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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Dr. Fauci Warns of Coronavirus Surge; Family & Friends Honor Rayshard Brooks at Historic Atlanta Church; Petition Urges Disney World to Delay July 11 Reopening Due to Spike in Florida Coronavirus Cases. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired June 23, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

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BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: And that's it for me.

I'm Brooke Baldwin here in New York. Thanks for being here.

Let's go to Washington. "THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER STARTS" right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to the lead. I'm Jake Tapper.

And we begin today with the health lead. This afternoon, the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said that he is concerned about what he called a disturbing surge in coronavirus infections in some states, calling it very troublesome, and that the next two weeks are critical in order to get the spread under control.

The number of new coronavirus cases is on the rise in half of all states. And 13 states just yesterday saw a record number of new infections.

Despite the spread, the Trump administration is, as of now, continuing its plan to end funding for testing sites a week from today, even in hard-hit states such as Texas, Colorado, and Illinois, 13 sites across five states in total, even though Dr. Fauci, once again, emphasized today the importance of testing.

Fauci is among the Trump administration health officials testifying right now before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. And it has not been all bad news, we should note.

As CNN's Nick Watt reports for us now, Dr. Fauci is cautiously optimistic there may be light at the end of this tunnel.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: If you look at how we have been hit, we have been hit badly.

NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A checkup from Dr. Anthony Fauci, praise for New York, where they are for now controlling COVID- 19.

FAUCI: However, in other areas of the country, we are now seeing a disturbing surge of infections.

WATT: Black Americans are being hit harder. Does institutional racism play a part?

FAUCI: The answer, Congressman, is yes.

WATT: And a vaccine?

FAUCI: I still think there is a reasonably good chance that, by the very beginning of 2021, that, if we're going to have a vaccine, that we will have it by then.

WATT: Meantime, they say, it must be masks, distancing, and handwashing.

FAUCI: The next couple of weeks are going to be critical in our ability to address those surgings that we're seeing.

WATT: Case counts are now rising in half our states.

DR. RICHARD BESSER, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: As we move from total lockdown to a public health model of testing, tracking, isolating, and quarantining, we have yet to see any state make that transition effectively.

WATT: Here's what happened in Texas since reopening began. We knew daily case counts would go up. They have about quadrupled.

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): Because the spread is so rampant right now, there is never a reason for you to have to leave your home unless you do need to go out.

WATT: He says even tougher actions might be needed if those numbers keep rising. Here's Florida since reopening began. Average case counts have tripled.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A week ago, we had eight patients, none on a ventilator. We are now at over 40-plus patients, four on ventilators. We have had to find a second COVID unit. And they're looking for a third COVID unit right now.

WATT: More than 60 percent of all infections in the U.S. are in those under 50, according to the CDC, increasing fears for schools in the fall and the return to sports. The world's number tennis player, Novak Djokovic, just tested positive days after hosting an up-close-and- personal tournament, a decision another player called boneheaded.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATT: And Djokovic just updated his earlier apologetic statement to add: "We were wrong, and it was too soon."

Meanwhile, Jake, bad news from California, a record high number of new cases and a record number of COVID patients in the hospital, according to the state. And this isn't the second wave, Jake. We are still in the first

TAPPER: That's right.

Nick Watt in Los Angeles, thank you so much.

Let's talk about all this with CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, this morning Dr. Fauci told the House of Representatives that he remains cautiously optimistic that some vaccines will be ready at the end of the year, or at the very latest at the beginning of 2021. That theoretically would be the fastest vaccine ever developed. Your reaction?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, by a long shot, right. I mean, typically, you talk about not even years to develop vaccines, but oftentimes decades, if they work at all.

I mean, HIV, hepatitis C, certain viruses for which we have been trying to find vaccines, which we have never been able to actually develop one.

I guess cautiously optimistic is the reaction. The thing I'm sort of struck by, I think, more from a medical journalism standpoint, is that we have seen very little data still, mid-June, end of June now, very little data. We have seen some encouraging results.

Some of these early vaccine trials, phase one trials showed evidence that the vaccine actually generated antibodies, but still, Jake, much of these -- this data is coming to us by press release. They're coming to us through non-peer-reviewed sort of articles. So I'm a little bit surprised by that.

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We want to dig our teeth in to it, do some independent validation, and see what this stuff really means. I'd like to believe that it's progressing really well. And, , the whole world would like to see a vaccine sooner rather than later.

But I'm surprised. And I think, as a medical journalist, we have to keep digging to actually see the results that people say is giving them that optimism.

TAPPER: Absolutely.

CDC Director Dr. Redfield said that the CDC has developed a test that checks for coronavirus and both strains of the flu. That seems a significant development.

GUPTA: Yes, I think so.

I mean, one of the things you have to realize is that, even during a normal flu season pre-COVID, certain percentage of the country would get tested for flu. But, oftentimes, doctors would -- or nurses, health care people, would say, look, if flu is circulating in the area and you have flu-like symptoms, it's probably flu.

I mean, it's sort of a diagnosis of exclusion. I think the same questions are going to apply to this test as any other test. How widely available is it going to be? Are people going to have access to it? And is it going to be an accurate test?

I think those things matter more than this idea of combining it for convenience. Also, it shouldn't take the place of a flu shot. I mean, the flu shot is not perfect, but I think the flu vaccine is going to be more important this year probably than maybe ever before.

TAPPER: And there's still so much about this virus we don't know.

Some people think that because they have been exposed or if somebody has antibodies, that that automatically means they're immune, or because that they're young, they won't have severe symptoms.

Take a listen to what scientist and author William Haseltine told CNN this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. WILLIAM HASELTINE, INFECTIOUS DISEASE EXPERT: I call this virus they get it and then your body forgets it.

This is not a standard virus that you're going to get herd immunity. There is no evidence of herd immunity for coronaviruses. It does not exist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So, until there's a vaccine, we should all just operate on the assumption that we're all susceptible to the virus, right?

GUPTA: I heard Dr. Haseltine make those remarks, and I have great respect for Dr. Haseltine. I think he's drawing a comparison with other coronaviruses, the ones that cause a common cold, and saying people get common colds often, so why would this be any different?

I don't know. I think there does seem to be some protection that people get after they get this particular infection, Jake. We don't know how long that protection last or how strong it is. But, Jake, again, we're, what, end of June now. We haven't really heard about reinfection rates in the United States.

TAPPER: Right.

GUPTA: If this was the thing that didn't provide protection, then I think we would have started hearing clusters of reinfections. And we haven't heard that.

There was some concern about that in South Korea. That wasn't really the case. So, I think you do get some protection. But how long that protection lasts, we still need to figure out. TAPPER: OK. Well, half the country, right now, 25 states are seeing

an increase in coronavirus cases over the past week, including Florida, Texas and Arizona, Arizona, where the president is right now.

Dr. Fauci said the next couple of weeks are going to be critical in the ability to address the surges. Now, obviously, Florida, Texas, Arizona were among states that reopened fairly early in early May or even the end of April.

Where were we on May 12, when Fauci last testified, compared to where we are today?

GUPTA: Well, I want to show you that.

And let me remind you, as you as you look at these maps, there was criteria, Jake, you remember -- you and I talked about that at the time the criteria released -- that needed to be met before states could open. These were criteria that came from the White House, from the Coronavirus Task Force itself, in conjunction with the CDC.

I can tell you, as we go back and look, I don't know that any of the states -- there are 48 states that essentially were reopened at the time of the last hearings on May 12. I don't know that any of them had actually met these criteria, just to keep that in mind. There were criteria by which these states should open.

So, now go look at May 12 and look at this past week. It's changed a lot. There were some 80,000 people who had died by May 12. And now it's 40,000 more people died over the last 40 days. There were about 1.3 million people had been infected. About a million more people have become infected over the last 40 days.

So, Dr. Fauci is right, of course, that the next few weeks are going to be critical. But we started off way behind. We started off way behind every step of the way, with testing, with we opened too early, not meeting the own criteria.

And you can see the stark difference in these maps from one hearing to the next.

TAPPER: And, meanwhile, California, which was very aggressive very early, continues to struggle.

In fact, the state of California recorded more than 5,000 (AUDIO GAP) record high, and hospitalizations grown 16 percent over the last two weeks. This is a state that has a governor who's taken it seriously. San Francisco shut down pretty early. What's going on in California?

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GUPTA: I think there's two things that I'm sort of realizing. And this is in part talking to sources in these various states.

One is that flatten the curve became the sole metric of success. Let's just flatten the curve, but -- and basically decide to open again if the curve has flattened. That wasn't really supposed to be the metric of success. That was just to keep hospitals from getting overrun. That's what flattening the curve is all about.

Two is that, again, going back to the gating criteria, the reason you wanted the numbers to be so low is that you could then phase into the next thing. After you started to open up, you needed to have the testing in place. If you had low enough numbers, you could contact trace effectively.

Because the numbers are so high, it's very hard to contact trace all those people that are newly infected every day. So, the basic public health measures that needed to go in place after you started to open things up, even if you're doing a good job before that, weren't in places, as Dr. Richard Besser just said in Nick's piece.

So we didn't fit the criteria and we didn't put the second piece of the puzzle into place.

TAPPER: Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much, as always.

And be sure to join Sanjay and Anderson Cooper for a new CNN global town hall, "Coronavirus: Facts and Fears." That's live Thursday night 8:00 p.m. Eastern, as always, must-see TV.

Call it the testing two-step. The White House says one thing, the president says the opposite. And up next, the country's top medical experts explain what's really happening.

Plus: a summer vacation alert -- the countries that are now considering blocking the American people from visiting because of the surge in infections in the United States.

That's ahead.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: At that rally when you said you would ask your people to slow down testing, were you just kidding? Or do you have a plan to slow down testing?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't kid.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: OK. That's President Trump today plainly admitting what his team has been trying to deny for days, that he was serious when he said he had asked his team to slow down coronavirus testing because more cases made the country look bad, which is no matter how you slice it, a nonsensical way to address this crisis. A cancer patient can refuse to have a biopsy. That doesn't mean he doesn't have cancer.

But the president is clearly focused on the optics of all this, and how those optics could affect his re-election campaign, which might explain why he is in Arizona right now, playing up an issue he knows appeals to his base, the border wall, as CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Trump landed in Phoenix today with hopes of reviving his re- election bid after a low turnout in Tulsa on Saturday. And this time, he'll survey one of his biggest promises in 2016.

TRUMP: We will build a great wall along the southern border.

COLLINS: The trip was built as a celebration of 200 miles of new wall, though only roughly three miles are where no barrier existed before. And the rest is a new system that replaced outdated structures that were already there.

TRUMP: It's just about unclimbable.

COLLINS: As coronavirus cases in Arizona spike, Trump is scheduled to host a mask optional rally for college students at a megachurch, as several of his campaign staffers are still quarantining after testing positive.

Before leaving Washington, Trump contradicted what his own officials have said for days, that he was just kidding when he said he told staff to slow down coronavirus testing.

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: It was a comment that he made in jest.

PETER NAVARRO, WHITE HOUSE TRADE ADVISER: You know, it was tongue and cheek. Come on, now.

COLLINS: Trump said today it wasn't.

TRUMP: I don't kid. By having more cases, it sounds bad. But actually what it is is we're finding people.

COLLINS: Adding to the confusion as Trump was contradicting his own staff, his top health experts were contradicting him while testifying on Capitol Hill.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: To my knowledge, none of us have ever been told to slow down on testing. That just is a fact. In fact, we will be doing more testing.

COLLINS: Addressing reporters today, Trump also called for lengthy jail sentences for those who unsuccessfully tried to topple Andrew Jackson's statue in Lafayette Park in front of the White House last night using straps and chains until police intervened with chemical agents and batons and pushed them out of the park. Trump said he'll sign an executive order enforcing a law already enacted to preserve monuments like Jackson's.

TRUMP: We are looking at long-term jail sentences for these vandals and these hoodlums and these anarchists and agitators, and call them whatever you want. Some people don't like that language, but that's what they are.

COLLINS: The president said no monuments will be removed on his watch. But Jackson's may be more personal. He has long admired the seventh president who signed the Indian Removal Act and forced the march now known as the trail of tears. And Trump has his portrait hanging in the Oval. Trump has compared their elections and even paid tribute to Jackson at his national plantation once.

TRUMP: Andrew Jackson was a military hero and genius and a beloved president. But he was also a flawed and imperfect man, a product of his time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Now, Jake, after the president said numerous people were arrested last night, we reached out to the metropolitan police department. They said two people were arrested for assault on an officer. I should note that law enforcement sources are telling my colleague Allie Malloy that remember that tall black fence they had put up around Lafayette Park after they had initially cleared those protesters earlier this month? That is now expected to go back up in the coming days.

TAPPER: All right. Kaitlan Collins, thank you so much.

The renewed push legally or by mob to take down statues and monuments of historical figures with problematic if not obscene histories comes after multiple high-profile cases of black men being killed by white police officers.

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The funeral for one of those men, Rayshard Brooks, is just wrapping up in Atlanta right now. Brooks died nearly two weeks ago after an officer shot him twice in the back in a Wendy's parking lot.

CNN's Nick Valencia is live outside Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Nick, the service today was emotional and moving, but it was also a call to action from Rayshard Brooks' family.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There was a message of love here today, Jake. In fact, the niece of Rayshard Brooks spoke clearly about that calling on the community to put love first, especially during this moment in America. And the man who eulogized Rayshard Brooks, the pastor here at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Ralph Warnock, calling this moment, this day, a moral inflection point in the country.

I asked him how he would go about eulogizing Rayshard Brooks, a man who was not a member of this church, a man who he never met. He said Brooks represented a larger part of the conversation going on in this country, the narrative currently going on in this country. He said he represents not only the ideals but its shortcomings here in this country. And it's clear that people were drawn to today's services.

I spoke to one family who brought their 6-month-old grandson. I asked what today meant to them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEMETRIUS ROMAN, BISHOP-ELECT, GREATER NEW HOPE CHURCHES AND MINISTRIES ATLANTA: It's just scary. It's scary and it's hard explaining to your children what's really going on. I'm hoping that racism, police brutality, and just basic human discrimination cease.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VALENCIA: And just very quickly here, Jake. One of the officers involved in the shooting death of Rayshard Brooks, Devin Brosnan, who has been released on bond, gave an interview to "The Atlanta Journal- Constitution". He called Brooks' death a tragedy but said personally he wouldn't do anything different that day.

He went on to say that he feels as though his side of the story was not told, which is why he gave this interview. And he also pushed back on the assertion that he's now a state's witness saying that he is cooperating and will continue to cooperate -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Nick Valencia in Atlanta, thank you so much.

Coming up next, the new dramatic push to keep Disney's gates closed.

Stay with us.

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TAPPER: The money lead today: Keep Disney closed. That's the message from some Disney employees in Florida who started a petition urging Walt Disney World to delay its scheduled July 11th re-opening. Nearly 6,000 people have signed onto that petition.

Workers say the park is just not safe given the surge in coronavirus cases in Florida, especially in nearby Orange County where infections have jumped more than 400 in just one day.

I want to discuss this with CNN business anchor Julia Chatterley.

Julia, thanks for joining us.

This petition from workers at Walt Disney World reads in part, quote: It is not fair to the people who work there to risk their lives, especially if they are at risk or have family members who are at risk. People are more important than making a profit, end quote.

Here you have employees of Walt Disney World saying out loud exactly what a lot of families fear, that it's simply too early to work at or even to visit an outdoor theme park.

JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNN BUSINESS ANCHOR: Absolutely. Especially if you're operating in a state that's seen cases spike like Florida. Look, this is a small chunk of the 77,000 plus employees. But what they're saying in this petition is as workers, we are responsible for the safety of each other and our guests.

That struck me because look at Disney's website about what they have to say about potential guests coming to the resort. They say by visiting Walt Disney World resort, you voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19. Look at that. There's no sugar coating there to help the medicine go down there.

Workers are saying that everybody involved here, the risks are too high. Disney, I would argue, has a tough decision to make on this date. People and reputation if they have to open and then close again comes before profits, Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Julia Chatterley with our money lead, thank you so much.

There are protests for policing reform underway right now with Senate Democrats preparing to stop a Republican plan for policing reform. But why? I'll ask the number two Democrat in the Senate, next.

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