Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

18 States See A Rise In New Coronavirus Cases; Aide: Trump Expected To Sign Policing Executive Order Tomorrow; Warren Allies Urge Biden To Pick Her As Running Mate. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired June 15, 2020 - 12:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Much of the South and the West heading in the wrong direction in our tracking of the coronavirus case trend line. Let's take a look.

First let's look at the overall case map. This is the United States total count above 2 million cases sadly above 115,000, approaching 116,000 deaths from coronavirus here in the United States. Here are the latest trends, 18 states heading in the wrong direction. That's the orange and the red.

And as you see, essentially go across the South out to the West, up into Montana. You see there, 18 states heading in the wrong direction. That's the orange. Ten states holding steady. That's the base states there. Twenty states heading down, essentially the northern half of the country, if you will, that heading in the right direction when it comes to the case count.

[12:35:06]

If you look at the new cases, let's take a look here at some of the states. We're watching closely. This is Florida, spiking up wrong direction to be headed in. Arizona was up. It seems to be trending down a little bit there. You see Alabama and South Carolina down here. They've moved up from a dip. The question is can they flatten that out or keep going up?

Texas is getting a lot of concern right now. These are the new cases seven day moving average that is flat at best. It seems to be trending up at the end, somewhere in the ballpark of 2,000 cases, new cases a day. Some people starting to raise concerns there. The governor staff says they've got it, they're in charge of it.

Here's one of the things to keep an eye on, hospitalizations. Again a flat line starts to trend up when it comes to hospitalizations in Texas right now. Some say the state reopened too quickly. So other say we've got this under control. Among those who are worried, the judge in Harris County, that's where Houston is who oversees the coronavirus response.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) LINA HIDALGO, HARRIS COUNTY TEXAS JUDGE: Right now, we're seeing that the spread is just too much for us to get a grip on. And we've reopened so fast that folks have gotten the idea life is back to normal. And I hope I'm wrong. I hope that we don't end up having a crisis. And so we're throwing all we have at it, but certainly, you know, I would have done it differently.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Dr. Umair Shah is the executive director of the Harris County Department of Public Health. Doctor, thank you so much for being with us today.

When you hear the judge there saying, she's hope she's wrong, but she's worried. Should she be? Are you seeing -- is the increase at a dangerous level or just what you expected when you get more aggressive in the reopening?

DR. UMAIR SHAH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS PUBLIC HEALTH: John, thanks for having me, first of all. And I think the judge is absolutely right, that we are worried. And this is not just worry from a number of angles, but particularly from a health angle.

When we get to the numbers and you're looking at overall cases, you're looking at overall cases across Texas, and certainly what's happening in our local community, it's not just the increase in testing and the increase the numbers that are testing positive. But what's happening in our healthcare system, our hospital system. That's actually what is absolutely concerning to us. So yes, I would say, yes, we are concerned.

KING: And so I just want to put up the Harris County numbers over the past two weeks, the case count going up. And you see it's, you know, it's flat, it goes up a little bit. I mean, you look at these numbers every single day, you see a dip in the middle. But the overall, my question is always, you know, what's happening right now? And if you look at the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, is that up? Is it flat around 150, where are you?

SHAH: Yes. So this is -- what we've been talking about is the fact that every time you have an activity or an event or a milestone that there is what I call a layering effect that you have reopening that's occurred starting with the state May 1st, and there were milestones within the reopening plan.

In addition to that, you've had events like graduations and obviously people getting together and all sorts of other activities. And so each of those layer on top of another Mother's Day, Memorial Day weekend moving forward, we're going to have obviously Father's Day, we're going to have 4th of July, all of that layers on top of each other.

So the question that I'm getting asked a lot is, you know, did reopening or did other events have something to do this? And some saying no, it didn't? And the answer is, absolutely it did. The hard part is to know, how much? It's that quantification. That's really been the challenge. KING: And so when do you get to that point of quantification because as you mentioned, these events Memorial Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, the 4th of July, you know, as we've been going through this over the last several months, usually we're told, you know, just wait three or four weeks, then you will see both in the case count, but more importantly, hospitalizations rate of infection, are they going up at a manageable level or a dangerous level? When will you know?

SHAH: Right. And we're watching this. I'll tell you, our team all -- this entire weekend has been working on this exact question. We're looking at all sorts of indicators, all sorts of metrics. And yes, it is generally a few weeks after one of those activities, one of those events.

But the concern that we have is that if we do get to this point where we have an incredible increase in our healthcare system, particularly ICUs, then that would be not just a concern that would be an emergency, a crisis, a disaster. And that's why we're doing everything we can to remind everybody that we are not through this pandemic.

John, I think the key message is that we may be tired of this virus, but this virus is not tired of us. It is ready to continue to take aim at our community. And we have to really rely on our community members to do everything they can to prevent themselves from getting sick by wearing the facial covering or social distancing, and all those measures.

But at the end of the day, that's what translates into prevention so that people do not present to the healthcare system. That's what concerns us. That's where we're monitoring very aggressively right now, but we are concerned.

KING: And Dr. Shah, you have a new color coded threat system in the county now. Red is severe, orange is significant, yellow is moderate, level four green is minimum. You are right now at level two, orange. Let me ask you this question. Are you closer to red or closer to yellow? Maybe you're headed in the right direction or in the wrong direction?

[12:40:16]

SHAH: Well, you know, we are -- we're solid orange right now. And obviously the Judge reveal this, announced it last week. And I think it is an absolute helpful way for our community to understand where we are because lots happened in several months.

I think what the key issue is that, if the choice is up to us whether the orange goes to yellow or the orange goes to red. It's about what we do as a community to prevent our community from really getting overrun by this pandemic in this phase, not just what we did successfully for four or five months, but in this phase moving forward. And that's why reopening and our approach to reopening including what our community members are doing, but also our businesses, our establishment, and certainly everything else that we're doing from a response standpoint, is going to dictate whether we go towards the red or go towards the yellow. And let's hope we go in that direction and not in red.

KING: My hope is with your hope, Sir. Dr. Shah, again, thank you for your insights, as always appreciate it.

SHAH: John, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

KING: Thank you, Sir.

Coming up for us, Congress now, working to try to find common ground on police reform. But there are some big roadblocks.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:46:08]

KING: Calls for police reform growing louder across the country and local communities and right here in Washington in the halls of Congress. But, it's a big but. Can Democrats and Republicans agree on what police reform should look like?

Our congressional reporter Lauren Fox joins me now. Lauren, a lot of ideas on the table, the question is, can they get an agreement?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Exactly, John. And you have worked in Washington long enough to know that when there is a national moment, a national crisis, and you see Republicans and Democrats working on two very separate pieces of legislation, it does not always bode well for a bipartisan compromise.

And that is exactly what we have right now on Capitol Hill. You have Democrats who have more than 220 cosponsors for their proposal. We expect they'll vote it out of Committee this week. Then they'll vote on the floor of the House of Representatives. And next week, it'll easily pass. But they don't have a single Republican cosponsor right now.

Meanwhile, we expect that Senate Republicans will unveil their proposal on Wednesday with Senator Tim Scott leading that effort. But there are very different views on how to handle policing nationally. Republicans don't believe in telling state and local governments how they need to be handling policing. We don't expect that the Republican proposal right now will include a ban on chokeholds or a ban on no knock warrants, although there are some Republicans who support those things within the conference.

Instead, we expect them to really be incentivizing state and local police officers to carry out best practices. Now Democrats want to make it easier to sue individual police officers in court if they misuse force or if they don't do their job appropriately, that's something that Republicans have said could be a poison pill, John.

KING: We'll see as the negotiations continue. Lauren Fox on the Hill, appreciate that very much. Keep us posted.

Meanwhile, the deputy assistant to the President says, President Trump plans to sign an executive order on police reform and sign it tomorrow. Final points of that are yet to be finalized, the President making clear one thing that will not be included.

He tweeted this morning. Many Democrats want to defund and abolish police departments, how crazy. It's not exactly true. But that's what you get when you read the President's tweets.

With us now CNN White House correspondent, Kaitlan Collins and White House reporter for The Washington Post, Seung Min Kim. Kaitlan, let me start with you. The President's assistant says this is coming, do we know how big, how broad, how significant it will be, or are we still waiting?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: We're still waiting on at the final text. Of course, we're not expecting to get until tomorrow. And so far, we've only got little snippets so far from White House officials really detailing what they think is going to be in there.

We do not expect it to be broad or substantive in the way that you're hearing those discussions that Lauren was just talking about on Capitol Hill. The White House has not led in any way really on police reform. So far, they've let those conversations start and mainly go on the Hill, though, we should note that the President's chief of staff and Jared Kushner did go up to the Hill to talk to Senate Republicans about what they were working on.

And so the White House is going to put out this executive order. We do expect it to establish a national database for tracking the use of excessive force among officers. But beyond that, it doesn't really seem clear exactly anything more than that that it's going to match the messaging that you're seeing coming from Capitol Hill, from across the country.

Those calls for big sweeping police reform, that's not likely to be included in this executive order that we're supposed to get from the White House that the President is supposed to sign tomorrow.

KING: And Seung Min, it's because of the timing anyway. We're in a presidential reelection year. You have these demonstrations or protests all around the country. Rayshard Brooks now in the headlines just after George Floyd was in the headlines. So the President is trying to figure out what to do at this moment. Do you try to reach out to those people in the streets or we can listen to a bit here? Does the President stick to his traditional history which is standing by the police? Let's listen.

KING: Do we not have that sound? OK.

[12:50:01]

Seung Min, the President has repeatedly talked at his campaign rallies around the country about law and order, law and order, stand with the police. Do we expect him now to do something that could be a bit of a break?

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I mean, John, you and I are old enough to know, when we've had these past major moments in the Trump presidency where there seemed to be this momentum for some bipartisan legislation, whether it's immigration or gun control, particularly after the El Paso and Dayton shootings last summer.

And we're kind of in a similar moment where there is that change in views. I mean, you could look at national polling, the public does believe that police departments need to be reformed, that incidents are such as the George Floyd shooting isn't a one offs incident that there are systematic problems in law enforcement.

And you see the President kind of reaching out a little bit. And he would sign an executive order to do this. And he is open to do certain other things. But then very often go back to his base whether that is, you know, gun rights advocates and the gun control situation or here, the law enforcement community.

So I mean, we've seen -- we haven't seen heard -- we haven't heard too much from a law enforcement community yet on what they actually think about these proposals from Capitol Hill. And they could be quite influential. But what the President is -- what the President is proposing, what Senate Republicans are proposing, they're really not going to go far enough for Democrats here. And that is just a recipe for good luck.

KING: And so, Kaitlan, and now we can get to that sound to hear the President's history. And then we'll get the other side of it. But the President has consistently said law and order in, in a way, in the wake of the George Floyd and now Rayshard Brooks that a lot of people have -- a lot of people have heard that as the sort of the Republican message of the 60s, not the Republican message that you need right now. Let's listen to the President.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We want law and order. We have to have a lot of good things, but we have to have law and order. If you're going to have to really do a job, if somebody is really bad, you're going to have to do it with real strength, real power.

We'll not stand for these vile Democrats veers against our law enforcement and that includes great police.

We must maintain law and order at the highest level, or we will cease to have a country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: You see the President over the years there. He is tweeting now that he's done more for African-Americans than anybody. The poll numbers would suggest the African-American community doesn't believe that. But he does face a difficult choice here and to Seung Min's point, 99 times out of 100, when faced with a choice, he sticks with his base.

COLLINS: Yes. And he has privately voiced concern about not wanting to alienate police officers. He knows that he's got their support. Mostly, you've seen how he talks when he's on the campaign trail.

And so the other question, on the other side of this, political equation is that his advisors are worried about is, they felt like he actually made some inroads with black voters leading up to this before this. And now their concern is whether or not those gains have been erased whether they've really lost that ground that they felt like they had actually gained over the last several months.

And the President has dug in on this lawn order message. He believes it's a winning one. And it's really a risk. It's a calculation. And we don't know how it's going to pay off yet for the President. He's leaning into those instincts that he has, and instead focusing less on police reform, more on the culture wars that he's talked about in the past.

But the question is, you know, is his response meeting, the national moment that you're seeing happening, and how more widespread the calls for police reform have been during this shooting of this -- or this death of this unarmed black man compared to so many others that we've seen.

And so the question is, you know, does the President's political instinct workout for him again in this occasion? And his advisors will say they don't know yet.

KING: They don't know yet. We will get that tomorrow. Kaitlan Collins, Seung Min Kim, thank you. And Seung Min that was very kind of you, were both old enough. I got a couple weeks on you still, I think, a couple of weeks at best.

[12:53:51]

Up next for us, supporters for Elizabeth Warren make a new pitch as why Joe Biden should pick Senator Warren as his running mate.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: There's a new push to get Elizabeth Warren to the White House, allies for the former 2020 candidate now urging Joe Biden to pick Senator Warren as his running mate. CNN's MJ Lee joins us now with that, MJ?

MJ LEE, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, we know that Joe Biden is currently deliberating over one of his most important political decisions and that is, who is he going to choose as his V.P. running mate?

And today we're seeing a fresh effort, pushing Biden to choose Senator Elizabeth Warren. This is a letter has now been signed by more than 100 activists, strategists, and celebrities. And they're saying that 2020 really is the most important election of our lifetime. They see it as a crisis election that is going to require a big running mate. Just want to read a part of that letter.

They write, the most important criterion is who would be the most capable to be President if necessary. In our view, Elizabeth Warren has proven herself most prepared to be President, if the occasion arises and deeply expert on the overlapping emergencies now plaguing America, COVID-19, economic insecurity, racial injustice, and climate change.

Now, of course, Warren ran against Biden in the 2020 primary, and he formally endorsed him back in April. And we know, John, this is a process that is very tightly guarded that Biden himself has already committed to choosing a woman. And he has also said that there are multiple black female potential candidates that he is looking at.

We know that there's going to be a lot of scrutiny on names like Congresswoman Val Demings or Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, particularly given the tumultuous last few weeks that we have seen across the country.

[13:00:06]

And we know as far as timing goes that he hopes to have somebody --