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Trump and Biden Fan across Crucial Swing States in Final Sprint; Pandemic Rages Just Days before the 2020 Election; Thousands in Pennsylvania say Requested Ballots Never Arrived. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired October 30, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: I think we'll be celebrating together in 2021, Thanksgiving in 2021. We need to get through the next couple of months. This is the hardest point in this pandemic right now, the next two months. We've done a very good job sheltering a lot of people and keeping people safe. We can't give up our guard right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The hardest point in the pandemic, the governor in Ohio says there is no place to hide.

CNN has new data this morning indicating that the president's rallies may actually be helping fuel to spread. This was his rally in Florida. Obviously, no social distancing here, really just none, and it's hard to find that many masks in the crowd there. CNN has identified more than a dozen counties where cases spiked after a Trump campaign rally.

Now, former Vice President Joe Biden also campaigned in Florida yesterday. Obviously, a different scene, social distancing, a car rally, like so many of his others, drive-in format. Both candidates are holding events in three states today, including the critical battleground of Wisconsin.

More than 81 million votes have already been cast in this election.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Okay, but let's start with where we are in the worsening pandemic. Joining us now is CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, we're here, I mean, it's here. Look, everything that people you, doctors, had warned about today, it's here. And the worst of the -- I mean, you just heard, the hardest part of the pandemic is right now. What are you seeing?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, look, it saddens me to say it. It's one of these things that, as you point out, people could see coming for some time, by looking at the data, looking sort of what was happening. And now the increasing number of people who are becoming infected is growing, but it's also growing at a more rapid pace. As you know, some of the highest total days of new infections have happened just over the past few days. And if you look at these numbers closely, you see the pace at which they are building.

So the concern is that red line that you see is going to start going into exponential growth, which is more straight up. They're also, you know -- we'll talk about this, but there's increased positivity rates in many of these states, as well, which basically means, as high as those numbers are, we're still not even capturing, we still don't have full visualization of how significant the spread is many states around the country.

BERMAN: That's like 28 percent right now in Wisconsin. And you're in double digits all over the place, Sanjay, in terms of positivity rate. Again, as bad as it is, and it's bad this morning, we're nearly 90,000 new cases, nearly a thousand deaths, there's very reason to believe it's going to get worse and fast. And the IMHE model just projected their total deaths for February 1st by 15,000.

GUPTA: Yes, that's the thing. I mean, these models are going to bounce around. And we follow a lot of them. The IHME model is the one that the White House often refers to. And you're right, I mean, they've upped their projection a bit now.

I mean, I think over the next several weeks, we're really going to get a clearer idea, because, as you know, I mean, this virus is -- it's very contagious, it's going to spread more easily as people are clustering inside more easily. People have sort of let their guard down.

When we look back at the middle of July when we saw some of the greatest peaks before, you know, in terms of these overall numbers, we were still outside. I mean, the numbers are going up, people had significant COVID fatigue, it was after July 4th. But people could still mainly stay outside.

You got all of those same elements, being told, you know, it's over, don't worry about it, having the fatigue of it, increased mobility because of kids going back to school, whatever it may be. And add into that that people are mostly inside, that's what's really going to drive these numbers up.

I still think that there are different strategies to at least stall the growth, if not bend the curve down, at least stall the growth for a period of time, which would be so critical. But, obviously, we're still not doing that.

CAMEROTA: Sanjay, look, obviously, we have talked so often over the summer about what upshot of the Trump rallies were. They didn't look good. It just, you know, sort of -- if you looked at common sense, it didn't seem to be good to be packed in, even though some were outside, but they were still packed in shoulder to shoulder, often maskless.

Now, we have actual data to know what has happened as a result of these Trump rallies. And I know that you have been looking into this, so let's look at your reporting. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: All you hear is COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID.

GUPTA: At rallies like this, Dr. Tom Inglesby is less-focused on the speaking and more on the crowds of people listening.

DR. TOM INGELSBY, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR HEALTH SECURITY, JOHNS HOPKINS: There seem to be hundreds or thousands of people closely standing together for prolonged period of time, without masks, lots of yelling and shouting.

GUPTA: Inglesby is director for the Center of Health Security at Johns Hopkins. And he's concerned about the rallies.

INGELSBY: The rallies really do pose high risks for transmission.

[07:05:01]

GUPTA: But I wanted to better understand what that meant. So, CNN investigated what happened at 17 recent Trump rallies, specifically looking at infection rates in the counties where the rallies took place four weeks before and four weeks after, and then also comparing them to the corresponding rates at the state level. The results were startling. 82 percent of the time, the rate of new cases in the county jumped after President Trump's visit. More than half the time, the county rate of new cases grew faster than the state's rate.

For example, September 12th, Minden, Nevada, in the month going into that rally, cases had begun to fall. But fast forward four weeks, and the rate of new cases in the county skyrocketed by 225 percent, far outpacing the 74 percent increase the state experienced.

Or September 18th, Bemidji, Minnesota, rates of infection were already climbing in the month before the rally. By the day of the rally, the rate of infection was 6.36 for every hundred thousand people in the county, about half the rate of Minnesota. But a month after the rally, the rate of infection in the county had jumped more than 385 percent and quickly bypassed the state's rate of infection.

INGLESBY: Those places are already going to be concerned about rising rates of hospitalizations, increasing risk of community transmission.

TRUMP: We have had no problem whatsoever. It's outside.

GUPTA: It is true that being outdoors is far safer than being indoors. But take a look at how the virus leaves the mouth and nose, like a puff of smoke, sitting so close, no mask, and the risk rises dramatically.

INGLESBY: None of these in and of themselves a strong barrier to spread, but if you take them all together, they would help to decrease the risk.

GUPTA: Here's another way to think about it. If you attend a gathering like this, according to new research in most places in the United States, there is now a 99 percent chance the virus is attending right alongside with you. And now at least 70,000 times a day, the virus is finding a new home inside one of us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Sanjay, this is so hopeful, because it's not just a hunch anymore, it's not just theoretical anymore, we now can see that Trump rallies make people sick.

GUPTA: Yes. I mean, you know, we had a pretty good idea. You know, the challenge of actually developing cause and effect, when you have 80,000 people becoming infected every day, can you imagine, it's an entire sector of our society that we need to track down those 80,000 people, track down their contacts, try and figure that all out. It's challenging to do.

So what these epidemiologists have done is said, okay, let's look really granularly at that area. And then, as a comparison, look at the counties right around there, within that state, to see what's happening. I mean, the numbers are going up all over the country, and you've been showing the map. But these hyper-local sort of areas that are really being hit hard, it oftentimes is because of some large gathering of people.

It could be the rallies, could be other gatherings of people, as well. But point is, we are in the middle of a pandemic. The numbers are growing, putting people together in large numbers is a bad idea. You get over a few hundred, and there's a 99 percent chance that the virus is there with you.

BERMAN: And just to be clear, it really does seem that most of the people in the crowds there are not wearing masks.

GUPTA: Right.

BERMAN: But they're packed in so closely together and they're standing so closely together for so long, you know, it barely matters at a certain point, Sanjay. And add to that, you talk about contact tracing, there were a couple of cases discovered from a rally in North Carolina the other day. They can't even contact trace. When you've got thousands of people crammed in together there and cases start to pop up, the state just says, look, there's not much we can do. We're just telling everybody, this rally is a problem.

GUPTA: Yes. I mean, I think it's a really good point, John. I mean -- and Dr. Inglesby sort of alluded to this, but you wear a mask and the mask does a great job in terms of trying to capture the virus and make it harder for the virus to leave you and infect others.

But these -- I think we showed some of the visuals, if you see the virus sort of -- if you could see it around the mask, it greatly limits it, but there's still a little bit of virus that gets out. If you're right up next to somebody for a long period of time, they can still potentially become infected. You have to do these things in conjunction. Wear the mask, keep a little bit of distance, you know, from people as well, and don't stay there that long next to somebody. These large gatherings are the exact opposite of that.

And by the way, the vast majority of people don't know that they're containing the virus. You were talking about positivity rates. Let me show you some of the positivity rates. You mentioned Wisconsin, but look at how high these positivity rates -- South Dakota, 46 percent.

[07:10:00]

What does that mean? I think people still don't have a full understanding of what that means. That means, you test 100 people, 46 of them are coming back positive. That number should be below five or below three, even.

If you use the fishing metaphor, which I've given you before, it's like you put a net down and try to catch fish, if you catch a lot of fish the first time you put the net down, what do you think? There's a lot of fish here that I've just missed. If you put the net down and catch one fish, you think, at least probably not that many more fish around here.

46 percent positivity rates means they are missing a lot of infections, according to some of these studies. There may be five times, ten times even as many people out there who are getting infected than we are even counting right now.

CAMEROTA: Sanjay, one more thing about the Trump rallies, and this is a side bar, but I think also really interesting and important. People are getting sick even when it's not COVID. Yesterday, after his rally in Tampa, the Tampa Fire Rescue Department got 16 calls for help from people who were having heat-related emergencies.

It was hot in Tampa. People were packed in. You have to get there much earlier, obviously, than the president and his team do. You have to stay much later for security reasons than they do. They had to go -- they were calling an ambulance. They had to go to the hospital.

In Nebraska, people were stranded on a cold street. Many got pneumonia. And so, I mean, the hospital -- when President Trump and his team come into a town, the hospitals get overtaxed one way or another.

GUPTA: Yes. I mean, you know, it speaks to just how problematic this is. But also, you know, I heard that and I thought, okay, if you look at Nebraska, people developing hypothermia in some of these rallies, people then being packed on to buses after the rallies.

It all speaks to the fact that people are really -- not only are they together, they're really closely clustered together, developing, you know, heatstroke or heat exhaustion in the southern states, developing hypothermia in the northern states in the middle of a pandemic, just speaks to how closely people are being forced to cluster together. The virus is spreading. I mean, we keep talking about these numbers. And the virus is spreading no matter what. But these rallies and these large gatherings of people are clearly helping fuel that.

BERMAN: Look, you can see the pictures from the buses. When you see the windows mist up, that's terrifying. That's people's breath. They're breathing that. The air everywhere inside those buses. You can see the potential danger there.

Sanjay, can't wait to have you back next hour. Thanks so much for being with us. Really eye-opening report.

CAMEROTA: So, Joe Biden and President Trump crisscrossing paths today as the presidential race enters the homestretch. What are both candidates' paths to 270 electoral votes? We'll show you.

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[07:15:00]

BERMAN: Look at the map today. This is where both presidential candidates will be and it is no accident. Smack dab in the middle of the country, right in the Midwest. This is the key region on the path to 270 electoral votes.

Joining us now, CNN Political Director David Chalian. David, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, why is this where the candidates are today?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: It's going to be the determinative region in this election. I know we talk a lot about Florida and it is a critical state, because it's such a big electoral prize and the president needs it in his corner. I know we talk about the Sun Belt. Look at these states in the Midwest. This is going to determine who is president of the United States when this election is done.

And what I think is so interesting today is that both President Trump and Joe Biden are in Minnesota. And I just think, John, you've got to remember, that was a Clinton state in 2016, but barely so. It was one of the Clinton states that Donald Trump came really close to, and it was the thing that the Trump campaign sort of circled on their map at the beginning of the cycle and said, that's where we're going to play offense. We're going to try to take our strategy of finding more of our voters who didn't show up in '16 or '18 and turn them out. And we think there are plenty to mine in Minnesota.

Now, the polling doesn't reflect that, but that has never stopped the Trump campaign and the president and his team from believing in Minnesota and going there. And Joe Biden is not going to sleep on it. That's why he's going there today, as well.

CAMEROTA: And, of course, all of this, David, is against the backdrop of the coronavirus in this country, never having been worse. Today is the worst days that we have seen since February, since the beginning of this, in terms of cases, in terms of hospitals in the Midwest being overwhelmed. The death toll is still close to 1,000 people a day.

And so has President Trump's messaging changed on that? Was there a time when he was not talking about coronavirus and now is talking about it, but sort of denying it?

CHALIAN: Well, I mean, he's been talking about it, throughout the entire pandemic. I remember, he used to hold those White House briefings in the press room there dealing with coronavirus. Certainly, his messaging went from in the late summer, into the early fall of trying to find something else to talk about and to try and distract from it. But then, of course, he contracted coronavirus, and that was the end of that. I mean, it has never, ever dissipated as the dominant issue.

And here is the reality. We don't often see something like this in presidential campaigns, where there is such a dominant story that is impacting nearly every American's life, and that it is a story sort of on the rise in the closing hours of the campaign. I mean, Donald Trump is trying to make the sale right now to earn another four years at the same time that his and his team's mismanagement of this pandemic is more and more apparent because of the continued spread.

We're four days away.

[07:20:00]

And you just see the convergence of these two things in a way that nobody in the Trump world would like to see.

BERMAN: And it's astounding. Look at Wisconsin, which is being hit as hard or harder than any other states and where both campaigns are going today, and the president's message is, it's not so bad, or it's not as bad as you think. And Joe Biden's message is, the president is telling you it's not so bad. It's just sort of incredible how it all lines up.

David, another subject here, everyone is fascinated with the number of people who have voted already. It's over 80 million people at this point, well over the number who voted early in 2016, and approaching a serious chunk of all people who voted in 2016.

If we can focus in on one state and talk about this, because I know Alisyn wants to talk about Florida for some -- there are a lot of reasons to talk about Florida. But this recent Quinnipiac poll out of Florida said that only 17 percent of people in Florida plan to vote in person on November 3rd. The rest of them plan to vote either early in person or early mail-in.

That's just -- that's staggering. I mean, that's just staggering.

CHALIAN: It really is, John. I think we're at nearly 60 percent of the overall 2016 turnout, has already voted in this election. And here's the thing with that when you look at Florida and that 17 percent number, if that poll has nailed that number correctly. Donald Trump's path to reelection is all about Election Day turnout, because we know from all of the pre-election polling, and we know from the way the early vote is coming in in some states where we get some granular data on it, that Trump's supporters and Republicans are far more inclined to say they're going to vote in person on Election Day.

And Donald Trump needs that universe, because it's his advantage category, so he needs the share of the overall vote to be Election Day vote to be as big as humanly possible. And it is a very tricky -- that is sort of threading a needle with all of this early vote that we're seeing in record numbers. And yet Donald Trump's chance for success is really dependent on the Election Day turnout.

Now, we don't know what that will be yet, and, obviously, that's one of the great sort of missing puzzle pieces in this picture that we'll learn on Tuesday, but if we see explosive Election Day turnout, you can imagine the folks in Trump headquarters saying, we still have a shot here, because that's where his voters plan to participate.

CAMEROTA: The one place that may defy your math and logic, David, is Miami-Dade County in Florida. So what I think the numbers are showing is that many more Republicans have already gone in person to vote in early voting than Democrats.

And Congressman Frederica Wilson of that district is trying to sound the alarm. She talked to Politico and said that what he's seeing is very concerning for her. She has said, let me quote it to you, I screamed, hollered, I called, I lobbied from the top to the bottom.

Wilson said of her efforts to get the turnout operation started in the community, including sending written proposals to the Biden campaign and having virtual zoom meetings with his advisers. She is worried, because what she's seeing, she says, in terms of the black community and Hispanic, it's not going Biden's way.

CHALIAN: Yes. Listen, and Democrats don't win the state of Florida usually without a real increased turnout in Miami-Dade. It's one of their base counties.

But here is the reality. First of all, Joe Biden does not need Florida. It's not a must-have in his column to get to 270. It is for Donald Trump a must have. I mean, you could get Donald Trump to 270 without it, Alisyn, but it is really - you sort of have to sort of upend all that you believe to be true to get him to 270 without Florida. That's the first part.

But the second part is here, we do see a huge Biden advantage and Democratic advantage in vote-by-mail. We see that advantage get narrowed with in-person early voting. And then on Election Day itself, we're going to see a much more Trump-friendly electorate than in either of those two early vote categories, either in person or vote by mail. And that's why I'm saying that he needs to, the president, extend that turnout on Election Day, because that is where the bulk of his votes are going to come from.

BERMAN: The other thing we don't know in Florida is the non-party voters, which is a growing percentage of the Florida voters and the early vote, both by mail and in-person. We just don't know which way they're leaning, particularly in Miami-Dade and other places, that may make up for some of the underperforming the Democrats worry that they're doing there. We just don't know. And that's one of the things we will find out on Tuesday, as well.

David, great to have you on. Thanks so much for what you're doing.

CHALIAN: Sure.

BERMAN: Be sure to join CNN's special coverage of election night in America Tuesday starting at 4:00 P.M. Eastern Time.

Look, obviously, if you were listening to David Chalian there, you know how key Pennsylvania is in this election. It could be the tipping point state in the election.

[07:25:02]

And a top official there has a strong message for President Trump. He joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Developing overnight, a voting obstacle in Western Pennsylvania. Thousands of voters outside of Pittsburgh say their requested mail-in ballots never arrived. And Philadelphia's district attorney has harsh words for the tactics he says the Trump team is already trying.

The D.A. writes, keep your Proud Boys, goon squads and uncertified poll watchers out of our city, Mr. President. Break the law here and I've got something for you.

[07:30:00]

Joining us now is that Philadelphia district attorney, Larry Krasner. Mr. Krasner, great to have you. What does that mean, I've got something for you?