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Trump Threatens to Push U.S Democracy to the Brink; U.S. Reports Nearly 1,100 Coronavirus Deaths in Single Day. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired September 24, 2020 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Justice Ginsburg in lying in repose at the Supreme Court today. She will be moved to the Capitol Statutory Hall tomorrow, the first woman in history to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol.

Thanks for joining us today. I hope to see you back here this tomorrow. Brianna Keilar picks up our coverage right now. Have a good day.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: I'm Brianna Keilar, and I want to welcome viewers here in the United States and around the world.

Democracy in America on the brink. The United States president has insistently undermined faith in America's institutions and ideals for his personal benefit. He has consistently expressed his admiration of autocrats but now he's threatening to become one.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Will you commit to making sure that there is a peaceful transferal of power after the election?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, we have to see what happens. You know that. I have been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster. And --

REPORTER: I understand that but people are rioting. Do you commit to making sure that there's a peaceful transferal of power?

TRUMP: We want to have -- get rid of the ballots an you will have a very -- we'll have a very peaceful -- there won't be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: By refusing a peaceful transfer of power, he is testing the boundaries of democracy and he is encouraging violence. There is no way around it. He is signaling to his supporters that if Joe Biden, it can't possibly be legitimate. It's rigged, as he puts it.

Also, this week, Trump has praised violence against journalists. His campaign videos are asking able-bodied people to form election squads, which historically were used to intimidate people of color from voting.

Trump has dismissed the fact that Russians are attacking this election to hurt Joe Biden. His campaign and his Republican allies have pushed manipulated videos of his opponent, which social media companies won't take down.

Trump is claiming that he can override the FDA on making guidelines stricter for a vaccine, fueling new fears that this vaccine has been politicized to get him re-elected.

He gives himself an A+ for failing coronavirus response in the same week that we lost our 200,000th Americans to this disease.

Trump is contradicting the head of CDC on masks, vaccines and his proxy on the coronavirus task force, a radiologist with counter- scientific views, who has floated herd immunity, is also undermining Dr. Robert Redfield.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, DIRECTOR, CDC: The preliminary results on the first-round show that a majority of our nation, more than 90 percent of the population remains susceptible.

DR. SCOTT ATLAS, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS ADVISER: I think that Dr. Redfield misstated something there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: That's just this week. With less than six weeks until Election Day, the FBI also warned this week that foreign actors will try to spread disinformation on the election outcome. What's clear is they will be following the playbook of President Trump, who is already doing it in plain view.

And while Democratic lawmakers were quick to condemn the president's refusal to guarantee a peaceful transition, Republicans have been pushing back but more gently. Senate Majority Leader McConnell tweeted this. There will be an orderly transition, that's what he said, and pointing out that there always has been. There will be an orderly transition, just as there has been every four years since 1792.

CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju is on Capitol Hill. And I know you're getting in your steps today, Manu. I know you were burning up the phone lines trying to see where lawmakers stand on what the president said.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and we've been getting a lot of reaction today. And this has really been the story of the Trump presidency, the president says something or does something very controversial, Republicans on Capitol Hill tend to not engage, don't respond, dodge questions about it.

But this time, his controversy dealing with the pillar of American democracy and a lot of them weighing, but, as you mentioned, in gently, oftentimes, not calling out the president by name but seeking to reassure the American public that there would be an orderly and peaceful transfer of power if the president loses.

John Cornyn of Texas told me, no, it's not appropriate for the president to say that. But then I asked him, well, what will Republicans do about it if the president doesn't leave office. He said he didn't want to entertain a hypothetical.

Now, just moments, the number two Republican senator, John Thune, just told our colleague, Ted Barrett, that Republicans would stand up to Donald Trump if he were not to leave office and lose the elections. But most Republicans are not going there and a lot of them are simply deflecting questions.

And then pointing to a comment that Hillary Clinton made last month, in which she suggested that Joe Biden should never concede to Donald Trump if he loses. Of course, Hillary Clinton is not running for president now but nevertheless a number of Republicans pointing to that as sidestep the questions about whether the president should have committed to that orderly transition. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. KEVIN CRAMER (R-ND): But I think that to overdramatize it is to overdramatize it.

RAJU: What do you mean? The White House has (INAUDIBLE) and the president has said repeatedly, he is not guaranteed that he would accept the election results and last night made it clear he was not committing to an orderly transition.

[13:05:02]

CRAMER: The opponent stated they don't plan to ever concede the election if --

RAJU: Hillary Clinton is not on the ballot. The president is running for re-election.

CRAMER: Sure.

RAJU: He is the one who is saying that from the White House podium.

CRAMER: Look, the president speaks in very extreme manners, occasionally. I didn't find what he said last night to be overly extreme, quite honestly.

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): Well, I think that the president will accept the result and we've got to make sure that it's fair and I would ask you the same question I asked, Manu. Hillary Clinton said Joe Biden should not accept the result of the election under any circumstances. Go ask the same question of every Democrat if they think if it's a fair election that they will support the outcome.

RAJU: But she's not the candidate. The president is the candidate. He is not committing to accept that.

TILLIS: Manu, how many people have you asked on the Democratic side whether or not to support they will the outcome of the election?

RAJU: She is not --

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAJU: And Democrats, of course, are saying that if Joe Biden were to lose, he should concede certainly. But nevertheless, Republicans are suggesting, one senator, Ben Sasse, told reporters earlier today, the president just says crazy stuff, and this is part of it.

So, you're seeing see a variety of reaction and some deflection as Republicans are faced with these questions about what the president said last night and that's caused a lot of alarm. Brianna?

KEILAR: Manu, thank you so much for that report. We really appreciate it.

The president is also trying to cast doubt on an essential part of the electoral process, especially this year, mail-in or absentee voting. He has continually alluded to unsubstantiated claims about widespread mail-in ballot fraud.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: The ballots are out of control. You know it. And you know who knows it better than anybody else? The Democrats know it better than anybody else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, in Michigan, where Trump won in 2016 by just three-tenths of a percentage point, or a little over 10,000 votes, the secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat who is responsible for running the state's election, tweeted, the ballots are not out of control. Our elections are safe, secure and accessible to every eligible citizen thanks to the thousands of committed election administrators from both parties who working around the clock to make sure that every vote is counted, and every voice is heard.

And Secretary Benson is here to talk more about this now.

Secretary, thanks for being here. What concerns do you have about the impact of President Trump casting doubt on the electoral process in your state?

JOCELYN BENSON (D), MICHIGAN SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, I'm looking at it from the vantage point of the bipartisan election administrators all around the country who are working overtime to ensure that our ballots are secure, and indeed they are. We have time-tested security provisions in place not just in Michigan but around the country.

Now, we need voters of all backgrounds to know that whoever they cast their vote for, their ballot will be counted, and their vote will be secure.

KEILAR: And you're expecting a record number of absentee ballots to be cast. They have been requested. And they need to be postmarked the day before Election Day, as I understand it. So, obviously, they could be coming in after Election Day and then, of course, be counted after Election Day, even though they were mailed beforehand.

How quickly are you thinking that you will have votes counted? How quickly will we know which way Michigan is going?

BENSON: Well, we are looking at it from a basic math perspective. We will have probably 3 million ballots or more that are going to be sent through the mail to our clerks throughout the state. And under current guidelines, they cannot begin tabulating those ballots until 7:00 A.M. on Election Day. And it is just not physically possible to have those -- that many ballots counted in 13 or 12 hours.

They are going to start counting them 7:00 A.M. and they will get done with them when they get done with them because they're going to prioritize security and accuracy, as well efficiency.

Now, we have, in many places, doubled the number of tabulators to process ballots more quickly, where we have recruited close to 20,000 new election workers all across the state who are going to be working as hard as they can to efficiently tabulate those ballots, but it's going to take time.

And we're estimating that it may be not until Friday when we know the full results and have every ballot tabulated. And at the end of the day, we're going to prioritize that full tabulation, that accuracy over everything else.

KEILAR: So -- and you know if you go to Friday, if you're going days after Election Day, the longer the count goes on, that plays into the narrative that the president is already setting up, which is baseless but it's that the election is rigged, especially in the case of states like yours where the margins are so slim or could be so slim and could change after election night based on what's come in by election night and what you're counting after. How do you deal with that?

BENSON: Well, the bottom line is there should be -- and this is the way democracy works, no winner is declared until every ballot is counted. That's why we vote. So at the same time, we recognize from the minute the polls close to the minute we do have that final tabulation, there will be efforts to try to sow seeds of doubt among our electorate and others about the sanctity of our votes.

[13:10:00]

So, we're going to respond to that, as we always do, with facts, data, truth and transparency, so citizens will be able to know throughout that time period exactly where we are in the process. And will consistently, not just my office but in many other offices, because Michigan won't be the only state in this scenario, consistently providing information about the progress that we're making, being transparent along the way and responding to any element of misinformation that emerges in that time period with truth and data and facts until the final votes are tabulated.

KEILAR: All right. Secretary Benson, thank you so much for joining us.

BENSON: Thank you.

KEILAR: And good luck. I know you have quite the weeks ahead of you here.

My next guest is the author of a very timely warning of about how the election could be subverted and what could happen if President Trump refuses to concede or clouds the outcome of the election.

Barton Gellman is the journalist behind the cover story for the fall issue of The Atlantic. It's called, The Election That Could Break America. But this was a piece that was actually released early online with Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg explaining, sometimes a story comes along that just can't wait.

I'm joined now by The Atlantic's by Barton Gellman. And, Bart, you write in this that, quote, a lot of people, including Joe Biden, have misconceived the nature of the threat. They frame it as a concern unthinkable for presidents past, that Trump might refuse to vacate the Oval Office if he loses.

And then you go on to say, quote, the worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. And in your article here, in your reporting, you found a concerted effort to do that. So tell us about that.

BARTON GELLMAN, STAFF WRITER, "THE ATLANTIC": Well, one of the things that surprised me when I started to explore this was the power of the implication. If you start with the premise that Trump is not going to concede defeat, whether or not he's defeated, he has enormous power to prevent the formation of a decisive outcome.

There is no umpire in a presidential election, even someone like the secretary we just heard from, there is no umpire who has jurisdiction over the whole problem of who just got elected of president, who can make a decisive outcome, blow the whistle and say the game is over. There is no one to tell the loser he lost if he's not prepared to concede.

And one of the things that the president can do is to challenge the results. His campaign is working on the apparent presumption that he can't win or is less likely to win if all the votes are counted. He has pre-announced his legal strategy of challenging mail votes and, in particular, any vote that is not counted on election night as being fraudulent or rigged or invalid somehow, although that is just a fantasy invented out of old cloth.

We have been doing mail-in ballots securely for decades in this country.

KEILAR: You say --

GELLMAN: And --

KEILAR: Sorry, go on, Bart.

GELLMAN: He starts off by challenging them in the world of public opinion, he challenges them in court. He challenges them at the polling places where his watchers have the right to look at every outer envelope from every mailed in ballot and argue, no, that signature doesn't match, no that postmark is unreadable. These are going to be the new hanging Chads of this election.

But he's going to do his best to prevent the votes from being counted but he has other maneuvers available to him after that.

KEILAR: You say the postmark will be the hanging Chad of 2020. And you also highlight the expiration of the consent decree, which was born out of a New Jersey governor's race in the '80s where the GOP allegedly hired off-duty police to be a national ballot security task force that really just had the effect of intimidating voters of color.

On August 20th, you point out the president said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We're going to have everything. We're going to have sheriffs and we're going to have law enforcement. And we are going to have, hopefully, U.S. attorneys and we're going to have everybody, an attorney general.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: I mean, that sounds somewhat like this volunteer force monitoring elections. What will the effect of that possibly be?

GELLMAN: Well, these ballot security task forces and in particular the use of off-duty police officers, sheriffs and so forth, they work because they rely on the perfectly reasonable and rational reluctance of people of color to have encounters with members of law enforcement because their experiences with them are frightening.

And so, this is the first presidential election in 40 years in which the Republican National Committee will not be under court supervision and will not be forbidden by courts to do ballot security measures. So we'll have to see how far they go.

[13:15:01]

Beyond that, the president has command of an enormous federal bureaucracy. If he chooses to do so, and if Bill Barr is willing to write him the check in terms of an assertion of presidential authority, he can send people to guard or supervise or seize or impound postal ballots at post offices, for example, or to bring law and order to an unruly city, which happens to be key Democratic stronghold in a swing state.

We don't know what he is capable of doing because he's already announced that he does not intend to let anything happen that causes him to lose the race. I mean, if you define a rigged election, as any election in which I lose, then you're leaving yourself a lot of latitude to act.

KEILAR: Yes. It's a fascinating read, Bart. It is very important to read. We really appreciate you joining us to discuss it. Bart Gellman with The Atlantic, thanks.

GELLMAN: Thanks for having me.

KEILAR: The president claims he could override the FDA on the coronavirus vaccine. Can he though?

Plus, we are now learning that the virus is mutating. And what is that going to mean for all of us?

And tensions boiling over, the lack of charges in Breonna Taylor's death. We're going to take you to Louisville.

This is CNN special live coverage.

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[13:20:00]

KEILAR: Coronavirus infections are trending in the wrong direction in the U.S., the nation reporting more than 1,000 deaths in a single day for the first time in over a week, nearly 1,100 people taken from their families. This spike coming as health officials plead with Americans not to squander this critical time, these few weeks that we have left before flu season to get the number of coronavirus infections down.

Today though, 21 states are experiencing an increase in new infections compared to just last week. Almost all of these are in the Midwest and the west.

And then there's this, a new CDC analysis finding that young people in their 20s have accounted for more than 20 percent of the confirmed coronavirus cases from this summer.

The CDC also says that nearly 11,000 people may have been exposed to the virus this year on commercial flights. United Airlines is responding by offering rapid COVID testing for some passengers, specifically for flights to Hawaii to help people there avoid the state's quarantine rules.

The president is now accusing his own government of playing politics when it comes to approving a coronavirus vaccine and he is threatening to inject himself into the approval process as regulators consider additional proposals for a more cautious and safe vaccine timeline.

Sources are telling CNN that the FDA is weighing proposals, like adding an extra 60 days to the process in order to increase the monitoring time of patients in these trials. This is a move that would push a vaccine beyond Election Day and dash the president's political timeline.

Here is what Trump said when asked about the stricter FDA guidelines. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We're looking at that and that has to be approved by the White House. We may or may not approve of it. That sounds like a political move.

ATLAS: You shouldn't be punished by doing something faster than other people could have done or thought. It's the opposite. We have a pandemic. The urgency is the pandemic, not politics.

REPORTER: Are you --

TRUMP: It sounded -- to me, it sounded extremely political. Why would they do this when we come back with these great results? And I think you will have those great results. Why would we be delaying it?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, mere hours before the president said this, four of his top health officials pledged to Congress that science and science alone would drive the authorization and timeline of a vaccine.

Today, the head of the FDA choosing not to comment on the president's threat.

I want to bring Dr. Dan Barouch, who is the director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Doctor, thank you for joining us to talk about your perspective here.

Can the White House, as you know it, override the FDA and short circuit the approval process?

DR. DAN BAROUCH, CENTER FOR VIROLOGY AND VACCINE RESEARCH, BETH ISRAEL DEACONESS MEDICAL CENTER: Well, thank you, Brianna. I am not a regulatory expert so I don't know the legalities of it, but what's critical here is maintenance of public trust. Because for a vaccine to be successful in a population level, then we need the vaccine to be successful but we also need there to be public trust in the vaccine process and the regulatory process in order for people to take it.

KEILAR: And, briefly, these proposals that the FDA is weighing, they involve adding 60 days before a vaccine maker could apply for an emergency use authorization and then one proposal says the wait has to happen until all the participants get the second shot, the other plan says the wait should be after half of the participants get the second dose. Why are those markers important? Can you explain that to us?

BAROUCH: Absolutely. So the issue that's at stake here is safety of a vaccine, which is the most important part about a vaccine, because if a vaccine is going to be given to millions or billions of people, we need it to be extraordinarily safe.

The question what is the bar of safety needed before an emergency use authorization that would be necessary for public use? And I think that in this case, the debate is really what is that marker for safety. And just the fact that there are two proposals that have been put forward essentially means that there is a debate ongoing.

[13:25:00]

How much safety time and safety follow up is really needed to assure the public that the vaccines are safe?

KEILAR: I want to listen to something that the HHS secretary said today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEX AZAR, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: I want to reassure you and the American people, politics will play no role whatsoever in the approval of a vaccine. There are many independent checks in this system that we have built in first.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: You are involved in Johnson &Johnson's vaccine trial, which just that reached phase three with the largest group of participants so far of any trial. That's 60,000 participants. What obstacles are currently standing in your way?

BAROUCH: Well, yesterday, the NIH and J&J announced the initiation of the phase three trial of the Ad26-based COVID-19 vaccine, which is the fourth phase three trial in the United States. Of course, there were some others internationally. And we are very much in the early stages of this trial so we will need to recruit a large number of individuals for this trial and then we need wait for infection endpoints to occur prior to seeking regulatory approvals.

KEILAR: Okay. Sorry, Doctor, you wanted to add something?

BAROUCH: Yes. But I absolutely agree that science and science alone needs to dictate the process. And that is needed because, ultimately, we need to have public trust in these vaccines.

KEILAR: Yes. It is so important --

BAROUCH: A fantastic vaccine that people don't take will fail.

KEILAR: Yes. The vaccine is important. The vaccination is more important or just as important. Dr. Barouch, thank you so much.

BAROUCH: Thank you very much.

KEILAR: The NAACP president in Louisville will join me live on the unrest in his city over the decision in the Breonna Taylor case.

Plus, how one civil rights leader is calling for an economic boycott after not a single officer was charged related to her death.

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