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Source: Trump Still Doesn't Get Severity of Pandemic; Georgia Second-Grader Tests Positive after 1st Day of School; Dr. Leana Wen Discusses Trump Falsely Claiming Children Are "Almost Immune" to Coronavirus; Update on Coronavirus Responses Around the Country; Trump Campaign Sues Nevada over Main-In Ballot Expansion; Trump Says He May Deliver Convention Speech from White House. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired August 05, 2020 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan. Thanks for joining us for the next hour.

He still doesn't get it. That's what a source says that's familiar with the president's appearance yesterday at the White House Coronavirus Task Force meeting. He does not get it and he does not grasp the severity of the crisis that we are now six months into.

Mind you, yesterday was also the first in-depth task force briefing that the president has joined since April. Yes, April.

Back in the middle of April, there were just over half a million cases in the United States. The country was looking at just over 33,000 deaths, and that's the last time the president sat for an in-depth task force briefing.

There are now 4.7 million cases and that means more than 120,000 more people have died from COVID since the president was last in an in- depth task force briefing. And still the president doesn't get it.

You don't even have to trust a source familiar with the briefing. Just take a look at this morning. In a new interview on FOX, the president was trying to make the case for opening schools and he argued once again that the virus is going to disappear just using different words.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (voice-over): My view is the schools should open. This thing's going away. It will go away like things go away. And my view is that schools should be open.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: He is clearly focused on pushing all schools to reopen without offering a plan for how to do so safely.

But despite his best efforts, some of the nation's biggest school districts are not listening. Chicago just announced that it's going to start the year completely online after initially saying that kids will be in classrooms a couple of days a week.

And in districts that had already started school this year in person, like in Georgia, they're quickly running into problems.

CNN's Dianne Gallagher is in Atlanta. She's joining me now with more.

Dianne, the school year is just starting this week in some parts. What is going there?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. In Georgia, much like other states, especially across the south where things tend to start earlier, it is a mixed bag. Some schools are starting online, others are doing a hybrid version.

And then some are going back in person, like in Cherokee County. And on Monday, when school started in Cherokee County, at the elementary school, the kids were there. Most of them were wearing masks.

We're seeing pictures right now of -- some of these pictures don't really show social distancing, but masks aren't required.

And at the elementary school, a second-grade student tested positive for COVID-19. The district informed the school and the parents on Wednesday, just a couple of days after they began.

And all 20 of the students in that second-grade class and the teacher now have to quarantine at home for 14 days.

That class isn't necessarily -- we don't know if it's one of those in the pictures there. But that's the situation while they deep clean the classroom and continue to do contact tracing to make sure that those students, if they were exposed, don't also test positive.

The teacher right now, we are told, is not showing any symptoms so they will continue teaching virtually from their homes.

And it's not just the schools that have started in person that are starting to see problems. In Marietta, their school district, when they began pre-planning, they're starting the school virtually, and they did so yesterday. But they have five employees that tested positive for COVID-19.

And in the state of Georgia's largest school district, Gwinnett County Public Schools, 260 employees have either tested positive for or have been exposed to COVID-19 so they can't work.

School is starting virtually, Kate, next week in that school district. We have no word on whether or not that will impact the start of school in the state's largest school district.

But these districts are coming to terms with what going to school during the pandemic is going to mean for them.

BOLDUAN: It's so complicated. It's so wonderful to see those sweet -- although we can't see those faces in those pictures because they're pixelated -- of those kids back in class. But it comes with so much complication and complexity as you're laying out as they're trying to get back in class.

Thank you so much, Dianne.

With me now is Dr. Leana Wen. She an emergency room physician at George Washington University. She's also the former Baltimore City health commissioner.

It's great to see you again, Doctor.

Let me play something else for you that the president said this morning about kids and coronavirus.

I'll read it for you. We're having a technical issue with it.

He says this: "If you look at children, children are almost, and I would say almost definitely, but almost immune from this disease. So they've got it stronger."

I think the technical issues worked itself out. Let's have the president say it in his own words.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (voice-over): If you look at children, children are almost -- and I would almost say definitely, but almost immune from this disease. So few -- they've got stronger -- hard to believe. And I don't know how you feel about it, but they have much stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this. And they do it. They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:05:17]

BOLDUAN: We know that kids aren't immune, Doctor. We know this very well. They are getting it at a lower rate right now. But what do you say to that?

DR. LEANA WEN, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: Well, it's not true. And I think it's important for us, as scientists and doctors, to set the record straight that children do tend to get less ill than adults do. But some children get very ill. They end up getting hospitalized and they end up in the ICU. Some children tragically have died because of coronavirus.

Also, children don't live in a bubble. They live with their parents and grandparents. And we know their children can transmit the virus and can be vectors for transmission to other people in their households. And --

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: I don't mean to interrupt, but I think that, Doctors, is one of the things that the president misses consistently and always, is that it's not just about getting sick. It's about, as it has been from the beginning, spreading it. And the children don't live alone, by definition.

Please continue.

WEN: That's right. Children don't live alone. They can potentially and do spread it to other people in their households.

We also know that, when it comes to school, that it's not just children in the schools but also staff and teachers and their families.

And having so many people, whatever their age, congregate in one setting, when there's community spread that's ongoing and very high, is just really dangerous and changes the dynamics of the disease and furthers the spread as we have seen in our own country and in Israel and other countries, too.

BOLDUAN: We've seen cases of kids getting COVID since schools reopened in Indiana, Dianne just laid out it happened in Georgia, as well.

What do you think parents need to understand about what we know and what we don't about kids and COVID as they prepare to send them back to school?

WEN: I think the risk of having severe illness from COVID-19 for children is low. But again, children can spread it.

And if you're in a situation, let's say that you're in a community where the rate of disease is one in a hundred, that means that, on day one, walking into school -- let's say the school has a thousand people -- you have 10 children what are actively infectious and able to spread it to others.

It's not a question of if. It's a question of when there are outbreaks. And parents who are sending their kids back have to be ready to have their kids home again.

And also, when we have testing and the backlog of cases that we have, you could have a child be at home waiting for a test for 10 days, 14 days. Then the parent also has to be out of work, too.

But I think there are a lot of contingencies to think through, the logistics of what it would look like, even if kids do go back for in- person instruction.

BOLDUAN: No kidding.

I wonder how you felt when you hear that the president sat down for the first kind of extensive, in-depth White House task force coronavirus briefing yesterday. And that was since April. And a source coming out of it says to CNN that he still doesn't get the severity of this crisis.

And he's saying that behind closed doors. But also in public, this morning, he's saying, again, that he thinks this thing is just going to go away.

WEN: It's not going go away. And I think it should be abundantly clear by now that it could have gone away.

Other countries have been successful in suppressing the infection, but we have not. We are less than 5 percent of the world's population but we're at 25 percent of the world's cases.

And it doesn't have to be this way. There are actually steps that are within the president's control. For example, universal mask ordering or universal mask wearing order, having restrictions on indoor gatherings, making sure that there's a national strategy for testing so that we're not waiting two weeks for results to come back.

These are all things that the president can do right now. But it begins with him recognizing the severity of the problem as well as the fact that Americans are not powerless against the virus. But we need national leadership. We need his leadership here, too.

BOLDUAN: I mean, it's just -- we're to the point where I think we can agree that it's not going to happen. But I don't know what that actually means then for when this country is going to be past what we're dealing with right now, as other countries have.

It's great to see you, Doc. Thank you.

Coming up for us, Dallas County, in Texas, now reporting one of the deadliest days since the pandemic began. Why health officials think this happening while the numbers of new cases is trending down.

[11:09:25]

Plus, mail-in voting, fine for Florida, a disaster for Nevada, at least according to the president. What is motivating this new target for Donald Trump?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: Right now, Mississippi is on track to become the state with the most coronavirus infections per capita in the country. Mississippi's governor is issuing a statewide two-week mandate. He is also delaying the reopening the schools in some counties because of all of this. Just look at those numbers. Look at that graphic.

We have correspondents positioned all over the country with that and more coronavirus headlines for you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Ed Lavandera. Here in Dallas County, officials are reporting the second deadliest day of the coronavirus pandemic. And 31 deaths reported on Tuesday.

County Judge Clay Jenkins says it is a sobering reminder that people need to continue wearing their masks and practicing social distancing. There was a stretch here in early to mid-July where Dallas County was

seeing more than 1,000 new cases a day. Officials now say that hospitalizations and new cases are no longer at those record levels, but that they still remain too high.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: I'm Coy Wire, in Atlanta. The University of Connecticut has become the first major college football program to cancel its football season due to COVID-19 concerns.

[11:15:05]

Athletic director, David Benedict, saying, "The safety challenges created by the coronavirus has placed our student athletes at an unacceptable level of risk."

The players say they support the decision. UConn already had four games canceled by other conferences shutting down non-league play.

That includes the University of Illinois from the Big 10. That league formally approved their conference-only slate and issued minimum standards for COVID testing and safety protocols for all their sports.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: I'm Pete Muntean, in Washington. Southwest Airlines says it's cutting back on some of its cabin-cleaning procedures.

It just told flight attendants in a new internal memo that the focus will be on fewer items, tray tables and lavatories, but not seat belts like at the start of the pandemic.

Southwest says it's doing this because it's trying to speed up flight turnaround times as it ramps up its flight schedule. A Southwest spokesman says a thorough cleaning will be done on planes once a day.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BOLDUAN: Guys, thank you so much.

Still ahead for us, the Trump campaign is suing Nevada over expanding its mail-in voting operation for this election. But also is saying mail-in voting is great in another state. The only difference, one has a Trump-friendly governor. Where this all is headed and what it means for November.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:21:18]

BOLDUAN: This morning President Trump is claiming it could be years before the November election is determined. That is, if, he says, states move ahead as planned with expanded use of mail-in voting.

He's especially targeting the state of Nevada, a competitive state this November. His campaign overnight filed a lawsuit against the state, as Trump had threatened, for its expansion of mail-in ballots because of coronavirus concerns. While the campaign is trying to make a coherent legal argument in the

suit, lawsuit, President Trump is already exposing his, honestly, nakedly, political motivations that have nothing to do with the safety and security of the election process.

While saying mail-in voting in Nevada would be a mess, he says, yesterday, he encouraged mail-in voting in Florida. Trump tying it director to one difference between the two, one has a Democratic governor and one has a Republican governor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (voice-over): Florida is different in the sense that it had been doing it. And they've had two very good governors, frankly. And they have an infrastructure that's taken years to build.

But Nevada, they start voting very soon. And he just threw it out there. And the other thing is the votes don't have to be counted or tabulated until seven days after November 3rd.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Joining me right now is Josh Dawsey, CNN political analyst, White House reporter for the "Washington Post."

Great to see you, Josh.

You've done some great reporting on what is really going on here. What are you hearing?

JOSH DAWSEY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: What's really going on is there's a number of political advisers, RNC chair, Ronna McDaniel and others, who are repeatedly pressing the president to stop his rhetoric against all mail-in balloting.

What we're seeing from a lot of different political operatives in states, a lot of early polling, is that Democrats are embracing this practice far more than Republicans.

And what his advisers fear is that, with his constant rhetoric about this, it could hurt his chances to get those ballots that he needs for himself.

BOLDUAN: And what are you hearing about the president also continuing -- he did again this morning -- to push this claim that results are going to be delayed potentially. This morning, he said years, which is not going to happen.

What is behind that portion of this?

DAWSEY: Well, the president is certainly raising lots of questions about mail-in balloting. And they're pointing to New York as one of the key areas. There's a congressional primary there where, six weeks after the ballots, they were still counting.

They're pointing to different cases here and there. They're saying the United States is not ready, its infrastructure is not ready to count mail-in ballots quickly after the election.

Now a lot of these states are saying we are working hard to get ready, we will be ready for Election Day.

But the Trump campaign in rightly pointing to some of these places where there have been some issues. Now not years'-long delay, not some of the things the president is saying, but some legitimate concerns, nonetheless.

BOLDUAN: The point, though, is getting the count correct. So if it does take a week or two longer, under the unprecedented health crisis circumstances, OK, I kind of say.

In Nevada, especially, they did have an expanded mail-in balloting, just in June, when they were -- in a primary there. So they didn't have any issues there.

How big of a problem could this become for the president and the Republican Party? Because as you've mentioned, it's not just Democrats who are building out mail-in voting turnout strategies. Republicans are as well.

DAWSEY: Right. One of the Republican Senate candidates, and including President Trump's campaign, are pushing folks to vote by mail.

Both Democrats and Republicans and the like said this will be an unprecedented election for mail-in ballots. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, a lot of folks are fearful to go to the polls. A lot of people are dislocated. A lot of different reasons that people might vote by mail.

And there's some concern on the Republican side that, with the president's rhetoric on mail-in balloting, saying that he thinks it's fraudulent and rigged, that some of his own voters may be more reticent to accept the practice. You are seeing that from consultants in a lot of states.

[11:25:04]

We talked to the Alabama secretary of state, who was repeatedly said he was trying to explain to voters the difference between good and bad mail-in ballot because they didn't want to go against the president, as he was saying. There is no difference. They're all the same.

BOLDUAN: It's one in the same. There's one type of mail-in ballot and that's what he's trying to explain to folks.

The president continued this morning to say that the postal service can't handle this amount of mail. That's one of his arguments.

Let me play what the governor of Nevada said about that exact point last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. STEVE SISOLAK, (D-NV): We've had mail-in voting, absentee ballots going on for as long as I can remember in the state of Nevada and we've never had any problems. And I certainly don't anticipate any problems this time around.

I'll guarantee the post office that there is in Florida is the same as the post office in Nevada. It's the United States Postal Service. I mean, they have the same regulations. So if they can handle it in Florida, they can certainly handle it in Nevada.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: The postal service put out a statement this week saying it has ample capacity to handle the election.

What is this one about?

DAWSEY: Well, what the president is doing is he's raising different concerns repeatedly about mail-in voting. And his own postal service. He's saying there's an avalanche of mail-in ballots.

The president is trying to convince folks that maybe they won't be counted by Election Day or maybe some of them will get lost in the mail. He repeatedly references Paterson, New Jersey, and some misplaced ballots there.

I mean, what the president is doing, with his advisers, is a concerted strategy to just raise lots of questions about the election.

BOLDUAN: Yes. Founded and most unfounded just to confuse and stir up fear.

The president confirmed this morning your reporting that he's considering giving his convention speech, acceptance speech from the White House.

How serious do they actually are about this because it would present a slew of issues?

DAWSEY: Our sources indicate they're quite serious. Most of the events will be in Washington after trying to have the convention in Charlotte and then trying to have it in Jacksonville.

The president has been convinced that he really cannot travel extensively for the convention. And most of the events will be in Washington.

The president has repeatedly brought up having it at the White House on the front lawn in meetings. And if you talk to folks in the Republican Party, that's one of the scenarios that is of high likelihood.

BOLDUAN: We shall see.

Good to see you, Josh.

DAWSEY: Good to see you. BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, President Trump says a devastating

explosion that rocked Beirut was "an attack," his word, but U.S. American military officials are disputing that.

We'll be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)