall. There they are, all sitting, flaunting the no-masks right there.

I do have a question about the debates going forward, Joe. The vice presidential debate apparently will go on with a Plexiglas divider, President Trump says he still wants to debate next week. Is this a good idea? I mean, what should the Debate Commission do with this? Is there a public responsibility to try to figure this out in a way that keeps everyone healthy?

LOCKHART: Yes, listen, I think they need to do a better job than they did in the last debate, where it was on the honor system. You know, debates are important. You know, I personally think they should move the vice presidential debate to after the vice president has reached a quarantine period, even if he's not quarantining.

It's really irresponsible of the vice president, but it appears these debates would go on. And that, you know, another point, John, on the political strategy and good politics, the Trump campaign has a strategy, they can't turn on a dime after seven months and say, oh, now we understand masks.

That's an admission of defeat. So what he's doing is, he's speaking to his base. They're going to come out and vote for him, and then they have an extensive effort to suppress the vote and then challenge mail- in ballots in court. That's their only path to victory right now, and that's why in their minds, what Donald Trump is doing makes some sense.

CAMEROTA: Karen, I know you have strong feelings about the debate, so much so that --

FINNEY: Yes --

CAMEROTA: You've written a letter because we now know it certainly appears that they violated the honor system. Since no one in the Trump camp can tell us when he was last tested before he got that positive test. We don't know if it was a day earlier, we don't know if it was a week earlier, but for some reason, they don't want to tell the public. And so what's your thinking on what should happen now?

FINNEY: Well, I think the debate commission needs to enforce the rules, as Joe just mentioned and as we saw in Ohio, they did not do that. They -- you know, you saw a doctor go around and try to offer masks to folks from the Trump campaign and they refused.

That is unacceptable. So myself and a group of other women leaders have written a letter to the commission, calling on them to take this more seriously. We were pleased obviously that the Plexiglas was announced, folks may know that the Pence folks strongly opposed that measure, which is ridiculous because we also know that Vice President Pence has been at several events where he was exposed to people who have now tested positive in the last couple of weeks.

And so, in addition to having himself submit to some tests and be willing to make those results public, we want to see, again, those rules enforced and we want to make sure that we're thinking -- you know, again, it's not just about Vice President Mike Pence and Kamala Harris.

What about all the men and women who are working at that debate? What about, you know, your family and the staff who are working at that debate. What about protecting their health and their lives? So, we're trying to make a strong statement to the commission that they've got to take this far more seriously than they did the last time.

BERMAN: Karen Finney, Joe Lockhart, thank you very much for being with us. NEW DAY continues right now.