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Plot to Kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer Foiled; President Trump's Comments on Plot to Kidnap Michigan Governor Draws Controversy; Tropical Storm Threatens Louisiana and Parts of Gulf Coast. Nine States Report Coronavirus Hospitalizations As Cases Rise; Trump Planning Rally Tomorrow, Won't Say If He's Been Tested This Week. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired October 09, 2020 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Also, the first public reaction from the president instead of condemning the plot specifically or the alleged terrorists involved, he went after Governor Gretchen Whitmer. It is worth noting that in April the president called on his Twitter followers to liberate Michigan after the governor imposed coronavirus restrictions. This coincided with scenes like this one, armed protesters on the capitol steps in Lansing. Later this hour we are going to get an update on the investigation in the case itself with Michigan's Attorney General Dana Nessel.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Now to coronavirus. Overnight another 56,000 new cases. That's the highest daily total in nearly two months. We are going in the wrong direction. This morning nine states are reporting record hospitalizations.

As for President Trump's health, still unclear. His doctor says his recovery is going well. He claims the president can return to public events tomorrow, though he will not say whether President Trump has tested positive or negative. And during a phone interview Mr. Trump said he hoped to hold a rally in Florida tomorrow and another one in Pennsylvania this weekend, but in that very same interview the president had to stop twice to clear his throat and cough.

BERMAN: Joining us now, CNN national security analyst and former assistant DHS Secretary Juliette Kayyem, and CNN White House correspondent John Harwood. Juliette, first to you. This plot in Michigan to kidnap the governor of that state with people connected to extremist groups, with people who had intent and capability to pull this off -- they had detonated improvised explosive devices, they had talked about seizing bridges, they had talked about knocking on the governor's door. What do you see here, and how concerning should it be this morning?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: OK, so there's the specific threat, and it's pretty concerning because of its organization. So I think if you put it on a scale from zero to 10 how far along with this, with zero being just a crazy guy with an idea, and 10 being execution, they were at a seven. They had been testing materials, they had gone through the planning and they were ready to do something. They just had been infiltrated and the FBI knew what was going on. So specifically, this was organized, this was not random.

And then also, remember it had interstate aspects to it. They were traveling around, they were recruiting from around states. So this isn't just about Michigan.

I think more generally let's put this in the context of radicalization. We are facing a number of types of radicalization right now, white supremacy, which we've talked about before, and now this anti-government radicalization, which is absorbing the language of liberation, anti-COVID restrictions, all the stuff that you saw in Michigan that's amplified by the president. These guys are organizing around a sense that the president is actually not the government. The president talks about the deep state, and view liberation from either a governor or from COVID restrictions as part of a sort of liberation movement.

And that's the sort of uniqueness of this radicalization that we're seeing today that's amplified by the president and those who support him. And so that's what we have to be worried about leading to Election Day. We call these constitutional flash points. In other words, these are people that are looking at Election Day to mobilize. The president has talked about his supporters going to polls outside of the normal poll watching aspects. And so we are all looking to November as one of these constitutional flash points, and then if the president loses, of course the period between November and January 20th.

CAMEROTA: And, John, just to be clear, this is not our imagination that things are getting worse. We just had our experts on. We just talked to Congresswoman Debbie Dingell from Michigan. There's demonstrative proof that this kind of extremism is spiking, and she just admitted to us on our air that she herself has felt that she has been victimized by some of these threats and how frightening it is.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: There's no question it's getting worse, Alisyn, and the president himself is acting in a dangerous manner that makes it worse. That tweet last night where he targeted Gretchen Whitmer in the wake of the revelation of this plot, the arrest of those people, is dangerous because he, as you noted in the introduction, he did not specifically condemn the plot. He did a generic statement saying, well, I condemn all violence, extremist violence, but Gretchen Whitmer needs to open up her state and she's been a terrible governor. This is reminiscent of how he dealt with the white supremacy question at the debate. Yes, sure, I'll condemn it, but then he went hard after Antifa and the imagined violence on the left that preoccupies him.

But what we've heard from his own officials, his own DHS officials, his own FBI director, is that the problem with white supremacist violence, militia violence, is by far the predominant problem.

[08:05:06]

And the president is pointing elsewhere, and in doing so he is facilitating and excusing the dominant problem in this sphere. It's a dangerous situation.

BERMAN: Juliette, the charging documents, or the government affidavits here, they do not mention the president in any way or make any direct reference to these men who are now in custody being inspired by the president. So then what do his words mean? What is a connection between the language the president uses and not necessarily these people, but the rise of extremism writ large?

KAYYEM: So it's a radicalization, it's not an on/off switch. It isn't that a leader says something and then his followers just follow. So what we see happening is a sort of a policy wonk term called stochastic terrorism. It is basically a leader like the president gives winks and nods. He urges a kind of philosophy, a kind of radicalization, whether it's not condemning white supremacy, talking about both sides, sending out tweets that are vague and yet understandable, like liberate Michigan. It's not clearly saying something.

Forget what Trump is saying specifically and trying to parse it, whether he apologizes, whether he says I condemn all violence, and understand radicalization about what his supporters are hearing. And what they are hearing is a president who does not condemn white supremacy, a president who is urging sort of anti-government sentiment, whether it has to do with poll watching or has to do with liberation from COVID restriction. A president who goes after Democratic governors, right, so specifically, partisan -- the other party governors. That's what they're hearing.

And so don't think a radicalization as like you can prove it in an affidavit. It's the atmosphere that Trump has created, and it's why, as John is saying, that both the DHS and the FBI are saying that's the increase that we're seeing during the Trump administration. It's not our imagination. It is festering because it's not being condemned. I often say this election is one about whether America will be shamed again, in other words, whether we will have a leader that shames these bad sentiments, and I think that's what you're not seeing from the top right now.

CAMEROTA: John, let's talk about what President Trump want to do next personally. He wants this weekend to go to hold rallies in Florida for one. And his doctor, it appears, has given him the green light to do so, but we don't know what's happening with his health. We don't know if he's tested positive or negative. We don't know -- when last we checked he was still on the steroid. We have no idea because other than giving him the green light, we just haven't gotten a lot of transparency.

HARWOOD: Alisyn, the president has always been somebody who behaved erratically. He seems to be behaving more erratically than usual right now, in a way that makes him a danger to himself as well as people around him. He has insisted on going to the Oval Office even though he is very likely still infectious with COVID. He is making these rapid reversals by saying, oh, I'm going to kill the stimulus talks, then I'm going to revive the stimulus talks. I'm going to pull out of the debate, no, now I want a debate. This is odd behavior from the president. As you mentioned, he is on a powerful steroid for treatment of his

coronavirus. We have not heard directly from his doctor. We get these vague statements that he puts out. We've gotten taped statements. We expect to see him on camera today on FOX, but we do not know if the president is getting healthier or not. And certainly from -- to judge from his behavior, he is not well right now.

BERMAN: John, we have to run, but Vice President Mike Pence canceled a scheduled trip to Indiana and came back to Washington earlier than we had thought he was going to. Is there any information exactly about why?

HARWOOD: No. They've kept that from us. They've said it's not caused by a positive COVID test for the vice president or anyone in his party. So they're trying to take that off the table. But they're not saying why, and you cannot divorce the fact that he's canceled his schedule, come back to Washington from the broader context we're discussing, which is a president who is ill and behaving in a strange way.

BERMAN: All right, John, appreciate it. John Harwood, Juliette Kayyem, thank you both so much for being with us this morning.

As we speak, more major news. The Gulf Coast bracing for yet another major storm. Hurricane delta is set to make a record-breaking landfall in Louisiana in just hours. The new 8:00 a.m. advisory has just been released. So I want to get right to Ken Graham, he is the Director of the National Hurricane Center. Ken, thanks so much for being with us this morning. Tell us everything you can about how big, how strong this storm is, where and when it's going to hit.

[08:10:06]

KEN GRAHAM, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER: Yes, good morning, John. Big storm. This is one of these situations that even if you get fluctuations in that wind speed, still 120 miles an hour, so a strong hurricane. But look at the wind field. John, that's 140 miles out from the center. So it's not just inside that cone, it's not just around that center. If you extend those tropical storm force winds inland as this moves over the next 24 hours, there is a lot of folks that are going to see some bigtime wind.

The other part that we have is a larger storm that will actually produce more storm surge, larger storms do that. So some of these areas, life-threatening storm surge. You look at Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge over to Morgan City including Vermilion Bay, Louisiana, that's seven to 11 foot of storm surge. That's water up your pant leg, that's inundation, and that's very dangerous.

BERMAN: I've lost track of the names at this point because there have been so many hurricanes to make landfall along the gulf coast. That's why we called this record-breaking. How closely does the path of this storm follow the paths of the others?

GRAHAM: It's so close. If you go back and look at hurricane Laura and you look at this one, both impacting areas around Cameron, Louisiana, so close. So, you know, you had hurricane Laura produce all the hurricane force winds, and over 17 foot of storage surge we had in hurricane Laura, now we're talking seven to 11 foot of storm surge and hurricane force winds over the same area. So it's been a record- breaking, very busy season in 2020.

BERMAN: Just very quickly, what added concerns does that cause if you have the second strike right where people are still recovering?

GRAHAM: It's dangerous because it's one of these situations that you are trying to still clean up, you're trying to recover, and you put hurricane force winds on top of that. A blow like that is just very difficult. So just talk about that storm surge, getting folks out of there, keeping people safe, that's the biggest thing we are concerned with.

BERMAN: All right, people, please listen to all the information you're getting from state, local, and federal officials. Ken Graham, as always, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

GRAHAM: Thank you.

BERMAN: So President Trump says he's ready to get back on the campaign trail. He says he wants to have a rally tomorrow in Florida. What's the medical opinion of this? Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:15:48]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. recorded 56,000 new coronavirus infections on Thursday. That is the highest in almost two months, hospitalizations also rising nationwide. Nine states mostly in the Midwest breaking records on Thursday.

We're joined by CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

So, Sanjay, it feels like -- I mean, obviously we're going in the wrong direction, we know that, but it seems like the prediction of what was going to happen in the fall that we're starting to see it.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, I think there's no question. I mean, you know, the concern has been we knew we were going to see more people becoming newly infected, but was it potentially going to go into exponential growth? Was it going to start to -- the lines of people becoming infected starting to up, straight up and even hospitalizations?

I think there's two important things and we spent some time this morning crunching these numbers, but one of the things is that there's been this belief that, look, if kids start going back to school and colleges, you know, they are less likely to get infected, they are less likely to get sick and that remains true, but what we're seeing is the second part of that equation now which is despite that, kids being less likely to get sick, they are still spreading it and they are spreading it to vulnerable people. And that's why the hospitalization rates and the death rates have stayed pretty high and as you point out are starting to go up.

There's something else that I think I want to point out to you and I want to show you this, this is deep down sort of within the IHME models, but this has been a source of concern for some time and it really has to do with -- I don't know if you can read that, but I will explain it quickly. But it really has to do with hospital bed needs as we go into the fall and early winter.

Basically, you know, we have about, you know, 1 point -- about a million beds, staffed hospital beds in this country. If you look at that trajectory, what we're starting to see is by January 1st we may need close to 4 million beds in this country. Which means disaster planning people in big cities across the country are now starting to look at buildings and starting to ask could these buildings potentially be staffed hospital bet settings? It's going to be cold outside, harder to do things outside as you saw over the spring and summer.

So, these are the types of real conversations that are happening. When you start to talk about hospitalizations going up, the next thing you have to ask is, could hospitals potentially become overwhelmed? And this isn't just incremental. We're talking, you know, 300, 400 percent the demand on the system in terms of what it's capable of delivering right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And, look, people are letting their guard down, Sanjay. They just are. I mean, all you have to do is look in your own community and own workplace, people are behaving differently now as if things are improving and they are actually going in the opposite direction.

And that's where the connection is I think to what we're seeing in our every day lives and what we're seeing in Washington, D.C. and at the White House with the president of the United States who is infected with coronavirus right now, making decisions like apparently deciding to go back out to do a campaign rally tomorrow. He has a doctor's note, but I'm not sure that doctor's note tells us that it's safe other than to put down words that, you know, on paper that say, hey, we think the president is fine to do it.

GUPTA: Yeah, I mean, I read that doctor's note.

First of all, that is not how doctors communicate. There was a lot of jargon in there that is just not standard convention which right away raises your eyebrows. That last note didn't even say whether or not he had a fever, which as you know is a basic criteria, are you fever-free for a period of time off of meds? He is not off of his meds.

Let's not forget it was just a week ago today that the president was essentially medevaced from the White House to the hospital, lots of concern, needing supplemental oxygen, on three experimental medications.

Seventy-four years old -- I mean, you know, a lot of people who may be watching may think if that was me there is no way I would be thinking within a week's time to be doing this. So, for that reason alone it makes no sense. We still don't know what the negative test is so we don't have a sense of his contagiousness. And this is not just, you know, political intrigue. That is a really relevant point.

[08:20:00]

And, finally, you know, I've got to say even before the president got diagnosed with COVID, I mean, we've had many conversations on your program, the idea of having rallies, the idea of aggregating people together in the middle of a pandemic when the numbers are getting worse, not better, as you point out, I mean, it made no sense even before this. It definitely doesn't make any sense right now.

CAMEROTA: Well, then you're really not going to like the pictures of Don Jr.'s rally yesterday along with Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida. They had it packed indoors, Sanjay, and --

BERMAN: I almost -- I can't just believe this. It's almost --

CAMEROTA: Believe it. Believe it.

I mean, you know, look -- look at how they're conducting it indoors, after the super spreader what we believe to have been the super spreader event at the White House. There were a few masks in that crowd.

And I know, Sanjay, that, you know, you can't always save people from themselves who don't want to be saved. I get it, people are grown-ups. They can make their own decisions. If only they could also agree not to use valuable hospital resources when they get sick, but, of course, that's not the compact that we have with people in America.

And so, who knows what's going to happen two to three weeks from now?

GUPTA: Right. I mean, it's awful to watch. It just gives me a pit in my stomach to see those things. You know, look, they may require hospital resources. They could also be sources of spread. I mean, that's a huge concern.

I mean, you know, you are not -- you say, look, I don't care, I'm willing to take the risk, I don't really believe this virus is a big deal or, you know, whatever, but then you could potentially spread it to other people. That's the nature of a contagious deadly virus.

We were talking last night to a few ethics specialists like what is the metaphor for this? What examples do we have for this? If you have a known contagious deadly virus and you don't act responsibly and possibly spread it to others, like what is -- what are the ramifications for that in this country?

I guess the closest thing we think of is something like HIV is obviously very different in terms of how it spreads, but it's morally wrong if not legally, I don't know the legalities here, but you're absolutely right, and I just showed you what the hospital bed sort of demand is going to be.

And I know that that's going to frighten a lot of people to think that, you know, a lot of people will be told over the next few months when they call the hospital and say, I need to bring my love in and they're going to say, we don't have any hospital beds. We are 200 percent over, you know, flowing right now.

So it's a real concern when we look back historically at events like that indoors bringing a lot of people together, unmasked in the middle of a pandemic.

BERMAN: So, Sanjay, I want your take on the president's interview last night over the phone. He was talking about a number of things, but a couple times as any recovering person would, and I don't necessarily think it's alarming, I just think it's evidence of a fact of a guy who has been sick and trying to get better, stops, coughs, catches his breath. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (via telephone): I mean, the last time I had a big problem they oscillated my mics when I had the one debate, we had three debates with Hillary and on I think the first debate they -- excuse me, on the first debate they oscillated the mic.

I want them to vote but I will say this, absentee is okay because absentee ballots -- excuse me, absentee ballots are fine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: What do you hear there, Sanjay?

GUPTA: He sounds congested still, you know, and, yeah, I hadn't heard that before. It's interesting because, you know, he's obviously still just, what, seven days out, eight days out from when he first developed symptoms so he would still be in that period, for sure.

He's also my understanding is still on the steroid medication which usually acts as a very potent anti-inflammatory so that could be masking whatever symptoms he does have, so as you start to take him off steroids, you know -- it's worrisome. He still sounds sick and it's not surprising as you say, John, I mean, it's not each been a week since he was medevaced from the White House to Walter Reed.

So, they've got to take care of him. He's got to take care of himself. Anybody, I think -- you don't need to be a doctor to be able to tell that and I am really worried about these steroids.

You know, he is off the other meds it sounds like, the remdesivir, he got a single dose. It sounds like the monoclonal antibodies. Just to reiterate, the steroids don't treat the virus, they treat the inflammation in the body, once you take the steroids off, they typically are a ten-day course, we looked at the recovery trial which this has trialed, ten-day course, 6 milligrams a day.

When you -- when you come off the steroids, that inflammation may come back. It just may be he's masking symptoms right now. So, they've got to keep a close eye on him. I mean, this isn't -- I mean, this isn't political intrigue. This is

decent humanity at this point. He sounds sick and he's 74 years old and this is a serious disease.

[08:25:02]

CAMEROTA: Really helpful, Sanjay, as always. Thank you very much for all of that information.

And you can join Sanjay and Anderson Cooper for a brand-new CNN global town hall with five former CDC directors. Watch "Coronavirus: Facts and Fears" tomorrow night at 9:00 a.m. -- sorry, at 9:00 p.m. on CNN.

BERMAN: Let's watch all day.

CAMEROTA: What's the difference for us, John, really.

Will there be another presidential debate this year? And what would it look like? How would it happen? What exactly will the date be, I'd like to know. We're going to ask the experts next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: So, President Trump is refusing to participate in a virtual debate against his Democratic opponent Joe Biden. But now, both campaigns are planning alternate events for the night that the debate was supposed to be.

Joining us now to discuss, CNN's senior political commentator David Axelrod, and CNN contributor and former Republican election lawyer, Ben Ginsberg.

And, Ben, you're not just an election lawyer -- I mean, you were the guy tasked with negotiating all of the debate details for Bush, Romney, like what -- what temperature the room should be.