Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Georgia's COVID-19 Numbers are Down Statewide But Up in Schools; Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) Posts Manipulated Video Without Apology; ODNI Moves to Written Congressional Briefings. Aired 10:30- 11a ET

Aired August 31, 2020 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: This morning, one of the states at the epicenter of the latest coronavirus surge is showing signs of improvement. On Sunday, Georgia marked its lowest daily case count since June -- you see the drop there on the right -- but it comes as Georgia Tech says the number of infections on campus there have doubled in a week. We're seeing a lot of that on college campuses as they reopen.

State health officials have reported the death of a 1-year-old boy, the youngest COVID-related death in Georgia to date. Nick Valencia is live in Atlanta with the latest numbers.

So a drop in cases here, do we know why? Is it mitigation? Any evidence of reduced testing?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, things are getting better from a week ago, Jim. We've been reporting throughout that Georgia is really near the top of the list among worst states when it comes to coronavirus infections. I mentioned the good news, but first the bad, Georgia Tech saying 64 new cases have been spotted there on campus since they reopened, bringing the total there to 705 since the pandemic started.

And schools, as we've been reporting here in the state, a huge hurdle in terms of combating the coronavirus. You remember Cherokee County schools, among the first in the nation when they went back to face-to- face learning. And cases just spiked there, they had to close two high schools. In a neighboring county, a third high school was closed. Today, those three high schools will go back to face-to-face learning. We'll be keeping an eye on that.

Overall though, the state is doing nominally better. And here's a look at some of those graphs here. We have 20.21 cases per 100,000 now, that's a 36 percent decline in cases over the course of the last three weeks. You mentioned hospitalizations, also down.

Georgia's governor, Brian Kemp, saying that the decline we're seeing is a result of cases that really spiked during the July 4th holiday, now we're seeing that decline. But with Labor Day just around the corner, there's cause for more concern. And just really quick to wrap it up here, last week, the White House Task Force sent a report to Georgia State officials, saying the state is in a fragile state. I they don't take more aggressive approaches to combating COVID-19,, it will continue to suffer -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes. I mean, we saw that after Memorial Day Weekend, we saw it after July. There's always a lag time there --

VALENCIA: That's right.

SCIUTTO: -- you know, you don't want to be caught on that rollercoaster. Nick Valencia, thanks very much.

This afternoon, Joe Biden will go after President Trump to directly blame him for the increased violence we are seeing now in cities such as Portland and Kenosha. We're learning more about what he plans to say in that speech and we're going to share it.

And, follow the fearless female CNN political reporters as they cover the 2020 presidential campaign. Watch "ONE THE TRAIL: INSIDE THE 2020 PRIMARIES," AN HBO Max original. Saturday night, 8:00 Eastern time, right here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:37:19]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. Joe Biden is heading back to his home state today. He will be in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for his first speech since accepting the nomination. His plan? To focus on one key question for voters: Are they safe in Donald Trump's America?

CNN's political correspondent Arlette Saenz is following the Biden camp in Pittsburgh. Arlette, give us a sense of the argument Joe Biden's going to try to make here.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, Joe Biden will be here in Pittsburgh in just a few hours, where his campaign says he will be presenting a contrast in vision for the country to President Trump. This comes as we've seen unrest in cities like Portland and Wisconsin following shootings there, and we've received some excerpts of what Biden will say later this afternoon.

The former vice president will say, "This president long ago forfeited any moral leadership in this country. He can't stop the violence -- because for years he has fomented it." Biden will go on to say, "He may believe mouthing the words law and order makes him strong, but his failure to call on his own supporters to stop acting as an armed militia in this country shows you how weak he is." The former vice president will go on to say, "Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is re-elected?"

And this comes after a week at the Republican Convention, where Trump and his allies tried to argue that some of the scenes playing out in cities across the country with these protests are due to Joe Biden's America. But what Biden and his team have tried to argue is that this is happening under Donald Trump's watch. Biden will also talk about the crises that are facing the country in

this moment, pointing to both the coronavirus and these protests as well as racial injustices. And he will say that an incumbent president who makes things worse not better -- that's how he will describe President Trump, and also add that he is an incumbent president who sows chaos rather than providing order.

So Biden today, expected to kind of present himself as the person who could restore civility to the country and also unite the country going forward, which has been a key tenet of his campaign from the very beginning -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Arlette, you've been covering this campaign since the beginning. Are we going to see Biden on the road more in the coming days and weeks?

SAENZ: Well, Biden last week said that he plans on traveling to battleground states starting after Labor Day, but he is making this trip to Pittsburgh today for -- since early March, we've only seen Biden doing in-person campaign events in Delaware and kind of the surrounding area in Pennsylvania. He also made a trip to Houston to visit the family of George Floyd earlier this summer.

[10:40:01]

But this will be the first time that he is kind of venturing out of that Eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware area to campaign, as he's starting to look to some more in-person campaigning in these battleground states. He's talked about possibly making stops in Arizona, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. So that's something that we're going to keep tabs on in the coming months, heading into November.

SCIUTTO: For sure. And states that Hillary Clinton was criticized for not visiting -- right? -- in the crucial weeks and months leading up to 2016. Arlette Saenz, thanks very much.

Well, the second-highest ranking Republican in the House is facing criticism for sharing a doctored video of Joe Biden -- that's right, it was doctored. Congressman Steve Scalise shared a clip on Twitter of an interview between Biden and a progressive activist, Ady Barkan. Barkan has ALS, we should note -- Lou Gehrig's disease -- and uses an artificial voice to speak.

The clip was edited from its original version to mislead about Biden's stance on funding police. This is key, and the number-two Republican in the House shared this.

CNN's Donie O'Sullivan is looking into this. Donie, what -- you know, Twitter's been more forward-leaning, right? In calling out stuff from the president and others that's either false or misleading or doctored. What did they do here and what effect did it have?

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN REPORTER: That's right, Jim, yeah. I mean, as well as this just being blatant misinformation, this was particularly distasteful given that Ady Barkan has ALS and uses a machine to speak. So to edit and to splice his words together was particularly distasteful.

And he tweeted yesterday to Steve Scalise, saying, "These are not my words. I have lost my ability to speak, but not my agency or my thoughts. You and your team have doctored my words for your own political gain. Please remove this video immediately. You owe the entire disability community an apology."

Scalise did later go on to remove that video from his Twitter and Facebook accounts. But before he did that, Twitter took some action. They labeled it as a manipulated video.

Facebook, on the other hand, did nothing. And you know, that is something we're seeing over and over again from Facebook, where they don't want to tackle misinformation when it comes from politicians, even if they're some of the most senior leaders in Congress, some of the most senior people in Washington, D.C.

And also of course, this weekend we saw President Donald Trump retweeting an account that showed support for the conspiracy theory QAnon. So it really is, I think, what we're going to be seeing much, much more of in the weeks leading up to November's election, where social media is used to misinform and mislead American voters -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Just quickly, did Scalise apologize for sharing the false thing or say, I shared something that was false here?

O'SULLIVAN: No, he didn't. He tried to defend himself, tried to argue that it had accurately reflected Biden's position on defunding the police, which it did not. But he did say that following Barkan's request, he did remove the video and has now reposted a different version without the deceptively edited audio, but no full right apology.

SCIUTTO: Well, all right. Donie O'Sullivan, thanks for covering this.

[10:43:14]

The Office for the Director of National Intelligence -- the highest intelligence body in the land -- no longer plans to brief Congress on election security in person, even as that same group has warned that Russia's interfering again. What does that mean when it comes to protecting this election, just 64 days away? We'll discuss, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Top Democrats are sounding off over the decision by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to no longer provide in-person briefings on election security to members of Congress, even as that same group says that Russia continues to interfere in this election. This includes both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Now, Democrats are suggesting the ODNI could face a subpoena.

I'm joined now by the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Republican Mike Rogers. Congressman, always good to have you on. MIKE ROGERS CNN NATIONAL SECURITY COMMENTATOR: Thanks for having me,

Jim.

SCIUTTO: So John Ratcliffe, the director of National Intelligence, says that he is no longer doing in-person briefings on this, two months to the election, despite the fact that this is an ongoing threat, because he got tired of information leaking.

I mean, given that written briefings -- which he will provide, presumably -- are equally at risk of being leaked, do you buy his explanation here?

ROGERS: Well, I can say this. I had the occasion to bump into the DNI recently, and you could sense the frustration of the series of briefings that were given and the information that was leaked. And I get that, and that's not -- wouldn't be just coming from the DNI, it would be coming from the intelligence community.

However, that being said, there is, I think, a better way to handle this. And I'll tell you why. Twenty-eighteen, the NSA actually did a pretty good job playing whack-a-mole with Russian activities to try to do influence operations.

Well, I would want to know, as the chairman of a committee, are they -- do they have everything they need, are they doing it again, what's the process, what's the scope, what can we do to make sure they're not successful in this election?

And when you just cut off this kind of communication, that's where I get worried. And it has turned into (ph) a (ph) political partisan slugfest. And none of that's good for our national security.

SCIUTTO: Why hasn't the president uttered the simple words, do not interfere in our election, Russia, this is a sacred American political process? And by not doing that -- you've been well briefed on the Russia threat for years -- by not doing that, does that open the door further to interference?

[10:50:11]

ROGERS: I certainly think they would take this as permission. And here's the -- this is the crazy thing, and I wish the president would come out and set this straight because he could do it in one speech, and set the tone -- is because we know that they've been building. And so they got -- they started all of this in, you know, '14 and '13, 2014, 2013 in other countries, working their kinks out. And then they brought it to the United States in 2016.

And I would argue through their information operation -- not hacking of votes, but the information operation -- were wildly successful. I mean, they got Americans not liking Americans, and that's exactly what they want to have happen.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ROGERS: Going into 2020, we knew that they were continuing to ramp up their activities. And it's been pretty -- you know, most of the committees, most of the members who got access to classified information said, hey, they're back at it. You know, they're coming back at us again.

And so I think it would help the country and our national security sector by saying, hey, we're not going to tolerate it, we will take action, there will be consequences, really important.

And then where I think Congress can be helpful is, A, stop leaking classified information. It's irresponsible, number one. But number two, work with the intelligence agencies. These shouldn't be combative meetings, they should be, you know, what are you doing or why aren't you doing enough or are you doing enough and how do we help you do enough.

This notion that they're passive briefings, to me, that makes me more nervous than anything I've heard so far this year.

SCIUTTO: Should members of Congress, intelligence be worried about Russia's hand not just in the social media atmosphere, but in the violence that we're seeing on the streets? There's been some suspicion that they would help to stoke that kind of thing. Have you see evidence? What level of concern should there be?

ROGERS: Yes, I don't know any information related to what's happening in the United States. I will tell you, there is a large body of evidence of the Russians taking a kernel of truth, sow some chaos somewhere -- I don't care if it's the separatist movement in Spain in Catalonia or the Brexit movement or activities happening in the rest of Europe -- and then they flame it up.

So they'll take something that's actually real, it's really happening. Well, if you look at what's happening now, all of that would be true. And we also know that for a long time, they've been trying to engage Americans in this racial disagreement and try to flame it up.

So I haven't seen anything. If I were at the FBI today, I'd be looking for it. Because the last thing you want is a foreign country coming in and interfering with Americans' free right to protest, and we don't want to make -- you know, if they want to encourage violence, they probably could. We've watched them do it in other places. I think that's where the (INAUDIBLE) concern is.

SCIUTTO: I mean, there's got to be a digital -- I'd be interested in seeing if Russian bots have propagated the message, for instance, of these groups that were drawn into Kenosha, right? From outside the state.

Final question, given that you don't have presidential leadership on this -- the president has refused for four years -- for folks watching at home, what should their level of confidence be that others -- that the intelligence community, that the FBI, that members of Congress are doing all they can to keep Russia out of this election from influencing it in any way? What confidence should people at home have?

ROGERS: Given what I have seen in 2018, that the NSA was engaged in activity to push back Russian interference in that particular election, I feel pretty confident. I don't know of any agency that's been told, you cannot be aggressive in pushing back. So all the political rhetoric you see is at one level. What worries me however is that we can't get together, Republicans and Democrats, and say, we are going to push back.

And by the way, this whole notion that Russia is worse than China -- China -- they're, the FBI opens up a Chinese counterintelligence -- meaning they're doing something bad -- every 10 minutes, an investigation. Yes, the Chinese are a risk and a threat, and they're also getting into information operations. So are the Russians.

So we ought to stop talking about whose team we think is more dangerous or not depending on our political beliefs, and get together and say, we need to protect the borders of the United States against these foreign actors trying to influence American voters. I think it's something that we have to worry about.

And the political climate, I'm very worried about. You know, every -- if you're in one party, they're Snidely Whiplash. If you're the other party, they're Dudley Do-Right. And the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

SCIUTTO: Well, you'd think it'd be an easy one, but sadly it's not in this environment.

ROGERS: Yes, it's (INAUDIBLE).

SCIUTTO: Mike Rogers, always good to have your wisdom and insight on the air.

ROGERS: Thanks, Jim, I really appreciate it.

[10:55:00]

SCIUTTO: Have a good week.

And thanks to all of you for joining us today. I'm Jim Sciutto. NEWSROOM with John King will start right after a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Hello everybody and good morning. I'm John King in Washington. Thank you for sharing this busy news day with us.

Joe Biden makes a rare road trip today to frame protest and racial unrest as more proof, in his words, it is unsafe to live in Donald Trump's America.

[11:00:03]

President Trump wants you to see recent unrest in Portland, Kenosha and elsewhere? Well, he wants you to see it differently.