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UGA Student Says Peers Care More About Bud Light Than Grandma Dying Amid Pandemic; Filmmakers Warn Roger Stone Commutation Has Unleashed Stone; Fauci: Some States Went From Shutdown To "Throwing Caution To The Wind"; Coronavirus Updates From Around The World; Trump Taking Questions At White House As Pandemic Worsens. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired July 13, 2020 - 14:30   ET

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

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[14:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Plus, a college student who says too many of her peers care more about Bud Light than Grandma dying. Why she thinks some young people are not taking the pandemic seriously.

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KEILAR: Today, New York's governor announcing schools will only reopen if the daily coronavirus infection rate for the region remains below 5 percent.

Governor Andrew Cuomo is offering to send a team of contract tracers to Atlanta to help with the rise in that city.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms joined Cuomo's press conference to talk about here city's needs. She also gave an update on her own health, saying she and her husband are doing much better after recently contracting the virus from one of their four children.

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MAYOR KEISHA LANCE BOTTOMS (D), ATLANTA: My family is an example of what's happening across this country. We had an asymptomatic child in our home for eight days before we knew that child was asymptomatic. And by that time, my husband and I had contracted COVID, unnecessarily, I would imagine, because we would have taken precautions to protect ourselves.

[14:35:04]

Thankfully, by the grace of God, we don't have underlying health conditions and we are all on the mend. My husband is feeling a lot better.

But for so many people across the country, that is not their story.

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KEILAR: Now, Bottoms is currently at odds with Georgia's Republican governor over restrictions that the mayor wants to impose due to a rise in cases. Bottoms has ordered Atlanta for a phase one reopening and called for a state-wide mask mandate.

Governor Brian Kemp claims Bottoms does not have the power to supersede his more relaxed measures.

A senior at the University of Georgia is calling out her peers, saying they care more about parties and socializing than protecting older relatives who may be vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Faith Settipani wrote a powerful op-ed for the "Atlanta-Journal Constitution." It said this, in part, quote, "While the news is focusing on the middle-aged protesters who line the streets with signs advocating for their right to get a haircut, there's little attention on the college kids who couldn't care less if grandma dies in the name of a shot-gunned Bud Lite."

UGA is in Athens, Georgia. The state there seeing a stark rise in COVID infections over the last few weeks.

And UGA senior, Faith Settipani, is joining us to talk about this.

Faith, thank you for coming on to share this with us.

And tell us why you decided this was important for you to have your voice out there about this.

FAITH SETTIPANI, SENIOR, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA: Thank you for the opportunity.

I definitely think there has been a focus on older individuals not following CDC guidelines. For me, on social media, I've been witnessing my peers going to bars, frat trips, beach trips, and totally disregarding the CDC guidelines.

I think my generation does claim this narrative we're so much more empathetic and socially conscious than the generations before us but our actions during COVID are proving that not to be true.

KEILAR: And you personally understand some of the risks here. You are immune-compromised and been staying home since March.

SETTIPANI: Absolutely. Fortunately, I have had the ability to stay 100 percent quarantined. So I've been taking classes online and haven't been susceptible to the illness.

KEILAR: Why do you think that is when you say this is an empathetic generation or prides itself on being such? You make a point that many of your peers are very visibly supporting social justice causes. They're being empathetic in that regard. But to you, there's a disconnect with the virus?

SETTIPANI: I look at the case of coronavirus activism really prominent in my generation. I think it's easier to say you care about certain causes but then the actions that are, unfortunately, much harder to implement. In the case of COVID-19, especially, as we've seen COVID-19

disproportionately effect marginalized communities, you have to recognize COVID as a genuine threat.

KEILAR: You are the age of the people you're talking about. I think a lot of people, as we get older, it feels like you're telling kids to get off your lawn and it seems like the younger generations get undue flack. But we're seeing the pictures of parties and you can't ignore them. This is happening. What do you think it takes?

What does it take to get through to a young person short of them losing somebody that they love?

SETTIPANI: I think recognizing our individual choices do make an impact on the world around us. I think a lot of the time people my age are discounted for how young they are. But we do make a difference. I think holding ourselves accountable and ours friends accountable is the first step towards that.

KEILAR: So UGA is planning to have faculty and staff back August 10th. This is around the corner. And in-person classes are going to begin August 20th.

How do you feel about that? And will you be on campus?

SETTIPANI: Luckily, the Disability Resource Center has been great for me, specifically. So, I have a little bit more leeway and options than my fellow students.

But I'm extremely concerned for my friends who don't have that option. As we've seen, this virus can affect and ultimately kill people who do not have any underlying conditions as well.

I definitely think there should be more options for those that don't want to sacrifice their health for the education.

[14:40:00]

KEILAR: Faith, thank you so much for coming on. Faith Settipani, we really appreciate you joining us. And also check out your op-ed -- it's really cool -- for our viewers.

SETTIPANI: Thank you so much.

KEILAR: Breaking news. Just after NBA players arrived in the Orlando bubble to restart their season, one of the league's brightest stars just revealed he tested positive for coronavirus.

And Dr. Fauci reveals the four things he wishes he knew about the virus as it gets more and more confusing.

And the man who made a documentary about Roger Stone explains why he thinks President Trump really commuted the sentence of his friend and long-time political ally.

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KEILAR: There's new reaction on President Trump's decision to commute the 40-month prison sentence of his long-time friend and political ally, Roger Stone. The filmmakers behind the movie, "Get Me Roger Stone," are warning Stone has not just been set free. They say he's been unleashed.

In an opinion piece in The New York Times," headlined, "What Trump Wants From Roger Stone," they argue it was about the re-election bid, writing, "The president needs political help, and who better to give it than his political guru of many decades."

Dylan Bank is with us now. He's the co-director of the movie, "Get Me Roger Stone." He co-wrote the op-ed.

Dylan, you write that the president commuting Stone's sentence is about helping the president get re-elected. Tell us about this.

DYLAN BANK, FILMMAKER: Certainly. When Donald Trump has had his back against the wall in the past, time and time again, he's turned to Roger Stone.

An example is in 2016, when the "Access Hollywood" tape came out. He relented on what Roger had been pushing him to do all along, which is go hard on Clinton's supposed war on women. That's when he rallied the women who had been accusing Clinton of abuse, put them in the front row during the second debate, rattling her.

And now Trump's in a similar circumstance where he's in political trouble and, once again, he's calling to his old friend, who's been with him almost 40 years.

KEILAR: That's right. Because he began urging the president to run for the White House in 1987. They have this decade's-long relationship.

Can you tell us a little bit more about it? Give us a little more context about how this relationship operates.

BANK: Right from the beginning. Roger spotted Donald Trump as an incredibly charismatic person who could connect with the public and voters, and somebody willing to play it his way, to move within what he can do and not necessarily what is proper.

And all along, he's been pushing him. But Trump never really took it more seriously than a publicity stunt. It was only when the country changed enough for their act to be mainstream that they pulled the trigger. And here we are.

KEILAR: So, you write in this op-ed that, "Mr. Trump has now rescued Mr. Stone, but can Mr. Stone return the favor?"

Axios reported that Stone is going to help Trump's re-election campaign. I wonder what you had in mind.

BANK: Well, certainly. He was in bad need of a bailout. Roger has never been to prison before. He's 67. It's the middle of a pandemic. And he was going to be put in prison tomorrow. This would have been catastrophic for him, after he had already lost all of his money and clients through the very long legal process.

And Donald Trump didn't pardon him or commute his sentence right away. He left him going until the very last moment, when both of their backs were up against a corner.

Still, it was an incredible display of the amount of power and influence Roger had through his years of working with Donald Trump for Trump to take such a political hit, when we know he's so sensitive about things like this.

So, for him to be willing to take this hit, it is both back to their long years together and a very personal relationship. But also what was it worth it to take that hit, adding an attack dog out there in a knife fight?

KEILAR: And we'll see what that means to be unleashed.

Dylan, thanks for joining us. Dylan Bank. We appreciate it.

BANK: Great to be here, Brianna.

Just as Disney World reopens in the U.S., Hong Kong's Disneyland forced a shut down again as that city tries to tamp down an outbreak of new infections.

[14:49:07]

Plus, South Africa banning all alcohol sales and imposing a curfew as its cases sore past 12,000 a day. We'll have a look at coronavirus around the world, next.

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KEILAR: Just in, Chicago Marathon cancelled due to the pandemic. This is the second-largest in the U.S. after New York. And it follows both New York and Boston, which also cancelled their marathons.

Moments ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci said COVID-19 is the most challenging public health crisis that he's ever dealt with. This includes HIV, Ebola,, Anthrax and Zika. And he also explained what Americans can do in the absence of a vaccine.

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DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY & INFECTIOUS DISEASE: It is very clear -- and we know this from countries throughout the world -- that if you physically separate people to the point of not allowing the virus to transmit -- and the only way to do that is by draconian means of essentially shutting down a country -- we know that we can do that if we shut down.

The Europeans have done it. People in Asia have done it. We did not shut down entirely. And that is reason why, when we went up, we started to come down, and then plateaued at a level that was really quite high, about 20,000 infections a day.

[14:55:04]

Then as we started to reopen, we're seeing the surges that we're seeing today as we speak, in California, your own state, in Arizona, in Texas, and in several other states. So that when you try to reopen, if you're not handling the surge well, what you're seeing is what we're seeing right now.

So we need to drop back a few yards and say, OK, we can't stay shut down forever, economically, and the secondary unintended consequences on health and a variety of other things make it completely non-tenable for us to stay completely shut down for a very long period of time.

So you got to shut down but then gradually open. And we made a set of guidelines a few months ago, which had good, what we call checkpoints. We had situations where you do entry, and you have phase one, phase two, phase three.

Unfortunately, it did not work very well for us in an attempt to do that. Tests assessed, the increase that we've seen. So we could get a handle on that.

I am really confident we can if we step back. You don't necessarily need to shut down again. But pull back a bit and then proceed in a very prudent way of observing the guidelines of going from step to step.

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KEILAR: The United Nation said more than 130 million people worldwide could go hungry by the end of this year as the coronavirus puts a strain on the global food supply, with Africa being the hardest-hit region, followed by Asia.

We have more from now on the virus' impact from my CNN colleagues all around the world.

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IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Ivan Watson, in Kong Hong. More than 35,000 U.S. Marines and family members stationed on Okinawa, Japan, are under virtual lockdown after at least 94 U.S. personnel tested positive for coronavirus.

Now, Okinawa hadn't seen any confirmed cases for more than two months. The Japanese governor is shocked and expressing doubts about the infection prevention measures that the U.S. has adopted against the pandemic until now.

DAVID CULVER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm David Culver, in Beijing, where Chinese officials have confirmed that two members from the World Health Organization have arrived here in China's capital to take part in a source-tracing mission for the coronavirus outbreak.

And ultimately, we do anticipate them to bring more members from the WHO here. But this is an advanced team and so the scope hasn't been fully explained.

In fact, we put questions to the WHO, to Chinese officials to understand the itinerary, and where will they go while here, who will they speak with, and what are they looking to uncover. Those questions have yet to be answered.

KRISTIE LU STOUT, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: I'm Kristie Ku Stout, in Hong Kong. On Monday, the city reported 52 new cases of COVID-19. This is the highest daily number of new cases so far during the city's so-called third wave of infections.

And today, new strict measures have been announced, including border controls. All travelers coming into Hong Kong from high-risk areas must present proof of a negative COVID-19 test. Also, no public gatherings --

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And the biggest, by far, the biggest testing program anywhere in the world. If you tested China or Russia or any of the larger countries, if you tested India, as an example, the way we test, you could see numbers that would be very surprising.

Brazil, too. Brazil is going through a big problem. But they don't do testing like we do.

So we do the testing. And, by doing the testing we have tremendous numbers of cases. If we didn't do this -- as an example, we've done 45 million tests. If we did half that number, you would have half the cases, probably around that number. If we did another half of that, you would have half of the numbers. Everyone would say we're doing so well on cases.

But when I see it reported in the night -- you could check me out on this -- I mean, they always talk about -- they're always talking about cases, the number of cases. Well it is a big factor that we have a lot of cases because we have a lot of testing. Far more than any other country in the world. And it is also best testing.

Yes, please?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The federal government said federal executions for the first time in a decade, as soon as a couple of hours from now. Are you monitoring the last-minute appeals on that case?

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Well, I think what I'm going to allow that be answered by our attorney general.

Do you mind, Bill?

WILLIAM BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Yes, sir. We'll obviously monitor the appellate process.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And you have given any consideration to using your clemency powers to stop the executions and commute them to life sentences?

TRUMP: Well, I've looked at it very strongly. And, in this particular case, I'm dealing with Bill and the people of Justice. It is always tough.