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Positivity Rate Trending Up In Over 30 States; Florida Eclipses 500,000 Coronavirus Cases; President Donald Trump Falsely Asserts Children "Almost Immune" From COVID-19; Joe Biden No Longer Expected To Travel To Milwaukee To Accept Nomination; Mail-In Voting Early Test In Washington Primaries. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired August 05, 2020 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Thanks Kyung. Thanks Jasmine. Be sure to watch "On the Trial: Inside the 2020 Primaries" which begins streaming on HBOMax tomorrow. Thanks for joining everybody. I'm Kate Bolduan. CNN coverage begins now with John King.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Thank you, Kate. Hello, everybody. I'm John King in Washington. Thank you for sharing this day with us. Vivid new proof of the lasting Coronavirus disruption CNN has just learned Joe Biden will accept the Democratic Nomination later this month in Delaware, his home state, and not travel to the convention city, Milwaukee.

This change, the same day President Trump told us he might give his Convention Speech from the White House. We learned that as the president spent part of his morning chatting with friends "Fox & Friends" to precise to listen what's to hear an assessment of the Coronavirus still very much at odds with the facts.

Despite the fact the president made a very rare appearance yesterday at a meeting of his Coronavirus experts, and we heard the president again sow doubt about the country's ability to hold an election in the middle of a pandemic this time suggesting we might not know the presidential winner for a very, very long time.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: You're not going to know the November 3rd election results. I'm talking for the country. It could be for months and months. I mean, actually, could be for years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Now, the president supporters call such remarks harmless hyperbole. His critics hear things like that and worry he is laying the groundwork to ignore the results if he loses. Now casting and counting votes would be much easier, of course, if the Coronavirus is under control. The experts on the White House Task Force concede it is not at this moment. Listen to the president. He disagrees.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It's coming down. Some states are going up a little bit, but they will very shortly, they're under control. They'll be coming down. My view is that schools should open. This thing will go away. It will go away like things go away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Now there are hopeful signs in the numbers but it's far too soon to say the virus is "going away" as you just heard the president promise. 57,000 plus new cases added to the count on Tuesday. That reverses a weekend dip below the 50,000 threshold.

Deaths remain on the rise, 1,399 Tuesday that's the second high left daily death toll of the summer. The seven day average of new cases down 9 percent from this time last week the question is whether new spikes are just ahead?

This map here highlights that challenge the positivity rate the percentage of positive tests climbing. You see those states in red climbing in 33 of the 50 states this week. The Republican Governor of Massachusetts is warning he may have to roll back the Commonwealth reopening if the cases there keep climbing.

The Republican Governor of Maryland just helped create a consortium of states to work around the national testing failures. And the Republican Governor of Mississippi just issued a mask mandate to fight the COVID spike. But listen to the president this morning in his own words proving his disconnect from the Coronavirus reality.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The Democrats are standing in our way. They don't want the states open, even if the state is in good shape. You know, much of the country is really good shape. We see the red spots and we have them in red. The COVID areas, but the country's in very good shape and we're set to rock 'n' roll.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The country is in better shape but Republican Governors like their Democratic counterparts are still nervous about some of the signs. Let's take a look at the map. When you look at this map, this is the most encouraging map I've been able to show you in quite some time.

Five states heading up meaning more cases this week than last those are the states in orange. To the west, to New England Maine and Massachusetts there only five states heading up, right? You see Hawaii is also heading up down there five going up.

27, that's the yellow or beige holding steady. 18 states going down including Florida, including Arizona key drivers of the summer surge. This is a much more encouraging map compared to just two weeks ago standing here two weeks ago I was telling you 26 states in red including big Texas heading up 20 holding steady. So this is an improvement. Where we are today is an improvement. But we also know from the last six months, deaths lag cases. So even as the case count map improves the map of new deaths is quite depressing. 22 states heading up, 11 holding steady, 17 heading down again the longer the case map looks good, then eventually this would change, the death map still a struggle at the moment when you look at it.

Top five states, California, Florida, Texas, New York and Georgia, New York had been number one for a very long time. It is during the summer surge that these big three, Texas, Florida, and California have passed it in case counts more than 500,000 these two states, on a path to 500,000.

Now if you look at Florida, the president says things are getting better. He's right to a degree if you look at certain states. Seven day moving average in Florida starting to go down the question is, can you continue this during the week and carry it into another week?

You see Florida heading down from above 10,000 cases routinely. Now down below it can you keep momentum going? This is the challenge there but big state going down, some of the smaller states starting to go back up.

[12:05:00]

KING: I mentioned Massachusetts, here is Mississippi as well. Seven day moving average it bumps up here the question is, is it starting to come down? We need to watch Mississippi. This is why the Republican Governor says wear your mask mandating it now to try to push this number down.

All of this plays out as some states start to go back to school other states making their decisions about going back to school. These five states, you see them on the map, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, Missouri and Iowa, will require you to go to school at least full or part-time, meaning students back in the class room that is the requirement in these states.

Now if you look here. Some cities, some districts, some states, already back in school. In Indiana, Tennessee, Mississippi and Georgia, all back to school already all very quickly developing COVID cases among students, among teachers, among janitors and others in those schools. Listen here to a teacher. This is Gwinnett, Georgia, saying, yes, they're coming back to school and, yes, I'm nervous.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMY FOREHAND, FIRST GRADE TEACHER, GWINNETT COUNTY, GOERGIA: We were notified yesterday that the county is going to proceed with starting to allow kindergarten students and first grade students back in to the building August 26th. I have asthma. My 2-year-old son is showing indications he as well as asthma, and I'm worried, even bringing in just kindergarten and first grade students. That's a very large population at my school.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: CNN's Diane Gallagher is tracking this for us she joins us now live from Atlanta. It's very tough for the teachers, Diane it is tough for parents. Uncertainty adds toughness to the dilemma here. It's a big one.

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is. It is kind of a bad choice on all sides here when you consider what teachers, parents, districts are weighing these options. I can tell you that just north here in Georgia, in - County, they started back in-person on Monday in school, and you can see in some of these pictures, most of the kids wearing masks.

At Six's Elementary School they're not required to wear a mask because there's no mask mandate in the State of Georgia, but they're encouraging them to when they can't social distance. And while a lot of the kids don't seem to be socially distancing.

But a second grader, we don't know if that classroom is in any of these pictures but a second grade student tested positive at school on Monday that first day. And so now all 20 of the second grade students in that class and the teacher have to go home and quarantine for 14 days.

Now, right now that teacher isn't showing any symptoms. So that teacher is going to continue teaching virtually from home. But this is the challenge that these schools that are coming back in-person are trying and figuring out what they're facing here.

There was another school district where before school began they sent letters out to let them know that the football team, that it had been practicing before school started had multiple positive cases as well.

And then you have the districts that aren't going back in-person yet but are still grappling with positive cases in their employees. The largest school district here, Gwinnett County Public Schools, they start back school virtually next week. But currently, right now, they have roughly 260 employees who have either tested positive for or been exposed to COVID-19. So they can't work.

Now, most of those teachers may be teaching from inside their classrooms, even though the students aren't going to be there to begin with. John, we're seeing all sorts of different scenarios throughout the State of Georgia on how these districts are approaching educating during a pandemic?

And at each avenue they choose, we're seeing road blocks because of these positive cases, and parents aren't sure how to plan. Teachers don't know how to plan, and districts aren't sure if they've made the right choice.

KING: Well, this is a conversation around the country within the State of Georgia, within these different school districts and we'll continue with Diane Gallagher. Appreciate the latest update there and we'll stay on top of this.

And with us now to share his expertise and insights, Senior Scholar at John Hopkins Center for Health Security, Dr. Amesh Adalja. Doctor, thank you so much for being with us. This is a conversation happening in every family in America. Every parent in America trying to figure out what's going to happen?

Do I like the advice I'm getting from my school board? Or if I accept the decision they've made? As we had the conversation let's start with the president who says open the schools, because there's no problem?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: 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, I don't know how you feel about it, but they're much stronger immune systems than we do somehow from this and they do it and they don't have the a problem. They just don't have a problem.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Is that true?

DR. AMESH ADALJA, SENIOR SCHOLAR, JOHNS HOPKINS CENTER FOR HEALTH SECURITY: No, it's not true. There are a lot of inaccuracies in there. While it is true those children tend to be spared from the more severe consequences of this disease it's not because they're not getting infected or it's not because the virus isn't in their nose.

[12:10:00]

ADALJA: It's a mystery why children tend to be relatively spared but it isn't something that we can completely count on and we have to think about what's going on in the community as a whole? If a community doesn't have the virus under control it is inevitable that the virus is going to find its way into schools and find its way to vulnerable populations.

So you have to be very careful when you're opening a school to make sure that the community has the outbreak under control. In some places do and some places don't. Those schools that are in places that don't are going to be severely disrupted with cases occurring amongst their population.

KING: Right. And so as we had conversations weeks ago about reopening, it was 50 states, 50 plans. You have 13,000 school districts across the United States of America and I'm just talking about public school districts there. 13,000 school districts 50 million students so this is an intensely local decision and intensely local dilemma for families. But for you as a public health professional what is the one biggest--

ADALJA: --school district even if you have it under control just because of so much virus in the community in the nation as a whole, you're going to have to take action and you don't want parents to be worried, you don't want teachers and teachers unions to be worried about safety of their members. This going to be something that is the new normal for school and I think it's a priority that we open schools. We find a way to do it safely following CDC guidelines looking at clear metrics to do so. But it is going to be something that is very challenging and not something we probably have seen since probably 1918.

KING: And so how much of a factor is testing in all of that? I said at the top of the program, there are 33 states that have a higher positivity rate this week than last. So if you're a public health professional, the Governors and the Mayors in those states you're on alert.

Might not be terrible but you have problem. Your positivity rate is higher this week than last week. We also know - I can show you a map here that in 30 states they're testing - less testing this week than the prior week in 30 states and you see that map there. Does that trouble you? That as children start to go back to school, as many of these states try to keep their reopenings going, that they're testing less?

ADALJA: Yes, it definitely troubles me. That's the only way that we can really tell whether somebody is infected or is not infected? That's going to be almost like a green and red light that schools and other organizations are going to use as they move through this.

So if we have test results that aren't coming back for seven to eight days they're basically worthless. So we want to have testing be seamless so that we can use that as a way to guide actions and do contact tracing and so people can know what they can and can't do.

And if you can't test, and if testing is going down in certain places as we're increasing social interaction, it's not a good recipe and it is not a way that we're going to move forward with this pandemic.

KING: It is not. Dr. Amesh Adalja, as always, sir, appreciate and grateful for your insights and your time today. Thank you.

ADALJA: Thank you.

KING: Thank you. Up next for us, President Trump issues a new warning about mail-in voting along with a new complaint about the debate schedule.

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[12:15:00]

KING: Today President Trump saying it could be "months or years" before the election result is determined. Blaming mail-in voting from states like Nevada which the Republicans are now suing over its plan to send absentee mail ballots to all active voters this November but in Florida the president's new home state, he says he supports it even encourages it all because Florida has a "Great Republican Governor."

Now the president may not like all of this early mail-in voting but knows he can't stop it. So he wants to move up the presidential debates.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We should have the debates. One problem I have is the debate is very late. End of September and a lot of ballots will already be cast by that time. They want to make the debates as late as possible, why are they putting first debates so late? The first debate should be before the first ballots go out and they have a month later, almost a month later. It's ridiculous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Let's discuss this and more Toluse Olorunnipa of "The Washington Post" and CNN's Arlette Saenz. And Arlette, I want to start with you. I'll come back to the debate schedule in a moment. But we learned something else today.

We already heard the president saying I'm not going to Charlotte for my convention I may deliver my acceptance speech from the South Lawn of the White House. Now we know Former Vice President Joe Biden will not travel to Milwaukee. Why?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, John. We've learned today that Joe Biden won't traveling to Milwaukee to accept the Democratic Nomination in person. Instead he will be delivering that speech in Delaware and this is due to concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic.

The Democratic National Committee and Biden Campaign say they are listening to the advice and warnings from health officials regarding Coronavirus in that state right now, and they have decided to move that speech away from Wisconsin to his home State of Delaware.

The Vice Presidential pick, when she is named, she will also be speaking from a different location, and you've had Biden repeatedly say that he was hoping to deliver that speech in person, accept the nomination in person in Wisconsin, but that ultimately they would be listening to the advice from health officials and health experts in that state.

And now they have concluded that concerns about the spread of the virus are too great to have that speech be held in person. Now, Democrats already significantly scaled back their convention plans. Early on they started shifting to this more virtual model.

You know, they had passed rules so that delegates could vote remotely instead of in person, but this is just the latest change we've seen to this convention on both Democratic and Republican side due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

KING: And Toluse we've already seen some of the sites for the debates changed because of concern at those universities about holding them in the Coronavirus. We will see if the candidates actually end up in the stage on together in person.

But the president's point today, there are a great number of states some states start voting in 4.5 or 5 weeks from now. He has a point. Whether you agree or disagree with the president politically does he not?

[12:20:00]

KING: That by the time the debate - if they keep the current schedule, the first one is in late September, a lot of American will have already voted. You can't get that back.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. And the truth is a lot of Americans have already made up their minds. There are very few Americans who are sort of on the fence now. We do expect these debates to have high viewership.

There are a lot of people waiting to see Joe Biden on the debate stage with Donald Trump to see how the two men where both in their mid to late 70s stack up against one another. But I think because these debates were set in the timeline were set months ago, years ago, even before the pandemic, it's hard to see them moving it at this point.

They, the two camps do not agree on very much. I doubt that they're going to agree even on the moderator. Trying to change the debate timeline and change the dates is going to be a tall task. Even though President Trump said he wants to move them up.

It is clear that President Trump's campaign is come to the realization that a large percentage of the American public is going to cast their votes before these debates early because a lot of people are just ready to have their say in the election and the ballots going out as you said in a matter of weeks.

KING: And so we see how competitive the battlefield is, it tilts in favor of Joe Biden right now Arlette which is one reason that Biden campaign is a new $208 million ad spending at least they've reserved the time for that. They can change this as it goes forward.

But when you look at the map there where they're spending those are mostly your traditional battlegrounds. You see Iowa on there. They're spending some money in Iowa which is a state that Trump won last time.

It's a state we would lean red but there is a brand new poll from Monmouth that shows essentially a statistical dead heat. Trump at 48 and Biden at 45. This just is a reminder that the map at the moment is tilted in Joe Biden's favor and because of the pandemic everything is hard for the president.

SAENZ: Yes. That's right. The Biden campaign is really trying to take advantage of the competitive state in a lot of these states right now. You know, they've described their new ad, $280 million is a strategy of offense.

They are running these - they were planned to be running these ads in 15 states across the country. Your traditional battleground states but they're also going into states like Iowa and Texas really trying to focus on those competitive races there that they could potentially have heading into the General Election. You know, one thing that Biden has consistently over the past few months really, he has tried to do, is draw this contrast with the president when it comes to character and when it comes to leadership and that's something that they're planning to continue to do in their advertisements.

They really want to draw that contrast with the president on his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic and how President Biden if he were to be elected would handle this crisis on both the health care and the economic front?

And a lot of these ads feature Joe Biden speaking and using his own words direct to camera as they're trying to once again reinforce this message that they think he would provide a different type of leadership to the president.

KING: Arlette and Toluse I appreciate you coming on this important day. We'll continue the conversation as we go. Let's continue the conversation about main-in voting with someone who oversees it for a living.

Joining me now the Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman we should know that she is on the ballot in November as well. Madam Secretary, thanks for being with us. You held your primary yesterday. You have a Democratic Governor. You're a Republican Secretary of State.

We hear the president say, well, Florida, it's okay in Florida because they have a Republican Governor and have had a Republican Governor before that. Does the party of the Governor or party of the Secretary of State, should it have anything at all to do with the effective news, integrity of mail-in voting?

KIM WYMAN, SECRETARY OF STATE OF WASHINGTON: No it shouldn't. We really have got to stop politicizing election administration. It is so important that we're inspiring confidence in our voters and every time we undermine people's faith in the system, it undermines the credibility of the election results.

KING: So today as part of the stimulus negotiations up on Capitol Hill the Democrats were bringing the head of the postal service in for the meetings because they're trying to get the White House to agree to more money.

Do you think the United States Postal Service is ready to do this on a national scale? You've done it in Washington State for some time, you're very good at it, you've proven it has integrity, and it actually increases participation. It should be a modeled for other states. Do you think the Postal Service has stress and strain as now we go into 50 states doing more mail-in voting?

WYMAN: I don't think it's the volume of mail that the states are going to put in the system from vote by mail that's going to be a problem for the USPA. It's really a resource issue. They're going to need to be able to have staffing and the capacity and the throughput that they normally have. And if we cut back overtime or reduce the routes that they run, it's

going to have a ripple effect on ballot delivery and ballot return. And so it's really important that the USPS has capacity to conduct the election, you know - deliver those ballots on our behalf.

KING: You mentioned at the top, it would be nice to take the politics out of this, because we are in the middle of a pandemic and our elections are the most sacred thing we have. We're going to do it this way.

[12:25:00]

KING: But I want you to listen to the president's take. He tries to make a distinction between traditional absentee voting and this new push for more mail-in voting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Absentee is okay because you have to go through a process, Brian, and you go through a process and you make a request and they send it to you and you get it and you fill it out and it's a process and it's a smaller number. What they're going to do it blanket to the state anybody that ever walked, frankly, would get one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: You've invited the president and Attorney General to take a peek how you do it? Can you explain why that is just not right?

WYMAN: Well, if I'm an Election Administrator point of view, both by mail elections and absentee elections have the exact same mechanics. We do the same processing. We're verifying voters in the same way like checking their signature on the return envelope.

So mechanically there's really no difference. It's a subtle difference and a nuance difference politically I think. An absentee ballot requires the voter to do something. They have to request to receive that ballot by mail. A vote by mail election is government sending a ballot preemptively to every eligible voter.

So it's a subtle difference and I think that's what the president is really trying to focus in on and divide people's opinion on it.

KING: I appreciate your time today. Madam Secretary and we'll have you back as we get through this, because I was going to show it during the segment. We can show it right now how Washington State does this? The steps you take, eligible voters sent to ballots, mark ballots and put in security sleeves, sleeve put in return of them.

You do it in a way this should inspire confidence at a time when there are others trying to say you can't trust it. So we'll continue the conversation as we get between now and November and actually September when people start voting. Again thanks for your time, Madam Secretary. Appreciate it.

WYMAN: Thank you. KING: Up next for us, how much one possible Coronavirus vaccine may cost, if and when it hits the market?

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