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The Lead with Jake Tapper

President Trump Set to Return to White House; Brand New CNN Polls On Trump's Handling of Coronavirus. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired October 05, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:00]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Thank you so much.

DR. SEEMA YASMIN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Thanks, Jake. Take care.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

TAPPER: And welcome to our second hour of THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

We continue with major breaking news.

President Trump set to be released from Walter Reed Medical Center in a matter of hours. At his own insistence, he will now recover from coronavirus at the White House.

Moments ago, we heard from the president's doctors, who acknowledged that President Trump is not entirely out of the woods yet. They said they will be closely tracking his condition through the weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. SEAN CONLEY, WHITE HOUSE PHYSICIAN: We all remain cautiously optimistic and on guard, because we're in a bit of uncharted territory when it comes to a patient that received the therapies he has so early in the course.

So he may not entirely be out of the woods yet. The team and I agree that all our evaluations and, most importantly, his clinical status support the president's safe return home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: The president's physician, Navy Commander Sean Conley, said that his commander in chief, President Trump, has not had a fever in 72 hours and will receive another round of an experimental drug, remdesivir, before leaving the hospital this evening.

But Commander Conley is still refusing to answer basic questions about the president's condition, including what the president's lung scans showed, when President Trump last tested negative for the virus, what specific drugs the president of the United States is taking, instead saying he's on a routine regimen of COVID therapy. The president also downplayed this deadly virus that has killed almost 210,000 Americans in his Twitter announcement, writing -- quote -- "Don't be afraid of COVID. Don't let it dominate your life. We have developed under the Trump administration, some really great drugs and knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago."

Of course, President Trump right now on a bunch of medications that might make him feel better. That doesn't necessarily mean that he has been cured.

Let's get right to CNN's Kaitlan Collins.

And, Kaitlan, Dr. Conley, Commander Conley, refusing to answer just basic questions the American people are entitled to know, making it hard for the public to understand the scope of President Trump's sickness right now.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's something that he's done for three days in a row now, Jake, refusing to answer those basic questions.

But, today, he finally cited the reason why, citing HIPAA, of course, that privacy act that prevents medical professionals from divulging information about their patients, unless that patient gives them permission to do so.

And, of course, in this case, the patient is the president, and he is refusing to allow his doctor, apparently, to give the American people information, basic information, about his health and his condition and what's behind this decision to now leave the hospital after just three days.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONLEY: There are HIPAA rules and regulations that restrict me in sharing certain things, for his safety and his -- and his own health and -- and reasons.

Again, HIPAA kind of precludes me from going into too much depth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: So, there you have it. He also went on to say when the president's last negative test result was. That is something that they have done for three days.

And, Jake, you have to think, if the White House had actually been testing the president on a daily basis, like they have claimed for months, they could easily say his last negative test was Thursday morning or Wednesday. Yet they have refused to say that time and time again, the president's doctors and his political aides.

And that makes you really question whether or not the White House is actually testing the president on a daily basis, like they claimed.

TAPPER: There's also the other theory, of course, is that the White House has seemed to lean into the idea that the president may have gotten -- may have contracted and been infected on the Saturday, when he held that event announcing his Supreme Court nominee, two Saturdays ago.

If he was infected that day, and the debate was Tuesday, and we don't know when he last tested negative, it remains possible that they knew he was infected before the debate.

COLLINS: Or maybe they had that suspicion, because Kayleigh McEnany answer a lot of questions yesterday before she herself tested positive.

She did say that he did not test positive, until Thursday when he returned from New Jersey. But they didn't say whether or not he had actually been tested the days prior to that.

So, maybe they had an inkling that he was. That's something that they will not answer. So we don't know.

But Dr. Conley admitted that they did not even ask the president if he had symptoms on about coronavirus related to coronavirus, until Thursday evening, when he got back from that New Jersey fund-raiser, after he had already been around over 200 people at that fund-raiser.

And that was hours after one of his top aides tested positive. And it raises the question, why didn't you test the president of the United States immediately upon learning that somebody he works closely with was positive?

TAPPER: Yes.

What did the president know and when did he know it? We have asked that question before.

Kaitlan, do we know where the president will be quarantining when he gets back to the White House this evening?

COLLINS: Well, obviously, you presume the residence.

But when the doctor was asked, will he only stay in the residence for the next several days, given we just found out less than a week ago, not even close to a week ago, that he was positive, they wouldn't say, Jake, if he's only going to stay in the West -- in the residence, or if he would actually be going into the Oval Office for work.

[16:05:10]

And so that raises questions about the exposure of the housekeeping staff, the residence staff, the military valets, the Secret Service agents.

And if the president is going into the West Wing, you could be seeing West Wing staffers go from wearing no mask at all, as they were doing in the weeks before this, to wearing full PPE, gowns, gloves, shields and mask and their day-to-day workspaces.

TAPPER: Kaitlan Collins, thank you so much.

I want to bring in CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

But, Sanjay, before I ask you about your medical expertise, I just want to take a second here.

President Trump wrote on Twitter: "Don't be afraid of COVID. Don't let it dominate your life."

Almost 210,000 Americans are dead from this disease, meaning hundreds of thousands of people in this country are mourning. Oh, we just reached -- we -- look at that. We just reached 210,000 since I have been on air, 210,000 Americans dead, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans mourning them; 7.4 million Americans have contracted the disease.

Many of them are going to have health problems for the rest of their life.

For President Trump, who gets the best medical care of anybody in the world, to say, don't be afraid of COVID, don't let it dominate your life, there are children who don't have parents now because of this virus. Don't let it dominate your life?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean, Jake, this is so disrespectful. I'm not even sure I can speak about this in some sort of cogent way here.

I just -- I know people who right now, family members, who have lost people. And they watch -- they watch our programming. And it's incredibly, incredibly disrespectful.

It's obviously not true, in the sense that we know he knows how serious this is. He's known how serious it is since the beginning of February. He's just gone through this himself now. It's a total, total cognitive dissonance, even within his own mind.

What he believes and what he says are diametrically opposed at this point, not to mention, don't be afraid of it almost then encourages this completely dangerous nonscientific approach of herd immunity, basically saying, don't be -- what does that mean, don't be afraid of it?

I mean, first of all, it's a contagious disease that kills people. So what are you going to be afraid of if you're not afraid of something like that?

Also, are you advocating that people then go get infected, nothing to be afraid of?

We know if that is the policy, if that's the approach, two million people could die, hospitals would become overwhelmed. It would -- it would cause millions more infections.

It's just -- there's nowhere to even begin with some of this, Jake, in terms of responding to a comment like that. It's gross. It really is, in terms of how people will take that, as you point out the number, the hundreds of thousands of people who died.

And another thing those family members don't like me to say and -- but needs to be said, is that no one likes to think of their loved ones as having died a preventable death, right? That's the last thing they want to hear.

And yet so many of these deaths -- I'm sorry to the people who are listening dealing with this, but so many of those deaths were preventable.

TAPPER: They were.

GUPTA: It's true. It's just true. Didn't have to happen.

TAPPER: Yes, of course it's preventable.

And Dr. Fauci acknowledged it back in April or May, when I interviewed him, if they had acted sooner, and if they'd acted more effectively, and if the business -- businesses hadn't been reopened before they were -- they should have reopened, before -- if states hadn't been pressured to reopen before they should have been reopened, if testing was up to snuff, if -- and I could go on and on.

I just want to say to anybody out there who's watching who has either lost somebody to this virus, or is grappling with it, or has somebody in their life who is grappling with it -- because I know young, healthy people who've had this virus who are still not fully recovered, and may never be because of the damage to their lungs -- I just want them to know that there are plenty of us out here who understand that it's OK to be afraid of COVID.

And it's OK that it's dominating your life, because it has dominated your life. And the idea that the president of the United States out there is -- because he feels fine -- maybe that's because of a steroid, I don't know -- that he's saying this is so disrespectful to you.

And I just want you to know that you're not alone, if you're out there just shocked that this kind of callous indifference would be relayed by the person who's actually charged with protecting you from this virus.

Sanjay, I want to ask you.

Dr. Conley said that they're in uncharted territory treating this president. And that's certainly true. But, if that is true, shouldn't be still be at Walter Reed?

GUPTA: Yes, absolutely.

I mean, he said he's in unchartered territory. He says the president is not out of the woods yet. Time to go home.

I mean, it makes -- it makes no sense. You don't need to be a doctor to sort of read into that. This is not a medical decision, clearly.

[16:10:02]

I mean, forget that he's the president, but any 74-year-old who has these preexisting conditions, and then on top of it shows us that there's been an impact on him, he's -- he's required supplemental oxygen, so things like that, he had a fever, he's gotten these three medications, none of which are FDA-approved. Two of them have emergency use authorization for COVID.

I'm not sure that people have received a combination of all three of these medications. We don't know how they're going to interact.

The dexamethasone, or the steroids, as you point out, can suppress illness, but not actually treat it. So, there's -- there's all these different factors.

And when he went to the hospital on Friday, I thought to myself, good. He's going to be in a place where he's going to have many specialists, advanced imaging, an ICU close by, be able to deal with the things that he may need.

If Dr. Conley is saying he's not out of the woods yet, then why is he sending him home, or why is he allowing him to be sent home, I should say? Maybe he has no power over this, which is probably the case.

But this is not a good medical decision. And you could probably invite 1,000 doctors onto your program over the next couple of weeks, and I think that they're all going to say the same thing, I mean, unless there's something we're not being told.

And truth is, they are hiding information from us. Are they hiding information from us that would suggest that he was actually better than it seems, or are they hiding information that would suggest that he's worse than he seems?

We don't know, because the doctors come out to do these briefings, but then don't answer, does he have pneumonia? Is he on a blood thinner? How's he responding to the steroids? Are they causing him to develop any of those side effects Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo is talking about, hunger, restlessness, aggression, mania, any of those things?

Are they going to monitor his blood sugars? What about all the other labs? Was there an impact on his heart, his livers, kidneys? Those are basic questions. That isn't -- how can you come out and say, we're going to abide by HIPAA, talk about some things, and then not talk about the most critical issues when it comes to COVID?

TAPPER: Yes, I don't think -- I think it's safe to say that, in the history of medicine, it has never been said, you're not out of the woods yet, therefore, we're discharging you today.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Just in, a brand-new CNN poll showing how much Americans trust or do not trust White House statements about the president's health. The results of that question and more, that's next.

Plus: outside the White House, the abrupt changes to stop the virus from creating yet another coronavirus hot spot.

That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:16:57]

TAPPER: We are following breaking news waiting for president Trump to be released from Walter Reed Medical Center at his own urging this evening.

And meanwhile, we have more breaking news. Brand-new CNN polls on how the American public believes President Trump has handled his coronavirus diagnosis and how much the public trusts what we're hearing about his current health.

CNN political director David Chalian joins me now.

David, let's start with the president's handling of his own infection. What are the American people saying when asked if President Trump has been responsible?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yeah, nearly two-thirds of Americans in this poll, Jake, say no, the president has acted irresponsibly, 63 percent in terms of how he's handling the risk of infection to others that were around him and in contact with him, only a third of those polled say that he acted responsibly, Jake.

How about the kind of information that Americans are getting out of the White House today, trust what they're hearing about the president's health? Only 12 percent in this poll, Jake, say they believe and trust almost all of the information they're getting from the White House about the president's health, but take those bottom two numbers. 68 percent, nearly 7 in 10 in this poll only trust some or none of what they are hearing. Most of what they're hearing, they don't trust in terms of what the White House is saying about the president's health.

TAPPER: Well, those are bad numbers, not expected given how the White House has handled this crisis.

What do they -- these new numbers tell us about how many Americans approve of how President Trump is handling the virus?

CHALIAN: Yeah, these numbers, for the president, Jake, are going in the wrong direction. Precisely at the worst possible political moment for him, of course, being a month away from Election Day. Sixty percent now disapprove of the way the president has handled the coronavirus outbreak. Only 38 percent approve.

Look at that disapproval number. Overtime, Jake, that's 60 percent now, it's a high water mark of disapproval on the major issue in America today. You see it climbing, April, May, June. You can see throughout, now, it's 60 percent disapproval on the issue that's defining his reelection effort.

TAPPER: David, these polls have also concerning new numbers about how many people say they will get a coronavirus vaccine should there be a safe and effective one.

CHALIAN: Jake, this may be the most disheartening information in this poll. Look overall, only 51 percent of Americans say, yes, if there was a low cost vaccine for coronavirus available now, they would take it. Forty-five percent, nearly half the country say no, they wouldn't take it. Numbers like that, the vaccine doesn't work.

And by the way, if you look at the 51 percent number being willing to take it, that's a negative trend also. Fewer and fewer people over time, if you go back and look, it was at 66 percent, yes, in May. Now down to 51 percent and also politicized. You could see inside these numbers, Jake, a difference that you see sort of between Biden supporters and Trump supporters and Biden supporters are much more rapidly now stepping away from being willing, ready and able to take a vaccine if it were available.

[16:20:08]

I mean, it's just -- when you politicize something like this, and you split the country on it, how possibly could a vaccine be effective at that point?

TAPPER: Well, when you split the country on masks, why not vaccines?

David, stick around.

I want to bring in CNN's Nia-Malika Anderson and Seung Min Kim, who's the White House reporter for "The Washington Post."

Nia-Malika, let me start with you.

Let's start with the breaking news. President Trump's pending release from Walter Reed Medical Center this evening. His doctors continue to refuse to answer basic questions about the president's health. They did admit that he's not entirely out of the woods yet.

How much do you think it's politics driving the president going back to the White House as opposed to medicine?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: I think it's 100 percent from this president, wanting to appear strong, wanting to downplay this virus. We saw his tweets essentially saying to the American people, don't worry about COVID. Don't let it run your life.

Well, listen. This is an illness that caused him to be helevacced to a hospital, have to get all sorts of experimental treatments that obviously aren't available to average Americans.

I think this is a president that's always about optics. We saw him take that joyride of the COVID parade yesterday and so now, he's doing the same. Perfectly timed, I think, for this president for the evening news to walk out of that hospital, be driven out of the hospital. However he goes out of this hospital.

But listen, I think Americans know how this president handled this virus so far, they don't approve of it. As David talked about and I think handling of his own virus and the virus as it spread trout the White House, only underscores of the lack of faith and lack of trust that Americans have in this president when it comes to this terrible, terrible illness.

TAPPER: And, Seung Min, on that point, President Trump's poll numbers are moving back in the exact wrong direction for him and now you see him pushing to get out of the hospital. When his doctors say he's not entirely out of the woods yet.

But one of the most perplexing things about covering this president is how often he moves to please the Breitbarts and Matt Gaetzes of the world, while the other two-thirds of the United States looking at him saying we disapprove and instead of trying to meet the people, the majority who disapproved of what he's doing, he runs completely in the wrong direction.

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think that's precisely right. Like we've seen him do that with the handling of the coronavirus. You've seen that with the handling of the mask when you know that a vast majority of the country believes and supports in mask-wearing.

But this is something that we've seen from the president time and time again, when there is something that is dominating his presidency, the news cycle. He tries to change the subject. He tries to veer it in a different direction that's more favorable to him.

So if it was the pandemic going on earlier this year, he tries to pivot to the economic reopening and tries to kind of pressure states to kind of get things back to normal because they know the sense of normalcy is something that would help his prospects in the election. You know, if there's a racial justice with the racial justice issues going on, he's trying to pivot back to law and order issues.

But this puts, again, the coronavirus pandemic squarely in the spotlight, as it should be, considering the severity of the current pandemic and how hard it is hitting the leader of the free world right now squarely back into the public spotlight, and in a way politically about the president and his team don't want.

TAPPER: David, I want to dive into the poll numbers here for a sign, talk about a warning sign for the Trump campaign. His disapproval rating for handling the virus has gone up. Take a look at that when it comes to women voters, disapproval among women, 29 percent to 69 percent. This is alreasdy a group of voters that have been running away from him.

CHALIAN: Yeah, this -- I mean, we know the gender gap that exists in this race, there's no doubt about that, and his own actions on his own contracting the virus, now he handled it and as you're saying, just handling the outbreak overall is driving female voters even further away. I showed you before, 63 percent say handled it irresponsibly. If you

look at difference between how women and men answered that, it was like by 20 points. I think 72 percent of women are saying he acted irresponsibly in the way that he handled this.

This is a particular problem there, and with independents, precisely the groups that if you're Donald Trump and you want a successful path to 270 and reelection, you need to start bringing some of these folks back into the fold. His actions in the last week, Jake, they continue to repel.

TAPPER: Yeah, his action today is not going to -- is not going to help.

Nia, there's also another group that President Trump needs, and this is shocking. Seniors, in these new polls, 62 percent of those above the age of 65 disapprove of how President Trump has handled the pandemic.

[16:25:00]

It turns out that the message of let grandma and grandpa die isn't a winning one.

HENDERSON: Grandma and grandpa, exactly.

TAPPER: Yeah.

HENDERSON: Yeah, and, listen, Democrats haven't tied or won seniors in decades. You see Biden doing well among seniors of all races and I think about seniors of all races, independents of all races and women as well, this president is just not where he needs to be.

It is not clear how he gets there. How does he turn that message around, particularly in a state like Florida, Pennsylvania as well. Lots of seniors in those big battleground states and so here he is with this message about COVID that affects seniors disproportionately. Seniors like Donald Trump and really not being able to have a message that assures those seniors he's taking this seriously, this disease that has really ravaged so many different communities, nursing homes, people's grandparents, as you said.

And so, it's unclear that this new message of listen, the president beat this and too bad Joe Biden doesn't have this firsthand knowledge of experience of COVID, it's a ridiculous message. And I think you're going to see that show up time and time again with senior voters and these poll numbers.

TAPPER: Right, the idea -- that was one of the most ridi -- you're referring to one of the spokesmen on the other channel, saying now he's going to be a good president because he has firsthand experience with COVID which is just, you know, brain melt.

Thanks one and all. Appreciate it.

This Wednesday will be the only vice presidential debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris. Special coverage starts at 7:00 Eastern here on CNN. Be sure to tune in.

And as we wait for President Trump to be released from Walter Reed, a closer look at the timeline of this infection and his treatment. I'm going to talk to an infectious disease doctor, next.

Stay with us.

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