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36 States Seeing Surge in Cases as White House Embraces 'Herd Immunity'; Justice Department's 'Unmasking' Probe Ends with No Charges; Biden & Trump Battle to Court Older Voters; Barrett: Landmark Abortion Case Not 'Super Precedent'. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired October 14, 2020 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: More than seven months into this pandemic, the U.S. is sliding backwards.

[05:59:12]

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: A resurgence of cases historically leads to an increase in hospitalizations, then ultimately an increase in deaths.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is going to be a horrible winter.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With exactly three weeks to go until election day, Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett in the hot seat.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT): Are you able to commit to recuse yourself from disputes that arise out of the 2020 presidential election?

JUDGE AMY CONEY BARRETT, SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: I can't offer a legal conclusion right now about the outcome of the decision I would reach.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Wednesday, October 14, 6 a.m. here in New York.

And the national map of coronavirus cases looks different this morning. For the first time since early April, not a single state in the U.S. is in green, meaning no state is seeing a decline in cases.

Thirty-six states this morning are seeing an increase in coronavirus cases. Fifty-two thousand new cases were reported in the U.S. yesterday. Wisconsin is particularly bad. It's setting new records for cases, deaths, and hospitalizations. The situation is so bad that that state has opened a field hospital to handle the crush.

So how is President Trump responding to the crisis? By dancing, I suppose, at a packed campaign rally. JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I think that fits the definition, loosely, of

dancing.

CAMEROTA: OK, well, the president, again, spoke to a packed crowd in Pennsylvania last night. Supporters behind him were seen wearing masks, but most in the crowd were not.

Joe Biden spent the day in Florida. He's appealing to seniors, who have been hardest hit by the pandemic.

BERMAN: All right. There is major new reporting this morning on the White House attitude toward the virus. And you can hear it from the president's own words. They want at least some people to catch it. Now, that might sound alarming, but it's not a stretch. They want some people to get it.

But "The New York Times" and "Washington Post" report that unnamed White House officials are explicitly embracing herd immunity, explicitly supporting a document from a relatively small number of scientists that says, quote, "allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally, to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at the highest risk."

Sanjay and other doctors will tell you that this could lead to millions, potentially, of deaths.

One more important development overnight. Yet another Trump administration witch hunt exposed as a giant nothing. This involves the faux outrage over Obama administration officials requesting the identities of redacted names on intelligence documents. It is a common legal practice.

And "The Post" reports this morning an investigation launched by William Barr found no evidence of wrongdoing and wrapped things up this week without even writing a report.

We begin, though, with the deeply concerning trends on the pandemic.

CNN's Adrienne Broaddus is live in Wisconsin, where they're setting up field hospitals to deal with the steep increase in cases.

Adrienne, welcome to NEW DAY. It's great to have you. But I have to say, what we're all seeing around the country is deeply disturbing.

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Indeed, it is. Good morning to you, John. And to all of you watching and listening.

In a few hours, the state will open an alternative care facility just outside of Milwaukee, here at the Wisconsin State Fair Park. The goal is to take pressure off of local hospitals dealing with severe COVID cases.

The new facility has capacity to treat more than 500 patients.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BROADDUS (voice-over): Wisconsin bracing for a fall surge in coronavirus cases. This field hospital at the state fair park is ready to accept new patients as hospital beds become increasingly scarce. The state recorded at least 3,279 new cases Sunday, a record high.

GOV. TONY EVERS (D-WI): We have to get this virus under control and help flatten the curve to prevent our health care systems from being overwhelmed. Over the last month, our hospitalizations have nearly tripled.

BROADDUS: And with President Donald Trump scheduled to hold an event here on Saturday, likely without social distancing, and few masks, health experts and local officials fear it will only contribute to the surge.

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: If you think about unmasked people in mass gatherings, it's like dry, you know, brush in a forest fire. The president is making it easier for the virus to spread in those states. It's very damaging to the public health.

BROADDUS: Former Vice President Joe Biden continuing to chastise what he calls Trump's reckless behavior.

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I prayed for his recovery when he got COVID. I'd hoped at least he'd come out of it somewhat chastened. But what has he done? He's just doubled down on the misinformation he did before in making it worse.

BROADDUS: Wisconsin is one of 36 states seeing an increase in new coronavirus cases over the last seven days. And it's one of at least 13 with a daily positivity rate above 10 percent over the past week. According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, that's a massive red flag.

FAUCI: What's called test positivity, which is often, and in fact, invariably, highly predictive of resurgence of cases, which historically, we know leads to an increase in hospitalizations. And then ultimately, an increase in deaths.

BROADDUS: This as "The New York Times" reports that the White House may be embracing a call for, quote, "herd immunity," from some scientists who argue that lockdowns should end and the virus should be allowed to spread among young people. Other scientists warn, this theory is extremely dangerous and unrealistic.

[06:05:05]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As a strategy, it simply means doing nothing and letting the virus run through the population. But that's -- that's a recipe for just an awful lot of deaths.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROADDUS: And here in Wisconsin, Governor Evers said if things don't turn around, winter will be tough. The director of the CDC telling governors in a phone call yesterday small family gatherings are contributing to the spread of the virus. He's reminding state leadership to keep up those mitigation efforts,

because with Thanksgiving right around the corner, if things don't change, we could be in big trouble.

Back to you -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Adrienne, thank you very much for that report. And that small family gathering thing is curious. We'll get to that later in the program.

OK. So remember that unmasking conspiracy that President Trump kept talking about and peddling for years?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The unmasking and the spying, and to me, that's the big story.

Well, the unmasking is a massive -- it's a massive thing.

(via phone): We're talking about unmasking, yes. That was a big deal. Horrible deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Apparently, it was not. This morning, "The Washington Post" reports that the DOJ's investigation into the president's claim that Obama officials improperly unmasked individuals that were named in intelligence documents, well, it turned up nothing. No charges against anyone. And interestingly, no written report.

CNN's Joe Johns is live at the White House with more.

What happened here, Joe?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Well, this is about intelligence reports prepared by entities like the National Security Agency and how sometimes those intelligence reports that might include the names of Americans will conceal those names to protect their identities.

And as a matter of business, some high-ranking government officials may from time to time ask for those names to be unmasked in order to understand the reports better.

Well, so what has happened here is that two years ago, the president of the United States, along with congressional Republicans, found out about what the Obama administration had done with unmasking and started really calling this the biggest scandal since Watergate, hyping it.

The president called it an enormous issue, and so much so that a senior federal prosecutor was named to look into the issue. John Bash is his name. And now John Bash, apparently, has finished his investigation with no report, as you said. Also ending it without any charges, without any substantiative wrongdoing found.

So what this ends up being is another example of the president of the United States and, with the help of some Republicans, essentially pushing the United States Department of Justice to look into the president's enemies and people of the president's concern, at the end of the day with nothing found.

Back to you.

BERMAN: That's right. It just shows what a false message, when amplified, can do. That is what can happen when people just -- and often, just report on this, as if, Oh, the president says there's an unmasking controversy.

No, the minute you report that, you're buying into, I think, the false charges here. And now we see the impact of that.

Joe Johns at the White House, thank you very much.

JOHNS: You bet.

So overnight, the Census Bureau announced that the count for the 2020 census will conclude tomorrow. This comes after the U.S. Supreme Court approved an emergency application by the Trump administration to end the count ahead of schedule. Census officials say 99.9 percent of households have been accounted for.

Civil rights groups are concerned that cutting off field operations now will result in an undercount and leave funding gaps for critical services in areas that need it most.

Well, you heard us moments ago. The White House now explicitly embracing the idea of herd immunity. What does that mean? It means they want some people to get coronavirus. That's right. You can see the president's actions. He seems to want it. They want people to get it. What does that mean? What's the impact of so-called herd immunity? Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:13:31]

BERMAN: A stark, alarming reality this morning. Thirty-six states seeing an increase in new coronavirus cases. All the states there in red.

You need to notice when you look at this map, there's something else remarkable. No states in green, Alisyn. Which means, what, there are zero states showing a decline in cases right now?

CAMEROTA: Yes. And the last time we saw a map that looked like this was early April.

BERMAN: OK. Joining us now is Professor William Haseltine. He's a former professor at Harvard Medical School and chair and president of Access Health International. His forthcoming autobiography, "My Lifelong Fight Against Disease," is out next week.

So no states in decline, professor. Fifty thousand plus new cases reported in the last 24 hours. Hospitalizations at a level not seen since the end of August.

We've been worried about this possible winter surge. It's not even a month into fall, and we're seeing this alarming increase. So what does that tell you?

WILLIAM HASELTINE, FORMER PROFESSOR, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: Well, it tells us that we don't have this pandemic, this epidemic, under control. And I'm extremely concerned that the president is being advised by people who speak of herd immunity.

Herd immunity is another word for mass murder. That is exactly what it is. If you allow this virus to spread, as they are advocating, we are looking at to 2 to 6 million Americans dead. Not just this year, but every year.

The reason for that is that there is no such thing as herd immunity. These viruses, coronaviruses, come back year after year and infect the very same people. We know that from very detailed studies of the viruses, their cousins, the coronaviruses that cause colds. Every year they come back and infect the same people, the same virus.

[06:15:20]

This is an unmitigated disaster for our country, to have people at the highest levels of our government countermanding our best public health officials. We know this epidemic can be put under control. Other countries have done it. We are doing the opposite.

CAMEROTA: Professor, I just want to underscore what you just said, because I think it's so important. This is not the chicken pox. This is like the flu shot that we have to get every year. And the reason we get a flu shot every year is because there's no herd immunity. It comes back every year.

And so in other words, the White House is operating on a false premise. It's based on this paper by a libertarian think tank that I think that Dr. Scott Atlas has kind of championed at the White House, and basically, what they are doing, they're embracing this concept.

And the concept is, let it gallop freely. Let COVID gallop freely, particularly through younger people, who seem to not die at the rate of older people, and then they think that that will somehow help herd immunity. But they would protect, they claim, somehow, older people from doing that. So therein, I mean, that's a challenge right there.

But the whole thing is wrong. I mean, from the get-go, it's wrong. And when you see President Trump at these rallies, like he was last night, where he is, I mean, frankly some of what he's saying there sounds a little bit like a game show? Who has it? Who's had it? Who's immune? I'm immune! Raise your hand! Are you immune! We're all immune!

It's just all wrong. HASELTINE: It's wrong, and there is no real evidence that there is

immunity, long-lasting immunity. In fact, there's quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.

People have been reinfected by the virus that causes ss COVID. We know that. Absolutely, we know it definitively. And from long studies of the cousins of these viruses, we know how persistent they can be.

I'm pleased that you raised flu. People are hoping a vaccine will eliminate this disease. Well, it hasn't eliminated flu. And the kind of criteria being put forward for the vaccines that are now going through, even the ones that have had some trouble recently, is not that they protect you from infection. It's that they moderate the symptoms. They're looking for a vaccine a lot like flu, and we know that flu is still with us.

And this disease is a lot more dangerous than flu. There's many indications now it's more transmissible, and it's certainly more lethal.

I should also say one other thing about the young people. It's true that, on average, young people don't die as often, but more young people are being infected, and more young people are now dying. Because you're young, you're not immune.

BERMAN: And there's one thing we've seen repeatedly, which is when young people get it, older people get it, too. We are not protecting the older populations. People are still dying at alarming rates from this.

When you -- I want to make sure people understand, what has changed over the last few days is that the White House now seems to be explicitly endorsing the concept of herd immunity. There was a background phone call, White House officials who didn't want to be named, they supported this document from this think tank that Alisyn was talking about, that says we need to let young people get infected.

When you know that the White House is endorsing this, explicitly, it informs your view of the super spreader event at the White House, at the Rose Garden. The White House perhaps didn't put any protections in place, let people sit in the Rose Garden unmasked, because they don't care if people get it. They want some people to get it.

And we learned overnight that another person -- I think we have a picture of this -- was infected at that Rose Garden super spreader event. This is where Amy Coney Barrett was announced as a nominee.

CAMEROTA: That's the indoor portion of the event, which is, you know, even more dangerous.

BERMAN: It is, it is. I mean, the outdoor portion, too, people were hugging and kissing. They may have caught it out there. That is the wife of Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia right there. We now know she has tested positive at this super spreader event, which may have been called -- you know, they had chicken pox parties. Maybe this was a COVID party. Honestly, it had the same impact of that right now. So now we have this explicit endorsement, Professor. And it does

inform what we can expect from the White House over the next few weeks.

HASELTINE: Yes. I think that the point that you're hearing me and you'll hear other public health officials talk about this in very different terms now that it's more explicit.

It was implicit in many of the policies. The states were being given instructions by the White House not to enforce rules against bars, not to make masks mandatory. That was implicit.

Explicit is another thing. Explicit is close to promoting death amongst our fellow countrymen. As I say, this means the policy that seems to be being followed now is to have 2 to 6 million Americans die this year and next year and the year after. We have to change.

[06:20:18]

CAMEROTA: And I just want to end on this note. According to an internal FEMA -- FEMA memo, 34 people connected to the White House have now become infected with COVID. So that's the number that they're using internally: 34 people.

Thank you, very much, Professor Haseltine. Great to see you.

HASELTINE: You're welcome.

BERMAN: All right, how is this playing out on the campaign trail? We just showed a little bit of President Trump. How is the Biden team handling this? And how does all of this play with senior citizens who may be the key voting bloc in this election? That's next.

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[06:25:07]

BERMAN: This morning, we're getting a very good sense of where both presidential candidates think some of the most important votes are. Joe Biden in Florida appealing to seniors. He says they are the ones paying the price for President Trump's handling of the pandemic.

CNN's Arlette Saenz covering the Biden campaign. We heard some new language from the former vice president, Arlette.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: We did, John. And both of these candidates, 20 days out from election day, are trying to appeal to some of these key constituencies in their own ways.

Joe Biden traveled to Florida, trying to court that all-important senior vote. President Trump won older voters by about seven points back in 2016, but recent polls have shown -- have shown Joe Biden making some headway with older voters. In some of those polls, leading the president by about double digits. That could be critical in a battleground state like Florida with a large retirement community. And Joe Biden, once again, criticized the president for his handling

of the coronavirus pandemic, putting this in very personal terms for older voters, asking them when was the last time they got to see their grandchildren. Take a listen to a bit more of what Biden had to say in Florida yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: It's become painfully clear, as his careless, arrogant, reckless COVID response has caused one of the worst tragedies in American history, the only senior that Donald Trump cares about, the only senior is senior Donald Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: Now, for President Trump's part, he is back to holding those giant not socially-distanced rallies. Yesterday he campaigned in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, talking about how he is feeling well after his coronavirus diagnosis.

And the president also tried to make an appeal to suburban women, warning that Joe Biden is part of the radical left who will destroy their suburbs, even though Biden right now is significantly leading the president when it comes to women voters. Take a listen to a bit of the president's plea yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Suburban women, will you please like me? Please. Please. I saved your damned neighborhood, OK!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: Now, President Trump today is heading to Iowa to hold another rally, campaigning in one of those reliably red states for the president.

Right now, 20 days out to the election, he is having to defend some of these states that he won back in 2018. And while the president is defending those red states, Biden is planning to send in a political heavy-hitter. We're told President Obama will soon be appearing on the campaign trail, maybe even next week, hitting some of those early voting states, as he's making the pitch for his former partner in the final stretch of the election -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Arlette, thank you very much for all of that reporting.

So today is the third day of the hearings of Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett. On Tuesday, she was pressed for her thoughts on landmark rulings like Roe v. Wade and the Affordable Care Act.

CNN's Sunlen Serfaty is live on Capitol Hill with the latest.

So what's the takeaway, Sunlen?

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Alisyn.

Well, it was certainly a marathon session on Tuesday. Amy Coney Barrett facing more than 11 hours of questioning in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And today she is back for her second and final round.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SERFATY (voice-over): Judge Amy Coney Barrett was unflappable, batting away tough questions on the Affordable Care Act and on Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court nominee says she doesn't consider the signature abortion case a super precedent, a decision so critical it cannot be overturned.

BARRETT: The way that it's used in the scholarship and the way that I was using it in the article that you're reading from was to define cases that are so well-settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling. And I'm answering a lot of questions about Roe, which I think indicates that Roe doesn't fall in that category.

SERFATY: On the Affordable Care Act, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris slamming Republicans for rushing to confirm Barrett before the election.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Republicans are scrambling to confirm this nominee as fast as possible, because they need one more Trump judge on the bench before November 10 to win and strike down the entire Affordable Care Act. This is not hyperbole.

SERFATY: President Donald Trump has said in the past he would nominate a justice who would overturn Obamacare, a case the Supreme Court takes up one week after the presidential election. But Judge Barrett denied that would weigh on her decision in the case.

BARRETT: I have never made a commitment. I've never been asked to make a commitment. And I hope that the committee would trust in my integrity not to even entertain such an idea, and that I wouldn't violate my oath if I were confirmed and heard that case.

SERFATY: Critics are convinced Barrett will vote to strike down the ACA, citing a 2017 article she wrote in a Notre Dame Law School journal. In it, she criticized Chief Justice John Roberts for upholding a key provision.