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CNN Poll Shows Trump's Pandemic Approval Drops to 38 Percent; Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama Headline Night 3; Florida Teachers Union Lawsuit Against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is Back in Court Today After Mediation Falls Apart. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired August 19, 2020 - 10:00   ET

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

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They have moved on for that.

[10:00:01]

I think there might have been some disappointment, but I think very on -- or very early on, it was clear that there wasn't very much coming from the United States. I think there was one statement by Mike Pompeo from President Trump that really wasn't very much at all. In fact, I haven't heard anybody say about the two things that he did say.

They're really looking towards the European Union. They're looking towards Angela Merkel to see what happens to get some support. But, certainly, at this point, not towards the United States. Jim?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: Got you.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: Fred, thank you. We're so glad you're there.

SCIUTTO: A very good Wednesday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

HARLOW: I'm Poppy Harlow.

Well, a warning from the World Health Organization this morning and a message for young people around the world, you are not invincible. The WHO this morning says young people are increasingly driving the spread of COVID-19. One way to fight it, increasing the amount of testing in the country, of course, in this country, and everywhere.

And saliva-based testing could be game changer. A top researcher joined us last hour.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. MARTIN BURKE, ASSOCIATE DEAN OF RESEARCH, CARLE ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: We've done studies that give us very high confidence that the test is accurate and effective.

We are in an all-out blitz to try to make this as available as possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: So how do the Americans see the U.S. response? A new poll this morning show from CNN shows American's approval of President Trump's handling of the crisis at an all-time low. Seven in ten Americans embarrassed, in fact, at how the U.S. has handled this pandemic.

Let's begin with CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. So, Elizabeth, you look at this new polling, the other headline figure here is a drop in the number of Americans willing to get a vaccine when one is available. I mean, just over half, 56 percent, you need far more than that to make it effective.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. I think the assumption, Jim, at the beginning of this was that the folks, the scientists and the government officials developing a vaccine was, hey, we'll develop a vaccine, it will be -- hopefully, it will work, and people will get it. Well, that last part of it, that people will get it part, may not turn out to be true.

Let's look at some of the numbers you just referenced. So this is a poll CNN did August 12th through 15, asking the question, would try to get a coronavirus vaccine if it existed? 56 percent of respondents said yes. 40 percent said no. As you mentioned you cannot get really great community immunity when 40 percent of your people are not taking a vaccine. Even worst news is that we're headed in the wrong direction. Let's take a look at these numbers.

In May, CNN asked the same question and 66 percent of the respondents said, yes, I'll get a vaccine. Now, only 56 percent. So that is a ten- point drop in just a matter of a few months. That is not good. We've talked on our show, on your show, that the anti-vaxxers have been doing this very pedal to the metal campaign ever, really, ever since January saying say no to a COVID vaccine and there's basically been no response from the CDC or any other government agency to instill confidence in the vaccine.

Chelsea Clinton and I sat down and talked about this recently. It is a real problem when all people are hearing is the anti-vaccine news and they're not hearing the pro-vaccine news that you can see. That's a problem.

HARLOW: Yes. It's a big problem and you're totally right to highlight that. Elizabeth, thanks a lot for the reporting this morning.

The Washington Post this morning is reporting that Florida's education chief told school superintendents last week to be, quote, surgical, when dealing COVID-19 cases and not to close schools without talking about it with state officials first.

Let's discuss exactly what's happening there. Alberto Carvalho, Superintendent of Miami-Dade of Public Schools, is with us. Good morning. Thanks for being here.

ALBERTO CARVALHO, SUPERINTENDENT, MIAMI-DADE COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS: Good morning, Poppy. HARLOW: So, you've got remote learning is the plan and you're going to start that all across your school district starting at the end of the month, August 31st. You said, quote, rushing into a bad decision is far worse than being cautious.

As you have seen what happened at UNC with their reversal, what Notre Dame has decided to do, so many colleges moving sort of last minute online and the outbreaks that have happened in other schools, like in Georgia, for example, what does that tell you about when you think when Miami schools will be able to physical reopen?

CARVALHO: Well, considering what's happening in that county and UNC, I think that our approach is the right approach. We are being vindicated. We have made decisions that are science-informed, experts in the area of public health and medicine described and determine the gating criteria for us to move forward, which includes paying close attention to the positivity rate in our community, which, by the way, has been on a roller coaster.

But over the past three months, it was about 5 percent three months ago. It jumped to close to 30 percent. Now, we're experiencing a relatively good trend around 12 percent over 14 days. It would lower mortality and morbidity. Those are all good signs. But, look, we do not feel comfortable in bringing children and teachers back into the school house while the positivity rate is still above 10 percent.

[10:05:03]

So, we're going to start online on the 31st after a week of intensive training, single platform, making the experience very, very real, very organic, relying on continuous, synchronous teaching. I think we cannot compromise the health or well-being, the safety, the security of our kids or the ones who teach them.

HARLOW: You used an interesting word just there, Superintendent, and that is vindicated. It's sort of amazing to me that one would have to be vindicated in the fight over public health. The data should clearly just drive all of the decisions. I just wonder what that speaks to in terms of political pressure you felt. We know exactly where Governor DeSantis stands on wanting schools to open.

CARVALHO: Well, I certainly, personally, have not felt political pressure from any level, not from the state level, not from the federal level. I never felt intimidated over the potential loss of funding. I cried out the truth that that would impact, quite frankly, the most fragile students amongst us, the poor children, students with disabilities, English language learners, it did not make sense.

And we have been informed from the very beginning by the only type of information that should guide decisions about by reopening of schools in a gradual, protective way, which is science, data. That's why we determined the gating criteria that we would follow. That's why we're following it religiously. And that's why we continue to monitor.

Look, no one more than me, my principals and teachers, wants to welcome kids back into the school, but we know what's taking place and, quite frankly, we do not want to be Gwinnett County, we do not want to be UNC.

HARLOW: Yes. I get it. I get it. I guess part of the reason why I ask also is what I just mentioned, and that's The Washington Post reporting out this morning. So I'd like to get your take on it since you're in the middle of this. And they're reporting that Florida's education commissioner, Richard Corcoran, had a phone call with school district superintendents last week and urged you guys to be, quote, surgical, that's the word they're quoting him, with COVID-19 cases as opposed to sweeping, and to not just close the school when there are a handful of cases without talking to state officials first. Were you on that call?

CARVALHO: I was on that call. We certainly were encouraged to participate in a dialogue with the Department of Education regarding cases in our schools. I personally did not get a sense that we were to be guided by direction from Tallahassee.

look, I think, all along as superintendent, as a constitutional officer in the State of Florida, responsible for 41,000 employees and 350,000 kids, I think the best decisions are made at the local level in consultation with health officials recognizing local environmental conditions, and that's exactly what I plan to do.

HARLOW: Okay. So, clearly, you're going to make the decisions here for your district?

CARVALHO: Absolutely.

HARLOW: Thank you, Superintendent. Good luck.

CARVALHO: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: With us now, Dr. Anish Mahajan. He is the Chief Medical Officer at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. Doctor, good to have you on this morning.

I want to start first with what CNN found its polling regarding vaccines, that little more than half the country is willing to take a vaccine if it becomes available. Tell us how concerning that is from a public health perspective given that you need, really, the vast majority people to take it for it to tamp down the outbreak.

DR. ANISH MAHAJAN, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, HARBOR-UCLA MEDICAL CENTER: It's very concerning. The government and private industry have done a great job, in my view, of trying to accelerate the pace of testing candidate vaccines. Everybody knows we now have ongoing phase three trials to determine whether vaccines are effective. We heard from Dr. Fauci and other leaders that we probably will have vaccines available and mass produced even by early 2021. These are exactly the steps we need to take to fight this pandemic.

Now, of course, it all doesn't mean anything if we don't have shots going into arms and people actually taking the vaccine. So this is a very concerning issue.

SCIUTTO: Okay, let's talk about young people. The WHO warned yesterday, young people have now become the primary drivers of this spread. Tell us the significance of that in the big picture in terms of how the outbreak goes going forward.

MAHAJAN: Well, I think it's important for us to talk about how -- what we know about COVID spread. We know that from modeling that 80 percent of people with COVID are not actually spreading the virus all that much. What we know is that super spreader events are the primary driver of spreading coronavirus. We know that because see that in places where people are working close together, essential workers. We see that in nursing homes and jails.

Now, the big question for all of us is do children act as super spreaders.

[10:10:02]

And the data is still we don't know yet. What we do know is that young children under the age of five carry a lot of virus in their nose. But does that actually mean they're transmitting it? We don't have evidence just yet. We know that teenagers are just as effective transmitters as adults.

So this is a very complicated issue and I wouldn't make a broad sweeping generalization that children are spreading the virus and the main driver of the spread.

SCIUTTO: All right. Gosh, there's so much to learn about this as we go.

You are, of course, in Los Angeles. Schools resuming online for now, but a district there just announced it's going to launch testing and contact tracing for students, teachers, staff, et cetera as a step towards making in-person schooling possible and safe. How would that work? How extensively would you have to do that to make it safe enough for kids to go back in the classroom?

MAHAJAN: Very important question. I think what we have to say to ourselves is, any community where there's a fair, high amount of transmission of virus in the community, we just heard from the superintendent in Florida, too much transmission of COVID in the State of Florida to open schools in person. So even if you have contact tracing and testing, you can't do it. You can't open those schools when there's so much virus in the community.

And so we do need contact tracing and we do need testing in those areas of the country where the community transmission (INAUDIBLE). We can't start to reopen schools with appropriate social distancing. But it's not -- contact tracing and testing will not work if there're lots community-level transmission.

SCIUTTO: I see, so many steps necessary to take. Dr. Anish Mahajan, thanks very much.

MAHAJAN: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour, history tonight at the Democratic National Convention, Kamala Harris will accept the Democratic nomination for vice president. President Obama will issue a message to young voters. We're going to have the latest.

HARLOW: Also, collective outrage and confusion, thousands of business owners have filed lawsuits after discovering the insurance they've been counting on during the pandemic is not going to pay them a dime.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I take it as it comes, one day at a time. And the only way is to look to the future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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[10:15:00]

HARLOW: All right. Tonight, some of the Democratic Party's biggest names take the stage, kind of the virtual stage in the national convention tonight. Vice presidential pick Senator Kamala Harris, former President Barack Obama, former nominee Hillary Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are all set to speak.

SCIUTTO: Joining us now, former Hillary Clinton Campaign Manager, Patti Sollis Doyle, and New York Times National Political Correspondent Alex Burns. Thanks to both of you guys.

Patti, I wonder what you say to the criticism that there have been too many names from the party's old guard, Bill and Hillary Clinton, others like Colin Powell outside the party, generally, but more those voices than say, the AOCs of the world that energize the next generation of voters.

PATTI SOLLIS DOYLE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I don't know if that's a fair criticism and that I thought last night was just a beautiful evening for the Democratic Party in the roll call vote. I think one of Joe Biden's great strengths, if not his greatest strength, is his ability to connect with people -- people of all walks of life. That's why he's doing this, for the American people. And I thought the way the convention highlighted all of those people from across the country was really, really spectacular.

In terms of the old guard, I think the message that was being sent was that Joe Biden knows what he's doing. He's done this before. He has worked across the aisle. He has governed. He has spoken and dealt with leaders from around the world. Last night, it was about leadership, but it was also about people. So I don't think the criticism is fair.

HARLOW: Alex, we see, obviously, through this convention, Democrats making a play for Republican voters. They did it on Monday night with John Kasich, they did it last night with Colin Powell and this video featuring Cindy McCain. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CINDY MCCAIN, WIFE OF FORMER SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: It was his style of legislating and leadership that you don't find much anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: And, really, talking about the history of the decade's-long friendship between the late senator, John McCain, and Joe Biden.

At the same time, you still have Bernie Sanders pushing for the progressive wing of the party and trying to get them behind Joe Biden. It's an interesting needle to try to thread here. Can they do it effectively?

ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it is. And I do think that this is one of the tensions that exists within the Democratic Party and really within the mind of individual voters in the Democratic Party that people both do want significant, progressive change and they want the two parties to work together. This seems counterintuitive.

But when you talk to regular voters, we hear it on the Republican side too, that one of the reasons why people voted for President Trump in the primaries in 2016 was the sense that they wanted somebody who was going to, you know, go to Washington and sort of kick things into shape, but also sort of build compromise. Tthat obviously has not happened under this president.

So, the burden on Joe Biden is to, first, synthesize these ideas in his own speech and for his running mate, Senator Harris, to synthesize them in her speech this evening.

[10:20:08]

And then, obviously, to execute them in government if they win, that the burden of re-forging this better age of bipartisan cooperation and mutual good faith is always on the person who is saying, no, things really can be that way. It is always much, much easier to be the person who says, come on, that's ridiculous, we have not seen that in our lifetimes.

SCIUTTO: Patti, if -- and, listen, a lot of things went into the loss in 2016 for Democrats. But if the conventional wisdom is correct that some of that was not getting Democratic voters out enthusiastically to vote in numbers, particularly in those swing states, but also having a message to those independent voters who might have gone for Obama in 2008 but went to Trump in 2016. I just wonder, as you look at the plan here for the Biden-Harris campaign, have they sufficiently corrected those shortcomings from 2016 to put them over the top in 2020?

DOYLE: Look, I managed many campaigns, and I cannot imagine doing it under these circumstances of a global pandemic. And it is hard to get your base energized and get out the vote under these circumstances, obviously, and everyone is working within a new normal.

But I think that from the get-go, from the beginning of the primary season, there was a north star for Democrats and that was beating Donald Trump. And there is nothing that energizes the Democratic base more than Donald Trump's administration, the way he leads, his divisiveness and that still exists today, 18 months later after this process started, if not, more so given the circumstances that we're in now. The global pandemic, a health care crisis, an economic crisis, a reckoning on racial equality, I think he is the strongest energizer of our base.

HARLOW: Alex, for tonight, on the stage, a number of big names, obviously, from President Obama, et cetera. But from Senator Harris, what is the most compelling, important thing she could do in her remarks this evening to help that ticket?

BURNS: Look, she needs to introduce the country to who she is. There are a lot of people who followed her during the presidential campaign, but most of them are sort of ultra high information voters who really feel deeply connected to her in some way. And she does have a considerable national following.

But for most people, she is somebody who is a relatively distant figure who they have probably seen on television or read a headline about, but they don't know her life story in any real depth, they don't her accomplishments in office.

And I that think hearing her talk about what a President Biden might hope to accomplish and what, frankly, a Biden-Harris-led Democratic Party stands for is going to be an important message for people who are probably not that interested in Bill Clinton's version or even Joe Biden's version of what that party is about.

SCIUTTO: Yes, that's interesting, and defining it beyond, right, being the anti-Trump, right, what is the positive message.

Patti, Alex, good to have you both on, and we're going to keep up the conversation. A couple of months to go.

It is the day three, of course, of the Democratic National Convention tonight. As we said, Senator Kamala Harris, she will make history as she accepts the nomination for vice president, the first woman of color to do so for a major party.

Plus, hear from former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State and, of course, nominee, Hillary Clinton. Special coverage continues tonight starting at 7:00 Eastern Time live on CNN.

HARLOW: Well, there are new polls out this morning that show most Americans are embarrassed, that's the word that was used by the U.S. response to the COVID pandemic. What do those numbers mean for November, next.

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[10:25:00]

SCIUTTO: A lawsuit by the Florida Teachers Union against the governor, Ron DeSantis, over his plan to reopen schools back in court today after mediation, attempted mediation fell apart overnight.

HARLOW: Let's go to our Rosa Flores. She joins us from Florida with more. So what is going to take place today in the courtroom and, ultimately, what is the decision they're trying to get to?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Poppy, they're duking in that out right now in virtual court and what's going on is a virtual hearing for a temporary injunction. And what the teachers are arguing here is that it is unsafe and, therefore, unconstitutional for the state to reopen schools if it is unsafe, if the state cannot guarantee the safety and the security of the students and the teachers.

Now, the first witness on this virtual stand is a school board member from Hillsborough County. Now, you remember this story probably very clearly. This school board member testifying that her and her colleagues voted based on advice from medical experts not to reopen for in-person instruction in Hillsborough.

END