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Bolton: I hope Trump is 'One-Term President"; Florida Surpasses 100,000 total Coronavirus Cases; Trump: Testing "Makes Us Look Like We Have More Cases"; Trump Upset by Empty Seats at Tulsa Rally; U.S. Attorney Ousted after Initially Defying Barr; John Bolton: "I'm Talking Now Because Democrats Have "The Political Understanding" to Succeed on Impeachment; U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Approaches 120,000 as Cases Rise Dr. Zeke Emanuel Says Trump Administration Did not Understand Scope of Coronavirus Challenge. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired June 22, 2020 - 11:00   ET

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

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[11:00:07]

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everybody. I'm John King, in Washington. Thank you so much for sharing your day with us.

The president spending his morning lying on Twitter as the country he leads approaches a shock coronavirus milestone. You can see the numbers on your screen, 120,000 Americans dead.

Globally, the virus is spreading faster than ever. A single-day high of 183,000 cases reported by the World Health Organization on Sunday. At home, daily new infections finished north of 30,000 on Sunday, the highest single day case count in seven weeks.

The White House today insisting the president was not serious when he told rally--goers he instructed aides to slow down testing to make the numbers look better than they actually are. The 2020 election 19 weeks from tomorrow, so the timing of this new case surge not good for the president.

It's also a bad time for doubts about your campaign, your campaign team or campaign plan, but empty seats in Tulsa this weekend infuriated the president. And there's a lot of debate today about the rally plan going forward.

We know the president likes to try to change the subject when he doesn't like the headlines. Today's effort simply a lie. Quote, "Millions of mail-in ballots will be printed by foreign countries," the president tweets.

There's no evidence to support that claim, none, and no evidence to support the president's claim that mail-in voting means massive fraud. Again, none. When we count the votes in November, John Bolton says his will be a

write-in for a Republican not named Trump. The one-time White House insider savages the president in a new book and hopes the voters decide four years is more than enough.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BOLTON, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: I hope it will remember him as a one-term president who didn't plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can't recover from. We can get over one term.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: A big coronavirus milestone in Florida today. Remember that state opened early and now has a rising are case count, and it just crossed 100,000 total cases.

Let's get straight to CNN's Rosa Flores in Miami for me -- Rosa?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, John, and here in the state of Florida, like you mentioned, crossing 100,000 cases. We were expecting that because of the recent increase.

And Governor Ron DeSantis finally acknowledging that the increase in cases here in the state is not just due to the increase in testing but also to an increase in community spread.

According to the governor. it's young people who are not social distancing and who are not wearing masks.

Here in Miami-Dade where I am, three businesses were shut down over the weekend for violations of COVID-19 regulations. Not one of those rules is, of course, one of the rules is no large gatherings. And apparently, that rule applies even to the president of the United States.

Our very own Poppy Harlow asked the city of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez if he would support a MAGA rally here in Miami, and here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRANCIS SUAREZ, (R), MIAMI MAYOR: We're not opening large venues where you can have any sort of large congregation of people, whether it's a sporting event, whether it's a rally. So none of those kinds of things are open in the city and won't be open after today's data which is worse than last Monday's was.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLORES: Now, John, I would love to ask that question to Governor Ron DeSantis to see what he thinks about hosting a MAGA rally here in Miami.

What we do know from the governor he's upping enforcements and sending inspectors out to businesses like in Miami-Dade. They're already doing it at the county level. And at the state level, he said he'll be sending out inspectors to make sure that the rules are being followed -- John?

KING: Day after day and day, in recent days, Rosa, those tough numbers out of Florida. We'll stay on top of it. Appreciate your reporting from the scene for us.

The coronavirus reality here in the United States, the nation has the most cases globally and the number of new infections is, again, climbing.

Those are two facts the president simply does not like, which explains why he's repeatedly trying to tell you the numbers look worse than they actually are.

The president insisting on Twitter last night, "Our coronavirus testing is so much greater, 25 million tests," he says, "and so much more advanced that it makes us look like we have more cases, especially proportionally than other countries."

Let's go to the White House and CNN's John Harwood.

John, it looks like we have more cases here in the United States because we have more cases here in the United States.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Exactly right. You used the right word at the beginning of that setup, the "coronavirus reality."

The coronavirus reality is that the United States has 4 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's cases and, more significantly, 25 percent of the world's deaths. That's a number you can't spin and say, well, it's asymptomatic and mild cases. One-fourth of the world's deaths.

Now because the president of the United States doesn't want to acknowledge that reality, it puts his aides in a very difficult position to try to talk about what everyone can plainly see is happening, which leads to the mixed messages that we've got to two administration economic advisers, Larry Kudlow and Peter Navarro.

[11:05:05]

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Are you preparing for a second wave in the fall?

PETER NAVARRO, TRADE ADVISER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: You prepare for what can possibly happen. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but, of course, you prepare.

LARRY KUDLOW, ECONOMIC ADVISER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: We know how to deal with this stuff now. It's come a long way since last winter. And there's no second wave coming.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARWOOD: Larry Kudlow had a point saying we know how to deal with that better. Our death rate is coming down even though 120,000 people have died. The rate of death is going down.

However, when you've got rising case counts, you now have half the states with a virus reproduction or infection rate exceeding one, meaning the epidemic is expanding, and you have highly variable results by individual.

Nobody knows how bad it's going to be for any particular case. That's a frightening reality for Americans. And President Trump simply does not want to accept it.

But you can see from that one-third filled arena in Tulsa over the weekend, that there are a lot more people now being skeptical of the administration's claims than they were before this epidemic hit.

KING: There's a lot of room to debate in the middle, but the simple numbers just don't lie. The numbers don't lie.

John Harwood, appreciate that, from the White House.

With us to share their expertise and their insights, Jackie Kucinich, of "The Daily Beast," former SDNY prosecutor, Elie Honig, and CNN's Vivian Salama.

Vivian, I want to start with you because when we saw the president's coronavirus numbers tank early in the crisis, it was because Americans had the impression he was not on top of it. He said it wasn't going to be a pandemic and it was. He said everybody could get a test when nobody could get a test. He seemed out of touch from the beginning.

Do they not get, even politically, whether they like it or not, if he seems out of touch now -- he says it's fading and dying. Look at Florida. Maybe the case count is going up and the cause for concern is real and present. Why does the White House keep saying we're good?

VIVIAN SALAMA, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Because, John, it's an election year, and one of the things been weighing very heavily on the mind of President Trump and his advisers is the fact that the economy has been tanking through this whole entire process.

And so in their minds, and especially some of his economic advisers who are around him, the best way to tackle that was a quick reopening regardless of the risks.

And a lot of the advisers that I've spoken with said they tell the president, you know, we took a quick hit but let's move on with it. And even if we have to continue to battle with rising cases or just the continuation, the drag out of this virus, at least we're better equipped right now.

They say that testing has improved and hospitals are better equipped, the ventilators are in play. But, of course, we still see the numbers going up. And obviously, when you have rising death tolls and rising rates of infection, that also is a huge problem.

And it's something that the president has opted, probably for political reasons, to completely shelve so he can focus on the re- election and economy and getting people back to their jobs and kind of get the country in motion again. And it's come at a great cost.

KING: It has come at a great cost. Well put.

Jackie, it's trademark for the president. He doesn't like the headlines or what's being talked about on cable television so he tweets something outrageous to try to change the subject.

He's simply lying when he says mail-in voting is subject to giant fraud. He's making it up when he says, if we have more mail-in voting, foreign countries will be printing the ballots.

He's doing it because he's upset. His press secretary said the president is not at all angry. And you can translate that the president is, indeed.

We know from our reporting, your reporting, quite angry over the weekend. So many empty seats in that arena in Tulsa. There was no overflow crowd even though they planned a big outdoor event for him to speak to. They had to cancel it and break down the security measures there.

It has to rattle the president a little bit, at least, that 19 weeks from the election, in addition to all these other challenges, now he has some questions about his campaign team.

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, and let's not forgot, the coronavirus is not something that's self-inflicted. This is a crisis that the president has not been able to control.

This rally and the optics of that real which the president cares about very much -- we know how much he watches TV -- were atrocious and totally self-inflicted.

And -- and they have tried to -- we've seen the blame from his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, try to blame the media and protesters who reporters on the ground they weren't a problem with attendees getting in. He blamed any number of things.

At the end of the day, they didn't have to have this rally. They wanted it to be a show of force, that they were moving past the coronavirus. You've seen Mike Pence trying to say that as well in his op-ed in the "Wall Street Journal," that there wasn't going to be a second wave.

They can spin all they want. The virus doesn't care. And the --

KING: Yes --

KUCINICH: Yes, go ahead. KING: I was just going to say, Elie, that in the middle of all of

this, the president doesn't think two crises is enough.

[11:10:01]

We're in the middle of a pandemic and a racial reckoning going on since the death of George Floyd and the president decided, 19 weeks before the election, with the help of his attorney general, which is remarkable, to fire the man who leads the office you once worked income, the Southern District of New York president, Geoff Berman.

That office we know is involved in a number of investigations. Number one, it's the office that put Michael Cohen behind bars, Congressman Chris Collins, a key Trump ally, behind bars.

Giuliani associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, charged by Geoffrey Berman. A Turkish bank close to the president's friend, the president of Turkey, charged, Jeffrey Epstein, Michael Avenatti.

They're also looking at the Inaugural Committee and looking at possible misconduct by Rudy Giuliani, looking at Deutsche Bank, which had a relationship with the Trump Organization.

Pretty brazen to not only touch but grab with two hands this third rail. Why?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: John, to me, this is a flagrant attempt to inject politics into prosecution. You said it well. Third rail.

The Justice Department is supposed to be the most independent of all the departments in the federal government, and within that, had the southern district is famously independent.

Look, you just gave a great list of all the high-profile investigations of people close to Donald Trump that the SDNY managed to get under way even in this highly politicized era.

And if you look at the way Donald Trump and William Barr did this, announcing it on a Friday night, misleading the public saying Geoffrey Berman would step down.

Trying to appoint Jay Clayton with zero prosecutorial experience. Putting someone never spending a day as a prosecutor in charge of the Southern District of New York is ridiculous. It's a joke. It would be like trying to make me the surgeon general of the United States. Completely unqualified.

I don't think there's any reason conclusion, other than they are trying to politicize the Southern District of New York.

KING: Jackie, this president is disruptive from day one, but the idea that he would do this. There's a little bit of pushback from Republicans on Capitol Hill, but it was a very little.

KUCINICH: Well, I mean, we're -- I think that goes back to being in an election year. They don't want to cross -- especially you have some Republicans facing tough races in November. They don't want to cross him in the middle of an election year and being the sort of hate tweets.

This week, there's actually a hearing in the Judiciary Committee about the politicization of the Justice Department, so we'll see if they are able -- this obviously will come up and we'll see who they can get in there to talk about it

KING: Eli, on that point, Geoff Berman agreed to step down on Saturday after he essentially because of his stubbornness. His deputy will run the office. The administration wanted to bring in an ally from the U.S. attorney's office in New Jersey.

How much of a difference does that make? And one would assume if the prosecutors, if they're loyal to their former boss, to Mr. Berman, will double dot their "I"s and cross their "T"s given the microscope they are under.

HONIG: I want people to understand how unusual this all is. I served in the SDNY, almost four years under Bush, four years under Obama. We went through four U.S. attorney changes. They were all smooth, even when we went from one party to another. Did not interrupt the work that the office did day by day.

Now under the Trump administration, we've seen not one but two, by including our colleague, Preet Bharara, firings that were sudden, unexpected and I think politically driven. That's got to impact the morale.

But I'll say, the Southern District will survive this and will outlive the Trump administration and many beyond it. I do have faith that the men and women who work there every day will continue to do their job. That's certainly the way I was trained there -- John?

KING: Vivian, another thing we know under the president's skin is that his former national security adviser, former insider in the West Wing, John Bolton, not only does he have a book out that savages the president, questioning his intellect and questioning whether he has any principle, questioning whether he shares American value, is now giving a bunch of interviews.

And Democrats like most of what they hear but they won't like this. John Bolton explaining to ABC why he would not Cooperate and testify back during the impeachment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOLTON: I didn't think the Democrats had the wit or the political understanding or the reach to change what for them what was an exercise in rousing their own base to say that they impeached Donald Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: It's been interesting -- a mild word -- to watch Mr. Bolton beat up the Democrats but also says, you know, that he can't -- he's not comfortable voting for Joe Biden and he'll write in a Republican other than President Trump and he hopes voters end this at one term.

SALAMA: That's right, John. He even says, if he were subpoenaed now, he would agree to testify. So there's been sort of an evolution of John Bolton from the days of the House impeachment inquiry when initially we weren't sure if we were going to see him. And, you know, the subpoena was eventually -- they did not pursue a subpoena pause his deputies' case went nowhere.

[11:15:03]

But John Bolton came out and said he would testify in front of the House and continues to say that.

But Democrats are saying it's too little too late. Ultimately, they needed this information last fall when they were building their case. And now John Bolton coming out with several explosive allegations in his book, which is going to be released to the public officially this week.

Among them, he said that obstruction of justice was a way of life in the White House, and particularly with this president. And he made some very, very staunch allegations in the president's relationship with China, with China's President Xi Jinping, with his relationship from the Ukraine president.

So obviously, we're seeing a trend. But Democrats kind of throwing their hands up at this point saying, where have you been.

KING: That's a very good way to put it in these very dizzying times.

Appreciate the help of all three of you, Vivian Salama, Jackie Kucinich and Elie Honig. We'll continue the conversation. These stories are not going away.

This important footnote. The White House changing the coronavirus mitigation measures. The once-daily mandatory temperature checks are now gone. Now voluntary, temperature checks for White House staff. Those in close proximity to the president and vice president will still receive temperature checks this.

This comes as the U.S. coronavirus death toll is approaching 120,000. More on the numbers when we come back.

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[11:20:43]

KING: Today is a big day in New York City's coronavirus reopening. Phase two kicks in, meaning outdoor dining, retail and salons are now open along with more beaches and more parks.

But that progress in New York comes as many other areas of the country are reporting numbers heading in the bring direction.

Let's take a look at the latest. Let's show you the national map. A lot of orange and red, that's bad. And 23 states, nearly half, heading up and 11 percent 50 percent rate of case growth this week compared to last. And you see big states, Florida, Texas, Michigan, among the states there, Arizona as well as you look at that.

Ten states holding steady. That's the beige color. And 17 states heading down, the green states. And with 23 states on the way up, 11 dangerously on the way up or with big numbers anyway.

Highest, 10 states reporting their highest seven-day average. So we're months into this. Ten states, ten states hit their highest seven-day average of new cases on Sunday, yesterday. Obviously, a point of concern there.

If you want to look at some of the states, you can see California in green. Texas behind it, Florida and Arizona.

If you go back in time, we talked about this since the beginning, this is flattening the curve. This is not. You can see these lines going up in these four states. Others as well.

Let me bring in hour chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, the governors of these states say, we've got this. We'll deal with this. When you see going from April into May and then, boom, especially Texas, Florida, Arizona, California, what goes through your mind?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I -- I worry that we're going into a period of exponential growth. I mean, people have become familiar with these terms, John. I think that -- that there was always an expectation as things start to reopen that the numbers would go up.

It became a question, would it go up like a plateau here and then go up to a higher number and plateau, or would it start to actually start to burn like a forest fire, as Dr. Michael Osteholm has described it, where, all of a sudden, it starts to go significantly up. That's the exponential growth part of things.

It's a real concern. At the beginning of last week, there were 18 states that showed over 50 percent growth and now over 23 states. We follow this day to day, but if you start to look back even month to month, as we've been doing this, you see this really concerning trend. I mean, it bounces around day to day, but it's a concerning trend overall.

John, the other thing is, did we find the basement. Yes, look at this. Look at what the E.U. was able to do. That is what a wave looks like, right.

And I find this graph both inspiring and very troubling at the same time. Inspiring because you see what is possible and what the European Union was doing taking their case counts very, very low.

The United States seems like we found the basement at 20,000 new infections per day. That's not a good basement, John, and now we're going up. KING: That's the rough spot we're in. You're 20,000 to 30,000 new

cases all of last week.

Let's take a look at some of the other numbers, Sanjay, as we go through these. This is hospitalization. Again, it's California, Texas and Arizona here.

California has said pretty much a flat line with a high number of hospitalizations, but, still, that's a stress on the system. And then you see Texas, pretty much a flat line and, all of a sudden, you start to go up. Arizona has been flat going up at a slower pace than Texas.

Yes, but if you look at hospitalizations, Sanjay, the governors are saying we knew it would be inevitable and we're going to have more cases. This is what we're watching, right, is it a strain on health care system.

GUPTA: That's right. That's the term flattening the curve. That's what that was all about. Let's flatten the curve because we want to slow down the pace in which we see new people becoming infected.

I kind of regret in some ways, John, that that became the metric for success, by the way. If we don't red line the hospital system, we'll have succeeded.

That wasn't really supposed to be the only metric of success. That supposed to stop the bleeding, if you will. So, you know, in some places we were able to do that. But now there's a concern, especially in states, John, where the populations are more likely to be vulnerable.

So think about, you know, retirement states, Florida, Arizona. You're going to have people who are older there. You will have people who have more pre-existing conditions.

So in addition to a number of infections going up in those places -- and Arizona is going up, you know, I'm concerned about Arizona and Florida in particular, in addition to the numbers going up.

[11:25:04]

People who get infected are also more likely to become sick and need hospitalizations. And 75 percent of the ICU beds in Florida are already full, and they are going up.

I mean, that could be a real problem -- John?

KING: Sanjay, on your podcast, you talked to Dr. Zeke Emanuel, who was an Obama adviser. And one of the interesting things -- and I want you to listen here -- is you asked, what would you say Dr. Trump. And he said, Sanjay, I did talk to President Trump.

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA (voice-over): What would have Dr. Emanuel advised the president?

DR. ZEKE EMANUEL, FORMER ADVISER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA (voice-over): I think in the third week of February, I did advise the president and I did say to the president that you've got to do what, say, Lyndon Johnson would have done or Franklin Roosevelt would have done, which is you create a tornado of activity.

So you've got a task force that deals with testing, a task force that deals with PPE and a task force that deals with ventilators and contact tracing. And they created a small task force that was supposed to do all of that. That was totally inadequate. And I think it would have made a huge difference.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Pretty plain here. He thinks they came nowhere close to understanding the scope of the challenge.

GUPTA: Yes. Now I'm thinking there might have been a deliberate minimizing of this problem, which I find, you know, really, really troubling because you look at other places around the world.

South Korea, by the way, South Korea, they never went into a lockdown phase. People keep saying here, and understandably, we don't want to go into lockdown again, get it.

South Korea never had to go into a lockdown phase. Fewer than 300 people have died. Why? Because they did exactly what Zeke Emanuel was talking about.

They in brought biotech companies together and said let's make the best test and figure out contact tracing and take this seriously.

How people behave with inadequate information is sort of the key here. And in this country, we kind of minimized this problem and have a lot of catchup to do.

KING: A lot of catchup to do.

Sanjay Gupta, appreciate your time and insights as well. As always, thank you very much.

GUPTA: Thank you.

KING: Coming up, a big week on Capitol Hill in the police reform debate. A key Republican, Senator John Barrasso, joins us next.

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