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Coronavirus Cases Double on Quarantined Cruise Ship; Twenty Four Americans Among Those Infected with Coronavirus on Ship; Schumer Calls for Investigation into Witness Retaliation After Trump Fired Two Former Trump Appointees Who Testified During Impeachment; Democratic Candidates Sharpen Attacks Ahead of New Hampshire Primary. Aired 9- 9:30a ET

Aired February 10, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:18]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Good Monday morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

We're now just hours away from the first primary votes of the 2020 race. The candidates going all out as you'd expect with their final push. Those earlier pledges, not to attack each other and instead focus their fire on Donald Trump, that's a distant memory. There is, of course, a primary to be won.

HARLOW: And hopefully we'll get the numbers one time and get them tonight. We are seeing candidates attacked, defend and attacked again. All of this just a week after Iowa where updated vote numbers now show Mayor Pete Buttigieg maintaining a very lead there.

Joining us from New Hampshire with the latest on the race, CNN correspondent Jessica Dean and Ryan Nobles.

Good morning to you, guys. And Ryan, let's begin with you. Bernie Sanders focusing on Mayor Buttigieg and Joe Biden ahead of a big day.

RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, there's no doubt about that, Poppy. I think particularly the interesting part of the turn in Bernie Sanders tone here in Manchester and in New Hampshire in general has been that focus on Pete Buttigieg. You know, for the most part, Sanders -- I don't want to say ignored but really didn't pay all that much attention to Buttigieg at least publicly but the results in Iowa certainly changed that.

It's pretty clear now from all the polling that we're seeing leading up to tomorrow night that Buttigieg is Sanders' close competitor and has a realistic shot at winning here. And Sanders also has found a very specific way to distinguish himself from the former mayor's campaign and that is their donor base. And Sanders has repeatedly gone after the fact that Buttigieg has a lot of wealthy donors to his campaign and that Sanders campaign has virtually no wealthy donors and it's all done by a grassroots online army of donors. So Sanders believes that's something that Democratic primarily voters

in particular are very concerned about. They're concerned about the way that campaigns are financed and the influence it has on politics. He's hit on that over and over again for the past 36 hours or so. Buttigieg's response has been pretty clear. He said he's not going to be influenced by these donors and he doesn't want to go into a campaign against Donald Trump with one hand tied behind his back.

You know, Poppy and Jim, it's going to be for the voters in New Hampshire to decide which path they feel is a more preferable one for their nominee.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Absolutely. It's up to the voters.

Now so tell us what the Sanders campaign is saying about that Iowa caucus count which seems to solidify a small but seems to solidify a Buttigieg victory there.

NOBLES: Yes, you know, Jim, they are not going to be satisfied with these results is essentially what the campaign is telling us. You know, they certainly want to move on. They don't really believe that the Iowa result is going to have much of an impact on New Hampshire at this point but they do want to make sure that the final count is accurate and complete, and that Sanders is able to capture every delegate available to him.

This is what his campaign manager Faiz Shakir told me last night about their plans in the wake of the report from the IDP last night. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

The first question I have for you, Faiz, is -

FAIZ SHAKIR, CAMPAIGN MANAGER, BERNIE 2020: You can expect us to be asking the Iowa Democratic Party for a recanvas of the discrepancies that we have identified and found for them. We will be asking them to take a look at some of these obvious discrepancies that have affected our count. And I think after it's all said and done, it should be the case that we have the same number of national delegates as Pete Buttigieg.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBLES: So we don't know what specific discrepancies they're talking about yet. They did issue a lengthy list of discrepancies in the first round of this accounting process to the IDP and the Democratic Party in Iowa said that they'd address those originally. So now they are going to take one more look at it. And it's clear that they want to make sure they have access to every single available delegate, even if it's only a one or two delegate split right now in Iowa -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And before we pronounce any campaign dead in the water, right, I mean, it's an eight-delegate difference between Biden and Buttigieg there.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: You need thousands to win the nomination.

Ryan Nobles, thanks very much.

Jessica Dean, she's in Gilford, following Joe Biden's campaign today.

So, Jessica, the former vice president he more so certainly than in the past aiming his fire at Pete Buttigieg.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Interesting, right? He and Bernie Sanders have one thing in common, they have turned their attention to Pete Buttigieg and we saw that play out over the weekend here in New Hampshire.

The vice president had really been hesitant to really call it out directly but he certainly did that starting on Saturday. We saw a digital video that his campaign put out directly comparing the experience the mayor of South Bend has versus the vice president's experience, and knocking the mayor's experience there in South Bend. And they kind of went back and forth with each other over the weekend. I'll let you take a listen to a little of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Come on, man. You think -- this guy is not a Barack Obama.

MAYOR PETE BUTTIGIEG (D-IN), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, he's right, I'm not. And neither is he. Neither is any of us running for president.

[09:05:03]

And this isn't 2008, it's 2020. And we are in a new moment calling for a different kind of leadership. Look, we are facing the most disruptive president in modern times. And I don't think the same playbook that helped us get here is going to work against him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: Now interestingly yesterday I was with Vice President Biden on the trail and we really didn't hear him directly attacking Pete Buttigieg. He said that he congratulated him and Bernie Sanders. That they were better organized than him in Iowa. But then he turned right to what we've heard time and time again from Joe Biden, from his campaign which is that you have to take the first four nominating states as a package.

That they want to see what happens when they get to Nevada and especially when they get to South Carolina because the argument from Biden and his campaign has been that he is the one who has overwhelming support from African-American voters. That that's a key demographic within the Democratic Party and that you have to have that support to get the nomination. And that is what they continue to poke at is that Pete Buttigieg doesn't have that support, Jim and Poppy. But they certainly are ready to move onto the next phase to get to

Nevada and South Carolina. They've got to get through New Hampshire first and we'll see what happens on Tuesday, just where he'll place among all these candidates.

HARLOW: OK. Jess, don't go anywhere. Stay with us in your picture- perfect background there.

SCIUTTO: Of course some snow.

HARLOW: We said it looks like a postcard.

SCIUTTO: It is the winter. It'd be nice to have some snow, you know.

HARLOW: Sciutto and I were just saying all it does is rain in New York City so try to enjoy the snow. Stay there.

Andy Smith is with us, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.

Andy, good to have you. Let me just begin with you because Klobuchar, I think, objectively speaking, you know, whether you like her or not, knocked it out of the park in that debate on Friday night like she needed to. She's raised millions of dollars since. Does she actually have the most on the line in New Hampshire in terms of if she can go on or is it someone else?

ANDY SMITH, DIRECTOR, UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE SURVEY CENTER: I think actually Klobuchar and Joe Biden have the most on the line in New Hampshire. Klobuchar because she just really is out of funds for the -- to speak of.

HARLOW: Yes.

SMITH: Certainly compared with the amount of money that the top candidates have raised. And Biden, because if you're the electable candidate, you're the candidate that can win in November, that's the message that's been pushed for -- for the last year by his campaign. If you don't win in the first two states you suddenly become much, much less electable, and voters in the subsequent states are gonna use that in their evaluation.

SCIUTTO: So, Jessica, tell us how the Biden campaign is responding to that argument. Right? Because, again, you know, it is very early in this race, by the way. And I will say, and Bill Clinton finished third in New Hampshire in 2000 --

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Sorry, 1992. Called himself the comeback kid and went on from there, of course, to two terms as president.

DEAN: Right. Right. No, I think that's exactly right. I think, Jim, Poppy, you talked a little bit about the delegate percentage that we saw coming out of Iowa that when you zoom out big picture, and this is what we've been hearing from the Biden campaign, this is a long road, and that we're just at the very beginning of it.

And you will also hear from them, as I said previously over and over again, they go back to let's see what happens when we're -- once we're done with South Carolina and then sling shot into Super Tuesday where we're getting a really big chunk of voters, a diverse chunk of voters, and let's see what they have to say. But I think the point is also valid, that, look, when you're winning, when you're Pete Buttigieg, if you win Iowa and you do really, really well in New Hampshire, maybe people start to give you a second look. You've got that winner shine on you.

The Biden campaign now going to be under tremendous pressure not just to win South Carolina but to overperform there and really, really have a knockout performance.

HARLOW: Can I ask you, Jess? There was an important question that has been raised to the Biden campaign this weekend and they really didn't give an answer. A lot has been made of how he dealt, you know, with the crime bill, et cetera, back in the '90s. But not a lot of attention until now on 1996 Welfare Reform and what that meant for minority communities.

And his campaign failed to address this weekend whether or not to answer directly, does he still stand by his vote for welfare reform, which, of course, Sanders was opposed to? When he's banking so much on the minority community supporting him in this election, could that hurt him to not have a direct answer on that?

DEAN: Yes. And I think there are a lot of these answers that keep -- a lot of these questions that come to them, that we saw kind of play out over the summer, where you talked about the Crime Bill, that was certainly one. It seems like this is a similar one. When you go and travel with him, let's say to South Carolina, there's just such overwhelming support, especially among older black voters who really know him, trust him and that's been what we have seen within his rallies.

But to your point, Poppy, I think when the stakes are shifting, when you're not coming out on the top and people start having questions like this, you have to be able to answer them and answer them directly especially when and we're hearing people start looking around, giving other people a second chance.

HARLOW: Yes.

DEAN: Maybe giving them a second look.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DEAN: You're exactly right.

SCIUTTO: All right. So, Andy, you know, the debate within the Democratic Party right now, you might even say the panic, right, is between the progressive left-leaning path and a more moderate path. Representatives say Buttigieg, Biden.

In New Hampshire where is the voter divide there? Where is it leaning?

SMITH: Well, historically New Hampshire hasn't about 40 percent of the electorate be -- in the Democratic electorate that the progressive end and about 60 percent moderate to conservative wing. But I really think the political energy this year is in the -- in the progressive and of the Democratic Party. And I think we're seeing that with Bernie supporters just being much more energetic and enthusiastic than the supporters of many of the other candidates. I think that gives Bernie a little bit of an advantage.

HARLOW: Yes.

SMITH: Going forward, I think that it's going to be really important, again, to see what happens. We have a misconception that voters in states after New Hampshire are getting the same sort of campaigning and the same sort of -- and paying the same sort of attention that voters in New Hampshire do. Historically nobody has ever won the nomination without coming in first or second in New Hampshire.

HARLOW: Yes. So, Andy, quickly, to put a button on it, what happened to Elizabeth Warren? You look at the new CNN polling that came out yesterday in New Hampshire specifically, your state, and look at Warren versus Sanders in terms of that liberal contingent just in October. She was ahead of him by two points. And how he holds 46 percent of the support from liberal voters versus just 13 percent for Warren. What happened?

SMITH: Well, they're both fighting over the same voters. And I think the big thing that happened with Warren is, she peaked too early. You don't want to peak in the fall, you don't want to peak in in the summer, you want to peak in January and February. And I think she was just a little bit too early and voters have moved back to Bernie.

One other thing I should say. Bernie is now seen as the most electable candidate among the Democratic field here in New Hampshire.

SCIUTTO: That's a remarkable change.

HARLOW: That is.

SCIUTTO: It's a very -- because that has been at the top of the list you'll often see as national poll among Democratic voters as to the quality they want most.

Andy Smith, Jessica Dean, thanks to both of you.

Still to come this hour, the number of coronavirus cases on a quarantined cruise ship has now doubled skyrocketing 65 new cases. This is the death toll internationally from the virus has now surpassed that of the SARS pandemic. We're going to be live in Beijing next.

Plus President Trump retaliating against those who crossed him. By crossed him, that means didn't tow the party line during the impeachment. Now Senator Chuck Schumer is calling for an investigation into the president's conduct. HARLOW: And no third summit with Kim Jong-un. CNN reporting this

morning the president does not plan to meet with the North Korean leader again before the 2020 election. What changed?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CO-ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: There are now 65 new cases of the coronavirus on a quarantined ship off the coast of Japan. At least 24 of the 135 passengers now confirmed to have the virus are Americans. Ambulances have been seen transporting some of those infected patients to hospitals in Tokyo.

POPPY HARLOW, CO-ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: To date, the coronavirus has killed 910 people around the world. That means more people have now died from this virus than from the entire SARS outbreak back in 2003. For the first time today, Chinese President Xi Jinping was seen wearing a mask, one of those face masks while visiting a hospital in Beijing. Our international correspondent, David Culver is there. David?

DAVID CULVER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, Poppy and Jim. You mentioned President Xi Jinping's visit out in public. This is significant because we have not seen him surface through really much of this entire crisis. There was one appearance about a week or so back, but it wasn't really relevant to what was going on here with the day-to-day fight, this massive outbreak.

So, today's visit was to a local community, was to a hospital, was to a disease-control center. And it's interesting the timing of this for two reasons. One is, it comes as -- you made that mention of coming past the death toll from SARS in 2003. That was a significant moment here. And so, to go past that now globally in the number of those killed, well, that's something that from a PR perspective, China certainly wants to push back against and show that they still have this under control, and that they're still trying to go forward with what they liken to almost a war-like battle, if you will.

And so, who did they put on the front lines in state media, this is certainly being echoed, but President Xi himself. Now, President Xi has also taken kind of a back seat publicly, it seems, because of some of the negativity that has surrounded this. You've got to remember where this originated. It was at the local level, it was in the city of Wuhan, it was Hubei Province.

So, early on, you had a lot of negativity thrown at those local leaders, but then the central government stepped in, President Xi became really the one who said, I'm taking command of deployment and coordination. And when he did that, it stops at him. And so, when some of the negative headlines start to surface, the concern here from state media in particular, and the propaganda machine doesn't like this either, is that you start to blur the two lines of some of the issues and President Xi.

So they like to buffer that. That's why it was so important to see him come forward today and to actually be out there in public, and really try to stress in his words, that they're trying to stabilize this fight, they're trying to stabilize the economy too, and they're determined to go forth. But Jim and Poppy, it's also worth noting that going around here, you start to see more of the state surveillance, something that China has certainly --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

CULVER: Pushed forward, but you see that just going into regular apartment complexes -- it's everywhere.

SCIUTTO: Yes, I mean, we saw those drones talking to people, floating over their heads. David Culver, thanks very much --

CULVER: Right --

SCIUTTO: We're joined now by science journalist and author, Laura Garrett, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her work, "Documenting the Ebola Outbreak" in Zaire in the 1990s, author of the book, "The Coming Plague". Laurie Garrett, thanks very much for coming on.

LAURIE GARRETT, SCIENCE JOURNALIST & AUTHOR: Thank you.

[09:20:00]

SCIUTTO: So, we have a news now that the death toll from this has now surpassed SARS. And what struck me, a difference is huge jump in global air travel between now and then. I think we've seen this, it's doubled, it's more than doubled during that time-frame in 2003, 691 million global passengers, now 1.4 billion. I think we have that number to put up on the screen. But tell me, how that makes a difference in the spread of this, but also, how does it explain the global response?

GARRETT: You know, Jim, I was thinking that back in 2003 with the SARS epidemic, I was in Beijing and I reported some information for CNN, and it was censored, and no one in all of Asia could see that information. It was the first time they'd ever blocked all CNN transmissions --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

GARRETT: Across the Asian region. And here we have a situation where China is much more integrated into the planet. They have this belt and road initiative that goes to already more than 60 nations. They have a reach into Sub-Saharan Africa which was completely cut off from China in 2003. And we see that slowly, different parts of the planet are starting to realize, you know, this could come here.

SCIUTTO: Yes --

GARRETT: And they're starting to talk about readiness. I fear they're too late. That everybody is dragging their feet in getting ready for this, and I think this is going to really explode.

SCIUTTO: Goodness -- GARRETT: It's out of control in China.

SCIUTTO: That's alarming.

HARLOW: It is. And what does that mean for the United States? Because there have not been reports of I think any new cases at least in the last few days here in the United States. What is that indicative of to you?

GARRETT: Well, one thing that's great in the United States is that our CDC managed to make a good test kit to figure out who is infected. It works in about four to five hours' time once you have a patient and a sample to test.

HARLOW: Yes --

GARRETT: So, and they've now dispersed that out to health departments all over the United States. So, the good news is, as cases appear, we should be able to much more rapidly figure out, is this real or not real. Is this person infected or not infected. So, that's good news, and if we can identify an infected case quickly and put them in isolation away from the rest of the community --

HARLOW: Yes --

GARRETT: And not in that situation where they might contaminate a whole hospital, that's happened with SARS and has apparently been one of the key features of this outbreak in China, then I think we may be able to buy ourselves time to really get the country together.

SCIUTTO: Tell us about the death toll here because SARS had alarmingly high death rate of about 10 percent, H1N1, but you know, there were similar concerns, but much smaller, well below 1 percent. Do we have a sense here of just how deadly this is?

GARRETT: We are getting tremendously variant answers to that question.

HARLOW: Geez --

GARRETT: There are accusations that officials in Wuhan have been manipulating data in order to have the data reconcile with a 2 percent case fatality rates. So, if you only report so many cases --

HARLOW: Right --

GARRETT: And then you have a fatality rate, then somehow comes out at 2 percent --

SCIUTTO: Interesting --

GARRETT: And a very different city on the other side of China that is having a huge outbreak, reports of 4.8 percent case --

SCIUTTO: Wow --

GARRETT: Fatality rate. And of course, everybody is going to be watching these cruise ships --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

GARRETT: Particularly the one off Yokohama to see, you know, what actually unfolds with these people. And is this sort of Petri dish to study the epidemic --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

GARRETT: As a whole, and to understand what the mortality rate is.

HARLOW: Laurie, thank you for that, I think we're all sort of --

SCIUTTO: Sober and --

HARLOW: Stunned --

SCIUTTO: Sober in comments, but we're going to --

HARLOW: Yes --

SCIUTTO: Stay on top of the story the best we can --

HARLOW: Yes --

SCIUTTO: Appreciate it --

HARLOW: Thank you very much --

GARRETT: Me too --

HARLOW: You're fired. The president pulls a page, I guess out of the "Apprentice" playbook and retaliates against two members of his administration who were witnesses in the impeachment trial. Now Minority leader, Chuck Schumer wants an investigation into that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:25:00]

SCIUTTO: This morning, Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer says that he wants the Defense Department's acting Inspector General to investigate witness retaliation by the president. This of course follows Trump's firing of two key impeachment witnesses, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman and Trump appointee and Trump donor, EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland, they both testified under oath, we should note.

HARLOW: That's right, CNN has learned this morning that both Lieutenant Colonel Vindman and Gordon Sondland were quietly planning to exit on their own before their abrupt firings by the president. You know, the president was advised by a number of Republicans in the Senate to let it be and let them leave on their own, but this president apparently didn't want them to go quietly.

Joining us to discuss, John Harwood; our White House correspondent, J.W. Verret; he worked on the Trump transition team, and his associate professor of law at George Mason University. Good morning to you, both, John, let me just begin with you. So, apparently, with Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Ron Johnson who said to the -- somehow to the president or his people like just let them go, don't make a thing of this. But the president wanted it to be a thing. Why?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is a president who thinks in terms that are transactional. If you help me, I'm going to do something good for you, say something good about you. If you hurt me, I'm coming after you. Kellyanne Conway; the president's adviser was in the briefing room a few minutes ago, and he said -- she said, you know, winning finishes a lot of sentences.

Well, the president won the acquittal vote, and now he's acting of the two firings, I should say, the Gordon Sondland one seems much more understandable to me. He was a political appointee who essentially bought the ambassadorship with a million dollar donation.

END