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Trump Family Members Make Case for Reelection on Night Two; Speakers Tout Economic Progress, Stoke Culture Wars; First Lady Expresses Sympathy for Coronavirus Victims; Second Night Brings More Messages to Trump's Base; New Video Shows Struggle Before Police Shoot Jacob Blake; Storm Strengthens As It Heads for U.S. Gulf Coast; CDC Now Says Testing Not Needed for Everyone Without Symptoms. Aired 4- 4:30a ET
Aired August 26, 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]
ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us here in the United States and all around the world. You are watching CNN NEWSROOM and I'm Rosemary Church.
Well, what's likely the most important production of Donald Trump's political career capped a second night with Republicans and several members of the President's own family making their case for why America needs four more years of his administration. The Republican National Convention saw norm breaking moments, a focus on the economy, divisive rhetoric and continued attacks on Joe Biden. But not much about the deadly impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LARRY LUDLOW, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF ECONOMIC ADVISER: Coming out of the deep pandemic who in their right mind would pick the pockets of taxpayers and drain money from their wallets and purses. Look, our economic choice is very clear. Do you want economic health, prosperity, opportunity and optimism or do you want to turn back to the dark days of stagnation, recession and pessimism?
JOHN PETERSON, WISCONSIN BUSINESS OWNER: Our economy is roaring back again. But when I hear that Joe Biden is ready to raise taxes, crush us with regulations, and weaken our international trade position, I shudder. We simply cannot endure a Biden induced recession. Some will struggle. Some will not survive. And working men and women of America will get crushed yet again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Well for a second night the President was seen in several taped appearances including one where he issued a pardon to a convicted bank robber turned prison reform advocate. It's not a typical video shown during a convention, not was this. Mr. Trump overseeing a naturalization ceremony at the White House this as he looked to soften his image on the issue of immigration. Mr. Trump also popped up in the newly remodeled White House Rose
Garden to watch first lady Melania Trump deliver an uplifting speech reflects on her immigrant background and her "be best" initiative. Mrs. Trump was the only Speaker to address the coronavirus pandemic directly and at length.
But it's interesting to note those attending the speech were not required to be tested for the virus, that's according to one member of the audience.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MELANIA TRUMP, U.S. FIRST LADY: I want to acknowledge the fact that since March our lives have changed drastically. The invisible enemy, COVID-19 swept across our beautiful country and impacted all of us. My deepest sympathy goes out to everyone who has lost a loved one and my prayers are with those who are ill or suffering.
As first lady I have been fortunate to see the American dream come true over and over again. I have met many inspiring women, children, parents and families who have overcome life changing issues.
As you have heard this evening, I don't want to use this precious time attacking the other side, because as we saw last week that kind of talk only serves to divide the country further.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: The first lady may not have wanted to attack Democrats but plenty of other speakers did and for a second night Republicans pushed dark and divisive messaging to make their case.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANETTE NUNEZ, FLORIDA LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: The fabric of our nation is in peril. Daily the radical left systematically chisels away at the freedoms we cherish. They peddle dangerous ideologies, cower to global progressives and normalize socialism to dismantle our Constitution.
CISSIE GRAHAM LYNCH, GRANDDAUGHTER OF REV. BILLY GRAHAM: The Biden- Harris vision for America leaf no room for people of faith. Whether you're a baker or florist or football coach they will force the choice between being obedient to God or to Caesar. Because the radical left's God is government power.
NICOLAS SANDMANN, FMR. COVINGTON CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT: What's happening to people around this country who refuse to be silenced by the far left. Many are being fired, humiliated and even threatened.
[04:05:00]
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): To those of you who want lower taxes and better, less expensive healthcare, join me in supporting President Trump.
(END VIDEOTAPE) CHURCH: Mark Preston is a CNN senior political analyst and joins me now from Washington. Good to see you, Mark.
MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hey, good to see you, Rosemary.
CHURCH: So how did the second night of the RNC go and was there any evidence at this time of an effort to broaden Donald Trump's appeal beyond his own base.
PRESTON: No. I mean, I think if you were to consider this anything, you would consider it a rifle shot. Meaning, they were very focused on who they were delivering a message to. They were trying to deliver a message to their base. They did so. Again, in a very effective way. But not something that would broaden it. Not something that would bring folks who may be on the outside looking in and try to find a way to support Donald Trump.
Having said it, you know, I do think that Melania Trump did a fairly good job tonight delivering her remarks and trying to show folks that she supports her husband because that's always that question whether she does or doesn't. But all in all, they're going to think it's a success, but they are not broadening their appeal and right now they need to do so.
CHURCH: You mentioned Melania Trump. I mean, she was much more conciliatory than any of the other speakers. Wasn't she? And she actually went ahead and mentioned the pandemic and talked to those who had lost victims to this virus.
PRESTON: Humanized her husband, right. And a lot of people don't think that he is capable of showing empathy towards folks. But I think that as what she tried to do tonight. But what was also interesting about Melania is that she tried to cut her own path so to speak. She tried to present herself to the American people. Talked, of course, about supporting her husband who is running for a second term but also talked about her own thoughts and her own believes which I thought was interesting. Because look, if he is to lose in November this, you know, could very well be the last real big public appearance we'll see from Melania Trump.
CHURCH: Yes, interesting point. And U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's speech sparked controversy and resulted in House Democrats opening up an investigation into his actions. What might the consequences be of that and what all did he have to say?
PRESTON: Well, so a couple of things. One, very, very strange to have a Secretary of State appear at a political convention. You will see other cabinet members participate and have done sign the past. But you don't normally see the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of State participating in any of these things.
Democrats are obviously very upset about it. They're upset that he happened to be in Israel which is a very key voting bloc here for folks of Jewish descent. Very key voting block as we all know here in the United States. So, there was a lot of controversy about that. All he said is listen I was over here on official business. And I
wanted to speak in my own capacity as a person. So Democrats are going to make a lot of hay about it but in the grand scheme of things is going to the bottom of really what matters right now and that is trying to fix this pandemic, getting a vaccine done and trying to get the world economy back turned around.
CHURCH: Mark Preston, many thanks for joining us. Appreciate it.
PRESTON: Thanks, Rosemary.
The "New York Times" is reporting one person dead and at least three others wounded in a shooting overnight in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It happened after the third night of protests following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Police declared an unlawful assembly as protesters defied curfew outside the local courthouse. Wisconsin's governor declared a state of emergency Tuesday and called in additional National Guard forces. CNN has obtained new video of the shooting and we must warn you it is disturbing. It shows Jacob Blake struggling with officers before he was shot. Our Sara Sidner is in Kenosha, Wisconsin with more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Lives forever altered, new video showing the chaotic scene where Jacob Blake on the ground, struggles with police officers before he walks around his vehicle and is shot multiple times in the back.
JACOB BLAKE SR., JACOB BLAKE'S FATHER: They shot my son seven times, seven times, like he didn't matter, but my son matters.
MEGAN BELCHER, JACOB BLAKE'S SISTER: This family is hurting, he loves his family. I just want my brother.
SIDNER: Still in intensive care, Blake now paralyzed from the waist down, likely a permanent injury.
BENJAMIN CRUMP, BLAKE FAMILY ATTORNEY: Those bullets severed his spinal cord and shattered some of his vertebrae.
[04:10:00]
It is going to take a miracle for Jacob Blake Jr. to ever walk again.
SIDNER: Blake's attorney calling for action.
CRUMP: We are demanding that the prosecutor arrest the officer who shot Jacob Blake, and we also are asking that these officers who violated the policies and their training be terminated immediately.
SIDNER: The Department of Justice announcing an investigation into the incident, but so far offering few details about the events that led up to the shooting. The man who took one of the viral videos shares what he witnessed but did not capture on camera.
RAYSEAN WHITE, WITNESS: I just see him m walk in the house behind one of these women that was outside. I stepped away, and I came back, and I see the police wrestling him, and I was kind of confused because it happened so quick.
SIDNER: We may never see exactly what happened before the disturbing moment because police in Kenosha do not have body worn cameras. But city leaders are promising justice will prevail.
MAYOR JOHN ANTARAMIAN, KENOSHA, WISCONSIN: People will be held responsible for their actions, and we will know the truth.
SIDNER: Blake's family demanding justice not just for Jacob, but his three children now traumatized, they say, by what they witnessed.
BLAKE SR.: They are stuck right now. We are going to seek out some of the best child psychologists in the United States, and we are going to work with them and let the whole picture that it plays over and over in front of their little faces. All my grandson asked repeatedly, is why did the police shoot my daddy in the back?
JUSTIN BLAKE, JACOB BLAKE'S UNCLE: And we're going to get justice. We're going to demand justice, but we're going to do that without tearing up our own communities.
SIDNER: Still, protests erupted in destruction for the second night, a familiar scene of tear gas, smoke bombs, and fires, protesters clashing with police and the National Guard. Kenosha waking up to destruction, another community rocked by police violence.
JULIA JACKSON, JACOB BLAKE'S MOTHER: If Jacob knew what was going on, as far as that goes, the violence and the destruction, he would be very unpleased.
SIDNER: The frustration from yet another black man shot by police felt far outside of Wisconsin.
LEBRON JAMES, LOS ANGELES LAKERS FORWARD: Why does always have to get to a point where we see the guns firing? And his family is there, the kids are there, we are scared as black people in America. Black men, black women, black kids, we are -- we are terrified.
SIDNER (on camera): We're now learning the extent of the injuries that Jacob Blake has suffered. He had a bullet, according to his attorney, severe or almost completely severed his spinal cord, has holes in his stomach, had his small intestine, most of that removed as well as his colon, and he was shot also in the arm.
He will be recovering for a very long time, but he is expected to survive. His family is asking for calm. They say they are behind those who protest peacefully, but they don't want to see any more destruction.
Sara Sidner, CNN, Kenosha, Wisconsin.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: Hurricane Laura is heading towards the U.S. Gulf Coast and gathering steam as it gets closer to land. Large parts of Texas and Louisiana are under a hurricane warning. And people in several coastal counties have been told to evacuate. Laura is a strong category 2 hurricane and is expected to get even stronger. The storm has already proven to be deadly killing nine people in the Caribbean.
And here's an incredible view of this storm taken Tuesday by astronauts aboard the international space station. So, let's turn to our neurologist Pedram Javaheri. He's tracking the storm and joins us with the latest. And it's just incredible looking at that picture, Pedram, because you really get an idea of the extent of this incredible hurricane. Talk to us about the latest and what you're seeing.
PEDRAM JAVAHERI, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Rosemary, the structure of this storm system and in fact, organization of it, is much more impressive than what you saw in that image taken in the past 24 hours. So, this storm is really becoming better organized and better structured here that unfortunately for portions of Texas and Louisiana this will have devastating consequences within the next 18 hours.
Water temperature as conducive as warm as it gets here to support rapid intensification of a storm system, which will be right around 90 degrees Fahrenheit or into the say middle 30 degrees Celsius there. But the system is expected to intensify to a category 3, some models suggest this may even get to a strong category 3 territory possibly into a category 4 right before it makes landfall. And that rapid intensification is unfortunately set to take place, again, leading up to landfall in the next few hours.
We're going to watch this here as system approaches portions of southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas.
[04:15:00]
Any time you're putting a storm into this category 3 scale, the National Hurricane Center typically scales the damage as devastating. So, we know the impacts will be significant.
Now notice the coastal regions could see storm surges exceed 3 meters or up to about 13 feet. The National Hurricane Center says watch for some of these storm surges in the water can in fact push inland as far as 30 miles. We're talking 50 plus kilometers of seeing this kind of impact of some of these coastal regions.
And of course, you're talking about storm surges of this magnitude, this essentially pushes a lot of homes right off their foundations. We've seen this along the very flat and low-lying area of this Gulf Coast region with previous tropical systems. And of course, with those winds exceeding 100 miles per hour this is typically what plays out when it comes to power outages in this particular area just east of Houston on into Lake Charles. Not only very high in population density but also the concern here for widespread outages that could last many, many days into this upcoming weekend -- Rosemary. CHURCH: Just horrible. All right, Pedram, thank you so much for
keeping such a close eye on that. Appreciate it.
Well, if you've come in to contact with someone who has COVID-19 you should get tested, right. New guidance from the CDC is changing things up and creating some confusion. We'll have the details next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:20:00]
CHURCH: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has changed its COVID-19 testing guidelines. The agency no longer recommends testing for most people without symptoms, even if they are being in close contact with someone known have the virus. This as the Trump administration continues to grapple with the death toll of nearly 180,000 in the U.S. CNN's Nick Watt has the latest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Some COVID-19 test sites are closing in Texas and Louisiana as Hurricane Laura approaches.
GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R) TEXAS: People need to be prepared and get prepared right now.
WATT: Meanwhile, record average case counts in Kansas.
GOV. LAURA KELLY (D) KANSAS: Our positive infection rate from this weekend continues an alarming trend in the wrong direction for Kansas.
WATT: And record death tolls in Kentucky, why?
GOV. ANDY BESHEAR (D) KENTUCKY: To the day we can pinpoint where we got tired or we stopped trying or we let our guard down.
WATT: One expert telling CNN that in the absence of a strong federal response, there is a hodgepodge of policies that don't necessarily fit the task in many states. Today, the FDA Commissioner was backpedaling his incorrect spin on some crucial test data.
STEPHEN HAHN, COMMISSIONER, U.S. DRUG AND FOOD ADMINISTRATION: And I personally could have done a better job and should have done a better job at that press conference explaining what the data show regarding convalescent plasma.
WATT: And Anthony Fauci just told "The Washington Post", I am sometimes referred to as the skunk at the picnic, but Pence never directly asks me, the skunk, to be quiet or leave.
Nationwide, average new case counts have tumbled more than 20 percent in two weeks, but it's the seesaw situation which will likely now be our newest normal. At the moment, cases rising in parts of the heartland but falling in the South and West, why? DR. AMY COMPTON-PHILLIPS, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: They shut down the bars and restaurants. They started making masks more mandatory. They started increasing rules around social distancing.
WATT: July 24th, Arizona logged 3,357 new cases, August 24th, 311. They've shaken off pariah status. New York no longer requires incoming Arizonans to quarantine, but --
DR. PETER HOTEZ, PROFESSOR OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Now we're pushing very hard to open schools in many parts of the Southern U.S. even though we probably shouldn't, and the numbers are then going to go back up.
WATT: Many millions of even younger people now back at school while still at home. No one's arguing this is ideal, but most experts say in hard hit areas, it's necessary.
(on camera): And this is stunning. Researchers here in the U.S. now believe that one event in Boston back in February, a biotech conference with a couple hundred people there may have led to as many as 20,000 COVID-19 cases. Now no one is blaming anyone. This was February. This was before we all knew about masks, distancing and frankly the danger.
Nick Watt, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: And it is become being painfully clear that crowded gatherings can easily become super spreader events as participants take the virus to a much wider group. At least 78 COVID-19 cases have been linked to the Sturgis motorcycle rally which drove thousands of mostly massless people to South Dakota earlier this month. State officials say those who have been diagnosed with the virus visited bars and a tattoo parlor in town. Participants came from all over the United States. In cell phone data shows that 61 percent of American counties have been visited by someone who went to that rally.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: Anne Rimoin is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles and she joins me now from L.A. Good to have you with us.
ANNE RIMOIN, PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF EPIDEMIOLOGY, UCLA: Thank you for having me.
CHURCH: So, we have seen in the last two nights of the RNC an effort to rewrite history when it comes to President Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, painting him as decisive and effective, despite the death toll in this country nearing 180,000. What's your reaction to that and some medical professionals who have come out praising his efforts?
RIMOIN: I think we have to let the data speak for itself. We're a country that has not been able to control the epidemic here on our -- in our own borders. And we have a very high death toll. We have a very high infection rates. And I just don't think that anybody looking at the data can suggest that we, as a country, or our leadership in this country, has done a good job.
[04:25:03]
CHURCH: And scientists are responding to President Trump and his administration's claims about the effectiveness of convalescent plasma in treating COVID-19, saying they are wrong and misleading, including those made by FDA chief Stephen Hahn who suddenly approved the emergency use of convalescent plasma on Sunday. Hahn came out Tuesday saying criticism of him was entirely justified. What does this say about Hahn's and the FDA's credibility?
RIMOIN: This is a really big problem. We cannot have the FDA be subject to politics. The FDA is supposed to be reviewing the data and making decisions that are in the interests of our public's health here. And it was a very clear indication that politics is really leading the day.
When you look at the information that was made available, there was no real basis for the information that Dr. Hahn gave. And one of the other really important things here is that there was a lot of hoopla made about this paper from the Mayo Clinic, from the study that they did, which was an observational study. And in fact, the conclusions of this study were very clear in the paper. They were that this is an observational study, that the data was interesting, and that they should inform clinical trials.
CHURCH: And six months into this pandemic, we are now starting to see a decline in new cases, hospitalizations and deaths, which is a good thing of course. So, what do you think is behind this? And how big a role might mask be playing in these declines?
RIMOIN: There are several studies now that have provided evidence to show that masks do work. And I think we're seeing widespread mask wearing now and social distancing, which has made a major difference in driving down the rate of spread in this country.
CHURCH: Anne Rimoin, many thanks as always.
RIMOIN: It's my pleasure.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: And still ahead when a political convention becomes a family affair. The Trumps are out in full force at the Republican National Convention but are they convincing viewers to help reelect the U.S. President?
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END
