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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Supreme Court Battle Set to Begin; Joe Biden in Wisconsin; U.S. Approaches 200,000 Deaths from COVID-19; Trump Claims U.S. is Rounding the Corner of Pandemic Despite 40,000+ New Daily Cases of Average. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired September 21, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:02]

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Now, Biden talked a little bit about how he insists that he will protect preexisting conditions going forward, hoping that that's something that could play with voters, particularly as this coronavirus pandemic continues to grip the country.

You saw Biden in that speech wearing a mask here in Wisconsin, where cases have surged. Biden also trying to appeal to those voters who might have voted for Trump back in 2016, saying that Biden will work for them and unite the country -- Jake.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Very interesting.

Arlette Saenz in Wisconsin, a key battleground state for the 2020 presidential election.

I want to bring in our chief political correspondent, Dana Bash.

And, Dana, Biden's approach today, very middle-of-the-road, saying he can work with Republicans and Democrats, talked about how he wants to bring the country together.

He is clearly running from the center, or at least attempting to.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely.

And the fact I know that, as you did, Jake, that he didn't even talk for a second about the Supreme Court fight, he really intentionally clearly kept his eye on the ball. And that ball, from the campaign's point of view, is health care, and about how the president, despite what he said to voters in states like Wisconsin four years ago, isn't looking out for the little person.

And what struck me was the wording, Jake, that the former vice president used. To the people who voted for Donald Trump, who had been Democrats previously, I know you're frustrated, I know you don't feel that you are seen or heard. That will change with me.

But fewer than 23,000 votes, that was the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton winning or losing in Wisconsin. And that's with nearly three million people voting. And so that is why Joe Biden is making a direct appeal to try to bring those traditionally Democratic voters back into the fold, because he clearly feels and his campaign feels that he is the kind of Democratic messenger who can do that this year.

TAPPER: All right, Dana Bash, thank you so much.

Now to the battle over that Supreme Court vacancy, President Trump saying today he will announce his nominee this week, either Friday or Saturday, he says, to fill the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat. The president also saying he has narrowed his choices down to five contenders. He has pledged to nominate a woman.

As CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports for us now, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell just declared Trump's pick will receive a vote on the Senate floor this year.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Trump says he will announce his pick to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court by the end of the week.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And I think, in all due respect, we should wait until the services are over for Justice Ginsburg. And so we're looking probably at Friday or maybe Saturday.

COLLINS: Trump telling FOX News that he's waiting out of respect for RBG, before baselessly claiming that her dying wish to be replaced by the next president, which she dictated to her granddaughter, was concocted by Democrats.

TRUMP: Well, I don't know that she said that, or was that written out by Adam Schiff and Schumer?

QUESTION: It was reported.

COLLINS: The president spent the weekend on the phone with staff, lawmakers and advisers, as he narrowed down his list of finalists to several women.

TRUMP: I'm looking at five, probably four, but I'm looking at five very seriously.

COLLINS: On that list right now are Amy Coney Barrett, Allison Jones Rushing, Kate Todd, and Barbara Lagoa, a Cuban American judge from Florida that campaign officials believe could provide a political boost.

TRUMP: Well, she's excellent. She's Hispanic. I don't know her. Florida. We love Florida.

COLLINS: Trump making clear his desire to submit a 6-3 conservative majority on the court for generations to come.

TRUMP: These are the smartest people. These are the smartest young people. You like to go young because they're there for a long time.

COLLINS: While it's not clear who he will pick, it is clear that Trump wants to have his nominee confirmed before the November election.

TRUMP: I think the vote, the final vote, should be taken, frankly, before the election. We have plenty of time for that.

COLLINS: Waiting until Friday to announce his pick would give Trump 39 days to get his nominee confirmed.

On average, Senate confirmations for Supreme Court justices take around 70 days.

TRUMP: We should act quickly, because we're going to have probably election things involved here because of the fake ballots that they will be sending out.

COLLINS: The president providing no proof that fraudulent ballots are being sent out. But there is new audio revealing comments he made to Bob Woodward about reshaping the courts and working with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to appoint conservative judges.

TRUMP: He will absolutely ask me, please, let's get the judge approved, instead of 10 ambassadors.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Now, Jake, inside the White House, this process of selecting someone is largely being overseen by the chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, in addition to the vice president, Mike Pence, and Jared Kushner, though the president is also hearing from a ton of outside voices as well.

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Just today, he spoke with the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, of course, an anti-abortion group. And you can bet he is going to hear a flood of advice over the next few days, before he finally settles on who his nominee is going to be.

TAPPER: All right, Kaitlan Collins, thank you so much.

Let's bring in CNN's Abby Phillip and Ron Brownstein to talk about it.

Abby, McConnell just said on the Senate floor that the president's nominee will get a vote this year. Now, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski have said McConnell should delay any action until we know who wins the presidency November 3.

Do you think any additional Republicans will join those two, thus, theoretically, at least being able to block McConnell from proceeding to a vote?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think it's a possibility. The list of people who could be in the company and Susan Collins and

Lisa Murkowski are pretty limited. You're talking about maybe three or four other Republicans who might be open to it. Many haven't said where they stand.

But I did think it was notable that McConnell said today this nominee will get a vote this year. He did not say before the election. It is possible that McConnell is trying to feel out the Senate Republicans that he represents, effectively, and saying to them, would you be open to this if we held a vote after the November election?

That might be more likely to help him keep the Republicans together? And I think that that might allow for a delay in this vote, but perhaps give Democrats limited options to stop it altogether.

TAPPER: And, Ron, McConnell also just argued that, in the '70s, Justice John Paul Stevens was confirmed in just 19 days.

No one doubts that it is theoretically possible to confirm somebody from now until Election Day, which is 43 days away. I guess the question is not whether they could. It's whether they should.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

And, of course, the intervening -- among the many intervening events was McConnell holding open a seat for the entire election year of 2016. You hear Ted Cruz saying, well, we shouldn't have an evenly divided court in an election year. Didn't bother Ted Cruz or any of the other Republicans in 2016.

Look, they probably will find the votes to do this. I mean, as Abby is saying, the universe of people beyond once you get to Mitt Romney at 50/50, that next one gets very hard.

But if they do, do this, in this very limited time frame, particularly if Republicans lose the Senate and lose the White House, I think you're looking at kind of a crisis of legitimacy for the Supreme Court, that you don't know exactly where it goes.

This will be the third -- if it's seated, the third Supreme Court justice chosen by a president who lost the popular vote and confirmed by a Republican Senate that represents less than half of the country, when you assign half of each state's population to each senator, George W. Bush, who lost the popular vote being two others.

Clarence Thomas, the last Republican, the other Republican on the, court was confirmed by a -- by senators who represented less than half the country as well.

And I don't know exactly where this goes. But if Democrats win the Senate, win the House, win the presidency, and have this new emerging majority centered on diverse America, I don't think they will stand kind of quiescently through the 2020s if this court knocks down their initiatives starting right after the election, with the very real possibility, virtual certainty that the Affordable Care Act will face -- could be struck down, with all the implications of that for people with preexisting conditions.

TAPPER: Abby, Mitch McConnell loves two things. One of them is confirming judges and justices. The other one is maintaining his majority.

And he has a balancing act here, because the question, of course, is whether or not, and for some of the senators, Republican senators up for reelection, like Susan Collins, like Cory Gardner, whether going against what Republicans did in 2016, when they said we should leave this up to the voters in November, whether that will turn off swing voters or independent voters.

I mean, this is hypocritical for many of the senators. How much do you think that calculation works in his favor in terms of pushing this forward now?

PHILLIP: I think it is factoring in.

I mean, the first rule of politics really is do no harm. It's really not clear what the politics of the situation is for a lot of lawmakers. You will hear Republicans saying that 2018 was a referendum on the courts and that they were given a larger majority because of the issue of the Supreme Court.

But, at the same time, you have -- the reason you have senators like Susan Collins trying to pull back from this idea of pushing a nomination through before the November election is because I think she's trying to avoid riling up her opposition.

The problem for many Republicans, however, is that, for the Republican base, this is such a motivating issue. It's a core issue for them. If you're a Lindsey Graham, and you're in a tough race right now in South Carolina, you don't want to pull the rug out from under you by alienating the president's supporters.

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So, it's really difficult to navigate this, given the geography of the Senate map right now is so diverse. These senators who are up are in a lot of varying positions.

So, it might be in McConnell's interest to try to do as little as possible before the election, and then act afterwards.

TAPPER: What do you think, Ron?

I mean, I have heard it explained from Democrats and Republicans alike that this probably hurts Susan Collins and Cory Gardner in Colorado, probably helps McSally in Arizona and Thom Tillis in North Carolina because it brings Republicans back into the fold.

And then you heard Abby obviously talking about the people like Lindsey Graham really needing to have Republicans backing him in what could be a tough election.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, I think it has differential impact in different places.

I think, obviously, Gardner and Collins are the most clearly hurt. I mean, those are states where you have a relatively small evangelical population, a lot of suburban college-educated voters and a clear pro- choice majority.

I think, Arizona, on balance, even if it helps McSally consolidate Republicans, I think it's a problem for her because that's another state with a clear pro-choice majority.

But even if Democrats win those three, they have got to win one more. And those next states, the politics are much more equivocal, whether it's North Carolina, Georgia, Iowa, South Carolina, Texas, Kansas, and Montana. Any of those, I think it is not as clear what -- how this will play out.

I will say that it may matter a great deal, Jake, what the debate is ultimately about. If it's about abortion primarily in states like North Carolina, Iowa, Georgia, that is a jump ball. If it's about protecting people with preexisting conditions, I think that is a very different politics.

And I think that's why you're going to see Biden in particular really hammer at this, because the -- at this point, the virtual certainty is that the court will send this lawsuit back to the district court, which will come back with a ruling throwing out the entire ACA

And some time in 2021, this new justice may get to decide whether the ACA and its protections for people with preexisting conditions continue.

And I think that is ground on which a Theresa Greenfield in Iowa or a Cal Cunningham in North Carolina is going to be much more comfortable fighting than on the question of whether abortion should remain legal.

TAPPER: Yes, you heard Joe Biden talking about Obamacare, emphasizing that.

Ron Brownstein, Abby Phillip, thanks to both of you.

I'm old enough to remember when Republican senators like Lindsey Graham said February was too close to the election to vote on a new Supreme Court justice.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): When a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said, let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So, what's really changed with the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

Plus, after posting new guidance warning that coronavirus particles can float in the air, the CDC took that guidance down today. What the agency is now saying about how the virus spreads.

Stay with us.

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TAPPER: In our health lead today, any moment we're going to hit the grim milestone of 200,000 people in the United States killed by the coronavirus, 200,000, the highest death toll in the world by far according to official numbers. That's basically the equivalent of the entire population of Salt Lake City just gone.

And as CNN's Nick Watt reports, this tragic and preventable milestone approaches as the president insists the U.S. has rounded a corner on the pandemic despite a surge in new cases.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Very soon, we will pass 200,000 people killed by COVID-19 in America. More than double what the president predicted in the spring.

DR. CARLOS DEL RIO, INFECTIOUS DISEASES SPECIALIST: We may be at 300,000 by New Year's. This is not necessary. This is not deaths that need to happen. We need a national strategy to avoid this from happening.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're rounding the corner and we've done a phenomenal job.

WATT: No and no. COVID-19 cases are in fact on the rise. There is the upturn on the graph. We're averaging more than 40,000 new cases a day, again.

DR. MEGAN RANNEY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE, BROWN UNIVERSITY: And we're worried that it's only going to continue. This is the beginning of our second wave.

WATT: Texas went from midsummer hot spot to curve crusher, but now an upturn.

Fewer than 22,000 people just attended the Cowboys season opener, but excitement trampled all over social distancing.

Why are numbers now rising in more than half of states? Could be Labor Day mingling, colleges going back, people moving indoors as the outdoors gets chilly?

DR. PETER HOTEZ, PROFESSOR AND DEAN OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: We may be in for a very apocalyptic fall, I'm sorry to say.

WATT: The president is still fighting the general scientific consensus, says maybe Pfizer will have a viable vaccine very, very soon. TRUMP: I would say that you'll have it long before the end of the

year, maybe by the end of October.

WATT: Meanwhile, the FDA, which would approve any vaccine and also the CDC, now has to run everything through the HHS. The press release reads, in part, no regulation issues from any part of HHS without the approval of the secretary and the White House.

RANNEY: It implies that HHS is going to be serving a censorship function. Our science, our approvals have never had to go through HHS in order to get released to the general public.

WATT: Friday, the CDC finally confirmed that COVID particles can float in the air, makes this virus even more infectious.

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Today, the CDC took that guidance down, claiming: A draft version of proposed changes to these recommendations was posted in error to the agency's official website.

DR. LEANA WEN, FORMER BALTIMORE HEALTH COMMISSIONER: The fact that they retracted this, even though this is common scientific knowledge at this point, one has to wonder what's behind it. Was there political pressure?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATT: Now, one federal official tells CNN that this was all the CDC's doing. It was a mistake. It was posted before the guideline was properly reviewed. Somebody hit the button and shouldn't have is what we're told.

Currently, we're told it's being revised, unclear when the guidance will be reposted. And, Jake, it's going to be interesting to see if it's any different when it is reposted.

TAPPER: All right. Nick Watt, thank you so much.

Let's bring in the dean of Brown University Medical School, Brown University School of Public Health, rather, Dr. Ashish Jha.

Dr. Jha, thanks for joining us.

So, we're about to cross the 200,000-person death toll any moment now. Could this grim toll have been prevented?

DR. ASHISH JHA, DEAN, BROWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Jake, thank you for having me on. Unfortunately, the answer is yes. If we had done what the president knew was the right stuff to do back in February, if we had acted on that information, I think a vast majority of people who have died, they would still be alive today. So it is in fact a double tragedy, not just so many lives lost but that so much of it was preventable. TAPPER: And we're going forward, you heard in that piece, the

predictions of another 100,000 dead by the end of the year. President Trump is going to be holding two more rallies this week. And as we've seen, no masks are required, there is no social distancing.

Listen to what the assistant secretary for HHS, Admiral Brett Giroir, told me over the weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADM. BRETT GIROIR, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF HEALTH, HHS: All the docs, all the public health experts, all of this are really unanimous that it's important to wear a mask when you can not physically distance. Avoid the indoor crowded spaces, wash your hands. And that's the way that we reduce the spread. Slow, the curve, flatten the curve and reduce mortality.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Is holding a massive rally, even if they're outdoors, as we approach this 200,000-person death toll, is this, in any way, acceptable to public health experts?

JHA: Yes. Look, I think we all expect our president to follow the basic scientific guidelines, right? And we expected him to do it as a model for others. And we expect him to do it to protect his own supporters.

And the indoor rallies where people aren't wearing masks, outdoor gatherings where people are stationary and not wearing masks for extended periods of time, those are all really dangerous. And it has defied logic to me why the president would continue to put his own supporters under subject risk.

TAPPER: The CDC just reversed its guidance twice in a week. On Friday, the agency issued guidance saying that aerosols are a main way the virus spreads, it warned that indoor spaces are especially dangerous. But now, today, the CDC reverted back to its old guidance.

After the change was pointed out by CNN, a spokesperson saying, quote, a draft version of proposed changes to these recommendations was posted in error to the agency's official website. The CDC is currently updating its recommendations regarding airborne transmission of coronavirus. A federal official told CNN the result was not the result of any political pressure, it was just published before it was ready to be posted. What do you make of all this?

JHA: Yeah, Jake, it's incredibly confusing. Because first of all the science is clear, airborne transmission is not only just a real thing. It is probably the main way that this virus is transmitted, and that indoor spaces are dangerous. Even beyond six feet if you're in an indoor space and not wearing a mask, you can pick up the virus.

So the science is actually not in debate. I was first relieved to see the CDC catching up to the science, felt to me like maybe the CDC scientists are actually getting a chance to speak and are no longer being muzzled. And then this reversal today throws everything kind of out the window. I no longer understand what's going on.

The science on this is not confusing. It's very clear. I know the CDC scientists know it. We just need to hear it from them.

TAPPER: Is it dangerous to be indoors but you're wearing a mask the whole time, is that dangerous? Like, for instance, the people who are trying school these days, but all the kids are wearing masks.

JHA: I think what we know is that indoors with a mask is much, much safer. And then if you can open up windows, if you can just get some basic ventilation going, most of the evidence we have is that that is very safe. I mean, nothing is 100 percent. But it's relatively low risk if you can be wearing masks and have reasonable ventilation in the room where you are.

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TAPPER: There have been studies showing that COVID can spread through small particles in the air, just like that CDC guidance had said.

Should the CDC change its guidance back to what it had posted Friday that it took down today?

JHA: Yeah, absolutely, right? Again, there is a science on this that is unclear. The CDC scientists know this, by the way. It's not like we know this and they don't. The CDC scientists should be able to speak and their guidance should reflect what we know in the scientific community, which is that aerosol and airborne transmission is a real thing.

TAPPER: Twenty-eight states are seeing at least a 10 percent rise in cases over the last week. Is this a spike that maybe was anticipated because of Labor Day? Or are we at another long-term surge, beginning it?

JHA: Yeah, it's hard to sort out for sure what's causing this. I think Labor Day probably is a part of the story here. You know, we did see cases declining going into Labor Day. But about four, five days after Labor Day, the cases sort of flattened and started going back up.

That's pretty suggestive that there were a lot of infections over Labor Day that took five, seven days to start showing up in the numbers. Obviously, I hope it stops growing, but I think we're all worried that this is the beginning of a much longer spike.

TAPPER: All right. Dr. Ashish Jha, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Back to our big story this hour, the Supreme Court vacancy, Democrats need just two more Republican senators to delay a confirmation vote until after the election. Who's on the watch list? That's next.

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