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Trump Downplays Coronavirus Impact as U.S. Nears 200,000 Deaths; CDC Takes Down Guidance on Coronavirus Airborne Transmission; Putin Allegedly Directly Influence Operation Against Joe Biden. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired September 22, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:44]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Very good Tuesday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Poppy Harlow.

Well, today the nation is right on the verge of 200,000 coronavirus deaths and the president is still downplaying the virus' impact on Americans. Listen to this from him at a rally.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Now we know it. It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems and other problems. If they have other problems that's what it really affects. That's it. You know, in some states thousands of people -- nobody young. Below the age of 18 like nobody. It affects virtually nobody. It's an amazing thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Well, the fact is, 40,000 people young and old are being infected each day right now with COVID-19 in this country. And the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, says the U.S. response to this virus is not exactly, quote, "terrific."

Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta is set to interview Dr. Fauci live in just moments. You'll see it here.

SCIUTTO: Once again, the president just denied the facts and data on COVID. We're also going to hear from President Trump this morning at the U.N. General Assembly. His speech comes as the battle over filling Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat in full swing here. Republicans falling in line, despite very firm commitments they made four years ago not to push Supreme Court nominees during an election year. Within hours, we're going to know the timing it seems of a vote.

But first let's get to CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen on the U.S. passing this grim milestone. What -- we're headed in this direction for some time. The concern, right, is at the same time we're seeing an uptick in daily infections but also deaths as well. What's behind it?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. The president is just wrong about who's dying in this country. And he's wrong about the direction we were going in. It would be nice if we were right. It would be nice if this would all just go away, but we all have to look at the facts and the facts are that it's not.

Let's take a look at the map of the United States. And I think this puts everything into perspective. Look at those orange and red states. Those are 24 states. Almost half the country where the rates are going up, going in the wrong direction. If you see there are eight states that are deep red there, that's where it's going up by more than 50 percent. So the rates two weeks ago versus this -- if you compare this past week to the week before, going up more than 50 percent.

The yellow and the green states are where the rates are steady or are going down. But, you know, we have -- Poppy and Jim, we've talked about this map many, many times over the past few months, and what we see is that things go up and down and up and down. Unfortunately this just isn't going away. This is a roller coaster ride that we will be on for some time.

HARLOW: So talking about another roller coaster, Elizabeth. You were on with us 24 hours ago explaining this updated CDC guidance on how COVID spreads and aerosols, et cetera.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: And then I almost couldn't believe the headline yesterday afternoon that they flipped it back again? So, I mean, what is it and what should people believe?

COHEN: They did. And I will tell you, Poppy, I've been covering the CDC for the better part of three decades. I have never seen anything like this. This is really, really unusual. So there's -- just to back up for a minute. There's been a debate about whether COVID spreads just directly. In other words, two people are within six feet of each other, one of them has COVID. They sneeze on the other person, they cough, they spit a little when they talk and it gets spread that way, or could it also be spread by aerosolized particles?

And what that means is someone with COVID coughs, spits into the air, et cetera, and those particles sort of hang out. They hang out in the air as these little like aerosolized particles and then someone could kind of walk into that air space or those particles could float over to someone else. So in other words, one, the first scenario you'll only have to worry about it if you're within six feet. The second scenario it could spread farther than six feet.

The CDC thus far, up until Friday, had focused on the first one. They didn't mention aerosolized. On Friday, they mentioned aerosolized. Yesterday they took it down and said that was a mistake, we didn't mean to put up that, we're still trying to figure this out.

[09:05:06]

HARLOW: Wow. Elizabeth, thank you.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Understand --

HARLOW: (INAUDIBLE). Yes.

SCIUTTO: Well, people have questions about what they're hearing from government agencies on this. We're joined now by Dr. Paul Sax. He is clinical director of infectious diseases at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Dr. Sax, it's always good to have you on. First, I want to start with the president's outlandish statement that the coronavirus affects virtually nobody. It's true that older people and people with underlying conditions are certainly more vulnerable to this. It is not true that virtually nobody else is vulnerable to this.

Just tell us so folks at home know what the facts are in terms of who's vulnerable and what we're learning over the last several months.

DR. PAUL SAX, CLINICAL DIRECTOR, INFECTIOUS DISEASES DIRECTOR, BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL: Sure. Sure. We know now that young people are vulnerable to getting severe COVID-19, in particular young people who might have underlying medical problems and there's an obesity epidemic in the United States, and obesity turns out to be one of the leading factors for young people getting the severe COVID-19.

It's not a benign infection in young people at all, and it's something that we all should need to be afraid of.

HARLOW: I want your reaction to something that I was really struck by from Bill Gates. He said just a few days ago that essentially the president's travel ban on China which is what the administration continually points to as a success story in terms of trying to mitigate the spread of COVID, he believes that that may have actually made it worse and he explains why. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL GATES, CO-CHAIR, BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION: You know what happened was that 40,000 people came out of China because we didn't ban the residents and citizens from coming in. So we created this rush and we didn't have the ability to test or quarantine those people, and so that seeded the disease here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Do you think that's correct? And if it is, what's the lesson learned for maybe this second wave if we see it?

SAX: Yes. Well, travel bans could potentially prevent an infection in a country. But not if they're instituted solely for the people who are traveling as citizens of the foreign countries and the same thing happened in Europe. You know, when a travel ban was set up for Europe, what happened was that there was a rush of American citizens who came home around that time, many of them from countries that had very high incidents of COVID-19. And unfortunately many of the individuals came home from Europe at

that time brought COVID-19 with them, so we know that the bad outbreaks that happened in the northeast, in particular, in New York City and Boston and Philadelphia, et cetera, was a result of actually (INAUDIBLE) that were instituted not across the board, but for -- just for foreigners coming into the United States during that time. It's really a very risky (INAUDIBLE).

The other thing to mention is that we were not equipped to screen people at entry to the country so people would come into the United States and not be screened either by symptoms or by testing.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Dr. Sax, we talked about the CDC's flip-flop on this guidance and not the first time. I mean, there's a testing guidance flip-flop just a couple of weeks ago. I just wonder about the crisis of confidence here given that these issues are not confined to the CDC. You have questions about the FDA exaggerating the benefits of convalescent plasma on the eve of the RNC.

You have someone working for the NIH in information there messaging who is a Twitter troll attacking Dr. Fauci at the same time, right? What as a doctor is the level of confidence now in these key institutions and what effect does that have as we go towards a vaccine, right, which is what everyone is looking forward to here as an ultimate solution?

SAX: Well, those of us in this field know extremely hard working and intelligent people at CDC, FDA and other -- and the NIH, and there might be individuals there who are succumbing to pressure from the White House. But overall, I still have a lot of faith in them. I will say that the original statement put out by the CDC that was later retracted is one many of us believe in. The virus is spread by -- and the respiratory tract predominantly and can sometimes spread by aerosols in unusual settings with poor ventilation.

So I think the CDC was moving in the right direction. Why they ended up changing it, nobody really knows. I will say, historically, the CDC rarely puts out anything before it's very carefully considered so it doesn't fly that there's something going on after their scientific effort is being altered.

HARLOW: Dr. Paul Sax, we appreciate you this morning. Thanks so much.

Now to a stunning headline. A headline that comes just 42 days from the election. This is according to "The Washington Post," broke the story. A recent CIA assessment reveals Russian President Vladimir Putin is right now likely interfering and, quote, "probably directing" an influence campaign to undermine Joe Biden.

SCIUTTO: Echoes of 2016. CNN's Alex Marquardt has been following this.

And, Alex, there's a lot in this report. Russia interfering again to denigrate Trump's Democratic opponent.

[09:10:04] But also that this Ukrainian politician, Andrii Derkach, the intelligence believes is a Russian agent, is the same person who's been meeting with Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal attorney on this. Tell us the many layers we're learning about Russian interference in this election and cooperation, it seems, from the U.S. end.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim, you hit the nail on the head there. Echoes of 2016. Let's start with the top line because there is a lot in this report. And this goes a step farther than what the intelligence community has said publicly in terms of what Russia is doing in the 2020 campaigns, specifically to denigrate Joe Biden.

This report in "The Washington Post" cites the CIA report saying that Putin is probably behind these Russian efforts to denigrate Joe Biden. This comes from what's known as the CIA's Worldwide Intelligence Review. It's a classified document that goes out to National Security officials and agencies and oversight committees around the U.S. government. This is the top line of that report according to "The Washington Post."

"We assess that President Vladimir Putin and the senior most Russian officials are aware of and probably directing Russia's influence operations aimed at denigrating the former U.S. vice president," so Joe Biden. "Supporting the U.S. President Donald Trump and fueling public discord ahead of the U.S. election in November."

Now, this is very much in line with what we have heard from the intelligence community that Russia is working against Joe Biden in favor of Donald Trump.

Jim, as you mentioned, 2016, after that election the intelligence community assessed that President Putin had personally ordered that operation to then denigrate Hillary Clinton.

Now this CIA report goes on to detail its analysis about the Ukrainian lawmaker Andre Derkach who has been singled out by the intelligence community and the Treasury Department who has sanctioned him as a Russian agent with close connections to the Russian intelligence services. And perhaps what's most interesting in this new report is that the CIA talks about Derkach's relations with a prominent member of the Trump campaign.

The report doesn't say who that is, but we do know that Derkach has very close ties to Rudy Giuliani, though no one was named in this report -- Jim and Poppy.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And we have pictures of Rudy Giuliani meeting with Derkach that Derkach himself posted.

Alex Marquardt, remarkable to see repetition of 2016. Much appreciated.

Still to come this hour, Dr. Sanjay Gupta will sit down with the nation's top infectious disease specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, for a live conversation. That's just moments away. We're going to bring it to you live.

HARLOW: And next, the Republicans say they have the votes for a quick confirmation of the president's Supreme Court nominee. That does not mean the fight is over.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

HARLOW: Welcome back. This morning, Republican leadership says they have the votes they're pushing ahead to fill the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Supreme Court seat. They are set to meet in just a few hours from now to talk about timing on a confirmation vote. Let's go to our Lauren Fox, she joins us on Capitol Hill. Good morning Lauren, some key Republican Senators overnight, Grassley, Gardner, making clear they're behind this thing.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Exactly. You know, yesterday when we talked, we had a list of Republicans we were watching very closely to see where they fell on this conversation about whether or not they'll be comfortable moving forward with President Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court ahead of the election. Now, we know, the answer is yes. And I think that how quickly this has all materialized on Capitol Hill, how quickly Republicans have fallen in line behind their leadership is very important. I wanted to take you to Senator Lindsey Graham. He's the chairman of the Judiciary Committee. This is what he said about thinking right now on when to move this nomination.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): The nominee is going to be supported by every Republican in the Judiciary Committee and we've got the votes to confirm the judge -- the Justice on the floor of the Senate before the election, and that's what's coming.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: And of course, it's worth noting that Senator Susan Collins and Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have said, they're not comfortable moving ahead before the election, but Democrats needed four Republicans to block this nomination, and while we are still waiting to hear what Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican, a moderate member who in the past has voted with Democrats on things like impeachment, that would only make three, Poppy. That falls short of the four that Democrats would need. So full steam ahead up here on Capitol Hill when it comes to this nomination.

HARLOW: Perhaps, the reason for Bret Stephens open letter to Romney this morning in "The New York Times", pleading with him to vote against -- I guess, the president on this one as he did in impeachment. Lauren, we'll watch, thanks a lot. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Well, you heard it from Lauren Fox. Republican Senators Grassley and Gardner, just the latest to say they support a Supreme Court vote before the election. And to be clear, contradicting positions they took four years ago when a Democratic president nominated a Supreme Court justice months before election day. Responding to President Obama's nomination then of Merrick Garland, Senator Gardner said, quote, "the American people deserve a role in this process as the next Supreme Court justice will influence the direction of this country for years to come."

Senator Grassley said then, quote, "the American people shouldn't be denied a voice." And as recently as this past July, the former Senate Judiciary chair told CNN, quote, "if I were chairman of the committee, I couldn't move forward with it, but you'd have to ask Graham what he's going to do." So, what will Senator Graham do? He now says Republicans have the votes to confirm someone before election day, again contradicting the very firm position he took in 2016.

[09:20:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRAHAM: I want you to use my words against me. If there's a Republican president in 2016, and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let's let the next president, whoever it might be make that nomination, and you could use my words against me and you'd be absolutely right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Listen to that. You'd be absolutely right to use his words against him. He said himself. Of course, the architect of all of this is the Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell who himself in 2016 said quote, "this nomination ought to be made by the president, we're in the process of electing this year." Note the inconsistencies there of the state in 2016 and the contradictions today. What they said then and what they are saying now is the exact opposite. They broke their public word. We're joined now by CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Laura Coates and CNN legal analyst Carrie Cordero. So, here we are, they're going to get their vote. Carrie, if I could begin with you, looks like they have the votes, Carrie, although we'll have to see where Senator Romney stands. How quickly could there be a new Supreme Court justice confirmed for life before the election and when would they sit?

CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, it depends on how quickly they actually move to the hearing. It certainly sounds like they're going to move very quickly. And so, if they have the votes, then they'll be able to do it. Look, the issue is, first of all, there is an incredible amount of hypocrisy. So Merrick Garland --

SCIUTTO: Carrie, sincere apologies. Dr. Anthony Fauci has just begun his conversation with our Sanjay Gupta. Let's join live.

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right away about the fact that it is expected, 200,000 Americans will have died of this coronavirus within the next -- a little bit of time here. Maybe during our discussion which is an unbelievable number to think about. You know, Dr. Fauci, you and I are both doctors. No one likes to think of deaths being preventable. No family member likes to be told that their family member's death was preventable, and yet so many of these are. I mean, we just need to look around the world to see what was possible. But I'm just wondering, how do you think about this and how do you -- what is the metric of success or failure in your mind when it comes to this pandemic in the United States?

ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY & INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Well, I mean, obviously -- thank you for having me, Sanjay. The metric for me is the concern I've had and continue to have for this base line of cases that we have every day. These, you know, going back and forth between 35,000 and 40,000 cases per day, which you know, ultimately some will lead to hospitalizations and those will lead to deaths. The idea of 200,000 deaths is really very sobering and in some respects stunning. We do have within our capability even before we get a vaccine which we will get reasonably soon, we have the capability by doing things that we've been speaking about for so long, Sanjay, that could prevent the transmission, and by preventing transmission, ultimately, preventing the morbidity and mortality that we see.

The simple public health things that are not universally being implemented in our society, in our very big country with a lot of heterogeneity. And I'm talking about the universal wearing of masks, the attention to keeping distance, the avoiding of crowds, trying to stay outdoors more than indoors, frequent washing of hands. They sound so simple, Sanjay, we've said them so many times, but they're not universally implemented and employed, and that to me is really something that is serious because as we all know, we're looking straight at the Fall coming upon us. We're looking at the Winter coming upon us.

If we don't get that baseline down sharply to a very low level, and the reason we need it there is because when you have a very low baseline and you start to get the blips as I call them, you don't want them to turn into surges or rebounds. And when you have a lot of cases floating around, it's much more difficult to contain that than if you have a relatively low number. So that when those cases appear, you can contain as opposed to having to jump over to mitigation.

GUPTA: You know, I mean, containment just to give some context in this country would be between 1 and a 100,000 to one in a million new cases per day. So, you know, maybe a couple of thousand new cases per day, and we're obviously more than tenfold that, Dr. Fauci. You know, to the extent that the 1918 flu pandemic was a bit of a model here, it's not perfect, but what they found at that point was in the first six months of the year, about 75,000 people died.

[09:25:00]

And as we just mentioned, close to 200,000 have died in this country during roughly that same time period. But then, it was the second wave, Dr. Fauci, during 1918, that was so disastrous, 195,000 people died in one month, and that month was October. How worried are you -- I mean, I hear you on all the public health measures, I want to talk to you and ask you about that in a minute. But how worried are you right now about this Fall? I mean, how bad do you think this could get? FAUCI: Well, Sanjay, you know, it's always the balance of trying not

to frighten people, at the same time of trying to jolt them into a realization of what needs to be done to protect themselves as individuals and the country. If you look at our country, there are some areas that are doing quite well. You know, it isn't a situation where everything seems to be spiking and going in the wrong direction. There are some places that are doing quite well. We can use them as a model. Namely, of getting a low level of test positivity where you're talking about 1 percent or less or a fraction of a percent. That's not universal throughout the country, so you're asking me a direct question, Sanjay, what worries me the most?

What worries me is that in those areas of the country, which is a large country, heterogeneous in many ways, if you don't have the control now as we get towards the end of September, of getting such a low percentage that it is entirely manageable, when things change that work against you and what works against you now is the fact that we're getting into a weather season where people will be spending more time indoors. And depending upon your own social situation, indoors for you or another person may mean poor ventilation, poor air flow. And difficulty getting the kind of removal of anything that would lead to spread. You know, you talk about particles. You talk about air, singing, coughing, sneezing, all those types of things.

Those are the things that I get concerned about as we get into October and November and December. I'd like to see us go into that at such a low level that when you have the inevitable cases, you can handle them. When they get out of hand, then I worry. I think we can do it, Sanjay. I don't want to really make this kind of a dark thing that oh, my goodness, it's inevitable that we are going to get into serious trouble.

The fact is, we know we could get into serious trouble if we don't do certain things. And I hope that, that understanding is not going to frighten people, but will jolt them into realizing that it is within our hands to prevent that. We can't throw our hands up and say, it's hopeless, it's going to happen anyway. That is unacceptable to take that approach. On the other hand, it's unacceptable to not realize that we are entering into a risk period, and we've got to act accordingly as we enter into that risk period.

GUPTA: Yes, now, I hear you, Dr. Fauci. And I think there's always this balance I think as you and I have talked about between being hopeful and being honest. I mean, you know, I think you and I are both hopeful, optimistic people by nature. But you know, I think that, you know, panic is prevented by presenting the problem clearly along with a plan. And you've done that.

I mean, you've talked about these plans, but I worry that these plans have not been really followed. And I think it gets to this idea of, you know, people who are worried about this, but aren't sure who to trust or what information to believe, which seems like a genuine concern. More so than maybe I even realize as I talk to people over the last several months. Yes, but these guys said this on masks one day and now they're saying this and then, you know, the vaccine. Whatever it might be, where should people get their trusted information do you think? I mean, it used to be the CDC, right? I mean, the -- Tom Frieden was out there on Ebola every day. Rich Besser was talking about H1N1. What about now? Just for the average person, they say, I don't have a political stake, I just want to trust the knowledge that I'm given. Where do they get it?

FAUCI: Well, they need to get it by following the scientific data and the scientific evidence. I do that, Sanjay. I've been doing that with you now for months to the extent that I am out there on TV and in the media. The fact is, you've got to go with the scientific data. One of the things that the public needs to understand is that this is an evolving situation. And the people who say, well, how can I trust anybody because things change? What changes is the fact that we are in an evolving outbreak.

[09:30:00]