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U.S. Supreme Court Allows Absentee Ballot Extensions in North Carolina and Pennsylvania; Trump and Biden to Hold Dueling Rallies in Florida; Nearly 79,000 New Coronavirus Cases Reported Overnight. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired October 29, 2020 - 06:00   ET

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


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I'm not running on the false promise of being able to end this pandemic by flipping a switch. We'll let science drive our decisions.

[05:59:48]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A safe vaccine is coming very quickly. That eradicates the virus. We're rounding the turn.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We get a vaccination campaign by the second or third quarter of 2021, it will be easily by the end of 2021 before we start having some semblances of normality.

NICK WATT, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The average daily death toll just topped 800 for the first time in more than a month.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not just a function of testing. The cases are actually going up. Hospitalizations are going up.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Thursday, October 29, 6 a.m. here in New York. Five days until election day.

President Trump and former V.P. Biden will cross paths today, both on the campaign trail in Florida. Both holding rallies in Tampa, though they'll look quite different. They'll be hours apart. It just shows how critical Florida is.

The pandemic, of course, continues to dominate the race. Overnight, the U.S. reported nearly 79,000 new coronavirus cases. The three worst days of this entire pandemic have all happened in the past week.

Twelve states are reporting record hospitalizations. Almost another 1,000 Americans died on Wednesday. Despite these staggering numbers, President Trump continues to hold large rallies, like those you see on your screen, in hotspot states.

Joe Biden is blasting President Trump's approach. Biden says the virus will not end by, quote, "flipping a switch."

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The threat is so real this morning and so much worsening that the White House coronavirus task force this morning is warning of unrelenting broad community spread in the Midwest, upper Midwest, and west, that will require aggressive mitigation. Unrelenting spread, they say. Almost the entire country.

Look at this map. Oh, my goodness. We've never seen anything like this. The entire map bathed in orange and red. That means cases headed in the wrong direction, rising. The map does not lie, unlike the president.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says we may not return to some vision of normal until 2022.

Also breaking overnight, two important rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court that get to the heart of counting votes and democracy, no small subject.

CNN's Kristen Holmes joins us now, live.

So Kristen, the court weighed in on two of the most important swing states in the country, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, decisions which allow ballots that arrive after election day to be counted, but their Pennsylvania action came with this huge, giant eyebrow-raising asterisk.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, John. It's more like asterisk, siren, red flag, emoji here. So they decided to block -- that they would not block this extension.

But, alongside of that decision came a statement from three conservative judges in which they said they were not going to block the extension, because it was just too close for the election for them to step in.

But they left the door open for potential legal action, hearing those arguments down the road, after the election. And in fact, Justice Samuel Alito, conservative justice, said that Pennsylvania officials had decided, had agreed to segregate ballots that were received after 8 p.m. on election night through that new deadline of 5 p.m. on November 6.

Why does this matter? Why is it important? Well, you said it. Critical swing state. If there are razor-thin margins, these ballots could come into play in some way. So something to keep an eye on.

Now, North Carolina, a lot more cut-and-dry here. The court said they would not block an extension put in place by the state board of elections to allow votes to be counted up to nine days after the election, as long as they are postmarked on or before election day.

Now, one other notable thing here. Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not participate in either of these decisions. In a rare statement from the courts, they said this was because she had not had time to review the arguments.

BERMAN: All right. Kristen, thank you very much.

Again, the important thing here in North Carolina, ballots will be allowed to be received for nine days after November 3, in Pennsylvania for three days. But in Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court reserving the right, perhaps, to throw all of those ballots out after the fact. So stay tuned there.

This morning, Tampa is the most important city in the entire country. Not just because Tom Brady plays there. Both President Trump and Joe Biden holding rallies in Tampa just hours apart. It is a key city in a key state on the road to 270 electoral votes.

CNN's Arlette Saenz live in Tampa with the very latest. Going to be quite a day there.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it is, John. We are five days out, and all eyes are on Florida today. President Trump and Joe Biden holding dueling events right here in Tampa, just a few hours apart.

And the coronavirus pandemic remains front and center in this campaign, with President Trump minimizing the threat and Joe Biden once again calling the president's handling of it a failure.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SAENZ (voice-over): The fight for Florida takes center stage this morning, with both President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden heading to the Sunshine State.

The presidential candidates will hold competing events in Tampa, just hours apart.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four more years! Four more years!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four more years! Four more years!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four more years! Four more years!

SAENZ: For Trump, a campaign rally without social distancing.

BIDEN: Thank you, thank you, thank you!

SAENZ: And Biden, a drive-in event where supporters will show up in their cars. The contrast in how the candidates are pushing for final votes reflecting their outlooks on combatting the coronavirus pandemic, as new cases climb across most of the United States.

BIDEN: The refusal of the Trump administration to recognize the reality we're living through, at a time where almost a thousand Americans a day are dying, every single day, is an insult to every single person suffering from COVID-19 and every family who's lost a loved one. SAENZ: Biden highlighting just that after a briefing with health

experts in his home state of Delaware.

BIDEN: I'm not running on the false promise of being able to end this pandemic by flipping a switch, but what I can promise you is this. We will start on day one doing the right things. We'll let science drive our decisions. We will deal honestly with the American people.

SAENZ: Meanwhile, Trump tried to scare supporters in Arizona, some wearing masks, but packed together.

TRUMP: If you vote for Biden, it means no kids in school, no graduations, no weddings, no Thanksgiving, no Christmas, and no Fourth of July together. Other than that, you'll have a wonderful life.

SAENZ: The president also looked to appeal to Nevada voters, from an event just across the border, due to the state's strict 250-person limit on outdoor gatherings.

TRUMP: In Arizona, you're opened up, but Nevada, get your governor to open up your state, please.

SAENZ: The Biden campaign also has sights set on the Sun Belt, sending vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris to Phoenix and Tucson, where she condemned Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The president of the United States is also the commander in chief, who has them as his highest responsibility to concern himself with the health and safety of the American people; and on that count, Donald Trump failed! He failed us!

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SAENZ: And in this final stretch, Joe Biden is making his play to reclaim Michigan for Democrats, and he's getting a little bit of help. Former President Barack Obama will join Biden out on the campaign trail in Michigan on Saturday. The campaign says their message is bringing Americans together to overcome the crises facing this nation. The two men reprising their road show that we saw several times during their past campaigns.

CAMEROTA: OK, Arlette, thank you very much for all of that news.

So this morning, 41 states are seeing coronavirus case surge. The White House task force issuing a dire warning that the Midwest is facing, quote, "unrelenting community spread."

In Wisconsin, more than 40 percent of tests on Wednesday came back positive, indicating that the virus is spreading rapidly. Wisconsin and 11 other states seeing their highest number of hospitalizations since the pandemic began.

Kansas also hitting a record high, in terms of new cases. The governor is now flying flags at half-staff to honor the lives lost.

CNN's Adrienne Broaddus is live from hard-hit Wisconsin with more. What's happening there today, Adrienne?

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Wisconsin is leading in a way it wishes it were behind. More than 210,000 coronavirus cases reported across the state since the start of the pandemic. And Wisconsin saw its worst week yet.

Hospitalizations are going up. The number of people dying across the state from COVID-19, also climbing. And some people who test positive for COVID-19 end up here, at the Froedtert Hospital. It's a hospital that draws patients from across the state and the nation. It's a level 1 trauma center.

Unlike some of the smaller hospitals that are really experiencing a strain right now, a hospital spokesperson here told me they are used to operating at 95 percent capacity.

She wouldn't say how many ICU beds they have. We do know according to the state's health department, across the state, ICUs are at 88 percent capacity.

Now, over in Illinois, the numbers aren't as bad, but it's still not good. And the governor doesn't want to take any chances. So starting tomorrow in Chicago, you will see more restrictions roll out, including no indoor dining, no indoor bar service, drawing criticism from that city's mayor. And this is how the governor is responding.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. J.B. PRITZKER (D-IL): We want to keep people safe and healthy. And we want to keep the economy going while this virus is ravaging so many people.

I've set out metrics for the state, for each region in the state. They're the same across the board. When you trip those metrics, meaning that we have more and more people getting sick or more and more people going into the hospital, it's time for us to take action.

[06:10:16]

BROADDUS: And back here in Wisconsin, the Badgers are taking action, postponing activities for about a week. So that Big 10 game that was scheduled for Saturday has been canceled. This after players and staff tested positive for COVID -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: I think we're going to have to get used to seeing a lot more actions like those. Adrienne, thank you very much.

President Trump and Joe Biden will both campaign in Tampa Tampa, Florida, today. Up next, we'll break down why that city is so important when it comes to the path to 270.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: November 3 is the last day when you can count your votes. Election day is now, across a big part of the country, including perhaps even especially, the state of Florida, where both candidates will be today. Not only going to Florida, but going to perhaps one of the key areas in the entire state. They're going to be having both of them, events in Tampa, just hours apart.

[06:15:19]

So why Florida? Why Tampa? We're going to bring in some magic to explain. John Avlon here --

CAMEROTA: Our magician. Our resident magician.

BERMAN: -- at the Magic Wall.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right. So look --

BERMAN: Basically, why is Florida so important?

AVLON: Because Tim Russert is eternally right. It's always Florida, Florida, Florida.

Look, you've got 29 electoral votes. And just take a look at this map. What happens if Biden is able to pick off Florida? Up to 302 in CNN's projections. The point is, the door closes for Donald Trump if he can't hold onto Florida, which he won last time around.

Heck, he even moved there during his presidency to try to keep it in place. It remains the big prize.

Florida is almost twice the number of electoral votes as North Carolina has.

But let's take a deeper look at Tampa, St. Pete in particular. Because there's a reason people are focusing there.

OK, here you go. This is the heart of the I-4 corridor. This is the swing district traditionally down the middle of the state, cutting through Orlando. But it is St. Pete and Tampa that matters so much.

Pinellas and Hillsborough are the name of the counties. Pinellas where St. Pete is, is one of the 211 counties that are so-called pivot counties. They voted twice for Obama/Biden. They flipped to Donald Trump last time around. High number of senior citizens, also very diverse, and a growing population. A lot of those signs are why Democrats think they can flip it.

But take a look at what happened in 2016, right? Tampa and St. Pete flipped. This is what is so critical to understand. Can they move it? What happened -- what happened back in 2012? You see, it was all blue. That's what Joe Biden is trying to recreate this time around. It is just a vital area in the heart of the swing district of the state. That's why it is the key battleground, perhaps, in the key battleground state.

BERMAN: And Florida in general, John, if you can go back to the first map, you talk about what happens if Joe Biden wins. What's Donald Trump's path to 270 without Florida? What would it take for him to get to 270 without it?

AVLON: I mean, he'd have to run the table, not only of battlegrounds, but take serious action into the other states.

So let's just -- let's just play that game. So, obviously, he's got to win Texas, fine. He's got to take Arizona, where he's been trailing. He's got to win Georgia, fine. He's got to win North Carolina. He's got to win Ohio. He's got to win Iowa. Oh, still not enough!

BERMAN: Well, Louisiana? I don't know why Louisiana is yellow down there.

AVLON: So, you know, so even with all of that, let's take Louisiana, but I don't think the impact of the tropical storm is that considerable yet.

Michigan, you've got to get into that upper Midwest. And that's the problem for him. You know, if Trump doesn't win Florida, if Trump doesn't win Florida, he's really got to run the table to get anywhere close. And that's a real problem for him.

CAMEROTA: All right, John. Stay with us, with your magic at the wall. But we also want to bring in Anna Palmer. She's a senior Washington correspondent for "Politico."

Anna, great to see you.

So we know a little bit about their messages, both candidates' messages based upon what they said yesterday. I don't know if they'll still say this in Tampa, but they're both talking about coronavirus. But in very different ways. So here is the juxtaposition.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: I'm not running on the false promise of being able to end this pandemic by flipping a switch. But what I can promise you is this. We will start on day one doing the right things. We'll let science drive our decisions.

TRUMP: The safe vaccine is coming very quickly. You're going to have it momentarily, that eradicates the virus. And we're rounding the turn, regardless. You know that. We've got the vaccine. I say "regardless." They'll say, well, maybe you don't. We have it. Great companies. And quickly ends the pandemic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: I mean, if by "momentarily," he means a year from now, I mean, that's what the task force tells us. So what do you think we're going to hear?

ANNA PALMER, SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, "POLITICO": Yes, I expect to hear a lot of the same notes that we just heard in those -- in those clips, right?

You have a very sober Joe Biden, trying to say that he's going to unify the country, trying to say he's going to rely on science and the scientists.

And it's a real split screen to where the president has been, where he's making what appears to be a lot of false promises, saying, you know, Momentarily, there's going to be a vaccine. He wants to be seen as vanquishing the virus, and also as the kind of "open up" president, and it really is in stark contrast to what's actually happening with the coronavirus across the country at this time.

BERMAN: I actually think they have the same message in a certain way, John, which is that President Trump is saying things that aren't true about the pandemic. And Joe Biden is saying that President Trump is saying things that are untrue about the pandemic. So --

AVLON: That's a -- that's a novel way to find common ground.

[06:20:04]

BERMAN: -- in a way, the messages -- the messages are aligned, in many ways. The president keeps doing the very thing that the Biden campaign is leaning into. And by the way, that the polls show the American people have some issues with, when by 20 percent in Wisconsin and by almost 20 percent in the CNN poll, the American people disapprove of the president's handling of the pandemic.

AVLON: Well, look, the old Orwellian line, you know, don't believe what you see, don't believe what you hear, believe what the party tells you, doesn't really work, especially in a pandemic. When you've -- people can see the numbers spiking in their own states and their own communities.

But Donald Trump is betting that that kind of bravado, contrary to facts and science, will save him. But it doesn't matter -- if you're confidently tricycling towards a cliff, you're still going to hit the cliff. So it's not that the problem is that the president appears to be wrong. It's that he is wrong.

Now people may not rally around a message of that this is bad; we've got to batten down the hatches. But you've got to realize at this point that listening to doctors and science is safer than listening to politicians saying what they think you want to hear in the moment.

CAMEROTA: Tell that to Jared Kushner, John.

AVLON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: I mean, tell --

BERMAN: But that's what I mean, the messages are exactly aligned here.

CAMEROTA: Well, yes, except that once again, the Bob Woodward tapes, Anna, give us this window into what was going on behind the scenes while the coronavirus was taking hold of, you know, New York and other East Coast cities.

And then to hear Jared Kushner -- I mean, I don't want to play the whole thing, because it's long. But basically, I'll quote it. He says that the president, they want to be done with the pain and the panic. They want to move on to the reopening. This is in April, OK? No time to move on from the pain and the panic. We were just beginning to crest the first wave.

And he says -- I'll quote it, "But the president also is very smart politically with the way he did that fight with the governors, to basically say, no, no, no, no, I own the opening, because, again, the opening is going to be very popular."

I mean, they just are on a different planet. Just a political planet. And not listening, obviously, to their own task force.

PALMER: I think what you really see there is everything is through the lens of getting re-elected. Everything is political. That there is no kind of ability for them to step back and say, We need to be good stewards to this country, and actually look at where the science is, where the scientists are.

This was behind the scenes. Before, often, the president -- now we see in public is tussling with Dr. Anthony Fauci and others on the coronavirus task force, very publicly saying he doesn't believe what they are saying.

I think it's just a really stark contrast when you look at where we are in the country, that this isn't, you know, the open up presidency, right? We're looking at potentially, you know, a lot of doctors saying we actually should have a national mask mandate at this point, that we haven't vanquished the virus. And it's really just in stark contrast to reality, to where the president and his advisers are trying to put the politics of this election season in the foreground.

BERMAN: I'm going to yield back some of my time, so that I can play Jared Kushner talking about the fact that the president stopped listening to the doctors. This is the "I did order the Code Red" moment, where Jared Kushner admits that the president ignored the scientific advice. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JARED KUSHNER, DONALD TRUMP'S SON-IN-LAW AND SENIOR ADVISOR: The last thing was, kind of doing the guidelines, which was interesting. And that in my mind was almost like -- you know, it was almost like Trump getting the country back from the doctors, right, in the sense that what he now did was, you know, he's going to own the open up.

There were three phases. There was the panic phase, the pain phase, and then the comeback phase. That doesn't mean there's not still a lot of pain and there won't be pain for a while. But that basically was, we've now put out rules to get back to work. Trump's now back in charge. It's not the doctors. They've kind of -- we have like a negotiated settlement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So, John, Trump's in charge, not the science. That was in April, roughly 190,000 deaths ago. AVLON: And that death toll is a way of showing how it's worked.

It's the problem of trying to handle a pandemic with sort of business- school jargon and a marketing approach that deals with a confidence, a long con, as opposed to just doing the work, and dealing with the science, and trying to lead from a sense of responsibility rather than self-interest, which has been a fundamental stumbling block, not just for the president, but for his son-in-law.

CAMEROTA: OK, John, Anna, thank you both very much. Great to see all of the Magic wall and what it looks like there, John. Thank you for that.

So we're just five days from the big day. CNN's election night in America.

BERMAN: You can vote now. You do not have to wait until Tuesday to vote.

CAMEROTA: But Tuesday is still an exciting day.

BERMAN: It's the deadline for voting.

CAMEROTA: OK. But it's also election night in America.

BERMAN: That's really why it's exciting.

CAMEROTA: And our special coverage begins Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern.

[06:25:00]

OK, so the White House coronavirus task force warning that aggressive action needs to be taken now in the Midwest amid the unrelenting community spread. So what's being done? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Nearly 79,000 new coronavirus cases reported overnight. That is the third highest number of the entire pandemic.

We're getting new dire new warnings from the White House coronavirus task force about unrelenting spread in the west and Midwest. Twelve states reported record hospitalizations yesterday. See where they're grouped there? I mean, that is the west and upper Midwest. It is a huge swath of the country. It does include Nebraska.

And joining us now is Dr. Ali Khan, the dean of the University of Nebraska Medical Center's College of Public Health.

Dr. Khan, thanks so much for being with us. Unrelenting spread. That is what the White House coronavirus task force now says is happening in the Midwest, upper Midwest, and the west.