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New Day

Fauci Says, White House Outbreak Could Have Been Prevented; Biden Calls for National Unity in Gettysburg Speech; Tonight, Pence, Harris Face-Off in Vice Presidential Debate. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired October 07, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Come out before Election Day, and it clearly has.

[07:00:01]

But --

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: The language is different in those texts you're saying than what we heard on that --

BERMAN: Well, there's that. And I'm just saying, we don't know what scandals are anymore.

CAMEROTA: Great point. Yes, great point. And you never know how they're going to affect the race.

New Day continues right now.

BERMAN: Happy anniversary.

Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day.

And this morning, the White House is a coronavirus hot spot. And Dr. Anthony Fauci says the outbreak there did not have to happen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Take a look at what happened this week at the White House. That is a reality, right there. And every day that goes by, more people are popping up that are infected. It's not a hoax. It's an unfortunate situation when you see something like that, because that could have been prevented.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That's the reality and it's a reality that's getting worse, seemingly, by the hour inside the White House. Not to mention the nation. Dr. Fauci is warning that hundreds of thousands of Americans could die this winter.

So, as we noted, the situation getting worse in the White House, the president's senior adviser, speechwriter, Stephen Miller, the latest White House aide to test positive. It's hard to keep count at this point, depending on how you count. He's the 21st person in the president's orbit to become infected.

Now, The New York Times reports that even though the White House created the impression President Trump was being tested every day, he was not.

Tonight, behind Plexiglas, the vice presidential debate. Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence, the Pence team ultimately relented to the safety precautions that the debate commission and Senator Kamala Harris were asking for. People are nervous that Mike Pence could be infectious, even though he has tested negative.

CAMEROTA: How could they not be? I mean, how could they not be?

BERMAN: This morning, we do have some new details about what the debate will look like.

CAMEROTA: Also this morning, millions of Americans are in desperate need of economic relief. But President Trump ended negotiations in a single tweet. The Federal Reserve chairman warns that without relief, the economy and a recovery are in danger.

Overnight, President Trump appeared to backtrack on that tweet, but where he stands is anyone's guess at this hour.

BERMAN: Joining us now, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, and Maggie Haberman, CNN Political Analyst and White House Correspondent for The New York Times.

And, Maggie, this morning, we do want to start with you because you have a report out this morning which goes behind the scenes, I think, the last 24 hours, of the White House -- inside the White House and paints a picture of confusion, to say the least. What's going on there.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think confusion is the right world, John. People have been told very little information about who has tested positive, who could have been in the vicinity of various people who were infected. People are not telling each other the truth. And, look, we've seen this over the course of the last four years, where advisers in this White House are not always honest with each other, but right now, we're talking about an infectious disease.

And one of the areas of finger-pointing is how this all began. The president, in particular, allowed people to believe that Hope Hicks, his senior adviser, had been the one who infected him when, in fact, it may very well have been the other way around. There's anger that Kayleigh McEnany appeared to blame Hope Hicks in her statement yesterday when people believe who McEnany would have been more symptomatic earlier if it came from Hope Hicks. There is just a lot of frustration.

And finally, John, we have reporting with senior officials acknowledging that the president was not being tested every day. They had created the impression that he was and that created this false sense of security in the bubble around him.

CAMEROTA: That is so important, Maggie. Because, obviously, all reporters have been asking for days now, when was his last negative test?

HABERMAN: Right.

CAMEROTA: That would help everybody understand if they'd been exposed, what the contact tracing should look like, and they never would answer it. The White House was, again, comically evasive about when his last negative test was, and your reporting is so helpful for us to know, it wasn't daily. We don't know if he was tested before the debate. We don't know if he was tested before the Amy Coney Barrett event.

[07:05:00]

HABERMAN: Right, Alisyn. We've been told that he was tested before the debate. But, again, because they will not release any information or logs or anything, I don't know what their practice is about keeping track of when his last negative test was. So we have to take them at their word, but they should understand by now by just saying, trust us, is not going to be sufficient for a lot of people.

BERMAN: So, Sanjay, I want to play you on that issue of the last negative test and what it means for the health of those who have been anywhere near the White House or near those who have been inside the White House over the last week. This was Deputy Press Secretary Brian Morgenstern last night with Erin Burnett. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN MORGENSTERN, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: I have not asked him or the doctors, you know, to go back through the records of things like that. I'm not sure. But as I said, we look at it from a contact tracing, sort of forward-looking exercise.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Sanjay, they're not contact tracing the Amy Coney Barrett event. They're only going two days backward from the president's showing symptoms, which we think was Thursday. To me, that leaves just so many people potentially in the lurch. What do you see there?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, no, and I think a lot of those people probably right now are saying, you know, if we're not being contact traced, if we're not being given a call by somebody to say, we did have close contact with somebody, we may just all need to be in quarantine and because they're not giving anymore specifics on this.

So it's, it's really concerning. I mean, these are -- when it comes to the last negative test of the president, as you point out, it's critical information. And it is known. I mean, what we're asking, somebody knows the answer to that, probably Dr. Conley, who was administering the tests. I mean, this is known, it's a national security issue, because it's the president. It's known, for sure.

And I should point out, with regard to the debate last Tuesday, and even with regard to the debate tonight, you know, we've looked at the protocols that the Cleveland Clinic put forth and it's interesting, because there's three things that are worth pointing out.

One is that you have to have had a negative test within 72 hours of the debate, which is really surprising that that's what the Cleveland Clinic is asking as opposed to asking for a negative test the day of the debate. Also, we just have to present it. Meaning, it's the honor system. There's no reviewing of the test by the Cleveland Clinic.

And, finally, it could be any of these authorized tests. It doesn't have to be the sort of gold standard PCR test, it could be one of these antigen tests, which we know it could have a significant false negative rate. It's a pretty porous system they've set forth with regard to testing as a safety measure at the debates.

CAMEROTA: Maggie, talk about national security. I mean, what's happening this morning? We know that Joint Chiefs are in quarantine and then the picture that you paint of what's going on behind the scenes at the White House, it's a virtual ghost town. People -- staffers, if they do show up, are in PPE. It's hard to see how the business of the country as well as national security is being done right now.

HABERMAN: One thing I want to say, Alisyn, it's staffers who are in close contact with the president are in PPE. People are not wandering around the west wing, per se, in yellow gowns and goggles and masks. And those are generally people who are either cleaning or people who are coming in close contact with the president in areas of the residence. The president, as we've been told, so far, has not gone to the Oval Office, although he wants to.

In terms of national security, look, in this day and age, people can stay in touch in various ways. And we know this. But it is symbolically bracing just about the spread of this virus around the top leadership of government in Washington that you have so many people quarantined right now.

BERMAN: Again, the joint chiefs were quarantined this morning.

And, Maggie, one more quick question to you before we jump back into the medicine with Sanjay. You know, I don't know if the steroids are affecting the president's thoughts at all. I'm certainly not qualified to say. What jumped out to me in your reporting though was that there are people inside the White House, staffers, who are wondering whether it's affecting his thinking. Just talk about that for one second.

HABERMAN: Sure. Look, it's -- I'm clearly not a doctor and neither are you. I have no way of knowing whether the president is indeed being affected by the medicine he's on. But the people I spoke with at the White House yesterday are very aware that he's on heavy-duty medication. And they have been wondering if any of it could be affecting his mood and how he's acting. One of which is this -- and Sanjay would know more about this than me, but one of which is the steroid that he's taking, which appears to be related to lung capacity. And it is known as a pretty heavy-duty medicine that can give you a false sense of energy, a sense of euphoria and that can eventually wear off. And then it's not clear how the person is feeling.

We should note, we did not see the president yesterday.

[07:10:01]

We didn't hear from him in what we had anticipated was a possible videotaped statement that was never released.

CAMEROTA: If only we had a doctor around that we could -- oh, Dr. Gupta, thank goodness you're here. Dexamethasone, that steroid that we're talking about, how long do you think the president will be on it? And is it known to cause mood swings?

GUPTA: Yes. Well, it is known to cause mood swings. I mean, this is a well-known side effect of the medication, you know. And ask anybody, I prescribe this medication even within the world of neurosurgery for other indications, obviously, than COVID. But that's one of the things we counsel patients on, it will keep you up at night, make you ravenously hungry, it can make people quite manic.

Everybody responds to things differently and it depends what the baseline is. It also -- the people that are going to be best-knowing whether or not this is affecting somebody that way are the people who are closest to him, that know what the person is like off the meds and then on the meds. So this is a medication that we know a fair amount about. We don't know how long he's going to be on it.

It's interesting, it is typically given to people who are critically with COVID. What happens is, you get the disease, the infection is spreading, and then the body responds. And sometimes the body responds in a very robust way, creating lots of inflammation. That can be the problem, that sort of later stage. That's usually when you bring in the steroids now and say, let's really quell down the inflammation.

He was given it quite early. Why? Was he sicker than we thought? Were they just trying to be aggressive with him? But it makes it harder to understand or know how long then he will stay on these medications. And you don't just come off of it. With steroids, you've got to wean off of it over a period of time.

BERMAN: And, look, as we said, we didn't see him, we didn't hear from him yesterday. That's why these questions are out there percolating. What we did get were tweets that somehow hard to explain, unilaterally pulling out of negotiations over relief and then seemed to contradict it overnight. This is why those questions linger out there this morning.

So, Sanjay, thank you. Maggie Haberman, thank you very much.

The vice presidential debate tonight, the only one we're going to get. What should viewers expect? Joe Biden's deputy campaign manager joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

CAMEROTA: Kamala Harris and Mike Pence face off tonight in the only vice presidential debate. So what can we expect?

CNN's Jessica Dean has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Former Vice President Joe Biden delivering an impassioned plea for unity.

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Today, once again, we are a house divided. But that, my friends, can no longer be. We are facing too many crises. We have too much work to do.

DEAN: With a backdrop of the Gettysburg battlefield, the site of so much American bloodshed and division, Biden made the case that America can come together once again.

BIDEN: There's no more fitting place than here today in Gettysburg to talk about the cost of division.

DEAN: The speech highlighted a consistent theme of Biden's 2020 run. His belief, the election is a battle for the soul of the nation.

BIDEN: Let's conduct ourselves as Americans, who love each other, who love our country, who will not destroy, but will build.

DEAN: Biden also calling for unity around the COVID crisis.

BIDEN: Wearing a mask is not a political statement. It's a scientific recommendation. Social distancing isn't a political statement. It's a scientific recommendation. Testing, tracing, the development and all of the approval and distribution of a vaccine isn't a political statement. It is a science-based decision. We can't undo what has been done. We can't go back, but we can do so much better.

DEAN: Biden's unity speech comes as a new CNN poll taken after last week's debate and mostly following Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis shows the former vice president increasing his national lead over President Donald Trump to his widest Margin in the election so far. Biden receiving 57 percent to Trump's 41 percent among likely voters nationwide.

MICHELLE OBAMA, FORMER FIRST LADY: I wanted to take a moment to remind you what's at stake.

DEAN: Meantime, one of the Biden's campaign most effective surrogates, former First Lady Michelle Obama, offering her closing argument for the Democratic nominee in a new video. OBAMA: we can no longer pretend that we don't know exactly who and what this president stands for. Search your hearts and your conscience and then vote for Joe Biden like your lives depend on it.

DEAN: Obama speaking as a parent and a black woman in America, criticizing President Trump for stoking fears about black and brown Americans.

OBAMA: So what the president is doing is, once again, patently false. It's morally wrong and, yes, it is racist. But that doesn't mean it won't work.

DEAN: Still, Biden hopes his message of unity will prevail.

BIDEN: I do not believe we have to choose between law and order and racial justice in America. We can have both.

DEAN: Jessica Dean, CNN, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: And our thanks to Jessica for that.

Joining us now is the deputy campaign manager and communications director for the Biden campaign, Kate Bedingfield. Kate, good morning. Thank you very much for being with us.

On the subject of the president's diagnosis and the possibility, not of the vice presidential debate tonight, but the next presidential debate, October 15th, former Vice President Biden says if the president still has COVID, we shouldn't have a debate.

[07:20:03]

So what proof will you need?

KATE BEDINGFIELD, DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER, BIDEN CAMPAIGN: Well, look, the obligation is on Donald Trump here to prove that he is not contagious for that debate. I think what the vice president said last night was a very common sense statement.

But, you know, Vice President Biden has every expectation that he will debate in Miami at the town hall. He's looking forward to it. But it is a town hall format. There will be real people. There will be citizens there in attendance asking questions.

So the obligation is on Donald Trump to prove that he is not contagious. The obligation is on him to meet the standards laid out by the Cleveland Clinic, laid out by the Presidential Commission on Debates. And we have every expectation that he'll do that. And when he does, we're looking forward to being there to debate.

BERMAN: Yes. I talked to Dr. Anthony Fauci yesterday and he said the standard waiting period of being infectious is ten days from showing symptoms. That would make it October 11th that you're infectious, October 15th is the debate. You say it's on the president to prove it, I'm just curious, because we don't know when his last negative test was before the debate. So it seems you may need more than just his word this time.

BEDINGFIELD: Well, it is troubling that the White House has not been more transparent, but, again, this is his obligation to meet. He needs to prove this he's not contagious. Vice President Biden is very much looking forward to the debate. I can tell you that. He is looking forward to talking to people directly, to hearing from them, to hearing from their concerns and talking to them about what he is going to do to make their lives better.

I mean, this election is a choice. It's a choice between two different styles of leadership. And what you have seen from Joe Biden is that he's led by example from the start of this crisis and he's put forward meaningful plans that are going to put the virus under control, that are going to get people back to work, that are going to get your kids back in schools.

And we haven't seen that from Donald Trump. We have seen nothing but lies and obfuscation. We know that he and Mike Pence, who, let's not forget, ahead of this debate tonight, let's not forget, Mike Pence is the head of the coronavirus task force, is the head of the group that is responsible for getting this virus under control, which they've failed to do. And we've seen nothing but lies and a failure to act. And it's cost over 200,000 Americans their lives and it's cost many millions their livelihoods. And Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have a different plan. And they're going to get this country back on track.

BERMAN: You brought up the vice presidential debate tonight. The combined age of the presidential candidates is 151. I'm not good at math. But it's a high number. These are older presidential candidates. So there are people who look at the vice presidential debate tonight, and I've heard people say it's the most consequential vice presidential debate in history. I don't know whether it is or not. But my question the too you what will be the message from Senator Kamala Harris, what do you think she needs to prove tonight?

BEDINGFIELD: Well, she's going to be on stage with Mike Pence, but the debate is going to be about the Trump administration's failures over the last four years. You know, nothing that happens in the debate tonight is going to change the fact that Donald Trump and Mike Pence lied about the coronavirus. Nothing about it is going to change the fact that they are walking away now from efforts to get relief to Americans across this country, walking away from the negotiations to get relief to small businesses, to people that are hurting all over this country. You know, nothing that happens on the debate hostage tonight is going to change that.

Now, look, Senator Harris is going to make the case for the Biden/Harris agenda. She is going to make the case for confident, steady, stable leadership in a very turbulent time. We know Mike Pence is a very good debater, he is a very skilled debater, and he gets a lot of credit because he speaks in complete sentences unlike Donald Trump. I mean, you only have to look at his RNC convention speech to see that. So we have every expectation that Mike Pence is going to be compelling on the debate stage tonight. But Senator Harris is going to make the case for a different vision for this country, a different direction, and for confident, competent, capable leadership.

BERMAN: So we had Jessica Dean piece, our reporter, Jessica, who you know, we ran are a piece where she covered the former vice president's speech in Gettysburg yesterday, where it was a message, as you said, of unity. I want to play a little bit more of that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: I'm running as a proud Democrat, but I will govern as an American president. I will work with Democrats and Republicans. I'll work as hard for those who don't support me as those who do. That's the job of a president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So that didn't sound like a leader who would support ending the filibuster in the Senate or adding to the number of Supreme Court justices, did it?

BEDINGFIELD: He believes that the most critical thing in our country right now is finding a path forward that brings everybody together, that deals everybody in on the deal. He's about finding consensus, he's about unity.

And I think our country is in a moment right now where we are starved for that.

[07:25:01]

Our politics is broken, it is hyper-partisan. Joe Biden, from the day he got in this race, has made an incredibly powerful case about the need to come together, about the need to unify. He believes we can do it. He doesn't believe that our politics are so broken that we can't come back from this moment that we're in. He's made that case from the start and voters have responded to it.

BERMAN: Yes, it was a very similar speech --

BEDINGFIELD: Americans are desperately looking for it.

BERMAN: It was a very similar speech yesterday to the one he made the very first day he got into the campaign. My question is trying focus a little bit more on the Supreme Court. And you're trying to build a very broad coalition, and that's very clear, that includes progressives, for whom ending the filibuster is important, for whom adding to the number of Supreme Court justices is important.

But you're also trying to include republicans, for whom, doing that, I don't think, is a priority. In fact, that's something that concerns them. So why don't they deserve a yes/no answer about whether or not the vice president will support adding to the number of Supreme Court justices? BEDINGFIELD: Well, the vice president has addressed this a number of times, John. You know, he has said, this is the conversation that the political press wants to have. This is the conversation that, you know, Republicans on Capitol Hill want to have. They want to try to have a divisive conversation that assumes that we're not going to rally people, for example, to prevent the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett from going through. He's not going to make an argument that assumes that the will of the people is not going to be heard.

He believes that Americans are going to come out on November 3rd. They're going to make their voices heard. They're going to demonstrate that, you know, we can move forward together. This is -- he's not interested in having a conversation that's about a distraction. He's focused on the goal at hand, which is turning out on November 3rd. You know, winning this election, a change of leadership in the White House, bringing along additional Senate seats and congressional seats, and getting our politics back to a place where we can actually work together to get things done. That's his focus.

As you said, you know, he was -- he made a speech that was similar to the one he made yesterday not long after he got into the race a year- and-a-half ago, because he knows why he's running, he has a clear conviction on this and that's where his focus is.

BERMAN: Very quickly, where will Joe Biden be watching the vice presidential debate from tonight? What are his debate-watching plans?

BEDINGFIELD: He'll be in Delaware. He'll be Delaware watching the debate.

BERMAN: All right. Kate Bedingfield, we appreciate your time this morning. Thanks for joining us.

BEDINGFIELD: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

BERMAN: And CNN's special coverage of the vice presidential debate begins tonight at 7:00 P.M. Eastern Time.

So President Trump pulled the plug on talks over a new round of stimulus. What does that mean for struggling businesses and millions of Americans out of work because of the pandemic?

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[07:30:00]