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The Lead with Jake Tapper

The Madman Theory of Trump; Biden Set to Announce Running Mate; Trump Administration Sabotaging Postal Service?; Interview With Former Acting CDC Director Dr. Richard Besser. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired August 10, 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]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Because we were having this -- this robust discussion with the team today about exercising outside.

You know, more exercise groups are going outside for classes. And I sometimes see runners wearing masks. Sometimes, I -- runners aren't wearing a mask.

What should we do if we're exercising outside? Should we all be wearing a mask? Or does it just depend on the circumstances?

DR. RICHARD BESSER, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: Yes, I would put it into it depends on the circumstances.

You know, when you think about what it takes to acquire a virus, it's not just being exposed to someone, but it's that duration, how long you're exposed, and in what setting.

And one of the things that we have learned since this pandemic began is that outdoor activities are much safer than indoor activities. So, if you're outside and you're running, and you are six feet away from people, you're not running in a marathon with people shoulder to shoulder, and you're just you running by people, if you give them a nice berth, you don't need a mask when you're when you're running or when you're riding your bicycle.

If you're out on a lawn and people are spaced more than six feet apart, again, I don't think that's a setting you need to wear a mask. If you're more comfortable wearing one, go ahead.

But I see and have some concern about shaming of people who are really not doing anything that's really risky if they're six feet apart, and they're outdoors.

BROWN: Yes, I was just talking to someone about that, that they were running and they were being shamed by a neighbor, even though they weren't even close. And so it just got me thinking, well, what should we all be doing? But that's great. That's a great perspective.

And I want to get to this op-ed before we let you go, Dr. Besser, from Michael Osterholm and Neel Kashkari, and this is what they said. They said: "We can continue to allow the coronavirus to spread rapidly

throughout the country, or we can commit to a more restrictive lockdown state by state for up to six weeks to crush the spread of the virus to less than one new case for 100,000 people per day."

So what do you think? Do you think we need to go back to the beginning, go back to lockdown mode to get this under control, or is there a happy medium where a lockdown isn't necessary, as we have heard from Dr. Fauci?

BESSER: Yes, I know Dr. Osterholm very well.

And I think what he has in here makes a lot of sense. But if we do this, there are things that we know that are different now, just as we were talking about the safety of exercising outdoors. You could envision a type of lockdown where that was taking place.

But I can't envision a lockdown and I wouldn't be in support of a lockdown unless the supports are there to ensure that everybody has what they need to be safe. We have seen a disparate impact of this pandemic among black Americans, Latino Americans and Native Americans, essential workers on the front line.

We have seen their families get hit hard, a new report showing that children, black children, Latino children five to eight times more likely to be hospitalized than white children.

So we need to make sure, if we go into lockdown, that we have got the income supports, the eviction and mortgage foreclosure protection, all of those things, so that everybody who's going into a lockdown can be safe and secure, not just those who are who are better off financially.

BROWN: Yes.

And, also, you're seeing public health experts make this argument that we have this window right now, before we get into to the winter and flu season and so forth. And the public should be taking advantage of this window to reduce the cases.

BESSER: Yes.

BROWN: Well, thank you so much, Dr. Richard Besser. Thank you. That was such an interesting conversation. We appreciate you coming on.

BESSER: Thank you, Pamela. It's a pleasure.

BROWN: Well, can the post office handle mail-in ballots in a timely manner? We visited post offices in several cities to see what is happening with the mail right now.

And, any moment, Joe Biden could announce his running mate. Now the campaign is already preparing for potential attacks.

We will be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:38:15]

BROWN: And we are back with our politics lead and new reporting about how President Trump's own advisers worked against President Trump's foreign policy vision, in one episode effectively following President Trump into leaving troops in Syria.

That is according to this new book out tomorrow, "The Madman Theory: Trump Takes On the World," written and reported by CNN's very own Jim Sciutto, who joins me now to discuss.

Jim, congratulations on this book. It is so illuminating in so many ways.

And you talked to several current and former Trump officials that really examined President Trump's foreign policy. And this episode about troops in Syria really exemplifies that. What happened?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, it shows a couple things, one, that many of his most senior advisers did not trust his decision-making, did not welcome his decisions, and, in many instances, acted to either water them down or block them.

And this relates to the president's two withdrawal orders from Syria delivered by tweet -- by tweets -- 10 months apart in December 2018 and then October 2019, where the Pentagon opposed this. They knew that this would hamper the U.S. mission the ground fighting ISIS.

So, in the first instance, they reduced, but didn't withdraw all the forces, and just hoped that the president's attention would turn, which it did. And then later, the second time, they came up with another plan to justify the deployment that they thought that would appeal to the president.

And that is to say, well, actually, we're there to defend the oil fields. And the president accepted that. And here we are, after these two orders, and there are still many, not the same number, but many U.S. forces on the ground.

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of defense for the Mideast Mick Mulroy told me for the book, he said: "That's right. And you could see that play out. If you look at his tweets, they were definitive about leaving. And then we didn't leave. And now we haven't left. We're still there. And that's a good thing."

[16:40:06]

BROWN: Wow.

And you also did a lot of reporting on the intelligence community and the concerns that Russia was trying to recruit President Trump. What did you learn about that?

SCIUTTO: Well, this is the thing. In the midst of all the investigations, but also just reactions to the president's public comments regarding Russia, his refusal to stand up to Russia, a concern of the community was not so much collusion with Russia, that was not it, but about Russia, doing what's called an influence operation, attempting to influence the thoughts, the decision-making of the U.S. president, in effect, to recruit him to some degree, unwittingly, but through public comments, through private conversations with Putin, to change or influence his view of the world.

I will give you an example of that. Senior officials in the Trump administration say that the president's hostility towards European leaders, Western European leaders, the leader of U.S. allies, influenced in part by Vladimir Putin's descriptions of them.

And, frankly, in some of the president's public comments, you could see him very much in line with Kremlin talking points on, for instance, NATO's position in Europe. And it's an alarming view to hear from within the president's own administration.

BROWN: And on that -- to that point, Jim, what did you learn, or did you learn anything about Putin seemingly holding sway over the president?

SCIUTTO: Well, this was the thing.

I asked everyone I interviewed for this book -- again, all people who serve this president, some who've been critical, some who remain loyal -- how can they explain the president's consistent deference to Russia, to Putin, even, for instance, on most recently new evidence that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election and his reluctance to call them out for that?

And the best explanation they could come up for come up with is that the president simply admires Vladimir Putin. He admires his power, but also shares something of a nihilistic view of the world, a sort of view of the world where no one's better than anyone else.

And you saw that in his comments in 2017 to Bill O'Reilly, when O'Reilly said, Putin's a killer, and Trump said, well, are we much better?

But, more recently, when the president was reminded that Russia armed the Taliban in 2018, and President Trump said, well, we armed the Taliban in the 1980s too, not making the distinction, in effect, a watering down of American exceptionalism. Remarkable to come from a sitting U.S. president.

BROWN: And your book is so timely too, as we're hearing from a top U.S. official who deals with election security, warning that Russia has been trying to interfere in the upcoming November election, with a preference for President Trump.

As we know Jim, President Trump has equivocated when it comes to Russian election meddling. And you write in the book: "Trump's willingness to ignore, contradict and defy his senior-most advisers is a quality I heard from virtually everyone I have spoken with about him."

And yet there is still no sign that the president is willing to call out Russia. I haven't seen anything about it and the readouts from his recent calls with Putin.

SCIUTTO: No, not once. And he's had many opportunities to do it. He could tweet it out tomorrow, right, but just doesn't do it.

And the president has a reflexive ability to just say, well, I don't believe what you're saying, to contradict his advisers. And that's one thing intelligence officials told me when it's about advice or analysis, right? You can disagree with someone's opinion of something.

But it's different, they say, when the U.S. -- when the intelligence community knows something, when they have the goods. And they have the goods on Russian interference in the election in 2016 and again in 2020. And once again, the president simply refuses to accept that.

BROWN: All right, Jim Sciutto, I'm really looking forward to reading your book. Congrats again. Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

BROWN: The book, "The Madman Theory: Trump Takes On the World."

Thanks so much, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Thanks, Pamela.

BROWN: Well, besides foreign election interference, there are questions about how mail-in ballots will potentially impact the election, especially since the U.S. Postal Service admits cost-cutting measures have gone into place that are intentionally slowing down mail delivery across the country.

It also just so happens a former Trump fund-raiser is running the post office now, as CNN's Pete Muntean reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Postal Service slogan might be, "We deliver," but it's not what reality appears to be.

NICK CASSELLI, LOCAL AMERICAN POSTAL WORKERS UNION PRESIDENT: We're having trucks leave our buildings with zero mail on the trucks.

MUNTEAN: For Nick Casselli, who heads a postal worker union in Philadelphia, the mail is moving too slow.

CASSELLI: My union reps, they call me throughout the night, in the morning, saying, Nick, the mail's all over the place. We're just not getting it out.

MUNTEAN: In 35 years with the United States Postal Service, Casselli says he has never seen issues this severe. The new changes have Democrats worried that slow mail could slow mail-in ballots, crucial in an election year overshadowed by the pandemic.

CASSELLI: We're not providing the service that we provided 24/7 before Mr. DeJoy was appointed the postmaster general.

[16:45:07]

MUNTEAN: In June, President Trump appointed longtime supporter Louis DeJoy to head the Postal Service, the first postmaster general in two decades with no postal experience.

It is his newly implemented changes, like eliminating overtime and ending extra trips by carriers, that Casselli says are causing delays nationwide. In Baltimore, people waited two hours in hopes of getting their mail that never showed up.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm waiting on an unemployment, a card, and it's just not showing up. So, yes, it should be here today, but it should have been here a week ago too. So I don't really know.

MUNTEAN: Mail delays have also been reported from Minneapolis to North Carolina and in Philadelphia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of them are bills, and then they're going to charge you late charges.

JAMES MAYO, PHILADELPHIA RESIDENT: We have missed six collection days in the last four weeks, which means they're not delivering, they're not collecting. So, it's a problem. Medicines aren't being delivered. Bills aren't going out in the mail.

MUNTEAN: James Mayo says the problem got so bad that he called his congressman. And he's not the only one.

REP. DWIGHT EVANS (D-PA): People who are calling us are raising concerns about the mail system.

MUNTEAN: House Democrat Dwight Evans and 80 other members of Congress wrote DeJoy, demanding the Postal Service not reduce mail delivery hours. DeJoy denies that any intentional slowdown is taking place.

LOUIS DEJOY, U.S. POSTMASTER GENERAL: Despite any assertions to the contrary, we are not slowing down election mail or any other mail.

MUNTEAN: Postal carriers live by the motto neither rain nor snow. Now the concern is politics will keep those like James Mayo waiting on the mail.

MAYO: Both sides of the aisles need to look at this. They need to fund the Postal Service properly, so that these guys can go back to work.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MUNTEAN: Even in spite of all this, President Trump continues to stand by DeJoy's changes. In a new interview, he calls mail-in voting a catastrophe, even though the American Postal Workers Union says the only real catastrophe is the squeeze being put on the Postal Service.

DeJoy is set to face a congressional hearing and answer to these mail delays, but not until September 18 -- Pamela.

BROWN: All right, Pete Muntean, thank you so much for that, bringing us the latest there with the Postal Service.

And I want to turn now to our 2020 lead.

Any minute, any hour, any day now. Joe Biden is expected to announce his running mate.

And I want to bring in CNN correspondent Jessica Dean and CNN senior political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson to discuss all of this.

All right, Jessica, you have been covering the Biden campaign for several months. Where does this decision stand right now?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So, right now, Pamela, we know that they are very, very close.

As you said, any moment now, we are expecting an announcement from the Biden campaign on his V.P. selection. We do know that he's met with a number of contenders in person. We also know, based on our reporting, that one have them as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who had kind of fallen off the radar there for a moment.

But we know that they did meet in person. She flew in from Michigan, and met with him last Sunday. But, again, Pam, we're expecting to hear any moment now. We know from Biden that he said for the months and months and months now that he really just wants somebody that he's -- quote -- "simpatico" with.

He is looking for someone who can be what he was to Barack Obama. And that's what he sees as someone who is loyal to him, who is going to have his back, who is going to be strong where he may be a little bit weaker.

But he said many, many times they're going to have a lot of work to do if they find themselves in the Oval Office. So, any moment now, we should know. But the list right now, Pam, remains pretty long in terms of who it could be. This is a very closely guarded secret even within the Biden campaign itself. Very few people know a lot of specifics.

BROWN: Wow. They clearly want this to be a surprise.

And, Nia-Malika, Jessica pointed out, yes, they're going to have a lot of work to do once they go into the -- if Biden wins and if they take on that role, but also they could face -- Maureen Dowd in "The New York Times," which seemed to also forget that there was even a woman on the ticket in 2016, noted -- quote -- "Conservatives will undermine the veep candidate with stereotypes. She's bitchy. She's a nag. She's aggressive. She's ambitious. Who's wearing the pants here anyhow?" How do you expect this to play out?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: She talks about conservatives.

I think it's any number of people might launch sexist attacks against this vice president. We have seen this throughout history, starting with Geraldine Ferraro, Sarah Palin, of course, criticized, talked about in terms of how would she take care of her kids if she went into the White House? Was she spending too much money on clothes?

Hillary Clinton, her lab, what's she wearing, all those sorts of things.

And it didn't just come from conservatives, right? It came from political reporters, political pundits. If you look at some of the conversation surrounding this current pick, there are people in and around Biden's camp who were sort of leveling pretty sexist charges at -- kind of comparing Karen Bass to Kamala Harris. Karen Bass might be more likely to be the pick because she might not be as ambitious as Kamala Harris, as if ambition is a terrible, terrible thing.

[16:50:23]

So, I don't think -- Maureen Dowd has in that column really kind of looking at conservatives. I think all of us should be on the lookout from all number of sectors, be it the press and pundits and political reporters, for the kind of sexist language that people can lapse into when it comes to looking at women assuming positions of power.

BROWN: Yes, it's interesting.

Kamala Harris actually addressed that this whole idea of being too ambitious as a woman and what that means exactly.

And the Biden campaign, I imagine, Jessica, has been thinking about how they might fight back against sexist remarks about the V.P. selection. What have you learned about that?

DEAN: Well, that's certainly right, Pam.

I actually spoke with an campaign aide earlier today who told me that, over the last few months, they have been in contact and meeting with women's groups that focus on getting women elected to office.

And what they have been doing is talking about some of the attacks that women who run for office face that men maybe don't face. And the whole point of this has been, for the Biden campaign, they said, to familiarize themselves with these lines of attacks and also begin to prepare for whatever may be coming their way.

BROWN: All right. Well, we shall see when that announcement is made this week, I guess we're expecting. So we will have to wait and see.

Jessica, Nia, thank you so much.

Well, a shoot-out, looting, and more than 100 people have rested in Chicago alone -- what sparked the chaos up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:56:32]

BROWN: In our national lead now: The mayor of Chicago is shutting down parts of the downtown area and putting more police on the streets, after a night of looting and violence there.

About a dozen officers were injured and more than 100 people were arrested. Massive crowds descended on downtown. They were smashing windows and looting stores. And at one point, police and the looters even exchanged gunfire.

Well, Chicago is just one of many U.S. cities seeing an uptick in violence and unrest in recent weeks. Riots were declared in Portland for a second night in a row. And in Kansas City, police are getting federal assistance as crime surges, including six murders this weekend alone.

CNN's Polo Sandoval joins me now from Chicago.

Do we know what sparked this, Polo?

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, the answer to that question is really what might be setting this civil unrest apart from some of those other incidents that we have seen in other parts of the country.

And that's because misinformation is likely what's behind what we saw play out in the early morning hours here in the streets of downtown Chicago. We're talking about mainly a rumor that, according to the city's mayor and the top cop, began to circulate throughout on Sunday.

And that was that police had shot and killed a 15-year-old boy. That certainly, as you could expect, was inciting some tensions. The mayor adding and trying to correct the record here, or at least making it very clear, yes, there was a police-involved shooting over the weekend. But it was in fact a 20-year-old man who was shot and wounded by officers just outside of downtown after he allegedly shot at them.

We should mention that man is expected to fully recover and that incident is under investigation. But, still, the damage has been done, Pamela. And what we saw when I looked out the window in the middle of night were police on every corner. And you saw really what authorities are describing as hundreds of looters, this wave of looting basically sweep through downtown Chicago.

And, of course, caught in the middle of this all are many of the business owners, many of the residents. And you can imagine that they are quite frustrated, especially since this is not the first time this year that many of these businesses have had to clean up and board up.

In fact, some of them had just opened up. So that's really what's fueling the frustrations, as, of course, authorities hope that we're not in for another similar night tonight. BROWN: Yes.

And on that note, what are officials doing now?

SANDOVAL: Well, they're starting by at least locking down parts of downtown tonight. Starting at 8:00 p.m. and up until tomorrow morning, they're going to try to restrict some of the access.

That's because we did see almost caravans of these looters driving through the streets, according to police. So they're trying to prevent that, some of the bridges that they had to lift, so they're trying to do that.

And then also, as far as the law enforcement side goes, they're going through the video right now, surveillance video, of all these stores, both small and big businesses, to try to track down and identify these individuals and also to keep themselves safe. They will be doubling up on their shifts and also extending them as well.

BROWN: OK, thanks so much, Polo Sandoval. We appreciate it, bringing us the latest there from Chicago.

And turning now to our world lead, new video capturing the exact moment of last week's explosion in Beirut that killed at least 160 people and led to violent protests. You can see, as the shockwaves tear through the city from the blast.

The man who took this video, we should note, survived.

Protesters were clashing with security forces for the third day in a row today exchanging, as you can see, explosives and tear gas. And the anger there now forcing the prime minister and his cabinet to step down, protesters there blaming what they're calling the crippling corruption in the government for the blast, along with the word financial crisis the country has seen in decades and rising coronavirus cases.

Well, I'm Pamela Brown, in for Jake Tapper today.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now.

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