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New Day

Coronavirus Cases in Children Jump; Voters Receive Threatening E-mails; Importance of Florida in Election; McConnell Warns Against Stimulus Deal. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired October 21, 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: There's a new report out by the American Academy of Pediatrics. They've seen a 13 percent increase in cases just since the beginning of October. They say that's in children. But that's not terribly descriptive. Do we know what's happening? How old these kids are? How severe the condition is?

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Well, you know, fortunately, this disease is often or usually tolerated to a much better extent by children. But, remember, what's happened recently? Kids have gone back to school. So that's why we're seeing this dramatic rise.

We didn't really know what was going to happen in children because since the beginning of the pandemic, when schools closed in most places in the United States, kids were largely sequestered. But in parts of the United States, where in-person school exists now, we're seeing transmission from child-to-child.

We know that children over the age of about 12 transmit the virus to adults probably as efficiently as adults transmit it to adults, maybe a little less for younger children. Most children will do pretty well with this virus. They will transmit it to adults, but a small number, still a tragic number, will not do well. Will either have long-term sequelle (ph) or will sadly die of this virus. This is nothing that we just sort of can let children have. This is not a chicken pox party, which you also shouldn't let kids have.

JOH BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Dr. Reiner, as always, thank you for being with us this morning. We appreciate you expertise. Please stay safe.

REINER: My pleasure. You too.

BERMAN: Voters in at least two states this morning say they have received e-mails threatening them to vote for Donald Trump or else. Who's behind these? What does it tell us? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:36:14]

BERMAN: Thirteen days left to cast your vote. More than 33 million Americans already have. That is 72 percent of the amount of all voters who cast early votes in 2016. It's about a quarter of the total vote in 2016. And we still have 13 days left.

Developing overnight, election officials in two states have now contacted law enforcement after voters received threatening e-mails.

CNN's Kristen Holmes joins us with more.

This is very concerning. Anything that seems to be this overt in terms of voter intimidation, very concerning.

What do we know?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, John, and there's still a lot of questions here. But here is what we know.

The election officials are working with law enforcement in Florida and Alaska after registered voters there received a threatening e-mail that essentially said, vote for Trump or else. Now, to the voter, it appeared as though this came from the far-right group The Proud Boys. But the chairman of the group denies this. He says, in fact, he's working with the FBI in hopes that whoever sent this is punished for impersonating the group, as well as voter intimidation.

Now, CNN obtained a copy of this e-mail sent to an analyst who seems to back that up, saying that this e-mail appears to have come from a foreign Internet infrastructure. So still digging into that. And if any viewers have seen this e-mail or gotten this e-mail, they should forward it to the CNN tip line.

But regardless of where this came from, voters are not letting it intimidate them.

Listen to one man who received this e-mail.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RYAN KENNELLY, RECEIVED THREATENING E-MAIL: I think calling it out for what it is, it's useless words to try to ruin a civil society. And I think calling it out and letting it be seen for what it is will hopefully encourage people to ignore it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Now, unfortunately, this is not the only story about alleged voter intimidation coming out of Florida. I want to talk about one other thing that really went viral overnight.

Look at this photo. It was tweeted out by the chairman of the Democratic Party in Miami-Dade County. You can see here, it is a Miami police officer. He is in a polling location, fully uniformed. He appears to be armed and he is wearing a Trump 2020 mask.

Now, the chairman is accusing him of voter intimidation. Listen to this statement. This is what he's told CNN. He said, essentially it was a taxpayer-funded voter intimidation. He was inside of the polling location, wearing a "Trump 2020 No More Bull" mask in full view of voters with a badge and gun.

Now, the mayor has since tweeted -- the mayor of Miami, that this officer is under investigation. The Miami police chief has said that these actions were unacceptable. It was being addressed immediately.

One question is whether or not he was actually voting. It should be noted that people who are voting, they can wear whatever they want to a polling place.

CAMEROTA: OK, Kristen, thank you very much.

I mean it just sound like foreign interference is alive and well.

BERMAN: Right.

CAMEROTA: We should note (ph).

BERMAN: By whom, though, is the question, and on whose behalf? Why do they think it will work? All of these things are key.

CAMEROTA: OK, more on that.

Meanwhile, developing this morning, we're hearing from members of the Breonna Taylor grand jury for the very first time. So after a Kentucky judge issued this rare ruling that allows them to speak publicly, one anonymous juror says the jury was never given the opportunity to consider homicide charges against the officers involved in Taylor's death, writing in a statement, questions were asked about additional charges and the grand jury was told there would be none because the prosecutors did not feel they could make them stick.

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron responding overnight, insisting he could only ask for an indictment on charges that could be proven under Kentucky law.

[06:40:02]

This morning we're also hearing from one of the police officers involved in the raid for the first time. He says he's frustrated with how the case has been perceived.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SGT. JONATHAN MATTINGLY, LOUISVILLE 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 race 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)

CAMEROTA: Sergeant Jonathan Mattingly was shot by Taylor's boyfriend after police broke down her apartment door and before police opened fire on the couple.

Well, Florida shattering early voting records. Voters lining up for hours. We'll show you what's going on there, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Both presidential candidates pulling to win Florida on election night, but how important is that state to their presidential hopes?

Joining us now is CNN senior political writer and analyst Harry Enten.

Harry, great to see you.

So why is Florida so key?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL WRITER AND ANALYST: Yes, so, you know, let's just talk about where we are first in the state of Florida, and that is that former Vice President Joe Biden has a small advantage there and he's under 50 percent, unlike in a lot of other swing states, right?

[06:45:06]

He's at 49 percent in my average polls. So Trump is at 46 percent.

But to get to your point of why Florida is so important, just look at the history of the state over say the last 92 years. Look at this. Look how many times the state has voted with the winner. Pretty much all of them, except for just two times in 1960 and 1992. Every single election since 1996, the state has voted with the winner.

And one other thing I'll point out, every single time Florida has had a final margin of six points or less. So the fact that the poll average right now is three points fits well within that. We're looking for another very close election in the state at this particular point.

CAMEROTA: And why is it that Trump needs Florida more than Biden?

ENTEN: Right. So this is something that I will point out is that President Trump needs the state more than former Vice President Joe Biden. You know, there are different sites that runs electoral simulations, right? And what it essentially tells us that if Trump were to lose the state of Florida, he would win less than 5 percent of the time, versus Vice President Joe Biden. If he were to lose in the state of Florida, he'd still have about a 60 percent chance of winning the election.

And the reason for that is pretty simple. That is, you can paint a lot of different electoral maps where Joe Biden wins without Florida, right? If he just wins in the states where he's ahead by five points or more at this point, he would win. And he's obviously ahead by less than five points in the state of Florida because Bien has those leads in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. And we add those to the Clinton states, he gets over 270 electoral votes. There's just, simply put, no electoral map like that for Trump. He could still win if says he lost Florida and carried all the other states he won in 2016, but that is a very difficult task.

CAMEROTA: Harry, tell us what's happening in the Senate. What are you seeing in the Senate races?

ENTEN: Yes, so, you know, all this talk about the presidential races and, you know, we still have a bunch of Senate seats that are up for control in -- later this year, in two weeks, actually, or less than two weeks. And right now it looks like Democrats are the favorite to win back the majority. They need a net gain of three seats, right, if Joe Biden wins the presidential race. And what you see on the left side of your screen, right, the Democratic pickup opportunities, they need probably at least four of those seats, because Alabama is probably going to go over to the Republicans. You can see right there, Tommy Tuberville has an 11-point lead. Probably going to knock off Doug Jones. So the Democrats need four -- at least four of the seats on the left side of your screen and they are leading in four of those states by four points or more. And, in fact, in North Carolina, they're up by three points. So they could, in fact, pick up more seats than that.

And then the other thing I'll note here is, if you note, Michigan, which is probably the Republican's second best pickup opportunity, the Democratic senator there, Gary Peters, is actually up by five points. So the Republicans really don't have that much room in order to pick up seats and Democrats have a much wider map.

CAMEROTA: What about some of the other states that we keep hearing about in terms of the Senate, like Montana, say?

ENTEN: Right. So this is another reason why I think the Democrats have such, just such a good opportunity to pick up the Senate, which is, get beyond those five races, right, that we previously showed you. Look at some of these lower-tiered pickup opportunities for Democrats. You mentioned Montana. How about Georgia? There are two races there. Kansas, Alaska, Texas. While Democrats are probably not leading in any of those at this point, they are very competitive in a bunch of them. So even if say they lost a state like Iowa, they lost a state like North Carolina, they still would have an opportunity to pick up Senate control because of all these backup opportunities that Republicans simply don't have.

And this is the same thing that we're seeing in the presidential race, right? We spoke about earlier how Biden could win without Florida. And the reason is, is there is just a wide range of different scenarios and that means that even if the first pathway doesn't work, a second, third, or fourth pathway may still work.

CAMEROTA: Harry, let me ask you about the -- where President Trump, we've talked about this a lot, where he would gain voters. Where he stands to gain some. And -- and there's always been a question of if he's just keeping his base or if he's adding.

And so what about the reporting that there is strong voter registration, Republican voter registration, in three critical states, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

ENTEN: Yes, I -- I hear this all the time, and it's always really interesting to me because, you know, if we were living in a vacuum and you heard about that, you might say, hey, that's really good news for Republicans. And in some cases it really is. But here's the thing that I will note, and that is that the polls really should be picking up on this. There are a number of pollsters who, in fact, wait by party registration, right, are you registered Democrat, Republican or no party at all, and pollsters like "The New York Times," Siena College, pollsters like Monmouth University should be keeping their list of registered voter up to date. And if they are, then the polls are capturing that.

And the thing that I will note is that even though Republicans are gaining in registration, I asked my friend Nate Cohn at "The Times" for basically his cross tabs, right, of vote by party registration. And what you see is that former Vice President Joe Biden is winning a larger share of Democrats than Trump is of Republicans. And he's winning among those without party affiliation.

[06:50:01]

So even though Republicans are gaining, Biden is still leading in the polls.

CAMEROTA: Really helpful, Harry, and great to see you. Thanks so much for giving us a snapshot of where we are right now.

ENTEN: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: OK, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the White House are still talking, but how close are they to a coronavirus relief deal? We have the latest for you, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: New this morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she is hopeful that a deal on a relief package can be reached this week. Negotiations will resume this morning with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. But sources tell CNN that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is telling the White House, don't do it! Don't get behind a deal before the election.

So joining us now, CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans and CNN international anchor Julia Chatterley.

Romans, what's going on here? These negotiations seem to be going on.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

BERMAN: Speaker Pelosi and Steve Mnuchin seem to be willing to reach some kind of agreement, or at least work towards one, and Mitch McConnell seems to be saying still, no, no, no, no, no.

ROMANS: Yes, there are three people dancing this tango here, right? You've got Senate Republicans, you've got Democrats, and then you've got the White House. And the White House has been saying, the president's been saying he wants to go big. Nancy Pelosi says Democrats have already gone big. They passed almost $3.5 trillion in new stimulus five months ago. But you've had cold water thrown on all of this, really, by Senate

Republicans. And it seems they want to really focus on the Supreme Court nomination here, getting that through.

[06:55:01]

Time is running out here. And there are -- there are Republicans who are increasingly vocal about the size of the package. They would not like to see a $2 trillion package here. They would rather see a piecemeal approach, something that the Democrats just won't do.

CAMEROTA: Julia, you have pointed out to us so many times, people are desperate. We've never seen, in recent memory, long lines at food banks like we're seeing right now. And so people who are desperate and hungry don't care as much about the Supreme Court nomination as they would about this relief bill. So what's that calculation?

JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Yes, the political calculation here from the Senate Republicans is the cost of doing some kind of splashy deal here pre-election and aligning with a weakened president, I think, too, versus the political cost, perhaps, of what that means if they lose the Senate as a result. And, unfortunately, when it comes down to it, the politics here matters more than the people. And we've been saying this all along, people don't care about the Supreme Court nomination as much as they care about paying their rent, being able to feed their families, for example.

And the fact is, this has been a problem now for two, three months. This is what it's coming down to. The one thing that you could perhaps take heart from was the statement from Nancy Pelosi that said, everybody now, at least in terms of the negotiation, the two that are fighting this, not the three, as Christine Romans pointed out there, they get the seriousness and it will be retroactive.

ROMANS: Yes.

CHATTERLEY: So, when it comes, if it comes, it will be backdated. But that's small comfort for the people that need the money now.

BERMAN: Romans, I was talking to House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn yesterday and said -- he said if a deal doesn't happen now, then nothing will likely happen until the inauguration, whoever is the next president, whether it be Donald Trump or Joe Biden. That's January 20th.

ROMANS: Yes.

BERMAN: So if it doesn't happen now, you are talking months without people getting money.

ROMANS: Yes. And there -- I mean any question about whether the recovery has been stunted is answered by that because we know -- we know that the first stimulus worked. I mean we -- we look at FICO credit scores and we see credit scores actually rose because for the first time in a long time people actually had money to have a livable wage. And that was because of massive government intervention to get money in unemployment checks and to get extra checks out to all of those -- all of those people. So we know.

We look at the retail sales numbers and consumer spending. And you can see that money went into the economy and also went into savings. People are still drawing down on that. But just not having it, right, and having an economy that is not completely healed yet is a really dangerous place to be for millions of families.

CAMEROTA: Julia, side note, tell us what's happening with Google and the anti-trust suit and why this didn't scare investors away.

CHATTERLEY: Yes, it was interesting, isn't it. You know, you've got a credibility problem when you announce the biggest anti-trust -- maybe the biggest legal case in over two decades and the stock ends up higher at the end of the day rather than lower.

Look, I think there's a few things here. Timing, two weeks before an election. The Department of Justice, there were rumors behind the scenes that apparently people -- the investigators wanted more time here. And, of course, you've got a president that's criticized Google for being rigged against him. So there's a whole number of elements here.

But what it boils down to is the suggestion from the regulators here that Google processes between 80 and 90 percent of all search requests in the United States. Critics say they simply have too much power. Power over search. No one else can get a look in. Power over the money, too, and the advertising spending.

Google turned around and said, hey, you have to prove here that consumers are hurt. And Google search is free. The critics here would turn around and say, hang on a second, how do you know if innovation has been suppressed, how do you know what you're missing if you missed it and don't get a chance to look in.

The bottom line is, guys, let's make a date for 2025 when we can come back and discuss this, quite frankly, because this stuff takes years.

ROMANS: Right.

CAMEROTA: I'll write that down.

BERMAN: Yes.

CHATTERLEY: Yes.

CAMEROTA: 2025. Got it.

CHATTERLEY: We'll see.

BERMAN: I can't make a date for Thursday, let alone 2025 at this point.

CAMEROTA: I know.

ROMANS: But, guys, the government's worried about the future because when you think of how you search, your car, your refrigerator, at some point search is going to be an interface for all of us. And Google has an empire in search, so they're worried about the future when Google really controls everything you're searching for.

BERMAN: Well --

CHATTERLEY: And it's been that way for years.

ROMANS: Yes.

BERMAN: And when Bill Barr and Elizabeth Warren are sort of in alignment, you know there is a kind of a trend going on here, right?

ROMANS: Well, they're -- well, I'm telling you, there are -- there are a lot of people who have agreed that Google is too big and too powerful, but everybody uses Google, right, and it's free. So the government will have to prove, as Julia said, that the consumer's been harmed.

CHATTERLEY: See you in 2025.

BERMAN: Christine Romans, Julia Chatterley, thank you very much for that.

CAMEROTA: We'll be there.

BERMAN: We have new details this morning about what former President Obama will say when he hits the campaign trail later today.

NEW DAY continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The president's very angry. He's lashing out at the media. He's lashing out at his critics.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There's nothing fair about this debate, but that's OK.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The president says he'll still show up in Nashville Thursday for the next presidential debate.

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: In times as polarized as these, your vote doesn't just matter, it matters more than ever before.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths has gone up in just way too many areas.

[07:00:04]