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U.S. Coronavirus Cases Climbing Rapidly, Up 60 Percent In Five Weeks; Trump's Response To Pandemic Now Dominating Campaign Dynamic; Biden Blasts Trump COVID Response, Pledges To Be President For All. Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired October 19, 2020 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[05:30:32]
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He's going to lock down. The guys wants to lock down. He'll listen to the scientists.
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CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: The President of the United States literally mocks the idea of listening to scientists as the pandemic shows real signs of a devastating comeback in the U.S.
We have reports this morning from Nevada, North Carolina, England, Paris, Italy, Berlin, and Moscow.
Good morning, this is EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.
LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Laura Jarrett. It's 30 minutes past the hour here in New York.
ROMANS: All right, remember those chaotic scenes at the start of the pandemic -- the desolate city streets, the frantic emergency rooms, the lack of medical equipment, and no end in sight? The U.S. faces the very real possibility it will find itself right back there, and soon, even as the president admits the quiet part out loud -- he has no plans to put science first.
The U.S. is averaging more than 56,000 new cases a day now, up 60 percent in five weeks. Remember, cases are what's known as a leading indicator. First, more cases, then more hospitalizations, then more death. Nearly the entire country is either trending the wrong way or at best, treading water.
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ALEX AZAR, SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: Cases are increasing and we're seeing this happen because we're getting colder weather and we're losing that natural social distancing that happens from being out of doors. And people are getting tired. The American people have given so much.
We're seeing mitigation fatigue right now.
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JARRETT: Yes, no doubt Americans are fatigued right now. But you know what, the virus does not care and easing restrictions before COVID has been contained only makes matters worse ahead of a winter that experts say could be just devastating.
On Sunday, Johns Hopkins University reported 48,000 new cases in the U.S. Remember, reporting is lower, typically, on the weekends so comparing apples to apples, this is the highest Sunday total since July 26th, Christine.
ROMANS: All right. Coronavirus, of course, is hanging over the election this morning with just over two weeks to go.
Dr. Anthony Fauci was asked about President Trump's handling of the pandemic and specifically, that White House super-spreader event -- he was asked last night on "60 MINUTES."
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DR. JON LAPOOK, CBS NEWS CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Were you surprised that President Trump got sick?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: Absolutely not. I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask. When I saw that on T.V., I said oh my goodness, nothing good can come out of that.
He sometimes equates wearing a mask with weakness.
LAPOOK: Does that make sense to you?
FAUCI: No, it doesn't -- of course, not.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: White House leadership on the pandemic has sunk to the point now where Twitter has removed a tweet by COVID task force member, Dr. Scott Atlas, for undermining the importance of face masks.
JARRETT: The president is in Arizona today, then Pennsylvania and North Carolina this week before the debate on Thursday in Nashville. That face-off against Joe Biden will likely be Mr. Trump's last chance to change the state of this race.
CNN's Ryan Nobles is on the road with the president in Carson City, Nevada.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) RYAN NOBLES, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Laura and Christine, President Trump making good on his promise to be very active on the campaign trail after he recovered from the coronavirus and heading into the Election Day. The president on a torrid streak moving across the country today.
And what was interesting is that during this rally in Nevada, the interview on "60 MINUTES" with Dr. Anthony Fauci was playing at the same time the president was speaking. Now, the president couldn't have heard what Dr. Fauci had to say but he did weigh in on what he thinks of the scientists and their assessment of the coronavirus. Take a listen to what he had to say.
TRUMP: If you vote for Biden he will surrender your jobs to China, he will surrender your future to the virus. He's going to lock down. This guy wants to lock down.
He'll listen to the scientists. If I listened totally to the scientists we would, right now, have a country that would be in a massive depression instead of we're like a rocket ship. Take a look at the numbers.
NOBLES: The president didn't mention Anthony Fauci by name but he is, of course, one of the prominent scientists dealing with the coronavirus pandemic so it's not hard to draw the line between the two.
And, you know, the way that this rally played out, you can show that the president just has a different view when it comes to the pandemic. Much like the others we've been to, very little social distancing, hardly anyone wearing masks. And we talked to quite of few of his supporters here and they told us they don't wear masks because the president says that they don't need to. And that's going to continue to play out here as we head into the election on November third -- Laura and Christine.
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[05:35:01]
ROMANS: All right, Ryan Nobles. Thank you so much, Ryan.
President Trump ignoring pleas to tone down his rhetoric against Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer after that failed plot to kidnap her -- rhetoric the governor warns is dangerous.
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GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER (D), MICHIGAN: You know, it's incredibly disturbing that the President of the United States, 10 days after a plot to kidnap, put me on trial, and execute me -- 10 days after that was uncovered, the president is at it again and inspiring and incentivizing and inciting this kind of domestic terrorism. It is wrong. It's got to end.
(END VIDEO CLIP) ROMANS: During his rally in Michigan, the president accused Gov. Whitmer of unnecessarily locking down her state as she fought to contain the virus -- the very same type of claim made by those accused of wanting to kidnap her. That led to this familiar battle cry.
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TRUMP RALLYGOERS: Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!
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JARRETT: The chants of "lock her up" with the president egging people on, you can see there -- a scene defended by the president's daughter- in-law and campaign adviser, Lara Trump.
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LARA TRUMP, TRUMP CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER: Well look, this is -- he wasn't doing anything, I don't think, to provoke people to threaten this woman at all. He was having fun at a Trump rally.
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JARRETT: Fun, she says, but at whose expense? Take one look at this video and you can see none of this is a laughing matter.
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Suspects accused in a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appear to show training exercises being carried out.
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JARRETT: That right there is evidence of the field training exercises that prosecutors say were carried out as part of the plot to kidnap the governor Michigan. Yet, despite all of this, in Nevada last night, the president kept it up. He says the governor is running Michigan like a prison.
ROMANS: All right.
Despite leading in the polls, the Biden campaign is urging his supporters to take nothing for granted here. His campaign manager warning in a memo, quote, "We cannot become complacent because the very searing truth is that Donald Trump can still win this race."
On Sunday, Biden campaigned in the battleground state of North Carolina. CNN's Arlette Saenz was there.
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ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Laura, Joe Biden traveled here to Durham, North Carolina as in-person early voting is underway in the state. He held a socially-distanced drive- in-style rally as he urged his supporters to make a plan to vote in these final weeks before the election, as Biden is hoping to turn this state that President Trump won back in 2016 -- hoping to turn it from red to blue in November.
And, Biden, once again, criticized President Trump for his response to the coronavirus pandemic and he argued the country is in a moment where they need to overcome the division that they are currently enduring. Take a listen to what Biden had to say.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Folks, as my coach used to say in college, it's go time. I'm running as a proud Democrat but I will govern as an American president. No red states, no blue states, just the United States. I promise you I'll work as hard for those who don't support me as those who did.
SAENZ: Now, later, today, Kamala Harris returns to the campaign trail after the campaign had suspended her travel for a few days after two members of her traveling team had tested positive for coronavirus. But today, she will be in the battleground state of Florida, making stops in Orlando and Jacksonville.
And later on in the week, the Democratic Party's biggest political surrogate, President Obama, is hitting the campaign trail for Joe Biden. He will hold an event in Philadelphia, his first in-person campaign appearance as he is making that pitch for his former vice president in these final weeks before the election -- Laura and Christine.
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JARRETT: All right, Arlette. Thank you for that.
The election is two weeks away but more than 27 million ballots have already been cast. That's more than 20 percent of the total amount of ballots cast in the 2016 presidential election.
But at the same time, Senate Democrats are urging voters to be on high alert for efforts to undermine the election. They released a report advising patience and warning people to ignore the president's baseless claims about voter fraud.
CNN has also learned that Democrats are hashing plans behind the scenes to counter the president's attempts to cast doubt on the election results should he lose to Joe Biden. "NEW DAY" will have more on that in the next hour.
ROMANS: All right.
China's economy is picking back up. Chinese officials say the world's second-largest economy grew 4.9 percent in the third quarter, building on the 3.2 percent increase in the second quarter when China managed to avoid a pandemic-fueled recession that crippled the world.
Two reasons here -- strict lockdown early on contained the virus, and hundreds of billions of dollars from the federal government boosted spending. China now on track, according to the IMF, to be the only major economy to grow this year.
[05:40:04] China's economy is strong enough that it started buying U.S. soybeans again. That's good news for farmers who were hit hard by the U.S.- China trade war.
And good news for President Trump. Farmers have been among his core supporters and could be key in battleground states in the Midwest.
JARRETT: New overnight, a federal judge striking down a Trump administration rule that would have stripped food stamps from 700,000 Americans. That rule would have required more food stamp recipients to work to receive any benefits.
Nineteen states have sued to stop it and a judge now says that the Trump administration had been, quote, "icily silent" about how many Americans would have been denied benefits during this pandemic. The judge adds that the changes would have radically and abruptly altered decades of practice, exponentially increasing food insecurity across the country.
We'll be right back.
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[05:45:08] JARRETT: All right.
Schools in Houston reopen for in-person classes today and despite the coronavirus risk, it couldn't come soon enough for many parents. Schools nationwide are seeing a drop in virtual attendance right now. Chicago's public school enrollment is down by 15,000 students. There are also big drops in Dallas and Nashville, as well as the Robla school district in Sacramento where 90 percent of students live below the poverty line.
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RUBEN REYES, SUPERINTENDENT, ROBLA SCHOOL DISTRICT: The press (ph) is making sure that when we were up and running with the program that our children had devices at home. We did have families who did not have Internet -- they did not have Wi-Fi in their home or in their apartment.
The instability of poverty is a big part of this, so they were there and now they're not.
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JARRETT: Meantime in New York City, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is outlining a new strategy for a more targeted attack on any viral outbreak clusters. Cuomo says he has the data, testing capacity, and contact tracers to prevent the broad lockdowns we saw back in the spring and allow the economy to stay open while the state fights the virus.
ROMANS: In Europe, several countries are taking new steps to slow another spike of coronavirus, but they're facing some resistance. CNN has the pandemic covered across Europe.
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BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Ben Wedeman in Naples.
Sunday evening, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced new measures to try to slow this second wave of coronavirus here. They were, however, fairly modest measures simply limiting some forms of social gatherings.
For the last five days in a row, Italy has reported record increases in the number of new coronavirus cases -- increases the likes of which we never saw here during the darkest days of the pandemic earlier this year.
SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN REPORTER: I'm Salma Abdelaziz in Manchester where we finally have a breakthrough after a days' long standoff between the authorities here and the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson over plans to raise the alert level of the city.
The mayor says that he has had constructive talks with the government. We've also heard from the housing secretary that a larger financial package will be offered to the city to help affected businesses. The government says it is hopeful that a conclusion will be reached today.
But it's important to remember Manchester is just one city. Imagine having to negotiate these restrictions city-by-city, town-by-town. That's part of the reason why the country's scientific advisers are calling for a nationwide lockdown.
SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Scott McLean in Berlin where the chancellor is urging Germans to abide by coronavirus rules as the number of infections continues to rise.
Meanwhile, in nearby Prague, people protested the new restrictions there over the weekend with no social distancing and few masks in sight.
The mandatory mandate to wear a mask outside your home in the spring made the first wave barely a blip on the radar. But the populist Czech prime minister has so far said no to reinstating that same strict policy now.
MELISSA BELL, CNN PARIS CORRESPONDENT: I'm Melissa Bell in Paris.
Here in France, the daily rises in new coronavirus cases, for the fourth day in a row, above 25,000. This, as the curfews came into effect in 10 French cities, including here in Paris, from midnight on Friday. It's going to take some time, though, for those to have an impact, if they do, on the number of new cases.
And, of course, all eyes are very much on what these massive rises in new cases are going to mean for the number of ICU beds taken up COVID- 19 patients. Already, nationally, it is above 35 percent -- and in places like the Greater Paris region, 46.8.
(END VIDEO CLIP) JARRETT: All right, thanks to all of our correspondents for those updates on the virus around the world.
Well, Russia's main opposition leader speaking out on camera for the first time since he was poisoned. Alexey Navalny wants to know why President Trump is staying silent on the chemical attack against him.
CNN's Fred Pleitgen is live for us in Moscow this morning. And, Fred, what else did he have to say?
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Laura.
Well, it was a wide-ranging interview that he gave to CBS "60 MINUTES" and one of the things that he also spoke about was actually what it was like to be poisoned. He said that he did not feel any pain but at the same time, he did realize that he was dying, as he put it.
He said at some point he went to the flight attendant of a flight that he was on and told him I've been poisoned, I'm dying, and then fell to the man's feet. He, of course, later was rescued by the fact that plane made an emergency landing.
And you're absolutely right. One of the things Alexey Navalny did point out is that he realized or he had heard that President Trump had, so far, not called out to the Kremlin for the poisoning of Alexey Navalny. He said he believes that President Trump needs to do more and say more in this regard. Let's listen in.
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ALEXEY NAVALNY, RUSSIAN OPPOSITION LEADER: I think it's extremely important that everyone -- of course, including and maybe -- and first of all, the president of the United States -- to be very against using chemical weapon in the 21 century.
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PLEITGEN: Of course, Alexey Navalny also saying that he does not only believe that Vladimir Putin is behind the poisoning, he says he is absolutely certain. The Kremlin, of course, saying that they deny that, calling those allegations absurd, Laura.
JARRETT: All right, Fred, nice to see you this morning. Thanks so much.
Now to another remarkable story of survival. A hiker missing for nearly two weeks in Utah's Zion National Park has been found alive. Thirty-eight-year-old Holly Courtier was found on Sunday. Search and rescue teams got a tip from a park visitor that they had seen here.
Park Service officials say Holly has been reunited with her family. The family is thanking park rangers, search and rescue teams, and volunteers who searched relentlessly and never gave up hope. ROMANS: Wow.
Boeing's troubled 737 MAX jet could be back in the air by the end of this year. American Airlines plans to resume passenger flights December 29th between Miami and New York pending recertification from the FAA. The 737 MAX fleet has been grounded worldwide since March 2019 following two crashes that killed 364 people.
The airline industry is struggling badly during the pandemic. American lost $5 billion the first half of the year and recently cut 9,000 jobs.
JARRETT: Wildfires raging in Colorado and Utah forcing thousands of people to evacuate. A new fire broke out Sunday in Boulder County, Colorado as crews battled the CalWood fire, the county's largest on record that began a day earlier.
Meantime in Utah, two wildfires that started over the weekend burned through more than 3,000 acres in less than 24 hours. Poor weather has hampered firefighting efforts there.
ROMANS: 988 will become the national Suicide Prevention Hotline beginning in 2022. President Trump signed a bipartisan bill over the weekend. The three-digit number will replace the current 10-digit number.
The pandemic has worsened mental health issues across the country.
JARRETT: Well, a new monument honoring women in the military unveiled at Arlington National Cemetery this weekend. "The Pledge" shows a woman in full combat gear bonding with a service dog.
The sculptor, Susan Bahary, says there are very few monuments in the U.S. featuring women and fewer yet honoring them for their great military service. The time has come.
Well, here, here.
ROMANS: Yes, that's really great.
All right, let's start the week taking a look at markets around the world here. You see Asian shares are mixed and Europe has opened slightly higher here this morning.
U.S. futures -- if you take a look there, U.S. futures -- I guess we're not going to take a look. Huge week -- they're up a little bit, I am told.
Huge week for earnings and markets are hanging on any developments on critical support for struggling Americans after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave the Trump administration 48 hours to reach a stimulus deal before Election Day.
And a curious byproduct of all that fiscal aid already delivered, Americans' credit scores are rising. "The Wall Street Journal" reports the average FICO credit score hit a record 711 in July, up from 706 last year.
Now, the increase in the scores largely, in part, because of all that stimulus. Many Americans used their stimulus checks and their fatter jobless benefits to keep with up bills, and some even paid off debt. But experts warn consumers' credit could start to decline without more help from Congress.
AMC Theaters has found a creative way to stay in business during the pandemic. The chain has joined a handful of cinemas letting customers rent out auditoriums for private screenings. Rentals, up to 20 people, start at $99.00.
Movie theaters have been devastated by the pandemic. Lockdowns kept people at home. Hollywood Studios delayed big movie releases. Last week, AMC said it would run out of money by the end of the year.
JARRETT: Well, that's a creative move there.
Well, a convicted murderer who helped subdue the London Bridge attacker being granted a rare early release by the queen. Steven Gallant famously confronted Usman Khan using a narwhal tusk during the attack in November of 2019. Khan fatally stabbed two people that day but Gallant, who was out of prison attending an event, helped subdue Kahn until police arrived.
Gallant is now being considered for early release. The parole board will make the final decision.
All right.
NASA is working with Nokia to build a 4G cellular network on the moon. The plan for the network to support the wireless operation of lunar rovers and navigation, as well as streaming video. Nokia's research arm, Bell Labs, was granted $14 million for the project. And like on earth, the 4G network will eventually be upgraded to 5G.
ROMANS: That's what I call long distance -- really long distance.
All right.
A 14-year-old from Texas winning $25,000 for her work on a potential treatment for coronavirus. Anika Chebrolu won the 2020 3M Young Scientist Challenge with a molecule she developed that stops the function of the virus by binding to a certain protein in it.
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Chebrolu says the scope of the pandemic and the stories of those suffering inspired her work. She also credits her grandfather for pushing her to thrive in science.
JARRETT: I love it. We need more of that.
ROMANS: Yes.
JARRETT: Fourteen-year-old geniuses are going to save us all. ROMANS: Love it. I hope so.
Thanks for joining us this Monday morning, everybody. I'm Christine Romans.
JARRETT: I'm Laura Jarrett. "NEW DAY" is next.
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