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Commissioner Melissa McKinlay (D-Palm Beach, District 7) Discusses Curfew Looming after 600 Attend Block Party; Karine Jean- Pierre, Joe Biden Presidential Campaign Senior Adviser, Discusses Biden Calling Trump America's "First" Racist President, Biden Giving More Speeches Over News Conferences; MLB Returns Tonight with No Fans, No Spitting, Lots of Testing. Aired 1:30-2p ET
Aired July 23, 2020 - 13:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[13:30:53]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: As the pandemic is raging on in Florida, we are seeing stupidity on full display in Palm Beach County. Over 600 Floridians deciding to attend a block party this past weekend. Not wearing masks, no social distancing. And their behavior prompted the county chief administer to threaten a curfew.
Melissa McKinlay, the Palm Beach County Commissioner, is joining us now to talk about this.
Commissioner, how likely is it that a curfew will go into effect?
MELISSA MCKINLAY (D), COMMISSIONER, PALM BEACH COUNTY, DISTRICT 7: Well, good afternoon, Brianna. Nice to see you again.
You know, we spoke with the county administrator yesterday, spoke with the mayors of the three cities out in the Glades area, and their city managers along with law enforcement officials. We are looking at doing some outreach, to the faith-based community to try to encourage people to not do this.
We're discussing right now the possibility of shutting down businesses rather than trying to do a curfew. Curfew would be the last resort. But if we can't get cooperation from the community, then that's what we're going to have to do.
KEILAR: Do you think that you would be able to enforce a curfew?
MCKINLAY: It's a tricky situation right now when you're talking about a gathering that big and the risk for something to go wrong. You know, Law enforcement is on full alert these days, and understandably so, given what we have seen happen in communities across the country.
We have got to do something. The fact is that gatherings larger than 10 right now are not allowed in our county, per the governor's orders. We are still only a phase-one county in Florida.
So we have issued citations. There have been a few arrests. That occurred over the weekend because of this.
I hope they hear the warning and they don't try to do it again this weekend. But if we have to, there will be a larger law enforcement presence.
KEILAR: And a shutdown is easier than a curfew?
MCKINLAY: The problem with a curfew is there's parts -- the cities right now, they could go ahead and issue their own curfews. The mayors are reluctant to do that.
The problem with trying to do spot-check curfews by the county and not the whole county, that has its own challenges. And so we're trying to get the cities to take care of this situation first. I hope Big Brother county doesn't have to step in and do it.
But if the situation and what happened last weekend happens again this weekend, I will, indeed, support the county administrator's push for a full-on curfew.
KEILAR: Thank you so much for joining us, Commissioner. We appreciate it. Melissa McKinlay, good to see you.
MCKINLAY: You, too. Take care.
KEILAR: The president and his education secretary make false claims about kids and the virus as they push for schools to reopen.
[13:34:01]
Plus, a man infected with the virus spends 128 days inside the hospital, 50 of those days on a ventilator. And he will join me live on the moment that his family was called in to say good-bye to him.
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KEILAR: Race relations is one of the many issues in the 2020 election. But presumptive Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, put it front and center with this blunt assessment of President Trump.
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JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What President Trump has done in going - he's spreading of racism, the way he deals with people based on the color of their skin, their national origin, where they're from is absolutely sickening.
No sitting president has never done this. Never, never, never. No Republican president has done this. No Democratic president. We have had racists and they have existed and tried to get elected president but he's the first one that has.
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KEILAR: When the president was asked about Biden's comments, he sidestepped the issue and instead used a very familiar talking point. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I say it openly, and not a lot of people dispute it. I've done more for black Americans than anybody with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln. Nobody has even been close.
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[13:40:13]
KEILAR: Karine Jean-Pierre, Senior adviser to Joe Biden's presidential campaign. She's a former Obama administration official. And she's joining us now.
Karine, thanks for coming on.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, SENIOR ADVISER, JOE BIDEN 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: Thank you for having me. Good to see you again.
KEILAR: Good to see you.
President Trump says -- and, yes, he does things that are racist, out in the open, things that no recent president has done, I think that's fair.
But there have been many slave holders who have held the office of president. Why is Biden not being more accurate when he is dealing with a serious matter here that requires precision?
JEAN-PIERRE: Yes. So I think what the vice president meant to say, what he was saying actually was that Donald Trump is the first president to have purposefully, has made racism the center of his campaign, of his administration, clearly.
And when you think about the campaign and type of campaign he runs, he won on that. He seeks to divide us. Deliberately enflames hate.
And if you think about Donald Trump, when he got into his business career, he denied people of color, black people, access into his buildings to get housing.
When he got into the political arena, he called -- he said that our first black president, Barack Obama, was not born in this country. When he started the 2016 campaign, he called Mexicans rapists. He saw Neo-Nazis marching down Charlottesville and said they were fine people on both sides. And he recently tear gassed Black Lives Matters protesters to get a photo-op.
This is who Donald Trump is and what he is all about. And what he is trying to do, he is trying to define Joe Biden in these attack ads and trying to say that, you know, Joe Biden is -- you can't trust Joe Biden. Joe Biden is not going to be the president that you think.
But it is not working because, at its core, people know Joe Biden. People trust Joe Biden. People understand his character. And I think that is what we're seeing the contrast that we are seeing here in this election.
KEILAR: But on this issue of how Joe Biden described President Trump, you're very familiar, it is one of the attack points to fend off. President Trump made mental acuity an issue in this election cycle.
Doesn't it make it more important for Biden to be accurate on easily verifiable points when it comes to saying this is the first racist president?
JEAN-PIERRE: What Donald Trump is trying to do is trying to distract. One of the things that you have rightfully focused your show on is COVID-19. And you have a president that failed in leadership coming to this current pandemic.
Everyone, even when you think about who the pandemic affects the most --
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KEILAR: I guess I'm asking if Biden is not being exact can be a distraction for him.
JEAN-PIERRE: I don't think it is a distraction. I think Biden -- I tried to lay out what Biden was saying about Donald Trump. And once again what matters here is what American voters think and what they feel. And they trust Biden's heart. They trust his character. You see that over and over in the polling.
And like I said, the whole -- you know, the whole thing about testing, you know, testing who's more -- is a distraction. Donald Trump doesn't want to talk about his failures. And that is what we have seen.
You have covered this. You have covered how, over the years, these last almost four years, when Donald Trump does not want to talk about something serious like the economy or like this pandemic, he pivots to something else so we can go down that rabbit hole.
But the reality is and you -- like I said, your show is leaning into this really well today. Almost four million people in this country alone, the cases of COVID-19. And 140,000 Americans that died in this country from COVID-19. And a lot of that is because of failed leadership by Donald Trump. He has no plan.
We have been talking about kids going back to school and how does that look like for parents? He has no plan. He wants to open up the government. He has no plan and left that at the feet of governors and state and local leaders.
That is what he does not want us to talk about and the real issue. And you see that in polling after polling after polling.
KEILAR: So I have some questions about Biden's plans, which is part of the reason why we have you on.
[13:45:00] But I also wonder, you know, we took this economic address that the former vice president gave this week and he didn't take questions from the press after it, which is becoming a very -- it's become a very common approach for him.
Why isn't he taking the questions? Isn't that an essential part of running for president?
JEAN-PIERRE: I think he's happy to take questions. He did it two weeks ago, I believe. He had a press conference to take questions from the press. And that was I think a very positive -- went very well. I don't think that's something he does not want to do.
KEILAR: But I think it had been months since he had done that.
JEAN-PIERRE: No, that was recently.
KEILAR: Before, prior to that -- doesn't do it often. So before that, he may have done it a couple weeks ago? But it's infrequent is my point.
JEAN-PIERRE: I gotcha. I think what Joe Biden is trying to do is what the campaign is trying to do is making sure that we are making clear what our policies are, what our positions are.
Like you are talking about. You just said that the policy that you brought me on to talk about, build back better. It is the policy on how does the -- how do we recover? Economic recovery plan.
And one of the planks that we put out this week was the care economy. It deals with caregivers and how families -- how do we relieve the burden on working families, especially families who have children, raising children and also taking care of older citizens.
And so that is the things we need to be talking about. How are we making people's lives better? What are we doing to make people's lives better in this pandemic? Tens of millions of people lost the jobs.
And this is what Joe Biden is talking about for months now. He is releasing different parts of the plans to lay out what he would do as president of the United States in this moment.
And he's done it before. He's done it before with Barack Obama when he was the vice president. And they came in and into an economy that was on a downturn and helped build that back up.
So this is the leadership you see from Joe Biden.
KEILAR: I hear you saying he's explaining it. But I'm a former campaign reporter and I know some of the most important information to get from a candidate is when you're able to ask them questions. Right? This is such an important part of it. We have so many questions about the economic plan, whether it is about his coronavirus plan.
I think of coming to -- we have been talking today about those Russian bounties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He put out a statement on that. But asking him questions on that would go so far.
He said himself that it's a betrayal of American families who are sending their loved ones over to Afghanistan or overseas. That is my family. And I have questions.
If this is happening, what is he saying to do? Because he says he'll confront Vladimir Putin but what does that mean? Specifically, what does that mean? And there aren't answers because we don't get to ask the questions.
JEAN-PIERRE: Just to be clear here, every speech that he has given or every policy that he's talked about, especially with this Build Back Better plan, he has talked to reporters. He has talked to reporters, local reporters in different states. And so he has actually done that.
He's taken questions from local reporters, like I said, every time that he talks about his policies. So that is, indeed, happening.
KEILAR: Democrats criticize President Trump for taking questions only from local reporters. You know when President Obama would do that, he received criticism for taking questions only from local reporters.
And I say that not because they don't have important questions but the reporters who are covering the campaign, who are covering the White House, they know that better than anybody and the ins and outs of the policies better.
And they can ask important questions to pull back getting information, more information of what exactly is in this plan for instance.
JEAN-PIERRE: Yes. But like I said, I think that we have pretty much have had conversations with reporters. I'm on here talking to all of you. We are -- had surrogates across all of the different cable news networks talking to surrogates.
We are in normally -- regularly talking to reporters and explaining the plans and bringing on our experts, policy experts, who have helped write the proposals, So we are out there talking to reporters pretty regularly and giving -- answering questions as well.
Like I said, you know, he does speak to reporters. Yes, it is local reporters but they're just as critical, just as important to have the conversations as well with.
KEILAR: Yes. No. I'm not saying -- I promise you. I was one once. They're important. But as -- I want to hear from the vice president and national reporters do.
[13:50:02]
JEAN-PIERRE: I hear you. I hear you.
KEILAR: All right, Karine. Karine, thank you.
JEAN-PIERRE: I heard you.
KEILAR: I know you hear me.
(CROSSTALK)
JEAN-PIERRE: I've said it so many times.
KEILAR: Thank you for coming on. Appreciate it.
JEAN-PIERRE: Thank you. All right, bye-bye.
KEILAR: Air high fives? Virtual fans? Hear what to expect when baseball returns tonight.
Plus, new advice from one city to wear masks inside of homes. Hear why.
And President Trump lying again about testing in the U.S., calls it overrated, even though it can save lives and stop the spread of coronavirus.
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[13:55:57]
KEILAR: Baseball's back. But as the MLB launches its short season tonight, opening day is going to look different. There will be no fans. And because of strict social distancing measures, there will be no spiting, no high fives, and no-in-the-face battles with your umps.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a Brooklyn native, will toss the first pitch out at the Washington National Game tonight against the Yankees. The Nats, of course, are the reigning World Series champs. Go Nats.
Harold Reynolds is a two-time MLB all-star and an analyst with the MLB Network. He's going to be a part of the extensive night and opening- day coverage.
Harold, thank you so much for coming on to talk about what I think is going to be an odd event, in a way, right?
How is this going to feel for the players with no fans, even if we know that all 30 teams are pumping in this pre-recorded fan noise that we're going to hear at this game and also other games.
HAROLD REYNOLDS, ANALYST, MLB: Thank you, first of all. We're excited at MLB Network to be covering baseball. It's really great.
It will be different. They've had a few days to get used to playing without fans. I will say this. I've said this before. If there's one sport that can get used to not having fans, it's baseball.
Think about your high school games. How many people went to that? College, Minor League Ball? So, they're used to playing without fans.
So, I think the experience, once they get playing, and the competition is there, they'll fall into place. And it's competitive. And it will be a good experience, I think. But obviously, missing the fans does affect you, no doubt about it.
KEILAR: That pre-recorded fan noise they're going to pump in, not a chance.
REYNOLDS: I'm not a big fan of that.
KEILAR: It's like a laughing track on an old sitcom or something, right?
I want to ask because there's a shortened schedule. And a lot of people have been wanting their sports. Do you think this might lead to higher ratings and benefit the sport?
REYNOLDS: The higher ratings will be there because we've been sitting home in the middle of the pandemic and those sports have really hit the airways, yes. So you'll have high ratings.
But I also think, 60 games, this will be the most competitive we've seen. And they're working on possibly adding six more teams to the post season. If that happens, you're really going to have teams that are going to competitive all the way down through the stretch.
But even right now, 60 games in, with 30 clubs to play for 60, a short season, gives everybody a fair opportunity. So, it's going to be a lot of fun.
Maybe the most competitive time ever in the history of the sport because you have over 162 games.
KEILAR: Yes.
REYNOLDS: Over 162, a lot of your weaknesses show up about mid-May or June. In this case, everybody is going to make a sprint for 60 games.
KEILAR: I don't know if you know, but Dr. Fauci says he's nervous about throwing out the first pitch tonight. So, I'm wondering what your advice is?
REYNOLDS: Play catch. And make sure you don't bounce it. If you bounce it, you're in trouble. Just air mail it is you have to.
KEILAR: Yes. Be too strong. Don't be weak on this, right?
All right, Harold, thank you so much, Harold Reynolds.
REYNOLDS: He'll be fine though.
KEILAR: He'll be fine.
REYNOLDS: He'll be fine.
KEILAR: All right. We wish him well.
REYNOLDS: Appreciate you have me.
KEILAR: Appreciate for coming on. We're looking forward to this.
REYNOLDS: All right. Thank you.
KEILAR: New studies just in. One showing the best way to stop the spread of coronavirus. Another naming the medical conditions associated with the most serious COVID cases.
Plus, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responds to the Republican overheard calling her an F'ing "B"-word.
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REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): Having a daughter does not make a man decent.
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