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Trump Falsely Claims Virus is "Under Control" as Death Toll Rises; Video of Jonathan Swan's Interview with Trump; Trump Denies Virus Reality. Aired 11-11:30a ET
Aired August 04, 2020 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[11:00:03]
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan. Thank you so much for joining us this hour.
"Right now, it's under control. It is what it is. There are those who say you can test too much." These are some of the inaccurate and, frankly, almost incoherent declarations made by the president of the United States in a new interview about the coronavirus and where the country is right now.
Here is where we are, actually, right now, the facts. Over 4.7 million people infected in the United States. Over 45,000 new cases added yesterday alone. At least 155,000 people have died.
And those numbers are rising across the country at alarming rates. The current seven-day average of new deaths nationwide is now above 1,000 per day.
And while other countries are seeing new spikes, they pale in comparison to where the United States is, which is just about 4 percent of the world's population and a quarter of all known COVID-19 cases. Things are out of control.
But the president made crystal clear in a new interview with Jonathan Swan, of "Axios," that he says he has it all handled, brushing off the rising death toll, dismissing the reality of the continuous problem with testing in this country, and pushing off blame for why things are so bad, even though he refuses to acknowledge it's so bad.
So remarkable in what he said, you should hear it for yourself in full. Here it is.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JONATHAN SWAN, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "AXIOS": Over the years, I've heard you talk about your adherence to a philosophy called positive thinking. This is the mantra, that if you believe something, if you visualize it, then it will happen.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: To an extent. I also think in terms of the downside.
SWAN: Right.
TRUMP: I do. I've been given a lot of credit for positive thinking, but I also think about downside, because only a fool doesn't.
SWAN: To what extent do you think that that positive thinking mind-set is suitable to handling the worst pandemic that we've seen in a century?
TRUMP: I think you have to have a positive outlook, otherwise would have nothing without a positive outlook.
I think we've done an incredible job, from the ventilators, from stopping very infected people from China coming in, meaning putting the ban on China, which frankly nobody wanted me to do, practically nobody because it was early, in January.
Then putting the ban on Europe, not an easy thing to do. When you put a ban on Europe, that's a big thing. We would probably have lost hundreds of thousands of lives more had I not done that.
And all of the experts, every one of them, not one of them wanted to do it. They thought it was too severe. Three months later, they're all saying, I'm glad you did it.
SWAN: The criticism of you that is most prominent is about the communication, is the public health experts saying, it needs to be based in reality. And they're saying that the wishful thinking and the salesmanship is just not suitable in a time when a pandemic has killed 145,000 Americans.
And it's -- I understand what you're saying, that people need to hear positive thinking. But for the past five months, it's been -- the virus is totally under control, and the cases have been going up and the deaths have been going up.
TRUMP: Look, look --
SWAN: You've been saying it's under control.
TRUMP: -- nobody knew what this thing was all about. This has never happened before. In 1917, but it was a totally different -- it was a flu in that case, OK?
SWAN: OK.
TRUMP: But other than 1917, there's never been anything like this.
And by the way, if you watch the fake news on television, they don't even talk about it. But you know, there are 188 other countries right now that are suffering, some proportionately far greater than we are. OK, as bad as we are.
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: Very few.
TRUMP: Some proportionately greater than we are. Right now, right now, Spain is having a big spike. And there are tremendous problems in the world. You look at Moscow, look at what's going on with Moscow. Look at Brazil. Look at these countries, what's going on.
This was sent to us by China, one way or the other, and we're never going to forget it. Believe me, we're never going to forget it. And we were beating China at every single point. We were beating them on trade. We were making progress like nobody's ever made progress.
They had, before the pandemic, they had the worst year, Jonathan, that they've had in 67 years, you know that, with the tariffs and everything else I did.
We were taking in billions of dollars. I was giving some of it to the farmers. The farmers were doing well because I was targeting -- they were targeting the farmers. I was targeting China.
We were doing good. Then all of a sudden, the game changed and I had to close it down. I closed down the greatest economy ever in history.
SWAN: I --
TRUMP: Well, wait. And then, I closed it down. And now we're open again. And we saved -- by the way, by closing it down, we saved millions of lives.
If we had have gone the herd -- and we knew very little about the disease. If we would have gone herd, we would have lost millions of people. Millions of people.
One person is too much. We're at 140,000 people. One person is too much. We're at 140. We would have lost millions of people.
[11:05:02]
And those people that really understand it, that really understand it, they said, it's incredible, the job that we've done.
And again --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: Who says that?
TRUMP: And, again, the ban -- the ban -- banning China from coming in --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: But it was already in here by the time --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: What's that? SWAN: It was already here. By the time you banned China, it came in
through Europe.
TRUMP: Nobody knew the extent. Nobody knew how contagious it was.
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: But the question is, Mr. President, by June, we knew, things were bad. And the last time I was with you was the day before your Tulsa rally in the oval. And, you know, you were saying, big huge crowd, it was indoors.
TRUMP: By the way --
SWAN: These people, they listen to you --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Excuse me, Jonathan.
SWAN: Yes.
TRUMP: We had a 19,000-seat stadium. First of all, we had 12,000 people, not 6,000, which you reported and other people reported, but you couldn't even get in. It was like an armed camp.
SWAN: Why would you have wanted that?
TRUMP: We had 120 Black Lives Matter people --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: Why would you have wanted that?
TRUMP: In Tula -- excuse me, wait -- in Tulsa -- because that area was a very good area at the time.
SWAN: Case were --
TRUMP: -- it was an area that was pretty much over -- after, after, a month later, it started going up.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: That's a month later.
SWAN: Yes.
TRUMP: But Tulsa was a very good. Oklahoma was doing very well as a state. It was almost free. It spiked a month later, a month and a half, two months later, but it was a good area.
We had a tremendous crowd. We had tremendous response. You couldn't even -- it was like an armed camp. You couldn't even get through. You couldn't get anybody in.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: We had 12,000 people. It was incorrectly reported.
The other thing that we had that nobody wants to talk about, so FOX broadcast it. It was the highest rating in the history of FOX television Saturday night. It was the highest rating.
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: Mr. President --
TRUMP: Wait a minute. You're saying something.
SWAN: Yes.
TRUMP: That speech was the highest-rated speech in the history of FOX television on Saturday night, and nobody says that.
SWAN: I think you misunderstand me. I'm not criticizing your ability to draw a crowd.
TRUMP: Are you kidding me?
SWAN: I've covered you for five years, you draw massive crowds and get huge ratings.
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: I'm asking about the public health.
TRUMP: And I canceled another one. I had to cancel it.
SWAN: Right.
TRUMP: I had a great crowd in New Hampshire and canceled it for the same reason.
SWAN: But here's the question. I've covered you for a long time. I've gone to your rallies and talked to your people. They love you. They listen to you. They hang on your every word.
They don't listen to me or the media or Fauci. They think we're fake news. They want to get their advice from you.
And so when they hear you say everything's under control, don't worry about wearing masks, these are people -- many of them are older people, Mr. President.
TRUMP; -- under control --
SWAN: It's giving them a false sense of security.
TRUMP: Right now, I think it's under control.
SWAN: How? A thousand Americans are dying a day. TRUMP: They are dying, it's true. It is what it is. But that doesn't
mean we're doing everything we can. It's under control as much as you can control. This is a horrible plague that beset us.
SWAN: You really think this is as much as we can control it? A thousand deaths a day?
TRUMP: I would like to know if somebody -- first of all, we have done a great job. We've gotten the governors everything they needed. They didn't do their job -- many of them didn't, some of them did. We'll sit down and talk about the good ones and the bad.
Look at that smile. We had the good, the bad, and a lot in the middle. We had some incredible governors. I can tell you right now who the great ones are and the not-so-great ones are. But the governors do it. We gave them massive amounts of material --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: Mr. President, you changed your message this week in terms of, you canceled the Jacksonville convention, you said, wear a mask, you said, it's going to get worse before it gets better. That's not something you like to say. You said that.
TRUMP: By the way, not get worse, like the original flow, you understand that. But --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: I hope not. A thousand --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Now you look -- Arizona is going down.
SWAN: If I could just finish my question.
TRUMP: Texas is going down and Florida is going down.
SWAN: The question is, are you going to -- even some of your own aides wonder if you would stick to that message until Election Day.
Whether in a week or two, you won't say, we've got to reopen again, you can't do this stuff anymore, that you'll get bored of talking about the virus and go back to that sort of cheerleading --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: I never get bored I never get bored of talking about this. It's too big a thing. And again --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: So will you stick to that message?
TRUMP: It should have been stopped by China. It should have been stopped by China and it wasn't.
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: But now it's here.
TRUMP: It's here. And I'm very consistent.
SWAN: You're the president.
TRUMP: No, This is a very serious thing. Do you think I -- we have 140,000 people at this moment --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: More than that.
TRUMP: This is a very, very serious situation. And what you have to do is handle it the best it can be handled.
And again, I'm working with the governors. I got them tremendous amounts of equipment that they would have never gotten. Jonathan, they wouldn't have equipment now if I didn't get it.
SWAN: When can you commit, by what date, that every American will have access to the same-day testing that you get here in the White House?
TRUMP: Well, we have great testing. What we're doing --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: By what date?
TRUMP: Let me explain, the testing. We have tested more people than any other country, than all of Europe put together times two. We have tested more people than anybody ever thought of.
[11:10:04]
India has 1.4 billion people. They've done 11 million tests. We've done 55, it will be close to 60 million tests.
And, you know, there are those that say, you can test too much. You do know that.
SWAN: Who says that?
TRUMP: Oh, just read the manuals. Read the books.
SWAN: Manuals? What manuals?
TRUMP: Read the books. Read the books.
SWAN: What books?
TRUMP: What testing does --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: No, I'm sorry --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Wait a minute, let me explain. What testing does, it shows cases. It shows where there may be cases. Other countries test -- you know when they test? They test when somebody's sick. That's when they test. I'm not saying they're right or wrong.
Nobody's done it like we've done it. We've gotten absolutely no credit for it, but we've come up with so many different tests. The only thing that we have now is some people have to wait longer than we would like them to.
We want --
SWAN: It's a big problem.
TRUMP: We want point-to-point. We have a five-minute to a 15-minute test.
SWAN: When do you think?
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: Every American.
TRUMP: From what I understand, we're close to 50 percent where it's point-to-point test. We are making thousands of instruments, thousands of tests right now, tens of thousands, that can be distributed to various parts of the country.
But you have to understand, and we've even sent some of them to other countries where they have a big problem. Jonathan, almost 50 percent infected -- I think the number might be over -- is immediate testing.
The other is tough. You take a test, you have to send to it a laboratory. Let's say that takes a day, let's say it's a day.
SWAN: That's typical.
TRUMP: It's three to four to five days. There's nothing you can do about.
SWAN: When do you think we'll have that?
TRUMP: I think you will have that relatively soon. I mean --
SWAN: What does that mean?
TRUMP: -- you already have half.
SWAN: Yes.
TRUMP: I would much rather get back to you because I don't want you to --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: -- write in one month, I didn't make it, I missed it by a day, and it's a headline.
SWAN: Mr. President, I want to talk about the federal intervention --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Excuse me, one thing I would say about testing, because we test so much, we show cases. So we show many, many cases. We show tremendous number of -- I know you're smiling when I say that.
SWAN: No, I mean, I've heard you say this --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Other countries don't test like we do, so they don't show cases.
SWAN: Just a couple of points on that. I wasn't going to continue on the testing, but you said it.
So we're testing so much because it's spread so far in America.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: We're testing so much because we had the ability to test --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: -- because we can up with --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: But South Korea --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Jonathan, we weren't even. We didn't even have a test. When I took over, we didn't even have a test. Now in all fairness --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: Why would you have a test?
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: The virus didn't exist. How would you have a test?
TRUMP: OK. There was no test for this. We didn't have a test because there was no --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: Of course.
TRUMP: In a very short order, we got one test, we got another test.
SWAN: It was broken, the first one.
TRUMP: Many of those tests are now obsolete. Because it's called science and, all of a sudden, something's better.
But because we tested so many people, 55, 60 million people very soon, we get cases. You test, some kid has even just a little runny nose, it's a case. And then you report many cases.
So we look like we have more cases than massive countries, like China, which, by the way, doesn't report, as you know.
SWAN: Well, I don't put any stock in China's figures.
TRUMP: No. But the point is, the point is --
SWAN: Yes.
TRUMP: -- because we are so much better at testing than any other country in the world, we show more cases.
SWAN: The figure I look at is death. And death is going up now. It's a thousand a day.
TRUMP: If you look at deaths --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: It's going up again. Daily death.
TRUMP: Take a look at some of these charts.
SWAN: I would love to.
TRUMP: We're going to look.
SWAN: Let's look.
TRUMP: And if you look at death --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: Starting to go up again.
TRUMP: Here's one.
Well, right here, the United States is lowest in numerous categories. We're lower than the world.
SWAN: Lower than the world?
TRUMP: We're lower than Europe.
SWAN: In what? In what?
TRUMP: Take a look. Right here. This is case deaths.
SWAN: Oh, you're doing death as a proportion of cases. I'm talking about death as a proportion of population. That's where the U.S. is really at.
TRUMP: Well --
SWAN: Must worse than South Korea, Germany, et cetera.
TRUMP: You can't, you can't do that.
SWAN: Why can't I do that?
TRUMP: You have to go by -- you have to go by where -- look. Here is the United States. You have to go by the cases. The cases --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: Why not as a proportion of population?
TRUMP: When we have somebody --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: What it says is when you have somebody that has -- where there's a case --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Oh, OK.
TRUMP: -- the people that live from those cases.
SWAN: It's surely a relevant statistic to say if the U.S. has "X" population and "X" percentage of death of that population versus South Korea.
TRUMP: No, you have to go by the cases.
SWAN: Well, look at South Korea, for example, 50 million population, 300 deaths. It's like, it's crazy compared to --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: You don't know that.
SWAN: I do. It's on --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: You don't know that.
SWAN: You think they're faking their statistics, South Korea, an advanced country? TRUMP: I won't say that because we have a very good relationship with
the country. But you don't know that. And they have spikes.
Look, here's one.
SWAN: Germany, 9,000.
TRUMP: Here's one right here. The United States. You take any number of cases
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Look, we're last, meaning we're first.
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: I don't know what we're first in. What?
[11:15:02]
TRUMP: Take a look, again. It's cases.
SWAN: OK --
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: And we have cases because of the testing.
SWAN: A thousand Americans are dying a day, but I understand on cases, it's different.
TRUMP: No, but you're not reporting it correctly, Jonathan.
SWAN: I think I am.
TRUMP: If you take a look at this other chart. Look, this is our testing, I believe. This is the testing, yes.
SWAN: Yes, we do more tests.
TRUMP: Well, don't we get credit for that? And because we do more tests, we have more cases. In other words, we test more -- now, take a look. The top one, that's a good thing, not a bad thing.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: Jonathan --
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: But if hospital rates were going down and deaths were going down, I would say, terrific! You deserve to be praised for testing.
(CROSSTALK)
SWAN: But they're all going up! Hospitalizations -- (CROSSTALK)
SWAN: And 60,000 Americans are in hospitals, a thousand dying a day.
TRUMP: The papers usually talking about new cases, new cases, new cases. I'm talking about death.
SWAN: It's going up.
TRUMP: Death is way down from where it was.
SWAN: It's a thousand a day. It was 250,000, down, and now up again.
SWAN: Excuse me, where it was is much higher than where it is right now.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: We had a spike but now it's going down again.
SWAN: It's going up.
TRUMP: It's going down in Arizona. It's going down in --
SWAN: Nationally, it's going up.
TRUMP: -- Florida. It's going down in Texas.
SWAN: It's going down in Florida?
TRUMP: Yes, it leveled out and it's going down. That's my report as of yesterday.
SWAN: Anyway, Mr. President, if I could change subjects.
TRUMP: It is going down in Arizona.
SWAN: Arizona, it is. Arizona, it is. Texas has big problems.
TRUMP: It spiked and it's now going down in Florida. It's even and going down in Florida.
SWAN: I'll have to see those.
TRUMP: But you have to look at this. This is the number of tests compared to the rest of the world.
SWAN: I don't deny your figures. You've done more tests my far than the rest of the world. I don't deny it.
TRUMP: And because we've done more tests, we have more cases.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BOLDUAN: You see? I mean, this is now the third time that I've actually seen this. It really is worth seeing that. Hearing the president in his own words in full, not cut down or distilled or paraphrased. The way an interview with the president of the United States played out in full.
We're going to take a break and we're going to drill down on what the facts really are and the harm that the fiction is doing when it comes to the crisis that the country is facing right now and what is driving the president to deny that reality.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[11:21:31]
BOLDUAN: So we all just watched that extraordinary interview that the president gave to Jonathan Swan, of "Axios," an interview conducted last week.
So now, let me bring in Dr. Seema Yasmin, CNN medical analyst, a former CDC disease detective, and CNN's political director, David Chalian.
I don't know how many times you guys have had a chance to see it, but that was my third and I still -- I think it's worth doing it even yet again.
Dr. Yasmin, we'll drill down on specific points, but I want to -- can I get your overall reaction to what you heard from the president there, now six months into the pandemic?
DR. SEEMA YASMIN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: So, Kate, this was actually my fourth time watching this video, and each time, it still feels like a skit or satire. Maybe not so surprising coming from a president who over the last few years has made more than 20,000 false claims.
But each time I've watched this, I've been taking notes and writing down things that are false. And there were just so many there, that we can dissect and debunk.
What really pains me, though, is we keep having to have this conversation. And we're having this conversation as tens of thousands of Americans are lying in hospital beds, many more are suffering sick, at home, and there are others who are mourning their loved ones, who have died from COVID-19, loved ones that they weren't even able to bury and mourn properly.
And yet we still hear the president making these false claims about the pandemic being under control. No, it's not. That we're doing tons of testing. Actually, proportionately, we're still not doing enough testing.
There were false claims about the number of cases going down. That's not happening everywhere across the U.S. False claims about kids who have runny noses being able to get a test and being counted as COVID cases. I have list and lists of all the things that were false.
And I'm frustrated that, we're in August now. The pandemic is still not under control. Americans are hurting. And we actually get very little remorse, very little sorrow, or acknowledgement that this is a public health tragedy on an historical kind of level.
And that when we keep bouncing around these numbers, 60,000 hospitalized, 155,000 dead, those aren't numbers. Those are people. Those are people with best friends and hobbies and pets and families who loved them.
And we're in this situation, because, unfortunately, we have a president who did not know how to design, implement, and lead an effective strategy to get this virus under control.
BOLDUAN: Does not know and very clearly does not want to.
David, you come at it from a very different perspective, from a political perspective versus a medical perspective. What did you see here?
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: I saw a president struggling to be in command of facts, which he clearly isn't. I saw a president struggling to be in command of the response effort, which he doesn't even seem completely aware of what is required.
I guess that would make sense for somebody who doesn't accept the facts of where we are in this battle against the virus, that the response would then be inadequate, if you don't believe in the facts.
But that's what I saw. I saw Donald Trump struggling, struggling to, in any way, present to the American people an example of leadership, in charge of something where he understands the facts and can actually lay out the government response.
[11:25:00]
BOLDUAN: And, Dr. Yasmin, you mentioned his comment that we have it under control right now, that everything's under control. Obviously, we have heard no doctor or scientist say that the virus is under control in any, way, shape or form in the United States. Quite the opposite.
As a former CDC detective, what impact, in the midst of a pandemic, does it have when the president says that it's under control, as much control as -- it's under control as much as it can be?
YASMIN: I think on two levels, Kate, it's really misleading. On the one hand, it's really hurtful to Americans who are suffering from this virus, who have lost loved ones, who have lost their jobs, because the pandemic has raged for so long. It's very offensive that the president can say it's under control, when very clearly, our lives are upturned because of it.
And then, it's just really confusing, and that misinformation and disinformation costs lives. Last week, we were talking about the Hydroxychloroquine misinformation, again, circulating.
This time, we're having to kind of debunk these claims that he's making that we're seeing more cases, because we're doing more testing. Actually, no. America is still not even doing 800,000 tests a day, when the bare minimum that we should be doing is close to two million. Really, we should be doing about four million tests a day.
So in the context of all of this, then we're hearing the president say nonsensical things like we're lower than the world. What does that mean? We're last meaning we're first. How are we supposed to make sense of this nonsense, when we're in the middle of this public health tragedy, a public health tragedy of our generation, really.
We haven't seen anything this bad in a hundred years. And we're living under an administration that does not know how to handle this.
And the one thing they did do strategically was, early in the pandemic, kind of shove the blame and the responsibility to states using the strategy of State Authority Handoff, so that now the president can say, well, he blames governors for not getting it under control.
And another false thing he said was that governors were given what they needed to respond to the pandemic. That's not what all governors are saying. It's falsehood after falsehood.
BOLDUAN: And, David, you know, he moved very quickly to declare that he's done a great job. What do you think is the political driving force that has him so consistently dodging the reality of this situation? Because anyone logically can think that you can't just deny this and it's going to go away.
And I'm trying to figure out what it is that he thinks he can consistently dodge reality and try to convince people that he's done everything he can. Is that working? Are you seeing that in any numbers?
CHALIAN: Well, no, I don't see that working right now. I think what you saw on display is why the country disapproves of his handling of this virus, overwhelmingly so, why the country doesn't trust what he has to say on it, in terms of his numbers on this issue.
But, Kate, I think it's how Jonathan Swan sort of presented some of the questions in the beginning. This is sort of Donald Trump's -- this is the way -- his modus operandi, right? This is how he operates. This is how he operated in reality television. This is how he operated in real estate, in New York.
He has operated in his life in creating his own reality, creating his own version of events and saying it over and over and over again in hopes that enough people or the person on the other side of the negotiating table or in the context of politics, enough voters, believe it to be true. That doesn't make it true.
But that is the approach you see here, and why I think you see a complete refusal to accept some of the fact-based reality of where we are.
BOLDUAN: And just getting to a place of saying that we should, I don't know, accept the status quo, where things are right now. It's just impossible when you look at what the rest of the world has done.
David, thank you.
Dr. Yasmin, thank you very much.
YASMIN: Thank you.
BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, President Trump says Nevada is trying to steal the election after doing what seven other states are doing with mail-in voting, something that has been around and done for decades and decades.
We'll be right back.
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