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Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) is Interviewed About the Election; Three Killed in Terror Attack at Church in Nice, France; Coronavirus Cases Rising in States Across U.S.; Supreme Court Allows Lower Court Ruling in Pennsylvania that Election Ballots Postmarked by Election Day Will Be Counted. Aired 8-8:30 ET

Aired October 29, 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: Of the entire pandemic have all happened in the last 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 in hotspot states. Joe Biden is blasting the president's approach. Biden says the virus will not end by, quote, flipping a switch.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning the White House Coronavirus Task Force is warning of unrelenting broad community spread in the Midwest, upper Midwest, and west that will require aggressive mitigation. Listen to those words, unrelenting spread. Look at the map. Almost the entire country is bathed in orange and red. That means the cases are rising in these states. Almost everywhere. Not a single state on this map trending in the right direction.

Breaking overnight, we did get two important rulings from the Supreme Court on mail-in ballots that have major implications in two key battleground states. We'll get to that in a moment.

CAMEROTA: Joining us now, we have CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta and CNN political director David Chalian. Great to see both of you. So Sanjay, when the White House coronavirus task force says that we are seeing unrelenting community spread in the Midwest and the upper Midwest, often, obviously we know the White House messaging from President Trump is completely different than what the White House Coronavirus Task Force says, but what does that mean? If, Sanjay, you were the head of the White House coronavirus task force --

BERMAN: If only.

CAMEROTA: -- and if President Trump would listen to you --

BERMAN: If only.

CAMEROTA: -- what would you do today?

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: First of all, if I had been in a job like that, I wish I could have been in a job like that from the start and had people listen from the start, because the patient is a lot sicker now and is going to require a lot more aggressive treatment.

Having said that, I think simply relying on this idea that we'll wait several months for the vaccine to come and we're not going to do anything in the meantime is a terrible idea. I would look at the evidence of what has worked and start applying it, and I would do it fairly aggressively to start because we've really got to break the cycle of transmission. So pick an example from around the world where you see strategies that have worked and understand why they have worked. Look to Europe and see what they're doing to get a glimpse of what we may need to do.

But there are three main things right now. The masks are crucial. This is a tiny strand of genetic material ultimately. It can't jump that far, it's fairly easily contained by a mask, it doesn't like to be outdoors. So start getting that into people's heads, wear a mask whenever you go outside. It will make a huge difference. Stop large public gatherings and indoor cluster gatherings like bars where you can't wear a mask, that needs to stop for a period of time.

In places where transmission is really getting out of control, we may need to do these circuit breaker lockdowns where people stay home for a period of time, again, just with the goal of breaking that cycle of transmission. Spread people out, the virus will have a hard time jumping from person to person.

Instead we hear testing is actually leading to more cases. We see the president taking his mask off as soon as he gets out of the hospital. We're aggregating people together at rallies in the middle of a pandemic. The vice president is out campaigning when he should be quarantined. So frankly, I would just do the opposite of everything that we're doing right now and it would probably make a big difference.

BERMAN: Wow. OK, Sanjay, like I said, if only you had been leading the Coronavirus Task Force. I want to play you what Dr. Fauci, who is part of the task force, although I think his warnings have not been heeded over the last six or seven months, what he says about the direction we're heading in right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: There's going to be a whole lot of pain in this country with regard to additional cases and hospitalizations and deaths. We are on a very difficult trajectory. We are going in the wrong direction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So David Chalian, that's the backdrop to the question that I want to ask you this morning. It's great to have you on so I can ask this question. Where are we right now in the presidential race? What's happening? What are we hearing today? DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: What's happening is that the

virus is closing in around President Trump in these final days. Just listening to the headlines as Alisyn went through them and hearing that four of the worst five days have been in the last week. As a presidential election is coming to a close that has shaped up to be a referendum on President Trump and specifically on his handling of this pandemic, that is just politically -- never mind the health disaster that is -- for the president in these closing days of the campaign. That is so politically perilous for him to have this uptick, this upswing happening precisely as he's asking Americans to renew his contract for four years.

CAMEROTA: David, I want to stick with you for a second, because we have yet another window into what was going on behind the scenes rather than what they were saying publicly.

[08:05:00]

Behind the scenes we know courtesy of Bob Woodward and the audiotapes that he has, this one is from Jared Kushner about their strategy, and it was all political strategy. He just spells it out that they -- that they were very proud that they were sidelining the doctors, and they were going to be announcing a big come back regardless of the numbers, regardless of what was actually happening on the ground. And here he is in his own words.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JARED KUSHNER, WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISER: The last thing was kind of doing the guidelines, which was interesting, and that, in my mind, was almost like -- it was almost like Trump getting the country back from the doctors, right, in the sense that what he now did was he's going to own the open up. There were three faces. 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 is now back in charge, it's not the doctors. They've kind of -- we have like a negotiated settlement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Negotiated settlement, David, like it's a divorce.

CHALIAN: It's an adversary.

CAMEROTA: Yes, everything is a battle. They can't work together, there can't be cooperation. It has to be Fauci versus the president, the White House versus the doctors. And here we are.

CHALIAN: Yes, as John was saying, he said he doesn't think that the White House has been heeding Dr. Fauci's words for six to seven months. You don't have to think it. Jared Kushner told you right there. The president got it back from the doctors. He wasn't at all interested.

And by the way, look at the date on that sound, April 18th in that conversation with Bob Woodward. That was a month into this crisis after the shutdowns and trying to get your arms around this crisis. And look where we are now. That was the mindset just a month into it. It just shows you how poorly managed this was from the get-go.

BERMAN: I just want to say it's the same message the president is delivering on the stump right now. It's the same message that the pandemic is not a big deal, that the economy is a bigger deal to me, that we've turned the corner even though it's not true. And Joe Biden has got the same message, which is the president is saying it doesn't matter. So everything is coming to an alignment here.

Sanjay, just one more question on the progress -- some of the progress we are seeing in some places. There is some optimism on some of the therapeutics, the antibody treatments. There has been a new round of research on how effective they may be for people with milder symptoms who received them early.

GUPTA: Yes, no question. The antibody treatments make a lot of sense, right? If you give a vaccine, the goal is for the vaccine to teach your body to make antibodies, these proteins that will help fight the virus. The other option is just give the antibodies directly. They are not going to last as long as the vaccine does, but it may last a little bit of time.

So there's two companies now, Eli Lilly and Regeneron, and we can show you sort of specifically what the antibody treatments might do. The goal, again, is to give it typically in patients who have milder disease, moderate disease. This is to help prevent the infection from really leading to significant illness. It's one infusion with this Eli Lilly, and we don't know how long those antibodies that are given will last, but possibly one to two months.

What we've seen from the Regeneron data, and we have some Regeneron data, is that it does seem to decrease the viral load in the nose and the mouth, and that's significant. That makes you less likely to spread. It's, again, breaking these cycles of transmission. It tangibly cause it to decrease hospitalizations and it made a difference in terms of the likelihood that someone would have a shorter duration overall of symptoms. So that's -- those are very promising, and they're going to be emergency use authorizations that are applied for and looks like they're going to be granted, and there's hundreds of thousands of doses available. Look, there's still 40,000 people in the hospital, 40,000 to 45,000 people in the hospital right now, so a lot of these types of treatments can't come soon enough, and they're going to be used.

There is one more thing that I would add to my earlier nine-point plan, though, that Alisyn asked me about, and that is testing as well. Ashish Jha used to talk about this, Michael Mina talked about this, we could be in a very different position in this country if we had widespread at home, accurate, rapid testing. Imagine being able to test yourself every day when you're putting in your contact lenses or brushing your teeth, and getting an idea as to whether or not you are positive or negative. If you're positive you stay home. If you're negative you can go out. As you start to incorporate that strategy into the country as well, you start to really break down the cycles of transmission.

CAMEROTA: That would be so helpful.

David, switching gears, let's talk about these important Supreme Court decisions last night that involve how long North Carolina and Pennsylvania, important battleground states, can extend their deadline for receiving mail-in ballots.

[08:10:03]

CHALIAN: Yes, this is a couple victories for Democrats here in what they're looking for. Given the pandemic, you know, Alisyn, more Americans are voting by mail than have ever done that before. And some of these states like a Pennsylvania have almost no experience dealing with this kind of volume of absentee and mail voting. And so what the Supreme Court did was allow the lower court rulings to stay in place, which is allowing for Pennsylvania -- everything has to be postmarked by Election Day. People can't wait until after the election to send in their ballots. It's got to be postmarked by Election Day, but gives the officials in Pennsylvania three days after the election to keep counting those as they come in as long as they're postmarked by Election Day. And in North Carolina I think it's extended to nine days perhaps after Election Day.

It's also interesting to note the newest justice on the court, Amy Coney Barrett, did not participate in these rulings from the Supreme Court last night. So a lot of Democrats were fearing she was going to immediately get on the court and start being involved in election- related decisions. That has not happened at least in these cases last night.

BERMAN: No, but one point that's key in Pennsylvania is the ballots that are received after November 3rd will be segregated. They'll be counted but segregated. And the Supreme Court didn't rule out taking up this case again after November 3rd. So I know that's something the Democrats are a little bit concerned about.

David Chalian, Sanjay, thank you both very much.

Michigan is such an important state. What's the situation on the ground there? That is a state that Donald Trump flipped four years ago. Where is it headed now? We've got reports from the ground and we're going to speak to a key member of Congress from that state next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:15:24]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Both President Trump and Joe Biden have plans to make campaign stops in the crucial battleground state of Michigan before the polls close on Tuesday.

CNN's Miguel Marquez is live in Detroit.

Miguel, Michigan is so important. MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: All roads lead through

Michigan. Officials say as many as 5 million Michiganders will vote in this election and more than two thirds of the votes will be in before Election Day because they have absentee mail-in balloting here. They also say if you want your vote to count today do not mail it in, drop it off at a clerk's office or at a drop box around the state. That's the surest way to make sure that your vote will count on Election Day.

Polls here have Biden consistently up, the latest ABC News/"Washington Post" poll has him at 51 percent, the president at 44 percent. But he is up over 50 percent, significant, that's something neither candidate could do back in 2016. That same poll, the pandemic here ascendant, people very concerned about it, the caseload is up here across Michigan as well.

Who do you trust to handle the pandemic? Fifty-three for Biden, 39 for President Trump, he just whoops the president on the pandemic here. The president was here in Michigan already, he will be here again on Friday, Joe Biden will be here on Saturday along with Barack Obama who has just laced into his successor, President Trump, in the three other rallies that we've seen.

So, we expect much the same here in Michigan. Back to you, guys.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Miguel, thank you very much.

Joining us now is Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell of Michigan.

Congresswoman, great to see you, as always.

So, you had your finger on the pulse last time around in 2016, you were one of the soul voices that was trying to get people's attention and say that there could be trouble for Hillary in Michigan, you wrote, I will quote your words back to you: I was the crazy one. I predicted that Hillary Clinton was in trouble in Michigan during the Democratic primary, I observed that Donald Trump could win the Republican nomination for president. And at Rotary Clubs, local chambers of commerce, union halls and mosques, I noted we could see a Trump presidency.

So, Madam Fortune Teller, what are you seeing this time around on the ground?

REP. DEBBIE DINGELL (D-MI): So, good morning, Alisyn. Always good to be with you.

It's tightening here in Michigan. I am out there probably doing more than I should, but I'm always masked.

And yesterday, I had -- some of the autoworkers who I thought were going to go back to Joe Biden, were very clear with me last night they were voting for President Trump. And I think what we're seeing now is that on the ground, people have to turn out their votes.

As you noted, President Trump is coming back on Friday. My grapevine tells me he will probably be back again before Election Day. President Obama and Joe Biden will be here and it's coming down to who they're targeting and who is going to turn out.

I think Democrats need to talk to the working men and women of the auto industry, those good, hard core workers that have always been the backbone of our economy.

CAMEROTA: Isn't Joe Biden doing that? I mean, isn't he talking to those folks?

DINGELL: He is talking to them, and it's great (ph). And I want to make it clear the Biden campaign is listening.

But I think in these last days, people are focused on turning out the Detroit, Flint votes, which matter greatly and may not quite be at the numbers people would like to see and suburban women, but we cannot -- and I'm making -- saying that strongly now after the last two days on the ground, we can't forget that autoworker, the steelworker, teamster, whose jobs they've lost and are worried about, and they want to know as Democrats we care.

CAMEROTA: So, are you saying that the tightening you're seeing suggests that the economy is as or more important than coronavirus and that Joe Biden somehow isn't messaging to those folks well enough?

DINGELL: I think Joe Biden and the ad campaigns are -- you know, reach voters in many different ways. We have to make sure that we're talking -- look, you want to know what an auto worker said to me last night, he said, I'm tired of your Democratic friends, they look down on me. I said, that's not true about Joe Biden, he categorically does not.

A little of what I said four years ago that President Obama promised to save our jobs, he did, but, you know, a lot of workers lost their jobs in 2008 or didn't get a pay raise for a long time.

[08:20:06]

We have to remember that working men and women are really worried. And even as we talk about -- I was listening to you saying wouldn't it be great if people could get up and test for COVID every day.

But do you know who is not going to be able to afford that test or how they're going to be able to do it? The front-line workers, the people that are in the grocery stores, the people that aren't making as much money as they want to make. These are issues we've got to remember as Democrats.

CAMEROTA: And so, I know that you've said that the Biden campaign is listening, they're responsive. What's your advice to them today?

DINGELL: I gave it to them last night when I came home. We've got to focus, we've got to find ways that we can focus on making sure that we're talking to white union workers in these next few days, as well as focusing on the other numbers.

Look, I don't believe any of the polls, I don't think anybody is up tremendously, I think it's competitive. I think Joe Biden is up right now, I think President Trump is going to make a hard push here, and we've got to push back. And we've got to push back on COVID, too. People are scared about COVID.

CAMEROTA: What are you seeing in the Senate race? I know that that has shifted, maybe the dynamic, this month.

DINGELL: I think that I -- for me, that Senate race has been competitive for a year. I think it is competitive. People need to take it seriously.

I think Gary Peters is doing that. He's really working hard right now, but, you know, there's split ticket voters that say, okay, I'm going to support Joe Biden, I want a balance, I'm going to vote for John James.

Some people -- you know, we had 90,000 voters that didn't even vote in the presidential election last time. We've got to make sure that people vote in the presidential and the Senate race.

So I'm not -- you know, I'm not sounding the alarm bells like I was four years ago, but it's competitive, it's tight, every vote matters, and on the ground, we've got to deliver our votes and make sure we're talking to people respectfully, and including everybody.

CAMEROTA: Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, we appreciate you sharing with us what you're seeing on the ground. We will talk to you soon.

DINGELL: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: OK. We have some breaking news right now. There's been this deadly terror attack inside a church in Nice, France. We have a live report with updated details, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:26:22]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Breaking news, three people stabbed to death in a terror attack at a church in Nice. France has raised their security threat now to the highest level.

CNN's Cyril Vanier live in Paris with the breaking details here -- Cyril.

CYRIL VANIER, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: John, well, first I can confirm that death toll, there are three victims, as you say, the attack took place shortly after 9:00 a.m. local time here in France in the southern Riviera city of Nice.

An assailant entered Notre Dame Basilica and carried out a knife attack. One person's throat was slit, one person was stabbed multiple times, one-third person was injured then able to flee the basilica, but then sadly died of his or her wounds close to the basilica shortly after that. The assailant while the police were able to intervene rapidly, they

shot the assailant, did not kill him or her. We have, by the way, no further details at this stage on the identity of the assailant. Shot the assailant who is now receiving medical care.

Now, there is one detail, the mayor of Nice and he is the only source we have on that at the moment, the mayor of Nice says the assailant was shouting "Allahu Akbar" even as he was receiving medical care.

This is being treated as a terror attack. The counterterrorism prosecutor is handling this case. The French President Emmanuel Macron is expected in nice shortly.

And, of course, John, our viewers need to know that there is a background to this. There have been two attacks, this is the third in five weeks in France and the first two were centered on the publications of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. And those we know have in recent days sparked anger across the Muslim world, forcing the French president to defend freedom of expression, including freedom to caricature here in France.

And we do not know if this latest attack was linked to that, but certainly that is first and foremost on many people's minds. More details will be revealed shortly, John.

BERMAN: Obviously, the timing raises all kinds of questions and there was a knife attack as well in Saudi Arabia outside a French consulate there in Jeddah.

So, again, the timing here and the spread of this raising serious questions.

Cyril, thank you very much.

Joining me now is Bobby Ghosh. He writes about global affairs on Bloomberg, where he serves on the editorial board.

So, Bobby, the French President Emanuel Macron is headed to Nice, but he is clearly in the middle of something that appears to be if not the middle of but at least the beginnings of a new wave of terror attacks based on caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

BOBBY GHOSH, GLOBAL AFFAIRS EXPERT: Yes, it is and the fact that it happened in nice where we remember four years ago nearly 90 people were killed when a terrorist drove a truck through a crowd of people. So, all kinds of resonances with this one.

As we heard just now in this segment, the terror alert is now at its highest, I'm frankly surprised it wasn't already. The French security forces at any given time are keeping their eye on up to 3,000 people that they think are potential terrorists. They can only, of course, tail constantly 150, 200 of those.

But I think now there will be a lot more of that, a lot more surveillance. From Macron when he gets to Nice, I think we can expect another strong defense of freedom of expression. I think that is also likely to be supported very widely by the French public. We've seen this happen over and over again.

Every time there has been an attack because of cartoons or caricatures.