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Trump Holds Event in Wisconsin as Dems Kick Off Convention; Nancy Pelosi Calls for House to Return Early from Recess for USPS Vote; Video Shows Packed Private Party Near a Georgia College Campus; States Mull Legal Action Against White House Over USPS; Democrats Ramp Up Postal Service Investigation; A New CNN Poll Shows Race Tightening Between Trump And Biden Ahead of Democratic Convention. Aired 9-9:30a ET
Aired August 17, 2020 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[09:00:13]
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good Monday morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.
This Monday morning, we're following several major headlines. As the U.S. tops 170,000 deaths from coronavirus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling on the House to cut its recess short for a vote to block the administration for more cutbacks to the U.S. Postal Service.
Democrats are also calling for the postmaster general, who Trump appointed and Trump mega donor as well, Louis DeJoy, to testify under oath next week to face questions on his controversial new policy changes amid accusations they are intended to deliberately slow voting by mail.
HARLOW: Also this morning, at least half a dozen states are now seriously considering legal action.
And tonight a Democratic National Convention like you have never seen before. The party looking to try to ramp up support with virtual speeches and with no crowds in Milwaukee. This as a new poll out this morning from CNN shows that Biden's lead is tightening.
Next hour, the president heads for campaign events in Minnesota and Wisconsin. We're watching for any comments ahead of that. Let's begin at the White House with John Harwood.
John, there are many headlines. I do think that the CNN poll is really interesting that you now have the president within four points of Joe Biden. It has narrowed and it's right in line with the margin of error. Do we know why?
JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Not clear why. And other polls have shown a somewhat larger Biden lead. If you average all the polls together we show that Joe Biden's got a lead of roughly eight points in the polling aggregates. But Joe Biden's got a consistent lead and that's one of the reasons why we've got this battle over mail-in balloting, and the integrity of the Postal Service that Nancy Pelosi is trying to raise attention on.
And the president of the United States again this morning was on "FOX & Friends" casting doubt on mail-in balloting and casting doubt on the integrity of the Postal Service itself. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This has been one of the disasters of the world, the way it's been run. It's been run horribly. And we're going to make it good. Now what am I supposed to do? Let it continue to run badly? So if you fix it they say oh, he's tampering with the election. No, we're not tampering.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARWOOD: Now that the president was doing of course was justifying those service cuts that his postmaster general has been implementing that Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats are trying to stop. The president did say he was open to other methods, expanding other methods of voting, in-person voting, more polling locations. But this is where the Republican Party itself has been opposing these steps, early voting, expanded voting hours.
The reason for that is very simple, that over the last number of years as the country's changed culturally and demographically, public opinion and voter sentiment has moved toward the Democrats. And the response for Republicans has been to try to curtail measures to make it easier to vote because the votes are going against them more often than not, and that's what President Trump is trying to do with mail-in balloting.
SCIUTTO: Yes. I mean, it's a connect the dots here on a number of policy moves over the course of years.
John Harwood, thanks very much.
Let's get to Capitol Hill and the Democrats' plans to take on the changes at the post office. CNN congressional correspondent Sunlen Serfaty joins us.
So, Sunlen, Nancy Pelosi feeling the urgency it seems and getting members to come back. What are they going to do exactly and when?
SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jim. Certainly an important moment later this morning. The House Democrats will be hopping on a conference call together to sort out the details of the return early from their summer recess and Speaker Pelosi over the weekend really laying out the stakes.
She says, quote, "Lives, livelihood and the life of our American democracy are under threat from the president, that is why I'm calling on the House to return to session later this week to vote on Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Maloney's 'Delivering for America Act' which prohibits the Postal Service from implementing changes to operations or level of service it had in place on January 1, 2020."
And most likely we are told according to sources they will move to a vote on that bill in the House in a very rare Saturday session. Now this is all part of a very ramped up, very new, aggressive approach that we are starting to see House Democrats take this week including the House Oversight Committee calling for an emergency committee hearing one week from the day on Monday of next week.
They have called for the postmaster general. They have called for the chairman of the Postal Board to come in to testify on Capitol Hill about all of these problems. Additionally just this morning, two Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee, they're calling on the FBI to look into whether any crimes were committed by the postmaster general and others in charge, amid all of these policy changes.
[09:05:06]
So certainly, Jim and Poppy, tons of movement for House Democrats over here on Capitol Hill, especially when they return early from their summer recess and really underscores how they're trying to ramp up their aggressive approach in taking this on.
HARLOW: Sunlen, before you go, I mean, how notable the person getting all the attention that they're going to call, DeJoy, next to him you're going to see or they're calling for the head of the Board of Governors here on all of this to talk, and it's notable, is it not, that the Board of Governors, Republicans and Democratic governors, have both been saying we need $25 billion to shore up the Postal Service to actually handle mail-in voting correctly, right?
SERFATY: That's absolutely right, Poppy, and I think that is why the pressure just increases on potentially the testimony on Monday, why you have Democrats certainly putting much more importance on that hearing, calling it an emergency committee hearing, wanting to see these two, not only the postmaster general but as you rightly point the chairman of the board there answering questions in front of cameras as so many Americans, voters and people across the country are worried about these changes at the post office.
HARLOW: For sure. Sunlen, thanks very much. Good to see you.
As students return to university across the country, we want you to take a look at this video. OK. Let's roll it. This shows a packed off- campus party near the University of North Georgia. You don't see many people wearing masks, although it's hard to see their faces, I get it, it's dark. But face coverings we know are not mandatory in Georgia.
SCIUTTO: Yes. And you wonder how common this scene is at college campuses. CNN's Nick Valencia is in Atlanta.
So, Nick, what is the school saying about the party, and to our knowledge, is this an isolated incident or something that you're seeing more of?
NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we're starting to see more of these videos emerge online, Jim and Poppy. University of North Georgia in Dahlonega, Georgia, officially starting classes today but the partying started over the weekend.
These shocking images that you're seeing as Poppy mentioned, people seemingly not social distancing, not wearing masks. We should mention there is no current mask mandate in the state of Georgia but the university replying to these -- this party that they saw over the weekend saying that they are disappointed and that everyone, quote, "has an individual responsibility to stop the spread of the virus."
Look, guys, this party happening as the seven-day moving average of new cases in the state of Georgia is trending upwards, hovering around 3,000 new cases.
The moving average of deaths over the last seven days also trending upwards here in Georgia and there's one school district in particular that's facing a lot of challenges, that Cherokee County School District about an hour north of metro Atlanta, where I spoke to one parent this morning who says that, although one of her children has been entered into the digital learning program, her fourth grader is being forced to attend face-to-face, putting her child she says in danger.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SABRINA CLAIBORNE, PARENT OF STUDENT IN CHEROKEE COUNTY, GEORGIA: My daughter is very concerned. She's already concerned about why mom has to get up and go out of the house just to go to work every day. Being in a new district and already having to deal with, you know, learning new people but also wondering what's going to happen once she gets in the classroom with this virus.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VALENCIA: The school district has repeatedly declined our request for an interview, but last week, I spoke to a teacher and parent who says that people in the district can be divided into believers and non- believers. It really is saying something that here we are six months, guys, into the pandemic and there's still people who don't believe that this is a real thing -- Jim, Poppy.
SCIUTTO: A lot of disinformation out here and disinformation works, sadly.
Nick Valencia, thanks very much.
Joining me now is Dr. Megan Ranney. She's emergency physician and researcher and associate professor of emergency medicine at Brown University.
Doctor, great to have you on. You've written that the U.S. has not shown the will power to control the virus. I wonder, when you look at those videos of college kids together and it appears at least anecdotally that that's not an isolated event, what are you thinking when that happens and what does that mean as school continues in the fall?
DR. MEGAN RANNEY, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN AND RESEARCHER: So we have two separate things here. We have the colleges which are going back to school and then we've got the elementary, middle and high schools. The colleges, it is just not paying attention to human psychology, if you think you're going to be able to put those kids back together and not have them go and party.
Any of us who were young adults know what it's like to be in your late teens and early 20s. It's up to those colleges to make it easy for those kids to do the right thing, to do regular testing, have mask mandates, have masks easily available, and if needed, to shut down those campuses.
For our younger kids, for our high school students, middle school students and elementary school students, that's on us as parents and on teachers. If the community rates of COVID are too high, it is simply not safe to reopen those kids' schools, and listen, I'm a parent.
[09:10:01]
I want my kids to be back in school, but if I were living in Georgia, where the rates are as high as they are, again, well over 300 per 100,000, I would be unlikely to be sending my kids back to physical school.
SCIUTTO: Yes. Now the flipside, right, is, you know, communities with high rates, not safe but as Dr. Fauci and others have said that if the community has the outbreak under control, it can be safe with mitigation. And I understand you decided to send your own kids back to school. Is it based on that measure and how should parents around the country look at that? Right? If there's -- well, my community has it under control, should my kids be able to go back to school?
RANNEY: Yes, Jim, it's a really difficult question, and there are no clear black-and-white right answers, but in general, yes, if one's community has COVID under control, so under about 100 cases per 100,000 or under a 5 percent positivity, and there's mandatory masking in schools and there are protocols for testing symptomatic kids or teachers and better yet protocols for testing the asymptomatic kids, because we know that about 40 percent of kids are asymptomatic, and your family is not super high risk.
If all those things are in place, then it may make sense to send your children back to school, and that's the position that I'm in.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
RANNEY: I'm lucky to be in one of the few communities in the United States right now.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
RANNEY: Where I think it is safe to send my kids back to school.
(CROSSTALK)
SCIUTTO: So why isn't that happening nationally?
RANNEY: Yes, go ahead.
SCIUTTO: I mean, you just cited what are the CDC guidelines, right, positivity rate under 5 percent, 100 per 100,000. I mean, these are out there. Why isn't it just happening around the country then where folks, OK, let's look at the numbers, we meet the standards, we don't? Why isn't that happening around the country?
RANNEY: Same reason we don't have a mask mandate around the country, same reason we heard yesterday that a student went back to school in Oklahoma despite a positive test and supposed to be on quarantine. The kid was asymptomatic and the parents thought it was OK for him to go back. It's because we have not been consistent with our public health messaging and because on our individual state and on a federal level we still lack national strategy and consistent messaging.
SCIUTTO: Yes. It's amazing this far in. The guidelines are out there.
Dr. Ranney, always good to have you on and good luck to you and your family.
RANNEY: Thank you, Jim.
SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour, at least half a dozen states say they are looking at legal action now to stop the Trump administration from slowing mail service in the run-up to the election. The North Carolina attorney general will join us next, right in the middle of it.
HARLOW: Also the pressure is on to rally support as the Democratic National Convention kicks off tonight, and a new CNN poll out this morning shows the race is getting tighter.
Also California facing multiple crises, coronavirus, record-breaking heat and wildfires. We'll have a live update from there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:15:00]
SCIUTTO: Welcome back. Several states now say they're considering legal action against the Trump administration over new operational changes taking place inside the U.S. Postal Service. North Carolina, one of those states considering such action. Joining me now is the state's Attorney General Josh Stein. Mr. Stein, thanks so much for taking time this morning.
JOSH STEIN, NORTH CAROLINA ATTORNEY GENERAL: Jim, pleasure to be with you.
SCIUTTO: So first, let's begin on those lawsuit. Are you going to join forces with other Attorney Generals and sue the administration? Have you decided?
STEIN: We are exploring our legal options. A number of states share the concerns. The Postal Service is the definition of an essential service. It's a --
SCIUTTO: Yes --
STEIN: Life-line to the rule in Carolina, small businesses depend on it. In an era of pandemic, it is a way for people's voice to be heard in this election by voting, and so we will protect the postal service this cycle.
SCIUTTO: This morning, the president just a few minutes ago said that this is just about making the Postal Service more efficient. Do you believe him or do you suspect the president is trying to restrict mail-in voting because he sees political advantage?
STEIN: The president last week admitted that he did not want to provide funding for the Postal Service because he wanted to make it harder for people to vote absentee. Those were the words he spoke out loud. And you combine that with his political appointee donor Postmaster General taking a series of actions, all of which have the effect of slowing down mail delivery. This is the cause of our grave concern.
SCIUTTO: I want to show you what some North Carolina voters received in the mail this past week, which I know you're aware of. It's an absentee ballot request form, it came from the Trump campaign, I believe we have an image of it, and has, well, the president's face on there, Trump victory campaign slogan. What is this exactly?
STEIN: It's a shame. It's a shame. It's hypocrisy. He's making false and unfounded assertions that there's widespread fraud, when there's no evidence. He's making a false distinction between mail-in voting and absentee voting, when they are the same thing. His own legal filings in federal court admit they are the same thing. In North Carolina, it is actually called No Excuse Absentee Voting. Anyone --
SCIUTTO: Yes --
STEIN: Who wants to vote by mail can do it. All you have to do is put in your request, and if you put in your request today, in North Carolina, we're the first state in the country, 18 days from now, the ballot will be mailed to you and you can have your vote counted or put into the box in mid-September.
SCIUTTO: Yes, so much of what the president does is about disinformation. It's about raising doubts, et cetera. You have an important job there, as the attorney general. Is it working in North Carolina? Is it confusing voters? Is it reducing interest in mail-in voting?
STEIN: Well, it has not reduced interest. Mail-in vote requests are up eight or nine-fold from where we were four years ago, and I think that's obviously driven by the pandemic.
SCIUTTO: Yes --
[09:20:00] STEIN: But the damage he's doing is to really the fabric of our
democracy. The way our system works is, we have peaceful transfer of power between parties, and have done so successfully since our founding because people have faith that the final result reflects --
SCIUTTO: Yes --
STEIN: The will of our voters, and he's --
SCIUTTO: Yes --
STEIN: Trying to damage that belief, and it's incredibly harmful.
SCIUTTO: Yes, and as you say, it's often in his words themselves. So Congress, Nancy Pelosi says she's going to bring Congress back Saturday, to take urgent action. What does Congress have to do to fix this problem, or to prevent really a further, you know, trimming of the Post Office's ability to handle that increased demand? What do you need from Congress now?
STEIN: Congress plays a critical role. They provide oversight so they can make sure that it's not been mismanaged, and they provide funding, and I urge them to do both of those things. There's a role for state legislatures. They need to review their laws to make sure that if somebody postmarks their mail-in ballots by election day, and it gets their days afterwards, that vote still counts because a lot of states, the law says it has to have arrived on election day --
SCIUTTO: Yes --
STEIN: Even if you mailed it in a week earlier. And then ultimately, though, Jim, it's the voters. The voters have to have confidence and know their vote will count. They just have to participate.
SCIUTTO: Yes --
STEIN: In North Carolina, it's incredibly easy, you can vote on election day safely. They're going to have all kinds of protective measures in place, 17 days of early voting including two weekends, and if you want to vote by mail for any reason, you can do that.
Your ballot will be mailed to you in 19 days, if you send in your request, and you can either put it in the post and track it through the state board's website to make sure it got there or you can hand deliver it to the County Board of Elections any time before election day. So people need to know, they can vote --
SCIUTTO: Right --
STEIN: Their vote will count and it will reflect the will.
SCIUTTO: Well, I'm glad you said that. We're going to be doing that as often as we can, is get the information. If you're in North Carolina, listen to what the man says, you have multiple ways to vote. Don't listen to the disinformation, listen to the facts. Josh Stein, thanks so much for coming on this morning. STEIN: Jim, appreciate it.
HARLOW: Yes, really important interview there. Molly Ball is here, national correspondent for "Time", an author of "The New York Times" bestseller "Pelosi". Congrats on the book again, Molly, good to have you.
MOLLY BALL, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, TIME: Thanks so much, great to be here.
HARLOW: Can we begin with this sort of remarkable exchange between Mark Meadows; White House Chief of Staff and our Jake Tapper yesterday. They had about a half-hour interview, people should watch the entire thing. But then there was this moment about any evidence of widespread mail-in voter fraud of which there is none. Let's just roll the tape.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK MEADOWS, CHIEF OF STAFF, WHITE HOUSE: They say, hey, by the way --
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST, THE LEAD: There's no evidence of widespread voter fraud, though.
MEADOWS: That's not --
TAPPER: But there's no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
MEADOWS: There's no -- there's no -- there's no evidence that there's not either. That's the definition of fraud, Jake.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: What? There is no evidence that there's not either. I mean, has the bar completely changed here for the White House and Republicans? You've got to like disprove something that was never there anyways?
BALL: Well, you know, this is kind of the standard that has been created since literally day one of the Trump administration, right, when you remember, the president began insisting that he actually won the popular vote because of these imaginary claims of fraud for which there was no evidence.
There was no way for them to substantiate it. But he just kept claiming it, and this is obviously a pattern for this president, that something doesn't actually have to be true for him to say it over and over and over again, until it just sort of becomes part of his reality, even if it's not part of the reality that we all live in.
So, and interestingly, you know, there have been isolated cases where fraud in absentee balloting did affect elections. There was a North Carolina congressional race a few years ago --
HARLOW: Sure, 2018. BALL: That was --
HARLOW: Yes --
BALL: But you never hear Republicans talk about that one in part because it was a Republican-driven voter fraud scheme.
HARLOW: How big over the weekend though, the change that you apparently now -- I mean, you do have now Schumer saying that, you know, that Democratic-led house, Pelosi is open to a standalone bill on funding USPS.
In fact, Steve Cortez, a Trump surrogate said on "Fox" yesterday that the White House is now open to that, and it sounds like the Senate is. So how big a shift is that, that as they come back -- if McConnell calls the Senate back, the house is going to come back, that at least there is somewhat of an OK, we're open to a standalone bill here to fund USPS?
BALL: Yes, you know, I think the Democrats sense that they have the politics on their side on this, and the way you see Republicans behaving backs that up. The Postal Service is a tremendously popular institution, and it's something that touches literally every American where they live.
People like getting the mail. People notice when the mail doesn't come on any particular day, especially when so many of us are stuck at home, waiting for packages, waiting for letters, even waiting for junk mail, just to have something to do over the --
HARLOW: Yes --
[09:25:00]
BALL: Course of the day. So, I think for a lot of Democrats, they feel like look, the President Trump allegedly trying to cheat in the election isn't new. It's what they impeached him for, but this is something that hits home to the American people in a much more accessible way.
This is something people can relate to much more urgently, and I think you see evidence of that in the protests over the weekend, and in just the tremendous amount of public concern that has been flooding, you know, every member of the house and Senate over people's worry about the Postal Service.
HARLOW: You write in your book, Molly, here's just one quote, "the story of Nancy Pelosi is the story of an extraordinary woman who shattered the marble ceiling." You go on to say "Pelosi would demonstrate it was not Trump's Washington. It was hers." She's flexing those muscles right now, is she not, with calling back the house?
BALL: She is, but you know, as always, and as with impeachment, she has to juggle a lot of competing imperatives. This is the week of the Democratic Convention, and so, you know, as a party, they want to show that they're one team and not create a distraction to that. I'm sure that a lot of people have been in touch over the weekend over, you know, how can the house best push this forward without taking away from the infomercial that the party as a whole and the Joe Biden campaign is trying to put on.
And there's also -- you know, you have a left wing of the caucus that has always wanted more aggressive oversight, that even up to and after impeachment felt that more could have been done, more investigations, faster pace of all of these oversight efforts.
So she's always had that left flank pushing to try to get her to do more, and I think this reflects that, too, saying even though this is on the eve of the election, I mean, everybody would prefer to be out campaigning and putting a happy face toward the -- forward for the American people, this is just too urgent to let stand, particularly because it does affect the election.
HARLOW: Molly Ball, good to have you. Thanks so much.
BALL: Thank you.
SCIUTTO: Well, as convention week kicks off, a new reality for Democrats, a new CNN poll shows Biden's lead narrowing. We're going to give you all the details, next.
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