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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Facebook Rolls Out New Tools to Fight Misinformation as Trump Uses Site to Spread Lies About Mail-in Voting. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired August 13, 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]

NATHANIEL GLEICHER, HEAD OF CYBERSECURITY POLICY, FACEBOOK: Well, the voting information centers are going to be one-stop shops for information about how to vote, how to register, how to make sure you're registered, how to get mail-in ballots. All the information in it is going to come from state election officials and nonpartisan election experts. And our goal is to get this accurate information in front of voters so that they can understand what's coming, and they can know how to vote, how to participate.

I also know getting information out there is a key part of protecting an election. We know disinformation is most effective in times of uncertainty.

And so, putting this information out there can inoculate public debate so they know what's coming and what to expect so we can get 4 million people registered to vote.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: All right. So, let's talk about this information. In June, President Trump posted this on Facebook. He said, quote: Rigged 2020 election, millions of mail-in ballots will be printed by foreign countries and others. It will be the scandal of our times.

Now, this is not just misleading, this is a lie. Attorney General Barr even told Congress he has no evidence of this happening. But this post is still up and it's being shared more than 18,000 times.

Do you concede that this false information is being spread on your platform?

GLEICHER: I think it's really important that people be able to see claims that their elected officials are making about voting and how voting works. To be honest, I think claims will factor into people's decision for how they vote in the fall. At the same time --

BROWN: Hold on, let me ask you real quick on that point and I'll let you finish. But I guess -- I don't understand. You're saying people should listen to what elected officials say but didn't Facebook remove the video posted of President Trump saying that children are nearly immune from coronavirus, so how does that square.

GLEICHER: We have clear bright lines around content that could lead to direct physical harm, particularly around misinformation from coronavirus, something that suggests fake cures or certain groups of people are immune.

But for voting information like this, what's really important is, yes, people should see what their elected officials are saying, but they also need contacts and facts from the experts. And so, the voting information center is designed to actually strike this balance. There will be links on posts about voting so that people will see what their elected officials are saying but also see information about how protected vote by mail is, what the process is, how they can request a vote by mail ballot if they need to do that in their state, and what steps they should take to participate.

BROWN: So, you're seeing if the president or politician gives misinformation on COVID, that is different than misinformation about the election or disinformation I should say?

GLEICHER: If we see -- there are some very specific cases of false information. If it is misinformation about coronavirus that could lead to physical harm, if it is misinformation about voting that would lead to direct voter suppression. For example, lying about how, where, or when someone votes, or suggesting there might be legal consequences for voting for certain types of people, we will take that down, because the consequences of that if one person sees that and is deterred from voting is too significant.

But if people are making claims or debating how voting works, I think that debate is important but people need accurate information so they can judge and see what their elected officials are saying.

BROWN: But couldn't the president saying vote by mail fraudulent be a form of voter suppression?

GLEICHER: In a case like this what we want, we want people to have accurate information on the posts, and whether it's the president, whether it's a different elected official, whether it's a public influencer, people need to see how vote by mail works and how it is protected. That's why in the voter information center, there's going to be facts about voting to dispel confusion to understand how it works and how it can be protected.

BROWN: OK. So, I imagine Facebook is gaming out how things can play out around the election. Facebook obviously plays a very critical role for voters if election results are delayed in November and President Trump uses Facebook to say vote by mail is fraudulent, will Facebook take it out? Where is the line?

GLEICHER: It does look like we're not going to know on November 3rd what the results are and that creates uncertainty. It's challenging because of domestic actors and also foreign actors. Foreign actors will take advantage of this time and try to manipulate public debate.

So, there are a couple of things to do. The first and most important, voter information centers in the lead up to the election, they are going to show information about how to vote. But on election day and immediately after, they will show information about how the count is going, what's happening, what people should expect, and what the next steps are.

So, if there are claims and counter-claims about who won and whether the vote is complete or not or whether the vote is legitimate or not, people will see that, but they will also see clear information about what to expect and what the process is.

[16:35:00]

BROWN: So, but I guess -- where is the line then for taking out -- taking down posts that could be voter suppression or distrust foreign actors have done? And I've talked to forces in the law environment community who were concerned that politicians, that the president is basically helping foreign adversaries sow distrust in democracy, sow distrust in the election system, where is the line to remove post like that, especially in the election is delayed?

GLEICHER: Well, one challenge is we don't just want to focus on the content of the message. If we're talking about foreign actors or any actor that's trying to mislead people about who they are or who is behind their operation, we will find and take that down. We removed more than 50 networks trying to do it last year and we're up to almost two dozen this year, including coming -- some coming from Russia and some coming from Iran.

So, we have behavior enforcement on people using fake accounts. If we're talking about the content of the communication, we've laid out clearly a set of claims, statements about an election if they are provably false and about voting we will take them down. These are misleading people about how, when, or where to vote and some other specific things we could talk about in more detail. Our teams are looking at this critical period after the election when there might be uncertainty and likely will be uncertainty and evaluating whether we should have additional components added here to be able to take action.

BROWN: Yeah. I mean, that is the question, what is the plan. And, obviously, Facebook played a big role. You know, disinformation was pervasive in 2016 from foreign actors. And we know that Russia, China, Iran are using Facebook and social media, again, to sow distrust.

We also know that there have been hacking done. Prominent people, including Joe Biden have been hacked. Have you seen evidence of foreign actors trying to hack campaign or candidate accounts? What have you seen in that regard?

GLEICHER: There's been a good amount of public reporting. The U.S. government has highlighted this. Google has highlighted it. They have seen targeting of some campaigns.

We know that foreign actors are targeting campaigns. But the reason they are doing that is that influence operations and perception, it targets all of society. They target social media. We also see them targeting and using traditional media. We see them targeting debate across all of its components.

And so, we work closely together with our government partners, partners in civil society and other partners to be able to find and stop this type of targeting.

BROWN: OK. I want to quickly before we let you go, Nathaniel, I want to go to this video of Nancy Pelosi. Facebook has put this partly false label on the video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi because it was manipulated to make it look like she was drunk or drugged.

We checked today, that video is still on your site with more than 3.7 million views. It looks like other video on Facebook, no warnings or clear fair labels. If your fact checkers say the video was altered, why didn't you remove it or make it more clear that this is -- this is false?

GLEICHER: So, I don't know the specific video you're referring to. What I can tell you is when a fact checker concludes something is false, we place a label on it. And actually for a video, the label overlays the video itself. So, you can't even click through to the video until you've read the label. And then in addition, we down rank the video, so far fewer people see it.

BROWN: So --

GLEICHER: One of the challenges we've seen around recent videos is there's an interesting tension. We've seen mainstream reporting and traditional press reporting on these videos and linking to them, and large volumes of people following those links to see the videos because it's being covered in the news.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: But why not take them down, the controversial ones where you're saying this is partly false, why not just take it down?

GLEICHER: So there are two types of people who might find video like this. First, someone who stumbles across it and second someone who seeks it out. If we put a label on it that blocks the vision of it and down rank it, people don't stumble across it, we drastically reduce the volume of people who find it.

If someone is hunting for this, they are going to find it anyway. They are going to find it on another site without a label on it. I would rather they find it and see it with a label and context rather than them find it somewhere else without the label and context.

Now, that's a different balance.

BROWN: Yeah.

GLEICHER: And it's hard for us. But I think that's an important balance to strike to make sure that people don't just find the contents but they find the context that shows that it's been rated false.

BROWN: But I guess it's a little confusing because you have the example of Facebook removing this Breitbart video saying that hydroxychloroquine was a cure for COVID-19. That was released after millions of views. So, it may be confusing for people to understand what is the line, what are the rules?

[16:40:07]

GLEICHER: Well, Pam, we've said -- I should say we've said that content that is false, that is misinformation about coronavirus, that could lead to direct harm, for example, fake cures, we're going to take down. Because the danger of someone seeing that once and relying on that fake cure can lead to direct physical harm. But when you're talking about a broader range of misinformation, we want people to see it but we also want them to understand that it's been determined to be false so that they can make their own judgment and so that label is very clear.

BROWN: All right. Nathaniel Gleicher, thank you so much for coming on for this important discussion. We appreciate it.

GLEICHER: Thank you, Pam.

BROWN: And up next, Dr. Sanjay Gupta with a look at so-called long hauler still dealing with the effects of coronavirus, months after being diagnosed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I haven't gotten better. Some days I'm worse than I was at the beginning.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:45:39]

BROWN: In our health lead: For some people diagnosed with coronavirus, symptoms can linger for months and months.

CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, spoke to some of these so-called long-haulers living a nightmare every day. And the medical experts are left scratching their heads to figure out why.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Four months later, my stomach is not what it used to be.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have been treated as COVID for 97 days. I'm pretty much in the throes of it.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They are known as long-haulers, diagnosed with COVID-19, but months later, still experiencing symptoms.

MICHAEL REAGAN, COVID-19 VICTIM: Everything from blood clots, seizures, tremors. I have a lot of neuropathy. I don't have control pretty much of the left side of my face, and some issues with memory loss. GUPTA: Fifty-year-old Michael Reagan had always been on the go, rock

climbing, running, scuba diving. And then, just like that, everything changed.

(on camera): When did you first feel sick?

REAGAN: Well, on March 22, which was a Sunday I woke up in the morning. I was unable to catch my breath. I went into the bathroom and I coughed up blood.

GUPTA (voice-over): Reagan ended up the same day at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. At the time, in the spring, it was the epicenter of the U.S. coronavirus pandemic.

REAGAN: I remember seeing stretchers come in with lots of people, people gasping for breath.

GUPTA: His symptoms dire.

REAGAN: My blood pressure was out of control. It was 200 over 100- and-something. My heart rate got as high as almost 200 beats a minute, and I was gasping for air.

GUPTA: Fortunately, after five days, Reagan began breathing more easily with the help of medications. He never went on a ventilator.

But he spent the next two months in and out of the hospital.

DR. ZIJIAN CHEN, MOUNT SINAI: We realize that the patients don't really fall into the black and white, where some patients are sick and then they get healthy again, and then some patients are sick and then they die.

GUPTA: Dr. Zijian Chen is medical director of the Center for Post- COVID Care for the Mount Sinai Health System, a first of its kind in the country, focusing on recovery.

For the first several months, doctors have been just trying to figure out this disease, but now the long-term effects are also proving equally mysterious.

CHEN: If you have shortness of breath, we're looking to see whether we see something on a CAT scan, or we see something through pulmonary function testing to see that there's specific organ damage.

And the reason we break this down is because we need to look at it physically to see what the virus actually does to your organs physically.

GUPTA: The CDC estimates 35 percent of adults are not back to normal two to three weeks after testing positive, still experiencing difficulties breathing, nerve pain, or even memory loss and brain fog.

A study of 143 Italian patients found that 87 percent of them reported having at least one lingering effect 60 days after the onset of their first symptom. (on camera): Is there some way of predicting who is more likely to have these persistent symptoms?

CHEN: I would presume that, if you had a preexisting condition, that the infection with the virus can worsen that condition. But, again, we're also seeing patients who are previously healthy, but their symptoms have also persisted throughout their illness and beyond.

GUPTA (voice-over): It's truly a medical mystery that Dr. Chen and Michael Reagan hope is solved.

REAGAN: When I was in the throes of fighting COVID, I was only focused on breathing. I was scared to go to sleep because I would stop breathing. It wasn't until that I was generally doing better that I started to notice a lot of the other symptoms, and I know other people must feel the same.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: This is frightening, Sanjay.

There seems to be -- and, as I'm watching this, I'm thinking, there's this misconception that, if you're healthy and you get coronavirus, you're going to be sick maybe for a week or so, then back to normal.

But these long-haulers prove that's not always the case. And you're not going to know if you're one of the long-haulers or not when -- if you get coronavirus.

GUPTA: Yes, that was the most striking thing, exactly that, Pamela, this idea that even people who had minimal symptoms throughout the course of their illness still had these prolonged recoveries.

[16:50:08]

I thought it was going to be, look, the sicker you were, the longer recovery, the more likely you have these persistent symptoms. That just doesn't seem to be the case here.

I mean, these doctors are a bit baffled by this, Pamela, because it seems to be that this inflammation perhaps is persisting in the body. It's something that affects all these organ systems. Could it be something that is changing in the blood itself as a result of the infection?

They don't know. As I mentioned, it's still considered a little bit of a luxury to thinking about -- to think about recovery, because we're still in the throes of it. That's why we wanted to show you this first center now in the country that's talking about it.

BROWN: Really important reporting there from Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Thank you, Sanjay.

GUPTA: You got it, Pamela. Thank you. BROWN: Well, President Trump is aggressively targeting suburban

voters, but it's not working for some Republicans in a battleground state.

That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:55:33]

BROWN: And we are back with our 2020 lead.

It's evident all over his Twitter feed, if you look, President Trump, in racist and misogynist tweets, trying to appeal to suburban voters, but he's already lost some of them.

CNN's Miguel Marquez went to the suburbs of Phoenix, where some Republicans are now organizing against President Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Trump trouble in the Phoenix suburbs?

LAURA CLEMENT, MORMON WOMEN FOR ETHICAL GOVERNMENT: He's very selfish, and I don't think he's conservative.

MARQUEZ: The president's hands of the pandemic...

DANIEL BARKER, ANTI-TRUMP REPUBLICAN: He has just not been truthful about the coronavirus.

MARQUEZ: ... making voters who typically vote Republican...

KATHY VARGA, WON'T VOTE FOR TRUMP AGAIN: I have hope that we can take the party back from extremism back to the center.

MARQUEZ: ... not only speak out, but organize to defeat him.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Donald Trump wins Arizona.

MARQUEZ: Trump won Arizona by less than four points in 2016. He still has support in this battleground state.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We love him.

MARQUEZ: But recent polls show Joe Biden with a narrow edge.

Now even some current and former Republicans are organizing against Trump.

C.J. DIEGEL, STAND UP REPUBLIC: You can't blame the president for the virus, but you can absolutely blame him for the complete lack of leadership and the mismanagement since that time.

MARQUEZ: C.J. Diegel runs the Arizona chapter of Stand Up Republic, the nonpartisan political group co-founded by Evan McMullin, who ran as an independent in 2016.

DIEGEL: We want to make sure people know they have an outlet to -- permission, if you will, to go out and either vote against Trump or just not cast a ballot for him.

MARQUEZ: Diegel, a self-described lifelong Republican, never thought he'd say this:

DIEGEL: I will be voting for Joe Biden this year because I'm so, so disgusted.

Kathy Varga says she voted for Donald Trump. She now volunteers for Republicans For a New President.

VARGA: I would like to see a president that can unify the country, that can show empathy for others.

Longtime Republican Daniel Barker, twice appointed a judge by Republican governors, has started a political action committee. Its name is its message: Arizona Republicans Who Believe in Treating Others With Respect.

BARKER: if we could make a difference, whatever it might be, so that Joe Biden won Arizona, that is our hope.

MARQUEZ: For now, he's printing and distributing Arizona Republicans for Biden yard signs.

Laura Clement is working with the group Mormon Women for Ethical Government. It started after Trump's election.

CLEMENT: He was in denial, and he only started wearing a mask like a few weeks ago. So, I think he only made it worse.

MARQUEZ: She, too, says she's voting for Biden.

The president and the pandemic, in the Grand Canyon State, a call to action for some Republicans to vote for anyone other than Donald Trump.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ: So, over the last four years, I have spoken to a lot of Republicans, a lot of swing voters in a lot of swing states. I have never heard Republicans or swing voters speak out not only against the president or say they're going to vote for somebody else, but organizing against him the way they are.

The other thing these guys say is enablers. That's a word you hear a lot here. They want to defeat Donald Trump. They want to defeat his enablers, they say. They see this election as the first step toward taking back what they believe is their Republican Party -- Pamela.

BROWN: All right, Miguel Marquez in Phoenix for us, thanks so much, Miguel, really important reporting there. And wanting to turn now to our money lead. For the first time since the pandemic started, weekly unemployment claims dipped below the one million mark; 963,000 Americans filed for benefits for the first time last week. That is the lowest number in 20 straight weeks, since the shutdowns began in mid-March.

Despite the dip, weekly claims are still at an all-time high. For prospective, even at the peak of the financial crisis in 2009, it took nearly five years for claims to drop to levels before the crisis started.

And one quick programming note for you here. Be sure to tune in to CNN's special live coverage of the 2020 Democratic National Convention. We will be bringing you all of the important speeches and the biggest moments.

And it starts Monday night at 8:00 p.m. Eastern.

And I'm Pamela Brown, in for Jake Tapper. Our coverage on CNN continues right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[17:00:00]