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College Campuses In At Least 19 States Reporting COVID-19 Cases; Georgia District Considers Hybrid Learning At Schools Hit Hard By COVID; CDC Group Projects 195,000 U.S. Coronavirus Deaths By September 12th; Joe Biden Calls For Unity, Urges Americans To Choose Hope Over Fear; Joe Biden Won't Hit Campaign Trial In A Traditional Way. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired August 21, 2020 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

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JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Hello, everybody. I'm John King in Washington. Thanks for sharing this busy day with us. Your mail is breaking news today.

The Postmaster General facing tough questions from Senators, especially Democrats who hear the president attacking vote by mail and worry a summer spike in postal delays and new policy changes are part of the calculated effort to tilt the election. Outrageous is how the Postmaster General Louis DeJoy describes such allegations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOUIS DEJOY, POSTMASTER GENERAL, U.S. POSTAL SERVICE: The sacred duty is my number one priority between now and Election Day. There have been no changes in any policies with regard to election mail for the 2020 election. If everyone complies with the mail process that we've been identifying there will be absolutely no issue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The Coronavirus of course is why a record number of Americans will choose to vote by mail this fall and the pandemic is also of course shaping decisions about which candidate gets that vote? Thursday the United States added 44,000 infections to the case count. The overall case count will sail past 5.6 million by day's end.

Another 1,078 deaths yesterday, more than 7,000 Americans have died of Coronavirus in just the last week. The president says the virus though is taking a "Final turn down". He's made similar predictions before, predictions that of course that have proven misguided so will see this time. The pandemic and the president's response to it that was a consistent threat of the Democrat's big convention this week.

Joe Biden asking voters last night just look at the facts including the case and the death counts you see right there in your screen. The Former Vice President says voters should ask themselves if the incumbent had earned four more years. His convention closing speech cast the incumbent as selfish, divisive and Mr. Biden offered a different approach.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I'll be an ally of the light, not the darkness.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Students return to classes, at least 19 states reporting Coronavirus infections on college and university campuses. Let's take a look at the trends as we go through right now state by state map here. Let me bring this up there we go 50-state map.

We have ten states right now reporting more cases right now than they did a week ago. You have 19 states that are holding steady at the moment, 21 states going down, and 21 states going down at the moment. If you look at the positivity rates in states just look at the scale over here.

The darker the blue, the higher the positivity rates so you see here, you see Louisiana, Louisiana you see Mississippi, you see Texas. Positivity rates especially in the southeast, even though the cases are down, positivity remains a problem across a lot of the country right here.

19 states, colleges have opened and they have COVID cases already. This is what's significant about this. The question is can you keep this down? In a lot of states, like Arizona and Colorado like Indiana look all through here, these states were heading in the right direction. The green means the case counts going down now they have at least minor outbreaks on college campuses are something to watch in the days ahead as we go through this.

Let's focus on one of them here, Notre Dame, total confirmed cases 147 up on Tuesday, went up to 222 on Wednesday, up to 304 on Thursday. So, it's a rising problem here, a problem that has the attention of people including the Vice President of the United States.

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MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think Father Jenkins said that people were congregating off campus and so they wanted to take a pause in in-classroom learning to make sure that they have that you should under control.

We respect that but the priority has to be we got to get our kids back to school. We want our teachers to know we are going to continue to prioritize their health, their safety, the safety of our schools but we're going to work every day and states around the country are safely reopening as we speak. We are going to continue to support that and our teachers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: One Georgia school district is taking another look at its reopening plan for the three high schools that have been closed after being hit hard by COVID-19. Before the closures Cherokee County had fully opened for in-person classes and now the superintendent there says a hybrid model will be looked at.

Joining me from Atlanta on this big issue is CNN National Correspondent Natasha Chen, a hybrid model now after reopening?

NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right John. The three schools that you're talking about temporarily had to close when positive test cases popped up and the plan was to reopen them on August 31st.

Now the school district Cherokee County, which is outside of Atlanta, they held a board meeting yesterday and talked about amending the plan. Once August 31st hits what are they going to do?

[12:05:00]

CHEN: The Superintendent talked about this hybrid model where half the students would be kept in the classroom, half would be at home at any given time. So that students on average might have two days of face to face instruction instead of five.

Just to give some context of what's happened in this district, they have had 201 Coronavirus cases since the start of the school year, about 100 of those are still active cases. 29 out of 39 schools and centers have at least 1 case.

So that means at least one positive test case on most of their campuses and of course like we said they amended the previously approved reopening plan and they're considering this hybrid model when the students come back after August 31st.

This struggle of what to do when there are positive test cases and lots of people having to quarantine is not exclusive to the K-12 experience and public schools. Of course, like you have said, a lot of universities are starting back up for their fall semester.

Here at the University of Georgia there have been 47 confirmed COVID- 19 cases so far, this however that they have a student body population of 50,000, still it is something to look out for, something to watch out for as these classes continue in person.

Overall, Georgia has had at least 4,900 people die of COVID-19 since the pandemic began. And of course, we have seen the seven-day average of new cases come down slightly over the last few weeks.

However, the White House Coronavirus Task Force report recently stated as of last Sunday Georgia had the highest per capita community spread of this virus at the nation and that's something that's caused some contention for the Governor Brian Kemp.

As he's had to respond to that, that task force report said that Georgia should be doing more and should institute a statewide mask mandate, especially in counties with a higher spread and according to their threshold that pretty much covered the entire state, John. KING: Continue to watch and tension now between the Governor and the Trump White House. Natasha Chen for us live in Atlanta, I appreciate that very much. Let's get some medical prospective now Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips. She is Chief Clinical Officer at the Providence Health System out in Seattle.

I want to start in this back to school thing, because there are two schools of thought. Number one is whether it's a college campus or a K-12? If you're going to put kids back in the classroom and just like reopening the economy, you'll have some cases the challenge is can we manage it?

As you just watch this, it is bit of an unfair question. You're watching from your approach there, but you these - Georgia about the K-12, do you see evidence that this is the right way to do it? Put some kids back in classes and you can manage it or are we seeing early warning signs that we trying this too soon?

DR. AMY COMPTON-PHILLIPS, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: I think there's definitely early warning signs there, John. So, if I think about it there are three kind of key things that help us to be safe in opening schools, whether it is K-12 or university campus.

First is, is it under control in the community? And so, what are the cases per 100,000? What is the test positivity rate? If those are both low, then maybe you can consider it but then the next step is can you test?

And so can you proactively screen people before they come back into the classroom so you're not having people actively infected get around a lot of other people, right? And then the third one is once they're in the classroom can you keep people safe if somebody was a false positive test or they prevent it from spreading to everybody else?

And so those are the three big factors we need to look, and it sounds right now like Georgia really isn't meeting any one of those three.

KING: We'll keep an eye on that. Help me with some perspective here because these numbers are sort of seared into me. The summer surge yes, there were days we were averaging about 70,000 cases now we're down somewhere around 40,000 cases a day, that's progress.

I'm not going to call it good because we are one point, we were down to 18,000 cases a day and it was allowed to go back up. But 1,000 Americans a day pretty much every day this month, 1,000 Americans or more have died on average. We do know that if the case count drops, you wait a couple weeks and hopefully the death count drops, as well. Dr. Redfield says its coming, listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, DIRECTOR, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: These interventions are going to have a lag, that lag's going to be three, four weeks. You and I are going to see the cases continue to drop and then hopefully this week and next week you're going to start seeing the death rate really start to drop again. (END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Is there reason to believe that, A, that's true? B, it's the last time down the hill? Because we came down the April, May hill to a flat point in June and then we right back up again.

COMPTOM-PHILLIPS: I do believe that with the case counts dropping right now we will see because the hospitalizations and the deaths tend to lag the case counts. So I do think we'll see a trough again and I do not believe this will be the last trough.

[12:10:00]

COMPTOM-PHILLIPS: The virus is out there. It is circulating in the communities with the coming of fall and people going back indoors again and being around each other again.

And by the way the exhaustion and people feeling like I'm done with this and you know college kids getting back together again in parties because that's what teenagers do and young adults do is need socialization that I think we're going to see in the fall another spike. And I just don't see it not happening given the burden of disease that's circulating in the community today.

KING: And so, to that point you look at that number on the screen. 5.5 million cases in the United States. That is pretty numbing. The number below it is as sad as you can get and it keeps going up the death count. But listen to Dr. Redfield here. You look at 5.5 million, he says now actually it is a lot higher.

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REDFIELD: We are in the process of obviously following up with the report that we did in - they kind of learn us understanding that you know may be from the 2 million cases we diagnosed we had an estimated 20 million people infected. We have now expanded that throughout the country. I think if you're going to do a crude estimate somewhere between 30 million and 60 million people but let's let the data come out and see what it shows.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: 30 million to 60 million people? Number one that's stunning, is that the right ballpark figure? Is there any blessing in that in the idea of so-called herd immunity or the like or is that just a wow?

COMPTON-PHILLIP: So there is some data behind saying that the number of infected people, the people who have antibodies that show some - that they have been exposed at some point to this infection is much higher than the case count that we know.

First of all because the lack of testing that people who early on maybe had the sniffles and thought it was allergies maybe that you know a very mild case of COVID. So we think that the case counts are significantly higher than we have measured. But still even if we are at 60 million which that is on the high end, call it 30 million; I can do that math in my head. That's 10 percent of the U.S. population and we believe herd immunity is going to take somewhere around 50 to 60 percent of the population.

And personally I would be loath to say that, you know, five times more, ten times more death count is what we want to shoot for so I think we absolutely cannot let up on controlling the spread of the infection. We just can't, full stop.

KING: Sounds like good advice to me. Dr. Amy Compton-Phillip, as always, appreciates your expertise. Sometimes it is tough to listen to but it is necessary medicine. I appreciate it very much doctor.

COMPTON-PHILLIP: Always a pleasure.

KING: Let's have Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, he is the latest lawmaker to test positive for COVID-19. The Senator said he'll quarantine now for 14 days and strictly follow the direction of the medical experts, Cassidy now one of several lawmakers to across bipartisan to announce a positive test.

Former Secretary of State James Baker and his wife Susan have also contracted Coronavirus. The spokesman telling CNN they're recovering in isolation in their Houston home. The 90-year-old Baker first served as White House Chief of Staff for Ronald Reagan later Head of the State Department under President George H.W. Bush.

Up next, Joe Biden gives the most speech of his political career. Now it is on to the general election.

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[12:15:00]

KING: Joe Biden vowing to lead the country out of what he calls "This season of darkness". The Democratic Nominee for president delivering clearly the most important speech of his five-decade political career last night. The Former Vice President went after President Trump for his response to the Coronavirus pandemic saying the incumbent has failed to protect America.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: Just judge this president on the facts. 5 million American infected by COVID-19. More than 170,000 Americans have died. The president takes no responsibility, refuses to lead, blames others cozies up to dictators and fans the flames of hate and division. He failed to protect us. He is failed to protect America. My fellow Americans, that is unforgivable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Joining us now to discuss Julie Pace, she is the Washington Bureau Chief for "The Associated Press Bureau Times". Let's listen, Julie Pace, to a little bit more last night. The vice president's goal and the Democrats' goal this week was to cast Biden essential as the anti-Trump. Here's a guy of empathy. Here is a guy who understands your pain. Here is a guy who will follow science. The vice president going out of his way to say, guess what, vote for me and I'll even pay attention to those who didn't.

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BIDEN: While I'll be a Democratic candidate, I will be an American President. I'll work hard for those who didn't support me, as hard for them as I did for those that did vote for me. That's the job of a president to represent all of us not just to our base or party. This is not a partisan moment. This must be an American moment.

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KING: In this polarized environment we live and there is a little bit of a risk there. But Julie you're right in your analysis this morning, Biden's nominating convention this week was filled with evidence validating his approach that fierce opposition to Trump can unite a wide swath of the American electorate around an imperfect yet personally respected and empathetic candidate, interesting take.

JULIE PACE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "ASSOCIATED PRESS": I think so much of this convention you know was not about ideology, it wasn't really even about policy, it was about competence and it was really about character.

And Biden made this bet in this 2020 campaign very early on that Americans would be less focused on ideology and more focused on decency, looking for somebody who could be essentially a soothing balm after the Trump era.

And he sees coming out of his primary and now into the General Election that that bet is paying off that he can reach out to Republicans, to moderate Republicans, conservatives, independents and not alienate the left of the his party because they are all united around one thing which is the need to beat Donald Trump.

[12:20:00]

KING: It is interesting. Yesterday I was texting with an old friend last night. You're all too young to remember this Michael Dukakis 32 years ago said this election is not about ideology it is about competence. Turns out he was just ahead of his time may be a little bit there.

Laura Barron-Lopez, you mentioned, Julie talks about the wide swath but among the progressives there was also a fascinating transformation of this party under Biden. You write it this way. The speed at which the Democrats have embraced the movement against racial injustice has been extraordinary.

Activists had to push and prod Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to get them to utter the words Black Lives Matter. They eventually did. Four years later Harris spoke about race explicitly and repeatedly. There's a lot of history in this convention and potential history in this campaign but you're right.

That was a dramatic transformation and the Democrats are hoping A, it allows them to make the case to younger voters who might be more reluctant to vote and B to get a lot of people out to vote.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. There was such a dramatic shift from 2016, John, as you reference a story that I wrote and not just Harris but also last night Biden asking that if this generation will be the one that wipes away the stain of racism and he said that he thinks it can be.

But what's also noticeable throughout the convention was there is still this disconnect with younger voters and who Democrats are choosing to represent and speak to this moment of racial injustice. They chose black Mayor like Keisha Lance Bottoms and Mayor Bowser of D.C.

And those politicians are being pressured by Black Lives Matter activists, by younger activists and they still felt as though the policy was not there during the convention. So from now until November the question remains whether or not they feel enthusiastic enough about Biden's candidacy and what else the campaign will do to address those concerns?

KING: And Alex, we live in 2016 so we know Joe Biden entered this convention in the strongest position of a challenger in any of our lifetimes, in modern times really. But we also know that the president gets his turn next week that this race will definitely tighten and likely be very close at the end.

So the president, the incumbent president, the Republican who was closely watching the Democratic Convention, this is his morning after take.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Democrats held the darkest and angry gloomiest convention in American history. They spent four straight days attacking America as racist and horrible country that must be redeemed. Joe Biden grimly declared a season of American darkness. And yet, look at what we have accomplished.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That has to go through a fact check machine of course. They didn't call the country racist. They called him racist and other terms. But it is interesting now to just see the president's reaction to understand he goes next and this is going to be a very tight race.

ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. I think one way to think about what the Democrats did or didn't accomplish this week is how much space have they left for the president to fill in, in his own sort of typically misleading terms as he tried to do this morning?

I think Republicans have found including last night watching Joe Biden's speech that much of the caricature they have tried to paint of him as this sort of doddering and incoherent over the hill old man has not really panned out over the last couple of days nor has the idea that Biden is some bomb throwing anarchist who is in favor of burning police stations.

This is not the Biden that anybody saw this week. It's obviously not the Biden who we have all covered for quite some time. I do think that the challenge ahead for Democrats and potentially the opportunity for Republicans is that as Julie said Democrats didn't spend a lot of time talking about a policy.

They were talking about Trump; they were talking about broad values. Laura was pointing out that a lot of younger voters were disappointed not to hear more about policy. I do wonder whether there's still a bit of a heavy lift left for Biden in terms of defining what an America after four years of a Biden Administration would look like.

And what are the concrete ways that people's individual lives would change besides presumably hopefully the absence of a crippling pandemic? Because we know what the Republicans are going to say and we know what Trump has already started to say?

Whether voters find that credible or not I don't know but I do think that there's some blank space there left after the Democratic Convention.

KING: And it is a fascinating challenge, Laura, because Joe Biden is going to - you hear the Democrats say we are the responsible party. So they're not going to travel. We've seen the president and the vice president both on the road this week. We know they plan to travel more. There has been a lot of - you see pictures of the vice president at an event, no one is wearing a mask, President - very few people wearing a mask.

But can the Democrats fill in the empty policy canvas, if you will? When they're doing is it all through ads? Is it speeches over the internet?

[12:25:00]

LOPEZ: So far, yes. I mean, it is primarily digital ads, TV ads, Zoom meetings, you know, holding different conversations that way. But so far they haven't been knocking on doors the way we - Politico's actually reporting that Republicans have been.

They have been going door to door canvassing and Democrats, the DNC has not been doing that. So also in during this convention when they warned about it's going to take time to actually cast your ballot so to get on that as soon as possible.

How are they going to be helping voters better understand how to cast their mail-in ballot or how to prepare for what could be very long lines come Election Day?

KING: This will be the most fascinating test of digital organizing that any of us have ever lived through. Julie Pace, so the president the incumbent party goes last, the president's convention is next. They have had the opportunity since we are living in this brave new pandemic world to watch how the Democrats pulled this off?

The president didn't want a virtual convention. He wanted to go to Charlotte and he was going to go to Jacksonville and Charlotte - you can't fill an arena. He has had to bow to reality, if you will. What do we expect? What Republican lessons if you will did they learn from this week?

PACE: Well, we know that the president and his advisers were watching the Democratic Convention really closely to try to learn some lessons, try to see what worked and what didn't work? And I think that their takeaway is that there are opportunities to really control your message and in a bit of a better way.

You don't have to rely on the unpredictability sometimes of speeches. What we see next week, there is going to be a little bit different than what we saw in the Democratic Convention is a lot more Trump himself. He is going to be much more of a central figure in each of these nights of the convention than Biden was.

And some of that is because of Trump's theory of the case which is that he is the front man. He needs to be out there. Some of it of course is the fact that even within the Republican Party you have politicians and former leaders that don't necessarily want to take part in this event.

KING: Just want to look, Democrats, Republicans, independents watching out there but just to the moment, Alex, of last night Joe Biden, first met him in Iowa in 1987 when he was running for president. He tried again in 2008, whatever your politics we did see a testament to resilience last night and I think he made an important point in the earlier conversation too.

The president has tried to say Joe Biden is not up to this, meaning he is too old, he is not nimble enough, he is not agile enough, he is not smart enough the president has said straight out. Democrats do come out of the convention thinking that A, the vice president answered some of those questions and B that they proved the empathy case I guess for lack of a better word.

BURNS: I think they clearly did. I do think this has been one of the sorts of underestimated strengths for Joe Biden since the very beginning of this campaign. Is that the country feels like they know him, his numbers have not moved all that much up or down in any direction no matter what has happened in this race in terms of basic favorability, un-favorability.

It is so striking John; this is somebody who is being nominated for president after half a century of public life. There is nobody in modern history, I don't think anybody in American history at all who has waited for such a long interval between winning their first major office and being nominated for president.

And for all the success that the Democrats had this week in laying out Joe Biden's biography, maybe the most remarkable thing is how little of that biography would really be new to people, people know about his tragic family story. They know the circumstances under which he came to the Senate.

And of course they know his relationship with Barack Obama. So there was still space for them to tell the fine details of that story. But from the very beginning of this campaign every person, every campaign or interest group that did focus groups about Biden, polled about Biden said that the things people knew about him where that he was close to Barack Obama, that he had this tragic family story and he was a decent man.

KING: They're hoping that decent man part helps them in the contrast with the Coronavirus. We'll watch. Republicans go next. Alex Burns, Laura Barron-Lopez and Julie Pace it is great to see you all appreciate the reporting and the insights.

Coming up, President Trump's Postmaster General grilled on Capitol Hill over post office changes. What we have learned about the impact to the election?

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