Return to Transcripts main page
The Lead with Jake Tapper
Trump Claims He Will Be "Ending" Pandemic "Soon" As U.S. Surpasses 8 Million Confirmed Cases. Aired 4:30-5p ET
Aired October 16, 2020 - 16:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:33:50]
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: We're back with our 2020 lead. President Trump on a potential virus super-spreader spree, holding rallies in Florida and Georgia today.
And as CNN's Jeremy Diamond reports, the president is falsely claiming that his handling of the pandemic has been a success, just as the U.S. passes 8 million confirmed cases of coronavirus.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Today, President Trump is playing defense, campaigning in two states he won four years ago but where he's now on the ropes.
In Florida, the president battling to win back a key demographic, turned off by his handling of the pandemic.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Since the beginning, our nation's seniors have been my top priority. I'm working as hard as I can so you can kiss and hug your children and grandchildren very soon.
DIAMOND: Trump announcing a partnership with CVS and Walgreens to deliver an eventual vaccine to nursing homes. But his pitch was riddled with false claims and comparisons to Europe, which he is seeing a surge, but he's experienced far fewer cases and deaths per capita than the U.S.
TRUMP: Sadly in Europe, the average daily deaths are really soaring.
DIAMOND: After a pair of events in Florida, the president will rally supporters in Georgia, a red state he carried by five points in 2016, but where polls say the race is now virtually tied.
[16:35:07]
Despite the warning signs, Trump insisting big crowds and great enthusiasm signal a massive red wave coming.
As for the wave of coronavirus cases that is threatening the country --
TRUMP: We have done an amazing job, and it's rounding the corner.
DIAMOND: The president is still in denial and continuing to spread misinformation. The president also offering this hazy answer to the question of whether he tested negative before debating Joe Biden last month.
TRUMP: I don't know. I don't remember. I test all the time.
GUTHRIE: Did you take a test on the day of the debate, I guess, is the bottom line?
TRUMP: I probably did, and I took a test the day before and the day before, and I was always in great shape and I was in great shape before the debate.
DIAMOND: Trump also refused to disavow the QAnon conspiracy theory, which accuses Democrats of leading a satanic pedophile ring.
TRUMP: I know nothing about QAnon.
Let me just tell you, what I do hear about it is they are very strongly against pedophilia, and I agree with that. I mean, I do agree with that and I agree --
GUTHRIE: OK, but there's not a satanic pedophile cult --
TRUMP: I have no idea. I know nothing about them.
GUTHRIE: You don't know that? OK.
TRUMP: No, I don't know that.
DIAMOND: As for the conspiracy theories Trump has promoted himself, like the ludicrous lie that Joe Biden plotted to kill the Navy SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden --
TRUMP: That was a retweet. That was an opinion of somebody --
GUTHRIE: But --
TRUMP: And that was a retweet. I'll put it out there. So, I don't take a position.
GUTHRIE: You're the president, you're not like someone's crazy uncle.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DIAMOND: And, Jake, I'm going to sound like a broken record over these next two weeks plus, but what the president is doing here today and going to continue to do every day for the next two weeks is reckless according to every single health expert. As you can see behind me, thousands of people gathered because the president of the United States asked them to come here. Very, very few of them wearing masks and as you can see, no social distancing to speak of -- Jake.
TAPPER: All right. Jeremy Diamond, thanks so much. Stay safe. Joining us now to discuss all of this and more, CNN's chief medical
correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
So much to unpack here, Sanjay. President Trump trying to rewrite his administration's response to coronavirus this afternoon while also claiming Democrats would delay a vaccine and prolong the pandemic. I'm going play this clip, but before I do, as always, I want to tell our viewers, this is not true in terms of the accusations he's making. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: As we shelter high risk Americans with extreme vigilance, we must also allow lower risk Americans to return to work and return to school. But we cannot allow unscientific, panic-driven, fear-based policies to deny our children and grandchildren their future and their dreams.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: It sounds to me like he's kind of promoting the herd immunity theory there -- protect the vulnerable, but kids and workers should go back? I mean, we would all theoretically love to return to work in the way we used to, sent our kids back to school as used to, but I still have not heard a legitimate plan from the president. This sounds like herd immunity, which would kill 1 million to 2 million Americans.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, I mean, this is the thing, these are the exact talking points from the Barrington Declaration, this controversial memo that's come about advocating for herd immunity. And the basic premises is, look, we know who's vulnerable, they should be in a bubble, and everyone else can go back to their lives.
It sounds reasonable, right? There's two problems. One is, it doesn't work, right? In places right now where people, older people, people with preconditions have largely been home, we're seeing young people become infected and the death rate still occur in people who are becoming vulnerable, because this is a contagious virus.
One person latches on to this person. She's sisters with someone who works in a nursing home. They travel over here.
You get the idea. It's just -- it's very challenging.
But also -- let me show you what we're talking about in terms of vulnerable individuals. We just want to protect the vulnerable individuals. If you look at it by age and with preexisting conditions, people under the age of 65 with preexisting conditions. I think we have to graphic.
But it's close to 92 million people, Jake, that we're talking about here, right? So, you're going to put 92 million people into a bubble?
It doesn't work, which is why every public health official has been against this. That is to say nothing of the fact that, you know, between 1 million to 2 million people would die under that strategy, hospitals would become overwhelmed. It's -- it's just not a good strategy.
There are countries around the world that haven't had to shut down, because they've always been able to shut down because they have been able to keep the virus under control. And because we have such widespread virus, still in this country at this point, that's why we're still having these challenges. But the answer is not to basically wall off a third of the country.
TAPPER: President Trump holding this rally in Florida. You saw it. Then he's going hold a rally in Georgia. He's going to hold one this Wisconsin tomorrow.
These are three states with alarming COVID warning signs right now.
[16:40:01]
The death toll just passed 16,000 in Florida. The hospitals are above 82 percent capacity in Georgia. Wisconsin has the second highest seven-day positivity rate in the country.
I mean, we already know for a fact that after Trump rallied in Tulsa, after Trump rallied in Minnesota, after Trump held the event at the White House, people got sick. Some people -- it's entirely possible Herman Cain died.
The timeline matches up. Obviously, we don't know for a fact when he got the virus, but it certainly could have been in Tulsa.
Do you think these rallies like the White House event a few weeks ago are likely to become super spreader events?
GUPTA: Yes. I mean, I really do. And, you know, I mean, the issue is that the virus is the constant here. It's very contagious. You put people together for long period of time, longer than 15 minutes, closely clustered, maskless, that's -- those are the ingredients for a super spreader event.
The challenge has been, Jake, because there's so many newly infected people every day in this country, contact tracing has basically become a futile task. How do you contact trace 15,000 people every day? It would be an entire sector of our society dedicated to doing that.
But what we did -- we have reporting on this tonight, Jake -- we were able to go back to cities, Tulsa, you mentioned, Phoenix, and then Oshkosh, Wisconsin, you know, in the beginning of August. You know after people are exposed to the time they get hospitalized is typically a few weeks, right? That's a more -- that's an easier statistic to sort of trace, because a number of cases people don't get tested. It's hard to actually contact trace back to the event, but hospitalizations is a truer measure.
In Tulsa, as you mentioned, you know, Herman Cain may have been exposed at that event and subsequently died. But we know hospitalizations went up threefold a few weeks after Tulsa. We know in Phoenix, hospitalizations were about 2,000 per day in Phoenix at the time of that rally. It went to 3,000, so went up a significant amount.
Oshkosh, hospitalizations went up 20 percent within that time period after the rally. So again, cause and effect is always going to be challenging to draw, but look what happened in all these cities a few weeks after. Hospital -- people got sick. Hospitalizations went up.
Was it directly related to the rally? We may never know.
TAPPER: Yeah.
GUPTA: But in places where the virus is already spreading like this, it's really challenging.
TAPPER: He swore an oath to protect the American people.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much.
Major worries for one state at the center of this latest surge, the president heading there for a rally even though they just had to open up a field hospital.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:47:15]
TAPPER: In our health lead: 32 states trending upwards in cases, among them, Wisconsin, which, right now, is reporting record high deaths, cases and hospitalizations. It's a horrible trend.
Joining us now, Dr. Agnes Kresch. She's an infectious disease physician for Prevea Health in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Dr. Kresch, thanks for joining us.
Both the hospitals you work at are at near capacity. Tell us what you're seeing on the ground in your hospitals.
DR. AGNES KRESCH, INFECTIOUS DISEASE SPECIALIST, PREVEA: That's right. Thank you so much for having me.
So, the numbers are really unbelievable. We have never seen numbers quite this high. Our hospitals are at near capacity. And for the city of Green Bay, we have over 130 people hospitalized just with the coronavirus.
And the real issue is, where does that leave the rest of the patients who are still coming in with their strokes and heart attacks? And how do we find places for them?
TAPPER: Wisconsin, with its record high hospitalizations, if cases continue to go up, are hospitals going to be able to handle the surge? What do you do?
KRESCH: So that's a really difficult question. We are trying our best. And we are trying to treat people very
aggressively, as effectively as we can. And the whole scary part about this is that we haven't even yet started flu season.
TAPPER: And, Dr. Kresch, why do you think Wisconsin is seeing such a surge?
KRESCH: So, it's a hard question, but I really have to say that it comes down to human behavior.
We saw an outbreak, and we actually made national news in May as well, when there was the outbreak at the meat plant and other manufacturing plants.
But, at that point, people were still at home, and we knew where the focus of the infection was. And now it's different. It's different because there isn't one zip code, one employer. It's all over. It's community spread. And it's just because people are being a little bit lax here and there, and it all adds up to our positivity rate.
TAPPER: President Trump is headed to Wisconsin tomorrow for a rally. He's been doing all these rallies all over the country. People are not wearing masks. People are not distancing.
The mayor of Milwaukee is warning that the rally could be another super-spreader event, such as what we saw at the White House Rose Garden a few weeks ago.
Do you -- are you also afraid of that happening?
KRESCH: Well, absolutely.
I'm in no place to tell anybody what to do. But, at this point, we are really recommending not to have any kind of gatherings, and even to the point of family gatherings, where people from different households, they're getting together is a risk too.
TAPPER: Are you worried about cases getting even worse in the winter months, when flu season approaches and hits hard as well?
KRESCH: Absolutely.
I mean, flu season is always bad. And we're always worried about what's going to happen, about people getting the flu vaccine or not getting the flu vaccine. And the whole coronavirus issue is a wild card.
[16:50:06]
This is unprecedented. I don't know what's going to happen.
TAPPER: Dr. Kresch, is there anything you want the federal government to do? Is there anything that people can do to help out?
KRESCH: Well, I really think it comes down to just common sense and all the things that we hear every day. And I know it sounds simple, but that's what it really takes. I really wish that people could just avoid gatherings, enforce social distancing, not do anything unnecessary. Stay home when you're sick. Get your flu shot. And just take care of others. Take care of each other.
TAPPER: Dr. Agnes Kresch, thank you so much. And best of luck to you in the trenches there in Green Bay.
KRESCH: Thank you.
TAPPER: Joe Biden is hoping to build a wall, but not the type that Trump likes.
That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:55:15]
TAPPER: In the 2020 lead today: With 18 days to go before Election Day, more than 20 million ballots have already been cast through early voting.
For comparison, at the same point in 2016, the numbers were around six million. Tomorrow, President Trump will head to Michigan and Wisconsin, two Midwestern states showing signs of trouble for the Trump campaign.
Joe Biden's clear lead in these states may help Biden build a Midwest blue wall.
Let's bring in CNN's Harry Enten, who crunches the numbers.
And, Harry, we have heard this before, and Trump won Michigan, Wisconsin and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania back in 2016. But you say this is not 2016, from what you're looking at.
HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICAL SENIOR WRITER AND ANALYST: Yes, I don't really think it is.
Now, obviously, we don't necessarily know that. We have still got a little bit over two weeks to go.
But take a look at the polling averages in those three states you just mentioned, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And what you see there are, clearly, it's for Joe Biden, seven to eight points in all of them. And more than that, he's over 50 percent of the vote. And that, of course, was a level that Hillary Clinton never reached.
Now, what's so important about Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin is, if you look at the electoral map, right, and you add that to the states that Hillary Clinton won back in 2016, you get over 270 electoral votes, you get to 279. And Biden's lead in those states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, have been at least at five points in both September and October. So it's been pretty consistent, Jake.
TAPPER: What is working for Biden in these states? And is it definite that the numbers are going to hold?
ENTEN: I mean, look, it's not definite that the numbers are going to hold, but the numbers make a lot of sense to me, right, because if you look at the national polls, right, there are two key groups that play a very big role in those three key Midwestern states that you mentioned, non-college white voters, who make up the plurality in each of those states, and white women.
And what you see is, white women back in 2016 nationally, in the final pre-election polls, Trump was leading among them by five. Now Biden's up by 12 points, right? So it's a 17-point shift. Look at non-college whites who are a huge portion in those states. Look here. Trump won those nationally by 30 points back in 2016.
But now his lead has been cut nearly in half to just 17 points. So, the movement that we're seeing in the Midwest battleground states really does seem to correlate and line up with what we're seeing nationally with two key core demographic groups.
TAPPER: And we know, Harry, from the new fund-raising numbers that candidates release, both of them have a lot of money to burn in the 18 days left.
Is there a lot of financial resources put into these Midwestern states?
ENTEN: Yes, another big reason why I think Joe Biden's doing so well in those three key Midwestern states, again, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, is look at how much money he has spent on the airwaves compared to Donald Trump.
He is basically just crushing him in all of those states. In Michigan, he has $32 million on the air vs. just $12 million for Trump, Pennsylvania, $54 million vs. $24 million, and Wisconsin, $27 million vs. $10 million.
Biden has been able to get his message out in these three key swing states in a way that Trump, simply put, hasn't been able to.
TAPPER: And, Harry, these Midwestern states may be among the most contentious on election night. They are states Trump had a narrow victory in 2016.
Now final results for 2020, it, frankly, could take a while.
ENTEN: Yes, they really could.
Two reasons why, right? Number one, the deadline to get your ballot in. And in some states, Arizona, Florida, and Wisconsin, the votes must be received by Election Day. But, in Michigan and Pennsylvania, they only need to be postmarked by Election Day. So it could take a little bit longer to wait for those final votes to come in. And, finally, on the votes being processed, right? This is another key
thing. In Michigan and the big cities -- in Michigan and the big cities, they only have -- they get started counting before Election Day.
But in most of -- in a lot of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, they can only start processing those ballots on Election Day, which could, in fact, delay the counts in those states.
TAPPER: Officials in Pennsylvania constantly telling me that they might not have an answer on the final vote count until Thursday or Friday after Election Day.
Harry Enten, thanks so much. Good to see you.
And we'd like to take this moment just to honor one of the lives lost to coronavirus, one of more than 216,000 in this country.
Philippe Gonzalez (ph) died just a few days before his 58th birthday. He fought for his life for five weeks before dying alone in a hospital from COVID complications.
Gonzalez was a musician. He was talented at both the guitar and the keyboard. He filled his home with music, his family says, playing all the time for his four children and his wife of 34 years. Gonzalez is remembered by them as being kind and humble, a loving family man, who leaves behind a devastated family who misses him dearly.
It's so sad.
May his memory and the memories of all of those we have lost during this horrific pandemic be a blessing.
This Sunday morning on "STATE OF THE UNION," Trump campaign senior adviser and the president's daughter-in-law Lara Trump, Democratic Senator from Delaware Senator Chris Coons, plus Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. It's at 9:00 a.m. and noon Sunday.
And then, Sunday night, a CNN special report: "The Insiders: A Warning From Former Trump Officials" -- "The Insiders" airing Sunday 9:00 p.m. and midnight right here on CNN.
Our coverage on CNN continues right now.
