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The Lead with Jake Tapper

CNN Poll Shows Biden's Lead Over Trump Shrinks as Enthusiasm for Election Grows; Trump Rails Against Universal Mail-In Ballots; Pelosi Calls for House to Return from Recess for USPS Vote; Researchers Struggling to Recruit Minorities to Vaccine Trials; Los Angeles Schools Announce Large Testing Plan to Restart School; US Intel Says Iran Paid Bounties to Taliban for Targeting American Troops; Democratic National Convention Begins Tonight. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired August 17, 2020 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: -- this election, that could potentially mean sort of record turn out just as we're talking about how the vote is going to be actually be conducted this fall, the convergence of those two things could be a serious problem.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: And David, this evening at the Democratic Convention, the speakers include some Republicans like Ohio Governor John Kasich. And CNN has just learned of this former Chief of Staff of the Department Of Homeland Security under Trump, Miles Taylor who's endorsing Biden in this new Republican Voters Against Trump video. He says what he saw inside the administration was terrifying.

Do these sorts of endorsements of Biden by Republicans especially Republicans like Miles Taylor, who have worked and seen Trump up close, do you think it has any impact?

CHALIAN: I mean I think in the aggregate this is a reality, right, that Donald Trump does not have at the moment as consolidated a Republican Party necessarily as he had across its entire spectrum.

But it's not the individual stories, I think, Jake. I mean you've two big anti-Trump, Republicans groups. Republican Voters Against Trump, The Lincoln Project out there spending a ton of money, not only are they trying to take Trump down, they're actually also out there supporting Joe Biden, these Republican operatives behind this effort.

But I do think seeing a political appointee -- remember this isn't a government official who's just there carry from the Obama administration. A Trump political appointee coming out and saying, this is why I can no longer be with him. It's sort of is a validator kind of experience that the Democrats are looking to reinforce throughout their convention week this week.

TAPPER: Yes, I mean what he describes as devastating about Trump not wanting to help Californians who suffered through wildfires because California is a Democratic state and on and on. David Chalian, thank you so much for your insights. Appreciate it as always.

CHALIAN: Sure, thanks.

TAPPER: The House of Representatives is headed back to Washington this Saturday for a rare weekend vote hoping to stop the U.S. Postal Service from making changes that are delaying mail and could delay it even further.

The President meanwhile has spent a lot of today railing against universal mail-in ballots suggesting that the election might be rigged. What the President said is not true. Here are the facts.

Universal vote by mail which is mailing ballots to all registered voters in a state, that's going on without any serious problems for years in states such as Utah or Oregon and there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Now the Postmaster General, an ally of the President, has agreed to testify before Congress next week. CNN's Phil Mattingly is live for us from Capitol Hill. And Phil, what is this legislation that Democrats want to pass, and could it solve the problem of all of these mail delivery delays?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it will at least seek to address those problems, Jake, and it really works in two frames. First it would stop or block any of the operational changes that the Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy and his predecessor put into place that have been responsible -- at least according to many constituents of the lawmakers -- for those slowdowns in deliveries.

It would also supply $25 billion for the Postal Service and this is obviously a huge issue, one that goes further back than just the last couple of weeks or months. The Postal Service has had major financial issues for a series of years now.

The idea behind this bill would essentially be to prop up the Postal Service over the course of the next several months in order to ensure that there are no major issues in vote by mail but on other issues, as well. Veterans who receive prescriptions, areas like that where constituents have really raised alarm to lawmakers.

Jake, you've seen the Speaker take this unprecedented action bringing the House back in the middle of a recess in between two national conventions that underscores, one, the urgency they believe -- they think exists, given where the President stands on this. But also, that they understand -- given what they're hearing from constituents -- this is a political issue that they want out in front particularly in this moment in the campaign.

TAPPER: So, I interviewed the Chief of Staff of the White House Mark Meadows and he told me yesterday that the White House supports a separate Postal Service bill but something closer to $10 billion and not $25 billion. Although we should point out it's the Trump appointed Postal Service Board of Governors that requested the $25 billion, not Democrats in Congress. Where do things stand today? MATTINGLY: Not great. If you want a negotiation that actually ends up

in an outcome, you know, Democrats put that $25 billion in their broad coronavirus relief package because the Board of Governors of the US Postal Service requested it.

During negotiations behind closed doors sources say that there was kind of a tentative agreement at that $10 billion number. That's obviously short of where Democrats are headed with this bill they're going to vote on, on Saturday. And where does that leave things?

Still Very, very far apart. Republicans and Mark Meadows -- as what he was telling you yesterday and reiterated today to reporters -- want any Postal Service funding to be paired with other economic issues, other economic provisions. Right now, Democrats are unwilling to go piecemeal on their broader coronavirus relief package. So, in other words, Democrats are going to push forward on a U.S. Postal Service bill with changes and funding.

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Republicans right now look like they are going to oppose that in the House as is the White House and the broader negotiations over a broader coronavirus relief bill, one that the economy according to many economist desperately needs in the months ahead, still in a very, very clear standstill -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Phil Mattingly on Capitol Hill, thank you so much.

Coming up next, the major recruiting problem that could now delay Operation Warp Speed and the nation's efforts to get a coronavirus vaccine. Stay with us.

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TAPPER: The Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed program is moving quickly to hopefully come up with 300 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine by January. That's the goal.

One potential problem, scientists have not managed to recruit enough black or Latino study subjects for the vaccine clinical trials which could cause a

delay in the vaccine.

CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has some exclusive data now on how this recruiting is going. Elizabeth, what's gone wrong here?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: What's gone wrong is they just haven't reached out to these communities enough. They're in the process. And when they do reach out, these communities are not so happy to get an invitation to join these clinical trials.

Let's talk about the numbers first. So, Jake, 350,000 people have registered online to take part in these trials. Only 10 percent of the registrants have been black or Latino and these studies are supposed to reflect the population of people who are sick, but more than half of COVID cases have been among people who are black or Latino. So obviously that 10 percent and more than half don't match up.

And there is a board of experts that oversees these trials, if they see that there aren't enough minorities they could say, hey, wait a second, you need to slow this down and get more minorities. It is not scientifically valid to have a study that doesn't reflect the population that you're trying to help -- Jake.

TAPPER: Why have they had such a difficult time recruiting minorities?

COHEN: So Jake, there is a real legacy of mistrust of the medical establishment, especially in the black community. The legacy of Tuskegee and other experiments are real. Black people were experimented on without their knowledge or consent.

In the case of Tuskegee, they had syphilis and they were not treated for their syphilis. This ended in the '70s, the U.S. didn't apologize for this until the late 1990s. That is very much front and center in people's minds especially because injustices in the health community still exist.

Blacks do not get treated the same way as white people do by doctors to put it bluntly. So that is making black people say, wait I second, you want me to be in an experiment? You want me to roll up my sleeve and get an experimental vaccine? And the answer is often, no.

TAPPER: Elizabeth, beyond the fact that the sample group is supposed to represent the people who are getting sick, why else might it be important to have diversity in these trials?

COHEN: Right, so in a vaccine trial, Jake, you are trying to get people to join who are at high risk for getting infected and getting sick. If you vaccinated a bunch of home bodies who, you know, hardly ever left and always wore masks when they did and always social distanced, at the end of the trial, no one would be sick but you wouldn't know if it was the vaccine in that you gave them that protected them of if it's just that they hardly ever left home.

So, you want a high-risk group and unfortunately as we just saw from those numbers, that minorities are at a higher risk than white people for getting COVID and getting very sick from COVID. So the minorities are exactly the group that you're looking for. Unfortunately, it's exactly the group they're not having a very easy time recruiting.

TAPPER: All right, Elizabeth Cohen, thank you so much for that report.

COHEN: Thanks.

TAPER: In our national LEAD today, children who attend the Los Angeles Unified School District go back to school virtually this week in preparation for in-person education at some point, the district is also launching a new testing and tracing program just in time for the first day of school. CNN's Stephanie Elam joins us now from Los Angeles. And Stephanie, this is a huge undertaking. How will it work? STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: To say the least, Jake, you're

talking about some 600,000 students that are in K through 12th grade here in Los Angeles County. It's the second largest school district in the nation. So this is huge. Because they're not just talking about the students, they're also talking about the staff and also looking at their families potentially.

So, what the idea here is, is that they will starting today test for a baseline of people who are there. Maybe some of the staff that may be on campuses now and their children who are there as part of care taking efforts right now. Then they will expand it out to everyone. The idea being if they do this, they will know where the virus is and it will help L.A. County as a whole as well.

Then if someone does test positive then they will test their family members as well. And they've got a big consortium of entities that are coming together to put this together in this task force. Besides the fact that you've got Austin Beutner who's the Superintendent of L.A. USD coming out behind this.

But they also they have the help of UCLA, Stanford, Johns Hopkins University, all working pro-bono to help L.A. USD do this. And then also looking at Microsoft that's going to provide a way for them to cull all this data together and then Anthem Blue Cross, Health Net as well as some other testing experts.

It'll be a saliva-based test that can be collected by the individuals themselves and then that data will be processed quickly to find out where the virus may be within the population -- Jake.

TAPPER: And what else will the task force do with the data that they collect?

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ELAM: Right. One of the big goals here is to find out how well this can work and perhaps inform other school districts, other organizations on how they could do it within their own settings. And so, they want to take all of the data that they cull together, what they learn and make it available to the general public so that that way other people can learn from this and hopefully get people back to school.

Obviously, this does not mean that we're going to see L.A. USD kids going back to school this week. The idea is to make it so that they can go back and be safer and actually stay on campus because everyone agrees that students learn better when they're actually there in their classrooms with their teachers -- Jake.

TAPPER: Oh, they do, indeed. Stephanie Elam, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

It was not just Russia. Next why U.S. intelligence agencies believe another country also offered bounties to Taliban terrorists to target U.S. and U.K. troops in Afghanistan. Which country? That's next.

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TAPPER: In our world LEAD, CNN has learned that in addition to Russia, U.S. intelligence agencies believe that Iran also paid bounties to Taliban terrorists to target U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan just last year.

Intelligence agencies identified payments linked to at least six attacks carried out against coalition service members including a suicide bombing at Bagram in December. CNN's Alex Marquardt joins us now. And Alex, tell us more about this story.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Jake, yet another country that is now being accused or that the intelligence community has assessed is carrying out what they would like to be deadly attacks on American forces.

The intelligence community has identified at least six attacks in the course of 2019 for which the Haqqani Network -- which is a branch of the Taliban -- received payments from Iran. Now, that part about Iran making those payments is classified. But two officials familiar with the intelligence did tell our colleague Zach Cohen that Iran was behind them.

Among the biggest attacks as you mentioned was this one against Bagram Air Base. That's right near Kabul. It's the biggest U.S. air base in Afghanistan. This was a sophisticated attack that the U.S. had to send in air support to eventually quell.

Some 70 people were wounded including four Americans, two people were killed. And in the wake of this attack, there was a condemnation from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo among other officials. But there was no mention of Iran or of the four people wounded. So then the question became whether and how to respond to this attack.

And over the course of the next several months there were discussions, and in the end it was decided that there should be no direct response because there were ongoing talks, negotiations and a peace deal in the works with the Taliban.

Jake, we did reach out to the Pentagon. They did not want to address the intelligence or those discussions in the time frame. But a spokesman did tell us that the administration has repeatedly demanded both publicly and privately that Iran cease its scourge of malign and destabilizing behavior throughout the Middle East and the world -- Jake.

TAPPER: Alex, what more can you tell us about the behind-the-scenes debate about how to respond to this?

MARQUARDT: Well, that it took several months. This was something that was really much discussed and deliberated over. If you look at the time frame, that attack against Bagram Air Base was December 11th. And it wasn't until the end of March that it was decided that there would be no direct response. Now just a month prior in February that's when that historic peace

deal was struck with the Taliban. Now that keep in mind is a direct response. A current official and a former official both said that that strike, that U.S. strike that killed Qasem Soleimani in January was also related to this deal between Iran and the Haqqani Network.

This is how one person who was familiar with the discussion described those deliberations. They said, the overarching element to all of this this has been the prioritization of the peace deal with the Taliban. And that even going back to December 2019 was a well-known priority in terms of what the U.S. response would be.

So, Jake, it all comes back to those discussions with the Taliban. The same source saying that in any other year if those discussions were not taking place that concerted action would have taken place -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Alex Marquardt, thanks so much.

We are counting down to the start of the Democratic National Convention. I'm going to speak live to one of this week's featured speakers.

Plus, the Republican on this evening's lineup. Stay with us.

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

TAPPER: And welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

We begin this hour with breaking news in our 2020 LEAD. In a matter of hours the Democratic National Convention is set to kick off from virtually everywhere really. The deadly coronavirus pandemic has forced the Democratic Party to scrap a crowded convention in Milwaukee. Instead, there will be four nights of speeches and performances from locations across the country, making the pitch for a Biden presidency before Biden formally accepts the nomination later this week.

Among the top speakers this evening, former first lady Michelle Obama, Biden primary rival Senator Bernie Sanders, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina. A Republican, former Ohio Governor Jan Kasich, will also speak in support of Biden today with tonight's focus on three crises facing the nation right now. Racial injustice, the coronavirus pandemic, and the economic catastrophe as a result of the pandemic.

CNN' senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny joins us now from Vice President Biden's hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. And Jeff, obviously, this is an unusual convention. How are Democrats hoping to generate any enthusiasm without crowds?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, the enthusiasm the Democrats hope to inspire is the enthusiasm they believe that is driving people to the polls and being excited about the election.

It is on the issues. As you mention, coronavirus, racial injustice, the economy as well. So, this is going to be a much more serious convention in the sense that there is not going to be the applause, at least from inside one room. But there is still excitement that we saw throughout this primary campaign that led us to this point.