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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Can Hospitals Handle COVID-19 Surge?; Interview With Former U.S. Special Operations Commander Admiral William McRaven; Former FDA Commissioner: U.S. is One Week Away from a "Rapid Acceleration" in COVID Cases; Dozens of Volunteers to Be Deliberately Infected with Coronavirus as Part of New U.K. Study. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired October 20, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:02]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: But she canceled those plans. Her office is saying she's still recovering from her own battle with the virus.

As CNN's Ryan Nobles reports, expect to see a playbook from the Trump campaign that you have definitely seen before.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With two weeks left for voters to cast their ballots, President Trump is presenting a familiar closing argument, attacking his enemies and firing up the base.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't know. I don't see you people. I don't think you're going to want to give up those guns. I don't think so.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: That's not -- that's for Arizona.

NOBLES: While the president has spent a lot of time hammering Democrats, his current target is a member of his own administration, someone polls show most Americans admire, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

TRUMP: The only thing I say is, he's a little bit sometimes not a team player. But he is a Democrat. And I think that he's just fine.

NOBLES: Fauci has become a target for Trump, as he attempts to tap into the fatigue of many Americans struggling to deal with coronavirus restrictions.

The doctor responded to Trump's attacks with a reference to "The Godfather."

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: It's like in "The Godfather," nothing personal, strictly business.

(LAUGHTER) FAUCI: As far as I'm concerned, you know, I just want to do my job and take care of the people of this country.

NOBLES: Sources tell CNN that Trump has not met with Fauci in person since the middle of August and has little to no contact with the White House Coronavirus Task Force at all, instead putting his faith in the hands of controversial Dr. Scott Atlas, who the president praised this morning

TRUMP: Scott Atlas is fantastic, but they go after him so much.

NOBLES: Campaign advisers worry attacking Fauci only serves to remind voters of the pandemic, which is seeing spikes in almost every state.

Tonight, Trump travels to Erie, Pennsylvania, home to one of three swing counties in the crucial state that voted for Obama in 2012 and went for Trump in 2016.

TRUMP: We are going to win four more years in that beautiful White House.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

NOBLES: These big rallies may be the only card the campaign has left to play. His team hopes these events will reignite the magic from four years ago, an adviser admitting, with candidate Trump, a dramatic course correction is unlikely.

"It's the last two it. F it," the adviser tells CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NOBLES: And President Trump scheduled to leave from the White House in about an hour or so to Erie, Pennsylvania, which is a battleground inside the battleground of Pennsylvania.

And Melania Trump, the first lady, will not be alongside him, Jake, her staff telling us that she is still dealing with lingering complications from the coronavirus pandemic. She really hasn't been involved that much in the campaign, and her advisers telling our Kate Bennett that we shouldn't expect to see her on the campaign trail at all before Election Day -- Jake.

TAPPER: We hope she feels better.

Ryan Nobles, thanks so much.

A high-profile endorsement for Joe Biden.

Retired Navy Admiral William McRaven, the former commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, says Biden will make America lead again, McRaven most famous for overseeing some of the most important operations in U.S. history, such as the raid that killed OBL, the capture of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and the rescue of Captain Phillips from Somali pirates.

Admiral McRaven joins us now.

Admiral, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, most importantly, for your nearly four decades of service to this nation.

I want to start with your op-ed in "The Wall Street Journal" today. You write -- quote -- "I am a pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small government, strong defense, and a national-anthem-standing conservative. But I also believe that black lives matter, that the dreamers deserve a path to citizenship, that diversity and inclusion are essential to our national success, that education is a great equalizer, that climate change is real, and that the First Amendment is the cornerstone of our democracy.

"Most important, I believe that America must lead in the world with courage, conviction, and a sense of honor and humility" -- unquote.

Was it a difficult decision to announce that you're voting for Biden? This is the first time you have ever publicly weighed in on a presidential race?

ADM. WILLIAM MCRAVEN (RET.), FORMER COMMANDER, U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS: Well, it was a difficult decision, Jake, to announce that I was voting.

Obviously, as a senior retired military officer, these are challenging times. And there's a little bit of an unwritten rule that the -- that senior officers don't come out and endorse a candidate.

However, I felt that the direction of the country was heading in such a bad direction, that we needed a new leadership, and that Joe Biden will be a much, much better leader than Donald Trump.

The one thing I know about leadership, Jake, is that, if you are going to lead in challenging times, you have to build alliances, you have to build coalitions, you have to have friends and allies.

And we have got a lot of challenges ahead of us. And we have got a rising China. We have got an aggressive Russia. We have got a North Korea with ICBMs that may be nuclear-tipped soon. And, of course, we have the second wave of the pandemic.

You cannot confront those challenges unless you have alliances. And this president has proven he doesn't want alliances domestically, and he doesn't want alliances in internationally. I mean, he's pulled out of the TPP. He is pulled out of the JCPOA, the Iranian nuclear agreement. He has pulled out of everything from UNESCO to the Open Skies to the World Health Organization.

[16:05:11]

Now, not all those organizations and all those treaties are great, but what they allow us to do is to maintain and strengthen alliances. So, when you have these challenges, you have folks around you that can help you solve them.

TAPPER: Admiral, you say that the world no longer looks up to America because they have seen -- quote -- "our dismissiveness, our lack of respect, and our transactional approach to global issues" -- unquote.

You really think the world doesn't look up to us at all? And, also, if that's true, the election of Joe Biden will change that?

MCRAVEN: I do think the election of Joe Biden will change that.

In fact, I think it can almost change within five minutes. The fact of the matter is, Donald Trump has been dismissive. You saw very early on in his presidency how he treated the NATO members.

Now, I got it. Has NATO been living up to its 2 percent of GDP to support the NATO alliance? No, but there are better ways to handle it. And you don't, you don't disrespect some of our colleagues and our allies that have been around with us for 75 years. That's not the way to strengthen the alliance. That's not the way to push back against Russia.

You look at the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Here was an opportunity to bring in 40 percent of the GDP, in terms of our allies, to be able to leverage that against China. And Trump elected not to do that.

So, yes, what I know will happen under Biden is that he will be respectful of our allies, he will build those alliances, he will strengthen those coalitions, and that's exactly what we're going to need going forward.

TAPPER: Last week -- I have to ask you about this. I'm sorry. But, last week, President Trump twice retweeted this deranged conspiracy theory about SEAL Team Six, the bin Laden raid.

The tweet alleged that Biden and Obama may have had SEAL Team Six killed, that Obama -- I'm sorry -- that Osama bin Laden was still alive, the man killed in the raid was actually about a double.

I mean, it's insane. I -- I'm sorry I even mentioned what the conspiracy theory is, because it's just so nuts and ludicrous. Trump was asked about this at the town hall with Savannah Guthrie. He said, hey, it's just a retweet. People can decide for themselves. He doesn't take a position.

You oversaw the operation. What was your reaction to all this?

(LAUGHTER)

MCRAVEN: Well, to your point, Jake, I didn't even think it was worth addressing, because it was so crazy. It was a little bit like denying the moon landing.

And when things are that off in left field, it doesn't gain anything by giving it legs and keeping the story going.

I was glad to see that Rob O'Neill, the seal that, in fact, shot bin Laden, who I know is a Trump supporter, made it very clear to the president that, no, we did in fact, get bin Laden. And, oh, by the way, not only do we get it, but the men that went on the mission risked their lives and the future of their family to go get bin Laden. And by being so dismissive, by promoting this crazy conspiracy theory,

you really disrespected those guys that went on the mission, and, frankly, I'd offer a lot of the people within the Special Operations and the conventional forces that have been fighting this hard war for a long time.

TAPPER: Throughout your career, and even after returning to civilian life, you seemed resolutely apolitical.

But something changed for you in 2018, it seems. You have become a critic of President Trump, not often, but on occasion. In 2018, you wrote of Trump -- quote -- "Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage, and, worst of all, divided us as a nation."

Trump dismissed your comments. He claimed you're a Hillary Clinton fan. I'm pretty sure that's not the case. And I suspect he will paint you again as a partisan Democrat, even though you have acknowledged all the conservative views you hold.

What -- let me give you an opportunity to give a preemptive defense of yourself from whatever he says.

MCRAVEN: Yes.

This actually started, Jake, when the president came out and said that the media was the enemy of the American people. And the fact of the matter is, I have fought the enemy of the American people, and it is not the media.

And, in that comment, I said that this attack on the media was the worst attack on democracy in my lifetime. And people said, how could that be the case?

Well, when you go after the First Amendment, of which you are sworn to uphold, and you begin to attack the media, and then, as you have seen his administration go on, he goes after peaceful rallies and those sorts of things, this is not the way to be a president.

So, it started with me addressing the School of Journalism at the University of Texas about the role of the media. And so I have taken the opportunity, when I think Trump has stepped out of line -- I have not been, to your point, kind of consistently attacking him. There have been opportunities where I think he has been pretty brazen and off the mark.

[16:10:01]

The one with the media being the enemy of the American people was the first one. The other one was when he went after John Brennan. And that is the quote that you're referring to.

I have also gone after him when we pulled out of Syria or when he announced that we were pulling out of Syria, without ever coordinating or talking to the leadership in the military. And then, when he fired Joe Maguire, Admiral Joe Maguire, as the director of national intelligence, all these, I thought, were egregious acts that warranted a response on my part.

TAPPER: Do you worry about what a second Trump term would look like?

MCRAVEN: I do.

And, again, let me be clear here. I have a lot of friends and family members that are Trump supporters. They are great and wonderful people that I have known most of my life. I don't agree with their positions, but I certainly don't want to paint the Trump supporters in a bad light--

TAPPER: Sure.

MCRAVEN: -- because, like I said, I have got friends and family members that are Trump supporters.

My issue with this particular "Wall Street Journal" article was about the future. This is about the future. It is the challenges that we are going to face in the future.

What if China invades Taiwan? What if Russia moves into Estonia? What if North Korea launches an ICBM? And what happens when the second wave of the coronavirus comes? Do we have a leader who knows how to build alliances, who knows how to build coalitions, who can bring the country together to tackle these tough challenges?

President Trump has shown that he cannot do that. He can't do it domestically. He hasn't worked with the governors on everything from COVID to the wildfires. And he can't do it internationally.

We have seen that both on COVID and on most of the major national security issues. So, this is my concern moving forward. If Trump is reelected, I don't know how we are going to tackle these very, very difficult challenges, in light of the fact that he doesn't want to have relationships with our allies internationally, and, frankly, with his partners domestically.

TAPPER: Retired Admiral William McRaven, former commander of Special Ops and author of "Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations." It's a great book. People should check it out.

Thanks so much for your time, sir. And, as always, thank you so much for your four decades of service.

We appreciate it.

MCRAVEN: My pleasure. Thanks, Jake.

TAPPER: Endorsements help, but it is the votes that matter.

Coming up, the key battleground states that will likely decide who wins the election in two weeks.

But, first, a former FDA chief says the U.S. is just one week away from -- quote -- "rapid acceleration" in coronavirus cases. Can hospitals handle that surge that seems to be coming? A reality check with CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta next.

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TAPPER: President Trump complains that CNN talks too much about coronavirus. Well, guess what? That's because 220,000 Americans are dead from it.

And in our health lead today, the former FDA commissioner is warning that the U.S. is one week away from rapid acceleration in coronavirus cases. This as nearly 60,000 new cases were reported just yesterday. That's the highest number of new cases for a Monday since July. And it's a harrowing reminder that we are still very much in the thick of this pandemic regardless of the president's behavior.

CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins me now.

Sanjay, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former FDA under President Trump, he's warning of a rapid acceleration, yet we still don't hear any evidence of any new plan from the White House for more widespread testing, for some sort of contact tracing plan so that the virus can be identified and isolated and contained.

Do you see any evidence of the leadership on this from the White House that the nation needs in order to get these numbers down?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: No. I mean, there is no plan, Jake, right now. In fact, the most that you hear about things that they are not going to do, right? Absolutely not going to mandate masks. We're not going to back into any circuit breaker lockdown mode.

So it's not a plan of what we are going to do. It's what we're not.

You know, you talk about the case numbers. I know why Scott Gottlieb is saying this, because if you look at what is happening in the European Union versus the United States, remember, we were one to two weeks behind Italy -- I'm going back to April time frame now.

Well, the European Union was able to bring their numbers down a period of time and now, they've shot back up and again, we are one to two weeks behind them, which is why I think Scott and many others think there is a rapid acceleration over the next week.

The point I want to make, this comes up a lot. We are doing more testing. That's why there's more cases. You've heard that over and over again. That's not the case. What you find, what is a truer sort of more consistent measure is hospitalizations and hospitalizations are going up, Jake, across the country.

This is probably what concerns me the most. I don't know if we have this map. But you can see we are starting to go above capacity or at capacity or even above what we normally are already this time of year and we're not really into flu season yet. So as you've been some of the other reporters have been talking about

today, you're already getting situations now in many of these cities they are starting to look around and say what are we going to do if we run out of hospital beds?

This is not a theoretical concern, Jake, and I think this hospitalization issue is what concerns people the most in the medical world over the next several weeks.

TAPPER: And as we adapt to this new normal, which is just horrible thing to have to say, there are concerns, obviously, about what we do with our kids because our kids cannot learn from home for the next five years. It just can't be done. A classroom simulation found that open windows and glass desk shields reduced the spread of coronavirus theoretically.

If classrooms were to implement these precautions, as well as masks and shields, do you think it would be safe to turn to all in-person learning?

GUPTA: I think you'd have to add in a couple of more things there, you know, in the simulations that they look at. They were pretty lenient in terms of the square footage that they were making available for these classrooms. You got a lot of space in between these kids, so when I go to schools and we are doing stories on how schools are starting to reopen, it was the square footage that ended up being one of the limiting steps.

So, square footage and testing. Some sort of regular testing, I think, would be important as well. Then I think you could start thinking about a plan to get kids back to school.

I thought was very interesting when you looked at these simulations and some of the applied not to schools but large office buildings as well, and a lot of it had to do with the ventilation. You know, the simple idea of being able to open windows and make it less likely to breathe someone's air essentially.

The more that you can do that, the less likely people are to get infected. So someone who is sitting in the middle, for example, of a lot of students had greater risk. Someone who was off to the side, two to three times less risk of contracting the virus.

Again, these were computer models but this seems to hold up in real life scenarios as well. I don't know if we have a picture of a call center, because this was a call center where you had a lot of people within a room and you can sort of see in blue where people are most likely to get infected. This is one room. The blue is people who got infected. They're pretty much clustered on one side.

Jake, again, if you think about this virus like an aerosol, like camp fire smoke, it may drift into a particular area based on, you know, currents in the room or something like that. You can see it's not spread out equally. It's spread in that one area.

So, if you can address that issue, I think it could be much safer. Safe -- to say it's safe totally? I think it's hard to do.

TAPPER: Yeah.

GUPTA: Contagious virus is still out there, but you can make it a lot safer.

TAPPER: The director of the National Institutes for Health says that the White House Coronavirus Task Force still meets regularly but not with President Trump. I mean, should the president be in those meetings?

GUPTA: He should absolutely be in these meetings. This is the worst public health crisis in a hundred years. We are a country that represents 20 percent of infections in deaths. I mean, it's awful, obviously.

So this is a huge issue. He is spending most of the time, according to task force members I've spoken with, with Dr. Scott Atlas who is basically mirroring it sounds like the president's own beliefs.

Dr. Atlas doesn't seem to be giving the president any guidance as much as reinforcing what the president already believes. It used to be Ambassador Birx, Dr. Deborah Birx, who used to be mostly in the Oval Office. That's largely not happening anymore, according to the people I've been talking to. It's mostly Dr. Scott Atlas now.

So, they have their own meeting. They even call it the doctor's meeting, the coronavirus task force. It's on their own. They are still doing it but who knows if they are actually being heard.

TAPPER: And we should point out, Dr. Scott Atlas is a neuroradiologist. He is not an expert on infectious diseases and this is what President Trump likes to do. He likes to get these people like oral surgeons who are not experts on infectious disease attest to either how great he is or how the pandemic should be treated, how the federal response should be.

And these are not experts in infectious disease. You can't -- you wouldn't go see a podiatrist for a toothache.

GUPTA: No. You know, what's amazing to me he is just reinforcing what the president already believes. That's the striking thing and that's become a pattern, that has become really clear -- not only with Dr. Scott Atlas but some of the president's own personal doctors. Regardless, Dr. Scott Atlas might be a very smart guy but what he is doing right now is reinforcing these beliefs. He tweets out masks, no. That tweet has to be taken down.

He advocates for herd communities everybody in the health community thinks is a terrible and disastrous and deadly idea. So, it's not guidance. It's just reinforcement.

GUPTA: Yeah. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks.

TAPPER: Yeah, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks. Dozens of people in the United Kingdom will be deliberately affected with coronavirus and that's our world lead. Why? Well, they are volunteers. They're part of the world's first human challenge trial for COVID.

Researchers hope the trial will accelerate the development of vaccines that could end the pandemic. That's the hope.

CNN's Phil Black is in London with the details.

And, Phil, how does this trial work and who are these volunteers?

PHIL BLACK, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So, Jake, here at London's World Free Hospital is the U.K.'s only category three bio containment facility, the only site in the country deemed suitable for hosting these human challenge trials.

And it is here that young, healthy volunteers age 18 to 30.

[16:25:00]

Some just came to help, others very likely came for some extra money will receive candidate vaccines and then later be locked in and deliberately dosed with the coronavirus, so that the efficacy of the vaccines can be tested.

The idea is this will be an efficient tool for helping to quickly identify the most promising vaccine that are being developed around the world. But there are critics. Those who say that because these challenge trials must rely on young healthy volunteers, the data does not represent those who are most at risk from the serious consequences of COVID-19.

Those who most desperately need protection from an effective COVID-19 vaccine, and there's the ethically delicate issue of risks. It cannot be avoided, no matter how young and healthy the volunteers are, because there is no proven guaranteed cure for COVID-19 -- Jake.

TAPPER: What an incredibly altruistic thing to volunteer for.

Phil Black, thank you so much.

To help ease the economic pain of this pandemic, what Republicans and Democrats are saying that they want a stimulus deal the sticking points holding up an agreement. That's next.

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