Return to Transcripts main page

The Lead with Jake Tapper

Storm Batters East Coast; Coronavirus Relief Package Negotiations Continue; U.S. Coronavirus Testing Failure? Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired August 04, 2020 - 16:30   ET

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

[16:30:00]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. RAJIV SHAH, FORMER ADMINISTRATOR, UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: What we have seen is that industry, left to its own devices, is not going to produce the types of tests and the scale of tests necessary.

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): And several of the experts say the Trump administration needs to abandon its idea that the competitive marketplace will solve supply issues. It simply won't.

And if you want proof, Dr. Rajiv Shah of the Rockefeller Foundation says, turn on your TV and watch some sports.

SHAH: If you are a multimillion dollar baseball or basketball player, you're getting tested quite often, so that you can go to work. But if you're a teacher, if you're a health care worker, if you're out there doing your job and asked to do your job without the benefit of support for testing, that's not fair and that's not right.

Heather Pierce with the Association of American Medical Colleges says, it's time to let science lead this U.S. response.

HEATHER PIERCE, SENIOR DIRECTOR, ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN MEDICAL COLLEGES: That is not a market-driven response. That is something that requires the engagement of the public health community, the academic community, and the government public health forces.

GRIFFIN: In other words, a federal plan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRIFFIN: Pamela, the response to this story from the Department of Health and Human Services is that it does have a plan, it's working with states every day, but a single national plan is not appropriate because states have different needs.

As for the supply issue, the Department of Health and Human Services says it's simply unfeasible, unmanageable for the federal government to supply every single lab. Pamela, they think that this is working.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Well, and I read that same blueprint as you did, and the only plan I saw was to leave it to the states. And we're all seeing how that is playing out.

Thank you so much, Drew. We do appreciate it.

And let's dive a little bit deeper into this with Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Jennifer, thank you for being here.

Reiterating again, we're around six months into this pandemic. How would you say the state of things are with testing across the country? Like, how would you lay it out?

DR. JENNIFER NUZZO, JOHNS HOPKINS BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Yes, we're in really dire circumstances right now.

I mean, you heard in the before clip about the challenges, about not having enough tests, despite all of the work being done across the country and by individual states to try to increase the amount of testing that they're doing.

But right now, we're also having another and, in my view, possibly more important issue, which is that it's taking a really long time to get test results back, sometimes a week or more, which essentially makes these tests useless.

If we can't get these test results back in a couple of days, like in other countries, we're not going to be able to act upon these test results.

BROWN: OK, so to your point there, the president boasts that the U.S. is doing more testing than any country in the world. But how meaningful is that metric if people are waiting days, even weeks for their results?

I mean...

NUZZO: Right. Exactly. We should patting ourselves on the back for tests that come back sometimes a week or more later. That's functionally useless. And it doesn't allow us to do the work that is necessary to stop transmission of the virus.

It makes it very hard to intervene for when people are infected, to make sure that they're staying at home and not infecting others. And it makes essentially almost impossible the ability to contact tracing, to find people who may be exposed -- may have been exposed and to make sure that they're staying home, so that they don't infect others.

BROWN: OK, so, you just laid out why people should get tested and why they should get their results back soon.

President Trump, on the other hand, insists that the U.S. is testing too much. Here's what he said: (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And there are those that say, you can test too much. You do know that.

JONATHAN SWAN, REPORTER, AXIOS: Who says that?

TRUMP: Oh, just read the manuals, read the books.

SWAN: Manuals? Manuals?

TRUMP: Read the books. Read the books.

SWAN: What books?

TRUMP: What testing does...

SWAN: Wait a minute. I'm sorry.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Just let me explain. What testing does, it shows cases. It shows where there may be cases.

Other countries test. You know when they test? They test when somebody is sick. That's when they test.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Do any public health experts who say you can test too much? Is there any scenario in which that is possible?

NUZZO: So, that's not what is happening in the United States right now.

One of the things we look at to know if we're doing enough testing is positivity. People probably heard about this term by now. It's basically the percentage of people who get tested that come back positive.

One thing that we have seen across the world, the countries that are doing well with respect to responding to COVID-19, all tests enough to keep their positivity low. And, right now, across the United States, test positivity is above where it needs to be, which means that we need to test more.

But, that said, if we're testing more, and we're still getting results back a week later, it's almost pointless. So, I would frankly rather see us possibly do less testing in that case, if that means that we can get test results back in a couple of weeks.

But just on the bare facts, are we testing too much, the answer is no. We still need to cast a wider net with the tests that we have in order to find infections.

[16:35:05] BROWN: Yes, and you mentioned these other countries.

And, essentially, some of the other countries who have been successful in largely containing the epidemic, they had a more tailored testing regimen, right? It wasn't -- they looked at the epidemic at hand in their -- in the country and the percent positivity to determine who should get tested, right?

NUZZO: Yes, I mean, it's true, we should really be targeting the people who we think are most likely to be infected, and then make sure that they at least can get tested in a timely enough manner.

And right now, we don't really have that. We have people who maybe have symptoms or maybe exposed to a case, which are very much our top priority for testing, that go and get tested, and then don't hear a week or more later.

In other countries, it takes a day or two to get a text response to tell you whether you're positive or not. And that's really what we should be aiming for.

BROWN: OK, so let's talk about that disparity, because you have people who can get test results back in 15 minutes. Professional athletes are getting tested all the time and getting results back right away.

Then you have these other people across America who are waiting days, even weeks to get results. Why is there that disparity? What does the federal government need to do to bridge the gap?

NUZZO: Right.

So this is where the absence of a national testing strategy is really turning out to be problematic, because there are these discrepancies out there. There are some technologies that can give us test results back quickly. But if you wanted to go get tested, would you even know where to go to get that test? And the answer is no.

So we should really be thinking about, how should we be using testing, given what we have? How should we be trying to fix the supply chain, such that we can do more and meaningful tests? And then think about what technology is best poised to give us test results in the time period that we need them.

And the absence of this kind of leadership and coordination has really hindered our ability to answer those questions.

BROWN: OK, really quickly, before I let you go, the administration keeps saying, look, every state is different. Montana is different from New York as it pertains to testing.

But we have seen this virus doesn't respect boundaries. What do you think about that argument?

NUZZO: Well, first of all, no state is going to be safe until all states are safe.

And I'm sure if you ask almost every state, they would welcome additional federal health.

BROWN: OK, Jennifer, thank you so much. That sums it up.

NUZZO: Thanks.

BROWN: Well, President Trump has been blasting mail-in voting, but now he's suddenly reversed course, sort of.

That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:41:55]

BROWN: In our 2020 lead, today's primary elections in Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington state aren't just about the local races. This is also a test.

All of these states are offering mail-in voting, no questions asked. Washington state has been voting by mail since 2011. And even though President Trump and Joe Biden aren't on the ticket, today's events could foreshadow what's to come in November.

As CNN's Jessica Schneider reports, this comes as the president continues to attack mail-in voting and the post office's ability to handle absentee ballots.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The president reversing course, in part, on his conspiratorial stance on mail-in voting. In a tweet this afternoon, he signaled his approval for Florida's mail-in and absentee voting.

"In Florida, the election system is safe and secure, tried and true. I encourage all to request a ballot and vote by mail, " a sudden departure from his continued attempts to discredit mail-in balloting across the country, including in an interview taped just a few days ago.

TRUMP: There is no way you can go through a mail-in vote without massive cheating.

SCHNEIDER: Trump has been floating these false claims about mail-in voting fraud for months.

TRUMP: Universal mail-in ballots is going to be a great embarrassment to our country.

SCHNEIDER: But the truth is, mail-in voting fraud is exceedingly rare. Why? It's the states that administer the vote, and all have systems and processes in place to prevent forgery and theft.

The president has also floated the false claim about possible foreign interference of mail-in ballots, but that too has no basis. The director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, William Evanina, said last month in a statement: "It is extraordinarily difficult for foreign adversaries to broadly disrupt or change vote tallies without detection."

The president is also casting doubts about the vote count.

TRUMP: You know, you could have a case where this election won't be decided on the evening of November 3.

SWAN: Absolutely. What's wrong with that?

TRUMP: This election could be decided two months later,

SCHNEIDER: The president pointing to a Democrat congressional primary in New York City that still isn't decided more than a month after the election.

TRUMP: They're six weeks into it now. They have no clue what's going on. And, I mean, I think I can say right here and now I think you have to rerun that race, because it's a mess.

SCHNEIDER: While the U.S. Postal Service tells CNN it has ample capacity to handle what could be a surge of ballots by mail for the general election, there could be and have been problems at the local level, getting ballots back on time, making sure they're postmarked and ensuring there are enough election workers to sort and count.

But while that will delay the results, it does not mean that the numbers will be manipulated, as the president suggests. Eight states, plus Washington, D.C., will be conducting a primarily vote-by-mail election in November. Colorado, Washington and Oregon have had mail-in voting in previous elections without major problems.

And Hawaii and Utah planned to hold vote by mail even before the coronavirus pandemic.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER: And, in total, 35 states allow voters to vote by mail for any reason.

[16:45:00]

There are seven more states that do require a reason from voters before they get that mail-in ballot.

And, Pamela, recently, several states have actually changed their rules because of the coronavirus pandemic, which will allow more and more voters to send those mail-in ballots -- Pamela.

BROWN: All right. Thanks so much, Jessica. We do appreciate it.

And, meantime, President Trump is also dismissing the legacy of the late civil rights leader Congressman John Lewis, and instead complaining that Lewis did not attend his inauguration, in this interview with Axios on HBO.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SWAN: Do you find him impressive?

TRUMP: I can't say one way or the other. I find a lot of people impressive. I find many people not impressive. But, no, but I didn't go...

SWAN: Do you find his story impressive?

TRUMP: He didn't come -- he didn't come to my inauguration. He didn't come to my State of the Union speeches. And that's OK. That's his right.

And again, nobody has done more...

SWAN: Right. But back to...

TRUMP:... for black Americans than I have.

SWAN: I understand.

TRUMP: He should've come. I think he made a big mistake by not showing up.

SWAN: But taking your relationship with him out of it, do you find his story impressive, what he's done for this country?

TRUMP: He was a person that devoted a lot of energy and a lot of heart to civil rights, but there were many others also.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So, just -- and CNN political commentator Paul Begala, great to see you, Paul.

PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Hi, Pamela.

BROWN: First off, I would just want to get your reaction when you hear President Trump's thoughts on John Lewis. What do you think?

BEGALA: Well, I -- Mr. Lewis was a friend of mine. And I'm quite sure this would not have bothered Mr. Lewis. His place in history is secure.

I think he would tell us -- in fact, I got his book back here, and I got it out again. He gave it to me 22 years ago. He wrote in it, "With faith and hope, Paul, keep your eyes on the prize."

And so I'm thinking that as I listen to the president say this. And the prize here is voting rights. Mr. Lewis shed blood, risked his life for the Voting Rights Act. The Republican Supreme Court gutted it. That's where he would want this focus to be.

And I thought Jessica's report was really important. Voting by mail is safe. It's honest. It's ethical. It's clean. It is fraud-free. And I think John Lewis would be saying, don't worry about personal attacks on me. God knows he endured a lot worse from the beatings from George Wallace's state trooper go.

But he would say, vote. Register and vote. And I think that's what Mr. Lewis would want his legacy to be.

BROWN: All right.

Well, we can't help but notice the background where you are, Paul.

(LAUGHTER)

BEGALA: Yes.

BROWN: This is your new book that's out, it's titled "You're Fired: The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump."

And in this book, you write that you would not be surprised if President Trump tries to cancel the election. We just heard the president in Jessica's piece, as you pointed out, trying to undermine mail-in voting, saying he will fight it in the courts.

Do you think he's legitimately trying to set the stage for a delayed or canceled election? What do you think's going on here?

BEGALA: I think he's trying to set the stage to claim that the vote was fraudulent. He knows or should know he has no power to delay the election. That's not in the president's power. That's set by Congress.

BROWN: Right.

BEGALA: It's set by states. It's in the Constitution. He can't stop that.

So I think he's trying to sow the seeds of doubt. I think he's a very good politician. And I think he sees that he's in a lot of trouble politically. Candidly, he's got plenty of time to make it up.

But I think what he's trying to undermine is this. This is a pattern. As I show in the book, when Xi Jinping, the communist Chinese leader, who was not voted by anybody, when he declared himself president for life, President Trump, instead of saying, gee, in America, we have freedom, we believe in voting, he said, instead, gee, I'd like to have that here.

So he's an autocrat wannabe. And I think he's sowing the seeds. People need to know that, if they want to fire this president, they're going to have to register, they're going to have to vote, and their votes will be counted and their votes will count. And if he loses, even if he doesn't like it, I think he's going to have to vacate the building, because that's freedom.

BROWN: It's interesting you point out sowing the seeds of doubt.

Sources I have spoken to and the intelligence community and law enforcement say, basically, they're concerned that is amplified what foreign adversaries are trying to do to undermine democracy around the election. And just reading through your book, there was one major thing you're wanting Democrats against. You write in your book: "I'm terribly worried that some Democrats will swing from sense to nonsense trying to answer Trump's division with our division, his vulgarity with all our vulgarity, his hate with our hate, his lies with our lies. Therein lies the path to defeat. If we try out-Trump Trump, we will not only lose the election, we will deserve to."

So are you saying the Democrats should not return any attacks President Trump makes against Joe Biden or the Biden family?

BEGALA: Yes, in short.

And it's not that you don't respond, but that you respond with what matters in people's lives. I suggest in the book that people go back and study what Barack Obama did. Boy, he had a lot of attacks, including from Donald Trump. Remember that racist birther nonsense.

What President Obama did wasn't just say, oh, yes, I really was born in Hawaii. He said, look, they're trying to steal this from you. He is using -- this is what Trump does. He uses division as diversion. He divides us by race, and that's reprehensible.

[16:50:10]

But I think he does it to distract from the fact that he's in court right now trying to take away health care from millions of Americans, that he's got a budget that would cut Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, that he is doing a completely incompetent job on the coronavirus.

So those are the sorts of defenses. So, in the debates -- and I don't advise politicians anymore, but I know Joe Biden's watching.

Hey, Joe, when he comes after your family, don't defend your family. Defend the families of the American people. Defend the families of those soldiers who have bounties put on their head by Vladimir Putin, or the families who are at risk of losing their health care because of a preexisting condition.

That's the way to do this. And I watched Barack Obama do that. I watched Bill Clinton back in my day do it. That's the way you do. It's not by staying on his turf, but, in fact, shifting it to the turf that the voters want to hear about.

BROWN: All right, Paul Begala, thank you so much for that.

BEGALA: Thanks, Pamela.

BROWN: And, again, your new book, "You're Fired: The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump, " is out now.

Congrats on your book, Paul.

BEGALA: Thanks very much, Pamela.

BROWN: Meantime, millions of Americans are without power, as the tropical storm turns deadly. And it is not done unleashing its wrath.

The latest forecast -- up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:55:58]

BROWN: Turning to our politics lead now: Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine has a message for lawmakers negotiating with the White House on the next stimulus bill, today telling reporters: "If we can't get this done in the midst of a persistent pandemic, then we have failed the American people."

Collins is facing a difficult reelection battle and says she wants a package past and recess delayed if they can't reach a deal.

Still, progress seems far away, as millions of Americans dependent on unemployment insurance still have no answers from Congress.

CNN's Phil Mattingly is live from Capitol Hill.

So, Phil, still no resolution on unemployment insurance, food assistance, even the total price tag. What's going on behind the scenes there?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, but other than that, everything is going swimmingly right now with these negotiations.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: Yes.

MATTINGLY: Look, I think the reality has remained pretty static over the course of the last several days.

On the major issues -- and you can start to tick through them. You mentioned federal unemployment insurance, funding for states and localities, food assistance, eviction moratorium, even Postal Service and election security funds, which is a major priority for Democrats, none of these issues have at least reached any type of path forward at this point in time.

Now, as we speak right now, Pamela, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows are once again meeting behind closed doors with the top two Democrats in the Congress, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.

Before that meeting, they met with Senate Republicans and said very clearly that there had been no progress, that there was a stalemate, according to people who were in the room. They are going to try and jar that stalemate loose in this meeting right now.

Mnuchin saying before the meeting he had a couple of proposals he wanted to present. He hoped Democrats would hear them out and view them favorably. But, if they don't, the White House is still considering some type of executive action, kind of a threat to bring Democrats to the table.

The bottom line, Pamela, here is this. Democrats right now feel like they have got all the cards, that they don't need to give. And until that changes, or until the White House comes their way, there's no deal in sight.

BROWN: That is not a very encouraging note to end on, Phil, but that is the reality that we're dealing with right now.

Thank you so much for bringing us the latest.

And turning to our national lead, right now, more than 100 million people are at risk for flooding and high winds, and 2.5 million customers are without power as a tropical storm barrels up the East Coast of the United States.

At least two people were killed and others injured when a tornado from that storm tore through a North Carolina mobile home park. And rescue crews scrambled to save stranded drivers, as high waters took over streets and neighborhoods in the suburbs right outside of Philadelphia.

CNN meteorologist Tom Sater is tracking the storm.

So, Tom, now that the storm has made landfall, what are the biggest threats?

TOM SATER, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, we still have a threat for more power outages, Pamela. We still have a threat for more severe flooding that's going to occur.

I mean, the winds alone are still hanging in, in New York City, even though the rain has moved out. We have been watching this for over seven days. It's been named for six, flooding Puerto Rico, making its way over the mountains, Dominican Republic, fighting the dry air, spared Florida, just after 11:00 p.m. making landfall.

Winds went from 70 to 75 to 85. We had house fires with waters on the ground level, swift water rescues, massive surge and flooding, and evacuations.

The storm continues to make its way now north of New York. But those winds are still strong, still trying to alleviate the problem as it makes its way toward the Canadian border. But watch this. I mean, we have got over three million customers without power. That's not people. There's more people. Over three million customers, more suffering in the days ahead, until they can get that power restored.

If you look at the tornadoes, 21 tornadoes in five states. Ten states had a total of over 100 tornado warnings. And that threat continues. But look at the winds. A waterspout hit a weather station in New Jersey, Long Beach Island, 109 mile-per-hour winds.

But if you look at New York, Battery Park and JFK, 78 mile-per-hour winds, 70. We talked about it yesterday. This could be the greatest wind event New York City has seen since Superstorm Sandy. It surpassed that.

So, again, crazy amounts of rainfall still in New England, tornado watch for this area until 9:00 p.m., until we say goodbye at midnight.

BROWN: All right, Tom Sater, thank you so much for that.

I'm Pamela Brown, in for Jake Tapper. Thanks for watching.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now.