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Joe Biden Officially Trump's Challenger; Democratic Leaders Rally Around Biden, Slam Trump; Jill Biden Praises Her Husband, Never Mentions Trump; Postal Service Backs Down on Changes Ahead of Election; Trump: Mail-In Voting May Lead to Rigged Election; Senate Report Details 2016 Trump Campaign Contacts with Russia; U.S. Covid-19 Cases Down 10 Percent from Last Week; Schools Struggling with Return to In-Person Classes. Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired August 19, 2020 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Delaware is proud to cast its 32 votes for our favorite son and our next president.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Our friend Delaware's Joe Biden.
JOE BIDEN, U.S. DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Thank you very, very much from the bottom of my heart. Thank you all. It means the world to me and my family and I'll see you on Thursday. Thank you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: And with that Joe Biden is officially the Democratic nominee for U.S. President.
Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us here in the United States and all around the world. I'm Rosemary Church.
Well the second night of the Democratic National Convention kicked off with 17 keynote speakers in support of Joe Biden. Instead of designating one rising star in the party to deliver the address, the Democrats decided to break from tradition and have a diverse group give messages on how they think Biden will move America forward. And for the first time in history the convention featured a virtual roll call vote. It showed delegation from all 57 states and territories cast their votes for Biden.
Well the moment also marked a political high point for Biden who had sought the presidency twice before and fell short until now. Some of the Democratic Party's key figures used their platform to unite their party around Biden and attacked President Donald Trump's leadership.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If you want a President who defines the job as spending hours a day watching that spend hours TV and zapping people on social media, he's your man. Denying, distracting, and demeaning works great if you're trying to entertain and inflame. But in a real crisis, it collapses like a house of cards.
JOHN KERRY, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: When this President goes overseas it's not a goodwill mission it's a blooper real. He breaks up with our allies and writes love letters to dictators. America deserves a president who is looked up to, not laughed at.
SALLY YATES, FORMER ACTING U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: From the moment President Trump took office, he's used his position to benefit himself rather than our country. He's trampled the rule of law, trying to weaponize our Justice Department to attack his enemies and protect his friends. He treats our country like it's his family business. This time bankrupting our nation's moral authority at home and abroad.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: And Biden now has another key Republican ally. Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COLIN POWELL, FORMER U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Joe Biden will be a President we'll all be proud to salute. With Joe Biden in the White House you will never doubt that he will stand with our friends and stand up to our adversaries, never the other way around. He'll trust our diplomats and our intelligence community not the flattery of dictators and despots. He will make it his job to know when anyone dares to threaten us. He will stand up to our adversaries with strength and experience. They will know he means business.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: And Biden's wife, Jill, put the focus on coronavirus and schools as she spoke from the Delaware classroom where she once taught. Delivering a personal appeal for her husband.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JILL BIDEN, WIFE OF THE U.S. DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: As an American, I am heartbroken by the magnitude of this loss, by the failure to protect our communities, by every precious and irreplaceable life gone. Like so many of you, I'm left asking how do I keep my family safe. The burdens we carry are heavy. And we need someone with strong shoulders. I know that if we entrust this nation to Joe, he will do for your family what he did for ours. Bring us together and make us whole.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: CNN senior political analyst Mark Preston joins me now from Washington, D.C. Good to see you.
MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning, good morning, Rosemary. [04:05:00]
CHURCH: So Joe Biden accepted the Democratic presidential nomination. No surprise there. And is wife Jill spoke and compared a broken family to a broken nation that could be fixed with love, understanding and compassion. So what else did she say and will her message resonate with voters?
PRESTON: Well you know, it's interesting what she didn't say, is she didn't talk about Donald Trump. And so we heard a lot about Donald Trump last night from speakers trying to set up the comparison of Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. So they set Donald Trump up last night as being somebody who's not relatable to people. Somebody who only cares about himself. And then we see today -- we saw the speakers really trying to focus on Joe Biden being a person, somebody with great morals.
In this case we hear Joe Biden talking about how they actually met and how she, you know, came to become the mother to his two boys. You know, who had tragically lost their mother and Joe Biden tragically lost his wife, you know, a few years earlier. So I think what we saw today from Joe Biden is a humanizing factor. She tried to talk about her husband in just very simple terms. But also in terms that would try to connect with I think Americans across the country.
CHURCH: Right, and then Cindy McCain participated in an eight-minute convention video celebrating the unlikely friendship between her late husband Senator John McCain and Joe Biden. What impact might a video like this have on those disgruntled Republicans out there?
PRESTON: Yes, I think it was interesting that this was the continued thread that we saw being woven last night from John Kasich and others. We saw three prominence Republican women who came out for Joe Biden. But what we saw tonight to your point is we saw Cindy McCain really connecting Joe Biden to John McCain on a level of friendship, a level of, again, you're showing pictures there, this idea of honor, and service to the country. And I think that was done rather effectively. And then, of course, we saw Colin Powell come out, the former Secretary of State a Republican, who come out and endorse Joe Biden as well.
So again, this connective thread that we're going to see throughout, you know, the next couple of nights where Joe Biden not only appealing to liberals in his party but trying appeal to disaffected Republicans and independents here in the U.S.
CHURCH: Yes, and then tough words from former President Bill Clinton who said the oval office should be a command center not a storm center. What else did he say? And will his message of Trump chaos resonate beyond the traditional Democratic voter?
PRESTON: He's really trying I think appeal to those Democrats, those die-hard Democrats who might be out in the Midwest who might be upset with the way that Washington is running. But they liked the Bill Clinton policies of his time that Bill Clinton, you know, was a fairly steady hand at the presidency, even all the commotion he did create for it. So I think that is who he reached out to.
But it's interesting that he was not necessarily put on the docket to speak tonight to try to reach out to young voters, we saw that from AOC who came in and ended up, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who came in and did one of the nominating speeches for Bernie Sanders.
CHURCH: Mark Preston, many thanks to you for joining us. Appreciate it.
PRESTON: Thanks so much, Rosemary.
CHURCH: Well, now to a stunning reversal by the U.S. postmaster general. Louis DeJoy says all changes being made to the Postal Service will be suspended until after election day on November 3rd. This after weeks of criticism that those changes were being enforced to undermine mail-in voting. It also comes as 20 states have announced plans to file federal lawsuits over potential mail delays. The USPS and DeJoy say changes are meant to improve the agency's dire financial situation.
Well, for months President Trump has been railing against mail-in voting, baselessly asserting it will lead to voter fraud. He made that same claim again on Tuesday at the White House.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It'll end up being a rigged election or they will never come out with an outcome. They'll have to do it again. And nobody wants that. And I don't want that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: And after that event the President the president flew to Yuma, Arizona to give a wide-ranging speech to a crowd where many people were either not wearing masks or wearing them incorrectly and as you can see not social distancing. The President pushed for four more years in the White House and targeted his opponent.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Joe Biden is the puppet of the radical left-wing movement that seeks the complete elimination of America's borders and boundaries. They want to take the world down. They don't want to have borders. They want to have sanctuary cities. Lots of bad things they want, following orders from his boss, I guess his new boss is Bernie Sanders. Can you believe that? Crazy Bernie.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[04:10:00]
CHURCH: Well, the President made no mention of a damning bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee into Russian election interference in 2016. It details how the Trump campaign welcomed Russian help revealing new information about contacts between Russian officials and associates of President Trump during and after the campaign. CNN's Jim Sciutto takes us through the main points.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: The president's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, had repeated contacts with Russians tied to military intelligence, that he repeatedly shared proprietary campaign information with those Russian contacts. That in the words of this bipartisan committee created opportunities for Russian intelligence to interfere and they go onto say this.
Quoting here. Taking as a whole, Manafort's high level access and willingness to share information within individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence service, particularly Konstantin Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counter-intelligence threat.
Grave counter-intelligence threat from the president's campaign chairman. And to be clear, Wolf, it is not only Manafort who they described as being involved here. Roger Stone, repeated contacts with WikiLeaks, which U.S. intelligence views as basically a middleman, in sharing stolen information to get out in the public eye here, giving, according to the committee, advanced warnings to the President about these releases, and even composing pro-Russian tweets for the President. Roger Stone, there.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: Well despite the findings coming out of in that bipartisan report Democrats and Republicans have still drawn different conclusions with some Republicans and the White House saying it reaffirms there was no collusion while the lead Democrat in the committee urged Americans to read the report and judge for themselves.
Well, coronavirus cases in the U.S. Larry Sabato is the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. He joins me now from Charlottesville, Virginia. Good to have you with us.
LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Thank you, Rosemary.
CHURCH: And Larry, of course the big political issue right now is President Trump's undermining of the U.S. Postal Service and mail-in voting. For now those change that were slowing down deliveries have been put on hold but many voters still wonder if their ballot will get counted. There is a lot of concern. Where do things stand and what are the political ramifications of all of this?
SABATO: Well there is no way that the postmaster general and the Trump people would have agreed to stop this process unless the heat had become unbearable. Even Republicans were coming on board with those opposed to these changes. At least before election day. So they have had to pull back.
But you just noted the key thing. They managed to get out there a message to a large majority probably of Democrats who had planned to vote by mail. Now they wonder what should they do? They are not going to vote on election day, most of them. They want to vote by mail. But the Trump people and the postmaster general have undermined their confidence in the system. So Democrats have got to spend some time rebuilding that confidence and making sure that the changes they have pledged not to fulfill actually stay undone until after the election.
CHURCH: Right, and Larry, a Senate Intelligence Committee report just out details the security risks posed by Donald Trump's 2016 campaign with its Russia contacts. What are the political ramifications of this and ultimately do voters care about this issue?
SABATO: I'm not sure that voters care anymore. They should care. But I don't think they are focused on it. And we have had this intermittently for years now. But the facts coming out of the Senate Intelligence Committee are pretty disturbing to have the campaign manager of one of the candidates, Donald Trump who won, working for years with someone who was a Russian agent.
You know, in the old days that would have been the end not just of the campaign manager but of the candidate. We live in a different era and I think probably it was difficult to manage this so that the truth came out in a way that would be powerful and would have an impact on Trump.
CHURCH: And Larry, just finally how surprised are you that with the handling or mishandling of the pandemic, high unemployment, racism, division in this country that Joe Biden wouldn't be further ahead in the polls. Because we're seeing him really only a few point ahead of Donald Trump.
SABATO: Yes, that's true. Some polls like CNN had Biden up only four.
[04:15:00]
But I believe in polling averages and the average for Biden is actually around 8.5 percent which is remarkable. That's an Obama level victory. Now will it be the same in November? I have no idea. We'll have to watch.
Look, we live in an era of really extreme polarization. It takes a lot to pull anybody away from Trump or to pull anybody away from Biden. So we've got to live with that and recognize that the old days when you had landslide of 60 percent or even for that matter 55 percent they're gone at least for the near future, the foreseeable future. They are gone.
CHURCH: Yes, it's going to be a tight race for sure. Larry Sabato, always a pleasure to chat with you. Many thanks.
SABATO: Thank you, Rosemary.
CHURCH: Coronavirus cases in the U.S. are finally showing downward trends. Coming up we will look at whether masks and social distancing are finally having an impact. Back in a moment.
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[04:20:00]
CHURCH: The novel coronavirus has now infected 22 million people globally and it has killed nearly 800,000. That's according to Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. has the world's highest number of coronavirus infection and deaths followed by Brazil and the Pan American Health Organization says the Americas account for 64 percent of the world's COVID-19 deaths. That's despite having only about 13 percent of the world's population.
Well, in the U.S. coronavirus cases are trending down with the current average dropping 10 percent from last week. Monday marked the lowest day of new cases since June 24th. That's according to Johns Hopkins University. But the country has averaged more than 1,000 deaths a day for the last three weeks. CNN's Erica Hill has the latest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ERICA HILL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Masks and social distancing having an impact. New cases in the U.S. down 10 percent over the past week.
DR. PETER HOTEZ, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: There are some states that have done the hard work to really bring this epidemic into what I call containment mode.
HILL: New York state marking an 11th straight day with a positivity rate of less than 1 percent. The situation not as encouraging on college campuses.
REEVES MOSELEY, STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT, UNC CHAPEL HILL: UNC was kind of for lack of a better phrase, a guinea pig for all, it's both nationally and across state of North Carolina.
HILL: UNC Chapel Hill facing blowback after several clusters and quarantine dorms nearing capacity forced undergrad classes to move online just one week into fall semester. The chancellor blames off campus activities. The school paper says UNC has a, quote, cluster "F" on its hands.
MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH AND POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: I am quite certain that was going to happen over the next 4 to 6 weeks is an explosion of cases in young adults and adolescents as we reopen colleges, universities and schools which will then spill over to the general population.
HILL: Notre Dame moving all classes online for the next two weeks citing a dramatic increase in new cases. Ithaca College in upstate New York shifting to fully remote learning. Reversing plans to bring students back in October.
The SEC not making a decision on fans for the fall football season. Punting to individual schools to make that call.
More quarantines at some Florida grade schools after reopening. Miami- Dade public schools which began remote learning August 31st announcing nearly 600 employees have tested positive for the virus. AUSTIN BEUTNER, SUPERINTENDENT, LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT:
If we want to keep schools from becoming a petri dish and we want to keep all the schools safe, we need to test and trace at schools.
HILL: That's the plan in Los Angeles for the district's 700,000 students and 75,000 staff. But in many areas testing and the turnaround time for results is still a hurdle. A new saliva test granted emergency use authorization by the FDA could help.
ADM. BRETT GIROIR, U.S. ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR HEALTH: So it skips many steps upfront. So it makes it much more amenable to be using as a surveillance tool like in schools or universities. And it also preserves some of the reagents that are relatively scarce.
HILL: A new study in Germany finds the virus was likely spread on a flight in March before most airlines mandated masks. Travel still a concern especially in areas that are doing well.
DR. JAY VARMA, SENIOR ADVISOR FOR PUBLIC HEALTH, NYC MAYOR'S OFFICE: Over the past month about 15 percent to 20 percent of all of the cases in New York City have occurred in people who recently traveled to somewhere outside of New York City.
HILL: The city recommending families who have recently traveled to hot spots should quarantine before sending their kids to school.
(on camera): Also here in New York City in terms of travel the mayor signing an executive order that requires hotels and short term rental companies have travelers fill out quarantine forms if they are coming from any of the 35 states and territories which are on that travel quarantine list for the tri-state area. Folks from those areas must quarantine for 14 days. Just added to the list on Tuesday, Alaska and Delaware.
In New York, I'm Erica Hill, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: Dr. Anthony Fauci says the United States is collaborating with scientists around the world to try and manage the pandemic. They join a call sponsored by the World Health Organization every week.
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DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We have scientific collaborations with our colleagues in Europe, the European Union, Australia, Canada, Mexico. We have clinical trial networks in South Africa, in Brazil, in Chile, in Peru. So there's an awful lot of international activity going on.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Dr. Celine Gounder is a CNN medical analyst and former New York City assistant commissioner of health. She also hosts the podcast "Epidemic" and joins me now from New York. Always good to chat with you, doctor. DR. CELINE GOUNDER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: My pleasure.
CHURCH: So we are seeing schools at all levels now battle COVID-19 outbreaks, another college, Notre Dame has just now taken its classes online due to infections there.
[04:25:00]
What is the best way for them to work out what to do in the absence of any real guidance out there?
GOUNDER: Rosemary, I think the big picture is that we need to look at this as a societal problem. Not a problem that's limited to certain businesses like bars and restaurants or limited to certain schools but rather something that's happening across the community. And as long as you have spread throughout the community you are going to have spread on college campuses and other schools. You're going to have spread in bars and restaurants and other facilities.
So this is really a problem that needs to be addressed as a community problem and that hasn't been done in a concerted fashion nationwide all at once even now. And so we continue to play this game of whack-a- mole where we beat down the problem in one place and then see it pop up in yet another.
CHURCH: Right, and then of course, while this is happening new cases across the country are coming down slightly which, of course, is a good thing. But still at around 40,000 a day and deaths are still averaging a thousand on a daily basis. How is this possible six months into this pandemic and do you think that the declining cases may be perhaps more people wearing masks?
GOUNDER: I do think masks have had an impact. I do think people are finally hearing the message that masks work to protect yourself, to protect others against transmission of the virus. So that certainly has helped here. We are scaling up testing. But even now we still don't have nearly the level of testing we should have. And in many parts of the country the rates of transmission, the rates of new cases are so high, options like pool testing where you combine a couple different specimens into one and test it as a batch, simply are not feasible. Because there are such high rates of transmission. So there's a lot that needed to be done that still hasn't been done.
CHURCH: I guess there's a lot of hope on that saliva test. Isn't there? I mean, do you support that and see that as a possible game changer here?
GOUNDER: I do think the saliva test is a game changer. This allows us to spare ourselves using those nasal swab. So the huge savings right there. That was a rate limiting step. We were running out of those. So to not need those, to not need really any special specimen collection kits, to be able to use the routine laboratory chemicals and machines that we already have on hand and not need to procure anything special makes a big difference.
CHURCH: Doctor, a new study show immunity may last a little longer than previously thought, perhaps three months or more. And we're also learning that the threshold for herd immunity could be lower than previously thought, at around 50 percent of the population. How significant is all this for reaching some level of herd immunity given that a mask is about all we've got, plus that possibility of herd immunity or can that only happen once there's a vaccine?
GOUNDER: Well, I think the way to think about herd immunity is that you're really layering different things, different protective interventions to reduce everybody's risk of spread. So masks are actually a big part of that. But if you combine masks and social distancing and the fact that some people have had the virus and are at least in the short term probably immune to reinfection, that can have a dramatic reduction -- yield a dramatic reduction in transmission of the virus which could buy us time until we have that vaccine.
CHURCH: It always gets back to that mask. Doesn't it? We just need to wear them. Dr. Celine Gounder, thank you as always.
GOUNDER: My pleasure.
CHURCH: Well, the U.S. stock market has just seen its first record since the pandemic began. That came when the S&P 500 closed at an all- time high Tuesday. The index is the broadest measure of Wall Street. It had been hovering near the record for a number of days. The record matters as it shows it only took Wall Street five months to go from the most recent lows after the pandemic selloff in March to a new peak.
Well, still ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM, a rising Democratic star delivers a short but memorable speech at her party's convention. Hear what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said about the progressive movement in America. Back with that in just a moment.
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