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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Trump: "Very Close" to Picking Nominee, Announcement Saturday; Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) is Interviewed About GOP Having Support to Pursue Election Year Confirmation; Supreme Court Battle; U.S. Passes Grim Milestone of 200,000 Coronavirus Deaths. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired September 22, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:08]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to the lead. I'm Jake Tapper. And we start today with some horrible news, frankly, in our health lead.

Medical experts said it was avoidable. Dr. Fauci today called it stunning and sobering. But, today, the United States passed the unfathomable milestone, one that no other country has reached, according to official numbers, 200,000 people lost to the coronavirus.

The first known death from the virus in the U.S. was reported on February 29; 54 days later, the U.S. reported 50,000 deaths. It took only 29 more days for 100,000 Americans to lose their lives to the virus; 65 days after that, the death toll crossed 150,000. And today, 55 days later, we're at the grim milestone, 200,000 American deaths due to COVID-19.

In June, a model frequently used by the White House projected that we would see 200,000 deaths by October 1. That came through nine days early. And the same model is now projecting nearly 380,000 Americans will have died from coronavirus by January 1, 380,000.

These were mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, the 200,000 we have lost. And still, despite the fact that the U.S. empirically has the worst numbers of any Western wealthy country and the highest death count of any nation in the world, according to official numbers, there's no new strategy from the Trump administration to control the spread.

There is no cohesive strategy for testing and identifying and isolating to the degree that health experts have been calling for since March. And nearly half the states in the United States are now seeing a rise in new cases.

Despite all of this, all of this death, President Trump, bizarrely, gave himself an A-plus on his handling of the virus. And the White House tried to defend his actions again today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The president never downplayed critical health information. The president never downplayed our COVID response.

And you can just see that by the historic effort that we have put forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Those, of course, from the White House press secretary bald- faced lies.

The president continues to downplay the threat. And he is literally on tape with Bob Woodward saying that he downplayed the risks.

These lies that you're paying for are being used now to cover up government failures that have cost thousands of American lives.

CNN's Erica Hill takes a look at the troubling new hot spots.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERICA HILL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Twenty thousand small flags dotting the National Mall to memorialize 200,000 lives lost.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: The idea of 200,000 deaths is really very sobering and, in some respects, stunning.

HILL: Stunning because it didn't have to happen.

ANDY SLAVITT, FORMER ACTING ADMINISTRATOR, CENTERS FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES: It feels like a day for some humility.

HILL: Two hundred thousand lives, that's more than the entire population of Little Rock, Arkansas, gone, families forever changed.

SHERYL PABATAO, DAUGHTER OF CORONAVIRUS VICTIMS: It's beyond hurt. It's beyond pain.

HILL: And yet 24 states now reporting an increase in new cases over the past seven days.

But look at the same map this time last week, just nine states on the rise, then.

FAUCI: If we don't get that baseline down sharply to a very low level, when you have a lot of cases floating around, it's much more difficult to contain that than if you have a relatively low number.

HILL: Troubling trends in Wisconsin, which has seen a steady, sharp rise in new cases over the past month, steep climbs in North Dakota too.

The president sticking to his narrative.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're rounding the turn. And it's happening. It's happening.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: In some states, thousands of people, nobody young, below the age of 18, like nobody.

SLAVITT: Unfortunately, when the president makes comments like that and minimizes the virus and tells people that, unless you're old, you're not going to get it, that encourages more spread. It encourages more reckless behavior.

HILL: The University of Colorado at Boulder moving classes online for at least two weeks in an effort to slow the spread, Texas announcing more than 4,500 positive cases at its public schools, just over half of those in students.

There are encouraging signs, California, which struggled over the summer, now has a positivity rate just under 3 percent. But cold weather and flu season loom.

FAUCI: We have got to be in this together.

HILL: "The Washington Post" reporting N95 masks, critical for health care workers, are still in short supply.

[16:05:01]

Meantime, three NFL coaches fined $100,000 each for not wearing masks on Sunday, their teams also hit with an additional $250,00 fine apiece.

And another side of the economic toll, Sizzler filing for bankruptcy, citing the virus and trouble paying rent, something millions of Americans can relate to.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HILL: And, Jake, just a note about a vaccine.

We know that having a vaccine and getting a vaccine to people so they can be vaccinated are two very different things. The CEO of the world's largest vaccine manufacturer today telling CNN that, realistically, he doesn't see the world being really vaccinated, they are saying, about 90 percent of the world being vaccinated until 2024.

TAPPER: Wow.

All right, Erica Hill, thank you so much.

Joining us now to discuss, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, the first known death from coronavirus in the U.S. was in February, seven months later, 200,000 Americans dead from the coronavirus.

You and I have been talking about this now basically since February. What are your thoughts as we reach this awful milestone? DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That this was not

inevitable.

I mean, it's interesting. I think a lot of people sort of have resigned themselves to this, thinking this is just the way that it was going to be. And when this country went into the sort of pause mode middle of March, there were fewer than 100 people who had died, fewer than 5,000 people who had been infected at that point.

And there was this real sense that, look, maybe we can contain this-, really contain this, not just try and play catchup for the next several months, but try and contain it.

And we just never did, Jake. And we started opening things up almost as quickly as things were sort of paused for a bit.

Jake, I will tell you, just on a -- more personal for a second. I talked to so many families of people who have lost loved ones. And it's, as you might imagine, a challenging conversation, but the idea of telling families that their loved one died a preventable death, it's -- people just -- what do you do with that, right?

It has no context. It's just awful for them to think about. They really want to keep the conversation what can still be done. And, as you and Erica were just discussing, I mean, there's still hundreds of thousands of lives that can be saved through basic public health measures.

So, will we learn those lessons? I'm not sure. But, today, just is a really -- it's a really, really tough, tough milestone to swallow.

TAPPER: It's awful.

Right now, the U.S. is still averaging more than 40,000 new cases and 800 deaths every single day.

You spoke with Dr. Fauci today. He said that baseline is way too high. Lowering it is -- quote -- "not rocket science."

So, why haven't we been able to lower it?

GUPTA: I think that there's been this defiance of basic public health measures.

I mean, it's -- it will boggle my mind, probably until my dying day, given that people are told, you could be part of these movements that could save tens of thousands of lives by wearing masks and acting like good stewards to your community, and people are like, I'd rather not, booing at rallies when they are told to do simple things like that.

I do want to show you, because the closest -- 1918 -- the closest model we have to what's happening now is probably 1918. That was another major pandemic. And I think one of the things that people are particularly worried about is the second spike.

We see the first spike. We went back and looked at the data, Jake. In the first six months of the year, 1918, first six months of the pandemic, 75,000 people had died.

For us, it's about 200,000 people over seven months. But it was that second spike that was so devastating; 195,000 people died in one month. And that month was October.

And it was because people started clustering indoors again with a very contagious virus. And that is a cautionary tale. It's exactly what we're trying to avoid. And there are good strategies so that that doesn't happen.

Aside from a vaccine, aside from a therapeutic, there are good strategies. We have got to do it.

I know we have said this for months, but we have got to do it, because you can -- the graph sort of speaks for itself.

TAPPER: The politics of this are just ugly. President Trump obviously should be praised for the Operation Warp Speed, for the efforts for therapeutics.

But when it comes to his downplaying of the virus back in February and March and then continuing to today, when it comes to his refusal to get the whole country behind wearing a mask, when it comes to the sporadic leadership, when it came to whether or not states should reopen, when it came to the fact that there is no cohesive one-stop place where Americans can go to get advice, and now also the politicization of these agencies.

Despite changing guidance from the CDC, Dr. Fauci said that there is evidence coronavirus can be spread through the air, even though the guidance changed on the CDC.

[16:10:02]

Explain this for us.

GUPTA: Yes.

So, the basic gist of it is this. For some time now -- and I say several months -- there's been this belief among many scientists and many people in the public health community, based on data and based on modeling, that this virus spreads really in three ways.

One is through respiratory droplets, people putting out respiratory droplets into the air. But those droplets fall quickly. They don't really move much further than six feet. They don't linger in the air.

Another way is just from surfaces, touch a surface, touch your face, you could get infected that way. But this third idea, that the viral particles are so small that they become suspended in the air, think of it more like smoke, rather than a respiratory droplet, and the smoke lingers in the air, and it can move further than six feet, and it can last longer than a few hours.

And that's how they explain that choir where you had somebody singing up on stage and several people within the audience become infected. Or in a crowded indoor setting: I was nowhere close to the person who was infected, and yet I got infected all the way on the other side of the restaurant or the bar.

How would that happen unless these viral particles become aerosolized?

On Friday, the CDC seemed to finally acknowledge that. They put it on their Web site. It has tremendous implications as we go back to school. On Sunday, I believe, or Monday, it was taken back down.

It seems to be a genuine error. I only say that because I talk to sources at the CDC all the time, and they alert me when they think something has happened that has been more foul play. Here, they say it seems like a genuine error.

But the irony is, it did reflect the prevailing science. And Dr. Fauci seemed to acknowledge that today as well. This is what he said:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAUCI: You can make a reasonable assumption, Sanjay, that some aspect of transmission can be and is by aerosol.

The interesting thing about that, it doesn't change anything that we have been saying. It means wear your mask. It means avoid close contact.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: I mean, Jake, the only thing that I think is different at all is that we should be wearing masks. We know that.

But if you're inside a building, inside, you should be wearing a mask, even if you're not within six feet of people. If you think about this conceptually different, that you could have viral clouds sort of in those spaces because of this aerosolization, you should wear your mask indoors even if you're not within six feet of somebody.

TAPPER: All right, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much. Appreciate your time. as always.

It's all done but -- it's all but a done deal, after Senator Mitt Romney announced today, seemingly gave Republicans enough votes to confirm a new Supreme Court justice before the election. Is there anything Democrats can do to stop it?

A Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee will join me next.

Then they say politics can make strange bedfellows -- a look at the Republican political operative with a checkered past who is making millions off the political run of Kanye West.

Stay with us.

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TAPPER: We're back with a politics lead in what is likely to be a shift on the Supreme Court for decades to come. President Trump says he's very close to making an official decision and will announce his pick for the Supreme Court vacancy this Saturday. And barring any issues with the nominee who has yet to be named, it now appears the president has the support of enough Republican senators to push his nomination through before the election in just 42 days.

A source telling CNN that this decision is so critical to President Trump's legacy and his re-election, that's the view from inside the White House, that a confidant has told the president that this is akin to choosing his running mate.

And as CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports now, a Trump favorite is emerging.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Trump says he'll announce his pick to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in four days.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I would say that I'm very close to making a decision, in my own mind, I'm going to reveal it on Saturday.

COLLINS: As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is locking down support on Capitol Hill, President Trump is narrowing down his list and met with top candidate Amy Coney Barrett for several hours Monday. Barrett is a favorite of religious conservatives, who has already faced contentious exchanges with Democrats in the past.

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA): The dogma lives loudly within you.

COLLINS: The White House is also in the process of scheduling a meeting with Barbara Lagoa in her hometown of Miami. Once seen as a possible frontrunner, she appears to have faded from Trump's favor. Though sources cautioned that could change.

TRUMP: Well, she's terrific and you have Judge Larson. You know Judge Larson who's very talented also.

COLLINS: Trump is narrowing down his list as Republicans are falling in line.

Utah Senator Mitt Romney now says he supports moving forward on a Supreme Court pick, all but assuring Trump will have the votes.

SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): I think at this stage it's appropriate to look at the constitution and to look at the precedent, which has existed over, well, since the beginning of our country's history.

COLLINS: There were questions about whether Romney would break with his party, given he voted to remove Trump from office during impeachment. But today, he sided with Republican leaders. ROMNEY: My liberal friends have, over many decades, gotten used to

the idea of having a liberal court and that's not written in the stars.

COLLINS: Romney dashing the hopes of liberal lawmakers who were anticipating he could stand in the way of a vote by Election Day.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham says his committee will hold three days of hearings which could come as many lawmakers including Graham are campaigning.

If the president's nominee does get confirmed, one of the first cases to come before the court in November is the fate of the Affordable Care Act, which impacts at least 20 million Americans. The Trump administration still hasn't unveiled a replacement plan despite Trump promising one for years.

[16:20:06]

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: It certainly does exist. The president in the next week or so will be laying out his vision for health care.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Now, Jake, you'll remember back in early August, the president said he was going to sign an executive order on pre-existing conditions. He never did, it never materialized.

But now, the Vice President Mike Pence is telling CBS News the president is going to take some kind of executive action on pre- existing conditions in the coming days as we are still waiting to see what this health care plan out of the White House is going to be. Pre- existing conditions are already covered under the law by the Affordable Care Act, which the Trump administration is trying to disable, to dismantle through the Supreme Court.

So, of course, the question is going to be whether or not the level of protection offered through the president's executive order that he's going to sign on pre-existing conditions is as strong as the law. Many people are doubtful of that, saying if that was the case, Jake, that Barack Obama or Bill Clinton would've done so.

TAPPER: Yeah. I mean, the question is not only is it going to require insurance companies to cover people regardless of pre-existing conditions, but is it going to make sure that they can't charge them more in premiums? That's the real protection. And we'll see what the president offers, if anything, of course.

Kaitlan Collins in Pittsburg, of course, where the president is holding a rally later this evening. Thank you so much.

Joining us now, Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. He is on the Senate Judiciary Committee which will question President Trump's Supreme Court nominee. He is also a surrogate for the Biden campaign. So, Senator, as of today, it appears Republicans do have enough

Republican votes to pursue this nomination even before a nominee is named, even before the election.

Do Democrats have any options that you are considering to stop this?

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Well, Jake, this really is on Republicans. They are reversing themselves just four years after they set the precedent in 2016 of refusing to take up a hearing, to give a vote to President Obama's nominee Merrick Garland because he was nominated ten months before an election. We are now just 42 days before an election, in which I'll remind you, half of the states are already voting. In 25 states, there's early voting happening.

So, this really is on the majority party on the Republicans. They are the ones who are going to jam this through the Judiciary Committee, jam it through the floor if that's what happens.

I'll remind you, Justice Ginsburg passed on Rosh Hashanah. She dictated to her granddaughter her dying wish which was that the voters would choose the next president, the next president her successor, because she knows the consequences of who replaces her.

Your reporter just referenced the case that will be in front of the Supreme Court a week after the election which will consider the Affordable Care Act. She said it affects 20 million Americans. It affects 100 million Americans in terms of the pre-existing condition discrimination protection.

And given Justice Ginsburg's legacy, another key part of the Affordable Care Act is it prohibits discrimination by insurance companies based on gender. That's half of all Americans. So, frankly, what's on the ballot and what's at stake in this confirmation process is protections for half of all Americans.

TAPPER: So, just to be clear when she said 20 million, I think she was referring to those --

COONS: Yes.

TAPPER: -- who got through the Medicaid expansion, have insurance because of Obamacare.

Let me ask you, because, obviously, not every Republican senator said this, OK? But when Mitch McConnell talked about how he was not going to give Obama's nominee Merrick Garland a hearing. He said that one of the reasons for it was not just that it was an election year, but because the Senate was controlled by a different party than the White House. In other words, divided government. That's not operative here.

Now, I get a lot of people like Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio, when they talked about why they weren't going to give Merrick Garland a hearing, they didn't talk about the divided government part of this.

COONS: Right.

TAPPER: But Mitch McConnell did. So, he specifically is not being inconsistent, is he?

COONS: Well, Majority Leader McConnell is quite agile. And he has reframed and recast his justifications a number of times.

Chairman Graham is one who specifically said, if four years from now Donald Trump is president and if we have a vacancy come up in the election year, we won't hold a hearing, we won't hold a vote. And he's the one most directly responsible for moving us forward in the next couple of days.

So, you know, frankly, as you remember, Jake, there were dozens of Republicans who gave floor speeches and public statements about how important it was to make sure that the entire electorate had a say in an election which, at that point was nine or ten months away. There is one precedent in American history where there was a vacancy this close to an election. Abraham Lincoln was president at that point and he did not nominate someone to fill the seat. He let the electorate decide.

I wish that my Republican colleagues would respect Justice Ginsburg's dying wish. And I will continue to work with him to see if there is any way that they will step back from this abyss, which I think will further divide our country, our Senate, and cause further challenges for the Supreme Court.

[16:25:11]

TAPPER: So it seems pretty clear several sources are telling CNN that Judge Amy Coney Barrett has emerged as President Trump's favorite, at least as of now, putting aside her differing political views from yours, is she qualified? Is she a qualified potential nominee?

COONS: Well, Jake, I would have to wait for there to be a nomination for me to begin reviewing her record and background and commenting on it.

TAPPER: As you know, there are several others under consideration. And it, frankly, shouldn't come to this. And it frankly shouldn't come to this.

Justice Ginsburg is going to be lying in repose in the Supreme Court the next two days. She will be lying in state in the Capitol. The first woman to do so, which is a fitting recognition of her lifetime of dedication to gender equality.

I will consider the qualifications. But, frankly, we shouldn't be getting to this point. And in the next few days, I'll continue to appeal both to the conscience of my colleagues here but also to the folks around the country who are watching who know what an outrage this is, who know this should not be a partisan exercise.

Majority Leader McConnell has had months to move a relief package for the COVID-19 pandemic and the recession and hasn't done so. I've gotten texts from a dozen different folks in Delaware today, not about this nominee, but about their small businesses, their jobs, their kids' schools. They're wondering why is McConnell not doing anything to move a package forward, but instead he is now moving heaven and earth to race through a nomination.

TAPPER: Well, I mean, there was a bill but Democrats blocked it from coming up, right? Because it wasn't strong enough.

COONS: Well, that wasn't just a skinny bill. That was an emaciated bill. I recognize there was a distance between what the White House said, over a trillion, and what Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, said, she and the House passed a $3.5 trillion bill.

But what it was that Majority Leader McConnell put on the floor was a very small bill --

TAPPER: OK.

COONS: -- that had some protections for employers that, frankly, would've made it impossible for employees to ever get relief, even if they had irresponsible employers.

TAPPER: Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, thank you so much for your time today, sir. We always appreciate it.

COONS: Thank you.

TAPPER: Vladimir Putin reportedly taking a personal role in Russia's election interference efforts. Our next guest is an expert on this, President Trump's former national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, retired general, joins me.

Stay with us.

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