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Rural Midwestern Counties See COVID-19 Uptick; Polls Show Joe Biden Ahead; Interview with Farmer Christopher Gibbs. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired October 21, 2020 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Speaker Pelosi's also (INAUDIBLE) is expected to speak to some Republicans, Steven Mnuchin also expected to talk to Nancy Pelosi as well. So a lot they have to resolve.

And on top of that, Pelosi herself said last night was the time in which they could hopefully come to an agreement, and then that would give them enough time to get a bill passed before Election Day.

Of course, they did not come to an agreement last night. Pelosi did indicate they're moving closer, but again, this is a massive deal, they're talking about $2 trillion so there are so many details to resolve, that's what makes it incredibly unlikely something could get passed in the next two weeks.

And in a subtle shift in her language last night, Pelosi sent a letter to her colleagues saying, "I remain hopeful that we can reach an agreement before Election Day," not pass a bill before Election Day. A lot of folks believe that means they'll wait until after the election to pass anything -- guys.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. I mean, 13 days to go, there's also the calendar, right? Which doesn't move. Manu Raju, thanks very much.

It's not just big cities with lots of people that are being hit by this, rural areas are suffering now. We're going to speak to a doctor fighting the battle in one such area in South Dakota.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:35:49]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. All of a sudden it hit. And as it does, just exploded. That is how one doctor in rural South Dakota describes the recent spike in coronavirus infections there. Rural counties across that state and the Midwest are now seeing a sharp uptick in cases -- remember when folks said it was just about cities? And now health care systems in those areas are struggling to keep up with record hospitalizations, often overwhelmed.

Dr. Tom Dean is one of just three doctors who works in Jerauld County in South Dakota, one of those counties affected, and he joins us now. Doctor, thanks so much for taking the time this morning.

TOM DEAN, FAMILY PHYSICIAN, HORIZON HEALTH CARE: Thank you, good to be here.

SCIUTTO: Tell us about the impact of the outbreak where you are. Because you remember, early on, you heard this talk, oh, this is a big city problem. Well, in fact, it's not and you know it.

DEAN: Yes. We had a minor outbreak back in July, and then everything quieted down and we basically had no cases of COVID for about two months. And then in the late August, early September, all of a sudden, our small clinic had, in one day, had 11 positive cases.

Now, that's a small number by most standards, but for us it's a huge number. And they just sort of came out of nowhere. And it continued to go on, then, for a week or two. And now, has begun to taper off a little bit in the community.

The place that has got hit the hardest in our community is our nursing home. They closed down the nursing home to visitors, and started aggressively screening people and screening staff and residents, and doing regular testing way back in, I think, March or April. And were able to keep the virus out of the facility for about six months.

And then just in the middle of September, it snuck in and has just created havoc. There have been a number of tests, and it's been a major problem there.

SCIUTTO: Wow, yes.

DEAN: They've actually been hit harder than our hospital, but.

SCIUTTO: I know that this is personal for you as well. You suffered your own loss as a result of this?

DEAN: Yes, we certainly did. My parents were both residents of that nursing home, and my mother died. My mother was 97, she died the 26th of September for causes probably not related to COVID. But my father, who had just had his 100th birthday, contracted the virus and died on September 30th, after about four days. He -- he deteriorated very rapidly, and he had been clinically stable up to that point even though he was, obviously, very elderly.

SCIUTTO: Goodness, well I'm so sorry. Having lost parents myself, I know folks will say, well, they were old. But, listen, it's a loss, it's personal. I wonder why you think this is happening, why it's spreading so fast there. Are folks, have they given up with things like wearing masks?

DEAN: Probably given up isn't the right term, most of them never started.

(LAUGHTER)

SCIUTTO: Yes. DEAN: But, yes, I think it is frustrating. I think we have failed to

really communicate that this is a serious problem and it is in our community and can affect people. And unfortunately, a lot of young and middle-aged folks simply don't seem to think that it is a risk to them.

So we -- even in spite of all the publicity, we still see public events where we see a lot of people gathering together and not wearing masks and so forth. It's troubling, and I'm sure that's part of it.

[10:40:00]

Also, part of is the behavior of this virus, which comes and goes and pops up in unexpected places.

SCIUTTO: Just very quickly, has the president's contradictory messaging on things like masks helped or hurt you in terms of controlling this?

DEAN: It's hurt us, there's no doubt about it.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Well, listen, I'm sorry to hear about that. I mean, the science is clear, you could hear it from Dr. Fauci or Dr. Tom Dean in South Dakota. Stick with those measures.

Dr. Dean, we wish you the best of luck and our thoughts with you and your family, considering your own losses to this.

DEAN: Thank you.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Really meaningful to hear from him.

All right, next, look at that billboard, it says "Trump COVID superspreader event." These billboards popped up outside of the president's rallies last week. The man behind them actually voted for the president in 2016, he will not this time around. And he's here, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:45:54]

SCIUTTO: All right, so you're going to be hearing a lot about this number in the next 13 days, 270 to win, that is the game, of course, Election Night. So who really has the best path to that magic electoral number? CNN's senior political writer and analyst Harry Enten -- trust me, he's been diving into this more than you know.

So, Harry, where do things stand right now as best we know, who has the best path?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL WRITER AND ANALYST: Sure. It's former Vice President Joe Biden. I'll give you a map that gives you a really good understanding of why.

Essentially, take a look at the state poll averages, and assign to Joe Biden all the states where he holds at least a five-point lead in both the September and October polls, and he gets to 279 electoral votes, more than the 270 needed to win. This is even spotting (ph) President Trump states like Florida, Arizona and North Carolina, states where Biden holds smaller leads than five points.

So the real question is, can President Trump get into those Midwestern battlegrounds like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan to win? He needs to flip at least one of those, I believe.

But take a look at the polling averages in those states. Look at this, Joe Biden holds leads of at least seven points in all of them, he's at 50 percent-plus in all of them. So right now, it's not looking good for President Trump in those states. He need at least one of those, most likely, to win.

Now the question is, why is President Trump struggling in those states? Take a look here. Non-college educated white voters, they are a key part of the president's base. He's still leading among them in an aggregate of those three states I mentioned. But look, his lead is down by 10 points from 2016. If he doesn't bring up his numbers with non-college whites, I'm not really quite sure how President Trump could win one of these key states that he almost certainly needs to win.

SCIUTTO: Gotcha. We'll agree to ban the phrase "narrow path," given the history going back to 2016. But based on the numbers, can President Trump win without one of those key Midwestern states?

ENTEN: Yes. I mean, look, it's possible. You know, one of the maps I try to put together is essentially, you give Trump all the states that he won in 2016 except for, say, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and then if he were to be able to go in and, say, win both Nevada and New Hampshire, states that Hillary Clinton won in 2016, he could do it.

But here, again, look at the polling averages. You see former Vice President Joe Biden with clear leads in both Nevada and New Hampshire, and Biden over 50 percent. So it's just really, really tough -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Got it. Harry, thanks, always good to have you on the numbers.

ENTEN: My pleasure.

HARLOW: All right, thanks, Harry.

So an Ohio farmer who voted for the president in 2016 is now leading a push to stop the president's re-election. His name is Christopher Gibbs, he's the president of Rural America 2020. Last week, his group posted these billboards outside of the president's rallies in Iowa and Georgia, calling them superspreader events.

Christopher Gibbs is with me. He's a retired USDA county director. He says he's left the Republican Party and will vote for Joe Biden.

It's good to have you. CHRISTOPHER GIBBS, FORMER USDA OFFICIAL: Well, thank you. Glad

(INAUDIBLE).

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: You're kind of -- it's good to have you. You're kind of on an island, though, when it comes to your fellow farmers. I mean, when you look at the polling from over the summer, from farm futures, 75 percent of farmers in the United States polled said they're going to support the president.

What I find interesting, Christopher, it's even a higher percentage than in 2016. Why do you think your message is not swaying them?

GIBBS: Well, the president has got farmers across the Midwest -- and really all across the United States -- in a financial snare with the trade war -- or I should say a war on trade, is what I call it. When the president started the war on trade, clear back in March of 2018, what happened immediately is we lost confidence in our foreign markets.

And foreign markets are how we -- how agriculture brings dollars back to rural communities. And certainly we lost all of the trade that we were doing to China with soybeans. So what the president did at that point was, he extracted dollars from the Commodity Credit Corporation, from a $30 billion fund within USDA, to start paying farmers off to make up the difference.

And how that's worked over time is $12 billion in 2018, then $16 billion, then $19 billion. Then, about a month ago, $14 billion. And Congress is probably going to weigh in if they ever get their act together on another stimulus, for more dollars.

[10:50:13]

So -- and I'll tell you, on my farm, this is going to end up, most likely this year, going to be more than 50 percent of my net farm income is going to come directly from the taxpayer. And so farmers are trapped. They aren't able to get out of that snare because our markets haven't totally returned, and so they continue to support the president. And that's certainly unfortunate.

HARLOW: So your point is, taxpayer-funded, consistent bailouts of farmers is making them whole but it's not whole because of just their crops, et cetera. I hear that. But when we looked at the USDA farm income data this year, farm income is on track to be at nearly $103 billion, that's 65 percent higher than 2016.

And I hear your point, a lot of it is because of these bailouts. But it is still also maintaining farmer support for the president. I guess my question is, what's your goal with these billboards? It doesn't seem like it is taking away support from the president among your fellow farmers.

GIBBS: Keep in mind, the billboards were just up just a week or so ago. But Rural America 2020, what I'm involved with, we're up in six states. We're up in the battleground states, if you will: Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, I think I said. All of those states, we have steering committees in.

And steering committees, we have over 40 folks that are professional folks, farmers, teachers, retired legislators, the whole gamut. And what these folks do is bring to us what's important in those rural areas. And what's important -- like your previous guest said -- was rural health care. Rural health care is extremely important.

And so what we did with the billboards was to start that conversation. It's true that these were superspreader events, and that's scaring the Dickens out of folks in these rural areas.

HARLOW: I have 20 seconds left. You're not just leaving the president, you're leaving the entire Republican Party. Why leave the whole party?

GIBBS: Well, the party doesn't exist the way I came up. I came up as a regular Republican, as a Bush Republican. You know, in this party, there's no fiscal responsibility, that's out the window. There's no free trade, there's no diplomacy, there's no statesmanship and pro- life is certainly in question when you've got folks running around saying that they won't wear a mask because it's my body, my choice.

HARLOW: Christopher Gibbs, we'll have more time next time. Thank you for being here.

GIBBS: (INAUDIBLE), take care.

HARLOW: All right, thanks, Chris -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Fascinating to hear a voice like that.

[10:52:53]

Well, a grand juror involved in the Breonna Taylor case says the secret panel was never given a chance to consider homicide charges. This as one of the officers involved in Taylor's death shares a message for her mother.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Kentucky's attorney general, Daniel Cameron, is facing new criticism after a judge allowed a grand juror in the Breonna Taylor case to speak publicly. One of the jurors released an anonymous statement, saying the jury was not given an opportunity to consider homicide charges against the officers who shot and killed Taylor while serving what's known as a no-knock warrant at her home in Louisville back in March.

HARLOW: One of the officers involved in the March raid says the shooting had nothing to do with race. More headlines from that interview as well, let's go to our Shimon Prokupecz who joins us this morning.

We learned a lot from this conversation. SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, a lot

from the conversation with the officer. But what really has a lot of people talking today certainly, Poppy and Jim, is this grand juror, right? As you said, they went to court to seek permission to come out and speak publicly because they felt that the attorney general in Kentucky misrepresented how he went about presenting evidence in this case.

And specifically, it's two points that I think are worth raising. It's that these jurors wanted to hear about other charges, they said they were not given that opportunity. They said that prosecutors basically said they didn't think they could make the charges stick, so they didn't present other charges against some of the other officers.

This of course all happening as that sergeant, Jonathan Mattingly, spoke out for the first time yesterday. And here's some of what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JONATHAN MATTINGLY, SERGEANT, LOUISVILLE METRO POLICE DEPARTMENT: This is not relatable to George Floyd. This is nothing like it. It's not Ahmaud Arbery, it's nothing like it. It's not a rase thing like people want to try to make it to be, it's not. This is a point where we were doing our job, we returned fire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: And he also then said that Breonna Taylor didn't deserve to die, in a quote, that she didn't do anything to deserve a death sentence. Despite that, the officers defending their actions.

The key thing now obviously for Kentucky, for the governor, for people there is whether or not a new grand jury should be convened to raise, to bring up some of these issues that these grand jurors are now raising, that they didn't get a chance to consider some of these other charges.

It certainly seems from that statement that this juror, this anonymous juror, put out, that they did not feel entirely that the officers were justified in their actions here -- Poppy, Jim.

HARLOW: Shimon, thank you for all of those headlines. I suspect we're going to hear a lot more in the coming days.

And thanks to all of you for being with us, we will see you tomorrow morning. I'm Poppy Harlow.

SCIUTTO: And I'm Jim Sciutto, 13 days til Election Day --

HARLOW: There we go.

SCIUTTO: -- NEWSROOM with our colleague John King -- he might have something to say about that -- starts right now.

[11:00:07]