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Nebraska Is Latest State To Send Out Absentee Ballots; "New York Times:" Trump Squandered Millions, Faces Crippling Debt; Experts Re-Up Warnings Of Potential Surge In New Infections; Fifteen States Reported Daily Positivity Rate Above 10 Percent Over Last Week; Republicans Set Ambitious Schedule For SCOTUS Conformation. Aired 12- 12:30p ET

Aired September 28, 2020 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Meanwhile another judge stepping into block changes at the postal service that could hinder the mail in voting process. Judge Emmet Sullivan of the D.C. District Court saying last night the changes put the timely delivery of election-related mail at risk.

Top of the hour now and hello to our viewers in the United States and around the world I am John King in Washington. Thank you so much for sharing a very busy, very important news day with us. Judge Amy Coney Barrett plans Capitol Hill visit this week, a prelude to a nasty confirmation file.

The Coronavirus numbers are discouraging today. The average daily case count of new infections here in the United States heading up. Dr. Anthony Fauci warns states that continue to drop restrictions are, "Asking for trouble". And a truly eye opening report on the president's finances reshapes the first presidential debate and reveals a president staring down huge financial trouble.

New and incredibly detailed reporting from "The New York Times" cleaned from 18 years of the president's federal tax returns paints simply a damning picture of the president as a money manager mapping out millions of dollars of losses, a crippling debt load and year after year of avoiding taxes.

The president tweeting today that the story is "Nonsense" you see his words there, he says the story ignores the values of his assets and he denies one of the times core findings. President, the document show paid nothing, zero in federal income taxes for 11 of the 18 years "The Times" examined.

And he paid just $750 in federal income tax the year he won the White House 2016 and in his first year in office 2017. The documents also show a history of massive write-offs, an ongoing battle with the IRS over a nearly $73 million tax refund and a foreign money boon thanks to his presidency.

Importantly the president facing a coming huge money crunch he is personally on the hook for $421 million of debt and loans, most of those loans and that debt coming due within the next four years. The president dismisses the story as fake news and Trump Organization lawyers say he's paid millions in taxes since 2016. A former top IRS lawyer frames the president's serial tax avoidance this way.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PHILIP HACKNEY, FORMER IRS CHIEF COUNSEL: They fund everything right, I mean, they fund health care, they fund social security, they fund building roads, they fund administering our system and our army. And we all pitch in to do that. I think most people pay more for their rent per month for that than he paid in taxes that year.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Let's get straight to CNN's Kara Scannell for some of the details there. Kara the reporting is stunning, raises a ton of questions.

KARA SCANNELL, CNN REPORTER: It does John, it really does. This is an extensive report by "The New York Times" booming through 20 years of tax returns. And here's a bit of the story that they paint. They show that the president had made a fortune several hundreds of millions of dollars from his work on the apprentice and several licensing deals.

But then he was also losing money, losing a lot of money that he had put in his golf courses, this $300 million that he then used to offset the taxes on the money that he had made, so he was able to use these losses in order to wipe out some of what he would owed. But that wasn't the only way that he was able to do this.

According to "The New York Times," he also paid a number of people through consulting fees in the last ten years, $26 million he wrote off on his taxes and consulting fees. 700,000 according to "The New York Times" went to his daughter Ivanka Trump, while she was an employee of the trump organization.

According to "The New York Times" the president had also written off a number of personal and business expenses, over $300 million at Mar-a- Lago, and linen, silver and landscaping. And he also wrote off more than $70,000 on hairstyling that he had used when he was on "The Apprentice" and "The New York Times" also reporting that president does have this hefty tax loans that he is going to be personally on the hook for, $421 million that will come due in the next four years.

And as they point out, this is a period where the president is not making a lot of money from his businesses. His golf courses are losing money; his hotel in Washington, D.C. is losing money. It was before the pandemic and that's certainly not going to help those types of businesses. So the president feeling the heat here and an issue that the Democrats have really focused on was just, is the president profiting from his presidency?

Based on these tax returns in "The New York Times" be able to put some numbers on that specific numbers they say that the president has made $5 million a year in new membership used to Mar-a-Lago as people looking to buy access to the president. John? KING: Kara Scannell very important detailed reporting. Appreciate it.

Let's continue the conversation now with Bloomberg News Tax Reporter Laura Davison and CNN's Kaitlan Collins. Laura, I'll start with you. The question of fairness, and number one, this may not seem fair to President Trump.

But if you put up a list of other presidents and what they paid in taxes, federal taxes in their first year in office, Ronald Reagan paid $165,000 plus. George H.W. Bush paid $101,000 plus. Barack Obama paid $1.7 million in taxes his first year in office. He had just sold a book. When you see $750 for a guy who says he's the mightiest touch billionaire it does strike you as stunning.

[12:05:00]

KING: The question is, this is your area of expertise. When you look at "The New York Times" reporting, when you talk to your own sources and look at this, is it a question in your mind of tax avoidance which is legal, get good account or tax evasion which is not?

LAURA DAVISON, TAX REPORTER, BLOOMBERG NEWS: Well, this is always the question and there is sometimes a very fuzzy line in between what is legal and what is not. Some of the things like these losses that are a very common tactic.

But there are a lot of more aggressive tax moves that they at times have laid out, the consulting fees paid to his daughter Ivanka Trump, for example, these $30,000 for haircuts. These are things that tax lawyers have said are highly unusual, maybe the Trump defenders, but it is more likely that these are going to be problems.

And besides, the tax audit of the IRS has been undergoing for ten years which is very unusual. Even the Trump's pick for IRS commissioner said it was hypothetical when he answered, but - a tax audit this length would be very weird.

KING: So Kaitlan Collins there is questions for the accountants and the lawyers and then there are questions for the voters. I am going to hold at the front pages of "The New York Times," six-column headline here.

The reporting is detailed and damning and if you read this story and you crunch the numbers, it runs 180 degrees counter to this repeatedly from the president to voters about him and his mightiest touch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I used to come up as a businessman. I was very successful. The last election I was a successful businessman running for president. I said, I was going to do things and b the way really successful. I have a lot of common sense. I had great business sense. I made a lot of money. And I have had great success and when I tell you these things, I'm not saying it in a bragging way.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: He was saying in it a bragging way actually and if you read "The New York Times" it's a lot of it just straight outright false.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And John, I see all of this reaction from the president's allies, dismissing this breaking news from "The New York Times," this extensive reporting on the president's finances saying, we already knew that he did not paid a lot in taxes. We already kind of had an idea of this.

But John, this goes completely counter what you still hear from voters today, which is that they did vote for the president, because they thought he was this successful businessman, they thought not only that he did a good job running his companies, but also that because giving up that kind of a lifestyle to become president.

That seemed a positive trait to them and now of course this all runs counter to that with "The New York Times" saying that the president did a better job of playing a successful businessman than he actually was at being one. And so, it's not just about the $750 which is pretty damning because that is something that voters can measure up to what they personally paid in income taxes, federal income taxes.

But it's also what is going to come for the president with those $400 million in loans that you were talking about that are going to come due in the next few years, the questions are of course what's the president going to do about that? Is it going to be a situation that leads to bankruptcy? Who does he owe that money to?

Those are big questions that voters are going to have because John, it's not just that. If you also read in this times reporting, it says that the president has a $100 million mortgage for Trump Tower New York that's due in 2022, that's for just within two years.

So what's going to happen this November could have a pretty big impact on the president when it comes to these loans, when it comes to these finances and whether or not he is actually going to have to do something about it or whether or not people would pursue him, while he is in office over it

So it does make the idea in the choice that voters will be making in November a lot weightier given that the president's finances are obviously in such play here.

KING: Laura, one of the challenges is that there's really no context for this in the sense that Barack Obama did make a lot of money off a book that he wrote, books that he wrote plural. But most of our presidents are politicians at least in modern times and so, they come, they are either Governors or they're Senators or they come in the Bush family, had some money, so they had to do, they had some taxes there.

But if you look at the president he is just complicated, he made money from "The Apprentice" look at the income, $197,000 million from the apprentice between 2000 and 2018 endorsements and licensing in his real estate business investments, Trump-owned companies, Trump-gulf properties. They sell the brand essentially. So it is a much more complicated picture when you look at how this president has made his money or how he has lost money? You see the Trump-owned companies there and all that red on the golf properties. The challenges I guess is to just try to put this into context and with all that debt coming when you read through this, where are the red flags to you when you were looking at all this?

DAVISON: Well, one of the things that "The Times" raise is just how much money he has coming from overseas, from foreign countries. It is some allies, England and Scotland where he has golf properties, but also looking at more authoritarian leaning countries, Philippines, India, Turkey.

And this is something that raise that could be a concern, all the details about those business relationships aren't laid out there. They did note that there was no undisclosed or previously unknown information about his ties to Russia.

[12:10:00]

DAVISON: But still the fact that he has so many ties both domestically and internationally leaves more out of concerns for how - be influenced particularly if his financial position gets more precarious - he has some debt that that he will have to pay in the coming years as well as he also has some tax bills that he could also pay depending how this IRS audit results.

KING: Laura Davison and Kaitlan Collins, grateful for the reporting and the insights and just want to show you the Biden campaign certainly thinks there's something to be gained here very quickly overnight. No words in this ad pay close attention.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

KING: The world is closing in on what will be a very grim statistic, more than 1 million people dead from Coronavirus. Nearly a quarter of that total here in the United States of America. Today a bit of a sad feeling of deja vu experts says they see signs of a false surge.

Let's look at the trends and if you look at the state case trend, you do see 21 states that are the orange and the red. 21 states reporting more new infections now, more new Coronavirus infections now compared to a week ago. So trending in the wrong direction, that's 21 states.

19 is the beige, you see the swath here, and those states were holding steady, about the same this week versus last week. Ten states reporting fewer new infections now compared to a week ago. They include Florida and Arizona. Remember those were big part of the summer surge, those two states are better news in Arizona and Florida at the moment.

But you see this red and orange that is trending in the wrong direction. If you look at it from this way, the case trend started early, got down to here by Memorial Day, up the hill for the summer surge, where you are at 70,000 new infections a day.

You come down some and see the red line. That's the trend line you're watching, it's simply heading in the wrong direction, back up above 40,000 new infections a day. Was down at just shy a 37,000 on Sunday, remember the Sunday totals tend to be down.

Let's watch, let's hope it stays down there and hope it goes lower, but let's watch this as the work we goes out the trend line at the moment going in the wrong direction. In part because of the high positivity rate, in 28 states the percentage of Coronavirus test coming back positive is increasing. 28 states more positive test results this week compared to last week, 22 states decreasing in terms of positivity.

Now if you look at the testing in the United States, 22 states there is more testing now compared to a week ago. So 22 states were increasing when it comes to testing, most public health experts tell you that is a good thing. The president has an event on testing later today. We're not quite clear what is going to say, this is the total testing.

The United States has now conducted more than 101 million Coronavirus tests all across the United States. That's the cumulative total. This is the question, is this enough? Sunday more than 806,000 Coronavirus tests conducted across the United States. And you see pretty much a flat line. It comes up and down a little bit.

But we've been around 800,000 tests on a daily basis. You go back here to the end of June. That pretty much a flat line, hopefully maybe trickling up a little bit off late 806,000 yesterday that is more but listen here. This is over recent months the Trump Administration keeps promising more testing and keeps failing to meet the number.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADMIRAL BRETT GIROIR, HHS ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR HEALTH: In August, we'll have 50 million tests available. If we have pooling we will have a little bit more than that, but we are not going to have 300 million tests per day. In the month of September, we expect to have well over 85 million tests available the capacity. We are now at an inflection point in testing. This month we will have available on average 3 million tests per day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Again, later this afternoon the president and the vice president will give an update on the Coronavirus testing at the White House. So let's have conversation now with Dr. Michael Mina, Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Mina it's nice to see you again.

We're going to hear from the president later today. You heard Admiral Giroir over the months saying testing will go up, will go up, and will go up. Where are we today especially as you see the rise in new daily infection count back above 40,000? Are we testing enough people to have good eyes on this virus or are we still missing stuff? DR. MICHAEL MINA, DEPT. OF IMMUNOLOGY&INFECTIOUS DISEASE, HARVARD T.H.

CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: It really depends on how we want to be using the test. As a surveillance tool to keep just simply a pulse on what's happening in the country? We have enough testing to know our cases going up or down.

But if we want to use testing as a real means to identifying infected people, pull them out of the population before they have a chance to infect other people and stop transmission chains, I would say we're still willfully inadequate in terms of the number of tests that we really need given that we haven't done a good job at social distancing and mask wearing in many parts of the country especially.

KING: Well, it's sad to hear those seven months in when you hear willfully inadequate. But let's hope we hear something from the White House today that is a sign of progress. I just want to show you the map of positivity. Again as you go through this, and you tally the new infections, we dipped a little bit on Sunday. But we are over 40,000 back above, over 40,000 new infections a day on average right now.

And 15 states reported daily positivity rates, 15 states positivity rates over 10 percent in the last 7 days and the darker the blue, the deeper the shading, the bigger the problem, South Dakota and Idaho are leading the nation right now.

What does that tell you at this point when you have 15 states with positivity above 10 percent? That to me based on the track record we have had here says, not only more cases today and tomorrow, but more cases next week and the week after, because if you're infected you're spreading.

DR. MINA: Yes, absolutely. This is something that many of us who are epidemiologists and follow seasonal viruses like this have been warning about since this really began. We expect that transmission will increase again in the fall and winter. It is very likely will increase dramatically as we move further into the fall.

[12:20:00]

DR. MINA: At the same time, we're seeing restaurants and businesses were starting to open up K-12 schools, universities open up again. And we're still more or less in the same place from a surveillance and sort of control perspective that we were five months ago, six months ago. And so, I think that this is an unfortunately all too expected rise in cases, and I expect that it will just continue getting worse.

KING: And so, part of the challenge as a public health or a politician as a leader is what he do about it, what steps do you take? The Governor of Florida deciding to allow restaurants now some of the cities might fight this but at the statewide, restaurants is allowed to come to full capacity again. Dr. Fauci says that concerns him. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Well, that is very concerning to me. We have always said that if you do it in a prudent way, in a prudent way means focus on the things that are important, you could open up businesses, you can do things like that. But when you start congregating at bars without masks or in congregate settings, where people are crowded together indoors without masks that's asking for trouble.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Do you agree with that? Everybody gets that everybody's tired, everybody gets that especially in a state where the tourism based economy, the economy is suffering if you can't have bars open, if you can't have restaurants at higher capacity, but there's an important but, right?

DR. MINA: Absolutely. I completely agree with what he's saying. If we continue to bring people into close quarters, especially indoors, we're very likely to see major outbreak. So essentially society has to come to a decision and that's do we just let this thing go rampant or do we actually try to work in a concerted way to keep it at bay, while balancing the economic ramifications of our actions?

And I think we continue to fail at controlling this because we just haven't had leadership, we haven't had a concerted plan that is national. And if we're not focusing on this across all 50 states, we're going to keep seeing imports into states that do control it.

KING: And I don't pretend to be anywhere in your ballpark when it comes to expertise, but I can do basic math. And when you look at the positivity rate high, double digits in a lot of these states, you see the count of new infections back above 40,000 a day on average. And then you take this into account from Dr. Scott Gottlieb that the greatest majority of Americans have not been exposed yet, it tells me outlines the risks you're talking about. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: About 10 percent of Americans have been exposed to this virus. The best modeling that I've seen that suggests that there could be a higher rate of exposure suggests that maybe it's as high as 15 percent, but most of the models project around 10 percent. So it means a lot of the country is still very susceptible to this virus, there's a lot of room for it to run.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: There's a lot of room for it to run then our behavior, every individual's behavior really determines how well it runs, right?

DR. MINA: Absolutely. We are not anywhere close to herd immunity. There might be small pockets and in fact it's probably pockets of the country that are really driving that to 10 percent or 15 percent. Much of the country is probably still low below 10 percent.

And so, we're kind of where we were and, you know, I'll appeal to the White House sort of - start acting like leaders in this case and figure out how to get this under control in a real way, because this isn't something that's going to stop this week, it's not - we keep saying next month, next month, just a month away, and it is not. We are in this for the long haul and we need a plan.

KING: Dr. Michael Mina I wish we're having a more positive conversation but as always grateful for your expertise and your insights. Up next for us, how Republicans now planning to fast track the president's Supreme Court nomination?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

KING: Republican leaders in the senate are fast tracking the Supreme Court nomination process for President Trump's nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett. GOP setting an ambitious calendar that an effort to get the president's picked in place before the election and before possibly Republicans loses the White House and the Senate.

CNN's Phil Mattingly up on Capitol Hill for this one. It is an ambitious timetable Phil, and it is set by political realities.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Look, I think this is a little bit of a simplification of things John, but I think you know this well. And that is, if you have the votes you can pretty much move as fast as you want on just about anything in the United States Senate.

And that's what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham has made clear, they are going to do. They have heard from the White House, the White House wants this nominee confirmed before the election, so do many rank and file Republicans, and therefore they are kicking this into high gear and they're doing it quickly.

In fact, the confirmation hearings have already been set, they will start on October 12th, they will go four days, the main question and answer period will be on the 13th and the 14th. And by the 15th John, the Committee will start the process of actually considering the vote for that nominee.

Now that will be held over a week so the expectation right now is Amy Coney Barrett's nomination will be out of the Judiciary Committee by October 22. Setting up a floor vote the week after, that is the week before the election, with all signs right now pointing to at least according to Republicans that I'm speaking to, she will be confirmed during that week.

And I think one thing to keep in mind here a lot of people is wondering OK, how could this move so quickly? How when you looked at past Supreme Court nominees? Do they already have the votes lined up?