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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Trump Attacks Mail-In Voting, Urges Americans to Vote in Person; Interview with Sen. Mark Warner on Mail-In Ballots; Senate Intel Report Says Manafort Was a Grave Counterintelligence Threat; How Contact Racing is Helping Bend The Curve; FDA Halts Plasma Treatment for COVID. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired August 19, 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]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: And election experts say that mail-in ballots, the good news with them is they leave a paper trail making them traceable and more secure. And they say that, look, the best thing you can do as a voter is to plan ahead and to be patient. That even though it may take long this year to get the results that doesn't mean anything is wrong. It just means that election experts are taking extra care to get it right -- Jake.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: All right, Pamela Brown in Washington, thank you so much.

Here now to talk about election security and more, Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. The Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator Warner, good to see you.

So, President Trump has refused to explicitly say that he will accept the election results. Many Americans are anticipating a problem with that. A new CNN poll finds that if he were to lose, 55 percent of those polled believe that he will not concede. What are Democrats planning to do if the President loses and refuses to leave?

SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): Well, first of all, Jake, I think we just need to take a deep breath and step back for a moment and just hear what you just said. You know, there's never been in our history a time or a President, before an election, says he might not abide by the results of the election.

That is so anti-American, anti-basic democratic principles and it just gets my head spinning when he says this on a repeated basis. And he's saying this in the aftermath yesterday, the fifth volume of our intelligence committee report came out, all bipartisan, that outlined what Russia did in 2016.

End of the day what Russia and foreign governments want to do is undermine the confidence Americans have in our system. And it seems that President Trump seems to be playing into that narrative when before votes are even cast, he's casting doubt on the validity of elections. So, I think we're all going to have to rise to the occasion, whether

in a state like mine in Virginia where we now have 45 days of early voting as well as no excuse absentee voting. You know, write in for those ballots now and you could start dropping them off on September 19th in Virginia.

Many other states will have early voting. Let's not wait until election day, let's vote in record numbers. So there is nothing about the election -- and candidly, the media is going to have to be willing to not kind of do and then on the other hand, as one of the commentators just said, if it takes an extra day or two to make sure all votes are counted, that is not a sign of disarray, that's a sign of an attempt of election officials to be accurate.

TAPPER: Right.

WARNER: I think with this kind of mindset, I think we all -- so much is at stake here in terms of basic confidence in our system that we're all going to have to rise to the occasion.

TAPPER: We've been making that point now for several weeks, the election might not be settled on election night. It might take days or even weeks or perhaps even longer.

Let me ask you about that report that your committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, released yesterday. A comprehensive bipartisan about Russian election interference in the 2016 campaign. Some really stunning conclusions in this bipartisan report.

Finding that Trump's 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort was considered a counterintelligence threat, was sharing internal campaign information with someone identified in your report as a Russian intelligence officer, that Vladimir Putin personally directed the hack into the DNC.

But like the Mueller Report, this report does not explicitly accuse the Trump campaign of conspiracy or the word "collusion." Why not?

WARNER: Well, Jake, our report was not a criminal investigation. That was what Bob Mueller was supposed to do. Ours was a counterintelligence investigation. And I said to folks, read the report. Reach your own conclusions. I'll accept whatever conclusions individuals reach.

And as you said, all five volumes have been bipartisan. Earlier volumes pointed out Russia's attempt to hack into election systems or misuse social media, this attempt focused on the unprecedented level of contacts between Russian agents and people affiliated with the Trump campaign.

But I would even say to a degree that's still all in the rearview mirror. What do we take from this report going forward into 2020? Ten days ago, the American intelligence community said that Russia will be back and they are back. And other nations may be trying to copy their playbook as well, like China and Iran. And my job as the intelligence vice chair is to keep the pressure on the intelligence community to get that information out as much as possible to the American public.

[15:35:00]

We have an obligation, I think, to educate the American public about the Russian disinformation campaigns. Russia's attempts to mess with our election, they do it in democracies all around the world.

TAPPER: Right.

WARNER: But the best is educating the public and Sweden does a good job, Lithuania does a good job, and Estonia does a good job. They're adjacent to Russia, they get this kind of, interference all the time. Educate the public so they can spot that Russian disinformation. We need to do a better job of that going into 2020.

TAPPER: Well, frankly, sir, I mean some of the disinformation that's coming into the electoral system, into the political system these days is being given out by Republicans on Capitol Hill and individuals that work for conservative media. Are you calling it out? Is your chairman, Mr. Burr, willing to call it out?

WARNER: We did this three and a half years in this kind of environment bipartisan and we're going to stay getting out of the facts. And where I've called on the intelligence community is to go ahead and provide the kind of briefs that I've received to those individuals who I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe unknowingly propagating the disinformation campaign. Let's at least brief them.

Then if they continue, they have to do that knowing that they may be advocating a Russian position. But I think it's the intelligence committee's obligation to brief those kind of people who may be -- I will give them the benefit of the doubt again at this moment unknowingly perpetrating this kind of disinformation campaign.

TAPPER: That's very generous of you, sir. So the report that you issued also found that President Trump did speak to Roger Stone about WikiLeaks, which is, of course, the organization that is accused of putting out, disseminating Russian obtained emails through the hacks, et cetera. Despite the fact that President Trump told the Special Counsel in written answers that he had, quote, no recollections that he had spoken with Roger Stone about it. Is your report suggesting that President Trump lied to Robert Mueller?

WARNER: Our report laid out three and a half years of work of the facts that we obtained. I think it is twice the volume of the Mueller Report. It is part five of literally thousands of pages, hundreds of interviews and documents. I think every American ought to be advised, particularly this volume five, read it and draw your own conclusions.

Both looking back in terms of what happened in 2016 but more importantly, how do we make sure it doesn't happen again in 2020. Particularly when we're in the midst of a pandemic. When we've got a President before the election who is saying he may not abide by the results. When we've got his Postmaster General clearly getting caught trying to screw up the workings of the Post Office and there is going to be more people voting this way.

And my hope would be that other institutions, the judiciary, the media, my Republican friends, will realize this cannot stand. I mean our democracy ought to be bigger than any one individual.

TAPPER: But, Senator, it's a pretty simple question. Did the President lie? I mean he was under oath, right?

WARNER: There was the Mueller investigation that did criminal. We're not -- I'm not weigh on what happened in 2016 other than what was put forward in the report and I think the facts speak for themselves.

TAPPER: Well, that would suggest that you're saying the facts are that the President spoke with Roger Stone and the facts are the President told Special Counsel Robert Mueller he had no recollection of it and there's a discrepancy between those two, would agree with that?

WARNER: Jake, I'd say I'm going to stand by the report and the facts speak for themselves.

TAPPER: Senator Mark Warner --

WARNER: The most important thing we can do, Jake, though, is let's make sure it doesn't happen again. So, let's make sure we all get out and vote and have our voices counted.

TAPPER: Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Sir.

Coming up next, the disease detectives who could change the trajectory of the pandemic with answers to just a few simple questions. Stay with us.

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[15:40:00]

TAPPER: Test, trace, isolate, this is the mantra for public health experts trying to contain the coronavirus pandemic. South Korea and Germany have credited contact tracing as a key part of their mitigation strategies. And while it's not happening on a large scale in the United States, CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta did find some places across the country where this kind of disease gumshoe work is happening.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALEXANDER MIAMEN, CONTACT TRACER: This is Alexander calling from the Massachusetts COVID-19 Collaborative. How are you doing?

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Alexander Miamen is making a call that could change the trajectory of this

pandemic.

MIAMEN: Symptom wise you are OK?

GUPTA: He is a contract tracer with the group PIH, Partners in Health. His goal, find the contacts from someone recently diagnosed and let them know they might be at risk as well.

MIAMEN: The sacrifices you are making too is helping us bend the curve in the community.

GUPTA: One study in "The Lancet" found that contact tracing plus isolating and quarantining reduced transmission by 64 percent. Massachusetts has had just over 124,000 cases total and has a daily positivity rate under 2 percent, that's in part because of contact tracing.

MIAMEN: This is a list of people that have tested positive. Self- reporting positive or possible contact and exposure to the virus.

[15:45:04]

GUPTA (on camera): What does counts then as a contact?

MIAMEN: We're looking for intimate interaction for a prolonged period of time. So, there's two things, if is over 15 minutes of close interaction, we count that as a contact, right.

So, we look at those data and say, OK, where you at the grocery store? OK, you are this grocery store and for say, 30 minutes, OK. Were you in close interaction with anyone around you?

JOHN WELCH, PARTNERS IN HEALTH: Contact tracing has been around for over a century.

GUPTA (voice-over): John Welch oversees the contact tracing partnership between Massachusetts officials and PIH. The group has helped with the outbreak responses around the world. I saw their work firsthand when I covered the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Now they are using the lessons they learned over there here in the United States. One of the biggest lessons is trust.

MIAMEN: You're catching the flu, OK.

Asking someone to isolate or to quarantine is a big ask. So, we have to put social services around for them to do that successfully.

GUPTA (on camera): What do these services look like? How do you help somebody like that?

MIAMEN: We ask someone to isolate, right, that lives from paycheck to paycheck, can't afford, can do Uber eats, right. This person has to go to the grocery store. We provide these kind of services, right, be it food.

WELCH: You have to support them in the context where they find themselves and you have to make sure you're addressing all of their -- all of their needs. GUPTA (voice-over): As we've seen with testing in the United States,

we also don't have enough tracing. Just over 41,000 contact tracers at the end of last month, that's according to a survey from MPR and John Hopkins University. Public health experts estimate the country needs at least 100,000 contact tracers, that we need to think of this as an entirely new sector of health care.

DR. MARCUS PLESCIA, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, ASSOCIATION OF STATE AND TERRITORIAL HEALTH OFFICIALS: Contact tracing doesn't work if you wait around for five to seven days to act on a positive case. That may be the bigger challenge for us right now than the actual size of the contact tracing work force.

GUPTA: Ideally it should work like this. Someone gets tested, and even before they leave the facility, they know if they've tested positive. Right away, at that moment, the newly diagnosed person should be interviewed and the process of contact tracing should begin.

WELCH: What we're seeing now is so much transmission in huge numbers happening around the United States, it starts to become really daunting.

GUPTA: And that means Alexander Miamen will keep making those calls and connecting with his neighbors.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: And Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now. Sanjay hold on, we're going to squeeze in a big break. I want to talk you after that break about this new blood plasma treatment for COVID and why the FDA has put a hold on it. Stay with us.

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TAPPER: The Food and Drug Administration halted its emergency use authorization for blood plasma to treat COVID. According to "The New York Times," Dr. Anthony Fauci himself stepped in to argue that the emerging data on this treatment is too weak to continue.

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta is with me. Sanjay, this is not good news. What else can you tell us about why the FDA made this move?

GUPTA: Yes, it's interesting, Jake. We know that there's been a pretty low bar, if you will, for emergency use authorization, certainly up until this point. I mean hydroxychloroquine, you remember that got EUA with very little evidence.

I think we're starting to see a little bit of a shift there. That's just sort of more broadly speaking, a higher sort of caliber of evidence that's being required to get EUA, again, Emergency Use Authorization. That's not the same as getting

approval which requires even more evidence but for this EUA.

With the blood plasma, which I will say I think there's still a lot of enthusiasm around what they've said, is look, the evidence just isn't there yet. We're not seeing enough data in terms of randomized trials comparing patients who received this to patients who did not receive it. And really seeing is the plasma itself making a difference?

There's another nuance here, Jake, and that is that once you give an EUA, it actually makes the trials -- the further trials harder to do,

right. Because patients then want the plasma if it's available under this emergency use authorization. So, they say let's just slowdown that process, collect more data, and then they're going to re- evaluate.

TAPPER: So just to get everyone up to speed, the whole idea of convalescent plasma is to use the antibodies from other people who have contracted COVID, to inject them into people who are suffering from COVID to prevent or treat the disease, the antibiotic antibodies that presumably helped that person survive it. There are similar treatments being researched though, right?

GUPTA: That's right. And this whole thing is sort of known broadly as passive immunity. You're trying to give people passive immunity. But as you correctly mentioned, it can be used for both preventative and potentially to treat people who already have the disease as well.

So, the case you just mentioned, you take the plasma from somebody who has recovered from the disease, has antibodies. Those antibodies then go to three or four people. There's also something known as hyperimmune globulin where you take lots and lots of people's, you know, antibodies, put them all together and use that as a treatment for various people again either as a preventive or as a treatment.

There's also something known as monoclonal antibody. And that is when you sort of pick an antibody that you think is a winner, Jake, and you replicate that, clone it over and over again and use that as a potential therapy.

[15:55:03]

So, there are different things that all accomplish this passive immunity.

TAPPER: All right, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much.

Former Ohio Governor John Kasich is hinting that he is not the only high-profile Republican official backing Joe Biden.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KASICH, FORMER OHIO GOVERNOR: Well, look, you're going to have a prominent Congressman is going to come out and declare, let him do it --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Who is it? Well, that prominent Congressman will join me next. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)