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New Reports Suggests over 100,000 American Lives Could Possibly have been Saved by Better Federal Response to Coronavirus Pandemic; President Trump and Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden to have Final Presidential Debate; Joe Biden Responds to Questions about Adding Justices to Supreme Court; Former President Barack Obama Campaigns for Joe Biden; Report: Faulty Trump Response Led to 130,000 to 210,000 Avoidable Deaths. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired October 22, 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]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: That was cast in 2016. Of course, the coronavirus pandemic is sure to be a major focus of tonight's debate. A report out just this morning from Columbia University says this about the failed pandemic response, quote, "at least 130,000 deaths, perhaps as many as 210,000, could have been avoided with earlier policy interventions and more robust federal coordination and leadership," end quote. Overnight 1,124 new deaths were reported, and nearly 63,000 new cases. Former President Barack Obama delivered a blistering rebuke of President Trump's handling of the pandemic during a campaign stop last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: We literally left this White House a pandemic playbook that would have shown them how to respond before the virus reached our shores. They probably used it to, I don't know, prop up a wobbly table somewhere. We don't know where that playbook went. Eight months into this pandemic, cases are rising again across this country. Donald Trump isn't suddenly going to protect all of us. He can't even take the basic steps to protect himself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, and breaking news, we just heard for the first time a new answer from former vice president Joe Biden on the question of whether or not he supports adding to the number of Supreme Court justices. It comes in this just released clip from his "60 Minutes" interview. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: If elected, what I will do is I will put together a national commission of, bipartisan commission of scholars, constitutional scholars, Democrats, Republicans, liberal, conservative, and I will ask them to, over 180 days, come back to me with recommendations as to how to reform the court system, because it's getting out of whack, the way in which it's being handled. And it's not about court packing, there is a number of other things

that are constitutional scholars have debated, and I would like to see what recommendations that commission might make. The last thing we need to do is turn the Supreme Court into just a political football, whoever has the most votes gets whatever they want. Presidents come and go. Supreme Court justices stay for generations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Joining us now to talk about this and so much more, we have CNN political commentator Ana Navarro, she is supporting Joe Biden, and CNN political commentator Scott Jennings, he's a former special assistant to President George W. Bush. Great to have both of you here this morning.

I should mention, "60 Minutes" also put out a clip of President Trump's response to some of Lesley Stahl's questions, and we don't have time to play it at the moment, but basically you will hear that in terms of her questions and her tone, they are hardly gotcha. They are just the standard sort of respectful Lesley Stahl way, at least the clip that they have released.

Scott, now to what Joe Biden just said, does that answer Republicans or voters, I guess, all voters, questions about Joe Biden's vision for the court, that he wants court reform?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, he lied. He told us a few days ago he was going to have an answer to this question before Election Day. He doesn't have an answer.

CAMEROTA: Why isn't that an answer. Hold on, Scott. Why isn't that -- I'm going to set up a commission for 180 days and they're going to look at how to reform the court.

JENNINGS: He's been asked directly dozens of times, his running mate, his campaign, do you favor packing the court? I don't know, I don't want to talk about it because it will become a news headline. And then he finally said, well, I will get you an answer before the election. And the answer is punting it down the road 180 days. We're still in the same place. You have to vote for me to find out what I'm going to do.

The reality is he will never be able to withstand the left flank of his party on this, and he said the court is out of whack. He clearly has ideas about fundamentally changing this institution, the Supreme Court. So if you care about courts, if you care about nine justices, if you care about the sanctity of this branch of government, Joe Biden is telling you he is looking at radical changes, and that's what his party wants, but I'm not sure it's what the American people want.

BERMAN: And I don't know, I think if Joe Biden had been giving this answer for the last month this would not have been the issue it has become. It may not be an answer that satisfies Republicans, who may not have been satisfied with any answer from Joe Biden on this. It may not be the answer Scott wants, but for the first time it is an answer. ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I don't understand why

Joe has let this become such an issue. First of all, let's just go back to remembering that the people who set the number of court justices in a Supreme Court and in the federal courts is Congress. It's not the president. They are decided by congressional acts. It's been changed seven times in history. I think that maybe you hear Joe Biden's answer, it's the Joe Biden we have all known for decades.

[08:05:01]

This guy is an institutionalist. He respects the institutions, he served in the Senate for six terms, and I think he sees the Supreme Court, as he just said, something that should not be a political football.

Look, people forget when they are in the majority or when they have the White House that there will come a day when they won't, and they often do things that then comes back to haunt them when they are in the minority or when they are out of power. And I think Joe Biden in his years of experience has seen that time and again. I find that answer to be the answer of an institutionalist, but I wish he would add to that it's Congress's decision. It is up to Congress to decide the number of the justices. I don't think there's the votes in Congress to change the Supreme Court Constitution. And I think you're hearing he is an institutionalist.

And a lot of people, a lot of people on the left don't like that answer, him saying don't turn it into a political football. A lot of people on the right want to portray it as a radical answer. Believe me, as the radical left, if they think that's a radical answer, and their answer will be no. They're not content with it. I think it's Joe Biden's answer. He is an institutionalist, like it or not.

CAMEROTA: Scott, let's talk about tonight. So the final debate of the election, the reporting suggests that President Trump's advisers have told him to take it down a notch, tone it down, be less aggressive, somehow be more likeable.

BERMAN: Be different. Just be different. Everything you've done up until this point for 73 years, be different.

CAMEROTA: And President Trump doesn't like that advice according to the reporting. What do you expect to see tonight?

JENNINGS: Well, whether he likes it or not, the debate commission is going to give him a spoonful of castor oil because they're going to mute his microphone. So he's going to get some medicine whether he wants it or not. And that may actually help him, because if he lets Joe Biden talk a little bit and let's Joe Biden talk around some of these issues that he has had trouble with on taxes or the Green New Deal or on courts or what have you, that it might give Donald Trump a chance to show off a real contrast.

I'm not one who believes there is that many undecideds left. If you are still undecided, welcome to earth. We hope you're landing last night in middle America, wherever you landed your spaceship was comfortable, and you need to remember where you parked. This is about convincing people to vote. You have to get out the vote. You have got to tell your people don't sit it out. And so I expect Trump and Biden, frankly, to sort of forget about the persuasion game tonight and just talk about getting your people out to vote.

Trump has a whole bunch of people, millions of people who lean his way on issues, low political engagers, didn't turn out in 2016. If there's any of them that might hear a soundbite from tonight's debate, that's who he is really talking to. The odds of per persuading a Biden voter tonight to switch sides are very low. So this is about get out the vote messaging in my opinion.

BERMAN: Ana, percentage chance that it could be a different Donald Trump tonight? And what do you want to see from Joe Biden?

NAVARRO: I want to see from Joe Biden the Joe Biden that we all know, the presidential Joe Biden, the Joe Biden that's empathetic, that's giving complete answers and articulating them in complete sentences, unlike Donald Trump.

I agree with Scott, I think the mute button -- just think of that, wrap your head around that, OK, that we have to have a mute button rule because the president of the United States just won't shut up, and acts like a school yard bully on red bull anytime he is on a debate or a town hall. We saw how unhinged he was in that first debate. We saw how unhinged he was in the NBC town hall last week here in Miami. So I think the one that benefits from the mute button most is Donald Trump.

And I agree with Scott, I don't think this is about changing voters' minds anymore. I think it is about turnout. I think it's about enthusiasm. I have to tell you, I'm here in Miami, early voting started on Monday. We have had big blickelrays (ph). It feels like we are living in Macondo from "100 Years of Solitude." And yet I see lines around the block in the libraries, which is an early voting site every time I go. And to me that is so inspirational.

But those people that are still deciding whether to not vote or vote, I think a debate like this can make a difference. As frankly, look, we've been, as voters, we have been jilted, we have been stiffed out of a civic, substantive policy debate. We certainly didn't get it with the first debate. We didn't get a second debate. So this is the last chance for the American people, the American voters who want to see democracy in action, want to see a civil debate, to hear it tonight from the two candidates.

CAMEROTA: Ana, one more question to you. Former President Obama is heading to Florida. He spoke --

[08:10:00]

NAVARRO: To Miami.

CAMEROTA: Yes. He spoke yesterday in Philadelphia, and he went, it was a much more vociferous Obama than, obviously, we have heard in the past four years about what he thinks the case against Donald Trump is. So here is a portion where he's talking about how tweeting at the TV does not fix anything. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Look, I get that this president wants full credit for the economy he inherited and zero blame for the pandemic that he ignored. But do you know what, the job doesn't work that way. Tweeting at the television doesn't fix things. Making stuff up doesn't make people's lives better. You've got to have a plan. You've got to put in the work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK, 10 seconds, Ana. What's the Obama factor here?

NAVARRO: Listen, his ability to articulate attacks on Trump and do it almost in a comical way and bring back memories of the things that have happened to him, and he's talking about the place of experience of just how much character matters, I thought it was a brilliant skewering of the current occupant of the White House from the former occupant of the White House. I thought it was -- honestly, I thought it was funny, and it was satirical, and it was brilliantly done. And it's not an easy thing to do when you are talking to a bunch of parked cars as opposed to a stadium full of people. So looking forward to having him in Florida. Bring an umbrella or a raincoat.

BERMAN: Ana Navarro, Scott Jennings, I mentioned "Road House" twice in two days, Scott, and not once was I able to talk to it about with you. So America loses. See the excitement?

JENNINGS: We both solve all of our problems by kicking things. And so I applaud your --

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Life lessons from "Road House." Scott, Ana, thank you.

Tonight, Joe Biden and Donald Trump face off one last time. CNN's special live coverage of the final presidential debate begins tonight at 7:00 p.m. eastern time.

Obviously, a central focus of the debate tonight really has to be the coronavirus pandemic, and a brand-new report says that thousands of American lives could have been saved if the Trump administration had a better response. The details next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:16:11]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, a new report out of Columbia University this morning estimates that at least 130,000 deaths and perhaps as many as 210,000 could have been avoided with earlier policy interventions and more robust federal coordination and leadership.

Joining us now, CNN chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Also with us is Dr. Zeke Emanuel. He's a former Obama White House

health adviser and currently the provost of global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of "Which Country Has the World's Best Health Care."

And, Zeke, I want to start with you because we have this study out of Columbia that was published a few hours ago, but you also are in this study, or this letter inside the Journal of the American Medical Association which says largely the same thing.

So what did you see here?

ZEKE EMANUEL, FORMER OBAMA WHITE HOUSE HEALTH POLICY ADVISER: Well, if you compare the U.S. response to other countries, especially other countries that had been hit hard like Italy or Spain, France, the Netherlands in March and April, and you say, after the first wave, when we were just figuring out how to handle this virus, how different was the response of the United States versus these other countries?

You begin in May or you begin in June and basically you do see, you see tens of thousands of more deaths in the United States per person per capita than you do in Italy, for example. 90,000 more deaths in the United States, that's 90,000 people who would have been alive had we just followed the policies that Italy followed.

And basically, the Columbia study confirms what we found which is that many Americans have died unnecessarily. If you compare the U.S. to, say, Australia which did phenomenally well, you are up in the 180,000, 190,000 excess deaths in the United States.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Zeke, the numbers are just so staggering that I want to ask you a couple more questions about this. When you say in the JAMA letter as well as what the Columbia study says, that it leadership had been different, does that mean that we had the know- how and the technical wherewithal to do the kind of contract tracing that South Korea was able to do, to do the rapid test that go South Korea was able to do?

Because the suggestion from the Trump White House during that time was that we didn't.

EMANUEL: They're wrong. If we had had a proper response, coordinated at the White House, we could have done it. We have the CDC, they have excellent people down below, but it was politicized. We know that.

We have a president who had made fun of wearing masks, who made fun of social distancing, who didn't do it himself, who didn't let the scientists run this process and the task force, and that has been the problem. We never got our testing up and running and we made multiple mistakes on that.

We never got our contact tracing up and running. We had some governors doing a lockdown, enforcing the public health measures, but we had a lot of other governors like in Florida and Georgia flaunting them and you can't have a good response nationwide. Every public health person said this, it can't be haphazard patchwork because people travel. And so, if someone is infected in Florida and they go to New York, you're going to spread the virus. We can see that.

You know, why are so many people affected in Wisconsin? Well, they travel from Florida and Arizona and other places that were having outbreaks. And that's the problem, that you haven't have leadership at the top to coordinate the states to put in the infrastructure necessary and all of that infrastructure, all of the proper response would have been outlined in March if not before.

BERMAN: And the real question is as we sit here this morning is what now? How can we make sure we don't make the same mistakes we made before? How can we mix this with more than 60,000 new cases, more than 1,100 new deaths reported overnight?

[08:20:05]

Sanjay, to that end, this is a date that I know you've circled on the calendar for a long time. This is when this FDA advisory panel is meeting all day, I guess, to talk about vaccines and where we are.

Now, today may be different than what it might have been or what the Trump administration wanted it to be a few weeks ago, but talk about the significance of this day, how it's going to happen and what you are looking for.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, so this is a really important vaccine advisory committee meeting that's happening today. Typically a pretty obscure meeting but you can actually watch it, they're going to stream this on YouTube which is the first indication of what this meeting is really all about. They want to let people in.

Anybody in the public can watch this, they want to let people in to see how this vaccine advisory committee, how they sort of deliberate some of these decisions regarding safety, regarding efficacy, how effective the vaccine is. They're going to talk about, you know, the manufacturing, the distribution, you've got immunologists, infectious disease doctors, statisticians, they're all going to be talking about this and they're going to allow the public to comment on this.

So, this is an unusual situation in that they really want to let people in on the whole process. You are not going to hear about an authorization today. What we're hearing on that is that Pfizer is likely to apply for an authorization sometimes third week of November, we don't know for sure, but that's what it's looking like, Moderna probably November 25th. If that authorization application happens, within a week this committee will meet again and possibly actually put this forth to the larger FDA for authorization.

So this could happen quickly over the next couple of months. Let me just show you really quick if I can what the distribution might look like. We're talking about one of the largest vaccine distributions historically in the world. We know that this vaccine may need to be stored at super cold temperatures, but look at the number, 15,000 flights, 200,000 movements by pallet shippers, up to 10 billion doses ultimately, people may need more than one doze of this vaccine, that's likely what's going to happen if one of these vaccines gets authorized within the next few months.

CAMEROTA: And so, Sanjay, you're basically saying what we're going to be seeing today is an attempt to nullify the public anxiety about this. It's going to require 95 percent of the public to buy if for it to be really successful?

GUPTA: Yeah, I mean, you know, right now we know about half the country says they're willing to take the vaccine. You know, the number needs to be, you know, closer 70 percent. It depends a little bit on how effective the vaccine is. If it's a super effective vaccine, you may not need as large a percentage of the country, but a lot more than what we have now.

You know, how do you determine how safe something is? How do you determine how effective something is? People are well within their right to ask those questions.

And today -- and we'll report on your show tomorrow about this, but today if they want to watch this, they're going to get insights into how those things are determined and maybe, like you say, Alisyn, maybe it will help assuage some of those anxieties.

BERMAN: I like how Sanjay just booked himself tomorrow.

CAMEROTA: I like it, too. I like just out of time. Let's do that.

BERMAN: We'll see you tomorrow, Sanjay.

Dr. Emanuel, thank you --

GUPTA: We are all family here, come on.

CAMEROTA: I like it, too.

BERMAN: Thanks, Sanjay.

And, Dr. Emanuel, we thank you for being with us this morning. Terrific to see.

EMANUEL: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: OK. Tonight is the final debate of the 2020 race, last time that we will see President Trump and Joe Biden square off. So we get the bottom line on what both candidates need to do and what we can expect, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:27:36]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT: He hasn't shown any interest in doing the work or helping anybody but himself and his friends, or treating the presidency like a reality show that he can use to get attention. And, by the way, even then his TV ratings are down, so you know that upsets him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: He went there. He went right to the TV ratings. That was former President Barack Obama in Philadelphia yesterday, two days before, we should note, the final presidential debate.

Let's get the bottom line with CNN senior political commentator David Axelrod. He's a former senior advisor to President Obama in the White House and on the campaign.

And, Axe, we're going to get to the former president in just a second. First, we want to start with the debate tonight. This is the last best chance that either candidate has I think to speak to this many people across the country, maybe change the trajectory of the campaign if that's even possible.

What do you think each of the candidates needs to do?

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, for President Trump it's very clear, he needs to be more restrained. He was so over the top in the last debate that he did measurable damage to himself. It was palpable in the polling. Just, you know, 72 interruptions and his basic demeanor overwhelmed any message that he was trying to deliver and it wasn't really clear what message he was trying to deliver.

He needs to be more focused tonight and more disciplined. I'm sure his advisers are telling him stick to the economy, what you had done, what you will do, why you're better than Biden at leading the economy forward, attack him on stuff like taxes that are tangible, that people understand, and lay back and let him answer some questions and see how he handles that.

That would be the advice he gets from his -- from his advisers. The question is whether he will listen to it because, after all, Donald Trump is Donald Trump and he may not.

For Joe Biden, I think he has to not allow himself to be distracted by the heckler in his ear. He needs to focus on the country. He needs to focus on the coronavirus, what hasn't been done and what he'll do and what he's going to do to help the lives of working families in this country, wages, health care and other things that are in his economic plan so he can talk about a better future and not just what Trump has done wrong.

That would be the advice that I would give him.

CAMEROTA: But, Axe, what advice would you give Joe Biden for when President Trump invariably brings up Hunter Biden? I mean, I know that Joe Biden obviously feels very.