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U.S. Seven-Day Average Of New Cases Ticks Above 54,000; Former FDA Chief: I Wouldn't Take Russia "Vaccine"; President Donald Trump Attacks Cory Booker In Comments About Housing, Suburbs; President Donald Trump Says By Regulating Where Low-Income Housing Can Be, "The Suburbs Will Be The Suburbs Again"; Biden Campaign Assembles Staff For His Future Running Mate. Aired 12-12:30p ET
Aired August 11, 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]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Hello, everybody. I'm John King in Washington. Thank you so much for sharing this day with us. A potential world changing leap today in the Coronavirus vaccine race but we must greet it with giant skepticism.
The Russian President Vladimir Putin says his nation has produced a Coronavirus vaccine, dubbed Sputnik five and says it is safe. Now the skepticism we know Russia is lying when it says it does not meddle in our elections so credibility is paramount here.
Russia has not released the science so other experts can study it, nor has it put the vaccine through phase III clinical trials and essential vaccine testing ground a top U.S. official today warning, do not rush it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALEX AZAR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: The point is not to be first with the vaccine; the point is to have a vaccine that is safe and effective for the American people and the people of the world. We need transparent data and it has got to be phase three data that shows that a vaccine is safe and effective.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: And the numbers you see on the right of your screen, while they underscore the desire for a vaccine breakthrough, more than 20 million infections worldwide, more than one-quarter of that right here in the United States. And yet six months in, the President still either doesn't understand the science or chooses to mislead you.
He again today plugged a drug his own experts say does not work. And you can see it right here, the President shrugging off the some surge in cases, he blames it on more testing, not the lack of a coherent plan to corral the virus as so many other nations have done.
As we look at the numbers this morning, testing is down in 24 states. Monday's daily case number came in under 50,000. But the seven-day average of new infections is back up just slightly above 54,000. Remember, the lowest the United States pushed down the seven-day average came back in mid-May at around 18,000.
It is clear now crystal clear that was not low enough. Reopening at a high baseline made the surge numbers even bigger. And we know the death count trails the rising case tally. For more than two weeks now the United States has averaged more than 1,000 deaths per day and there are new warnings this morning about rising case and death numbers inside nursing homes.
Let's look more closely now at the national trends. And this map better than it has been, better than it has been still room for improvement. Seven states were trending up that's the orange and the red. That means more cases now compared to a week ago.
23 states in the beige including big Texas and big California holding steady, Texas and California are big part of the summer surge, holding steady at the moment. 20 states trending down, there are the states you see in green. They include Florida and South Carolina. Also big players in the summer surge numbers.
At the moment, the map looking somewhat better again, this is a six- month lesson, even if this map improves, sometimes when you look at it in terms of deaths, it is bad, this map still has a lot of pain and sadness in it.
11 states trending up, 16 states holding steady, meaning about the same amount of death this week than last week 23 states trending down, you see them in green, again, if this map gets better, you wait a week or two, and this map counting the deaths tends to get better, we'll watch as we go through the rest of August and beyond.
The new case trend, we showed you a bit of this earlier, there is some evidence that the summer surge gets you up here, above 60,000 cases, there is some evidence in recent days of a plateau, even a dip a little bit. That is encouraging news, that's progress. We want to celebrate progress.
But there is a but that come this, remember the New York State experience. New York peaked in early April; it took two weeks, two months, two months from April to June to get down this hill. What do we know about the down on the hill? More than half of New York State's cases, more than half of New York State's deaths came on the way down the hill.
So when you look at this now somewhat encouraging a plateau, maybe a dip, there is a long way to go down this hill, a lot of cases to count and beyond. The top five states now, California, Florida, Texas, New York and Georgia. These have been right here Florida, Texas, and California, driving up the summer surge numbers right now on a plateau.
Where are we watching? Georgia is among them. Illinois, South Dakota and Indiana not case numbers like California, not case numbers like Florida, back a month ago, but states that are starting to see in South Dakota, Indiana, Illinois, and Georgia, up a little bit.
All of this as people debate, is it safe for my kid to go back to school? Should we have high school football? Should we have college football? The President of the United States saying when it comes to younger Americans, he says it is much more safer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: People don't realize it is a tiny percentage of people that get sick. And they're old; it just attacks old people, especially old people with bad heart, diabetes, some kind of a physical problem, a weight problem. Many people get it and they have, like, kids they get it, they have the sniffles.
[12:05:00]
TRUMP: Young kids, almost none have a serious problem with it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Again, the big headline today, Russia says it has hit on a Coronavirus vaccine. But listen here to a warning from the Former Commissioner of the FDA.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: I wouldn't take it, certainly not outside the clinical trial right now. It appears that it only has been tested in several hundred patients at most. Some reports in as few as 100 patients. A lot of the situations you might only get one shot at taking a vaccine within a season.
So if you put a vaccine on the market, it is not efficacious, it is going to be hard to revaccinate the population. You want to make sure it works. And you also want to make sure it is safe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: With us now to share their expertise and their insights, our CNN Medical Analyst and Infectious Disease Chief at Massachusetts General Hospital Dr. Rochelle Walensky and Pediatrician at Children's National Dr. Nathaniel Beers he is also a Member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on School Health.
Dr. Walensky I want to start with you. It would be great if we could be celebrating a vaccine, no matter where in the world it was developed. Should we have, am I right to say be skeptical about what we're hearing out of Russia?
DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Good afternoon, John. You know, I think certainly we're looking for that golden vaccine, aren't we? All of us are dying to have it. I don't think any of us have seen adequate data from phase I studies from this vaccine from Russia, from phase II studies.
And sounds like the phase III studies have not been done. I think when we get a vaccine, we will be elated, but we will want to trust it, we will want to make sure that it has been fully vetted through all the stages of vaccine safety and efficacy. And I would be reluctant to move forward to trust it without seeing the data and certainly without seeing the data on a large scale.
KING: So, Dr. Beers, let me come to you, as this plays out, obviously parents would love to have a vaccine. Instead, they're dealing with 13,000 school districts across the country, having their back to school debate. You heard the President of the United States saying most kids just get the sniffles it is not a big deal. I want you to listen to a contrary view if you will; this is Dr. William Haseltine last night on "Anderson Cooper".
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. WILLIAM HASELTINE, FORMER PROFESSOR, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: There is every reason to suspect that this virus, even though it can kill you, behaves pretty much look a cold virus in terms of transmission. Who drives colds, children drive colds?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: That sounds much more ominous. The President says kids are healthy, it doesn't really affect them. They get the cold; they get the sniffles, no big deal. If you listen to the doctor there he says actually you put kids back in school, they spread the disease, it sounds like a time bomb then they go home and so on and so forth. Who's right?
DR. NATHANIEL BEERS, PEDIATRICIAN: Well, I think the both components have some truth to them. What we do know is that communities that try to open schools where they have not effectively controlled the spread of the virus will see escalation of cases and children will be part of the escalation of cases.
And you'll note that the CDC put out a report that suggested that together with the AAP and the Children's Hospital Association noted that over 97,000 additional cases in children occurred over the last two weeks of July. And that suggests that where we don't have good community spread, we do get spread this children.
And so certainly as the American Academy of Pediatrics has noted, in order to reopen schools effectively, you have to first control community spread. And that is where other countries around the world have been able to successfully reopen schools and contain escalations of community spread, even when children were in school.
KING: And to that point, Dr. Walensky, I was just showing at the top of the show where the United States is right now, and yes, so if you look at the last several days, I'm going to call like "Some Progress" but it is shoving a baseline down to still around 50,000 cases a day.
We were at 18,000 cases back in May. Florida just today, reporting a record of 276 deaths. That beats by several the state's previous high. I gave New York as the example in the sense that if you're coming - New York, as it was coming down the hill, still had more than half of its cases and more than half of its deaths.
If we're starting down the second hill here in the United States, at 50,000 cases, what does that tell us about the weeks and months ahead?
DR. WALENSKY: Yes, I want to be very clear that we have nothing to celebrate because we're down to 50,000 cases per day. That's - we have a huge amount of morbidity and mortality at our feet right now and in the weeks ahead. We have had a thousand deaths per day in this country for the last two weeks.
So our death toll, I envision, you know, the 70,000 cases we had in the middle of June, we haven't seen all the deaths that have been associated with that. So, yes, I do think we have some really sad, sad days ahead, from the numbers that we were just - from the numbers that we're seeing now.
[12:10:00]
DR. WALENSKY: And even at 18,000 cases per day as you noted in mid-May we were unable to really squelch this. So I really want to emphasize that we're now at a time in this country where this is as good as it is going to get. The weather is good, we can be outside and we're not in the middle of a flu epidemic or a flu outbreak.
So, you know, now is the time to buckle down, before all of our kids are back to school, before we all have to be inside in colder weather, before we have influenza at our feet as well, to really - to really be able to clamp down on this and we're just not doing that.
KING: Dr. Walensky and Dr. Beers grateful for your time and insight. And I think that part of the end there we have a long way ahead, there is nothing to celebrate, couple of days of progress, it is a good thing, but there is a long way to go if, if we continue down. Doctors, thank you both so much, we'll continue the conversation.
Up next for us, very nasty and frankly very dumb, those words from the President of the United States today, his new comments about the NBA and players who decide to take a knee in protest.
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[12:15:00]
KING: President Trump today claiming despite ample evidence to the contrary, that his polls are up, his words, up like a rocket ship. And never mind Joe Biden, get this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: George Washington would have had a hard time beating me before the plague came in, before the China plague. And then, you know, like every other nation, like other countries, when you get hit, it affects you. And we went down a little bit. And then we went down a little bit more and now we're coming up at a level we haven't seen.
(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: That in a conversation with Hue Hewitt today. The President also called into Fox Sports Radio, once again peddling Hydroxychloroquine despite studies making it clear it does not help with Coronavirus.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I took it for two weeks. A little outbreak around Washington and I said, let me have something. I took it for two weeks. It was fine. It was great. If I would have said I don't believe in it, doesn't work it would be the hardest thing going right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: More Trump in the briefing room, on the radio, that's the President's answers to his poll numbers which are not up look a rocket ship, with me now to share the reporting and their insights CNN's Kaitlan Collins and Toluse Olorunnipa of "The Washington Post".
Kaitlan, it is interesting I guess, I don't know but you could even hear, Hue Hewitt there chuckling at the George Washington reference but this President for all the things you might criticize him about, he does not lack confidence.
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No he doesn't. And what he's seeing right now is that his poll numbers are down, something he acknowledged in that interview with Hue Hewitt with just you know not that long to go before the election.
And so the President's answer to that seems to be that he's going to flood the airwaves and do all of these interviews and try to put his presence out there in order to make his own case for his re-election. So what you hear a lot of these - in these interviews is something that the President says normally, things he makes - he says about COVID, talking about cases being up because testing is up, something that even his own health experts have said is not the case.
But also the way the President views this as even he's acknowledging that his response to the pandemic has affected his poll numbers. Now, he sees it differently and he is blaming China and he's saying that it is essentially not his fault.
His aides tell a different story, though, behind closed doors, because they'll concede that the President has not handled it the best, from a messaging standpoint they say, and that's why they believe they're trying to get the President to stay on message when he is talking about COVID now because they realize how that affected him and the President argues a little bit differently as you can tell from those interviews.
KING: Right. And the more Trump motto from him, he thinks he alone as he said before can change these things. Toluse, is very reminiscent of 2016, when people - a lot of people around him thought he was losing. A lot of people around him thought he had to change his message and the President just kept going and some of the days were outrageous but he just kept going and he won, which in his mind he says I can do this. One of the things he's trying to do now is he doesn't like to talk much about the Coronavirus, and he likes to talk about other things. This has become a staple at his rallies he does them, now he can't go out and do big voter rallies and arenas, but he's talking about Joe Biden, trying to win back suburban voters and he has decided now to name a certain name. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They want to put low income housing in the suburbs. And I ended it. I signed three weeks ago, I signed a regulation, which will end it. And the suburbs will be the suburbs again. Biden wants to re- establish that program, but make it much worse.
And they recommended Cory Booker to be in charge. Cory Booker is going to head it up. He's going to be the one that tells you what to do and destroys your housing and your area.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Correct me if I'm wrong, but my first campaign was 1988, and I lived through the Willy Horton ad, naming a black man seems pretty clear to me what the President is trying to do, Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, am I wrong?
TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, WASHINGTON POST: It is pretty clear what the President is trying to do, first of all, there is no evidence that Cory Booker is going to be in charge of suburban housing. He's a Senator from New Jersey, he was the Mayor of an urban city.
The idea that he would even be sort of put forward really scratches your head unless you sort of see that the dog whistles that the President is pointing to talking about low income housing, talking through these code words of suburban housewives having their housing threatened and having their safety threatened by low income people coming into their communities is very clear.
He's looking at this through a racial lens. He is trying to scare some moderate white voters who may be on the fence about his campaign and who may not like his rhetoric. But he's trying to say, I'll the only thing protecting you from, you know, tons of people coming into your neighborhood and making it look not like it used to look. He said he's going to maybe the suburbs great again and sort of this throwback to the 1960s and 1970s.
And the country just doesn't look like that anymore, the suburbs are very diverse, a lot of the white voters that the President is trying to appeal to are actually thrown off and pushed back by his very clear and thinly veiled racial rhetoric.
[12:20:00]
OLORUNNIPA: And it is not clear the strategy is going to work outside of some thin margin of winning over some voters who this appeals to. But pretty clear what he's trying to do and it is a throwback to some of those types of ugly campaigning that we saw back in the '80s.
KING: Right. It is a throwback and it is, you know, be afraid of them is what the President is trying to say as you note. The country has changed, the suburbs have changed. But it is clear, Kaitlan, that again, a lot of people on the President say, sir, this is dangerous, the President clearly likes I'm going to call it a culture debate here. I'm a big fan of the NBA. I'm also a big fan of the first amendment, the President clearly not. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: There was a nastiness about the NBA the way it was done too so I think that they - the NBA is in trouble. I think it is in big trouble. Bigger trouble than they understand. What I haven't noticed them sending things back at me, but I will say that, you know, I wouldn't be that surprised, some are very nasty, very, very nasty and frankly very dumb.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: The NBA, of course, the majority of the athletes are black and a lot of them are taking a knee right now and wearing things on their jersey in the bubble saying, you know, provocative things like black lives matter. What is the President's beef?
COLLINS: Well, and he was also asked something that is an argument that, of course, everyone talked about, who is a better basketball player Michael Jordan or Lebron James, the President quickly answered Michael Jordan. And one of the reasons he gave was not because of his athletic talent but he said because he didn't get involved in politics.
Obviously a clear reference to Lebron James who has been very outspoken and recently said he doesn't care if the President doesn't want NBA. The President he wouldn't be watching if they were kneeling and saying things about black lives matter in the way that he said that about the NFL and for other sports.
So it is a point, if you listen to these two interviews the President gave this morning, he makes a point of saying he's not going to be watching if these players are kneeling. He's trying to put this argument out there, one that he's made many times, and he's trying to say it many more times before the election, because he thinks that is something that works with voters.
But the question is, at the end of the day, is that something more that voters care about or is it things like they're unemployment benefits and whether or not they're still getting those given that so many Americans are unemployed because the pandemic.
And just a point of confusion to see what the President is focusing on and what his aides are focusing on? You know this morning, the President was talking about the NFL and we've just heard from one of his economic advisers, John, Larry Kudlow who was talking about that confusing executive order the President signed over the weekend, trying to extend unemployment benefits after they ran out of course because Congress has not come to an agreement about what to do next?
But part of that agreement said that states had to give $100 to people before the federal government would give them $300 and many states, Republican Governor run states said they would not be able to do that because they just do not have the finances for it. And now Larry Kudlow is saying they're tweaking that and they're going to be backing off of that part of the executive order.
It sounds like saying that states can go ahead and contribute what they are so far and they will still get that $300 from the federal government regardless. Just showing you really what a mess signing that executive order has kind of been and wasn't clearly that well thought out.
KING: Haste makes waste, I've seen that somewhere in the past, I'm not sure where. Kaitlan Collins and Toluse Olorunnipa I appreciate the reporting and insights from both of you. Thanks so much. Coming up for us, Joe Biden's big VP reveal is expected any day now and the longer he waits well, the more pressure he gets.
(COMMECIAL BREAK)
[12:25:00]
KING: We're still waiting for Joe Biden's Vice Presidential pick, but here is another sign it could be coming very soon, will be coming very soon. CNN now confirms the campaign has a staff assembled for the woman who will share the Democratic ticket. Now I've been through more than a few of these over the years and they can get a little silly at the end.
Like this, a tweet serving notice the pick is imminent followed by a tongue in cheek tweet, congratulations to imminent. With me to share their insights, David Axelrod our Chief Political - CNN Political Commentator Top Campaign Strategist of course for Former President Obama in 2008 and 2012 and CNN's Nia-Malika Henderson also.
Alex, I'm going to start with you first because you've been in the room, the candidate has made his decision, and then you decide, okay, roll it out, immediately, wait a day, wait two, what is going on in Joe Biden's head right now with the team closest to him?
DAVID AXELROD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, look, I think he has to make a decision imminently because we have a convention coming up in a few days and so, you know, he's at the end of the string here. And I suspect he's made that decision and they're poised to mobilize.
But they made a promise to their supporters that they would let them know first in a text message that's what we did with Biden back in 2012. So they have done a pretty good job of keeping whatever that decision is, secret, I think they have dispatched teams to a number of different locations, to give him some optionality. But I suspect that they will pull the curtain in the next 24 to 48 hours.
KING: And they face a lot of pressure. You said Biden 2012 if you're trying to cheat a few years that was 2008. We won't-- AXELROD: There wasn't a lot of mystery in 2012, yes.
KING: We won't count them on your birth date - and so Nia, one of the questions is, you have the longer he waits, the more opportunity it gives people to weigh in. Some of it is just pressure, you would call it demands or you could call it a request.
