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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Majority of Americans Against Republican Rush to Fill Supreme Court Seat; Dr. Fauci Pushes Back; Interview With Cindy McCain; No Officers Charged Directly With Breonna Taylor's Death. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired September 23, 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]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, SEPTEMBER 2017)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: How do you want the American people to remember you?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ): He served his country, and not always right, made a lot of mistakes, made a lot of errors, but served his country, and I hope we could add honorably.

TAPPER: I think that we can say honorably.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: That's tough to hear.

Do you see your speaking out as fulfilling and upholding your husband's legacy of serving your country regardless of party?

CINDY MCCAIN, WIDOW OF SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Well, it's certainly his legacy. But, more importantly, it's the legacy of this country.

We have -- for years and years and years have been able to work across party lines and do what was right for the country. And that's what we're seeing not happening right now.

Joe and John, as I mentioned, would fight like cats and dogs sometimes on the floor, but they remained friends forever. And that's -- it's not a Republican issue. It's not a Democratic issue. It's an American issue.

And that's why -- that's why I'm here. And that's what I believe John felt and believed about Joe.

TAPPER: Cindy McCain, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate it.

C. MCCAIN: Thank you. Thank you.

TAPPER: We're following a tense situation in Kentucky, where police and protesters are facing off after today's grand jury decision in the Breonna Taylor case.

We're going to go live to Louisville next.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:35:08]

TAPPER: Breaking news right now in Louisville, Kentucky, a heated scene between protesters and law enforcement off and on.

In the last few minutes, we have seen protesters taken into custody by police, demonstrators reacting to today's grand jury and Kentucky attorney general decision in the Breonna Taylor case.

Only one officer was charged. And that was for wanton endangerment, not for manslaughter or murder, as Breonna Taylor's family wanted.

CNN's Shimon Prokupecz is on the ground in Louisville.

And, Shimon, update us on what's unfolding there. We're looking at some older images from a few minutes ago that show some violence. But have things calmed down a little?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they have calmed down significantly, Jake.

As you can see, there are just officers standing behind me in full riot gear. They have pushed us further off the corner. We were down in the middle of the block. And now they have pushed most of us over to this area.

And things are much quieter, certainly, than they were just a few minutes ago. If you can see -- I don't know if you can see -- we were blocked by this car here, but police were making several arrests.

They were trying to load several of the people, the protesters that they arrested into a van there. And now it's just -- people have just been standing around. The police were able to move most of the protesters away. Some went up some of the side streets here, Jake.

But we still don't know why police decided to move in on the protesters here. They had been marching, and we have been reporting, following them along, for well over an hour. We don't know why police decided to block off the area here and to prevent them from walking and marching further.

And that is when the confrontation ensued. Police moved in, made several arrests. And the protesters with throwing water bottles at the officers. And then some of the officers were firing those pepper balls to try and disperse the crowd.

But, like I said, we don't know what happened entirely in front of here, what -- why police ultimately decided to stop them from marching. And, as I said, several people now have been arrested. And we're waiting to hear more from the police here.

TAPPER: All right, Shimon Prokupecz on the streets of Louisville, Kentucky.

We will continue to bring you scenes from there as they develop.

Let's bring in right now retired Los Angeles Police Department Sergeant Cheryl Dorsey.

Sergeant Dorsey, thanks for joining us.

When you look at the clashes that we have seen between police and protesters, is there a way for police to handle what seemed -- or at least Shimon is describing an almost entirely peaceful protest, until the police came in and blocked it, without making it even more tense? In other words, is it normal just to stop protesters from walking, or not?

CHERYL DORSEY, RETIRED LAPD POLICE SERGEANT: Well, listen, certainly there's a way for officers to handle protesters without being confrontational.

Police officers are taught to use only that force necessary to overcome resistance and/or gain compliance. And so understand that there's a segment of police officers out there who live for protests. They want to engage. They want to get involved in what I have heard referred to on LAPD as stick time, because there's no use of force report that you have to create once you engage a protester in that way.

And so there are those who live for that on both sides, right? There are antagonists on both sides.

TAPPER: What was your response to what we heard from the attorney general of Kentucky today and the grand jury in terms of the Breonna Taylor case?

DORSEY: Well, I'm not surprised. I'm a realist, and so I deciphered all of his doublespeak and code talk.

And we know that this is really a non-indictment. It has nothing to do with Breonna Taylor. This was about officer Brett Hankison firing rounds into the next door neighbor's apartment, had nothing to do with the murder of Breonna Taylor. Those officers, according to the attorney general, were justified in that use of force.

[16:40:00]

Now, I don't know how 16 shots fired by one is justified use of force, when officers are taught to fire two shots in rapid succession, and then reassess the threat.

But, nonetheless, that was his story, and he's sticking to it. And I found it offensive that he would call out celebrities and alleged influencers because he, too, says he's a black man, and, somehow, celebrities can't speak for Kentuckians, but, as a black man, he can speak for us.

And so I understand he's skin folk, not kin folk. He doesn't speak for me.

TAPPER: How do you begin to repair relations between communities and their police force, when there is clearly so much anger and so much distrust?

DORSEY: Well, you have to first be honest.

And I haven't heard any of that. Even with this $12 million settlement in the case of Breonna Taylor, there are all these faux reforms, things that were only promises, not anything that really they have to do. The city council must approve much of this.

And then let's not forget that there's no admission of wrongdoing. And so, listen, if you didn't do anything wrong, I don't even know why Hankison was fired in the first place. They came up with this no-knock warrant. You need a supervisor to sign off on it. That should have already been in existence.

And so everything that they pretend to put forward really doesn't affect patrol officers, me, when I'm in uniform day to day in my patrol car. It won't stop. And we know that, because we saw Derek Chauvin sit and have us watch him for eight minutes and 46 seconds on the neck of George Floyd and dared us to do anything about it.

TAPPER: Do you think the other two officers should have been charged?

DORSEY: Well, absolutely.

They were there, and one of them was a sergeant. And so I hold that sergeant to a higher standard. But we have got the attorney general saying that it was justified.

Now, they're giving their truth. I don't know that it's the truth. They're saying that Breonna, her boyfriend fired the first shot. I don't know that that's true. We know that they will lie. They have. They said that they rendered aid. They said that there were no cameras. They said that they announced.

And there's been evidence contrary to all of that. And so now we're stuck with their version of events. And that's what happens when the police kill us. There's only one version to tell. And that's the one they put forth. I'm

not buying it.

TAPPER: The attorney general of Kentucky is starting up this task force to review the process for securing and executing search warrants in Kentucky.

So, that appears some sort of tacit acknowledgement that something went wrong, in addition to the $12 million payment to the family of Breonna Taylor and the firing of Officer Hankison.

But, based on the charges, no one is actually being held responsible for her death.

DORSEY: Absolutely.

I mean, Hankison is being indicted because he fired rounds with wanton disregard into a neighbor's apartment. It has nothing to do, no mention of Breonna Taylor. And so he gets no brownie points for starting a task force where they're going to look at and review things that should have already been in place. And then, when they violate their own policies and procedures, they will tell us, that's not what you saw. That's not what we did. Carry on.

TAPPER: The governor of Kentucky wants the attorney general to make all of the evidence in the case public.

Governor Andy Beshear, who's a Democrat, says the public deserves to know the facts. The attorney general's a Republican.

Do you think that would be enough to calm those who are angry over the lack of charges for Breonna Taylor's death, releasing the evidence?

DORSEY: I mean, listen, release the evidence if you want to or not.

What families want, what everyone seems to be most upset about is a failure to hold police officers accountable when they do things that are contradictory to training and/or laws. So make it available or not, but hold the officers accountable. And we know that won't be happening in this case, because we have already heard from the A.G. that, in his mind, 16 shots through a closed door or an open door, if they just entered, is somehow justified.

It's offensive.

TAPPER: Cheryl Dorsey, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it.

More breaking news up next.

A new CNN poll shows six in 10 Americans are not likely to get what they want when it comes to efforts to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat on the Supreme Court.

Plus: what Senator Rand Paul said about coronavirus that Dr. Anthony Fauci could not let go uncorrected.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:48:28]

TAPPER: We also have some breaking news for you right now in our politics lead, brand-new CNN polls.

It's all about who the American people think should pick the next Supreme Court justice. Most Americans, 59 percent, say that the president who was elected in November should nominate the replacement for the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That's compared to 41 percent who say President Trump should make the appointment now.

Let's break that down by party; 97 percent of Democrats say the newly elected president should make the decision, compared to 59 percent of independents, and all the way down to 17 percent of Republicans.

In March 2016, which was obviously much earlier in that election year, the public felt the opposite; 57 percent of Americans said Obama should then have been the one to fill the vacancy after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

The new CNN poll also gauges the public's opinion of the current court; 38 percent say President Trump's appointments have made the court worse; 49 percent say his appointments have made the court better; 32 percent say the president's appointments have made no difference at all.

Now on to the health lead. The country's leading health experts under fire today during a hearing over the handling of the pandemic that has left already more than 200,000 Americans dead.

Senators questioning the CDC director over trust issues in his agency, challenging the FDA chief on safety concerns surrounding an eventual vaccine.

And, at one point, the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in a passionate defense shut down what he described as wrong conclusions being drawn by Republican Senator Rand Paul.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: No, you misconstrue that, Senator. And you have done that repetitively in the past.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: This as sources tell CNN that Dr. Deborah Birx might be on her way out as coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, because she's -- quote -- "distressed" over the direction of the task force.

CNN's Nick Watt now reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): New York, once the world's hot spot, today the most heated topic during COVID-19 response hearings on Capitol Hill.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): How can we possibly be jumping up and down and saying, oh, Governor Cuomo did a great job? He had the worst death rate in the world.

FAUCI: No, you misconstrue that, Senator. And you have done that repetitively in the past.

They got hit very badly. They made some mistakes.

WATT: Dr. Anthony Fauci bit back at Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.

PAUL: They're no longer having the pandemic because they have enough immunity in New York City to actually stop...

(CROSSTALK)

FAUCI: I challenge that, Senator, because I want to -- please sir, I would like to be able to do this, because this happens with Senator Rand all the time.

You were not listening to what the director of the CDC said that, in New York, it's about 22 percent. If you believe 22 percent is herd immunity, I believe you're alone in that.

WATT: This pandemic now so politicized, the FDA commissioner also felt he had to say this:

DR. STEPHEN HAHN, COMMISSIONER, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION: Decisions to authorize or approve any such vaccine or therapeutic will be made by the dedicated career staff at FDA, through our thorough review processes, and science will guide our decisions. FDA will not permit any pressure from anyone to change that.

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: What stood out to me is that so many of the questions were about trust. And this is a position that I could not have imagined that we would be in several months ago.

WATT: Today, Johnson & Johnson begins global phase three trials of its potential vaccine. The company says it could be ready for FDA review early next year. And this is key. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, unlike the others currently in phase three trials in the U.S., is a single dose, so easier, quicker to deploy.

HAHN: In the end, FDA will not authorize or approve a vaccine that we would not feel comfortable giving to our families.

WATT: Meantime, nationally, we seem stuck at around 40,000 new confirmed cases a day. Two weeks ago, just nine states were seeing average new case counts rise. Today, that number is 22.

In Kentucky, that average daily case count tripled since midsummer, a 36-year-old nurse named Cassie (ph) among the recently infected.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want to be upset. I want to be angry. I want my daughter healthy.

WATT: Nationally, death rates were falling, but:

DR. JEANNE MARRAZZO, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM: That decline in deaths that we were seeing in late August is no longer being sustained.

WATT: We just passed 200,000 dead in America. Could be over 300,000 by year's end.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATT: Now, one of the big still unanswered questions is, how safe or dangerous are airplanes? Well, the CDC says they have now identified 1,600 flights between January and August that had an infected person on board.

And using a kind of six-foot radius rule, they have calculated that nearly 11,000 people were potentially exposed. But the data on how many people have actually caught COVID-19 on an airplane is patchy and therefore inconclusive.

So, the bottom line is, we still do not know how safe or dangerous airplane travel is right now -- Jake.

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

Let's bring in CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, let's delve deeper into an issue here that was part of the exchange between Dr. Fauci and Senator Paul.

Let's play a brief part of that clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: They're no longer having the pandemic because they have enough immunity in New York City to actually stop...

(CROSSTALK)

FAUCI: I challenge that, Senator, because I want to -- please sir, I would like to be able to do this, because this happens with Senator Rand all the time.

You were not listening to what the director of the CDC said that, in New York, it's about 22 percent. If you believe 22 percent is herd immunity, I believe you're alone in that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Beyond Dr. Fauci's frustration with Rand Paul, who says things that are at odds with science all the time, what's your reaction to this herd immunity argument that some conservatives are making?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, it's we -- there's no herd immunity.

I mean, to get to herd immunity -- and there's ways of calculating this, Jake. So, if you have a contagious virus, something that spreads from one person, in this case, to two or three people -- that's what they call this R0 factor -- you can calculate that, that you would need to get to around 60 to 70 percent, really around 67 percent.

[16:55:03]

Two-thirds of the country would need to have antibodies to get to herd immunity. And that the fact that Rand Paul is saying 22 percent, after he just heard that was the number in New York could be enough, is -- it just -- it doesn't make any sense. It flies in the face of the science.

And, again, these are objective things you can actually calculate. Dr. Fauci is very frustrated, I think, in part -- Rand Paul is a doctor. These are things that we do learn to sort of -- how you calculate these things. I think that was part of his frustration.

But also this idea that this is not a strategy, to let the natural infection run through a society. With 10 percent of the country, roughly, that's been infected right now, we have already had 200,000 dead. So you can imagine, if you just let this sort of that equation play out, that will turn into two million, potentially, or between a million-and-a-half to two million dead.

So I think that that's really what the frustration was about.

TAPPER: Yes, we should point out, Dr. Rand Paul is an eye doctor. He's not an infectious disease expert.

Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, asked the CDC director about a testing guidance that a lot of people think would decrease the number of tests out there. Let's play some of that exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, CDC DIRECTOR: There was no intent for this guidance to decrease testing. On the contrary, the intent was to link testing and to drive a public health action.

And, again, the manner in which it was interpreted by a number of individuals was such that it didn't accomplish that goal.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): I think I'm over my time.

This has just been dizzying, dizzying for public health professionals. They're just awaiting the next correction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So, was the issue here that the guidance was misinterpreted? Or was the guidance really going to decrease testing?

GUPTA: I don't think it was misinterpreted, Jake.

And I think it would have led to a decrease in testing. Whether or not that was the motivation, I don't know. I mean, I think it was more about this sort of general sort of approach to sort of minimizing things. It would have led to a decrease in testing, maybe had fewer numbers. Who knows. I read the guidance very carefully before, after the guidance was put up, and then again when it was reversed. It was very clear, I think, to me and to many people, frankly, that, when they put that guidance up, basically saying that, even if you have been in contact with someone who has COVID, if you don't have any symptoms, you don't need to get tested.

That's flat-out wrong, because we know that people could contract the virus, they could have no symptoms, and they could spread it. It's exactly what we're trying to prevent. So, yes, it would have led to a decrease in testing. But it would have been a huge problem, because the trajectory of the pandemic would be continuing to go up unchecked.

Same problem we had back in February and part of March, Jake. So this was an error. What the motivation was, unclear. As you know, our reporting, "New York Times" reporting was that it was put on the CDC's Web site without having gone through the scientific checks.

TAPPER: Yes.

I find myself in a position here where I seem to be expressing more concern for the president's supporters and their health than the president does. But I want you to take a look at these images last night from the president's rally in the Pittsburgh area of Pennsylvania, packed with supporters, no social distancing, very few masks.

We are in the middle of a deadly pandemic. And the U.S. is handling it, empirically, worse than any other Western wealthy nation. The surgeon general was asked about this rally. Take a listen to his answer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JEROME ADAMS, SURGEON GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES: And, at the end of the day, the virus doesn't care about your politics, it doesn't care what you're going out for.

It only cares whether or not you're following public health measures. So what I would say to everyone, politics aside, wear a mask.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: How dangerous is it? I understand that these rallies are outdoors, but there's still no other health precautions being taken that I can see.

GUPTA: Yes.

I mean, Jake, at this point I don't think it takes any more sort of educating of people around this, I wouldn't think. There's a contagious virus out there. It likes to jump from host to host. If you are closely clustered with somebody, if you're there for a prolonged period of time, there's a good chance that virus is going to make a jump. That's what these viruses like to do. It is safer being outdoors, and

significantly so. Some models suggest that it may be up to 18 times safer, just to put a number on it. It obviously varies depending on, again, how closely clustered as you saw there, and how long people are standing next to each other.

It's a terrible idea. These are the sort of images that we will look back on historically and say, in the middle of a pandemic, when you see the numbers on the right side of the screen that we see, that people still thought this was a reasonable thing to do. It's not.

And as I think the surgeon general, Jerome Adams, who I communicate with, was sort of suggesting there, this isn't about educating people anymore at all. This is pure politics.

TAPPER: Yes. But they won't call out the president by name because they want to keep their jobs. But he is putting his own supporters and their communities at risk.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much.

You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter @JakeTapper. You can tweet the show @THELEADCNN.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now.

I will see you tomorrow.

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