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Trump Makes False Claims About U.S. Testing, Death Rates; Trump Defends Holding Tulsa Rally By Touting T.V. Ratings; Teachers, Students & Parents Protest Reopening Schools. Aired 2-2:30p ET
Aired August 04, 2020 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[14:00:37]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: It's the top of the hour now. I'm Brianna Keilar and we start this hour with a reality check. As we see some states level off as far as coronavirus cases, we are also seeing the lag that we were warned about that when cases rise, we see death rates rise weeks later.
You can see it right here, the U.S. averaging 1000 deaths per day over the past week. These are numbers that we have not seen since May. So what message are we getting from the President right now? It's really a mixed message to say the least.
In a sometimes startling new interview with Axios, the President was asked about his message both to the American people and to his supporters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JONATHAN SWAN, CONDUCTED AXIOS INTERVIEW WITH TRUMP: Here's the question. You know, I've covered you for a long time. I've gone to your rallies, I've talked to people, they love you. They listen to you.
They listen to every word you say. They hang on your foot. 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 u say, everything's under control, don't worry about wearing masks, I mean, these are people, many of them are older people Mr. President.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What should if it's control (ph)? Yes. Under the --
SWAN: It's giving them a false sense of security.
TRUMP: I think I's under control. I'll tell you what?
SWAN: How? A 1000 Americans are dying a day.
TRUMP: They were dying, that's true. And you have -- it is what it is. But that doesn't mean we aren't doing everything we can. It's under control as much as you can control it. This is a horrible plague that beset us.
SWAN: You really think this is as much as we can control? A 1000 deaths a day?
TRUMP: Well, I'll tell you, I'd like to know if somebody -- first of all, we have done a great job, we've gotten the governor's everything they needed.
SWAN: Mr. President, you changed your message this week in terms of you canceled the Jacksonville convention, you said wear a mask, you're saying, you know, that it's going to get worse before it gets better. It's not something you'd like to say. I know you said that.
The big question --
TRUMP: Not get worse like the original flow, you understand that? But --
SWAN: I hope not, 2,000 --
TRUMP: Arizona is going down.
SWAN: If I can 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 whether you would stick to that message until Election Day, whether in a week or two, you won't say, right, we've got to reopen again. We've got -- we can't do this stuff anymore, that you get bored of talking about the virus and go back to that sort of cheerleading.
TRUMP: No, I'm not getting bored. I never get bored of talking about this stupid thing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: And the reporter conducting that illuminating interview was Jonathan Swan. He's with us now. Thanks for being with us, Jonathan.
SWAN: Thanks for having me.
KEILAR: I want to go through parts of this interview with you. The President had a lot to say about testing. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: 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. India has 1.4 billion people. They've done 11 million tests. We've done 55 it'll be close to 60 million tests.
And you know, there are those that say, you can test too much, you do know that. Who says that? Oh, just read the manuals, read the book. SWAN: Manual, books?
TRUMP: Read the manual, read the books.
SWAN: What books?
TRUMP: What testing done.
SWAN: No, I'm sorry, wait a minute --
TRUMP: 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. And 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.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: I wonder because you have a lot of experience interviewing him, you sat across from him for almost an hour. Does he not understand how the virus and testing works? Or is he just spinning this, or is it both?
SWAN: I don't know. You know, I can't X-ray his mind or his heart.
KEILAR: Sure.
SWAN: But what why this is so important is he's focused on this overall number of tests. It's the wrong metric to look at. It's completely the wrong metric to look at.
The reason so many tests have had to be done is because the virus spread like wildfire undetected through the country, because the government was too slow to test and contact trace at the beginning.
South Korea has done many times fewer tests than America, but they haven't needed to because they moved in very aggressively with testing at the start. They contact traced aggressively and they've limited their virus. And you see the outcome, South Korea has 51 million population, 300 deaths, United States, you know, 150,000 deaths. It's just not comparable on a proportional basis as it relates to population.
[14:05:11]
The other issue with testing, which I tried to get him to grapple with was the time it's taking still to get results, more than a week in many cases, which renders the testing effectively, useless in many instances, because these people are going around spreading the virus, contact tracing becomes much harder.
So, to me, yes, it's a good sales message. We've done 60 million tests, but it's sort of besides the point.
KEILAR: Yes. And you went over on the numbers versus the denominator being cases, which to be honest, we can't really even know what that number is versus it being population. The President brought his own charts to try to make his case when it came to death rates. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: You look at deaths.
SWAN: Yes, going up again. Daily death.
TRUMP: Take a look at some of these charts.
SWAN: I'd like to.
TRUMP: We're going to look.
SWAN: Let's look.
TRUMP: And if you look at death --
SWAN: Yes. Started to go up again.
TRUMP: This one -- well, right here, the United States is lowest in numerous categories. We're lower than the world.
SWAN: Lower than lower, what is that?
TRUMP: We're lower than Europe.
SWAN: In what? In what?
TRUMP: Take a look. Right here. Here's case death.
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 bad.
TRUMP: Well --
SWAN: Much worse than South Korea, Germany, et cetera.
TRUMP: You can't do that. You have --
SWAN: Why can't you do that?
TRUMP: You have to go by where -- look, here is the United States. You have to go by the cases, the cases of death.
SWAN: Why not as a proportion of population?
TRUMP: When we have somebody -- what it says is when you have somebody that --
SWAN: Yes.
TRUMP: -- has -- where there's a case -- SWAN: Oh, OK.
TRUMP: -- the people that live from those cases.
SWAN: It's surely irrelevant statistic to say if the U.S. has x population and x percentage of death of that population versus South Korea.
TRUMP: No, because you have to go by the cases.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: He wouldn't concede that point to you, which is a very accurate one that the denominator should be population, right? Because that's really how you can compare apples to apples in different countries.
But also you address to the beginning of your interview this sort of philosophy he has on positive thinking and you were challenging him to think about the limitations of where that might be when he is, for instance, looking at these charts and drawing a conclusion.
SWAN: Yes. And, you know, I wasn't trying to, I know that's not what you meant by this, but I wasn't trying to score a point or a got you. What I was trying to get him to do was grapple with the question of why, why is it that America with its incredibly sophisticated and advanced science and medicine, the leader of the free world, is doing so much worse than so many other advanced countries on a death as a proportion of population basis?
We're not -- America is not the worst. There are countries that are worse on that basis, but there aren't many. And that's the question that I was trying to get him to grapple with. But again, he kept coming back to the one metric as it relates to death that paints his leadership in the most favorable light, which is deaths as a proportion of cases. So, it really again, comes back to salesmanship.
KEILAR: Sure, exactly. And that seems to be you're actually trying to get to a substantive discussion about a topic which happened again when you were talking to him about the Tulsa rally, where you talked about how many and you mentioned how many people the fire marshal said were at the event which he takes issue at, even the premise of your question, which was so accurately put, he took issue with. He tried to defend his move by saying actually that he had even more people there.
Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We had 19,000 seats data. First of all, we had 12,000 people, not 6,000. Would you report another paper, but you couldn't even get in? It was like an armed camp.
SWAN: Why would you want that?
TRUMP: Because they had 120 Black Lives Matter people there -- SWAN: I understand. But why would you --
TRUMP: And Tulsa -- excuse me, wait. And Tulsa, well, because that area was very good area at the time. It was an area that was pretty much over. After a month later, it started going up. That's a month later.
But Tulsa was very good. Oklahoma was doing very well as a state. It was almost free. It spiked a month later, 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. Twelve thousand people it was incorrectly reported. The other thing we had that nobody wants to talk about.
So Fox, broad it. It was the highest rating in the history of Fox Television, Saturday night. It was the highest rating.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[14:10:00]
KEILAR: You know, it was not an armed camp. We did a fact check on that. Tulsa was not a good area at the time.
And you actually, I know you did this interview before the news of Herman Cain's death, which raised questions about, you know, what could -- we can never know for sure, but what would the fallout be of all those folks in a close knit area wearing masks?
You know, just sort of tell us what you're trying to get at and what those points the President was making, sort of, you know, sort of stopped getting at the heart of that point?
SWAN: Well, the basis of that question was the fact that when you talk to public health experts, they say, one of, if not, the most important thing a leader needs to do in a public health crisis is provide the public with consistent, accurate, reliable, credible information.
And I was challenging him on the fact that he's presented the rosiest picture up to the American public consistently since this virus first arrived to America telling them each month that it's under control with only brief reversions to a more grim reality when, you know, a sort of circumstances have forced him to do that.
But what happened there was as soon as I raised Tulsa, he thought I was trying to attack him for the -- for his crowd size. Quite the opposite. I mean, what the point I was trying to ask him about the public health, whether it was responsible as a president to hold what is still the largest indoor gathering of Americans since this virus took off in the country.
That's what I was asking about, whether that was a prudent course of action. But again, he thought I was trying to litigate crowd size. I wasn't trying to do that.
KEILAR: No. And it's almost as soon -- you know, he has been told in his campaign alleges that there were 12,000 people there, the fire marshal which is serving the --
SWAN: I don't care. The point is --
KEILAR: You know, I know. I -- that's the thing, Jonathan. I know you don't care. I know you don't care. He cares.
SWAN: Yes.
KEILAR: So right, the interview gets hung up when you use what is an accurate number.
SWAN: Why put 6,000 people in a why put 6,000 people who weren't wearing masks in arena? That was the question. I don't care what the number was. It was a crowd of people indoors, the largest crowd indoors that we've seen in the United States. That was the basis of the question.
KEILAR: Exactly. Why put 6,000, why put "12,000" right? Why put thousands of people?
And as you're aware, I'm sure, that your facial expressions in this interview have already become a meme. I know, that's not, that's look, that's not what you get in this for. I really appreciated how you were fact checking in in real time and trying to get to the heart of the matter with the President. But you know, he doesn't normally encounter this type of interview.
SWAN: Look, and I give -- look, I give him credit for doing it. And we have an invitation out to Joe Biden, I hope he does the same thing. Yes. It's important.
KEILAR: I do too.
SWAN: We're in an election year. And it's important that our leaders are fairly and in tough minded way and straightforward way questioned on important issues. And there were no got you questions in this interview. I interviewed him on the toughest subjects.
And, you know, again, we have an invitation out to Joe Biden. I hope he does the same thing.
KEILAR: Well, Jonathan, it was a great interview. We really appreciate you coming on in and talking to us about it. Thank you so much.
SWAN: Thanks for having me.
KEILAR: Protests erupting across America over the reopening of schools as parents and communities grow concerned about the spread of the virus.
Plus, New York City's Health Commissioner quits in the middle of a pandemic after tensions with Mayor Bill de Blasio. And the President apparently reverses himself on mail in voting, but only regarding one state. The Trump campaign will join us next to talk about that.
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[14:18:06]
KEILAR: A short time ago New York City's Health Commissioner submitted her resignation to Mayor Bill de Blasio. In a letter to staff, Dr. Oxiris Barbot did not specify her reasons for leaving.
The mayor would only say that it was time for change and thank her for the service. There has been tension between the two over decisions about contact tracing and testing.
From Los Angeles to New York and cities in between teachers, students and family turned out to protest the reopening of schools. In Chicago, the messaging couldn't be any clearer. We can't teach them from the grave is what one sign said.
The fear about physically reentering the classroom is real, but so is the concern that remote learning won't work and that leaves school districts trying to bridge the divide.
CNNs Bianna Golodryga is here with us now.
And Bianna, tell us how are schools going to keep kids safe?
BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Look, it's becoming more and more confusing, as the first day of school approaches and parents aren't getting much clarity.
So let's look at the bigger picture right now, Brianna. Of the 101 largest school districts in the country, 61 of them say they're going to be starting online, 12 of them are going to be starting with a hybrid models of some online, some in person. And 17 are starting with either online or in person. That seems to be a bit confusing, but that's how they're identifying it right now. And four have yet to finalize their plan.
Now, of the nation's 25 largest school districts all but six have announced that they're going to be opening remotely. And here's the reason why, health experts say that they want the positivity rate below 5 percent for them to see schools reopening for face to face instruction. Thirty-two states right now in this country have a positivity rate of higher than 5 percent.
Let's talk about Arizona, case in point, has a positivity rate of 18 percent. There's a lot of pressure for them to reopen schools.
But here's a statement that was issued from the Arizona super intended of public instruction.
[14:20:02]
I believe we have a graphic up. And the superintendent says, "As school leaders we should prepare our families and teachers for the reality that it is unlikely that any school community will be able to reopen safely for traditional in-person or hybrid instruction by August 17." That's just two weeks away. "Our state is simply not ready to have all of our students and educators congregate in school facilities."
And Brianna, I spoke with the superintendent of the Houston school district who said that she's actually envious of those countries where they can have face to face instruction with the infection rate and positivity rate is in check. They've been planning to reopen for months now and of course for these past few months, we've only seen the infection rate spike.
It is a big conundrum for parents and teachers because it is much more difficult for students to be learning at home especially younger students, which is why one expert I spoke with today said perhaps instead of focusing on K through 12 at this point, we should be narrowing it down to elementary in primary school students. Trying to get them to in person classes as soon as possible because it's so much more difficult for them.
KEILAR: Yes. We've heard so many families who say, you know, they're willing to take on some risk, but they're not willing to take on so much risk and that's where the government really comes in.
Bianna, thank you so much for walking us through that, Bianna Golodryga.
GOLODRYGA: Sure.
KEILAR: The President reversing himself on mail and voting. He now says it's OK. But he appears to only be talking about Florida. So what changed here? The Trump campaign will join me live next.
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[14:26:10]
KEILAR: South Africa's schools are in the middle of a four week shutdown as cases of the coronavirus surge. Charities had to sue the government to keep school feeding programs running during the shutdown. More than 7 million South African schoolchildren depend on this program for nutrition.
And in the meantime, the U.N. is predicting dire consequences globally from school closures. Now let's check in with our correspondents around the world.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) in Istanbul. As the number of coronavirus cases and dust continues to rise in Iran, a grim news statistic reported by state media, a person in that country dies every seven minutes from coronavirus according to the health ministry.
Iran is the hardest hit country in the Middle East. It was the epicenter of the outbreak in this region, but it did seem like they were getting the situation under control earlier this year. But as the country began to reopen in April in the weeks that followed, the numbers began to rise again, a record number of deaths registered in July.
Last month, the government had to make the wearing of masks mandatory. And they've said that they could reimpose more restrictions.
CYRIL VANIER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Cyril Vanier in Paris. A second wave of Coronavirus here in the fall or winter is highly likely and could be worse than the first wave. This according to the scientists advising the French government. Their conclusion is based on the seasonality of past viruses.
They warn that France should draw the lessons from the first wave, improved testing, tracing and have a plan to reconfine the largest cities.
The scientific council also warns that the situation could deteriorate as early as this summer if people fail to respect social distancing and health measures. Coronavirus indicators have been trending in the wrong direction in France for several weeks.
MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I Matt Rivers in Mexico where the government has announced that the more than 30 million students in this country will not be going back to in-person learning anytime soon. Instead, they will start remote learning beginning on August 24.
The outbreak in this country is simply too dangerous official say for students to go back inside the classroom. And that makes sense when you consider Mexico recorded its largest single day increase in newly confirmed cases on Saturday.
But, not every student in this country has strong internet connection. As a result, the government has partnered with several different T.V. channels that will broadcast classes 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Thank you so much to all of my colleagues. And the President insisting the coronavirus crisis is under control, especially when you compare the U.S. to other countries he says.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It's important for all Americans to recognize that a a permanent lockdown is not a viable path toward producing the result that you want or certainly not a viable path forward and would ultimately inflict more harm than it would prevent.
As we're seeing in foreign countries around the world where cases are once again surging. Countries where there have been very significant flare ups over the last short period of time or Spain, Germany, France, Australia, Japan, and also as you probably heard in Hong Kong, they've had some very serious flare ups.
Japan is gone. Yes, a lot of six volts six volt flare up, it's a lot. (END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: CNN Correspondent Tom Foreman is here with us now. So, Tom, help us sort out what is fact and what is fiction?
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, take a look at this first graphic here, Brianna, and that will tell you some facts that are simply irrefutable here. This is the seven day moving average for the United States. And you can see when you watch the line of this how much this has just grown and grown and continues to be a problem.
