Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Nearly 64,000 New Coronavirus Cases; Trump Warned of Disinformation; Fact-Checking the Town Halls; New Poll Numbers on Voting. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired October 16, 2020 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Overnight, nearly 64,000 new coronavirus cases were reported. That's the highest total in two months. At least nine states are reporting the most new cases in a single day ever.

CNN's Adrienne Broaddus is live in Wisconsin with more.

What's the situation on the ground, Adrienne?

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, good morning.

The numbers in Wisconsin are high and rapidly increasing. And experts say the fall wave they were dreading is already here.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROADDUS (voice over): n unseizing (ph) surge of new coronavirus cases. On Thursday, more than 63,000 new coronavirus cases reported in the U.S., the highest daily figure in more than two months.

DR. RICHARD BESSER, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, CDC: Each region of the nation is also seeing an increase in the number of hospitalizations. And that is what you see before you see an increase in the number of deaths.

BROADDUS: New record numbers of patients admitted to the hospital in at least seven states, the Midwest leading this concerning new trend. Wisconsin, on Thursday, saw more than 3,700 cases, a new record for the state. The test positivity rate standing at over 21 percent.

Kentucky also seeing a spike in hospitalizations, reporting 738 patients in hospitals Thursday.

GOV. ANDY BESHEAR (D-KY): Everybody ought to be doing the right thing. And those that are out there that try to confront you for wearing a mask or being a jerk, they're putting your health at risk.

BROADDUS: And in Missouri, more than 1,400 hospitalizations reported for the third day in a row.

Meanwhile, a new study released by the World Health Organization concluded that the antiviral drug Remdesivir had little or no effect on mortality and patients in the hospital with COVID. The WHO described the conclusions as conclusive and disappointing. Remdesivir has Emergency Use Authorization for coronavirus in the United States and President Trump received it while he was treated at Walter Reed Medical Center.

And rising outrage from many medical experts on the White House's view of herd immunity. The idea that letting the virus spread throughout the country with the goal of infecting a large percentage of the population in hopes of gaining immunity will end the pandemic.

DR. PAUL OFFIT, DIRECTOR, VACCINE EDUCATION CENTER AT CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA: We eliminated measles from this country by vaccination by the year 2000. Small pox was only eliminated by vaccination, even though that, too, is a much more highly contagious disease, and that, too, induces lifelong immunity. So the notion of community immunity by natural infection is made up. It's never happened.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROADDUS: And despite the concern about the number of cases here in Wisconsin, President Trump is expected to come to Janesville, Wisconsin, for a rally on Saturday. This as his task force is recommending people stick to measures like wearing a mask, social distancing, or risk preventable deaths.

Alisyn.

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

So if you've been wondering what Rudy Giuliani has been up to for the past year or so, well, "The Washington Post" has new reporting on how Giuliani was targeted by Russian intelligence to give President Trump disinformation. We have the details, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:37:12]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Developing overnight, "The New York Times" and "Washington Post" report that the White House was warned last year that Rudy Giuliani was targeted by Russian intelligence to convey disinformation to President Trump. Rudy Giuliani used by Russian intelligence. The White House warned about it.

So "The Post" first broke this story. This is what they report. "National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien cautioned Trump in a private conversation that any information Giuliani brought back from Ukraine should be considered contaminated by Russia. Trump had shrugged his shoulders at O'Brien's warning, the former official said, and dismissed concern about his lawyer's activity by saying, quote, that's Rudy."

Joining me now, CNN political and national security analyst, David Sanger. He is a national security correspondent for "The New York Times" and the author of "The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in The Cyber Age." That book is the basis of a new HBO documentary, which airs tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

And, David, we're going to get to this fantastic documentary in just a second.

But, first, this news first reported by "The Post," matched by "The Times." Rudy Giuliani, the White House warned that Giuliani is being used by Russian intelligence to convey misinformation to the president. The president literally, in this piece, shrugs.

How is this not an associate of the president colluding with Russian intelligence?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, it is. And thanks, John, for having me on. And great reporting by our colleagues and competitors at "The Washington Post."

You know, what's interesting about this whole story, John, is that in some ways it's the opposite of what happened in 2016, when the Russians were trying to hide what they were doing, right, you know, sending those messages through the Internet research agency, the FaceBook, and then through leaking documents through WikiLeaks. Here, Rudy Giuliani was going to Ukraine. He was making no secret about it. In fact, the White House, at one point, had to ask him not to go around the time of impeachment. And he made clear why he was going. It was to get information about Burisma and about Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

So he was sort of advertising himself to the Russians. Hey, whatever you can hack and get, I'm open for business.

BERMAN: It really is stunning to see the level of detail and the fact that the White House was more clearly -- the intelligence community is deeply concerned about this. And Giuliani is running around making no secret of it. I mean the phrase "useful idiot" is something that appears frequently all over dealings with Russia over time, and this is an example when Giuliani is a willing useful idiot.

David, I need to get to your book and the documentary, which deals with many of these same types of subjects, this background war that's happening.

[06:40:08]

The Russians are part of it, but there are other countries, too.

I want to play a long clip now from "The Perfect Weapon."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Sixteen hours since the Iowa caucuses began. We're still waiting for the results.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The app didn't work. No one knew if it would.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is so far not so good.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Iowa was exactly my worst fear.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The biggest concern was that voters would not be able to trust the system.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: What about the confidence in the vote?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Especially with -- against the backdrop of the Russian interference in 2016.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What Iowa is demonstrating to adversaries in the United States is, all they have to do is create that appearance, and they probably don't even have to create their own disinformation, American partisans will do it for them.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The president's son was saying it's rigged. The president's campaign manager.

TAPPER: The Biden campaign is out there openly say they don't trust what the results will be.

DAVID SANGER, AUTHOR, "THE PERFECT WEAPON": They've created what's called a perception hack. Our mind immediately goes to the question, are the Russians messing with our election? It doesn't matter whether they are or they aren't.

CHRISTOPHER KREBS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: This is one of the confusing aspects of election security. It's not just about trying to hack into computers, there's another aspect of election interference that's about trying to hack into your brain. They're ultimately trying to get the American people to lose confidence in the system, that the system is beyond repair, that the system is broken and their vote doesn't matter.

BLITZER: U.S. officials have now told Senator Bernie Sanders that Russia is trying to help his presidential campaign.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How did he even get (INAUDIBLE) now if you had the briefing a month ago?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): Well, I'll let you guess. Well, one day before the Nevada caucus. Why do you think it came out? It's "The Washington Post"? Good friends.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Joe, what do you say to the Russians?

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: They're coming. They're continuing to meddle. They're involved in this race and in my primary. They're involved going after me on FaceBook. They've already been taken down because Putin knows me and I know him and he doesn't want me to be president.

TAPPER: The Russians want everyone in this country to mistrust everything. Whether or not the Russians are involved, these next few months are going to be tense.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BERMAN: Yikes. The perception hack, David, that really is chilling.

What do you want people to know most as we are, you know, two weeks from Election Day?

SANGER: Well, you know, I think, John, the big message out of this documentary is, we're in an escalating world of cyber conflict in which that hacking of the infrastructure and the hacking of the minds goes together, right? So for the infrastructure, we're worried about the voting machines, less so than the registration systems. If you could get into just a few districts in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania or any other battleground state and make it look as if something has gone wrong, then people will think that the ballots in the entire state are bad. Or the president or others could leap on it and say, see, I told you this was fixed. And then, you know, that Biden line, that was taken back during the primaries, but pretty chilling at a moment that we're seeing a leak come out that we think was directed right at him and may have had Russian origins. We're still trying to figure that out.

So this is escalating on both fronts.

BERMAN: And we're seeing it play out before our eyes in a very overt way, as well.

David Sanger, thank you for being with us. Congratulations, not just on the book, but, again, the HBO documentary which airs tonight.

Thanks so much for being with us.

SANGER: Thank you, John. Great to be with you.

BERMAN: All right, the town halls. What a unique perspective on two candidates, two styles. A lot of things, a lot of statements made, a lot of facts and non-facts. Our special weapon, Daniel Dale, fact checker in chief, national treasure, smokes out the spin and lies, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:47:57]

CAMEROTA: So, which candidate had the hardest time sticking to facts last night? CNN's fact checker, Daniel Dale, has the answer.

DANIEL DALE, CNN REPORTER: Alisyn and John, this was lopsided from a fact check perspective, as usual. We heard some false and misleading claims from Biden, no doubt, but we got another bombardment from President Trump.

So part of what we saw from Trump was the usual. It's the usual, but it's still egregious, a claim that vote by mail is rife with fraud. Fraud is exceedingly rare. He described himself as a champion of protections for people with pre-existing conditions, even as he tries in court to get those protections killed. He said that Biden wants to triple or quadruple your taxes, which is not at all true. Not even close to what his plan is. He said we're rounding the turn on the pandemic, even as cases and hospitalizations spike again. I could go on and on.

In addition to that, the usual, he also gave airtime to two truly bonkers conspiracy theories. One was QAnon, which he spoke favorably about, although he said he didn't know much about it, and one was defending this retweet he did of a truly crazy stuff about Obama, Osama bin Laden and the military SEAL Team 6. Just absolutely crazy.

Now, from Biden, we did, again, have some false or misleading stuff. He claimed that the number of troops in Afghanistan is higher now than it was when he personally left office as VP. No, it's lower after Trump-era late-term reductions. He kind of denied that his website says that the green new deal is a crucial framework for environmental action. It does indeed say that. And he said that Trump did nothing, didn't do anything, after the initial round of aid to the unemployed expired. Well, you can say that Trump didn't do enough. You can certainly say that. But Trump did do something, he gave billions in aid to provide $300 checks to replace the $600 checks that had expired.

John and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Our thanks to Daniel Dale there.

More than 17 million Americans have already voted in the election. What do those votes tell us? Harry Enten breaks it down, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:53:59]

BERMAN: Some staggering numbers in early voting. People are voting in droves. More than 17 million ballots cast already. That's nearly 15 percent of the total vote in 2016. We're seeing huge, huge lines in these states where the voting is underway. So what does it tell us? Joining us now, CNN's senior politics writer and analyst Harry Enten.

And we should note that some of the information we're going to get now comes from Catalyst, which is a data company that provides data analytics and other services to Democrats, academics, and nonprofit issue advocacy organizations.

Harry, the numbers we are seeing, how big? Put it in context?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER AND ANALYST: Yes, they're huge, right? You've said it best, more than 17 million folks have already cast their ballots in this election. And if you take a look at this map, look at this, you're seeing people voting throughout the nation in very large numbers, from California down to Florida, all the way up even to Maine at this particular point. So people are already getting involved in the process.

And if you compare that to where we were back in 2016, 18 days out, look at this, we are seeing massive changes throughout the country, more people voting early than basically ever have before. [06:55:10]

Again, all the way from California to Maine, down to Florida. So people are very enthused. They're very much involved. They want to get their votes counted and cast early.

BERMAN: Is this consistent with what you've seen in the polling on enthusiasm in general?

ENTEN: Yes, I think this is rather important, right, John? The idea that we're just getting these early vote numbers and it's somehow surprising that people are so enthusiastic, and that's the first sign of it, it's just not true, right? I like that we can see it in the polling data, as well. And we saw that in our last CNN poll whereby what we saw was, on the certain to vote measure, the percentage of registered voters who say that they're certain to vote in this election, in early October in 2020, 88 percent. You compare that back in 2016, it was just 83 percent.

And we've seen this throughout the election, whereby the polling is demonstrating that more voters say they're enthusiastic, certain to vote, than they were at certain points in the 2016 cycle.

BERMAN: Harry, I have to confess, those first two maps you showed, I couldn't see the difference in the numbers. So let's see if we can dive in a little bit deeper and maybe focus on one state so people can really see what we're talking about here.

Take a look at Florida. Explain to us the difference in Florida now versus where we were at this point four years ago.

ENTEN: Right. I love the state of Florida as an example, right, because the rules have been changing in a number of states whereby they've made it easier to vote by mail or vote early. But Florida, in fact, the rules are pretty much the same. And yet even there, with 18 days to go, look at this, already over 2 million people have cast their ballots in the state of Florida. It was just over 1 million folks back in 2016. And I should note that 2020 number today is likely to get updated and it will likely rise even higher throughout the day. So we're getting double the turnout in Florida, already a state that had the same rules than four years ago.

BERMAN: What do we know about who is voting, Harry, in terms of which party is getting more voters out there?

ENTEN: Yes, I love this sort of number because, obviously, the president has had a lot of rhetoric, right, basically saying that he doesn't necessarily trust mail voting, even though in Florida he has basically said the system's OK. But, look, four years ago at this point, in Florida, if you were to look at the party registration of people who have already cast their ballots, Republicans were actually outvoting Democrats, 43 percent to 40 percent by party affiliation. Look at the numbers now in 2020. Democrats are making up 50 percent of the voters who have already cast their ballot in the state of Florida, Republicans just 30 percent. So part of that probably is the Democratic enthusiasm, right? But part of it is also the president's rhetoric on early voting, seems to have deterred Republicans from voting early, at least compared to four years ago.

BERMAN: Can we put that slide back up again because I want people to see this, because this is one of the big questions, what's different now versus four years ago. The bottom line is four years ago this shows us in Florida, more Republicans have voted by this point early by 3 percent in this time. That's just a big, big change, Harry.

ENTEN: Yes, it's a huge change. And we're seeing that throughout the country, right, whereby Democrats are the ones who are voting earlier. They are much more enthusiastic than Republicans seem to be in terms of voting early. And, obviously, Florida is such a key state. And you'd rather get those votes sort of bucketed early, right, just in case there's some late thing that occurs in the country, something that changes the race. So right now Democrats, though, seem to be the ones who are voting early and in big numbers.

BERMAN: There does need to be caution, though, Harry, when you're talking about extrapolating, right? One of the terms that I like the most is the idea that -- that votes are cannibalized in early voting. We do need to be careful about projecting what this might mean overall.

ENTEN: Yes, I -- this is something that's very important, right? And, basically, you know, as I was mentioning, Republicans seem to be really wanting to vote on Election Day more so than cast their votes early. And you can see this in an ABC News/"Washington Post" poll that came out last month, which essentially -- the top line was that Trump was at 51 percent, Biden was at 47 percent. Even so, in that particular poll, Biden was crushing Trump among early and mail voters by nearly 30 points. The reason Trump was ahead in that poll, or at least slightly more -- had a slightly higher percentage of the vote than Biden, still within the margin of error, was the Election Day vote. Trump was crushing it, leading it by 55 points.

Now, that doesn't mean that Trump is actually up by four right now in the overall aggregate in Florida, but the picture that we're seeing right now in the early vote is not necessarily inconsistent with the idea that Trump could still win on Election Day.

BERMAN: All right, early votes are votes that are in the bank. That is what campaigns generally love. Isn't necessarily divisive, Harry, but it tells us a lot.

Thank you so much for being with us. Appreciate it.

ENTEN: Thank you, my friend.

BERMAN: NEW DAY continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No second presidential debate. Instead, dueling town halls.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These twin town halls were a poor substitute for an actual presidential debate. DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I denounce white

supremacy, OK?

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The words of a president matter. Good, bad, or indifferent, they matter.

[07:00:04]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New warnings that this pandemic is taking a devastate toll on rural America.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If there was a major.