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Don Lemon Tonight
Governors Dispute Trump's Claim There's Enough Testing To Reopen; Trump Defends Protesters Defying Stay-At-Home Orders; Nearly 3/4 Of A Million U.S. Coronavirus Cases, More Than 41,000 Americans Have Died; NYC Mayor: Rise In Hospital Patients Admitted For Suspected COVID-19; Dr. Birx: Unknown If Being Infected By Coronavirus Means Immunity; WAPO: Americans At WHO Transmitted Real-Time Information About Coronavirus To Trump Admin. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired April 19, 2020 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We've done a - we've done a deal where they're paying us 250 - they are buying 250 - they didn't do anything for us. You know, we didn't even have a deal. It was so bad - -
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: This isn't about the deal. These comments are after the deal.
TRUMP: No, no. No, no. It's - it is about a deal because the deal started a long time ago before anybody heard about this. The deal was finished a - a number of months ago, very happy, I was very happy. I hope they were happy. Billions of dollars came into tariffs. Billions of dollars, they're going to be purchasing billions and then all of a sudden, long after that, I find out about this. And I told you - I told you, I'm not - listen - listen CNN - -
DIAMOND: Did you say, "I think it's going to be a very big problem"?
TRUMP: - - listen CNN - -
DIAMOND: "It's a big problem"?
TRUMP: I told you, I'm not happy about it and this was after the deal. So we have this wonderful deal and I was very - nobody's been tougher about the deal, ever, on China than Trump. Then I made a deal, I was very happy with the deal, it's a great deal, great for our farmers. Our farmers have been paid a fortunate already, then what happened - -
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TRUMP: No mistake, we made a great deal. Now I find out after the deal, after the deal, not during - after the deal, I find out - -
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TRUMP: - - I'm not happy - you - you people are so pathetic at CNN. Let me just tell you - -
DIAMOND: I just want - let's talk about November 23rd?
TRUMP: Sure. I was very happy with the deal, very happy with everything. Then we find out about the plague, right? The plague. And since we found out about that, I'm not happy, but I closed it up long before Pelosi - -
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TRUMP: Listen. Long before Pelosi and all. She was having parties in San Francisco. "Let's all go to Chinatown." And that was after a long time after I closed up the country.
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TRUMP: Go ahead, please.
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WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: All right. So the President, once again, defending his statements which were very robust, very positive about China, even - in the - in the face of reports that his intelligence community, the U.S. Intelligence community was getting that China was not being transparent, not being honest with the nature of what was going on in Wuhan with the coronavirus. Dana, let me get you and John Harwood to respond. First, Dana, go ahead.
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It would just be so nice and maybe I'm living in La-La Land right now but it would be so nice for the President, when he is asked a very legitimate question to take the question and answer it or spin it, do whatever you're going to do but don't insult the reporters.
I mean, to - to say that our colleague, Jeremy, "You don't have the brains you're born with" - I mean, he obviously stayed calm and everybody in that room is remarkable in the face of getting attacked and it's important to not take the bait in that room and just to press on with your question but it's unnecessary.
It's unnecessary. They're not insulting him, they're asking questions of our elected leader, the - the highest ranking elected leader in the land during a time of major crisis, unprecedented crisis, and he has to answer these questions and at some point and at some point, they will answer these questions whether it's now or through the judgment of the voters in November or history. But the fact is, that there are legitimate questions about China, about the testing.
Our friend over at CBS asking a very, very legitimate question about February and his answer to her was, "Well, how many people tested positive?" The answer back is, "Even if the answer is zero, it's because we didn't have the tests. The Federal Government wasn't prepared with the tests as they should or could have been knowing what was going on in China even a few months earlier." So you know, it's deflection and it's just - it - it's getting old. BLITZER: You know, John Harwood, like Dana, I'm a former White House Correspondent and White House Correspondents have to ask tough but fair questions and I think it's fair to say these questions, that these - this new generation of White House Correspondents, they're all young sitting in there right now. These are tough but fair questions.
JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: They are and the President doesn't like the heat but if you - also, if you look at the substance of his answer, it was an exercise in self-condemnation. A lot of the answer was about trying to justify his trade policy.
Now, on the substance, his trade tariff policy, trade war with China, harmed the American economy and the deal that he's talking about was a truce to stop harming the American economy because his administration knew he was heading into a re-election, they didn't want to do any more harm.
Secondly, the - because he was seeking that truce, he went soft on China in the beginning. There are many quotes from the President in January when he was praising China for its response. This negates what he's trying to do against Joe Biden, saying, "Biden is too close to China".
No, the - the President's on tape multiple times saying that "she is working very effectively" and he meanwhile was working on this trade deal and that's one of the reasons why he didn't want to rock the boat. It - the President does not - he may think he's helping himself with that answer but anyone who - who looks closely at it, sees that he isn't.
BLITZER: Certainly is. All right, John Howard, Dana Bash, and - you want to make another point, Dana?
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BASH: I just want to say one other thing on the protest. The whole notion of him saying, "It's OK for the protesters to be doing their thing, that he's OK with protesters," -- A, that's not true because we see him kicking protesters out of his rallies when they were even able to get in. But B, the most important thing to remember is what those people are protesting are his own policies.
So, he's encouraging people to go out there and protest, sometimes in a dangerous way, against the very policies he's encouraging governors to put in place.
BLITZER: And he says he likes the protesters because there are lot of American flags that they're carrying at the same time. Even though what they want potentially, according to the medical experts including the president's own medical experts, could lead to more deaths if all the social distancing went away. All right, guys. Thank you very much.
Don Lemon is standing by. He's going to pick up our continuing coverage right now.
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: This is a special edition of CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon. Thank you so much for joining us on this Sunday evening. You have just been watching the White House coronavirus briefing -- my colleagues in Washington, Wolf Blitzer and a group of our correspondents, there wrapping up that briefing giving some analysis on the night that we reach another tragic milestone in this pandemic.
There are nearly three quarters of a million cases in the U.S. right now. More than 41,000 people have died. And in the face of all of that, the president is passing the buck again tonight claiming that the testing for the coronavirus, in his words, is a local thing.
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TRUMP: You must remember that the governors wanted to have total control over the opening of their states. But now they want to have us, the federal government, do the testing. And again, testing is local. You can't have it both ways. Testing is a local thing.
And it's very important. It's great. But it's a local thing. And we're going to get it done to a level in a very short period of time because all of the swabs are coming in, all of the necessary materials. A lot of them, as I said, are already there. But a lot of people don't know that yet.
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LEMON: I want to bring in now my colleague, CNN's Jeremy Diamond, who was at that briefing tonight. Jeremy, you had a contentious exchange with the president. We will get to that. But the president claiming that this testing is a local thing dodging responsibility for that and other things -- but it was just last month that he falsely insisted that anybody that needs a test gets a test.
DIAMOND: Yes. The president really has tried to have it both ways on this testing issue, Don. Particularly as it relates to what the federal government is responsible for and what the localities and the states are responsible for. We've seen the president and his administration come out to that very same briefing room podium that we saw today and tout the number of tests that they've been able to ramp up capacity across the country.
And yet at the same time, we have also even seen the president pass the buck over to governors of states and saying it's their job to do the testing -- testing's a local thing. Now, we did hear a little bit more about what the federal government is going to do to help some of these governors. And that is, the president said that he's going to be invoking the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of some of those testing swabs.
But at the same time, we also saw the president suggest that these governors simply are unwilling or unable to do what they need to do to ramp up testing saying that it's their fault. So, there is a little bit of a disconnect here, Don, it seems between what the president sees as the governor's responsibility and what the federal government is actually working to do to try and ramp up testing capacity.
But nonetheless, it is very clear, Don, that the president and his administration do not see ramping up testing from now going into the future as the federal government responsibility.
LEMON: OK. So, Jeremy, another odd moment at the briefing -- in the briefing room. Last week it was this propaganda video -- the president playing, you know, self-congratulatory clips last week in this video mostly from conservative media and "Fox News". This one was a self- congratulatory clips from the New York Governor Andrew Cuomo -- again, an odd moment in the briefing room.
I want to play this part of your exchange as well about the clip that he played and then we'll talk about it. Here he is.
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DIAMOND: More than 22 million Americans are currently unemployed --
TRUMP: Yes.
DIAMOND: -- as a result of this. Today we hit the grim milestone of more than 40,000 Americans now having died from the coronavirus. Can you explain then why you come out here and you are reading clips and showing clips of praise for you and for your administration? Is this really the time for self-congratulations?
TRUMP: Well, I will tell you this. What I'm doing is I'm standing up for the men and women that have done such an incredible job -- not for me, for the men and women, admirals, vice president, if I might -- but all of the men and women, thousands, tens of thousands of them that built hospitals in New York and New Jersey and all over this country.
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In record time, they throw up a thousand beds in four days. I'm sticking up for those people. Those people have been incredible. I'm also sticking up for doctors and nurses, and military doctors and nurses.
DIAMOND: In the clips that you played, and what you read earlier, was praising you and your administration's --
TRUMP: All I played today was governor Cuomo --
DIAMOND: -- why is now the moment to do that, sir?
TRUMP: -- saying very positive things about the job the federal government has done. And those people --
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DIAMOND: -- more than 40,000 Americans have now died.
TRUMP: And those -- those people have been just absolutely have excoriated by some of the fake news.
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LEMON: Jeremy, it seems like he is making your point, because he played nothing about the people who are on the front lines. Everything he talked about was just him, him, him, and what a great job that he's doing. He's actually defending himself?
DIAMOND: That's right, and that's why it kind of struck me as a remarkable split-screen moment.
You know, Don, we have 22 million Americans who have had to file for unemployment as a result of this coronavirus crisis. We now have more than 41,000 Americans who have died of this coronavirus crisis. And yet -- I was sitting there in the briefing room, watching the president talk about how wonderful everything is, and how well his administration has done.
That's -- there's a time for the president to, perhaps, tout, you know, what his administration has done, and he can certainly make that case. That is his prerogative. But it just struck me as a damning split-screen, to see the president saying that on the day where we have this grim milestone of more than 40,000 deaths.
And it wasn't just, of course, the clip that he played from governor Cuomo praising the federal government's response. It was also that he read a headline from an opinion piece in "The Wall Street Journal."
The headline is literally "Trump rewrites the book on emergencies," and yet somehow the president was claiming what he was reading was not about him, but about other people, about the hospital workers, about the doctors. That's clearly not what the president was focused on today.
LEMON: Listen, Jeremy, make no mistake about it. These are my words, it's not yours, because you have to work at the White House every day, and you have to work with these people.
But does the president not understand that him coming out there every day and acting like a jerk is not going to help him with the American people; the American people are tired of it? It shows in the polling.
That people are watching every day because they want information about saving lives, they want to know where they are, when they can actually go back to work, and not about what a great job he's doing, when everyone knows there's not enough testing.
People don't want to go back to work if there's not enough testing; people are reticent to go back to work if there aren't tests -- if they don't know if they have antibodies, if that's actually going to protect them from getting this virus.
Is there a disconnect in the White House, or with this president? Does anybody talk to him about that? Does anyone have the courage to stand up to this person, to this bully, as we see him in this briefing room every day, to give him a real talk and say, "Hey, listen, you need to get out there and tell the American people the truth, and stop acting like a big bully"?
DIAMOND: Look, here's what I can say, Don. The president is always going to lean back on his instincts as a salesman, right? That's what his whole career, his whole life, whether in business or in reality TV, like, that is what his life has been about. Is about portraying things as better than they are, selling them as better than they are. So that is always the instinct that the president is going to fall back on.
Now, there are some officials at the White House who think that the president is doing himself a disservice by coming out and speaking so much. There's a lot of grumbling among some Republicans who wish that the president would perhaps allow the health experts to speak more.
I mean, you had Admiral Brett Giroir, who is leading the effort on the testing front, which was the main topic at today's briefing, and he sat in that chair on the side of the briefing room throughout the entire news conference. And he did not come up to answer any questions; he wasn't asked by the president to make remarks.
So, look, the president has always viewed himself as his best communicator. That is why we have seen the White House go through press secretaries and communications directors at a rapid rate, because the president will never allow anybody else to kind of lead that messaging aspect.
The president sees himself as best able to do that, and that's because, again, in 2016 the president proved other people wrong by talking the way that he did on the campaign trail.
LEMON: I want to ask you as well, because we see these exchanges every day at the -- at the briefing. It has become, you know, everyday viewing to watch the president go off on reporters. But to watch him sit there and belittle, especially women, by telling -- he told Kaitlan Collins "Enough" last week, and he told this reporter today to, you know, "Lower your voice," or what have you.
But to consider -- to sit there and to watch the president exhibit this sexist behavior, that must be uncomfortable: it is uncomfortable for the people at home. What is it like sitting there in the briefing room, to watch this -- to experience this behavior?
DIAMOND: Look, I - I - none of us like to see the President belittle any of us or our colleagues who are, you know, just trying to ask the President questions. Weijia Jiang of CBS News did a phenomenal job tonight.
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She was simply asking the President about some of his past comments and some of his past actions and that is, simply what we all in the PRESS Core are going to continue to do, is simply ask the President questions that are important, that - that people need to have answers to and that is, I think, going to be our guiding mantra.
LEMON: The President also talked, Jeremy, talked about the people protesting the stay at home orders. Watch this, please.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They've got cabin fever. They want to get back - they want their life back. Their life was taken away from them and you know, they learned a lot during this period. They learned to do things differently than they have in the past and, you know, they'll do it hopefully until the virus has passed.
And when the virus passes, I hope we're going to be sitting next to each other at baseball games, football games, basketball games, ice hockey games - I hope we're going to be sitting next to each other, I hope you have - golf - the Masters is going to have a 100,000 people, not 25 people watching.
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LEMON: Okay, again, he seems to be disconnected from the reality of the - the virus doesn't care how many, you know, how many people wants sports back - all - everybody wants sports back and business as - as usual but he seems to want these protesters out there and at one point, he said that these protesters seemed to be following the rules.
Well, the rules are to stay at home, so they're disobeying the rules, yet he championing - championing, for these reporters, it seems, and they're not social distancing. All you have to do is pick up your phone or look at the images that are out there on the internet and they are not following social distancing guidelines. They're not even following the rules that the President and the governors of their States have set.
DIAMOND: Yeah, there - there really has been mixed messaging on this front from the President, Don. Because we see the President on Thursday talking about these guidelines for reopening the country, talking about a gradual, multi-phased process to allow businesses to reopen, to allow children to go back to school.
Certain criteria that they need to hit and then the next day, we see the President tweet this, you know, "Liberate Michigan, liberate Minnesota, liberate Virginia", States that have not yet hit the threshold for actually beginning to reopen in - in the way that the President's own guidelines envisage this process happening.
And - and I think one of the big factors why the President is backing these protesters, number one, he wants to be viewed as the person who wants to reopen the country, doesn't want to be viewed as responsible for the economic devastation that this virus has brought and the President also knows that the people who are out there protesting in - in large percentages are his own supporters.
In fact, we've seen conservative groups organizing many of these protests in some of these different States. So any time you have someone who likes the President, who's a supporter of the President, who's doing something, it's going to be very hard to get the President to say what they're doing is wrong.
LEMON: Yeah. And we should make no mistake about it. The majority of people are - are not doing what these protesters - they are actually against what these protesters are doing. This is a small - small minority of the country. Jeremy, I want you to stay with us.
I want to bring in now Dr Jonathan Reiner, the Director of Cardiac - Cardiac and Catheterization Program at George Washington University. Also with us, CNN's Dana Bash. Thank you both for joining us. Listen, Dana, what is the President saying about testing and supplies tonight because governors are - are disputing his claim that there's enough Coronavirus testing?
BASH: It - it's an important question and he started out his briefing talking about the fact that the United States has more than four million tests. I think he actually said that four million people have been tested but I believe it's - the - the truth is it's about four million tests. And then he talked about various countries in Europe and adding them all together, that that doesn't even come close to how many tests the United States has.
All that might be true but when you look at the per capita numbers which is what matters - it doesn't add up and that's according to CNN's amazing fact-checking team. The US is still behind when it comes to the per capita testing. And the other - so that's just on the - on the numbers.
But the other important to remember is that - and I know I have a lot of people who I know have experiences, I'm sure everybody on this panel as well, is that even though that there are a lot of tests, for the most part, you have to be symptomatic to get the tests or you have to be of a certain age group to get the test or a certain risk group to get the test and there are lots of people out there still who have, even symptoms, who are told by their doctors to stay at home.
It doesn't even matter if you - if you're tested positive or not because they don't feel that there are enough tests to go around. That is not the place for a society or for, you know, a universe of patients to be to get back to work and to get the economy back open. It just isn't and so as much as the President and the Vice-President say till the blue in the face that testing is where it needs to be for their so-called phase 1, we heard all day long from governors in both parties who are there scrounging around for the very tests that the government says they have.
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BASH: They're saying, "No, we do not. We don't have the things to go along with it." Maybe the President is going to add more swabs, which is important to changing that, reagents, other components of this very complex notion of what we kind of summarize as testing.
LEMON: Doctor, I want you to weigh in on this question of testing because there are so many unknowns here, especially when you consider a country of 350 million plus and you look just at how many people have actually been tested. It's just really, I mean, a really small number of people.
And then you look at, you know, the ---- even Dr Birx said even if you have the antibodies, they don't even know if that protects you at this point because so little is actually known about the virus. There are so many unknowns here, yet the President is putting on this painting this rosy picture about where we actually are at the moment when it comes to the Coronavirus.
DR JONATHAN REINER, DIRECTOR OF CARDIAC CATHETERIZATION PROGRAM, GW UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL: Yes, yes. The president has been promulgating a fiction that we have all the tests we need. I pulled data this weekend. Since April 1st, the U.S. has performed about 145,000 tests per day. Now the problem with that is that that has been level. So, we have sort of plateaued in our ability to test and you can see that one of the bottlenecks is swabs, something as prosaic as a swab.
If you look at the positivity rate, the proportion of patient who is get tested who test positive, it's incredibly high. It's 20 percent, which means that docs are selecting people who are most likely to be positive for the virus to be tested. In other countries where testing is much more available, the positivity rate is much lower. So, in Germany, for instance, the positivity rate is only seven percent because they are testing much more widely than we are here in the United States.
LEMON: Jeremy, the President doesn't seem to have a handle on how to relate to the nation's governor. I mean, sometimes he's blaming them, sometimes he's praising them. I wonder why there's such a lack of consistency in his approach. Because in his praise, right, he -- what he doesn't understand is that it -- he has -- the governors have had to push him to get to this point where there is an abundance of ventilators, where there is an abundance of whatever is it that they need because they had to push him to this point to get those supplies.
DIAMOND: Yes, and one of the new arguments that we're hearing from the President, as he's being pressed on this issue of testing shortages, is he seems to be comparing it to when the governors were asking him for additional ventilators and oftentimes more ventilators than they ultimately needed.
But the president is suggesting that that's because the governors were asking for too many ventilators when the reality seems to be that it's because the curve was flattened in some of those states, right, that there were fewer cases than anticipated because the social distancing measures in those places worked and obviously, those governors were, in many cases, preparing for worst case or medium case scenarios and just because those didn't come to be doesn't mean those governors were going way out of proportion in terms of what they needed.
But it seems the president is using that same logic in applying it to the testing issue, which seems to explain why he feels that the federal government doesn't need do to as much as some of these state governors are saying he needs to do.
LEMON: Dr Reiner, I have to ask you, instead of patting himself on the back so much and talking about all the excesses that the governors ask for and they got, they asked for too much and all of that and on and on, shouldn't the President actually -- if you look at the modeling from the different agencies including the President's own, the government, independent agencies, other countries, so on and so forth, shouldn't the President actually be thanking the American people for following the social distancing guidelines so that we were able to flatten the curve?
They listened in ways that should be congratulated, instead of patting himself on the back for being too late then having to rush to put these systems in place.
REINER: Yes, he should be thanking the American people for thanking for what they were asked to do at great personal hardship. He should be thanking the nurses and docs and food service workers in hospitals who day after day run into the fire and put themselves at enormous personal risk. You know, America has been suffering and people have been valiant.
But, you know, this has been portrayed as sort of every state for themselves, every person for themselves. You know, we really need more leadership coming from the federal government.
LEMON: Thank you, doctor. Dana, thank you, and Jeremy, thank you. You handled yourself once again very well in the briefing today --
BASH: Amen.
LEMON: -- at the White House. Thank you, thank you very much. New York City is an epicenter of this pandemic in this country with at least 849 people in intensive care units across the city.
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What will it take for New York City to reopen? Well, I'm going to ask the mayor, Bill de Blasio. He's next.
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LEMON: New York City, one of the biggest hot spots for the coronavirus crisis -- there are at least 849 people in intensive care across the city tonight. Joining me now, the Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio. Mayor, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. I know it's a very busy one for you. So, listen, the president talked about New York City in his briefing today. I want you to take a listen and then we can discuss.
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TRUMP: I've seen New York streets. And I see it in the morning. I've watched all my life, New York streets. And you can't even see the pavement, there's so many people. And you take a look this morning, you take a look even on Friday morning, I looked at it. I saw through a camera there wasn't a person on Fifth Avenue. There wasn't a person on Madison Avenue.
I've never seen anything like it. Because people have really listened to instructions. And they've listened to what we've had to say. And the professionals - they've listened. And those people -- people should really give them a lot of credit including people like you.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Look, even on Friday morning I looked at -- I saw it through a camera -- there wasn't a person on Fifth Avenue, there wasn't a person on Madison Avenue.
I'd never seen anything like it, because people have really listened to instructions, and they have listened to what we've had to say. And they are professionals, they've listened, and those people -- people should really give them a lot of credit, including people like you, because you just don't have the sense to understand what's going on.
(END VIDEO CLIP]
LEMON: People really should give New Yorkers a lot of credit. I will agree with him on that. He's talking about people listening, he says he has never seen the streets like this.
On the other hand, he's also saying -- also speaking positively of these protesters, right, against these stay-at-home orders. How do you -- how do you square that circle? What gives here?
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Don, you know, it's another one of these situations with the president, where you just can't even begin to make sense of what he's saying.
He's praising, and he should be praising, the people of New York City. I have said for weeks and weeks, New Yorkers have done something miraculous. This is the hardest place in the whole country to practice social distancing and shelter-in-place, and yet my fellow New Yorkers have done it in an amazing way, and it's helping to drive back the disease.
But meanwhile, Trump is tweeting out, you know, "Liberate Michigan," and "Liberate Virginia." It's idiocy to suggest that we should be jumping ahead when we're dealing with a pandemic that, if you are not careful, it reasserts itself and set us back further.
Don, I've had this conversation with the president. I've said, "Look, you already are taking a huge risk if you do not make sure that this disease is fully controlled before you restart. But here's what could happen, you could have a boomerang effect, that the disease reasserts, and then any recovery is put off much, much longer.
LEMON: Yes.
DE BLASIO: He did not, in my view, understand this disease in the beginning. He didn't respond to it, he was never realistic about it, he didn't get us the testing we need. And now, even though he's saying nice things about New Yorkers, he's leaving us high and dry at a point where we are not going to be able to get back on our feet and restart if we don't get help from Washington.
I have directly implored him. I've said, "If we can't get help, how are we going to go from a city that's the epicenter of this crisis to restoring ourselves to the place of being the economic leader of this nation, if there's no federal help to make up for the billions and billions of dollars we've lost? If we don't get a helping hand, we can't restart our economy."
And I think, somehow -- Don, I think he thinks somehow America is going to recover without its largest city, which is absolutely impossible.
LEMON: Yeah, and -- without the largest economies, if you look at New York -- New York City, New York state -- and also California, as well. But he's also doing something that's very dangerous, which is for another conversation -- he's tying the second amendment, especially to Virginia, directly or indirectly, when it has nothing to do with the coronavirus.
Listen, this conversation -- the conversation in this country is focusing on how to reopen. But, you know, let's talk -- and this goes into what you were just saying before -- but New York City, it is still an epicenter. Is it really in its own category in terms of this ongoing crisis, Mayor?
DE BLASIO: Don, we have obviously had it harder hit than almost any place, but what we have to be really smart about is understanding this disease which has ravaged the world. You know, it's ravaged big cities and small towns and every kind of country. You let it in the door, it's going to cause you endless trouble. So, in fact, what we have learned here is "Be smart, be careful about when you take your foot off the gas."
So, yes, New York City has gone through hell, it is true. And we're going to need some real special help to get back on our feet. But I'll tell you something: so many other parts of the city have either gone through -- this -- excuse me, the country: so many other parts of the country either gone through a lot already, or they're starting to see upticks right now.
And that's the danger. The human cost, but also, where is this happening? In a lot of the places that this entire country depends on to fuel our economy. And I fear that the president is -- sort of his endless desire, sort of, "Rah, rah, let's restart," is ignoring the facts, ignoring the science, and he's going to lead us into something that will boomerang back on us very harshly.
And, Don, he's only got one chance to get this right. He really blew the first part of this crisis. And now he's saying there's enough testing when there isn't -- I can tell you for a fact we're nowhere near the kind of testing we need for our city to make a comeback.
He's not even lifting a finger to help cities and states around the country that must get help if they are going to recover. He's in some kind of dream state, acting like if he just wishes there would be a recovery it's going to happen. If he's not careful, he's going to have city after city dealing with this disease, the human cost, and then no possibility of a proper restart.
[20:35:00]
And the only way it works is for the federal government to actually take control, to say, "OK, we're now -- we, the federal government, are responsible for making sure every city and state that needs testing to restart gets the amount they need." In our case, hundreds of thousands of tests per day.
LEMON: Yes.
DE BLASIO: As much as the country is using now, we are going to need per day to restart and you've got to make cities and states whole. If we have billions and billions of dollars of budget gaps, we will not be able to provide basic services. We won't be able to take care of our people, we won't able to restart our economy. I mean, he is literally engaging in magical thinking if he thinks that the American economy can recover without the places that actually are the economic engines.
LEMON: That's a good message for the rest of the country, what you said. Remember the places with the economic engines and also don't take your foot off the gas. Thank you very much, Mayor. Appreciate your time.
DE BLASIO: Thank you, Don, appreciate it.
LEMON: Thank you, good luck, be safe. Dr Deborah Birx admitting today that we still don't know if people who survive after being infected with Coronavirus have immunity and there's still so much more that we don't know. We're going to dig into it, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:40:30]
LEMON: Governors across the country begging for Federal help to ramp up testing, saying it's necessary to reopen their States and will help increase understanding of the Coronavirus. Let's discuss now with Dr Howard Markel, he's a professor of history of the history of medicine at the University of Michigan. He served as a historical consultant on pandemic, influenza preparedness planning for the Defense Department. Doctor, so good to have you. Thank you for joining us. Listen, a preliminary - -
DR. HOWARD MARKEL, PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: Thank you for having me.
LEMON: Absolutely. A preliminary study from a small town in Italy found that around 43 percent of confirmed cases were asymptomatic. That's a huge number. So how does asymptomatic transmission complicate our ability to get on top of this?
MARKEL: Well, it complicates it because you have all these secret agents walking around who are not obviously sick who can get other people sick without them even knowing it and they may not be isolating themselves because they feel fine. So it's a -- a real monkey wrench into the works, yes.
LEMON: Yeah. So -- this looks and I think, this is one of the most important questions for -- for me this weekend, at least, because Dr Deborah Burke today saying it is unknown if being infected by this Coronavirus means that someone has -- even has immunity. If we don't know that or how long immunity may last, how does that complicate the battle? How do we even know if people should be going back to work?
MARKEL: Right. So here -- he's another part, you know, the key word of this novel Coronavirus is the word "novel" --
LEMON: "Novel".
MARKEL: -- we have no experience with it. Our immune systems have no experience with it. Our epidemiologists have no experience with it. Our scientists and doctors have no experience with it. So in many other Coronavirus infections, the immunity is only -- you know, three or four, five months, so that's a problem as well and that -- what -- that's what's leading us to the Holy Grail of a vaccine that will hopefully provide longer immunity than natural immunity, catching the virus which of course we don't want anyone to catch.
LEMON: Yeah. One more - I want to ask you about contact tracing, a critical step in reopening but it's dependent on testing and health experts are saying that testing needs to increase by more than three times to get to where it needs to be. How difficult will it be to contact trace if the US is struggling with testing?
MARKEL: Well, it -- it makes it almost impossible and you have to remember there are about 120 different companies now making tests. They have not all been approved by the FDA, they have not all been standardized. Many of them have false negatives so that you don't know if the person was actually positive because there was a false negative. Or there might be a false positive or it may not work at all.
So we have to -- just because you have a test, doesn't mean it's a good test. And under normal circumstances, we would've had tests that were already ready to go. Contact tracing by the way works best at the early part of an epidemic where you can actually get your health workers out there to test people and at the tail end of an epidemic.
But when you're at the peak or just after the peak, there are so many people who are actually ill and need to be taken care of that you may not have the -- the manpower to actually test all those people --
LEMON: Got it.
MARKEL: -- but the fact that we don't have tests makes it even worse.
LEMON: Dr Markel, thank you. "The Washington Post" has - -
MARKEL: Thanks for having me.
LEMON: Absolutely. "The Washington Post" is reporting CDC staffers were working at the World Health Organization headquarters as Coronavirus spread in China yet the Administration keeps blaming WHO for not being transparent enough. What is the real story? That's next.
[20:44:30]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: President Trump bristling tonight when asked about his relationship with China's President Xi Jin -- President Xi, I should say, and how he's handling the Coronavirus pandemic. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: When you repeatedly praised Xi in January and February --
TRUMP: This guy doesn't stop.
DIAMOND: -- you said he will solve the problem, you said he was doing a great job. Were you duped --
TRUMP: What?
DIAMOND: -- by President Xi?
TRUMP: No, no, no, no. I made a deal that's phenomenal for the United States. No, you know who was duped? You, you and the Obama Administration were duped for years because China was ripping off this country. Like, in the history of any country, nobody has been ripped off like the United States by China and many other countries.
And we stop it and we have done a deal where we're they're paying us 250 -- they are buying 250 -- they didn't do anything if us. You know, we didn't even have a deal. It was so bad.
DIAMOND: This is after the deal. These comments were after the deal.
TRUMP: No, no, no, no. It is about a deal because the deal started a long time ago before anybody heard about this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Well, let's discuss now. Ambassador Richard Haass is here. He is the President of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of the forthcoming book "The World: A Brief Introduction" and we thank you for joining us, Ambassador. What do you think about the President's response and what does it tell you about the relationship between the two leaders right now?
RICHARD HAASS, PRESIDENT, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, the relationship between the two leaders is good, but the bottom line is relations between countries are rarely based upon personal relationships between the leaders.
[20:50:00]
This is a relationship that's been heading south for some time. I think the pandemic is reinforcing that deterioration, and that's bad for both countries, it's bad for the world. This is probably the defining relationship of this century, and as this relationship goes, so will a lot of the future history of the world, and right now they are -- they're pointing in the wrong direction. LEMON: Can you give me, Ambassador, your assessment of the leadership
we have seen from the president in this crisis? Is he owning up to the fact that an earlier response would have saved more lives?
HAASS: Look, to the extent we're at war, and that seems to be the metaphor of choice, you've got to say, "How has he done as a -- as a war president?" And I don't think he gets particularly high marks.
He's not spoken the truth consistently to the American people, he hasn't prepared us for what -- for what is to come. He hasn't used all the powers of his office in order to rally the nation. The conversations we're still having about equipment, about testing, and so forth.
And most important, what we've learned is that exit strategies in wars have to be based upon condition, not calendars. And I think the biggest hit against the president is going to be that he was late to go to war, and he now might be early to end the war. And that, to me, would be getting it wrong at both ends.
LEMON: Speaking of that, "The Washington Post" is reporting that, as the situation in China was unfolding earlier in the year, there were at least a dozen CDC staffers working at WHO Headquarters who were reporting details back to the Trump administration in real time.
The warning signs were there. He just -- did he just fail to act?
HAASS: There were warning signs coming from the WHO, but, again, China was not being forthcoming. There's a lot of blame to go around here.
Partially China, obviously, they -- these wet markets never should have been operating. The Chinese were slow to react, they tried to cover it up; they allowed millions of people to leave Wuhan. So the initial responsibility goes with them. The World Health Organization was not demanding enough early enough on China, they were too collaborative with them, too much scared to alienate them. And then we were to blame, we were slow to realize what was going on.
We can't blame either China or the World Health Organization for our lack of equipment, our lack of -- slowness for social distancing, and the rest. And there's really -- no one's covered himself or itself with glory here.
LEMON: Why were -- the spokesman for HHS confirmed that there were Americans working at WHO, but appeared to suggest that WHO leadership was holding back information.
Why would they hold back information from an important partner? Does that make sense?
HAASS: WHO is -- it's not really an independent organization. Its ability to work depends upon the cooperation it gets from governments around the world. China is one of the most important governments, one of the bigger funders, and the WHO was clearly worried about alienating China. So it cut China a lot of slack, gave them every benefit of the doubt.
And as a result, it lost a lot of credibility, and it didn't do itself, or China, or us any favor.
But, again, the WHO is afraid to alienate the sovereign countries, essentially for whom it works.
LEMON: Ambassador Haass, thank you for your time. Stay safe, OK?
HAASS: You too. Thank you.
LEMON: Thank you.
At least two of our friends and colleagues here at CNN have been infected with coronavirus. Chris Cuomo has been sharing his story, and Brooke Baldwin is here to tell us hers -- there she is! Next.
[20:53:30]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: OK. Everyone, please sit down and watch this because someone you're going to see you haven't seen for a while on television and we're anxious to know how she is doing. But tonight, more than three quarters of a million Americans are confirmed to have been infected with coronavirus. And one of them is my CNN colleague Brooke Baldwin who is recuperating. I'm so nervous, I can't even get it out.
LEMON: I'm so anxious to talk to you.
(CROSSTALK)
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's all good. You're (INAUDIBLE) better than I -
LEMON: Brooke Baldwin is recuperating.
BALDWIN: -- could (INAUDIBLE) --
LEMON: And here she is. She joins us now. Brooke, how are you doing?
BALDWIN: Oh, my goodness. I mean, I feel like I came out of this, like, drag-down nasty fight with this virus that shows no mercy and I never thought I'd be so excited, Don Lemon, to put on mascara and come sit and string some sentences together with you on TV, truly.
LEMON: So, I was so happy -- I'm so happy to get your text because at first, you know, I was just keeping in touch with your husband James.
BALDWIN: Yes. Yes.
LEMON: And then I knew that you would, you know, you would have these moments where you would feel better and you would text me, "I'm doing OK today." And then --
BALDWIN: Yes. LEMON: -- when I got your text this morning that you had this piece on CNN.com, my (INAUDIBLE) -- usually keep my glasses by the bed and I couldn't find it. So, I'm, like, reading your thing like this without my glasses and I was so happy to get through it.
BALDWIN: I love you. Thank you.
LEMON: And you did this COVID diary on CNN. It's called "How fighting coronavirus taught me about the gift of connection." And you just write about having it --
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: Oh, my goodness. Look at that photo.
LEMON: I know. But I want people to read it. I'm not even going to read what you say because I want people to read it. But you said -- you talked to me -- you were working. I was watching you on television and you said that this -- it happened fast, right? It hit you fast.
BALDWIN: Man, yes. Took me down -- I was working, I was minding my own business like everyone else, you know, isolating, doing all the right things. I'd worked nearly a full week. And you know when you're feeling kind of, not totally yourself, but all the things, all the stories we tell ourselves -- or my husband had turned off the heater the night before and I was, like, irked at him because that's why I, you know, wasn't feeling well.
And then --
LEMON: Uh oh. Did we lose her? Oh, no.
[21:00:00]
