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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Two Kamala Harris Campaign Officials Test Positive For COVID- 19; Coronavirus Cases Spiking Across Country. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired October 15, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:01]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: In North Carolina, where the president held another reckless rally this afternoon and early voting starts today, the state is reporting its highest daily case count ever.

There were nearly 60,000 new cases reported across the U.S. today; 985 people died from the virus. At this rate, the U.S. could top nine million coronavirus cases and 230,000 deaths by Election Day.

Health experts have been very clear. Wearing masks, socially distancing can dramatically help reduce the spread of the virus, and yet President Trump on the campaign trail continues to undermine those efforts. Today, he completely misrepresented a CDC study and lied to the American people about it.

Listen to this. But, before you do, just keep this in mind. This is not true.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Look at all the masks.

They keep saying, nobody wears a mask, wear the masks, although then they come out with things today. Did you see, CDC, that 85 percent of the people wearing the mask catch it, OK?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: That is not true in any way; 85 percent of people wearing masks do not catch it. There is no study that suggests that at all.

I asked the White House what he was talking about. They referred me to a CDC study of people who had coronavirus. A high percentage of them claimed that they had worn masks. But that's not the fact of the matter in terms of how they got the virus.

More than 40 percent of those individuals had also had close contact was somebody who had COVID, mostly family members. A great number of them had eaten at restaurants. The report was trying to find out how these people who claimed they wore masks got the virus.

But President Trump continues to misrepresent facts, instead of facing the reality. The president also now dismissing Dr. Anthony Fauci as a -- quote -- "Democrat. Everybody knows that."

That's not true. There's no evidence Fauci is a Democrat. He's not registered as one. He has served in his position since 1984 under both Republican and Democratic administrations, heralded by both Democratic and Republican presidents.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins joins me.

Now, Kaitlan, Trump is now using his rallies to attack Dr. Fauci.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jake. I think this is the first time we have actually seen the president go after Dr. Fauci at one of his rallies.

And it comes just days after the president's campaign used Dr. Fauci in a campaign ad to try to appeal to voters. And now he's going after him, criticizing him for things he said in the past on coronavirus, even though the president himself has changed his position on the pandemic several times, and also claiming the Dr. Fauci is a Democrat.

When you actually look in the D.C. voter registration records, it says that Dr. Fauci is registered as a voter, but has no party affiliated with him. And, of course, he made clear in his statement this week that he's gone to great pains to make sure that he does not endorse any political candidates, given what you said, he's worked under presidents of both parties, being in government for decades in service.

And so this is the president going after Dr. Fauci as he tries to reframe really his entire response to the pandemic ahead of that town hall tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS (voice-over): President Trump is holding his fourth rally in four days, as he hopes to make up lost ground against Joe Biden in North Carolina, a state he must win in three weeks.

TRUMP: Can you believe -- can we believe we're even fighting against this guy?

COLLINS: Before leaving Washington, Trump called into FOX Business, where he defended holding large rallies with thousands of people packed together.

TRUMP: What I do is, outside is a big thing. And if you look at those people, they really are wearing masks. I'll tell you, I looked last night in Iowa, there were many, many people wearing masks.

COLLINS: The people directly behind Trump may have been wearing masks, but cameras showed that many in the audience weren't.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says holding large rallies with few health precautions is a major risk.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: You can't run away from or argue with the numbers. That's a high-risk endeavor.

COLLINS: One of the first people in Trump's inner circle to test positive was Hope Hicks. And she was not wearing a mask when she joined him on the campaign trail today.

Contradicting what his staff has said in the past, Trump acknowledged today he was not being tested on a daily basis.

TRUMP: I'm tested, not every day, but I'm tested a lot. I was really tested a lot after I got rid of it, because they wanted to make sure, and I always tested a lot.

COLLINS: That's not what his press secretary told reporters in July.

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: He's tested more than anyone, multiple times a day, and we believe that he's acting appropriately.

COLLINS: The pandemic has killed over 200,000 Americans and left many struggling to pay bills or find jobs. Despite that, Trump is downplaying the impact of coronavirus.

TRUMP: We have been affected less by the pandemic than any other major country in the world.

COLLINS: The Treasury secretary said yesterday that a stimulus deal before the election is unlikely, though Trump claimed today it's possible.

With no evidence and no explanation, he also claimed that no would pay for the $1.8 trillion relief package.

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TRUMP: Well, there's a lot of ways, OK? There's a lot of ways. And I will figure every one of them out. I already have them figured out.

COLLINS: That promise echoing one he's made many times before that also never happened.

TRUMP: We will build the wall. Mexico is going to pay for the wall.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Now, Jake, of course, the president has now twice today made that claim that you were talking about, where he claimed that 85 percent of people who wore a mask got COVID-19, something that is obviously inaccurate and not something that the CDC has said.

Instead, they have talked about how wearing a mask is not intended to protect you, the person wearing it. It's to protect other people, in case you have COVID-19.

But what this study actually showed was that people who got it in this study of adults that they did were twice as likely to have reported dining at a restaurant than those who did not get coronavirus. But, as the president is making all of these false claims about

wearing a mask, Jake, keep that in mind the next time his aides try to push this idea that he has always been consistent that people should wear a mask and whatnot, something that they have used time and time again when we have tried to press them on the president obviously making inaccurate statements about the effectiveness of wearing a mask.

TAPPER: Kaitlan Collins, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

With just 19 days to go until Election Day, the Biden campaign has pulled Senator Kamala Harris off the campaign trail after two people in her orbit, including her communications director, tested positive for the virus.

The campaign says Senator Harris did not have close contact with either of those people. But, as a precaution, her events have been canceled for the weekend.

CNN's M.J. Lee joins me now lives.

M.J., the Biden/Harris campaign, they disclosed every bit of information, it seems, about this incident and the individuals and how -- who came in contact with them and what. It seemed aimed in some ways at contrasting themselves with the White House, which has been completely nontransparent about President Trump contracting the virus.

M.J. LEE, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you're absolutely right about that.

We have gotten a pretty full accounting from the Biden campaign on what appears to have happened. And that is that two people -- the first is Senator Harris' communications director, and the second person is a member of her flight crew -- did test positive for COVID- 19 late last night.

And what we understand from the campaign is that both of those people traveled with Senator Harris on a plane on October 8, and that both of them, including Senator Harris as well, were wearing N95 masks on the plane and that, during this time, Harris did not have close contact with either of those people. That's according to the CDC's definition of what it means to be exposed to someone with the virus, and that, importantly, 48 hours prior to testing positive, those people did not have contact with either Senator Harris or former Vice President Joe Biden.

And the good news, Jake, is that Senator Harris was tested for COVID- 19 earlier today. That test came back negative. She was also tested yesterday as well. That test was also negative.

So, really, it is out of an abundance of caution, the Biden campaign says, that she has been taken off the trail for in-person events for the time being. They expect her to go back out on the trail on Monday.

So, remember, she was supposed to be out on the campaign trail in North Carolina today. Those events are now going to be virtual. And, as for our former Vice President Joe Biden, he is going to continue campaigning, including attending this town hall this evening in Philadelphia.

TAPPER: All right, M.J., thank you so much. And Democratic vice presidential running late Senator Kamala Harris will join CNN's Don Lemon on "CNN TONIGHT" this evening 8:00 p.m. Eastern. You don't want to miss it.

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

And, Sanjay, I have to say, again, the president, the leading purveyor of false information about the virus, misrepresenting this CDC study, for whatever reason. I don't know if he misunderstood it, or if he's just lying about it. It's dangerous.

It is not true that this study said 85 percent of people who wear masks catch the virus. It's a lie.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: No, it's absolutely a lie. That isn't even what the study was trying to determine.

As you pointed out, Jake, it was a totally different sort of focus of the study. In the study, as you know, they found people -- they had people who were symptomatic, people got tested for the virus, people who were infected, people were not infected.

They said they were about just as likely to have worn a mask whether they had been infected or not. But, interestingly, Jake, that's the problem with these studies, first of all, is that about half the country regularly or sometimes wears a mask. We know that from lots of different studies.

In this self-reported study, about eight out of 10 people said that they regularly or sometimes wore a mask. Point is that, it's self- reported. It's very hard to make any sense of that data.

What we know, I think pretty convincingly, that the CDC has always said -- and they just sent us a statement again -- is that the mask is really designed to protect others from a potentially infected mask- wearer.

So, the real question should be, if you got infected, how likely are you to be around people who weren't wearing masks, not how likely were you to be wearing a mask.

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So, as you point out, it was a totally different study. Masks are a good thing. That's been borne out over and over again, and it helps protect others from you. You may not even know you're carrying the virus.

TAPPER: Yes, I mean, what the -- they were trying to figure out how these people got the virus. GUPTA: Right.

TAPPER: And one of the -- I think 42 percent of the people who, -- and, again, they claimed they wore the mask. We don't know if it's true or not; 42 percent of them said they had had close contact with somebody who had the virus, meaning they probably -- and mostly family members.

GUPTA: Right.

TAPPER: So they probably didn't wear a mask around that person at home.

And then they were more -- I think more than twice as likely to have gone to a restaurant, when you obviously take off your mask to eat. So it wasn't saying wearing a mask doesn't do anything. In fact, it was saying the opposite.

These people who got the disease when they weren't wearing masks, they didn't spread it because they were -- because they often were wearing masks.

I mean, it's just lunacy. And I can't believe we have to spend our time talking about this from the president, who is charged with protecting the American people.

GUPTA: Yes, I mean, the most basic thing, this mask-wearing, because everyone has this conversation, we're actually not going to lock down again. You hear that all the time.

So you're not going to do anything? We're not going to lock down, we're not going to wear masks, we're not going to abide by basic public health practices? I mean, if the country were a patient, had a disease, you're basically saying, look, I'm just praying that this is just going to cure itself. I'm not willing to do anything, no treatment at all, to take care of this disease, and hope that it goes away.

That's obviously a really bad strategy. Just like herd immunity, where the virus will run through the country, the virus runs through that metaphor of the human body and you get progressively sicker. So, it makes no sense. And here we are still talking about it in October.

TAPPER: The Biden campaign says the both of the individuals who tested positive for coronavirus were on a flight with Senator Harris on October 8. They were all wearing N95 masks. And we're told she was not in close contact with either of them for more than 15 minutes.

Based on those details, is it -- is it safe for Senator Harris to return to the campaign trail Monday, do you think?

GUPTA: Well, it's one of these things where you have got to define close contact. And I read that statement, and they were careful to say there was no close contact.

And there is a definition around this. This isn't a precise science, but basically saying, did you have contact with the person within six feet for longer than 15 minutes, unmasked as well, and was that at least two days, 48 hours before the person developed symptoms from their infection?

So, if that's true, if she did not meet any of those criteria, it does not qualify as a close contact.

And I will say, Jake, as we talked about, she gets tested, they say it's negative. That doesn't necessarily mean that you can't be positive a couple days from now from an exposure that happens earlier. So I'm sure they're going to monitor that.

But if the close contact criteria were not met, she would be good.

TAPPER: And let's talk about what we're seeing in the U.S. right now, because it's getting worse, nearly 60,000 new cases just yesterday.

At least seven states are reporting a record high number of hospitalizations. There's a chance we could hit nine million cases of coronavirus before Election Day, almost 1,000 deaths yesterday.

How bad is this going to get, do you think?

GUPTA: Well, Jake, it's really worrisome.

I mean, I don't know how to represent this anymore. I don't want to frighten people, but it's really worrisome.

I mean, one of the things that I think you got to keep in mind is that we think about this virus ,and it has a certain fatality ratio, meaning, if you're infected, this is the likelihood someone might die. But it's also contingent on what medical resources are, right?

We had this conversation in April. If you start to run into situations -- and we can show the map of the country in terms of hospital capacity right now. Typically, this time of year, critical care capacity around 60, 65 percent. The purple means it's already over 70 percent, dark purple, even higher than that, I believe.

Most of the country, even before we go into flu season, is already at really significant capacity, Jake, here in Georgia, 89.2 percent capacity.

So what happens over the next couple of months? My point is, the viruses are here. They're contagious. We know that. I'm talking about flu and coronavirus coming over the next few months.

But if hospitals start running into trouble, that's going to be a real challenge. I mean, they're already planning, Jake, in these cities looking at buildings, trying to determine can that be a hospital sort of surge capacity structure?

So that's a really worrisome part. To try and prevent those preventable deaths is of huge concern.

TAPPER: When the president's out there on the campaign trail talking about the great therapeutics and everything that people have available to them, as if the average Joe Six-Pack in Greenville, North Carolina, will be able to medevac over to Walter Reed and be given an infusion of all these experimental treatments that he will quickly recover from.

That's just not the reality, not to mention, of course, the lack of safety net in this country.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

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TAPPER: It turns out the "let 'er rip" approach is not a good approach. Who knew? Scientists. Dr. Fauci's new warnings about deadly dangers of herd immunity.

And they are the most vulnerable to coronavirus. Some have not seen their grandchildren in person in months. What Joe Biden is doing to pull key senior support away from Trump?

Stay with us.

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TAPPER: Welcome back.

In our national lead today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now projecting there could be as many as 240,000 deaths in the United States due to coronavirus by November. Right now, at least 217,000 people have died in the U.S.

And as CNN's Nick Watt reports for us now, the rise in hospitalizations have many experts worried about what's to come.

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RICARDO AGUIRRE, LOST BUSINESS AND SEVERAL FAMILY MEMBERS DUE TO COVID-19: I feel very incompetent.

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This virus destroyed Ricardo Aguirre's business, killed eight family members, including his father.

AGUIRRE: We did everything together.

WATT: And nearly 60,000 new COVID-19 infections across America yesterday, highest tally in a couple of months.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is now unconscionable this late into the outbreak.

WATT: The Atlanta Falcons won't practice today after a positive test and perhaps the biggest name in college sports is now COVID positive.

NICK SABAN, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA HEAD FOOTBALL COACH: I feel fine. I felt fine. I was very surprised, you know, by this.

WATT: These are the nationwide daily case counts. Bad in the spring, worse in the summer, rising again, rising fast.

A call to arms at NYC, the one-time epicenter.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK CITY, NY: Simple as this: crucial week. This is the week to stop the second wave.

WATT: This week, 21 states logged their highest average daily case counts ever.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got to get these numbers down. And if this trend continues, our hospital capacity will be in jeopardy.

WATT: In just a week, the number of COVID-19 patients in the hospital in Indiana jumped 25 percent. In Ohio, 28 percent. In Delaware, 30 percent. In Minnesota, 32 percent.

In Wisconsin, more COVID-19 patients in the hospital now than ever.

DR. ASHOK RAI, PREVEA HEALTH PRESIDENT AND CEO: If there was a major car accident today in green bay between all the hospitals, we wouldn't be able to take care of it.

WATT: But advisers to our president reportedly promoting herd immunity, aka, let it rip.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I think that we just got to look that square in the eye and say it's nonsense.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It leads to unnecessary cases and it leads to unnecessary deaths.

WATT: What might have been New Zealand, small island nation, granted, but 25 deaths, total.

Why? Quick action. Real border closures and nationwide lockdown. Strong test and trace. This, according to a new study in "The Lancet".

Here, cases are rising. Temperatures are falling. Some say the first wave never ended.

Here comes the second. So, Thanksgiving?

FAUCI: You may have to bite the bullet and sacrifice that social gathering.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATT: Now, of course, Halloween is first up and Beverly Hills became one of the first cities in the country to outright ban trick-or- treating.

They say they're not going to be out on the streets looking for kids wearing costumes but if you are caught trick-or-treating or caught giving candy to a stranger, you could be fined a hundred bucks -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Nick, thanks so much.

Europe is already battling a second wave of coronavirus, averaging more than 100,000 new infections per day over the past week. That accounts for about one-third of the new cases worldwide.

CNN's Phil Black is live for us in London.

And, Phil, millions of people in London will move to a higher coronavirus level, tier two. What does that mean?

PHIL BLACK, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: In fact, Jake, it's a big blow to their personal lives during what is already a difficult time. From Saturday, it's going to be illegal for people who don't live together to spend time together indoors. It means you can't spend time with wider friends and family in homes, bars, cafes, restaurants. It's not going to be as easy to access those important relationships.

Meanwhile, there are regions in the north of England being nudged into an even harsher level of restriction that would see the closure, complete closure of some bars and restaurants. Tonight, we learned that politician from around the country, when they come from London, will have to show solidarity with those people who are enduring those highest level of infections because the speaker of the House of Commons parliament have said that he will close all bars in parliament that he is responsible for.

It means no more subsidized boozing for members of parliament for the foreseeable future, a move that is likely to enjoy strong political support across the U.K., Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Phil, thank you.

France also imposing tougher coronavirus restrictions. Paris and several other French cities will have a new curfew to abide by, starting Saturday.

CNN correspondent Melissa Bell is live for us in Bordeaux.

And, Melissa, what's this curfew and what happens if you violate it?

MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, basically, if you're out and about in any of those cities post-9:00 p.m., you can be stopped and fined. If you're a repeat offender, even face jail time. So, it's a pretty serious matter.

It was what the government felt it had to do to bring its COVID-19 figures under control. What we've seen, Jake, is a week of record rises and again tonight another record set more than 30,000 new cases announced today in a single 24-hour period.

And, of course, that bears the strain on ICUs and hospitals. And the French president, when he spoke on television last night, was very clear.

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It is a second wave that threatens to be even worse than was the first because it is now spread throughout the whole of France and because there are simply no more spare beds.

So, it's essential that these measures prove enough. But on Saturday, if they don't, we enter a state of sanitary emergency here in France, and that really gives local authorities a lot of power to bring in fresh restrictions if they're needed.

TAPPER: All right. Melissa Bell in Bordeaux, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

We'll talk to some of the voters in the key battleground state who could pose one of the biggest threats to President Trump's re- election. That story is next.

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