Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

New York Times Reveals Donald Trump's Tax Avoidance and Huge Losses; Global Death Toll Approaching One Million; Hundreds of U.K. Students to Self-Isolate in Dorms; 21 U.S. States Report Increase in New Infections; India's Confirmed Cases Now Top Six Million. Aired 4- 4:30a ET

Aired September 28, 2020 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us here in the United States and all around the world. You are watching CNN NEWSROOM and I'm Rosemary Church.

Just ahead, "The New York Times" reports Donald Trump has long been avoiding taxes but will that revelation make a difference in this election?

The world closes in on 1 million COVID deaths. India tops 6 million cases and several U.S. states are heading in the wrong direction.

And President Trump says we could see the landmark abortion rights case Roe versus Wade drastically impacted if his newest supreme court nominee is appointed. Reaction from a reproductive right campaigner this hours.

Good to have you with us. An explosive report on the U.S. President's finances rocks the election campaign and raises doubts about his image as a successful entrepreneur. "The New York Times" examined more than 20 years of tax return data for President Donald Trump and his businesses. Their report -- published Sunday --reveals he paid no federal income tax at all for years. Mr. Trump denies the allegation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yes, basically -- well first of all, I paid a lot. I paid a lot of state income taxes too. The New York state charges a lot. And I paid a lot of money in state. It will all be revealed. It's going to come out but after the audit is --after the -- I'm being -- they're doing their assessment. We've been negotiating for a long time. Things get settled like in the IRS. But right now when you are under audit you don't do it. You don't do that. So we're under audit, but the story is a total fake and all of this, this one -- you know, we had the same exact questions usually asked by the same people and that took place four years ago, you remember that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: For the record, an IRS does not prevent the release of tax returns. The "Times" report also details financial losses and potential conflicts of interest. John Harwood has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: On the eve of the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden a bombshell report in "The New York Times" reporting that the President paid only $750 in taxes the first year he was president and a broader picture of a president under financial pressure who was relying on his status as president to keep himself afloat financially.

This "New York Times" report says that in 10 of the previous 15 years before he became President Donald Trump paid no income taxes. Says that he has $300 million in loans that he has personally guaranteed coming due within the next four years. Potential loss of another $100 million from a disputed tax refund that he received from the IRS. Paints a picture of a president who is therefore using his properties to attract business from lobbyists, from the U.S. government, from foreign officials all because of the tightening financial squeeze that they depict him as being under right now.

Now this is a President, of course, who sold himself to the American people as a highly successful businessman and said his success was the reason why they should hire him as president to turn the country around. This report casts doubt on whether he had that success at all, whether he is a billionaire as he has claimed and whether or not it shakes his own voters.

Many of those small donors, those blue collar voters who support the President. They may not defect from him. But this report takes away time which is the one commodity the President doesn't very much. He just has a few weeks left to the general election. He's trailing significantly nationally and in battleground states to Joe Biden. And the more time he has to spend defending himself against this charge, the more difficult it is for him to come back and you can bet he will be defending it on that debate stage with Joe Biden on Tuesday night.

John Harwood, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Renato Mariotti joins me now. Good to have you with us.

RENATO MARIOTTI, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Thank you.

[04:05:00]

CHURCH: So after years of hiding his tax returns, "The New York Times" now has access to two decades of Donald Trump's tax documents. Revealing he paid no income tax at all for 10 years except for $1,500 in 2016 and 2017. He enjoyed vast write-offs while his properties struggled. He's currently in an audit battle with hundreds of millions of debt about to come due. Donald Trump calls it fake news. What do you say to that?

MARIOTTI: Well, if he wants to prove "The New York Times" wrong, then he can release the tax returns like everyone else does when they run for president of the United States. I have to say this is a matter that is causing so much speculation and so much concern that really if he doesn't want to release his tax returns, ordinarily this is the sort of thing you think either the Department of Justice or Congress would want to investigate.

CHURCH: Tax data also reveals he's using the presidency to keep himself afloat. So what will happen when and if he loses office? What's his legal vulnerability here?

MARIOTTI: You know, it will be interesting to see what next administration does. I have to say there are some matters here that seem worthy of investigation. A mere, for example, incorrectly taking deductions is not a crime but if, for example, there was a false statement here that Trump knew about when he signed it, that potentially could be a criminal violation. And it seems on its face that these documents are at odds with Trump's financial disclosures which show him with significant assets and don't list the debts that are listed here by "The New York Times."

CHURCH: And we've also learned that he's in the middle of a tax audit that involves $72 million tax refund that he requested. That presumably was the red flag here. So what have you learned about that?

MARIOTTI: Well, what we have learned here, of course, is that that audit is still ongoing. I will say I represent lots of people who run into tax trouble and it is possible to delay those investigations significantly. But I am surprised that Trump has been able to delay it this long and I think that Congress needs to provide oversight and see whether or not Trump or any of his allies in the administration are interfering with the IRS.

CHURCH: We'll watch to see the ramifications of all of this. Renato Mariotti, thank you so much.

MARIOTTI: Thank you.

CHURCH: Well, Joe Biden's campaign is lashing out at President Trump over the report on his tax returns. The Democratic Presidential nominee's deputy campaign manager was on CNN earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATE BEDINGFIELD, JOE BIDEN'S DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER: I mean, look, it's the latest reminder how clear the choice is here between -- in this race -- between Park Avenue and Scranton. You have in Donald Trump a president who spends his time thinking about how he can work his way out of paying taxes, of meeting the obligations that every other working person in this country meets every year. You know, with Joe Biden you have somebody who has a completely different perspective on what it means to be a working family in this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: CNN political commentator, Doug Heye, joins me now. He is a Republican strategist and form RNC communications director. Thank you so much for talking with us.

DOUG HEYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Thanks. It's good to be with you.

CHURCH: So "The New York Times" has obtained President Trump's tax return data which reveals he paid only $750 in federal personal income taxes in 2016 and again in 2017 but no income tax at all in ten of the previous 15 years because he reported losing significantly more than he made. Stunning when you consider he claims he's a man of considerable wealth and infuriating when you consider what the rest of us pay in income taxes. What do you think middle class Americans and blue collar workers will make of all of this?

HEYE: Yes, I think it's going to be simultaneously important and not important. And let me explain why I say that kind of contradictory thing. It's important because this tells us a lot of what I think a lot of us already knew. And it is important politically because Donald Trump for the first time with the announcement of the Supreme Court nominee has been on offense.

For seven months as we've been going through COVID and obviously the more than 200,000 American death toll and the economic impact that that has had, he has been on defense for seven months. He had been on offense. Last night his event announcing a Supreme Court nominee could not have gone better for him in less than 24 hours later he's back on defense. That's why it's important. Why I say it's unimportant is because only about 5 percent right now are undecided. That's less than half of what we saw in 2016.

CHURCH: All this leaves the President particularly vulnerable Tuesday night when he debates his Democratic rival Joe Biden.

HEYE: Yes, for Joe Biden, it's a very clear opportunity. He can say, Donald Trump, which is it? Are you the successful businessman that's been lying to the IRS or are you the unsuccessful businessmen.

[04:10:00]

Are you -- to use Donald Trump's parlance -- are you a loser that should have been fired and have been lying to the American people?

CHURCH: Right, and meantime of course, the issue that tops all other issues is the pandemic. And yet, the President has done nothing to stop the rising death toll. In fact, he has held huge rallies thumbing his nose at the very science that tells us that wearing a mask and social distancing is all we've got right now to fight this new virus. So Biden will keep repeating the death toll in the science. How will President Trump respond?

HEYE: Well, one thing we know about Donald Trump is that he is a master of distraction. You know, ultimately anybody who's ever seen "Star Wars," knows when Obi-Wan Kenobi says, these are not the droids you are looking for. This is what Donald Trump does all the time. He does something to distract us from the issue at hand because the media and the voters all take the bait. It's one of the reasons that he's very successful. You can dismiss it as being a carnival barker or even a professional

wrestler, that whether you cheer or you boo, as long as you pay attention, that's all that matters. But this is what Donald Trump does. It's the secret to his access and unfortunately everyone takes the bait on it.

CHURCH: Joe Biden knows those strategies and now he knows his tax and earnings vulnerabilities. How will Trump defend himself because presumably if Biden is prepared with all of this, he will keep hammering that until he gets under his skin.

HEYE: I would say I think the question or the better thing to focus on is not how Donald Trump is going to response, because we know that. It's how exactly does Joe Biden go and prosecute this case, so to speak, against him. Had she just burrowed down on fact after fact about COVID to where you can get lost in the numbers or has, he and his team found a way to pierce the balloon of Donald Trump?

What happened today with "The New York Times" reporting the story on the taxes, is a major arrow in Biden's quiver if he's able to use it. It's so easy to get lost in the numbers and lost in the details on these kinds of issues. Donald Trump is not a master of details and we know that. Joe Biden may be tempted to be a master of details but that clearly is not what wins things right now. So what tenor and what tone Joe Biden takes Tuesday night I think is going to be very important for him.

CHURCH: Doug Heye, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

HEYE: Thank you.

CHURCH: And be sure to tune in, CNN will carry Tuesday's debate live. Our special coverage begins at 7 p.m. Eastern. As midnight Wednesday in London and 7 a.m. in Hong Kong for our international viewers.

And still to come, imagine enduring a lockdown in your dorm room. That is a reality for hundreds of students in the U.K. right now. We will have the details after the short break.

[04:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHURCH: The global death toll from the coronavirus is now approaching 1 million. That is according to Johns Hopkins University, and that number is expected to climb even higher. Here in the United States experts are warning of a tough fall and winter ahead. The 21 states in red and orange are reporting a rise in new cases. It's feared that as people spend more time indoors, those case numbers will spike again.

India's confirmed cases are also rising rapidly. The country's health ministry now saying its count has now surpassed 6 million and we will have a live report from the Indian capital in just a moment.

But first, in the United Kingdom, hundreds of university students have been locked down in their dorms after a spike in confirmed cases on some campuses. Universities in Glasgow, Scotland, and Manchester, England, are among those affected. Students have been told they must self-isolate.

CNN's Scott McLean has been tracking this story from London. He joins us now live. Good to see you, Scott. So who's going to feed and look after all of these students that need to self-isolate and how is the government overall responding to criticism of how it's handling this pandemic.

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sure, it's a good question certainly, because at least in the case of Manchester, Rosemary, we're talking about 1,700 students. And this announcement came quite suddenly on Friday night. The university and the city council though said that the needs of those students when it comes to obviously, you know, food, medical attention, emotional support, all of those needs will be taken care of while they're being forced to self-isolate for the next two weeks.

Because of this concern about outbreaks on the university campuses, Scotland has actually barred students from going to pubs, and restaurants, and cafes, things like that in order to stop the virus from spreading off of campus. In fact, the British Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, has not even ruled out the possibility of asking university students to not go home this Christmas break to prevent the virus from spreading from campus into the wider population.

For the last two days the U.K. has reported fewer coronavirus cases, fewer new cases than it's seen the day before. That is good news. But it's not enough data quite yet to know if the U.K. is bending the curve on its second wave. If it is bending that curve it's likely because of the real maze of new restrictions and regulations that this government has put in place over the past two weeks. But because of the rules, the British Prime Minister is now facing somewhat of revolt from within his own party. A group of Conservative MPs is pushing an amendment not that would require Parliament to vote on any new coronavirus rules. Here's one MP over the weekend. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE BAKER, BRITISH MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT: People think that liberty dies, it dies like this with government exercising draconian powers without parliamentary scrutiny in advance. Undermining the rule of law by having a shifting blanket of rules that no one can understand. I mean, it's extremely serious. I don't think I look like a hysterical person to you. I'm saying that this is a very serious moment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCLEAN: So a prominent Labour MP was asked about that amendment. Said he's sympathetic to the cause but would not commit his party to actually supporting it -- Rosemary.

[04:20:03]

CHURCH: All right, Scott McLean joining us live from London. Many thanks. U.S. health experts are worried cooler weather could make the

coronavirus pandemic worse. Cases are already ticking up in much of the country. Data tracked by Johns Hopkins University shows the U.S. soaring past 7 million total cases and over 200,000 deaths. CNN's John King takes a look at the trends.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF U.S. CORRESPONDENT: New coronavirus numbers are getting worse at a bad time. Let's take a look if you go through the 50 state trend map right now. Will bring it up on the screen here -- 21 states, 21 states orange and red. That means are trending in the wrong direction. Look at the western half of the country, especially the northern part of the country. 21 states reporting more new infections now compared to a week ago. That is heading in the wrong direction.

The President says we've turned the final corner. This is not. This is a turn for the worse. Let's look at it from the case perspective. And again, the peak of the summer surge near 80,000 new infections a day. We started to come down. You see that below 40,000, but look, the red line owes you everything you need to know. We are trending back up, 55,000 new infections on Friday. Over 40,000 again on Saturday and they tend to tip. They tend to dip during the weekend heading in the wrong direction.

And then you look at the positivity map. Well, this tells you what can happen next week and beyond in there's some very troubling here. The deeper the color, the higher the percentage of coronavirus tests coming back is positive, 25 percent in South Dakota, 21 percent out in Idaho, 18 percent in Wisconsin, throughout the teens here in the central part of the country, 11 in Texas, still 10 in Florida. Those are bad metrics. More people testing positive, that means more infections as the virus continues to spreads.

Now I don't like to look at this from a political perspective but the President does. You hear him railing against blue states all the time. So let's take a look at this. The red line, states with Republican governors, the blue line, states with Democratic governors. Yes, New York, the northeast, New England they went up the curve first.

But look, states with Democratic governors have stayed down. It was states with Republican governors that are responsible in those states, the big summer surge. Came down some, now going back up. This is cases per 1 million residents. States with Republican governors well ahead. If you look at it from a different perspective, if you want to do politics as a president like to do, 2016 Trump states versus 2016 Clinton states. Yes again, New York, New Jersey, California, Washington state, they went through this first. But they've come down and they've largely stayed down.

It is 2016 Trump states, big in the summer surge, came down some. Now trending back up. But this is the map we should look at because we're all-Americans, right. Forget the Ds and Rs, look at this map. Trending in the wrong direction at the wrong time. It's getting cooler, we're in the fall, people are moving indoors. Dr. Anthony Fauci says, be worried.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Anne Rimoin is a professor of Epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She joins me now. Good to talk with you.

ANNE RIMOIN, PROFESSOR, UCLA DEPARTMENT OF EPIDEMIOLOGY: Pleased to be here.

CHURCH: President Trump continues to insist that the pandemic is winding down despite the loss of 204,000 lives to the coronavirus and case counts are on the rise across the country. Is there anything to suggest we're turning any corner here as Donald Trump keeps insisting?

RIMOIN: Rosemary, there's no indication that we're turning any corner except a corner towards more cases. We've now seen spikes in several states in the United States. We've seen spikes globally. This makes sense. It's getting colder. We're going to see people go inside. And so the big fear from all public health professionals, who been very vocal about this, is that as people turn to move indoors, will create more opportunity for the virus to spread.

So there is absolutely no indication whatsoever that this virus is slowing down and I think it's really important that we start listening to the science and not the political rhetoric.

CHURCH: All right, and a recent study just showed that fewer than 10 percent of Americans have COVID-19 antibodies so we are nowhere near herd immunity and a vaccination for the whole population is a way long way off. So how likely is it that we will all be wearing masks throughout next year. Do we just need to get used to that idea?

RIMOIN: Rosemary, even if we do have a vaccine that comes available even at the end of this year or beginning of next year, it is going to take a very long time for that vaccine to be distributed to the entire population. And a vaccine is not likely to be so effective that it will be the only measure in place. We are still going to be needing to wear masks, to social distance, to use hand hygiene.

And so, I think that the American public, I think the world needs to get used to wearing masks. Masks do work. And in fact we could be saving lives right now by wearing a mask. Because we do know how effective masks are. We don't know what vaccine candidates are out there.

[04:25:00]

And so I think we need to stop waiting for a magic bullet and do what we can right now which is wear masks and to get used to it because it is something that can save your life and save other people's lives as well.

CHURCH: As always, Anne Rimoin, many thanks.

RIMOIN: My pleasure. CHURCH: All right, now let's cross to India where cases have just

surpassed 6 million. Vedika Sud is joining us on the phone from New Delhi. Good to talk with you, Vedika. So how is the Indian government responding to this new milestone and how might that change the way it's responding to this pandemic?

VEDIKA SUD, CNN REPORTER (via phone): Good question there, Rosemary. The Indian government has come out and said on Sunday that the recoveries are higher than the new cases being reported for a day. They've also gone on record to say that the 83 percent of the COVID-19 patients overall has recovered.

So they are claiming that we should look more at the active cases currently than the total number of COVID-19 cases across India. (INAUDIBLE) a few numbers full of news and new reaction at this minute. First, we have the last million confirmed cases of COVID-19 have happened in the last 12 days. It's taken two months to add 5 million cases here in India. That shows you the rate of which COVID-19 cases have been surging ahead in the country.

But at the same time you now have the government of India come out and talk about the possibility of increasing the expenditure for health care from 1.1 percent to 2.5 percent by 2025. Because they claim that this is something that we could do in the light of the pandemic. Of course, we have a lot of problem states that are now seeing the surge in COVID-19 cases. Also about (INAUDIBLE) in the county, that could be 7 percent of the new confirmed cases. First, India's on (INAUDIBLE), because the government insists on believing that COVID-19 is something that the Indian (INAUDIBLE) exists within the responding time given that we've suffered immensely on the financial and economic front ever since the pandemic has hit the country -- Rosemary.

CHURCH: Vedika Sud, many thanks for bringing us up to date on that situation.

Lawmakers in the U.S. are gearing up for a contentious fight over the Supreme Court just weeks before the presidential election. Democrats warn health care and abortion rights are in danger. And we will take a look at how millions of Americans can be impacted. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)