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Don Lemon Tonight
Media Got Under President Trump's Skin; Dr. Fauci Between A Rock And A Hard Place; Coronavirus Pandemic; President Trump Lashes Out In Grievance-Filled Briefing Claiming Total Authority As President; More Than 580,000 U.S. Coronavirus Cases, More Than 23,000 Americans Have Died. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired April 13, 2020 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: I also want to see what greeted New Yorkers moments later tonight. Look at this rainbow. God who remember the rainbows. God who remember the rainbows. God who remember as Matthew Joseph Thaddeus Stepanek, the child poet who left his way too soon reminded you got to learn to play after every storm.
We're going through storm right now. I know. I know this is tough. I know it's so hard for so many. That's my urgency and making sure that we don't reopen the wrong way. I don't want to create more pain. We had enough but we're getting through it with our greatest medicine, our greatest power, our greatest strength. Our compassion for one another. If we keep that it will guide us to where we need to go.
If we think about how to keep each other safe we will not create any big bang just for effect.
Thank you for watching. "CNN TONIGHT" with D. Lemon starts right now.
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: How are you?
CUOMO: I am feverish but my breathing is much better.
LEMON: Yes. So, by the way, producers, if you can hear me, I'm hearing myself in my ear. There you go. Thank you. Fix it.
So, I left you long a little bit. The most I communicated with you was today. And I know that you've been having some issues. You told me about today that you've been dealing with the fever. It's affecting you mentally, I know, because it's tough.
I did see -- manage to see your wife over the weekend just for a second from the driveway when I drop stuffed, dropped flowers because I know she needs support.
CUOMO: That was beautiful of you, by the way, she loved it.
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: Don't even say that. But I mean, because everyone is focusing on Chris, Chris, Chris, right? Right? So, I just wanted to -- wanted her to know that I supported her. But these are tough times. And I don't really -- today that display at the White House just -- it did something to me to -- I can't really explain and to people -- the focus was off.
The focus should be on the people. The people you just showed especially. Those workers who are on the front lines and the people who are trying to survive this and the people who are dying. It's just -- the focus is in the wrong place, man.
CUOMO: I'll tell you what, re-opening it without a plan to trace, quickly test and treat people is madness. You'll create an army of people like me. And we already got too many of them. There are already too many families suffering under this. Everybody wants to re-open. Don, I'm ready to get out of the basement.
LEMON: I know.
CUOMO: I'm ready to come back to work.
LEMON: I know.
CUOMO: I'm ready to give you a hug. I'm ready to get back to life. I'm ready to stop sweating except when I'm the in the gym. But you know what? I'm not ready. And I got no plan to be ready because I'm not in control over it.
And that reality transfers to what we're dealing with this. If we say we care about the first responders and that we care about the elderly and we care about the fragile, how the hell can you re-open this economy without thinking through the implications and having a plan for it? Saying, well, that's up to the states. They're all telling you they can't handle it.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: How can you re-open? I just -- I just don't get it.
LEMON: Well, keep doing what you're doing. I'll keep doing what I'm doing. We have to speak truth to power and we have to think about the people who are on the front lines who are fighting this and the people who are dealing with it.
I appreciate what you do, brother. I love you. Listen, I know that your Easter wasn't quite the way you wanted it, but we'll be celebrating in person next year. So, you take care and I'll see you tomorrow.
CUOMO: Lord willing.
LEMON: Lord willing.
This is CNN Tonight. I'm Don Lemon. Here's our breaking news.
We have more than 580,000 cases of coronavirus all across this country. Over 23,000 deaths. This is a tragedy. A tragedy of stunning proportions. But we're starting to see what looks like the flattening of the curve tonight, and the question becomes now, how and when do we go back to work? Back to school, back to everything that we are not doing and that we cannot do now?
This president is claiming that it is his decision whether to re-open the states. But governors aren't waiting for that. Just as they didn't wait for the president before issuing their own stay-at-home orders. They did -- they did it themselves.
New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island, working together, all of those states on their own plans to re-open their economies.
The governors of California, Oregon, Washington State working out a similar pact. The governors of the states. Expert after expert telling us that the -- all the same thing, stay-at-home orders, social distancing, they are working. They are flattening the curve. They are the best weapons that we have right now to fight this virus. And that's what the president should be focusing on. That's what he should be focusing on. OK?
[22:05:02]
That's what he should be focusing on. But at this moment, are you listening? With well over 23,000 Americans dying of this virus, with millions and millions putting their lives on hold, this president chooses this very moment to turn what is supposed to be a coronavirus briefing, everyone at home, captive audience, waiting to hear what the -- the latest. Are they going to -- are people's lives going to be saved? How is their life going to change? What is happening? Waiting.
He turns this briefing into an epic meltdown. Making it all about defending himself. Gaslighting. Rewriting history. Instead of giving Americans the facts that we all need to save our own lives and the lives of the people that we love.
I lost a very good friend this weekend. I wanted to hear from the president how he's going to stop that from happening. Instead, I got a campaign video. What do I need a campaign video for? I want to know how you're going to stop my loved ones from dying. I don't need a campaign video, Mr. President. How are you going to keep friends and loved ones from dying?
It is crystal clear from what happened today what the president's top priority is, defending himself rather than focusing on the health and wellbeing of the American people. He is a president who seems to think that he is a king. This is America. We don't have monarchs here. An absolute monarch with absolute authority. That's not what we have here.
This is what he tells Ryan Lizza.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RYAN LIZZA, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: If a governor issued a stay- at-home order --
(CROSSTALK)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: You say my authority. The president's authority. Not mine. Because it's not me. This is -- when somebody's the President of the United States, the authority is total. And that's the way it's got to be.
LIZZA: Total? Your authority is total?
TRUMP: It's total. And the governors know that.
LIZZA: So, if the --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: The governors know that. Now, you have a couple of bands of -- excuse me. Excuse me. You have a --
(CROSSTALK)
LIZZA: Could you rescind that order?
TRUMP: You have a couple of bands of Democrat governors, but they will agree to it.
LIZZA: When was the --
TRUMP: But the authority of the President of the United States having to do with the subject we're talking about is total.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Listen, I'm not a doctor. But I am a man of a certain age. I've been around for a while. I know a narcissist when I see one. And this is the height of narcissism, to spend the White House briefing during a pandemic that has killed over 23,000 Americans -- to spend it on the president defending his poor performance.
That's right, a poor performance in a crisis while he paints himself as a king. I'm not a tailor either. But I can tell when the emperor has no clothes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The President of the United States has the authority to do what the president has the authority to do, which is very powerful. The President of the United States calls the shots.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: He says he calls the shots. But it was -- it was exactly one month ago that he said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: No, I don't take responsibility at all because we were given a -- a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations and specifications from a different time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: So, he doesn't call the shots at all, but he takes no responsibility. At all. He calls the shots but takes no responsibility. But he claims all the authority. Authority without responsibility. Does that make sense?
That is as far from showing leadership as it gets. And that is what was on full display today, America. It is sad. Lashing out at reporters. Whatever.
I mean, at this point, it is an obvious tactic. He wants to fight with the press. He wants to look tough. So, he fights with the press. When he should be concentrating on fighting this virus with everything that he has got. But how tough do you look having a tantrum?
[22:09:59]
Listen to this out of control attack on Paula Reid of CBS.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAULA REID, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, CBS NEWS: The argument is that you bought yourself some time and you didn't use to prepare hospitals, you didn't use it to ramp up testing. Right now, you --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: You're so -- you're so -- you're so disgraceful -- it's so disgraceful the way you say that. Let me just --
REID: -- 20 million people unemployed. Millions and thousands of Americans are dead. How is this (Inaudible) --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: I just went over it.
REID: -- supposed to make people feel confident in an unprecedented crisis.
TRUMMP: I just went over it. Nobody thought we should do it, and when I did it --
(CROSSTALK)
REID: But what did you do with the time that you bought?
TRUMP: You know what we did?
REID: In February.
TRUMP: You know what we did? What do you do -- what do you do when you have no case in the whole United States --
(CROSSTALK)
REID: You had cases in February.
TRUMP: Excuse me. You reported it. Zero cases, zero deaths on January 17th.
REID: January. February. The entire month of February.
TRUMP: I said in January.
REID: The video has a complete gap --
TRUMP: On January 30th.
REID: What did your administration do in February with the time that your travel ban bought you?
TRUMP: A lot. A lot. And in fact, we'll give you a list what we did. In fact, part of what we did was up there. We did a lot. Look, look, you know you're a fake. You know that. Your whole network, the way you cover it is fake.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Nothing she was saying was fake. By the way, nice job, Paula Reid. Nothing she was saying was fake. The fact is the president was dangerously slow to respond, and the fact is that slowness -- slowness costs lives. But this is a president who cannot tolerate any questioning of his authority. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REID: -- on China, why are there no consequences for China, for the misinformation?
TRUMP: How do you know there are no consequences.
REID: Well, you have been ask --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: How do you know there are no consequences?
REID: What are the consequences, Mr. President?
TRUMP: I won't tell you. China will find out. Why would I tell you?
REID: But the misinformation -- but people are concerned that they stonewalled with misinformation.
TRUMP: No. You started off by saying why there are no consequences.
REID: You've been asked this a few times. So, following up on your response --
(CROSSTALK) TRUMP: How do you know there are no consequences?
REID: Because when asked, and you've said --you've said --
TRUMP: You're going to find out. I wouldn't tell you. You'd probably be the last person on earth I'd tell. Go ahead.
REID: You say there will be consequences.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: That's a loss of control on the part of the president during a crisis. It is beneath the office. It doesn't meet the moment. And it is nothing new, sadly. Something that was new to the task force briefing anyway was using this time during a briefing to show campaign-style videos. Like it was a rally.
Propaganda videos meant to convince you that he took strong, decisive action to protect Americans from the virus from the beginning. Except he didn't.
Remember the question that set off the president? Let me remind you which one. When he was asked whether he did what he did in February with the time that this country -- brought the -- when he brought the partial shutdown to the travel ban to China. The president repeatedly points to it as his most decisive action. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REID: You had cases in February.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Excuse me. You reported it. Zero cases, zero deaths on January 17th.
REID: January. February, the entire month of February.
TRUMP: I said in January.
REID: Your video has a complete gap --
TRUMP: On January 30th.
REID: What did your administration do in February from the time that your travel ban bought you?
TRUMP: A lot. A lot. And in fact, we'll give you a list what we did. In fact, part of what we did was up there. We did a lot.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: So, what exactly did he do in February? Well, here's some of what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.
I think the virus is going to be -- it's going to be fine.
It looks like by April, you know, in theory when it gets a little warmer it miraculously goes away. Hopefully.
We had 12 at one point and now they've gotten very much better. Many of them are fully recovered. We have it very much under control.
Now they have it -- they have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we're very close to a vaccine.
When you have 15 people and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done. This is a flu. This is like a flu. It is a little bit different, but in some ways it's easier and in some ways it's a little bit tougher.
It's going to disappear. One day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear.
And this is their new hoax.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: So, these are the facts. We bought some time in January. It was a partial travel ban. Partial. Not a full ban. And then we squandered that time in February on falsehoods and minimizing. And no gaslighting can ever make that go away. And it can't bring people back. People whose lives could have been saved.
Which brings us to what happened in the first minutes of tonight's briefing, bringing Dr. Anthony Fauci up to fall on his sword over his comments to Jake Tapper on Sunday. When he, indeed, said that lives could have been saved if mitigation had started sooner.
[22:15:08]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Do you think lives could have been saved if social distancing, physical distancing, stay at home measures had started third week of February instead of mid-March?
ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: You know, Jake, again, it's the what would have -- what could have. It's very difficult to go back and say that. I mean, obviously you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: That clearly did not sit well with the president. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is greatly admired and respected in this country, came out and fell on his sword today. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FAUCI: I was asked a hypothetical question. And hypothetical questions sometimes can get you into some difficulty because it's what would have or could have.
The nature of the hypothetical question was if, in fact, we had mitigated earlier, could lives have been saved? And the answer to my question was, as I always do, and I'm doing right now, perfectly honestly say, yes. I mean, obviously.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Dr. Fauci then going on to say this.
FAUCI: That was taken as a way that maybe somehow something was at fault here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Seems pretty clear that's what the president really cares about. Maybe somehow something was at fault here. You remember it was just this morning that he retweeted a message including the hash tag fire Fauci.
A source telling CNN the president spent part of the Easter weekend complaining to allies about news coverage of the coronavirus and asking why isn't Fauci saying nice things about me?
Yes, that's what he was doing over the weekend, the Easter weekend. Complaining that the country's top infectious disease specialist in the middle of a deadly pandemic wasn't saying nice things about him. This is where we are now. I could go on. I don't have all night, though.
Let's get to Kaitlan Collins, Gloria Borger, David Gregory, Michael Sheer. Kaitlan, I'm going to start with you at the White House. Good evening, by the way. So please put in plain terms for us tonight, as you do so well, what was this briefing about?
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Don, clearly the president was agitated over that New York Times report. He had gone two days without briefing reporters, so he had a lot of pent up frustration that came out in that briefing room.
And I've never been in the briefing room where the president has dimmed the lights and then shown a video that he had aides putting together during the day trying to prove himself right in response to the New York Times, extensive reporting that detailed just how slow he was to respond to the outbreak of the coronavirus and how he ignored warnings from senior officials who were trying to get him to take more aggressive measures earlier on in this, including his own Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar.
And so, it was the president's frustration on full display as he was saying -- not admitting that they made any mistakes. He had Dr. Fauci come up and make that statement, which was really remarkable. Though Fauci said he was doing that on his own, not because of the president.
But clearly, that had been something that had caused a lot of issues inside the administration because there were so much concern that the president could potentially fire Dr. Fauci after he knowingly retweeted that message saying time to fire Fauci because he thought that Fauci had gone on air and contradicted him, even though what Fauci said, Don, was pretty obvious that, yes, they had put these social distancing measures in place earlier, it would have saved more lives here in the United States.
LEMON: Kaitlan, you know, you pressed the president about his claim of total authority, which was really a shocking statement. And we know that, you know, it is not true. I want to watch the exchange and then we'll talk about it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS: You said when someone is President of the United States their authority is total. That is not true. Who told you that?
TRUMP: OK. You know what we're going to do? We're going to write up papers on this. It's not going to be necessary. Because the governors need us one way or the other, because ultimately it comes with the federal government.
That being said, we're getting along very well with the governors and I feel very certain that there won't be a problem. Yes, please, go ahead.
COLLINS: Has any governor agreed that you have the authority to decide when their state opens back up?
TRUMP: I haven't addressed anybody. Because you know why? Because I don't have to. Go ahead, please.
COLLINS: But who told you the president has the total authority?
TRUMP: Enough.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEMON: Listen, you are a lot more patient because if someone tells me enough, I don't think I could have sat there and taken it. You're a lot more patient and professional than I am.
[22:19:59]
But, you know, he didn't you who it was who gave him the idea that he is a king and not a president who is actually elected and works for the people of the United States.
COLLINS: Yes, and, Don, we know that argument is completely wrong on the constitutional front. I don't think we're going to hear any governors come out and endorse it.
But it's also notable given the fact it is contradicting how the resident has treated this when it comes to a federal government, state level basis. Just last week the president was saying it's up to the states if they want to issue these stay-at-home orders.
He was saying from a constitutional perspective, he wanted to let them make the decisions when it came to that and he was not going to tell them what to do.
Also, on supplies, he repeatedly deferred to the states, he repeatedly deferred to the governors when they were closing down their states. But now when it's come in time to open up, he is saying that he has the authority.
And Don, it's not that some of these states are not going to want guidance from the federal government when they are making decisions. They likely will. So many governors have said as much. But the question really here is the clarity.
Because if the president is going here and saying he has complete authority over these states, you know, what is going to happen when he tries to issue guidance at the end of the month and there are some states who decide they're not ready to open up yet and they're not ready to send kids back to school or open restaurants and stores and what not, it's going to cause confusion.
So, potentially this could set us up for a clash with the president making this argument, that we should note it's not right that he has total authority as president.
LEMON: I've been wanting to ask, if, you know, when he says -- because he's said things like that before. When he says enough, has anyone ever in the briefing room -- I wonder what would happen if someone said, who the hell do you think you're talking to? How do you think he would respond to something like that?
COLLINS: I'm not sure. I think the president says that often when he is tired of hearing questions. Tired of follow-up on questions from that and that's why, you know, in these briefings a lot of reporters often follow up on the question that someone else has asked just to make sure they get an answer to that question or later ask someone else.
I mean, you later on saw Ryan Lizza ask the vice president about what he thought about the president's statement. He dodged answering that. But I do not think that Vice President Pence when he was governor of Indiana would have felt similar if Barack Obama made that statement when he was president, saying he has authority over Indiana when they're in a state of emergency during a pandemic.
So, of course it's all perspective here, but I just don't think that there is anyone, even though the president's allies, that would agree with that statement.
LEMON: Yes. Because you are an adult just like him and you deserve respect as well, all the reporters in the briefing room. So, thank you very much. I appreciate that, Kaitlan. Nice job. The president says he'll announce a new economic task force to open up
the country again, but who will be on it? We're going to discuss with Gloria Borger, David Gregory.
And then coming up, we're going to get Michael Sheer from the New York Times whose reporting on the administration's response brought much of this to a head today.
[22:25:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: More than 23,000 Americans have died of the coronavirus. There are more than 580,000 cases across country. And it's time to have a real conversation about what the plan is to safely re-open the country.
Governors are getting together on both coasts and across the country to lead the way on that. So, you would think that we would have heard more about all of that today and less about the president's grievances.
So here to discuss is CNN's Chief Political Analyst, Gloria Borger and our political analyst David Gregory as well. Good evening to both of you. Good to see you.
GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Hey, Don.
LEMON: And thanks for joining. Gloria, you first. So, tell us, what did we learn from that briefing tonight?
BORGER: Well, not as much as we wanted to learn. I think the only clear message coming from the president during all of these briefings, because there are a lot of mixed messages as you know, the only clear member we're getting is that Donald Trump sees himself as another victim of the pandemic.
That people aren't treating him with respect. That he now today says, I have clear authority and how dare any journalist question what -- that when, in fact, of course, the Constitution was written because nobody wanted the president to have any kind of unchallenged authority.
So, this is a president who feels that he's being attacked on fairly and that he's being treated unfairly and that somehow, he's being victimized by all of this.
It was a disgraceful performance, Don, and in many ways, it was really -- it was disturbing, of course, but it was also chilling because this is not what we should be expecting, this kind of behave from the president of the United States from the podium at the White House.
It's one thing to have this kind of behavior at a campaign rally, but when the podium of the White House is turned into a campaign event at taxpayer expense, I think that is completely over the top and I just -- I don't see how folks in the White House let this occur. Now, I was told that the video was not widely circulated, and I'm not surprised.
LEMON: David, the president played that campaign-style video that Gloria just mentioned, paid for by the American taxpayers. Using the White House resources in a pandemic.
Is the president losing focus here on what really matters? I mean, really, Americans' lives are what matters, testing, mitigation, getting more PPE, that's what the focus should be. It should come out, tell the American people where we are and where we're going.
DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, and take responsibility instead of just assert authority. You know, the president has said that he's a war-time leader, and it got me thinking about Dwight Eisenhower at D-Day and the note that he wrote if the landings had failed. That he would say that if there's blame, it's mine alone.
That he had met earlier in the day with paratroopers and he was expecting 80 percent casualties among paratroopers who were landing behind enemy lines on the -- on the Norman coast -- on the Normandy coast.
[22:30:00]
So, I mean, it's appalling. The president to me, if you really pickup parts of this briefings today, this is a temperament. You can agree or disagree with his decision. You can say, while he really miss-leaks here, miss some opportunities, maybe it costs lives, but let's move forward. But what you see out of the president is what Gloria alludes to, this is a temperament issue where he's consumed with ego and insecurity.
GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And people saying bad things about him. By the way, he's not the first president to deal with an annoying press corps that constantly asking you questions and holding you accountable and bringing up your previous words against you. As Tim Russert would say when I worked at NBC, when I worked for him, any leader worth his or her salt can take the tough question. Not this president. Not with his temperament. Not with that lack of responsibility and that defensiveness.
LEMON: Gloria, a huge discussion right now --
BORGER: Don --
LEMON: Go ahead, Gloria, go on.
BORGER: I was just going to add to David. Imagine working inside that White House, Don. And you saw what the president did publicly, chastising these reporters. And by the way, I don't think it matters that it's reporters. It's anybody who challenges him. I mean, I know he hates the media, except for Fox News maybe, but anybody who challenges him can get that kind of tone and that kind of bullying. Imagine what it is working for Donald Trump behind closed doors.
LEMON: Yes, well, thank you both. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. And be safe, both of you.
Coming up, with over 23,000 Americans dead, where we are on the current public health crisis. I'm going to talk to a top doctor about how we can save lives and get people back to work.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:35:00]
LEMON: President Trump tonight attacking the media, trying to rewrite history and insisting he's doing everything right in his handling of this pandemic, but the fact is our testing isn't anywhere near where it needs to be. Our hospitals still don't have the lifesaving supplies they need and we're still a long way away from a vaccine.
Let's discuss now with Dr. Jonathan Reiner, the co-Director of the George Washington University's Cardiac Catheterization Program. So, doctor, let's talk about the important things. He's going to rip the media. He's going to do all of that.
But we still need to do a lot of things to keep people healthy, to save their lives, to get us to the next point where we need to be. So, can you just remind our viewers where we are tonight? There are 23,000 Americans, dead Americans. This is still a full-blown public health disaster that is far from over.
DR. JONATHAN REINER, CARDIOLOGIST, WASHINGTON: Oh, yes. So, if this were a round of golf, we're playing the 2nd hole, right? This is probably an 18-month fight all the way through. And I think although it's so encouraging to see the curves start to plateau in places like New York, my hometown, we're a long way from, you know, from where we need to be.
And what we'll see hopefully in places like New York is we'll start to see mortalities start to drop, hopefully rapidly, but it's going to take a while. And then we're going to see hot spots around the country and it's going to persist for the next couple of months.
I think it's most helpful not to think about when we go back to normal, as the president said today, but to create a new normal. We're not going back to the way we were two months ago. We're going to have to do something else until we have a vaccine.
LEMON: Yes. So with that scenario --
REINER: Yes.
LEMON: You know, a crisis still unfolding. Despite what we saw this evening, what do you think the focus should be on right now?
REINER: Yes. Oh, easy. Testing, testing and more testing. So, first we have to widely and wildly expand testing for the virus. What we know with certainty is that there is so much asymptomatic transmission of the virus. There was a paper that was just published in the New England Journal today that suggests in one hospital in New York about 15 percent of asymptomatic women coming in for childbirth were covid positive, 15 percent. That suggests that the virus is much more prevalent in the community.
So we need to test, test and do more testing. And then we need to ramp up antibody testing, so we know who has been exposed, we know the scope of the disease, so we can identify people who can go back to work with relative immunity as far as we can tell. It will also help us identify a pool of people for this emerging therapy of using convalescent plasma.
So testing, doing the molecular test to test for the virus and then as soon as we can ramping up to test for the protective antibodies. That needs to be our focus. In addition, we need to continue social distancing. It's crucial. It's worked. It's helped, particularly in places like California where it's really flattened the curve.
LEMON: Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because the asymptomatic thing is really scary. That's how it's different from the flu. Because I remember New Year's 2012 and 2013 and I had a flu, and I think I had a norovirus on top of it with the flu. I was so sick, I couldn't lift my head off the pillow.
I had to crawl to the bathroom. I think I lost 15 pounds it was like three or four weeks before I got well. I mean, I knew I was sick, right, because I couldn't get out of bed, but with this, it's so scary that you can be a carrier and not know, you're asymptomatic but you're making other people sick.
REINER: Right. And this is why you need to wear a mask in public.
LEMON: Yes.
[22:40:00]
REINER: Right? The mask is not to protect you, it's to protect, you know, the elderly man that lives next door, the cashier at the grocery store, the -- it's crucial, and I think what we're going to see is in our new normal that you can't get on the subway without a mask. Masks should be available in every entrance to the subway, like what they do in -- in Spain right now. Your Uber driver needs to wear a mask. We're going to be a mask society, at least until we have a vaccine available.
LEMON: Thank you, Dr. Reiner, appreciate your time.
REINER: My pleasure. My pleasure.
LEMON: Next, one of The New York Times reporters who has been digging into the public health crisis and what the administration has or hasn't done about it.
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LEMON: More than half a million coronavirus cases across the country, over 23,000 Americans have died. The New York Times has a big report on the crisis and the president's miss-steps in the early days of its spread. Michael Shear was one of the reporters who broke the story. He joins me now. Michael, good to see you. Good evening. The president clearly did not like your deeply sourced reporting over the weekend that showed that he ignored warnings for months.
[22:45:15]
MICHAEL SHEAR, CNN POLITIOCAL ANALYST, THE NEW YORK TIMES WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right. No, I mean, I think he tweeted about it all weekend or tweeted about his sort of defending his response all weekend and then, of course, today at the briefing spent a good chunk of the time essentially mischaracterizing the story, doing what politicians do a lot, which is to create a straw man essentially claiming that the story had alleged that he -- that people urged him to shut the country down in January, which this story didn't say at all. And then -- and then denying the thing that the story didn't say he did.
So it -- you know, it was a pretty typical kind of political response, but, really not a denial of the central allegations of the story, which is that he was slow at many points of the response, especially early, but also even in the last week of February and early weeks of March, slower than his public health advisers would have liked to move to a serious kind of mitigation and social distancing effort, which could have slowed the spread of the virus at a crucial time, especially for places like New York.
LEMON: The president is saying that he did everything right. He points to his China travel restrictions, which he calls a ban, and it was not. It was restrictions. He says that he acted fast, based on your reporting, what's the truth here?
SHEAR: Well, look -- he did impose a -- some travel limitations on folks coming to the United States from China. It was far from a ban. I think there is something like 40,000 people from China travelled to the United States in the days -- in the days and weeks and months following those limitations.
But nonetheless, the public health experts said that that was probably a good sort of initial step to take. It was far from the kind of sweeping, you know, kind of decision that would have ended the threat from the virus that he tries to make it out to be, and the proof of that is what we're all living through, and I think the real question is not did he take that one decision? The real question is, what did -- what followed that decision?
If that decision bought the United States a little bit of extra time, you know, what did the -- his administration do? And the answer is they moved pretty slowly. They didn't get testing, as your previous guest talked about, they didn't get testing ramped up in the country and they didn't move when it was -- when it became clear that you couldn't contain the virus in sort of small little pockets in the country and you were going to have to move toward significant measures to keep people apart to make sure that the virus didn't spread quickly. They didn't move very quickly to put those measures into place. They took a long time to do that and that sort of leads us to where we are today.
LEMON: Michael, our time is short. We'll continue to have you back. We had you last night. We'll have you again. Thank you so much. We appreciate it.
SHEAR: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
LEMON: Governors begging for help with coronavirus testing that's going to be needed to get this country re-open safely. The truth about testing next.
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[22:50:00]
LEMON: We still don't have access to widespread coronavirus testing in this country. So, where does that stand? Well, we're learning tonight that the rapid Abbott laboratory's coronavirus test promoted by President Trump two weeks ago are a limited resource that must be prioritized for the states that need them most. That is according to the HHS. CNN's Drew Griffin is here now with the truth about testing. Drew, good evening to you. Thank you so much for joining us.
So, we know that these governors are begging for help. Some are saying that they are missing testing supplies. The president promised a whole new ball game last month. But the rapid test. The latest on their use?
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Don, the tests are being used. The problem is this miscommunication and over aspirational hype that's coming out of the White House. And it gets misinterpreted by these governors who think this is going to be the end all. The whole new ball game that President Trump was touting two weeks ago. It really was just to keep the metaphor going, just a single up the middle. Abbott is doing testing, they are rolling out 556,000 of these rapid I.D. tests that can give you a positive test within five minutes.
But the bulk of those tests went to the private healthcare facilities. The doctor's office, the hospitals that already have these machines in place. The states got a hold of some of the machines that they could buy, but there's not enough supply for the tests themselves so Abbott has to try to pump out, they are pumping out 50,000 tests a day. To try to give the states some of those tests so they can actually use those machines.
Really we're talking about a very small percentage of tests that actually are being run at state health labs by these machines. But it's just a miscommunication and overhype by the White House that we see over and over again. Whether it be in the very next testing thing that's developed or some brand new drug that the president seems to think is going to work. And in reality it just isn't what it is all made out to be.
LEMON: True. Part of being able to open up the country involves being able to test people. Isolate those who test positive and be able to track down every person that's infected, that infective person has been in contact with. Is that even possible with what we have in place right now?
[22:50:08] GRIFFIN: We're nowhere near close to that level of testing. Testing is
getting better. The backlogs that we talked about on your show last week with Quest. Quest now tells us, they are one of the biggest that the backlog is taken care of. But we are still just crippling along trying to handle the tests of those people who are sick and hospitalized.
We're nowhere near getting to the amount of tests needed to test the community. Let alone test people in the community and then follow their tracing. Their contact tracing that we need to do to try to figure out everybody they're in contact, we can test those people. It's a long way off. And again, you know, the aspiration coming out of the White House is just far ahead of reality.
LEMON: Drew Griffin, thank you very much. The coronavirus death toll in this country passing 23,000 today and the president spends his coronavirus briefing trying to rewrite history instead of focusing on the facts that we need to stay safe. Stay with us for the very latest.
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