Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

President Trump Walks Out during Interview with Lesley Stahl; Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden Prepares for Final Debate with President Trump; Former President Barack Obama Campaigns for Joe Biden in Philadelphia; Former FDA Chief: U.S. 1 Week from "Rapid Acceleration" of Cases. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired October 21, 2020 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That it could cause unknown side effect, but an official with China's National Health Commission says so far no serious adverse reactions have been reported.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: We can come out of this moment stronger than before.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Former President Barack Obama will hit the campaign trail in Philadelphia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump is presenting a familiar closing argument, attacking his enemies, and firing up the base.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Before the plague came in, I had it made. But we had this thing won. We were so far up, we had the greatest economy ever.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nationwide the virus is surging.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're facing a tough circumstance right now. We're going to see accelerating cases heading into the next four to six weeks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're going to get scared. You're going to get depressed. This is a normal response to a very stressful situation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. And the coronavirus situation in the United States is bad, and it's about to get much, much worse. That is according to the former head of the FDA. Overnight more than 60,000 new coronavirus cases were reported. Ten states reported record hospitalizations. The nationwide hospitalization rate is now reaching levels we have not seen for two months. And there's one thing we know is increased hospitalizations leads to increased deaths.

Not one state, not a single one, is trending in the right direction now. All the states in orange and red there are seeing a pretty steep rise in new cases. The first lady had to cancel a campaign appearance because of ongoing symptoms of coronavirus. Yet despite all that, despite the evidence in his own house and the evidence around the nation, President Trump continues to spread a demonstrably false statement that the United States has turned a corner in the pandemic.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: The president's strategy in the final days of the 2020 campaign appears to be to attack, well, lots of people, from Dr. Anthony Fauci to Lesley Stahl to Hillary Clinton and many more. Joe Biden, meanwhile, has been off the campaign trail this week, preparing for tomorrow's debate and attempting to portray a positive path forward for the country. Overnight new financial filings show Joe Biden's campaign with a substantial cash advantage, nearly triple the amount of cash on hand that the Trump campaign has. And President Obama delivering a video message to young voters as he gets ready to hit the campaign trail today for Biden.

We are less than two weeks before Election Day, and more than 33 million votes have already been cast. That is 72 percent of all of the early votes cast in 2016.

So let's begin with CNN's John Harwood. He is live at the White House for us. John, make sense of life for us, would you?

(LAUGHTER)

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, look, we're getting a demonstration from both candidates of why Joe Biden is winning this race and President Trump is losing it. Joe Biden, who has got a 10-point lead if you look at the average of national polls, lead in the critical battleground states, is hunkering down, preparing for the debate, which may be the last significant opportunity for the trajectory of the race to be changed if Donald Trump were somehow able to pull off an effective response. He had a disastrous performance in the last debate, which blew that chance. He's got one more. So Joe Biden is staying off the trail, preparing for that as a disciplined candidate should.

Donald Trump, by contrast, is showing a complete lack of discipline. And it's hard to reach any other conclusion, guys, that he's not even trying to win votes anymore. What he is doing is trying to accommodate himself and his supporters with what's happening to him, explain it to lay the groundwork for why I'm losing the election. He is saying that the media is against him, the debate commission is against him, Tony Fauci is against him, Bill Barr, the attorney general, is against him because he's not prosecuting Joe Biden. He had this bizarre performance in Erie last night where he said, I had it made. I had a great economy. I wasn't going to come to Erie, but then the virus happened to me, and now I'm here asking for your vote. Nothing to do with the needs of Erie, Pennsylvania. It was all a transaction where he said I wouldn't even have to be asking for you had I not been victimized by the coronavirus. That is not the performance of a candidate who understands what Americans are concerned about and is trying to resolve their problems.

BERMAN: I'm sure the fog behind you is a metaphor for something.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: I don't know what it is, but it's absolutely, I'm willing to say, a metaphor for something.

John Harwood, the president walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl with "60 Minutes," a preplanned interview, and didn't even do part of the interview that was scheduled, a walk and talk with the vice president, Mike Pence, and Lesley Stahl. Why? CNN has reporting on what transpired here.

[08:05:00]

HARWOOD: Well, the reason, John, is that, as you said in the intro, the coronavirus situation is bad in this country, it's about to get worse, it's happening on Donald Trump's watch, and he can't take the heat. So Lesley Stahl sat down with him to question him about coronavirus. He's been trying to pretend that the pandemic is essentially over, we rounded the corner. That, of course, is not true, and everyone can see that it's not true from the case counts.

And so when Lesley Stahl was sustaining a line of questioning about that, he couldn't take it. He decided to get up. He's now casting it as kind of I'm doing a sting on "60 Minutes." He released a photograph intended to show Lesley Stahl disregarding mask wearing requirements when, as we have learned since, that was just her talking to her producers after the interview happened. Again, this is a president who is struggling mightily under the pressure and does not appear to be making any political progress.

BERMAN: John Harwood in the fog of Washington, D.C. thanks so much for being with us.

Joining us now, CNN political commentator and former Republican senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum. Also with us, CNN political commentator Bakari Sellers. He is a former Democratic state representative from South Carolina. Senator Santorum, I want to start with you. You have said and continue to say that the president's demeanor is what is keeping him from doing better in this campaign, maybe even leading in this campaign. What do you mean?

RICK SANTORUM, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think you hear it all the time from voters that a lot of them like what the president's policies are and what he's been able to accomplish but don't react very well to his focus, as John just pointed out, his focus on himself. I think the last two weeks, since the debate, the debacle, I agree it was a debacle because it was a debacle that was a bit of a gripe session on himself. But since then I think he's actually been a lot more disciplined and focused on what he's going to do for the American public. That's why he won four years ago, because he went out and said I'm going to take on the swamp. I'm going to do all these things, listed the wall and a whole host of other issues that he was going to take on. And he hasn't done that effectively in this campaign. I think the last two weeks he's been better at it, but he's got to focus on what he's doing for America, not the grievances that are going on with him personally. People don't care that the press is mean to him. They don't care that there is all these sorts of things that people aren't -- whether it's Fauci or Barr, it's all personal. He's got to get away from the personal and focus on what he's going to do to help the American public.

CAMEROTA: And, Rick, just to clarify that, yesterday he went after, as you said, Dr. Fauci, Kristen Welker, the upcoming moderator, Lesley Stahl from "60 Minutes," the debate commission he's angry at, Hillary Clinton, Bill Barr. How is that more disciplined?

SANTORUM: The answer is you can do that, you can go after those things, but you have to turn it into why it matters to the American public. What does it mean? That he's fighting these people, but he's not fighting for himself, he's fighting for them. And it's not about him, it's about you and the American public, and what I'm trying to do is actually work for you. Effectively, yes, I think he can do that. I don't think you can get the president to not talk about himself. I think that's just impossible. But it's OK if he can talk about himself and put it in the context of how it helps the American public that he's fighting this battle.

BERMAN: Bakari, I think more than ever over the last 24 hours we have seen the Biden campaign embracing that contrast. There have been people who criticized him for not being out on the trail, doing debate prep in Delaware these last few days. But I think we're seeing exactly why he's doing that, because the Biden campaign is perfectly willing to let Donald Trump go out there and stir chaos because of the contrast it presents. And then we saw during the World Series last night -- first of all, as Alisyn was saying, the Biden campaign is just outraising team Trump in ways that are astounding. They have three times the cash on hand, and we saw them put it to use with an expensive commercial during the World Series last night. And I want to play just a little bit of it here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Joe Biden doesn't need everyone in this country to always agree, just to agree we all love this country, and go from there.

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I'm Joe Biden and I approved this message.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So it seems, Bakari, to me, at least, they're jumping all over the contrast that President Trump himself is providing. BAKARI SELLERS, CNN COMMENTATOR: Yes, the contrast couldn't be

clearer in this race and in this election, but I don't think it's new, John. Joe Biden when he came out of the gates was talking about how Charlottesville -- and him getting involved in this race.

[08:10:02]

And so this contrast is extremely, extremely clear, and they are just laying it out. And it's not just the energy at the top of the ticket, you talk about the fundraising, but look at Jaime Harrison in South Carolina. Rick Santorum can talk about this. Imagine if Rick raised $57 million in one quarter, or MJ Hegar, or the list goes on and on and on with the amount of money that's being raised by Democrats up and down the ballot because the energy is there.

Now, I do want to say that there ain't no changing a 70-year-old man, 70-year-old men don't change. And so this president, if we're expecting him to be anything different as we are beginning to finish this race, we will just be waiting until eternity because that's simply not going to happen. We are in the GOTV phase of this campaign. It's get out to vote. Whatever happens in this debate, whatever happens on the stage in Erie, Pennsylvania, doesn't matter much. Everyone right now is trying to make sure they get their voters to the polls.

And the Trump campaign seems to not be able to get out of its own way. It has no focus, it has no operations, it has no -- it does not have a central theme or central message. And what you saw last night in that commercial was that Joe Biden at least has that central theme, has that operation, has that central message.

CAMEROTA: Hey, Rick, about that money, obviously it's been pointed out it's an obscene amount. The astronomical figures of $177 million on the Biden side and $63 million on the Trump side. Obviously Trump has less, but is that too paltry a sum for him to do everything he wants to and needs to for the next two weeks?

SANTORUM: Well, as you know, Donald Trump commands the media, and so he gets a lot -- he gets a lot of air time that he doesn't have to pay for. So I don't think you can necessarily match that up.

And, look, the Trump campaign has invested a lot on grassroots activities, I would argue more than -- more effectively than the Democrats, in part because the Democrats have been hampered by their decision not to go grassroots campaigning because of COVID, and Republicans have sort of blown through that. And if you look at the registrations in Pennsylvania and Florida, North Carolina, and other places, Republicans have made gains. Their grassroots activity has been quite effective. So we'll wait and see how that turns out.

Look, I agree with Bakari on Biden's strategy. Joe has not been a particularly effective campaigner. You can hear from your report earlier that there's very little enthusiasm for him out there, and so his objective, which I think is smart for the Biden campaign, which is to keep him out of the limelight, don't have him say anything, and let Donald Trump be the issue. BERMAN: I covered Rick Santorum running for president, almost winning

the Republican nomination on pocket change. So when you see the fundraising figures that are out there now, it blows your mind.

SANTORUM: It makes me sick, John. It makes me sick.

BERMAN: I knew it. I could see it in your eyes that you looked at that money and were like, oh, my.

SANTORUM: I won the Iowa caucuses in 2012, and I spent less than $1 million to win the Iowa caucuses. So just the idea of having this kind of money is just insane.

BERMAN: Let me tell you something, there is a story about where the Trump money has gone, because you can't spend that kind of money without there being a problem or a mistake or potentially even worse there. But Bakari, that's for another time. For this morning, former President Obama going out on the campaign trail for the first time in Philadelphia, which is interesting. It tells us where the Biden team thinks it is most important right now. Also, the message. What do you think the message will be and what can the former president accomplish?

SELLERS: Look, the former president, Barack Obama, is the most popular elected official, former elected official, in the entire country bar none. Democrat, Republican, you've got to let the big dog eat, and Barack Obama is the big dog. Whether or not he is in North Carolina, which I'm pretty sure they will probably trot him down to North Carolina or in Florida, starting in Pennsylvania, he is somebody who can tell you about the presidency, can tell you about the pressures of the presidency and what type of man or woman you have to be in order to assume that office and do it well.

he got over 330 electoral votes not once but twice. So contrary TO the criticisms that anybody on the right may want to levy, this is somebody who has won the White House by good margins, and amongst people of color. I remind people, most mornings I come on the show, I remind you that the most crucial number is not that people who are voting for Donald Trump or Joe Biden, but there is a large group of people who elected to vote for the couch in 2016. There are 4.4 million people who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 who sat at home in 2016. If he can get a quarter of those people back out, the excitement for black folk and Hispanic folk coming out to see Barack Obama is palpable. And I think that that is going to be something that the Trump campaign doesn't have. He can't get nobody to campaign for him. Who wants to campaign for Donald Trump?

BERMAN: Bakari, Senator Santorum, thank you very much for being with us this morning. We're out of time. Thanks so much.

[08:15:02]

RICK SANTORUM, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You got it.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you both. All right. So Joe Biden and Donald Trump face off tomorrow night in the final presidential debate. CNN's special live coverage starts at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

All right. There is a new coronavirus warning from a former top health official. What he says we need to be on the lookout for next week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: A former FDA commissioner has a dire warning about what the pandemic could look like next week here in the U.S.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, FORMER COMMISSIONER OF THE U.S. FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION: We're about a week away from starting to enter a period where we're going to see a rapid acceleration in cases, I think November and December are going to be tough months. We're seeing hospitalizations go up in 42 states right now, cases going up in 45 states and there really is no backstop.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK. Joining us now, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, great to see you again.

Last hour, we talked about this, but I do think it bears repeating. If we are at 60,000 new cases a day right now today, what is next week going to look like?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, we're starting to go into that sort of exponential growth here I think is the concern, that's what Dr. Gottlieb is talking about, and the reason he is putting a sort of a week or two-week marker on it is because we're sort of tracking along the European Union.

We can show this graphic comparing the E.U. to the United States.

[08:20:05]

And we can see what happened at the beginning of this pandemic, sort of in the middle, you know, the E.U. was able to bring the numbers way down, the E.U. is in green on that chart.

But then it's this period on the far right of the graph, that's the concern. Look, they have a straight up sort of trajectory. That's the exponential growth that we're talking about, no longer linear growth. We're are starting at a higher level and starting to actually have that exponential growth as well.

What are we talking about? It's tough to say. I remember in July, middle of July, at some point around there, Dr. Fauci said we could potentially hit 100,000 people becoming infected daily at some point this year. I think that time may be now. You know, I hope it doesn't get that way, but that's the real concern.

BERMAN: I'd like to have seen us at 10,000 cases heading to the fall. We're now at 60,000 cases.

GUPTA: Right.

BERMAN: Sanjay, it begs the question, what can we do about it? The deal now is mitigation, we have to figure out away to mitigate this and you find some lessons from Arizona.

GUPTA: Yeah, I think this is really important because everyone is focused on the vaccine, which is understandable, but that's sort of the nature of our society, you know, let's wait for the quick fix and not do the hard work that's necessary.

But it can work. Let me show you Arizona, I wanted to get hyper local with some of these data, because I think this makes a difference. If we look at what happened in Arizona, we see that after they lifted their stay at home sort of orders and I'm talking the beginning of June now what happened? A hundred and fifty-one percent increase in people becoming newly infected.

OK. That's the bad news. But take a look at the second line there and this is really important. They were able to decrease new infections by 75 percent over about a three-week period between July 13th and August 7th. No stay-at-home orders in place, mask requirements, limiting large public events and certain businesses which were primarily bars that were closed at that point.

They were able to bend the curve for that period of time. I think it's -- you know, we've been saying this for months, right, going back to February now, March. It works. And I will keep giving examples of how this might work.

I think -- I think it's really important. People still question the efficacy of masks. They still question the efficacy of limiting these large outdoor or indoor even gatherings. They work.

That's one example, but you can see examples of that all over the world.

CAMEROTA: The surgeon general is just tweeting something. It's a tweet.

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Can you do a dramatic reading about herd immunity?

BERMAN: I can do a dramatic reading. This is Surgeon General Jerome Adams who was talking about herd immunity. He says it is a bad idea. He says it could overwhelm health care systems and lead to many complications or deaths.

CAMEROTA: Uh-uh, he won't be around long, Sanjay.

GUPTA: Welcome to the show, Dr. Adams.

I mean, look, I don't mean to be facetious. We've been saying this for months, okay? Dr. Adams is part of the coronavirus task force.

Unfortunately, Dr. Scott Atlas who is also a member of that task force has essentially been advocating for this for months. It's a terrible idea, it's always been a terrible idea, unfortunately, that is sort of the policy right now in this country, whether it's implicit or not -- I mean, this idea that, you know, don't even wear a mask, you know, having these large gatherings of people.

I mean, the virus is spreading. This is essentially a herd immunity mentality. The reason it's a terrible idea is many more people -- many exponentially more people will die than is necessary, hospitals will become overwhelmed.

Dr. Adams is right. But that's been the case for a long time. Why are we just saying this now? I mean, this has been a strategy that we have essentially been using in this country and it's a terrible strategy and we have the numbers on the right side of why you are screen to show for that.

BERMAN: There's also a mess in communications. We have the surgeon general disagreeing with the coronavirus task force adviser, disagreeing with Anthony Fauci, degree agreeing with Deborah Birx. You know, it's a mess. It is just a mess, Sanjay.

Thank you very much for being with us this morning.

GUPTA: You got it.

BERMAN: We've got more news for you. A woman who spent 18 years working for Donald Trump has a new tell-all book. What she says about the president's alleged racist comments, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:21]

CAMEROTA: Former long time executive and Donald Trump's real estate company says she witnessed racist, sexist and all around boorish behavior from Donald Trump for years. She writes in her new book, quote, if you didn't know the actual fact, he could slip something past you.

Joining us now is Barbara Res. Her new book is about her 18 years working for Trump. It's called "Tower of Lies", and it is on book shelves now.

Barbara, great to see you.

BARBARA RES, FORMER EXECUTIVE VP, TRUMP ORGANIZATION: Good morning. It's nice to see you again.

CAMEROTA: So let's talk about everything that you witnessed. I mean, you have this front-row seat for 18 years. Let's just start with the racist behavior that you say you witnessed.

You write in your book that he didn't want any black workers on his construction sites and here is what you write, "Get him off there right now, Donald said, and don't ever let that happen again. I don't want people to think that Trump Tower is being built by black people."

You go on to say he also didn't want any black job applicant, a young man, sitting in the lobby of Trump Tower.

Why? Why didn't he want any blacks visible?

RES: Okay. Well, it's the first item where there was a black man grinding the concrete on the second floor of the building when it was wide open and you could see -- you could see it from the street and that's -- and he saw it from his office or the building lobby, and that's what upset him and he called me and another person and he said I don't want that to happen again. We don't want people thinking that this is being built by black people.

Later, I was interviewing architectural students for a plant clerk job and I had a young man waiting for me in the lobby, I was across the building and after I interviewed him, I saw Donald.