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U.S. Reports Nearly 60,000 New Cases, Highest in 2 Months; Trump, Biden to Hold Dueling Town Halls after Debate Nixed; Obama to Hit Campaign Trail for Biden This Week. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired October 15, 2020 - 06:00   ET

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

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The number of states with increases in new cases keeps going up. Nearly 50,000 new cases a day.

[05:59:34]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are heading into a fall and winter without a national plan. Too many states are letting their guard down.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: President Trump staged yet another potential super spreader event in Iowa.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: When people are close to each other and you don't have virtually everyone wearing a mask, that is a risky situation.

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: One thing we know is that just basic competence can end up saving lives. When we had a pandemic, we had competent people in place who would deal with it.

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Thursday, October 15. It's 6 a.m. here in New York.

And this morning, doctors tell us they are running out of beds in some hospitals in Wisconsin. Running out of beds. That is where we are again.

Five states are seeing more hospitalizations than they have at any point in this pandemic. Nearly 60,000 new coronavirus cases reported overnight. That's the highest daily total since early August. Nine hundred and eighty-five new deaths reported. Each one matters.

The maps show rising cases across the country. Look at all the states in orange and red there.

Dr. Anthony Fauci issued a warning to all of us for Thanksgiving. He says, bite the bullet. Steer clear of family gatherings. On the subject of large gatherings, the president violating the

recommendations from the White House coronavirus task force. The task force calls Des Moines, Iowa, a yellow zone, meaning no gatherings of more than 25 people. The president's rally overnight easily closer to 2,500. Most of the people there, unmasked.

This in a state where hospitalizations are accelerating, where one in five people tested are positive for the virus. It's little wonder the president hasn't stopped the spread, even into his own house, where we learned his son, Barrett, was also infected.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: More than 14 million Americans have already cast their ballots. Voter enthusiasm is at record highs. Yesterday, we saw another day of very long lines for early voting across the country.

And former president Barack Obama is speaking out in a new interview about President Trump and Joe Biden. President Obama is expected to hit the campaign trail for Biden next week.

But we begin with the pandemic. CNN's Adrienne Broaddus live in Wisconsin, where they are seeing a record number of hospitalizations.

What's the latest, Adrienne?

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

Wisconsin is in crisis. The state's positivity rate is 22 percent. ICUs are strained, and every region of the state is reporting hospitals with one or more current or imminent staff shortages.

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BROADDUS (voice-over): This morning, the United States is facing dangerous coronavirus wave. New cases are on the rise in at least 35 states over the past week, and the country is averaging more than 50,000 new cases per day for the first time in about two months, recording nearly 60,000 new cases on Wednesday, the highest since August.

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: For the short-term, we have to hunker down. We have to get through this season.

BROADDUS: With holidays like Thanksgiving just weeks away, Dr. Anthony Fauci encouraging Americans to rethink travel plans.

FAUCI: That is a risk. You may have to bite the bullet and sacrifice that social gathering unless you're pretty certain that the people that you're dealing with are not infected.

BROADDUS: As Iowa reached a positivity rate over 18 percent, President Trump held a rally in Des Moines, with few masks in the crowd and no social distancing.

Trump is also scheduled to hold an event in Wisconsin Saturday, as the state experiences a coronavirus surge, reporting more than 3,100 new infections Wednesday. A circuit judge temporarily blocking Governor Tony Evers's efforts to restrict public gatherings to 25 percent.

GOV. TONY EVERS (D-WI): Just because some folks out there want to see full bars and full hospitals, doesn't mean we have to listen. The longer it takes for folks to take this virus seriously, the longer it will take to get our economy and our communities back.

BROADDUS: Fauci says holding large gatherings like the president's campaign rallies are dangerous.

FAUCI: When people are close to each other and you don't have virtually everyone wearing a mask, that is a risky situation that could very well lead to the kind of spreader events that we have seen in similar settings.

BROADDUS: Meanwhile, the virus sidelining the University of Florida football program after at least 21 players tested positive. And Alabama football coach Nick Saban is now self-isolating at home after a positive COVID test.

NICK SABAN, HEAD COACH, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA FOOTBALL: This was routine, every day. We test our players every day. I get tested every day. I feel fine; I felt fine. I was very surprised, you know, by this.

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BROADDUS: And back here in Wisconsin, the field hospital is reserved for patients who are nearing the end of their treatment.

And here's something to look forward to. As we look ahead, Dr. Anthony Fauci says a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine should be, or may be, widely available by April 2021, a year after the start of the pandemic.

Back to you.

[06:06:10]

CAMEROTA: That is a high note to end on. Adrienne, thank you very much.

So President Trump and Joe Biden were supposed to face off Joe Biden were supposed to face off in a debate tonight. But instead, both men will be competing for prime-time viewers in dueling town halls.

CNN's Joe Johns is live at the White House for us with more.

Hi, Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Alisyn.

Yes, dueling town halls, indeed. So these two candidates are going to be squaring off on competing television networks at the same time tonight.

This was supposed to be debate night in America, as you said, but the debate got canceled due to the fact, essentially, that the president backed out after the debate commission said, Look, we need you to do this virtually because of COVID concerns.

Now, the president will be in Miami. The vice president, Vice President Biden, will be in Philadelphia. Both in town halls.

Now, these -- these town halls were held on the condition, or the town hall for the president, I should say, is held on the condition that he take an independent test for COVID to show that he's in the clear. And he's done that. There were two experts who had to review that test. One of them was Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Fauci had a warning for people who were placing too much stock in the president's recovery. Listen.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When people say, The president beat it, I'm not worried about it, what's your response?

FAUCI: Well, that's sort of like saying, somebody was speeding in a car at 95 miles an hour and didn't get in an accident, so I can go ahead and speed and not get in an accident.

We're very, very pleased that the president did so well when he was infected with coronavirus, but there are also a lot of people who are his age and his weight which did not do as well as the president did.

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JOHNS: Now, the president is expected to have a busy day today. Besides this town hall in Miami, he's also supposed to have a rally in North Carolina. And then he's going to have a fund-raiser at his Doral property just outside Miami.

John, back to you.

BERMAN: Look, he might need the money. The Biden campaign announcing record-breaking fundraising numbers. Joe Johns at the White House, thank you very much.

JOHNS: You bet.

BERMAN: So a brand-new interview with former President Obama. He's speaking out about President Trump criticizing him and previewing what he will say when he goes on the campaign trail next week for former Vice President Biden.

CNN's Jessica Dean live in Washington with the latest on this -- Jessica.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning to you, John.

Yes, we heard from President Obama in this new podcast on the popular podcast "Pod Save America." It's hosted by former Obama White House alums. So you can imagine that most of the listeners already listening to this are planning to support the Biden/Harris ticket.

But now it is time for the Biden campaign to convert support into actual votes. And that's where we see them deploying President Obama, first on this podcast, then to the campaign trail.

I want to talk for a moment about what he said on the podcast. He did, as you mentioned, criticize President Trump on a host of issues, including foreign policy. He also made a big pitch for his friend and his former vice president, Joe Biden, specifically to young voters and to black and Latino men. Take a listen.

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OBAMA: A lot of times, when you're thinking about the presidency, it's great to look at policy and, you know, do they have -- what were their ten-point plans on this, or that, or the other.

But a lot of it is, what's their basic character? Right? Are they people who instinctively care about the underdog? Are they people who are able to see the world through somebody else's eyes? And stand in their shoes? Are they people who are instinctively generous in spirit, right? And that is who Joe is.

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Dean: So we're expecting President Obama to hit the campaign trail next week. Take a look at some of the states under consideration for him to go to. They include Florida, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, Critical swing states.

and we're told he's really being deployed to places where early voting is underway. That is part of the strategy for the Biden campaign. They want their voters voting early, either by mail or in person. They're sending Obama into places where early voting is already underway.

This also comes as we hear that the Biden campaign broke another record, bringing in $383 million in the month of September. That leaves him with $432 million cash on hand as we head into this final stretch of the campaign.

[06:10:08]

And John, as you well know, those are massive numbers for this stage of the game. It allows the Biden campaign a lot of leeway in terms of where they want to go up on the air with advertising and how they want to spend that money.

We also did reach out to the Trump campaign to see what their numbers were for September, but we haven't heard back.

We're going to see Joe Biden, as Joe Johns mentioned, at his town hall this evening in Philadelphia.

BERMAN: Four hundred and thirty-two million dollars cash on hand is insane.

DEAN: It's insane.

BERMAN: With a month left to go. That was what he was talking about at the beginning of October. So that's how much they had. That is so much money, it's hard to know how to spend it all, although I'm sure the Biden campaign will find a way.

DEAN: Yes.

BERMAN: Jessica Dean, thanks very much.

So nearly 60,000 new coronavirus cases reported overnight. That's the highest number since the beginning of August. What's the country going to do to stop it? Where's the plan? That's next.

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[06:15:12]

CAMEROTA: Alarming new numbers again this morning about the pandemic in America. Nearly 60,000 new coronavirus cases were reported overnight. That is the highest daily total since early August. Five states are seeing record hospitalizations this morning.

Joining us now, CNN political correspondent Abby Phillip. And Dr. Ali Khan. He's the dean of the University of Nebraska Medical Center's College of Public Health.

Dr. Khan, let's start with you, because Nebraska is in the red. So the states with record hospitalizations yesterday, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Wisconsin.

In terms of the positivity rate in some of the rural areas in the center of the country, I want to read those also, because they're just so staggering. Wyoming, 40 percent positivity rate. South Dakota, 32 percent. Wisconsin, 22 percent. Idaho, 22 percent. Iowa, 20 percent.

What are we supposed to do, Dr. Khan?

DR. ALI KHAN, DEAN, COLLEGE OF PUBLIC HEALTH, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA MEDICAL CENTER: So thank you and good morning, Alisyn.

Good morning, John.

I must be honest with you, this is now unconscionable this late into the outbreak. You know, we're nine months into the outbreak. We know exactly what we need to do to control this outbreak. And essentially, this is predictable, right?

So the virus is still a contagious disease, and 80 percent of Americans are still susceptible to be infected. And we have now explicitly stated that we're using a herd immunity strategy that's untested and unethical, which essentially means a no-response strategy.

So you couple the inappropriate response with a contagious disease, and this is exactly what you're going to see.

And it's all a -- it's sort of a misguided political calculus that, if you minimize the disease and promote under the guise of personal freedoms, that you can somehow get adults back to doing what they want to do. And public health officials will tell you that that's the way to maximum the number of people who die, and the Fed chair will tell you, that's the way you prevent the economic recovery.

BERMAN: Nine hundred and eighty-five new deaths reported overnight. Nearly 60,000 new cases. Hospitalizations at a level we have not seen since August. It is just so clearly moving in the wrong direction, Dr. Khan.

And I keep saying this. I think Alisyn gets sick of me saying it, but it's only the middle of October. I mean, we're not even in the bad part of the fall or winter yet. This will get worse.

Which is why I think the warning from Dr. Fauci, such a simple sentence about Thanksgiving, may be what cuts through. So let's listen so what Dr. Fauci said.

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FAUCI: It is unfortunate, because that's such a sacred part of American tradition, the family gathering around Thanksgiving, but that is a risk. You may have to bite the bullet and sacrifice that social gathering, unless you're pretty certain that the people that you're dealing with are not infected.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: He's being somewhat delicate, Dr. Khan, probably more delicate than he even needs to be at this point. But what do Americans need to know about Thanksgiving at this point? The idea of getting together in a house around a table with a group of even your family when some of them are almost definitely in that vulnerable age group?

KHAN: So again, this coronavirus is still an infectious disease. It spreads from person to person, and we have now tons of experience. The more people you put together, the more likely you are to have people get infected and the more likely you are to create these super spreader events, which are spreading this outbreak across America. So it's about, you know, 20 percent of events that's spreading 80 percent of the disease.

And again and again, we come back to these settings where people come together. Not just Thanksgiving, but parties, weddings, you know, meat packing facilities, prisons. You put people together, and virus loves it.

CAMEROTA: I'm just not emotionally ready to give up on Thanksgiving. I'm just -- I know I'm going to have to. I'm just not emotionally ready.

BERMAN: You've got to face it. I think we just have to face it. And I think Dr. Fauci is helping us get there. But I think, at some point, someone just needs to say out loud, You can't do it. You can't do it.

CAMEROTA: I'm just trying to get through Halloween.

KHAN: Well, at some point, somebody needs to say, we -- we could -- we have the tools to get rid of this disease! Right? So we're making these draconian choices, because we refuse to make the appropriate choice, which is contain the virus.

CAMEROTA: You know, Abby, of course there has been this big outbreak at the White House and people connected to the White House. And it was alarming and I think -- I don't know if it was surprising. But we hadn't known that Barron Trump got sick until -- he didn't get sick, he got infected. And so we hadn't known that until yesterday, when Melania wrote this personal essay.

And she said that her symptoms had been a roller coaster, which I think is, you know, very typical of most people's symptoms, but that Barron hadn't had any symptoms whatsoever.

And you know, I think that what both she and President Trump have been trying to do over the past couple of days, her in her personal essay, is say, like, We feel your pain. You know, we've been there. We can now relate.

[06:20:04]

But it's hard to see them as everyman, because, you know, President Trump got this -- this treatment that, I think, one -- he was one of ten people on earth that have been able to have, maybe, this combo of drugs and to be able to be immediately rushed to the hospital, which most people do not check themselves into the hospital at his level of symptoms, and most people do not have all the doctors around Melania Trump. So what do you think? Is that message resonating?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, first of all, I think that this entire situation is a real cautionary tale for the American people about how quickly this virus can spread, as we were just talking about, you know, Thanksgiving, within family settings.

And the one astounding thing to me about it is that, that is not how the president and the White House are kind of using their experience with the coronavirus to sort of give the American public a sense of, you know, Hey, here's the risk to you and your family, and here's what you can do to protect yourself. They're, of course, not doing that, because that would require the president to talk about mask wearing and social distancing.

But I will say that Melania Trump's letter, I found, to be a lot more clear, a lot more transparent about what she experienced, about how difficult it was for her, even though her symptoms were, as she described it, relatively mild. She -- you know, you even sort of gathered from her comments, her concern for her child, that luckily, he was not symptomatic, according to the letter.

But, you know, I thought that it was genuine in a way that's very different from the way that the president talks about his illness. I mean, he was sent to the hospital, and yet, he talks about it now as if it was just sort of like a brief trip to go visit a friend, and not that he was hospitalized and treated with some very serious medications.

So the president keeps downplaying what he experienced, and I think that does a real disservice to the American public.

BERMAN: Look, he held mass gathering, an unmasked mass gathering in a yellow zone, in a state with nearly a 20 percent positivity rate. So his behavior on its face is a lot different than any kind of message about how to battle this virus.

Abby, an important story in "The New York Times" overnight from Mark Mazzetti and others, which deals with what administration officials were saying behind the scenes to moneyed investors and maybe donors, as compared to what they were saying out loud.

Out loud, they were saying, No worries here. We have this completely contained. "The New York Times" reports behind the scenes, to wealthy donors connected to the Hoover Institute, they were saying something different.

The quote here from the story: "The president's aides appeared to be giving wealthy party donors an early warning of a potentially impactful contagion at a time when Mr. Trump was publicly insisting that the threat was nonexistent. Elite traders had access to information from the administration that helped them gain financial advantage during a chaotic three days when global markets were teetering."

What do you make of that?

PHILLIP: I mean, I think it's an incredible report, but it actually confirms a lot of what we knew at the time and what we know now, which is that people in the administration were aware of how serious this was. They were concerned. The president, in particular, was concerned about the impact on markets, almost exclusively at the beginning.

And that's one of the reasons he tried to downplay the virus publicly, was to sort of prevent a public panic, particularly financially.

But at the same time, the president was aware that this was contagious, that it was likely airborne, that it affected people not just the -- not just older people, but younger people, too, and people with pre-existing conditions.

The reason the president and the White House and his allies have been downplaying this virus is completely political. We know that, because we know that they have experienced a real outbreak that they could have prevented, had they just worn masks like they do on the other side of the White House. And they don't do it because it doesn't jive with the political measure that the president wants to run on this November.

CAMEROTA: Dr. Ali Khan, Abby Phillip, thank you both very much. Great to see you. KHAN: Thank you very much. Mask on, everybody.

CAMEROTA: We saw it.

Former President Barack Obama getting ready to hit the trail for Joe Biden. Hear what he thinks President Trump has done to U.S. foreign policy, next.

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[06:28:36]

OBAMA: And the thing that, over the last four years, it's not as if Trump has been all that active internationally. I mean, the truth is, he doesn't have the patience and -- and the focus to really substantially change a lot of U.S. foreign policy. What he's done is he's systemically tried to decimate our entire foreign policy infrastructure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So former President Barack Obama speaking out in a brand-new interview, blasting the president for his handling of foreign policy.

Perhaps the most important thing is that former President Obama is getting ready to get out on the campaign trail for Joe Biden.

Abby Phillip back with us this morning.

Abby, that interview was interesting. It was with Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor, his guys for eight years in the administration. I'm not sure the discussion, in and of itself, will necessarily animate voters, but the president hitting the campaign trail, I know the Biden team does think will help. How? And with whom can President Obama help?

PHILLIP: That is a very interesting question, I think, this cycle. You know, President Obama went out on the campaign trail four years ago for Hillary Clinton, kind of playing the same role as the closer in that race, too. And -- but I think that there was then a misconception about who President Obama actually can move.

I do think that there is a segment of the Democratic Party.