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The Lead with Jake Tapper

CNN Investigates COVID Spread Linked to Trump Rallies; Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) is Interviewed on Documents About Trump Admin Wanting $250M COVID Ad Campaign to Help Trump's Re-Election; U.S. Economy Shows Record Growth After Previous Record Drop. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired October 29, 2020 - 16:30   ET

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

[16:30:04]

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For every 100,000 people in the county, about half the rate of Minnesota. But a month after the rally, the rate of infection had jumped 385 percent and quickly bypassed the state's rate of infection.

DR. TOM INGLESBY, DIRECTOR, JOHN HOPKINS CENTER FOR HEALTH SECURITY: Those places are already going to be concerned about rising rates of hospitalization, increasing risk of community transmission.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have had no problem whatsoever. It's outside.

GUPTA: It is true being outdoors is far safer than being indoors. Take a look the how the virus leaves the nose and the mouth, like a puff of smoke, sitting so close, no mask, and the risk rises dramatically.

INGLESBY: None of these, in and of themselves, are a strong barrier to spread, but if you take them all together, they would help to decrease the risk.

GUPTA: Here is another way to think about it. If you attend a gathering like this, according to new research, most places in the United States, there's now a 99 percent chance the virus is attending right alongside with you. And now at least 70,000 times a day, the virus is finding a new home, inside one of us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now.

Sanjay, it's remarkable what you found, 82 percent of the time the rate of new case jumped after President Trump's visit to any specific county. Did this surprise you?

GUPTA: Well, we knew the numbers were going up in many of these places. I think what surprised me was just how out of proportion the numbers went up in those particular areas, those particular counties, even compare to the surrounding counties and the rest of the state. I mean, that's the thing. But it's very hard to contact trace right now, Jake, because you got

70,000 newly infected people every day. So, looking at this sort of data at a hyper local level, I thought, was quite revealing, just the impact of these types of large gatherings.

TAPPER: Yeah and, of course, just in terms of contact tracing, we were talking months ago about all the unemployed people and wouldn't it be great if the Trump administration launched a Manhattan Project to put people to work by doing the contact tracing that they're not doing?

When the cameras pan out to these crowds at the Trump and Pence rallies, you see so many people not wearing masks. A vast majority. How would these numbers theoretically change if they were all congregating, but everyone was wearing a mask?

GUPTA: Well, you know, first of all, I think there's no question that masks are very beneficial now. There's all sorts of data. We've shown data on your show so many times, look at different models. Project forward, even the model that the White House often cites, the IHME model.

They say 100,000 lives could be saved by February if 95 percent of the country wore masks. There's no question.

But, Jake, you know, I think the second part of your question is really important here. These rallies should not be happening, right? I think a lot of times people say we wore masks and therefore it's all okay. The mask is not a panacea. Let's show the video of what the virus looks like.

And if you think about this, you know, if we could see the virus, I think we would behave a lot differently. Say you're in the rally, the mask helps a lot. But if you're clustered closely together with people, you're sitting there for a long period of time, you imagine that viral thing like a puff of smoke, you can see,it's still a problem, Jake. It helps a lot but not as an excuse to still bring thousands of people together in a pandemic. That's still a bad idea, Jake.

TAPPER: And we have seen specific Trump rallies linked to specific cases of coronavirus, especially in Minnesota, where the contact tracing, department of health there seems to be pretty good. We know, according to "The Washington Post", the Trump campaign lied to officials in Duluth about what they were going to do in terms of following state coronavirus guidelines. They didn't -- they didn't abide by them. And now, that rally has been linked to at least three cases. We know a previous rally in that state got 20 people sick, two hospitalized.

As the president continues these rallies at this frenetic pace five days before election, what's your message to those who are attending them?

GUPTA: Don't go. Don't go to these rallies.

I mean, look, just about anywhere in the country now, if you go to a gathering that's several hundred people, it's without a doubt the virus is attending that rally with you. If you are clustered close together, you don't know who is carrying the virus. You don't know how many people are carrying the virus, if you're not wearing a mask, all the things we're talking about. You're putting yourself at risk.

What would be my advice if you've already attended one of these rallies is that you have to assume that you've been exposed at this point. I would say you should quarantine yourself for 14 days. You're going home to your family, to your friends, you may infect community members, whatever it may be. If you go to an event like that right now with the amount of virus spreading in this country, you have to assume you had some sort of exposure and take the appropriate action so you don't subsequently spread the virus to others.

[16:35:11]

TAPPER: And we had Dave Matthews on in the last hour. He was talking about how, as somebody who makes his living going to concerts, going to venues performing for thousands of people, he sits there and can't even believe it because, A, he would never subject his fans to such a risk and, B, he wouldn't be allowed to even if he wanted to.

GUPTA: Right.

TAPPER: The venues wouldn't open for him. Obviously, President Trump gets this special exemption.

GUPTA: Yeah, that is pretty remarkable. I mean, all these things, all these hypocrisies, right? I mean, Dave Matthews, other performers can't do this but, yet, these rallies, that Minnesota one you were just talking about, they agreed there would be no more than 250 there. There were 2,500. More than ten times that. That was the violation.

It wasn't just a marginal violation. It was exponential. And, you know, we're telling -- we're telling people they should not be with their families for Thanksgiving this year because of the potential risk and the White House is having events at their house, you know?

I mean, it is -- there's a lot of hypocrisies here, and, obviously, it's sending the wrong message. I still get tons of emails saying hey, it seems like it's okay. It seems like this thing is over. We're seeing these types of events. We're seeing what's happening at the White House. Why can't we do the same thing?

TAPPER: The White House Coronavirus Task Force said in one of its weekly state reports, quote: We continue to see unrelenting broad community spread in the Midwest, upper Midwest and the West. This will require aggressive mitigation to control both the silent, asymptomatic spread and the symptomatic spread.

How did things get so bad in those regions?

GUPTA: Well, there was a lot of virus that were spreading in these areas. I mean, you remember that there were sort of waves that were moving across the country. And I think a lot of people in the Midwest, aside from Michigan, which did get affected early on, many other places thought maybe we dodged this. They didn't. The virus is still spreading, people are moving from other parts of the country.

But then the weather got cooler, Jake. People started migrating increasingly indoors. Again, if you imagine, I wish people could see the virus, because you imagine that puff of smoke in an indoor area, poorly ventilated if people aren't wearing masks, that's when it can start to spread more rapidly, extended family gatherings, bringing neighbors inside your home. People let their guard down.

And the cold weather is not going to help. It's going to hurt -- really make this more difficult as we go forward. Right now you're seeing hospital problems more so in the north than the south. But as the weather gets cooler around the country, you're going to see that migrating down to the south as well.

TAPPER: Sometimes I think about the virus as being in a restaurant and somebody in the far end of a restaurant lights a cigarette and a minute or two later, you're like, is somebody smoking in here? Because it's worked its way all the way over to you, right? I mean, that's how it works.

GUPTA: That's right. And that concept that you just described, the sort of airborne transmission, that wasn't clear in the beginning. You know, we've learned a lot over the last several months.

It was thought mostly respiratory droplets. But then the science became clear that this can spread airborne. And what that means is it can suspend in the air. It can linger longer. It can travel further.

Just like you say, you know, cigarettes, campfire, that puff of smoke, however you want to envision it. If you envision that in your mind, I think you will automatically, hopefully, do things to protect yourself.

TAPPER: Wear a mask, people.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks so much.

The Trump administration accused of using millions of dollars meant for a COVID ad campaign to help the president's re-election. Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi joins me next to talk about that.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:43:31]

TAPPER: In our 2020 lead today, new documents reveal the Trump administration's $250 million ad campaign to rebrand the coronavirus and that that money was actually being used in part to help President Trump's re-election campaign.

Documents released by House Democrats on the Oversight Committee found that Michael Caputo, the top Health and Human Services official who oversaw the ad blitz, who has since resigned, reportedly sought to frame the taxpayer-funded ad campaign as a way to boost the president's chances of re-election, according to the Democrats.

And with me now, Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi. He's a member of the House Oversight Committee and a Democrat from Illinois.

Congressman, tell me exactly what your committee found?

REP. RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI (D-IL): We found two things, Jake.

First of all, the Trump administration tried to use $250 million of taxpayer money that was otherwise dedicated to the CDC for education education-related purposes to deal with the COVID pandemic on basically what amounted to a slush fund for the campaign of the president to get re-elected.

And then the second thing that we found is that they basically compiled a Joseph McCarthy-esque list of celebrities, 274 of them and they evaluated them based on their political preferences. For instance, about Christina Aguilera, they said, she is, quote, an Obama-supporting Democrat and gay rights supporting liberal. And these types of comments pervade the documents and it's something I've never seen in a government contract.

[16:45:06]

TAPPER: I mean, that is an accurate description of Christina Aguilera. But let me ask you a question -- it's not an insult. She is gay rights supporting liberal and an Obama-supporting Democrat.

How do you see this as being used for the president's re-election as opposed to an education campaign about what needs to be done in order to help defeat the pandemic?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Well, these particular ads were not meant to, for instance, encourage mask wearing, or social distancing, but rather to promote the theme, quote, helping -- the president will help country. That's a slogan that you might see in the former Soviet Union or even Russia today, not in the U.S., not certainly in a public service announcement.

With regard to Aguilera and the others, Adam Levine, Justin Timberlake and so forth, repeatedly, those comments were meant to essentially diminish or denigrate them as people that could be used in public service announcements. Typically, you would evaluate them based on, you know, whether they would be an effective spokesperson to the target audience in question.

TAPPER: Right.

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Not whether they support Donald Trump.

TAPPER: Yeah, no --

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Or support gay rights.

TAPPER: I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying that it's not -- it's not denigrating necessarily to say somebody is -- I understand what you're saying.

You're also accusing Alex Azar, who is secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, of a cover-up. How so? What do your documents suggest that he knew about the plans for this?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Well, this particular campaign of television advertisements was essentially supposed to start in the run-up to the re-election which, as you know, is happening next Tuesday. We, early on, working with Jim Clyburn and Carolyn Maloney of the Oversight Committee, brought this to Alex Azar's attention very early on in September and basically demand documents from him related to this particular contract.

He refused to comply with those requests for documents. Instead, we had to go to the contractors to get these very documents and now we know why Mr. Azar or Secretary Azar did not produce the documents, because they have such inappropriate material in them that I don't think they wanted to turn those over to us.

TAPPER: So, this was $250 million for an ad campaign. You said it was out of a specific budget for educational campaigns for the public, right? This money could not have been used for testing or contact tracing? It was designated for this.

Was it ever used? They didn't do this ad campaign. Did they ever use it for anything else?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Fortunately, we were able to stop the campaign in its tracks. However, the contract has not been killed. And so, it is possible that the money could be used after the election.

But as of right now, it's been paused. We hope to terminate it. And actually, I've introduced legislation to prohibit the use of taxpayer funded money for this type of purpose, this type of political purpose, because that's obviously not what the taxpayers want.

TAPPER: Did you have a script of the ad? I mean, what were they supposed to say in this ad, as opposed to the messages that would be good, such as wear a mask, practice distancing, wash your hands, that sort of thing?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Well, they were meant to, quote, inspire hope and defeat despair. That was the general theme. And those words would repeat -- repeatedly, presumably, appear in these commercials.

However, as you know, right now we need to defeat the coronavirus pandemic, and that means adopting mitigation measures, such as wearing masks and socially distancing. It kind of is part of the theme that the president is sounding his re-election campaign, which is, you know, trying to diminish what's happening with the pandemic, diminishing the scale of the loss economically or from a health standpoint, and trying to distract attention away from it to other themes. And that's what's happening with this particular campaign.

One other thing I want to mention -- two other things I want to mention briefly, which is this also seems to coincide at a time when the president's fund-raising was flagging. He didn't have the resources necessarily to run the campaign that he thought he would. And so, this advertising campaign seemed to start at the same time using taxpayer-funded programming to basically further a political end.

TAPPER: Yeah.

KRISHNAMOORTHI: And then the second is, you can go to our Twitter handle, @CongressmanRaja, to see all the other comments that have been made about the 274 celebrities on this list that they compiled.

TAPPER: It sounds like -- the ad campaign being proposed sounds like everything is awesome from the Lego movie, that kind of, you know, cognitive dissonance.

[16:50:01]

Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, thanks so much for your time today. We appreciate it.

Coming up, the new number about the economy that President Trump is bragging about but it might not be all that it seems in context. That's next.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: In our money lead today, a bit of a bounce on Wall Street on the heels of good economic report today.

Moments ago, the Dow closed up 139 points. The U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 33 percent between July and September. That is the fastest third quarter rise on record.

Of course, the context is important. It comes after the biggest economic contractions on record, too, because of the pandemic, and more than 10 million Americans remain out of work. There is still no stimulus deal to help the unemployed or small business owners or state and local governments to get through the rest of this pandemic.

[16:55:08]

Let's bring in CNN business anchor Julia Chatterley.

Julia, sure, this report is good news. The record growth is in the middle of a pandemic. We are climbing back but we have gone down to a very low point.

JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNN BUSINESS ANCHOR: You said it. This is a record growth number that follows a record collapse in the second quarter. And the truth is that we're still not back to levels that we were at before the COVID crisis hit.

You also have to remember this is an annualized number. What this means is it looks at growth and how it would be if this rebound continued for an entire year. I wish it would. It simply won't.

The fact is, you have to look at the quarterly growth number, which is around 7.5 percent. It's still great but it's a lot smaller in terms of the number than you would think. We bought this recovery ultimately with stimulus checks, with the bumped up in unemployment benefits, none of which was agreed by Congress in time.

So, the truth is, we pushed through the fourth quarter. The risk is that this quarter's number looks a lot, lot weaker than that, and that was --

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Julia, we also got new unemployment numbers today, 751,000 Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the first-time last week. Now, that number is trending down. That's good news, but it's still incredibly high versus before the pandemic.

CHATTERLEY: It's true. And it's just not the full picture. This 750,000 people is the number we talk about on a weekly basis. What you also have to add in here is a further 359,000 people that got pandemic unemployment assistance. It's a different program.

Bottom line, over 1.1 million Americans asked their government for help in just the last week alone.

Here it is. We have recovered two-thirds of the growth that we lost in the first half of this year, Jake. But we've only recovered half of the jobs. We go into now the winter months. The pandemic is accelerating, and we are in a far weaker position than we were this time back in March. That's what the next government has to contend with.

TAPPER: All right. Julia Chatterley, thank you so much.

President Trump is taking credit for the economic growth. He says next year will be fantastic under him, while Joe Biden says we are headed for the worst economic downturn in decades.

CNN's Cristina Alesci looked at their messages on the economy as we continue our series this week looking at the candidates and where they stand on major issues.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I was look at those big, once incredible, job-producing factories, and my wife, Melania, said, what happened? I said those jobs have left Ohio.

They're all coming back. They're all coming back.

CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN POLITICS AND BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In 2016, Trump ran on an America first platform to revitalize U.S. manufacturing and bring back jobs.

Today, in the battleground state of Ohio where the unemployment rate is higher than the national average, job growth in manufacturing has been anemic, and the pandemic has wiped out even those small gains.

Now, voters are weighing whether Trump --

TRUMP: Our economy is booming. Wages are soaring.

ALESCI: Or former Vice President Joe Biden.

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Those at the top were seeing things go up and those in the middle and below were seeing things go down.

ALESCI: Will create jobs in all sectors, an issue that's even more pressing because the country still hasn't recovered almost 11 million jobs that were lost as the pandemic slammed the economy.

Trump has promised two things, spending a trillion dollars on infrastructure.

TRUMP: Which means better roads, bridges, tunnels, and highways.

ALESCI: And keeping his tax cuts that largely favor the wealthy and corporations.

LARRY KUDLOW, TRUMP ECONOMIC ADVISER: Now, looking ahead, more regulatory rollback will be in store, payroll tax cuts for high wages, income tax cuts for the middle class.

ALESCI: The president's tax cuts will also cost an estimated $1.9 trillion over a decade and even more if he makes them permanent, as promised.

MARK ZANDI, MOODY'S ANALYTICS ECONOMIC: Under President Trump, the benefits will go to corporations and higher income, well-to-do households.

ALESCI: Biden wants to raise taxes on those making over $400,000 a year.

BIDEN: Time and again, working families are paying the price for this administration's incompetence.

ALESCI: The former vice president is also proposing $7.3 trillion in spending, including on infrastructure, which calls for creating 10 million clean energy jobs as well as education, health care and housing.

ZANDI: President Biden, benefits go right to lower and middle-income households and minority groups.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALESCI: Jake, Trump and Biden's economic agendas could not be more different. Mark Zandi, that economist that spoke in the piece, tried to estimate the impact of their policies on job creations and found that Biden would create 18.6 million jobs over his four-year first term while Trump would create 11.2 million. That 7-plus million difference is a big difference. That also assumes

that Congress would be controlled by their own parties and they can get those policies executed -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Cristina Alesci, thanks so much.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now.