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Interview with Senior Forbes Editor Dan Alexander; Interview with former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci; CDC Director Robert Redfield Expresses Concerns about Scott Atlas. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired September 28, 2020 - 14:00   ET

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

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[14:00:16]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Top of the hour, I'm Brianna Keilar. And a day ahead of the first presidential debate between President Trump and former Vice President Biden. President Trump is lashing out at "The New York Times" over an extensive new report on the president's finances.

And the report is not pretty. The big takeaway here is that the president has been dodging the IRS for years. Tax records obtained by the "Times" show that between 2000 and 2015, Trump paid no federal taxes whatsoever for 10 of those 15 years. He did pay federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, but it was only to the tune of $750 each year.

TEXT: Key Takeaways from President Trump's Tax Records: Federal income tax avoidance: $0 in 10 out of 15 years beginning in 2000; Paid $750 in 2016 and 2017; IRS auditing $72.9 million tax refund. Reported major losses at businesses: 1985-1994 Lost more money than nearly any individual taxpayer; Since 2000 $315 million losses at signature golf clubs. Profits from presidency: Made millions from golf clubs, projects in foreign countries

KEILAR: On top of this, Trump received a nearly $73 million tax refund. That is now at the center of an IRS audit.

Then there is the mountain of losses, more than $315 million at his golf clubs alone. And Trump has made some modest gains since moving into the White House on his resorts and from projects in foreign countries, we see that as well.

The Trump Organization has also written off millions in business expenses including $70,000-plus in Trump's hairstyling, and millions on consulting fees over the last decades. The "Times," finding that Ivanka Trump was the recipient of some of those payments, which would raise flags because she was also an employee of the Trump Organization.

Now looking ahead, the paper's analysis shows that the president faces significant financial pressure. He is personally responsible for some $421 million in loans, with many of those bills coming due here within the next four years.

I want to look closer at the numbers now and what they tell us. Dan Alexander is with us to do just that, he is a senior editor at "Forbes." He is the author of "White House, Inc.: How Trump Turned the Presidency into a Business."

Dan, your big takeaways other than the fact that this bombshell report completely validates the title of your book?

DAN ALEXANDER, SENIOR EDITOR, FORBES: Well, I think that the obvious first thing was just the $750 payments. I mean, you know, for a guy who actually is rich and you know, I think a lot of people were looking at these numbers yesterday, saying, oh, he's not that rich? That's not the takeaway. He is rich. The takeaway is that he's been very, very crafty with hiding the money that's coming into his businesses and coming up with ways to make sure that he doesn't have to pay tax on that.

So now you have a situation where the guy who's leading the federal bureaucracy, leading the federal government has put in less money into it in the last few years than, you know, many people who are just working 9-to-5s and making 30 or 40 grand a year.

KEILAR: Sure. And so explain that to us, because there is this -- you know, on paper on a tax return, the money that you're paying taxes on. So how much can Trump be -- how can he be so much in debt with more than $420 million in the loans coming due here in the next few years, and yet he is still so rich, he does have these assets and he is able to pay no taxes?

ALEXANDER: Yes, his total amount of debt is actually much higher than that. You know, if you include the companies in which he holds a major stake -- which are his -- he owns 30 percent stakes in two buildings that are his two most valuable properties. And sometimes people forget about them because he only owns 30 percent. But if they're his most valuable things, you can't forget about them. And if you add up the debt from those plus all the other properties, it's actually over a billion dollars that Donald Trump owes.

But you know, if you owe a lot of money, you can also own a lot of things. And then you can sleep at night. And you know, we have his total assets at $3.7 billion. So sure, it's a ton of debt and you're right that a lot of that's coming due, but he does have big properties that are throwing off large amounts of money even if his accountants are creative enough to make it look like they are not.

KEILAR: Is this above board?

ALEXANDER: Well, there are certainly a lot of questions. And I think that, you know, investigators are going to have a field day here. There's a lot of things for them to look at. You know, you can look at the payments to Ivanka for starters. You know, you can look at some of the aggressive moves to --

KEILAR: I want to be clear on this. She was paid, it appears, consultant fees while also being an employee of the Trump Organization, which is something specifically that is not supposed to be done because it's kind of --

ALEXANDER: Right.

KEILAR: -- a way of distributing profits and then using that to reduce his tax liability, that's not OK. So you're saying that would be of question?

ALEXANDER: Yes, that's certainly something that investigators will look at. You know, they'll look at whether he is saying that a proper number of costs were actually business expenses, or whether he just throwing everything into business expenses.

[14:05:05]

You know, if you look at the Ivanka thing, there's a lot of echoes of sort of how Trump and frankly his father have always acted. You know, when Donald Trump was in Ivanka Trump's place as sort of the heir apparent to the family throne, you know, he was working in companies that were in turn paying him. There's one company where he was leasing I think it was air conditioners to his father at an exorbitant rate.

So there were a lot of things that they were doing that were sort of intra-family self-dealing as creative ways to move money from one generation to another. And what we saw in this report is that that might actually be going on now with the third generation.

KEILAR: Yes. Well, Dan, thank you so much for taking us through this, we appreciate it.

ALEXANDER: Sure thing, thanks for having me.

KEILAR: My next guest says the next step for Donald Trump is crystal clear. His former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci tweeting this, "Release your full financial records, Donald Trump, so you can clear your name."

And Anthony Scaramucci is joining us now. I mean, do you really think that he will release all of his records?

ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Well, there was a little bit of biting sarcasm there because obviously --

KEILAR: Yes.

SCARAMUCCI: -- he's not going to release his records. And he can't call it fake news. The only fakeness is coming out of his mouth directly. He's dead to rights here on this. If he was in fact on the right side of this, of course he would release his -- all of his information, so he's not going to do that.

And what this does is it calcifies the negativity around him. It's like pushing through an open door where you're looking there at this garishness of his taxes combined with what he said about the nation's military and it's siding with the vice president, obviously. So he can't win back those people with this type of behavior, Brianna, that's where I think we are right now.

KEILAR: Are you -- you know, you have -- you worked for him, you have some familiarity with him in New York for years. Are you really surprised by this? Didn't you kind of know that he rolled like this?

SCARAMUCCI: Well, I mean, I said earlier that I wasn't surprised -- I am surprised by the magnitude of it, yes, I have to confess that. I think that we're always surprised by the magnitude. Just when we think it can't get any worse, he moves the goalposts again and he makes it way worse.

So I'm not surprised that he maneuvered with the taxes, Secretary Clinton went after him four years ago for that. He called himself smart for doing it. But now, I think it's something totally different. I think he's basically saying if you're doing things for other people and not yourself, you're a loser and a sucker. And so if you serve in the American military, you're a loser and a sucker. If you're paying taxes into the American system, you're a loser and a sucker. And so I think that was a bridge too far.

I didn't think he was there , but he is there now. And without releasing his taxes, he's going to stay there for the next five weeks.

KEILAR: Do you think that the people around him or his supporters care?

SCARAMUCCI: No, I don't think his supporters care. But if you look at the national polling, you look at the swing state polling, it is now starting to calcify. We're only five or six weeks out from the election, and so he would have to go into that midspace (ph) if you will, those independents and some of those undecided voters and bring them onto his side if he's going to win.

And when you have information like this out there about this sort of nefarious unethical behavior, I think it's going to be very hard to do that.

As far as his supporters are concerned -- whether that's a hard base of 35 to call it 40 percent -- know he can do anything for those people, it's not going to really matter. That's part of that cult of personality that he's been able to attach to himself.

KEILAR: What did you think, writing off $70,000 in hairstyling fees, what did you think?

SCARAMUCCI: Well, I think it's funny because we all know, anybody close to him knows that he does the hair himself. You know, he basically looks like Darth Vader after the helmet comes off, if he's not doing the hair. So he's got a combover from the back, and he flips it and then he hits it with a lot of that TRESemme (ph) hairspray. And he's going it himself, those pictures out there related to him.

So I guess he paid himself $70,000. It would be interesting to see who the hairstylist was that he gave that quote-unquote "money" to.

KEILAR: So you've never known of an actual hairstylist? SCARAMUCCI: No, he does his hair himself, you could ask anybody. You

know, maybe once in a while Hope did it for him, but he more or less does it himself because of that nervousness about the whole combover thing going on.

KEILAR: OK. So look, you know about the Ivanka piece of this. There are questionable consulting fees that match the payments that Ivanka Trump has reported herself.

[14:10:04]

So you have for instance the president at the time, deducting a certain amount as a consultant fee on something even though Ivanka Trump was employed as -- you know, with the Trump organization, which raises red flags. Why is she receiving consultant fees for something she's already employed on? How far are the tentacles here, do you think, when it comes to family involvement and this really being kind of a family web?

SCARAMUCCI: Well, listen, unfortunately for Ivanka, this is the family. You know, and the family business was reality television, they transported that reality television show into the White House. And so you know, it's his leadership and it's his guidance to his family that has led to this predicament.

And so it's sort of a sad sordid tale. If you think about the people that decided to stay close to the president or family members, they've been tarnished by it. And so that's the big issue for the voters. You know, he doesn't care about those voters. Olivia Troye will tell you that he called those voters "disgusting people," he doesn't want to necessarily shake their hands. This has always been about Mr. Trump.

So if the collateral damage are other family members, it's not really that big of a deal to him. Remember, when he's doing a news search, he's searching T-R-U-M-P, he's not searching U-S-A, and he's not searching Y-O-U. Brianna, trust me, he's never searching Y-O-U.

And I think all of this information is filtering out into the system. And yes, that 38-ish percent of the people will stay with him, but the rest of the people have had enough and they want a return to something more normal in American politics.

KEILAR: You know, he's having a coronavirus event announcement here, coming in the next hour. But we've heard of his reaction, which must be -- just knowing him, I think as we all understand his reaction to any report -- and this one is quite a doozy -- he has called it fake news, he has said that the "Times" illegally obtained information -- they make it clear they did not. How they would illegally obtain something that is fake?

I mean, it's just -- he's sort of throwing multiple things against the wall here. What do you expect the fallout of this is going to be when it comes to the president's behavior?

SCARAMUCCI: Well, he's going to triple down on the big lie. I mean, that's what he's done. I mean, demagogues are often amazed at how much they can get away with by that perpetuation of the lie. And what you discover is that it's the inaction of good people that allows for that runway for demagogues.

And so I think the good news now, there's a lot of people that he's alienated, there's a lot of good people on the force of good, and with the vice president, and with the preservation of the institutions of our democracy. And so he'll likely lose the election.

But he will double and triple down on this lie. He'll perpetuate it for as long as he possibly can, which is why I believe the journalists at "The New York Times" said, oh, and by the way, there's more stories coming.

So he'll continue to say the lie, and it's up to good men and women around the world and in the United States to explain that he's the one that's lying, he's the one that's representing fake news. It's not the journalists at "The New York Times," who you and I both know are meticulous.

KEILAR: Meticulous. All right, Anthony Scaramucci, thank you so much.

SCARAMUCCI: Good to be here, thank you for having me.

KEILAR: We're going to have much more on the president's taxes, ahead, including whether he could face prosecution.

Plus, the White House is responding after the CDC director was reportedly overheard disparaging the doctor who has become the president's new mouthpiece on the COVID task force.

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And a new study out today shows more than half of the clinical trials under way right now may be excluding older adults.

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KEILAR: We're seeing coronavirus cases rising across the nation, 21 states right now are experiencing an increase in new cases compared to last week. And a national study that examines the blood of more than 28,000 people undergoing dialysis found that just nine percent -- roughly -- had antibodies for the virus.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who had expressed hope that the U.S. could get its new daily case numbers down to 10,000 a day, is acknowledging reality, that we are reporting four times that number with no signs of it slowing down ahead of the flu season.

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ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Well, we're not in a good place with regard to what I had said back then because as we get into the fall and the winter, you really want the level of community spread to be as low as you possibly get it. And I hope not, but we very well might start seeing increases in deaths. That's really something that I had discussed some time ago as

something you don't want to be in a position like that, as the weather starts getting cold. So we really need to intensify the public health measures that we talk about all the time.

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KEILAR: And at this critical time, a source is revealing the head of the CDC, Dr. Robert Redfield, has serious concerns about Dr. Scott Atlas, a top advisor on the Coronavirus Task Force. An NBC journalist reportedly overheard Redfield say this about Atlas, quote, "Everything he says is false."

The CDC did not deny the story, saying that the two doctors agree on many topics but that they have, quote, "different positions on the value of wearing a mask, youth COVID-19 infections, and where we are currently with herd immunity."

So just to be clear, what the CDC is really spelling out here is that the two doctors disagree on how the virus has spread, who it impacts and how we should respond to this virus as a nation. So that's a lot of disagreement.

And as we have learned over the last seven months, older adults are the most vulnerable to the coronavirus, but a new study shows clinical trials and treatments are likely excluding older participants. For more, I'm joined by CNN health reporter Jacqueline Howard.

[14:20:06]

And Jacqueline, we know the vaccine trials have had an inadequate representation as well of minority candidates. Now we're finding out that older adults, who -- I mean, this is a key group, they're particularly vulnerable -- and now we're learning they're likely being excluded from clinical trials and treatments.

When you have those folks missing, it just makes you wonder how that's possible considering they're so essential to getting past this.

All right, I think we're having a technical problem there with Jacqueline Howard, so we're going to try to re-establish her and get her back up.

I'm going to move on now and talk about this with a health expert, Dr. Richina Bicette, who is an E.R. doctor as well as a medical director and assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine.

I wonder, Dr. Bicette, let's talk about kids under 12, because we're learning that they are contracting the virus at a lower rate than older children. This is essential to talk about as we're seeing schools reopen. What do you think about this?

RICHINA BICETTE, MEDICAL DIRECTOR AND ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Well, Brianna, I think we've known for a while now that children have been catching COVID-19 at a lower rate than adults. But what we have to think about is, aside from children getting sick themselves, the risk of them transmitting the virus to those who are vulnerable are what we really, really have to be considerate of and where the danger truly lies.

A child can come home and give the virus to their parent who may have an immune-compromising condition, they may pass it to their grandparents who, at older ages, are more susceptible to succumbing from this virus.

So although children may be contracting the virus at a lower rate, we still do have to consider those implications for other adults.

KEILAR: All right, let's talk about another important age group, and that is seniors. We were just discussing how it appears they have been left out of a lot of studies, which is curious when you think about how they're this vulnerable group and they account for so many of the deaths. What do you think about the significance of them being left out of vaccine trials?

BICETTE: Brianna, I think "curious" is one way to describe it, "alarming" would be another way. What the purpose of phase three trials is, is to give this test vaccine to patients who are deemed the most vulnerable, to patients who the disease affects the most. How can we leave out the age groups that this pandemic was targeting, it seemed like, at the beginning of the start of everything?

We initially thought that COVID-19 was a pandemic that would only affect older adults, and now we're developing a vaccine that isn't being tested on older adults? It doesn't make sense to me at all.

KEILAR: Let's turn to this report now of someone over -- a reporter overhearing the CDC chief saying that everything White House advisor Scott Atlas says is, quote, "false." I should mention, we have fact- checked a lot of what Dr. Scott Atlas says, a lot of it is not based in science. But he's a favored person on this task force of the president, so it's very important to at least hear what he's saying and discern the truth from fiction. How concerned are you about this schism?

BICETTE: I'm very concerned, and I agree with Dr. Redfield 100 percent. There are a lot of things that Dr. Scott Atlas has said publicly and to the media that just aren't true. You could easily fact-check and delve into the science, and it will show you that some of the things that he's saying are questionable.

I believe Dr. Atlas actually responded to Dr. Redfield's comments and said that everything he says is rooted in data and rooted in science, and I would love to see that data so I can examine it for myself.

There have been so many things that he's said that actually have been alarming to the point where 78 of his former colleagues actually penned an open letter and called him out, saying that the things he was saying was a misinterpretation of the science, and falsehoods. If his own former colleagues are distancing themselves from the statements that he's making and refuse to support him, then why should we? That's a huge red flag.

KEILAR: All right, Dr. Bicette, thank you so much, it's great to see you.

BICETTE: Thank you for having me, Brianna.

[14:24:22]

KEILAR: And next hour, President Trump is set to speak at the White House on coronavirus testing as questions swirl about the "New York Times" reporting, that he avoided paying a cent in federal income tax for years. We're going to discuss whether he broke any laws in the process.

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KEILAR: Tomorrow night, President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden will square off in their first presidential debate of 2020. The stakes are high as the pandemic, the Supreme Court and now the president's taxes are sure to be hot topics.

CNN's Arlette Saenz is at the debate site in Cleveland. Arlette, what do we know about how these two men are prepping for this showdown?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, Joe Biden and President Trump have been sparring from afar for about a year and a half now, but tomorrow they will be here in Cleveland, face to face for their first presidential debate.

And each of the candidates has been preparing for this debate in their own way. Biden started out in his early preparations by reading through briefing books, and he really dove into more intense debate prep sessions with his advisors over the past few days.

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