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Fauci: "I'm Not Pleased with How Things Are Going"; Report: White House Warns Georgia of "Widespread and Expanding" COVID-19 Spread; Dr. Ashish Jha Discusses Task Force Warning to Georgia & Giroir's Comments on Virus Testing Frequency; California Becomes 1st State to Surpass 600,000 Cases; Florida County Forced to Drop Virtual School Reopening Plan or Lose Millions in Funding from State; Trump Admits He's Blocking USPS Funding to Stop Main-In Votes; Judge Orders Trump Campaign to Provide Evidence of Mail-In Voter Fraud in Pennsylvania by Today; Obama Weighs in on Mail-In Voting, USPS as Collateral Damage. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired August 14, 2020 - 11:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:00:26]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Kate Baldwin. Thanks so much for joining us this hour.

One day after the United States hit its highest single-day death toll of the summer so far, the CDC is warning the next few weeks will be bad. According to the new CDC models, the coronavirus could kill another 22,000 Americans by Labor Day if things do not change.

The country is now, once again, averaging more than 1,000 deaths a day, with 18 states seeing an increase in deaths over the past week. And the number of new infections are now back to about 50,000 a day.

So here we are, halfway through another month, and it is abundantly clear that, once again, as a country, we are losing valuable time.

It was just a few weeks ago Dr. Anthony Fauci said the infection rate never got low enough. And that when we -- and that was when we averaged about 20,000 cases a day. Now our average is more than double that.

And as more schools open up and more children head back to class, Dr. Fauci is making it clear that he does not like where things are headed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY & INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Bottom line is, I'm not pleased with how things are going. This is the thing that is disturbing to me is that we're starting to see the inkling of the upticks in the percent of the tests that are positive. Which we know now from sad past experience that that is a predictor that you're going to have more surges.

To think that you can ignore the biologic and get the economy back, it's not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. You've got to do both.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: And with that in mind, there's a new warning today for one of the first states to reopen and a state seeing a major spike right now.

The "Atlanta Journal-Constitution" is reporting the White House Coronavirus Task Force sent a warning to the state of Georgia that it is simply not doing enough.

Here's a quote from this memo: "There's widespread and expanding community viral spread."

CNN's Martin Savidge is joining us wise from Atlanta with the latest.

Martin, what else are you learning of this memo and what this memo is saying? And is there any response from the governor who, everyone knows now, has resisted many health recommendations all along?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This report is, without a doubt, a double slam against Governor Brian Kemp.

Number one, it's very blunt in saying you're just not getting the job done.

And number two, this is coming from President Trump's Coronavirus Task Force. Brian Kemp is a staunch supporter of President Trump so it has a real political sting to it, as well.

Going through some of the language, listen to this. "Current mitigation efforts not having a sufficient impact."

In other words, what you're doing isn't working.

The task force is finally recommending that the state have a mask mandate, period. That is something the governor has pushed back continuously on.

Georgia allows nightclubs and bars and gyms to be open, yes, with some restriction. But this task force is saying, in the hardest hit counties, you cannot continue to allow them to remain open.

It talks about restaurants. In Georgia, you pretty much can seat as many people as possible as long as you keep them six feet apart. The task force says, no, you can only go up to a quarter of the restaurant's capacity.

And it goes on and on. The state needs to ramp up testing. It needs to do a better job of contact tracing. It needs to do a better job of protecting people in nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

Social gatherings, the state allows you to have up to 50 people. The task force is saying, no, you have to keep it to 10 and under.

So what is the governor saying about all this? There was a statement that was put out, but it's more a spokesperson for the governor. It didn't appear to be reacting to these criticisms.

It says this: "Governor Kemp continues to rely on the data, science and the public health advice of Dr. Kathleen Toomey and her team." That's the State Department of Public Health. "As the governor said many times before, this fight is protecting the lives and livelihoods of Georgians."

In other words, lives and the economy in the mind of the governor are equal in balance here.

He's losing lives. Twice this week, the state set records for coronavirus deaths.

And there's no doubt if this spread continues, the economy will suffer, as well -- Kate?

BOLDUAN: Yes. I mean, it is an indictment of their policies so far. There's no question.

Martin, thank you very much.

[11:05:01]

Joining me now is Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute.

Dr. Jha, thank you.

We have been hearing -- I feel like we've been hearing what the White House task force told Georgia in this memo from you for quite some time. I mean, what do you think of this?

DR. ASHISH JHA, DIRECTOR, HARVARD GLOBAL HEALTH INSTITUTE: Yes. So thanks for having me on, Kate.

This is not rocket science. We know the major public health interventions that Georgia needs. And Georgia has been ignoring the public health scientists. And now we find out that they've also been ignoring the White House Task Force.

So, you know, the problem here is there are two things. One is there's a misunderstanding that somehow there's a tradeoff between lives and livelihoods. There isn't.

Places that do well on protecting public health can get their economy going much faster and much better. I think the governor seems to not understand that.

And second is that, you know, the lives of Georgians aren't going to get better until he implements the things that the White House task force is suggesting.

So doing it sooner rather than later will save lives and will get the economy in better shape.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

Now, Dr. Jha, you have been talking about testing and leading on the testing front for a long time.

And I wanted to ask you about this. Because the top person on testing in the country for the government is saying that the goal should not now be to test as many people as possible frequently.

I want to play what Admiral Giroir said on a call with reporters. It surprised me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADM. BRETT GIROIR, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR HEALTH, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES (voice-over): Not only do we not recommend this strategy of testing everyone on a frequent basis, but I think it could instill a false sense of security.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Dr. Jha, do you agree with that?

JHA: I don't. And I don't know any public health person who does.

And I think Admiral Giroir fundamentally misunderstands the purposes of testing, which is unfortunate, because he is our national testing czar. So you would think he would have a better understanding.

The point of testing is to identify people who are sick and offer a bit of protection over the spread of the disease.

We know half of the spread happens when people don't have symptoms.

If you never try to test and identify asymptomatic people, you're going to miss all of them and you're going to miss you all the big outbreaks, which is what is happening in the United States right now.

So none of us are arguing that we should test every American every day. That would be great if we could. But that's not the goal.

But we have to be able to test a much broader swath of the population, particularly high-risk people, particularly students who are going back, nursing home residents.

Admiral Giroir just seems to have given up on all of that and is taking am approach that is not going to protect the American people.

BOLDUAN: We have to dive further into this. Because he was frustrated in this call with reporters is what we're hearing. And he really pushed back.

Let me read you other statements that he made on this call: "It is just a false narrative and I'm tired of hearing it by people, who are not involved in the system, that we need millions of tests every day." You beat the virus," he also says, "by smart policies supplemented by

strategic testing. You do not beat the virus by shotgun testing everyone all the time."

What do you think of that?

JHA: So, on one hand, Kate, the proof is in the pudding. We have the worst response of any major country in the world. And our testing infrastructure is in trouble.

So what I would say to the admiral is, first, please focus on trying to deliver testing for the American people. A lot of Americans are very frustrated about how hard it is to get a test, how long the results are coming back.

Instead of attacking experts who --

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Right, rather than arguing over this.

BOLDUAN: Yes. This is -- in my mind, can we focus on testing, please? Can we focus on the virus, please? And not argue about things that no public health person is arguing about.

I don't know any public health expert who thinks we have enough testing in the country.

We don't have enough testing for schools. We don't have enough testing for nursing homes. Those are really important.

Instead of arguing, it would be helpful if the admiral focused on delivering testing for the American people.

JHA: Look, I just talked to the head of an organization that represents nursing homes. And he has been -- he says it's like a five- alarm fire right now, once again, because they need more testing, they need more PPE in nursing homes.

It is no joke right now.

To be clear, I looked on the CDC Web site just to double-check. According to the CDC, there have been a total of just over 69 million tests performed so far in the country.

Dr. Jha, how many tests do you think we need to be doing?

JHA: Based on the level of the outbreak today, we need to be doing at least four to five million tests a day.

By the way, that is about 1 percent to 1.5 percent of the population being tested, not everybody being tested.

Four to five million gives us a fighting chance of bringing this virus under control. I'm not saying all we need to do is testing. But that is one of the

critical elements that we need to have. And right now, we're testing 700,000 or 800,000 people a fraction of the number we need.

[11:10:06]

BOLDUAN: And remember, everybody, back in July, Giroir testified before Congress saying the government would be able to perform 40 million to 50 million tests per month.

Apply your math to that capacity. We've got like half-a-month's-worth that we would be capable of doing by the -- and he wanted to see 40 to 50 million tests being able to be performed per month by the fall. We are clearly nowhere near that.

JHA: We are clearly nowhere near that. And that, all of said, was not anywhere near enough.

Look, kids are going back to school. Kids are going back to college. Testing is going to start happening in those places. Colleges are going to start to try to test students and faculty.

Schools desperately want to be able to test kids and staff and teachers, but the testing capacity just isn't there.

So I don't know why Admiral Giroir thinks that we are doing plenty of testing when literally no health expert I know of in the entire country agrees with his assessment.

BOLDUAN: And, Dr. Jha, are not an alarmist. You have been a realist and eyes wide open. You've analyzed this very specifically.

What is Giroir missing? I'm sorry to ask it that way but I don't get it. At this point in the pandemic, where we are as a country, why he is saying this kind of stuff.

JHA: So I've known Admiral Giroir for a number of years. He is a good person. And I think he cares about our country and wants to try to get this right.

The problem is that he's thinking as a doctor, as a diagnostician, saying, when a sick person walks into my office, he wants to be able to do a test. That's fine. That's important, actually.

But half the spread of this virus happens in people who are asymptomatic. You need a proactive strategy. You need a strategy to go seek out the virus, figure out where it's hiding, figure out the high- risk places and identify it.

That's how every other country has brought this disease under control.

He doesn't see things that way and I don't understand why. He has to put on a public health hat. He has to stop thinking about being a clinician in the office only.

Without that, we're not going to be able to get our arms around the virus. And I feel like he has not been able to shift his mind-set. And I think that's very unfortunate.

BOLDUAN: It's really deflating to think of, if that is the standpoint on testing from the federal government right now, where this is all heading come the fall. I really -- it's -- I'm scared.

BOLDUAN: Dr. Jha, thank you.

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: No, go ahead. Go ahead.

JHA: No, I was just going to say, I think a lot of states are taking the lead here. So even if the federal government has sort of given up on this, I think we need to find ways to support states.

Many of them are being very proactive. So that gives me hope.

BOLDUAN: I'll take it. I'm going to take it and I'm going hold on to it because it's a kernel and that is what we need right now.

Thank you, Dr. Jha.

JHA: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: We have some breaking news coming in. President Trump's younger brother, Robert Trump, has been hospitalized here in New York. The White House has confirmed this to CNN just a short time ago.

ABC News was the first to report this. And in the report, they added that the details of his condition remain unknown, though it is described by several sources to ABC News as very ill.

And they also say the president is expected to visit his brother today.

We'll follow this close. And we'll bring you any updates we hear about Robert Trump.

Coming up for us, a Florida school district planned to start the school year online and then the state weighed in. Why that school district is now opening its doors weeks earlier than it planned.

Plus, a new memo from the head of the postal service about recent cuts, just as President Trump admits why he is opposed to funding the post office. What all of this means for mail-in voting in November.

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[11:18:03]

BOLDUAN: California hitting a new high today. It has just become the first state to report more than 600,000 coronavirus cases. That is substantially more than the entire countries have seen.

CNN's Stephanie Elam is in Los Angeles with more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As California becomes the first state to surpass 600,000 cases, the death toll almost at 11,000. Now, to put that into perspective, New York State has a death toll of more than 32,800.

But when you look at the case number, it took just two weeks to get from 500,000 to 600,000.

Also worth noting that there's still a number of backlog cases, including in this tally this week.

Overall, though, the numbers are looking better. Hospitalizations are down. The number of ICU admissions are down in the state.

And the positivity rate is now below 6 percent when, in July, it was hovering at about 7.5 percent.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BOLDUAN: Stephanie, thank you so much.

Let's go the Florida right now. One county there's now making a last- minute change to plans after the state threatened to withhold funding if they did not.

Hillsborough County Public Schools previously announced it would start school all online for the first four weeks. And then the state stepped in.

Florida officials ordering all public schools to offer in-person classes by the end of August or risk losing millions of dollars of funding at a time when no school needs less funding. They actually need more.

So despite their original assessment, this school district backtracked.

CNN's Rosa Flores joins me now from Miami.

Rosa, you've been tracking this closely. What really happened here?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, Kate, if you asked the state of Florida, they will say, absolutely not, it has not nothing to do with funding because funding is set by state law.

Well, if you ask Hillsborough County Public Schools, they said they would say not so fast.

Here is how this all went down. Last week, Hillsborough Public Schools voted for the reopening of schools for virtual school only for the first four weeks of the school year.

[11:20:07]

Shortly thereafter, Florida's education commissioner sent a scathing letter to the superintendent saying that he had great concerns because what this school decided was against the emergency order that he issued, which requires schools to provide in-person instruction.

Now, in the past week, what has happened? According to the superintendent, he traveled to Tallahassee to try to iron things out so they could continue with their plan.

Yesterday, he tweeted the following. He said, quote, "The Department of Education made it clear that any model outside the emergency order would result in a negative financial impact."

And he goes on to say, "Let me be clear, our school board made an informed decision substantiated after local public health authorities."

So let me fill you in on that. During the school board meeting, what happened is they had medical experts talk and recommend and show the data to the school board members. And the recommendation was for in- person instruction not to happen because of the positivity rate.

Those experts were recommending that the county have a positivity rate of 5.3 percent or under. I checked this morning. The positivity rate, according to the Florida Department of Health, in the past two weeks for Hillsborough County, has been between 6.5 and 10 percent.

Now we did get a response from the Florida's Department of Education. Here is what they said. Quote, "We're glad Superintendent Davis worked hard to ensure the Hillsborough County school board decided to provide choice and flexibility to families and students."

Kate, what does this mean at the end of the day? This means schools in Hillsborough County will begin virtually on August 24th and then they will transition to in-person instruction on August 31st -- Kate?

BOLDUAN: No matter what the data says, apparently.

Rosa, thank you so much.

Coming up for us, President Trump continues to attack voting by mail. President Obama is now weighing in. That's next.

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[11:27:07]

BOLDUAN: If you haven't paid close attention to what has gone on with voting by mail, now is definitely the time to start. So many developments even in the last 24 hours that can and will impact the fall election.

First, you had President Trump admit in his own words that the reason he is opposed to funding the postal service is because he doesn't want vote by mail to happen in this country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (voice-over): Now they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all these millions and millions of ballots. Now, if we don't make a deal, that means they don't get the money. That means they can't have universal mail-in voting. It just can't happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: A few hours later, the president didn't back down under questioning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: They need that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all these millions and millions of ballots. And you said that would be fraudulent. So it sounds like you said --

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: No. I said it will end up being fraudulent. Because if you look at what's happened over the last few weeks, just look at the few instances where this has happened, it's turned out to be fraudulent.

(CROSSTALK)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Once again, the president makes these claims of fraud, but doesn't back them up with evidence.

Then, I guess you could call this irony, but it's more like hypocrisy. It was revealed President Trump and first lady, Melania Trump, requested mail-in ballots this week for Florida's upcoming primary.

Now, a legal fight is also brewing over mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania.

A federal judge there is demanding the Trump campaign provide proof to back up their claims of vote by mail leading to fraud in response to the lawsuit that the president's team filed to change how the team collects and counts mail-in ballots.

And that is not all. The U.S. Postal Service is now planning to remove hundreds of high-volume mail processing machines from postal offices, machines that would help process mail, including ballots, faster and more efficiently and effectively.

And as has been noted but worth repeating, that the new postmaster general leading these changes is a top RNC donor, a Trump appointee.

And just within the last hour, former President Obama is now weighing in on this very issue, saying this in a tweet:

"Everyone depends on the USPS, seniors for their Social Security, veterans for their prescriptions, small businesses trying to keep their doors open. They can't be collateral damage for an administration more concerned with suppressing the vote more than suppressing a virus."

Joining me right now is CNN's Kristen Holmes who is tasked with tracking all of this.

It's really unbelievable this is what is all happening here.

What is going on, Kristen?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, it appears to be the systematic degrading of the U.S. Postal Service just three months before a critical election where we know that millions of Americans, many of them for the first time, are expected to use that very postal service in order to cast their ballot.

[11:30:05]

And any one of the long list that you just gave, Kate, would have been cause for alarm.