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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Trump Passing Buck to States?; New York in Crisis. Aired 3- 3:30p ET

Aired April 03, 2020 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:01]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

At this hour, there are more than a quarter-of-a-million confirmed cases of the coronavirus just in the United States. And in the U.S., at least 6,699 people have died. One week ago at this hour, the number of dead was 1,451. The death toll has more than quadrupled since that in a week.

Today, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious diseases expert, is saying that it's going to get much worse before it gets better.

And New York state is, of course, one of the first areas where we are seeing just how bad it can get. Just in that one state, more than 500 people died from coronavirus in just the last 24 hours, making it the biggest single-day increase in deaths in that state or any state in the United States so far.

The governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, comparing the pandemic to a slow-moving hurricane. And in two days, on Sunday, New York City will run out of ventilators, according to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Today, Governor Cuomo, acting on that dire need, signed an executive order that will enable the state to take ventilators and personal protective equipment from places not currently using them.

Mayor de Blasio also called for the military to mobilize doctors and nurses in uniform to help ease the strain on New York City's civilian medical personnel, as hospitals continue to be overwhelmed with patients.

In a sign of just how dire the situation is, EMS personnel in New York City have now been instructed not to bring cardiac arrest patients to the hospital if they cannot save the patient in the field.

I also want to take just a brief moment here to note that I am anchoring at this hour because our friend and colleague Brooke Baldwin, who normally anchors at this time, has herself been diagnosed with coronavirus.

Brooke has chills, aches and a fever, even though she had been taking all sorts of precautions. She tested positive this morning anyway.

Brooke, we all love you. We are all thinking of you. We are all praying for you. Get well.

I want to start today with CNN's Shimon Prokupecz. He's in New York City.

And, Shimon, the medical ship USNS Comfort was brought in to help alleviate the strain on New York's hospital system by taking non- coronavirus patients. But, so far, we're told that the Comfort has only received 20 patients?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jake, 20 patients.

And I have been here are pretty much all afternoon, not seeing any activities to indicate that they have taken any more patients. The thing is here, at the Comfort, they don't want to take patients who have tested positive for the coronavirus. And, as a result, there really aren't that many patients at hospitals who don't have the coronavirus.

And where the stress, the relief that the doctors and the front-line employees and the people that are working at these hospitals, they need relief from the coronavirus patients. They need them taken out of their hospitals and brought to field hospitals to try and relieve some of the pressure.

So that is what is in process right now. The governor here, Governor Cuomo, said he was going to talk to military officials to see if there was anything they can do, so that the ship behind me, the Comfort, can start taking some of these coronavirus patients.

The issue for the ship, we're told, is, if they do start taking these patients, how are they going to clean the ship up, basically, afterwards? There's concern about contamination on the ship. And the military is concerned about how to clean that, Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Shimon Prokupecz in New York, stay safe.

Joining me now, Dr. James Phillips. He's chief of disaster and operational medicine at George Washington University Hospital here in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Phillips. The Trump administration is now expected to recommend that Americans wear masks when they leave the house. A top health adviser cautioned that masks should not lull Americans into any false sense of security, where they stop social distancing.

What do you think Americans should do when it comes to masks?

DR. JAMES PHILLIPS, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL: Jake, it's good to see you again.

My thoughts go out to Brooke. I think that the important thing that people need to understand -- and

it's not super scientific -- it's the purpose of why this recommendation is going to come forward. It's very important that the general public remembers that, if recommendations come to you to wear masks, whether that's a surgical mask you might have your hands on, a scarf or a bandana, the purpose of that is not to keep you healthy.

The purpose of that is because we have to assume that you yourself are sick, even without symptoms, and we need to keep you from getting others sick.

So, if you think about a surgical mask, it's designed to keep the saliva and the droplets from the surgeon from getting from getting into a patient during an operation.

[15:05:03]

In the same manner, this will be designed to keep your droplets from getting out into the general area around you. It does not prevent you from inhaling droplets from other people.

TAPPER: If someone cannot get their hands on one of those very basic surgical masks, is a scarf, a bandana, or any sort of mouth covering good enough?

PHILLIPS: Well, I think that it's better than nothing.

The surgical masks need to be reserved for hospital workers and first responders. There's no question about that. If -- there's been a lot of people reaching out trying to find ways to be useful with their skills.

And one of those skills has been the ability to create cloth masks. Now, studies have shown that cloth masks do not protect people from inhaling small particles such as droplets that contain coronavirus.

But they should act as a shield to keep your droplets from getting out onto and onto the objects around you. So, in that sense, cloth masks may be very useful. And, therefore, we can put people who are really trying to help to work and allow them to manufacture these for the general public.

It's better than nothing.

TAPPER: Better than nothing.

Dr. Phillips, I want to ask you. You have heard that EMS workers in New York are being told not to bring in cardiac patients to the hospital if they cannot save the patient in the field.

Is this the beginning of the rationing of lifesaving health care that we have heard about in places such as Italy, where the system is so overwhelmed, there's such a surge in patients, that doctors and nurses and EMS personnel have to actually decide, well, I'm going to save this person, and because I'm saving him, I can't save her, or vice versa? Is this just the beginning of that?

PHILLIPS: It's close to that topic.

So it's not a matter of necessarily not having enough resources to save those folks that have what we call out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. What we know about folks who have their heart stop in the public, and not in the hospital, is the mortality rate of that is just around 90 percent.

And only about 2 percent of people actually leave the hospital with their brain fully functioning. So, the numbers are already dismal. The big concern that we have as health care providers and as first responders -- and I'm a medical director of two EMS agencies as well.

And what we're concerned about is that, when you're doing CPR, or using one of those special bags to help breathe for someone, it generates a tremendous amount of very tiny particles, all of which can be very infectious and cause spread of the disease, not only to those first responders, but also throughout the emergency department, infecting other health care workers and patients.

So it's one of these terrible decisions that's being made, but it's the correct one, that we want to reduce the amount of what we call nosocomial infection, stuff that takes place inside the hospital, by reducing the amount of CPR and breathing put in that form to take place.

So it's going to be very grueling decision for those EMS providers. But it's also important to know that those guidelines already exist. If you are on paramedic in the middle of a futile CPR incident, if it's deemed futile, they can already stop in the field.

This is just expanding it.

TAPPER: All right, Dr. James Phillips, thank you so much. Keep up the keep up the work. We're all thinking about all the people on the front lines of this horrible war against this pandemic.

Thank you for your time and for what you do.

President Trump is now claiming the federal government is just a backup for states who should have prepared better. I'm going to talk to a former top official who handled the Ebola response in the U.S. about that and more. That's next.

Plus, a death rate higher than that of New York or anywhere else in the country per capita. We're live in Louisiana with a look at what's behind the surge in that state.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:13:27]

TAPPER: The buck stops over there.

President Trump's message to states hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic: You should have already had this covered.

President Trump saying that the federal government should really just be a backup to states and hospitals overwhelmed by cases.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: But we're backup. Ideally, those hospitals would have had all this equipment. Ideally, those states should have had all this equipment. And I think they will the next time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Let's bring in CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins.

Kaitlan, give me a reality check here. There is a national stockpile of medical supplies. It's not for the use of the American people at times of emergency?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's a message the president has been pushing, as you have seen more and more governors say they are not getting what they need from the federal government.

He's often using it as a way to deflect blame. You saw his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, pushing it even further during his first appearance at a coronavirus briefing yesterday when he was saying it's not meant to be a state stockpile. It's meant to be the national stockpile, though, of course, typically, in times of need, you see the states pull from that federal stockpile.

And, Jake, right after that briefing, people pointed to the language even from the Department of Health and Human Services, where initially on the stockpile's Web site, it said it's for state, local, tribal and territorial responders when they need federal assistance.

But, Jake, that guidance, that description changed overnight to fit what Kushner said yesterday about the stockpile. And now it says, the Strategic National Stockpile's role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies.

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So we're seeing that change happen already.

I should note Republican Senator Cory Gardner pushed back on what Kushner said, saying he didn't know what he was referencing, that, of course, states are supposed to able to use from the federal stockpile.

TAPPER: And, Kaitlan, we just learned that the White House has a new protocol when it comes to testing those around President Trump.

COLLINS: Yes. Before, people were just getting their temperatures taken before going into the meetings with the president or the vice president. Now they're going to be getting actual coronavirus tests.

You heard the president said yesterday he had taken another one. It was one that delivered results in about 15 minutes. And now they're going to be administering those to people who are in close proximity to the president and the vice president, though we don't know exactly what that means.

Does it mean anyone coming into the West Wing will get one or it's just people who have meetings inside the Oval Office with the president? Right now, we're not getting a lot of clarity from the White House on that exactly. But it is going to be these new tests that only get -- they get results pretty quickly, they say.

TAPPER: All right, Kaitlan Collins, we will catch up with you in the next hour too.

Joining me now, the former Ebola czar under President Obama, Ron Klain.

Ron, thanks for joining us.

Everyone, all the governors, at least, seem to be looking to the federal government right now for more supplies, for testing, for ventilators. President Trump, his message is: Hey, we're just a backup. We're not supposed to be the source of these materials.

Is that true? Is that accurate?

RON KLAIN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE EBOLA RESPONSE COORDINATOR: No, it's not true. And it's also not advisable.

I mean, first of all, the reason we have a federal government is to step it in, in times of crisis. And this is a crisis. And this is a crisis from a global infectious disease threat. That's why President Obama mustered a whole-of-U.S.-government response to Ebola.

That's why President Trump himself said that he was putting a task force in charge, with first Secretary Azar, then Vice President Pence, and so on and so forth. So, of course, the federal government is supposed to lead.

It's also important they do lead, Jake, for this reason. This disease is going to hit different parts of the country at different times. If you turn all the states loose to grab whatever they can grab, the stuff is going to run -- wind up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So we need a national organization, both to get us more stuff and to get it to the right place when it's needed.

TAPPER: Ron, CNN's KFILE has new reporting that Health and Human Services Department Secretary Alex Azar said last year that the number one thing that kept him up at night in the biodefense world is a pandemic flu, a possibility of a pandemic flu. So, President Trump has been saying no one could have anticipated

this, no one could have anticipated this.

Obviously, plenty of experts anticipated it for decades. What -- if Azar was worried about this, how on earth has the federal response been the way it's been?

KLAIN: Yes, it's a great question, Jake.

First of all, of course, everyone saw it coming. I wrote an article that laid out the scenario five years ago. Much more importantly than me, Bill Gates gave a big speech in 2017 where he warned of this. The warnings of this have been quite prevalent, including the Obama administration, in a transition meeting with the Trump administration, incoming Trump administration, saying, this was one of the top things to worry about.

Let's give Alex Azar some credit here. He saw this coming. Not only that. He asked for money to be -- to replenish our stockpiles. And the Trump OMB said no.

I think there's always been a view inside those closest to the president, starting with John Bolton closing down the pandemic office in 2018, that health care threats were kind of soft threats. They weren't the kind of threats like terrorism and kind of a nuclear attack or something like that. And they weren't really national security threats.

So these threats were put on the back burner by the people outside the health policy area in the Trump administration. Very different from the Obama administration.

So I think that mind-set that this wasn't really a deep, really hard security threat, really kind of colored how the Trump administration approached this.

And then, of course, once the warnings came in January and February, there was a real lack of attention and focus on it.

TAPPER: Well, Ron, let me ask you, because the response from former Ambassador and National Security Adviser John Bolton, as well as Tim Morrison, who was on the National Security Council, is that they didn't shut down the pandemic office in the National Security Council, but what they did is, they folded it in to a different office.

I think it was the office that dealt with weapons of mass destruction and other big threats. So it wasn't exactly like they shut it down. But they did -- the director was removed, and then all those other people reported to somebody else.

KLAIN: Yes.

TAPPER: But knowing the NSC as you do, does that still have an effect, or does it have the same effect?

Explain to us who don't really understand necessarily the workings of bureaucracy.

KLAIN: Yes.

[15:20:00]

Yes. No, so, it's a great point, Jake. And that's kind of exactly the point I was trying to make, which is that what the pandemic office was looking for was for naturally occurring diseases, like this coronavirus, that would come to the United States.

Bolton said that's not a security threat, shut the office down, and took some of the people and moved them into the office that is looking for terrorist attacks on the United States, WMD kind of attacks on the United States.

Now, some of those attacks could be with biological agents, the possibility that terrorists would weaponize Ebola or something like that. And so those people were looking for that. But they were looking for something different, right? They were looking for terrorists bringing a disease to the United States, not tourists bringing a disease to the United States.

That's what health people look for. They were looking for people coming back from Europe on spring break who would bring this disease. That's not what Bolton was focused on.

So, to me, Jake, the way I have tried to explain this is, it'd be like shutting down the fire department and taking a few firemen and putting them to work for the police force, and then saying, well, we still have firefighters because they're working for the police force.

They're just different kinds of responders looking at different kinds of threats. The threat of a natural occurring pandemic, that's what was keeping Alex Azar up last year. That's what has got our country in a crisis this year.

TAPPER: And, Ron, I want to get your response to something that White House senior adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner said, basically a message to governors last night.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JARED KUSHNER, SENIOR PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: The notion of the federal stockpile was, it's supposed to be our stockpile. It's not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use, just because you're scared, you ask your medical -- medical professionals, and they don't know.

You have to take inventory of what you have in your own state. And then you have to be able to show that there's a real need.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: What's your response?

KLAIN: I mean, I just think that's horrible.

I mean, look, every person in this country, you paid taxes for that stockpile. And right now, this is a crisis. And the idea that they're going to finger-point at governors, instead of getting the help they need, and suggest that somehow the governors are asking frivolously for this, I mean, every time I watch CNN and see someone in New York reporting, I hear sirens in the background all the time.

That city is in trouble. And the federal government should be doing everything it can to get it the aid that it needs. And it's not just going to be New York. You talked about New Orleans a little while ago. This is spreading around the country.

And if this isn't what the federal government is for, I don't know what it's for.

TAPPER: Ron Klain, the former Ebola czar under President Obama, also a senior adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, who is obviously running for president against Donald Trump, thanks so much, Ron.

Really appreciate your time.

KLAIN: Thanks, Jake.

TAPPER: Coming up next: The bus driver who posted a video plea to passengers, begging them not to cough without covering their mouths, that bus driver has now died from coronavirus.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:28:51]

TAPPER: Transportation workers are on the front lines of this pandemic, as subway lines and bus routes continue to operate, especially in major cities.

Among those workers, 50-year-old Jason Hargrove, a bus driver in Detroit, who shared his frustrations in this Facebook video less than two weeks ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JASON HARGROVE, BUS DRIVER: We are here, as public workers, doing our job trying to make an honest living to take care of our families.

But for you to get on the bus, and stand on the bus, and cough several times without covering up your mouth, and you know that we're in the middle of a pandemic, that lets -- that lets me know that some folks don't care, utterly don't give a (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

Excuse my language, but that's how I feel right about now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Jake, look, this is a very tough story, especially when you watch that video.

When you see his passion when he's talking about this, he's not talking about quitting the bus line. He's just talking about people changing their behavior on that bus.

Now, of course, we can't say where

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