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Live Coverage of President Trump Press Conference; Trump Again Addresses Atlantic Article, Attacks John McCain; Trump Suggests Vaccine Will be Available by Election Day. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired September 07, 2020 - 14:00   ET

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

QUESTION: But excuse me, my question is do you want the Justice Department to indict people over this?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm not going to say that. I have to see the report. I haven't seen -- I purposely -- I don't know if that was a good thing, smart thing -- I don't know.

[14:00:01]

But nobody can complain about it. I have every right to have been very much involved, and maybe someday I'll get involved in it.

They spied on my campaign, and that includes Biden and Obama. They spied on my campaign trying to defeat me. They wrote up a fake dossier, that has proven to be totally fake, written by Christopher Steele, paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, and they used that illegally in the FISA courts.

If we did what they did, you would have many people in jail all right -- right now, and you have, other than the one agent that admitted his guilt, that he forged documents, we don't have that yet.

But the report hasn't been issued yet. Let's see what happens.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: But let me just -- let me just tell you something: President Obama and Biden -- Sleepy Joe -- he knew everything that was happening. They were spying on my campaign, and they got caught. Now let's see what happens.

But if this were the opposite way, people would have been jailed. They would have been in jail already for a period of at least -- it would have started two years ago, and it would have been for 50 years for treason. Because you can't do that. That's never -- and nothing like that's ever happened before.

Then they created, at tremendous expense -- the money they paid is tremendous. I'm sure you know the money that was paid -- millions of dollars. They created a fake dossier, a fake dossier, proven to be, now, fake. Everyone -- and they used it in the FISA courts. That's a crime. QUESTION: (inaudible)--

TRUMP: So far, I haven't seen anybody have a problem. But the report hasn't been issued yet. Let's see what happens with the Durham Report.

But this started in Obama, and some people would say -- and some people go, "Well, but he was the president," like, "Let's leave him alone." If it were me, they wouldn't be leaving me alone, I can tell you. It's a totally double standard, and it's a -- it's a disgrace.

And if I were a Republican senator and if I were a Republican congressman -- and we have some great ones, but we have a lot of them that don't fight the way that the other side fights.

We have much better policy. We have much better things going for us, like borders and walls and immigration and no sanctuary cities. They have a lot -- they have a lot of bad stuff going on.

But they're dirty fighters. And the dirtiest fight of all is the issuance of 80 million ballots, unrequested. They're not requested. They're just sending 80 million ballots all over the country -- 80 million, non-requested. I call them unsolicited ballots. That's going to be the dirtiest fight of all.

People are going to get ballots. They're going to say, "What am I doing?" And then they're going to harvest. They're going to do all the things.

And if you look at the last period of six months, take a look at the races where they've sent ballots out, take a look at Carolyn Maloney, whose race should be redone because she won that race totally unfairly to her opponent.

Her opponent did very well against her. That race should be rerun. But they declared her the winner because they heard I found out about it. But take a look at what's happened in New Jersey and in Virginia and different places. It's a disgrace. That'll be a beauty. Yeah, please.

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.

If proven true, are you OK with Postmaster General DeJoy and the fact that he asked former employees at private companies to make donations to the GOP and then reimburse them? Are you OK with that?

TRUMP: Yeah, I don't know too much about it. I read something this morning, but I don't -- other than that, I'd have to see it.

He's a very respected man. He was approved very much by both parties, I guess. It was sort of a -- an approval that took place by both parties.

I don't know exactly what the story is. I'll certainly know within a short period of time. I just read it for the first time when I read it this morning, just like you did.

QUESTION: Would you support an investigation, sir? TRUMP: Sure, sure.

QUESTION: And then--

TRUMP: I think let the investigations go, but -- but he's a very respected man. Again, it was a bipartisan commission. Postmaster general is appointed by a bipartisan commission. And we'll see how that goes.

But no, I -- I think he's a very honest guy, but we'll see.

Yeah?

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Go ahead, please.

QUESTION: Mr. President, a follow-up please, if you don't mind. (inaudible) campaign finance scheme, do you think he should lose his job?

TRUMP: Yes, if something could be proven that he did something wrong, always. Always.

They've been looking at me for four years. They found nothing. Four years, think of it. For four years. From the day I came down the escalator I've been under investigation by sleaze, and they found nothing. They found nothing. A friend of mine said, "You have to be the most innocent, honorable man ever to hold the Office of the President."

Think of it. They spent just -- Mueller alone, they spent, I guess the real number turned out to be $48 million, but whatever it was -- many, many millions of dollars. They had 18 angry Democrats looking.

They had FBI agents all over the place. They had every -- and they have no collusion. Friends of mine have said -- sophisticated friends have said, "You've got to be the most innocent guy every to hold this office," and there's a lot of truth to that.

[14:05:05]

Yeah, please?

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. After the Navalny poisoning, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany is under pressure to cancel Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany. Would you support such a move (inaudible)?

TRUMP: Sure, well, I've been supportive -- I've been supportive of that. I was the first one that brought it up. You never heard of Nord Stream 2 until Trump came along. When I came along, I said, "Wait a minute, we're protecting Germany from Russia, right?" NATO -- "We're protecting Germany from Russia, Germany's paying Russia billions and billions of dollars to get their energy" -- and the real number's probably 60 to 70 percent ultimately of their energy's going to come from Russia.

And I said this for years, that -- nobody even talks about it. One of the many things, between sanctions and all of the -- what we've done for Ukraine relative to what the past -- they used to send pillows and we sent tank busters -- but I brought that up a long time ago. Russia's unhappy that I brought it up, but you never heard of Nord Stream 2, nobody did until I got elected.

And I said, "Why is Germany making a deal to give billions of dollars to Russia and then we're protecting Germany from Russia? How does that work?" And then on top of it, Germany is delinquent because they're only paying a little more than 1 percent and they're supposed to be paying 2 percent and even the 2 percent is low.

But just remember, Trump, me, I got the countries of NATO to spend $1.130 billion, going to $400 billion, a year -- think of it, $400 billion a year -- more for NATO, and the purpose of NATO primarily is Europe protection against Russia.

Now, they can use it for other, I guess, and they have a little bit in the Middle East, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm the one that did that. So -- but nobody talks about that. Nobody talks about Nord Stream 2.

The answer is absolutely, if they feel that something happens. But I don't know that Germany's in a position right now, because Germany's in a very weakened position energy-wise.

They're closing all their plants, they're closing their nuclear, they're closing their coal, they're closing a lot of plants, and they are -- they have put themselves in a very bad position frankly -- very, very bad position.

Yeah, please?

QUESTION: Mr. President, can I follow up on (inaudible) question? Have you asked John Kelly to (inaudible)?

TRUMP: No. I have nothing against John, I have nothing -- nothing against anybody. No.

I was very heartened to see that a friend of his -- cause I know Zach is a friend of his and worked for him. I was very heartened to see that Zach Fuentes came out with the statement that he did, I guess late last night, that -- that it was not true.

QUESTION: Can I ask another question on a different topic, Mr. President? Mr. President, what exactly is un-American about (inaudible)?

TRUMP: Well, we're going to do a report -- yeah, I -- I fired those people, they're all gone and it was a disgrace, frankly. And we're going to give you a big report that's going to make you very happy.

All right, yeah, please? QUESTION: Thank you. (Inaudible) moment ago (inaudible) you were talking about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and their comments about the vaccine. Do you (inaudible)--

TRUMP: No, they say worse -- they say negative -- they say negative. They're going to make the vaccine into a negative so that when we have it -- and I spoke to the head of Pfizer, I spoke to the head of Johnson & Johnson, I spoke to the head of the greatest medical companies in the world. We're doing great. We're going to have it soon.

Wait a minute.

So now what they're saying is, "Oh, wow, this is bad news. President Trump is getting his vaccine in a record time."

By the way, if this were the Obama administration, you wouldn't have that vaccine for three years, and you probably wouldn't have it at all. So we're going to have this -- a vaccine very soon, maybe even before a very special date. You know what date I'm talking about.

QUESTION: Yes.

TRUMP: Let me just say -- wait -- and what they're doing, because they think it is going fast -- and if you talk to a lot of your sources -- if you have sources -- if you talk to your sources in the FDA, you'll see it's going very, very well. The -- the numbers are looking unbelievably strong, unbelievably good.

So now they're saying, "Wow, Trump's pulled this off. OK, let's disparage the vaccine." That's so bad for this country, that's so bad for the world to even say that. And that's what (sic) they're saying it.

But I watched Kamala's poll numbers drop from 15 to almost zero and then drop out even before she ran in Iowa because people didn't like her, and I understand why. She will never be president -- oh, I have to be careful 'cause Obama used to say that about me, so I have to be a little bit careful.

QUESTION: Right--

TRUMP: But you have to look at her a little bit more closely, because obviously Joe's not doing too well, so you're going to have to look at her a little bit too closely.

[14:10:00]

But she's talking about disparaging a vaccine so that people don't think the achievement was a great achievement. I don't want the achievement for myself, I want something that's going to make people better, that people aren't going to get sick with. That includes therapeutics, where we're doing equally as well -- therapeutics.

Go ahead.

QUESTION: Your -- your point is that what they're saying is that they're saying it for political purposes.

TRUMP: Yes.

QUESTION: You have asserted repeatedly that a vaccine will be on the market by -- before the election--

TRUMP: No, I didn't say -- I didn't say they were, I said by the end of the year.

QUESTION: -- same things that--

TRUMP: No, but you're not quoting me accurately.

I said the vaccines will be on the market before the end of the year, but they may even be on the market -- they may even be developed -- and fully developed, tested, everything else -- you know, we have 30,000 people in just one vaccine right now under test, in very, very highly infected areas, so we're going to be able to get a good result one way or the other very soon.

So I didn't say what you said. What I said is by the end of the year, but I think it could even be sooner than that. It could be during the month of October, actually. Could be before November.

QUESTION: But aren't you also saying that for political--

TRUMP: No, I'm saying that because we want to save a lot of lives. The fast -- with me, it's the faster, the better. If it's somebody else, maybe they would say it politically, but I'm saying it in -- in terms of this is what we need. We have to have -- if we get the vaccine early, that's a great thing, whether it's politics or not.

Now, do benefits inure if you're able to get something years ahead of schedule? I -- I guess maybe they do. But the most important thing to me is saving lives. It's the most important thing.

Yeah, go ahead, in the back.

QUESTION: Hi. (Inaudible)--

TRUMP: You sound so clear as opposed to everybody else (inaudible).

QUESTION: -- 1619 Project--

TRUMP: Yeah.

QUESTION: Why do you object to that being taught in the schools? And -- and do you object to slavery itself being taught in schools)?

TRUMP: Yeah, so, I want everybody to know everything they can about our history. I'm not a believer in cancel culture, the good or the bad. If you don't study the bad, it could happen again. So I do want that subject study very, very carefully and very accurately.

But we grew up with a certain history and now they're trying to change our history -- revisionist history. That's why they want to take down our monuments, that's why they want to take down our statues.

I saw something the other day which was absolutely horrendous, a -- Washington monument, they want to rename it -- the D.C. Committee but the D.C. Committee is all Democrats. Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, I mean, we're talking about -- this is the big stuff now.

This is the big stuff. And they want to rename it, they want to re- designate it, they want to take some down. No, we don't do that. Never going to happen with me, I guarantee you that.

Well, I want to thank you all, and I just want to wish you a very happy Labor Day. And we're having tremendous success, whether it's on the vaccines, whether it's on the pandemic -- the -- the plague that came in from China that China should've never let happen, cause I will never feel the same about China. And I just want to again wish you a happy Labor Day. Thank you very much, everybody.

(CROSSTALK)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, so it's Labor Day, and you just heard from the president of the United States, speaking from a location normally reserved for more ceremonial entrances, state dinners: it's the North Portico of the White House there.

A White House -- again, just to remind everyone -- funded by taxpayers dollars, where you have now the president making a number of disparaging and just untrue statements, including calling former Vice President Joe Biden, quote, "stupid" along with a slew of other lies.

And by the way, Mr. President, it is Kamala -- Kalama Harris.

Gloria Borger, Abby Phillip, Dr. Kent Sepkowitz are all with me. And I just want to run through a couple, because we just know we have to fact-check when we listen to the president live.

Before we get to his vociferous -- again -- denial of the "Atlantic" piece, I just want to say, he continues to bring up that you know, Obama and Biden spied on his campaign, always going back to Obama, you know, trying to relitigate 2016.

This is just the facts, so we're all on the same page. The FBI opened an investigation, utilized routine surveillance methods to find out what was going on. Along the way, the FBI made some serious mistakes, but there is no evidence that either Biden or Obama were ever personally involved in doing something like that.

So that said, Gloria, I want to start with you on this -- the "Atlantic" piece, where you know, the article came out -- I believe it was last Thursday evening, you know, alleging that Trump referred to fallen soldiers as "suckers" and "losers," and that was just a piece of everything else that was alleged in this article, which by the way has been corroborated by us at CNN and "New York Times" and even "Fox News" and the "A.P." and "The Washington Post."

[14:15:06] But to hear his say -- and let me pull this verbatim up from Barbara Starr, this is what the president said. "I'm not saying the military's in love with me. The soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren't because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else, stay happy."

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: I would point out, Brooke, that those are people he's appointed, OK? That he's now deriding. And you know, he went out of his way to say that there was a person who denied this occurred, the story that "The Atlantic" is -- has written, who worked for Kelly. But he said he hadn't spoken with Kelly.

But then he sort of went on to talk about John McCain in the same way the article said that he talked about John McCain, as if he should get credit for not ruining John McCain's funeral. And so he brought the story kind of to life again.

And today, I don't know if my colleagues would agree with me, but he seemed to be in really a foul mood today. I don't know if you got that sense. He was full of grievance and vitriol, and also throwing charges out there.

For example, Brooke and Abby, this is -- Abby knows more about this than anyone here -- that there are 80 million ballots all over the country that are being sent to people that have been unrequested as part of his talking points about how this is a rigged election --

BALDWIN: Yes, yes.

BORGER: -- so he did throw a lot of stuff out there, today (ph).

BALDWIN: No, he did. Abby, let's go to you. The note I jotted down was that he went from talking about, you know, dossier in the same breath, then goes to all these mail-in -- you know, mail-in ballots, mail-in voting. It's just like the notion of turning all these conspiracy theories into his own campaign platform.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I think, Brooke, that is exactly the thing that I found to be the most interesting about this press conference. This is Labor Day. This is supposed to be a day that is the unofficial start of the fall campaign, people are getting ready to go actually and cast their ballots in just a couple of days in some states.

And instead of giving a focused press conference where he's driving home a clear narrative about what he wants the country to take away from why they should give him four more years, this press conference was all over the place.

It was about, you know, about this "Atlantic" article, it was about China, it was about Kamala Harris, it was about his conspiracy theories about voter fraud and mail-in ballots.

And I think that this is not the kind of thing that at this moment is helpful to the president. He is not focused, and seems to be grasping at a lot of different ways that he thinks he can try to get at, you know, undermining the Biden campaign.

Even doing this event, just the fact that this event is happening at the White House rather than somewhere out in the country on Labor Day, where he can really make these political arguments. He's doing it on the North Portico of the White House --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: From the People's House.

PHILLIP: -- that is -- from the People's House. That is, I think, the key point of all of this. We didn't hear anything today, Brooke, that we have not heard from the president before. A lot of lies, a lot of misinformation, a lot of disinformation, frankly.

And none of that is new, but I do think that what it tells you is that the president is still not focused. They have still not landed on the message. And instead of being out on the campaign trail like his opponents are, like the vice president is, he's at the White House and it's, you know, 45 minutes, an hour of grievance after grievance after grievance.

BORGER: And by --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Yes, referring to Jeffrey Goldberg as an animal, referring to former Vice President Joe Biden as stupid.

Hang on one second, Gloria, because I want to bring Jim Acosta in --

BORGER: Sure.

BALDWIN: -- our chief White House correspondent, who, if my hearing was correct, I heard you shouting, you know, trying to get a question in at the very end.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

BALDWIN: But, you know, we've just been having this conversation. You know, it seems like the president was just in an awful mood. Are we in the fifth grade, that he's referring to, you know, his opponent is stupid? From the People's House, using every inch, you know, of this White House from the RNC, now to this -- whatever this was.

ACOSTA: Yes.

BALDWIN: What did you think of what you just heard?

ACOSTA: Well, I do think that just as they used the White House for a political backdrop for the convention on the South Lawn of the White House, he did the same in the front yard of the White House, on the North Lawn of the White House. It is very unusual to see the president of the United States give a

press conference in that North Portico area. I don't think I've ever seen that happen, I'm not sure it's ever happened. At least not in a long time. And he essentially used it as a campaign event. This was a rally disguised as a news conference. We've seen this before, we're going to see it again.

I do think it's somewhat surprising, Brooke, that the president just doesn't go out and hold a campaign rally or campaign speech somewhere, why he feels he has to do it from the White House. I think that's a question that needs to be asked.

[14:20:02]

But getting back to the content of what was said, I mean, obviously he is still denying what was reported in "The Atlantic" magazine about disparaging our war dead and so on, even though CNN, other news outlets have confirmed largely what was reported in that "Atlantic" article.

But I want to go back to what he was accusing Kamala Harris, the Biden campaign of doing, and that is politicizing the development of a coronavirus vaccine. The president was accusing Kamala Harris of disparaging the vaccine for political reasons, but then you heard the president say on one occasion during this press conference, that maybe the vaccine will be available or ready maybe before a very special date, he said -- "You know what that is."

BALDWIN: Yes.

ACOSTA: And at one point, hinting that you could see a vaccine before Election Day.

So the president is clearly -- he's done this before, he did it again during this news conference, try to hint and indicate that somehow a coronavirus vaccine will be available to the public before Election Day.

We've talked to a number of public health experts inside, outside the administration -- as you know, Brooke, all too well, Dr. Anthony Fauci and so on -- who have all said consistently that the vaccine will not be available until the end of the year or the beginning of next year, widely across the country.

And so the president, as Abby was just saying a few moments ago, is basically lying to the American people, trying to put out this lie, see if it'll hang out there and some people will believe in it, that this vaccine will be widely available to the American people before Election Day.

All of the public health experts including Dr. Anthony Fauci have said that's not going to be the case. And they've even said -- Dr. Anthony Fauci said this late last week -- to us here on CNN, that he would speak up if he saw any kind of undue political pressure on this process. And that's what I was trying to ask at the very end of that news conference. But in terms of, you know, the president just throwing, you know,

fresh produce at his opponents, calling Joe Biden stupid and so on. I mean, that's what gave this news conference the sense -- the feeling that this was just basically a campaign rally at the White House.

And I suspect, Brooke, when he's not out on the road holding campaign events, he's going to be holding campaign events here too. That line has been blown away. That line for this president no longer exists any more.

BALDWIN: I do have a quick follow-up, because I think Abby made a great point too in talking about all the lies and the disinformation that he just spun for the last 45 minutes. You know, it's go time --

ACOSTA: Yes.

BALDWIN: -- right? It is Labor Day, two months away from this election. And this is when you need to have a tight message to sell to the American public. Did you get the sense that he was lacking focus? And how might that bode for him?

ACOSTA: I do think he was lacking focus at times, and I think it's because he was trying to grasp for that rally speech, that rally feeling that he wants to have. And when he's just standing out in front of a bunch of reporters trying to ask a question and sitting there in silence, keeping their masks on by and large, he's just not getting the same response from an audience that he wants to get.

Obviously, we're not going to sit there and soak up the disinformation and conspiracy theories in the way that other people will at his campaign events.

The other thing I think we should point out, Brooke, is that the president is trying to consistently put the wool over people's eyes, pull the wool over people's eyes that somehow he's had this amazing response to the coronavirus.

He once again tried to say that the U.S. is leading the world when it comes to the coronavirus? It's only leading the world in coronavirus deaths, it's not leading in the response --

BALDWIN: Yes.

ACOSTA: -- to the coronavirus, other countries have far surpassed in performance in terms of getting this virus under control.

And so I do think that the president is trying to put this false spin out there, that somehow he's on top of this and that's why he keeps coming back to this lie, if you want to call it that. You know, no reporter likes to say the president of the United States is lying.

But this lie that a vaccine is going to be out there, available to the American people, kids are going to be lining up and getting injections in their arms and so on before Election Day? Every responsible public health expert inside the Task Force and, you know, outside the Task Force and the public health community have all said that's just not going to happen -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Jim Acosta, thank you so much for all of this.

ACOSTA: You bet.

BALDWIN: And let me just close it out with our doctor, Kent Sepkowitz. And Dr. Sepkowitz, just listening to the president, I don't want you to talk politics. Let's just talk medicine, let's talk safety, let's talk about this vaccine.

And so you know, you heard the president, as he was being pushed by that A.P. reporter as to whether or not, you know, he's politicizing the vaccine and you know, might it be ready for, you know, this special date, as he referred to, obviously, that being the Election Day.

You know, if you're -- you know, just regular American, wanting obviously to be healthy, be safe, how will we know if in fact there is a vaccine that comes out, magically, you know, by the end of this year, maybe even before the election? How will we know if we're safe?

KENT SEPKOWITZ, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Magically indeed. I would say we won't know we're safe. I would even say that the worst thing that can happen to President Trump around the vaccine is to have something available.

[14:25:06]

With a vaccine, the first thing you see when you give it to a million people after only a thousand people, is all the side effects. It takes months and months and months to determine whether or not it's really working. You have to have a certain amount of disease, you have to account for a thousand and one variables.

But if, you know, tomorrow, 100,000 people got a vaccine, two weeks later, a lot of them are going to have aches and pains and this and that. And it'll look like a disaster. It might not be a disaster, we won't know because we won't know efficacy. But the dumbest thing you can do is to hurry up a vaccine, only see the side effects, which happen first, and not really see any benefit at all.

So I think even if it's all in his mind a great strategy, it's a really dumb -- if I can use his words for Biden -- I think it's a really misguided strategy, it's bad politics. He's going to make people sick with a vaccine, and never in a two-month period of time be able to show any benefit at all, no chance.

BALDWIN: I appreciate your candor, Dr. Sepkowitz. Thank you so much.

I want to thank everyone for chiming in in that whole discussion about the president, what we just heard there.

You know, as fears grow about COVID outbreaks on college campuses, Northeastern University in Boston just cancelled the fall term for 11 students for breaking the rules, and they are keeping the tens of thousands of dollars that these students paid in tuition. We'll talk to a student there, next.

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