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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Record COVID-19 Cases in More Than Half of U.S. States; Biden in Georgia, Trump in Michigan. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired October 27, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: For a majority of states, today is the last day that the U.S. Postal Service recommends sending in a mail-in ballot.

[16:00:05]

And, as CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports for us now, with more than 65 million ballots already cast, the candidates are fighting for every last remaining vote.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Trump is entering the final week of campaigning with a bleak backdrop. Half-a-million Americans have tested positive for coronavirus in the last seven days, as the U.S. witnesses the dreaded fall surge of new cases.

As Trump headed for the Midwest today, he defended his handling of the pandemic and claimed the death toll would be higher without his efforts.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Voters are judging me on a lot of things. And one of the things we have done a really good job on is COVID. We would have millions of people, millions right now, we would have millions of people dead.

COLLINS: The president is making three stops in Michigan, Wisconsin in Nebraska before overnighting in Las Vegas.

D. TRUMP: I'll see you in Michigan. We're going to have some fun.

COLLINS: But before Trump left Washington, he watched as his predecessor and Biden's top surrogate, Barack Obama, dinged his complaint that the media is covering the pandemic too much.

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What's his closing argument? That people are too focused on COVID. He said this at one of his rallies. COVID, COVID, COVID he's complaining. He's jealous of COVID's media coverage.

COLLINS: Former President Obama is not the only surrogate on the campaign trail today, first lady Melania Trump also stumping for her husband in the final days of the race, appearing on the trail in Pennsylvania for the first time since July 2019. MELANIA TRUMP, FIRST LADY: Hello, Pennsylvania.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

COLLINS: And Vice President Pence is still refusing to quarantine after several of his aides tested positive, and is instead holding campaign events in the Carolinas.

President Trump is continuing to set unrealistic expectations by insisting a winner must be known on election night, as state officials have warned the pandemic has dramatically changed the way people are voting.

D. TRUMP: It would be very, very proper and very nice if a winner were declared on November 3, instead of counting ballot for two weeks, which is totally inappropriate. And I don't believe that that's by our laws. I don't believe that. So, we will see what happens.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: So, Jake, there, the president calling it inappropriate, though, of course, election officials have said the vote-counting process could take longer this year because of the pandemic.

One other thing the president said before he left the White House is that he believes that the White House would approve a big stimulus package after the election, predicting that Republicans are going to win back seats in the House, even though, of course, Jake, the GOP is actually widely expected to lose seats in the House after next Tuesday.

TAPPER: I don't know one Republican that thinks they're going to pick up seats in the House, not one.

Kaitlan Collins, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

This afternoon, Joe Biden laid out his closing argument during a speech in Georgia. It was heavily focused on how he plans to try to unify the nation if elected president and try to get the coronavirus pandemic under control.

CNN's Arlette Saenz is live in Atlanta, where Biden is set to speak again in just minutes.

Arlette, why has the Biden team decided that this is the most effective closing message?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, Jake, Joe Biden is essentially starting right where he began.

Biden has had a consistent message from the start of this campaign, framing this as a battle for the soul of the nation and one where the character of the country is at stake.

Biden once again portraying himself as a healer. His campaign really believes that this is a message that resonates, particularly in this moment, as the country is facing division and multiple crises.

And you heard Joe Biden in Warm Springs, Georgia. That is the home to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's personal retreat, Biden trying to draw some parallels with FDR and the state of the country right now and what FDR dealt with while he was in office.

And you also heard the former vice president evoke the words of Pope Francis and kind of lean into a religious message as well, talking about how this is a time to heal.

Take a listen to a bit more of what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I believe this election is about who we are as a nation, what we believe and, maybe most importantly, who we want to be.

It's about our essence. It's about what makes us Americans. It's that fundamental. I run to unite this nation and to heal this nation. I have said that from the beginning. It's badly necessary.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: And Biden will arrive here soon in Atlanta for a drive-in event.

We are one week out from the election, and he is visiting the state of Georgia, a state a Democratic presidential candidate hasn't won since 1992. His campaign says they are trying to keep all paths to 270 open -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Arlette Saenz in Atlanta, Georgia, thanks so much.

Joining us to discuss, CNN's Abby Phillip and "The Atlantic"'s Ron Brownstein.

Abby, I just want to start by making the note that Joe Biden quoted Pope Francis today. It's an encyclical from earlier this month in which the pope talked about -- he criticized the media. He criticized politicians. He had a lot of criticisms.

[16:05:10]

One of the things the pope said is that politicians need to ask themselves: Why am I here? What is my aim? Joe Biden quoted the pope, attributing to the pope these comments.

The Trump campaign snipped out just, "Why am I here, what is my aim?" to create this fake impression that Biden didn't even know where he was or whatever.

I mean, I have literally never seen such a willingly, purposefully dishonest campaign in my life than the one that the Trump campaign is running right now. ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's pretty out of

bounds that you would sort of misinterpret or willfully misinterpret the pope in order to malign someone else.

You know, Jake, actually, interestingly enough, I do wonder about all of these attacks from the Trump campaign about Biden's mental acuity and wonder whether that contributes at all to the president's steep slide with seniors.

It can't be a politically helpful thing for this campaign to constantly accuse Biden of not being with it, accuse him of not being up to the job just because of his age.

And I think that that's one of the many ways that this has really gone out of bounds. But I think it's also been one of those political strategies that they didn't perhaps think through, because, by the time we get to this point in the campaign, the bar had been set so low for Biden, that he's cleared it multiple times.

TAPPER: Yes.

PHILLIP: It's become very easy for him to do that. But, again, yes, I mean, all of this just really out of bounds. It shows a level of desperation in these final days.

TAPPER: I'm no expert on Catholicism, but I'm pretty sure it's frowned on to smear a politician using the pope's words.

Ron, when you look at where Trump and Biden are campaigning today, Biden is giving a speech in a state that Democrats have not won since 1992, Georgia, while Trump is campaigning in three states that he won in 2016, including Wisconsin and Michigan. He won them narrowly. And that's why he's president because of those two in Pennsylvania.

What does that tell you, Ron, about how each campaign sees the race right now?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it tells you everything, I mean, that the Biden campaign feels as though they are on the offense, and Trump is on the defense.

I mean, Biden has to pursue this within limits. I mean, Democrats certainly are scarred by the memory of Hillary Clinton focusing all of that firepower on Florida and North Carolina in 2016, and neglecting Michigan and Wisconsin.

But Biden hasn't done that. I mean, to the extent he's been campaigning at all in public, he has spent a lot of time in those midsized blue-collar cities in the Rust Belt that were so critical in Trump winning.

But the fact that he is in Georgia, a state that Democrats have won only once since Carter -- and that was Bill Clinton with 43 percent of the vote in a three-way race in '92 -- is really indicative, Jake, of a much larger phenomenon, the same thing we are seeing in Texas, which is that the evolution of the kind of the revolt against Trump in the suburbs has extended beyond the places where you would have expected it, the coasts and Northern states, into the Sunbelt.

I mean, look at Gwinnett and Cobb, the big counties outside of Atlanta. Barack Obama lost them by about 60,000 votes. Hillary Clinton narrowly won them in 2016 by about 26,000 votes. Then Stacey Abrams pushed that margin up.

It would not be shocking if Biden wins them by 100,000 votes. That's his potential path. It's the same path in Texas and, for that matter, in Arizona, where a poll out today has him winning in Maricopa, which is Phoenix. No Democrat is one that since 1948.

TAPPER: 1948. That's Harry Truman, I believe.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, Harry Truman.

TAPPER: Abby, Biden has talked about needing to rebuild the blue wall across the Rust Belt. That includes Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin.

All of those states have polls with Biden in the lead. But we have to -- let's be honest here. Again, we know that polls are not always right. I mean, maybe pollsters have corrected the mistakes they made four years ago, but they're not facts. They're projections. They're snapshots.

Today, one week out from Election Day, Biden is in Georgia. If Biden doesn't win, say, Pennsylvania...

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

TAPPER: ... we're going to look back on today and say, why was he in Georgia? Why wasn't he in Pennsylvania?

PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, that's always the risk of going beyond your core strategy states.

But, that being said, Biden has spent more time in Pennsylvania than in any other state in the general election, because they know how central it is to his prospects.

The risk that we all face in a week potentially is just not knowing what we don't know. If there is somehow a hidden electorate, as the Trump campaign sees it, we won't know really until Election Day. And one of the reasons that you see the president doing so many of these campaign rallies in all of these sort of small, more rural towns is because they're trying to pull these voters who may not have participated in past cycles out of the woodwork.

The question is, how many of them are there? Will they show up to vote? And will it be enough to counterbalance what Biden might be able to do in the urban centers? Again, these are unknown questions.

[16:10:11]

But the polls say what they say. But the Trump campaign' strategy is all about these rallies being the magnets for these new voters. And we will have to see if that strategy works. TAPPER: Of course, during a pandemic, it might also be serving to turn people off, because they know how unsafe and unhealthy it is.

Ron, President Obama, take a listen to him campaigning for Biden today in Florida. Here's part of his argument.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: We have gotten so numb to what is bizarre behavior. We have a president right now who lies multiple times a day.

I mean, sometimes, it's almost too easy to make fun of it, but it's serious. There are consequences to his actions. If he was just on "Jerry Springer" or something, you would say, well -- but this is -- this is the most powerful office on Earth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: I'm not sure if Jerry Springer still has a show. So that might be a somewhat dated reference.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

TAPPER: But do you think, Ron, that that argument is potentially effective for voters who are still trying to make up their minds?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, I think it has been more effective than -- more consequential, to use President Obama's words, than people have expected.

President Trump has been suggesting in the last couple of days that, if he loses, it was the coronavirus. In fact, the polling averages, as you know, Jake, are not very different now than they were a year ago. And the reason why he was struggling even a year ago was because an unprecedented number of people who said they were satisfied with the economy, even satisfied with the way he is handling the economy, nonetheless said they disapprove of him overall and were going to vote for Biden.

About 20 percent of people who said they approved of Trump on the economy still said they were planning to vote for Joe Biden a year ago, before the virus hit. And that was almost entirely based on assessments of his character, his volatility, the way he talks about race, the way he talks about women.

And as the person back in 2009 who coined the blue wall -- still waiting for my royalties from politicians -- politicians evoke it.

(LAUGHTER)

BROWNSTEIN: I mean, that was what had put Biden and the Democrats back in the game as early as 2018.

I mean, don't forget, they won the governorship in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with big improvements among college- educated whites and some erosion for Trump among the blue-collar white women, all of whom were moved, at least in part, by their assessments of the aberrant behavior they had seen in the previous two years.

So, yes, I think there has been a cost from the outset. I don't know how much it matters to the remaining undecided, but there aren't many of them left. As Abby said, this is really at this point about who comes out.

Can Trump produce a different electorate again than pollsters are expecting? That will be harder, though, this time, because everyone else is voting in big numbers too, young people, incredible numbers. The numbers in these metro centers. Houston is going to be past its Election Day total probably in the next 24 hours.

TAPPER: All right, Ron and Abby, thanks to both of you. Appreciate it.

The pandemic, sadly, continues to soar out of control, hitting new grim records across the country. Why Deborah Birx, the doctor from the Coronavirus Task Force, is calling out one state -- that's next.

Plus, the president's niece, Mary Trump, will join me live. What she warns could have -- quote -- "potentially serious consequences" for the safety of the American people.

Stay with us.

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[16:17:44]

TAPPER: In our national lead: The United States is, sadly, in a bad place in the coronavirus pandemic, with cases hospitalizations, and deaths all headed in the wrong direction.

Just this afternoon, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force directly contradicted President Trump. Admiral Brett Giroir unequivocally said cases are rising across the U.S., and it's not just because of more testing, as the president has falsely claimed over and over, as CNN's Nick Watt reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): North Dakota leads the nation, with an alarming rate of new infections. Why?

DR. DEBORAH BIRX, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR: This is the least use of masks that we have seen in retail establishments of any place we have been.

WATT: In South Dakota, a stunning 40 percent of tests now coming back positive. Anything over 5 percent is a worry.

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: We are in the middle of a major COVID storm. Every indicator, every metric that we have is trending in the wrong direction. But we're not seeing behaviors change.

WATT: This country is now averaging nearly 70,000 new infections every day, highest ever nine months in, but the president and some Americans appear to be giving up.

DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: If we took some aggressive, targeted steps right now, we could potentially forestall the worst of it. But we're not going to do that. And I think we're right now at the cusp of what's going to be exponential spread in parts of the country.

WATT: Thirty-seven states in all seeing average case counts rise right now.

GOV. J.B. PRITZKER (D-IL): There seems to be a COVID storm on the rise. And we have to get prepared.

WATT: Eleven states already reporting record numbers in the hospital, desperate measures in El Paso, Texas.

DEE MARGO (R), MAYOR OF EL PASO, TEXAS: We have just got a surge that I'm not sure exactly where it's coming from. But we have got four tents, pressurized tents, set up at hospitals for overflow.

WATT: And this is a potential issue. One type of antibody immunity after infection appears to wane fast, according to a new study, down, on average, 26 percent in three months, dropping fastest in the asymptomatic and over 75s.

Meanwhile, cases in kids are reportedly up 14 percent in just two weeks. Severe disease is rare, can happen, and kids can spread the virus, so many staying home, however hard, missing friends.

[16:20:11]

TAYLOR JOHNSON, MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENT: I honestly don't even know what they look like anymore. Like, I have forgotten.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATT: Now, according to a new poll by Axios and Ipsos, more than 60 percent of Americans think that the federal government is making our recovery from COVID worse.

And we just heard from the mayor of El Paso, big spike there. He's not exactly sure where it's coming from, but he has an idea. He says that, with that stimulus stuck in Washington, people are testing positive, but still showing up to work, because they really need that paycheck -- Jake.

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

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

Sanjay, more than half of all U.S. states have reported their highest number of new COVID cases this month. And we know, of course, after cases come hospitalizations, and after hospitalizations come deaths.

Right now, all U.S. regions are showing a steep incline. What worries you most about these trends? DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's two

primary things.

Having looked at these numbers for so many months, I mean, you look for the numbers that are the most consistent and true reflection of what's really happening here. Certainly, the cases do that in part, but it's not just the number of cases that are growing. It's the pace at which they are growing now.

So, we have had close to half-a-million people diagnosed with this infection within the last week, OK, just to give you some idea there? That means the pace at which this is happening is starting to grow.

That means we are starting to -- worrisome that we may be going into exponential growth. And the second thing, Jake, which we have talked about for some time now, is hospitalizations, because we know the demographics of people who are getting infected has become younger, 46 percent now under the age of 50.

So they are, thankfully, less likely to get sick and be hospitalized. But we are still seeing hospitalizations go up, which means that, even if those people are not necessarily getting sick, they are spreading it to more vulnerable populations.

So, the pace of the growth and the hospitalizations, I think, are the two things to really pay closest attention to.

TAPPER: Sanjay, you and I have covered not just the botched response by the Trump administration, but also the things that they have done correctly, in terms of trying to improve the number of ventilators that are available for hospitals, in terms of Operation Warp Speed to get a vaccine, in terms of the improved speed by which therapeutics are approved.

I mean, it has not all been bad, and we have to just acknowledge that.

But there is also a lot of bad. And more than 60 percent of the American people, according to the new poll that Nick referenced, think that the government is making the country's recovery from the coronavirus worse.

How could this lack of faith in the federal government make things even worse going forward?

GUPTA: I think it boils down to a lack of trust at this point.

I mean, the basic things here in terms of public health practices that have worked in other parts of the world, testing, tracing, mask- wearing, preventing people from clustering together indoors, have had a remarkable impact.

I mean, there were -- as we talked about yesterday, Jake, there were more people -- there were the same number of people diagnosed in New Zealand, the entire country, five million people in that country, as were diagnosed in the White House, one of the most secure houses in the world, within a 24-hour period. So it's pretty remarkable. I think it just leads to this lack of trust

overall. If we abided by those basic practices, we'd be in a much different spot.

Everyone -- this is a quick fix society in which we live, Jake. And we're seeing the manifestation of that in ways that I have never seen before. We want the quick pill. We want the quick diet. We want the quick fix operation, whatever it may be.

And, in this case, the embodiment of that has become the vaccine. Everyone is just waiting for the vaccine. The vaccine will be very important, but it's not going to flip a switch and it's not going to come within the next several months still.

So we have to do those things. And I think that this lack of trust has led to the idea that many people feel like we don't need to.

TAPPER: Well, I think it's probably also the fact that the president has set such a horrible example when it comes to mask-wearing and physical distancing.

I mean, that is, I mean, literally, there have been people who caught the coronavirus at his rallies. I mean, that's not a supposition. That's fact from the Health Department in Minnesota, from what happened at the Rose Garden event in Washington. Obviously, we don't know for sure how the late Herman Cain got coronavirus, but the timing works out that he got it in Tulsa.

So, I mean, I think that's probably one of the reasons people in the public think that...

[16:25:00]

GUPTA: Yes.

TAPPER: ... because he's out there literally discouraging mask- wearing.

GUPTA: Yes, I mean, no question about it, Jake.

And I can even put some more data behind those rallies, because we have been investigating this quite a bit. Tulsa, you brought up. So, hospitalizations tripled four to five weeks after that rally, OK?

So, if you do the timetable in terms of how long between exposure to getting tested, to getting diagnosed, how long before somebody gets sick, how long before they get hospitalized, it's typically four to five weeks?

Four to five weeks after that rally, hospitalizations tripled in Tulsa. He went to Arizona after that. Hospitalizations were about 2,000 per day. They were at 3,000 per day four to five weeks later.

He went to Wisconsin after that. Hospitalizations went up 20 percent, again, in that right time course after these rallies. So I think there's no question. It's hard to draw the clear association because there's so many new cases. You would need an entire industry in this country to contact trace all these people.

So you have got to look at it in terms of these events and what happens in the aftermath. There's no question, Jake, I mean, that -- even if they started doing more mask-wearing last night, I believe -- I saw some of the images from the White House -- that's good, but the idea still that people are clustered together, they're there for long periods of time, is a real problem, Jake.

And we're seeing the manifestations.

If I have a second, let me just show this video, just this video of the virus sort of, when someone has a mask on, what that looks like. It does a great job of containing the virus overall. Don't know if we have the video.

But if -- but what you will notice is that there's some virus that still can get out around the mask.

TAPPER: There it is.

GUPTA: And, as a result, if you're close to somebody for a period of time, they could still become infected.

So, mask-wearing, great. It makes a huge difference. Separate yourself out makes a bigger difference. And then, if you start to layer these things, one on top of the other, you see how you can significantly break the cycle of spread.

TAPPER: Yes, and mask-wearing with distancing, with testing and contact tracing is the way out of this.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you, as always. Appreciate it.

The Supreme Court issues a controversial ruling involving a state that could be one of the election tipping points. What that could mean for your vote and Trump's chances.

Stay with us.

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