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Trump Ducks Questions on Taxes Ahead of Debate with Biden; New York Times Reports $300 Million Plus in Loans to Trump Due in Next Four Years; Trump and Biden Prepare for Presidential Debate; What to Expect from the First Debate; Global COVID-19 Death Toll tops One Million; Trump Announces Plan to Deploy 150 Million Rapid Tests; Fauci Expresses Concern About Trump Receiving Misleading Info. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired September 29, 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, two major stories we are following. First, Donald Trump and Joe Biden face off just hours from now as this year's first U.S. presidential debate falls out of the shadow of a tax avoidance bombshell.

And one million lives lost to COVID-19. We will take stock of the pandemic as the world passes this devastating mark.

Good to have you with us.

U.S. President Donald Trump will go head to head with his political rival Joe Biden in their first presidential debate tonight. It comes on the heels of that explosive "New York Times" report which detailed Mr. Trump's extensive financial losses and tax avoidance. Issues Biden will be sure to target him on. CNN's Kaitlan Collins has the latest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's totally fake news.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As President Trump is lashing out over a damning "New York Times" report about the dire state of his finances, his aides are claiming it's a last-minute hit job before the first debate.

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We've seen this play out before where there was a hit piece about the President's taxes just before a debate and an inaccurate one at that.

BRIAN MORGENSTERN, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: The President has paid lots of taxes but the point is that why would anybody pay more than they owe? COLLINS: Neither his staff nor the President have provided any

documents to refute what "The New York Times" is reporting, including that he only paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 despite the millions that he earned.

TRUMP: Actually, I paid tax but -- and you will see that as soon as my tax returns -- it's under audit. They've been under audit for a long time. The IRS does not treat me well.

COLLINS: That number not only pales in comparison to most Americans but also to past presidents who all paid tens of thousands of dollars in Federal taxes. Because of the massive losses, the report says Trump paid no income tax at all in 11 of 18 years of documents they obtained. When he did pay taxes, he reduced what he owned using questionable measures including a nearly $73 million tax refund now the subject of an IRS audit.

It turns out that Trump's best known properties drain the most money. He's lost around $315 million on his golf properties over the last two decades, including on Trump National Doral near Miami where the President tried to host the G-7 summit.

TRUMP: I don't need the money. OK? But I was willing to do this for free and they wouldn't -- it would have been the greatest G-7 ever.

COLLINS: The report also shows Trump made more money than previously known from foreign governments, including during his time in office, and used tax deductions for so-called business expenses that most people would consider personal ones, like $70,000 in hair styling while hosting "The Apprentice."

But perhaps what could be most damaging from the reports is what's to come. The "Times" says an enormous amount of financial pressure is facing Trump because hundreds of millions of dollars in loans that he is personally responsible for will be due within the next four years.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA) U.S. HOUSE SPEAKER: This President is the commander in chief. He has exposure to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. To whom the public has a right to know.

COLLINS (on camera): Now the President also claimed that he was not contacted for a request for comment for that "New York Times" investigation. Though his attorney was on the record in this story and he later the next day did not answer questions from reporters at the White House about the state of his finances.

Kaitlan Collins, CNN, traveling with the President in Cleveland.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Norman Eisen is a fellow with the Brookings Institution and a former White House ethics czar during the Obama administration. He joins me now from Washington. Thank you so much for being with us.

NORMAN EISEN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE ETHICS CZAR: Thanks for having me, Rosemary. CHURCH: So lots of big questions regarding how President Trump avoided

paying any taxes for ten of a span of 15 years and then just paying $750 in 2016 and $750 in 2017.

[04:05:00]

He calls this fake news despite bragging about avoiding paying taxes when he debated Hillary Clinton in 2016. Your reaction to all of this? And of course, the ethics of a president who thinks this is acceptable.

EISEN: Well, Rosemary, as President Obama's ethics czar, I was responsible for helping to reveal his financial disclosures and process his tax returns, and I can tell you that this is not fake news. We now know why President Trump has been so keen to hide these tax returns. The fact that he used his losses perhaps illegitimately. That's what the fight for the IRS is about, to avoid paying taxes for so many years. The ludicrous sum of $750.

And to me, since you ask about the ethics angle, the fact that he's raking in millions of dollars from conflicted sources, including foreign governments, that's revealed in these taxes.

CHURCH: Yes, let's look at that. Let's look at that because "The New York Times" has exposed a $300 million debt that Donald Trump owes in the next few years. Which raises national security concerns, such as who his creditors might be and what leverage they may have over him. What are your thoughts on that and the possible implications if it is Russia or Turkey or some other nation.

EISEN: Well, we know that he received millions of dollars already from foreign governments. Just in the span of two years as president where we have the data, 3 million from the Philippines, large sums from other foreign nations, including India, places where we have the strongest security interests and we know that he has got hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due in the coming years. Much of it would be during a second term.

No wonder he doesn't want to leave the Oval Office, Rosemary. He wants to use the White House as the ultimate leverage, the ultimate security. He's shown no compunction taking this money from foreign governments and that is an alarming situation. It's another reason that we should have had these tax returns before and it is disqualifying for president these revelations, just disqualifying.

CHURCH: Did Donald Trump break the law by not paying taxes or paying very little taxes or was he just being smart, as he said he was back in 2016?

EISEN: Well, the tax returns that deep his legal problems, number one, he used the full amount of his losses to reduce his tax debt. But the rule is you're not allowed to do that if you benefitted at all from the transaction that created the loss. This was the notorious casino bankruptcy. And we know he received a 5 percent interest in the new company so that raises a very substantial question whether all of those tens of millions of dollars in losses that he applied were improperly applied.

CHURCH: Norm Eisen, many thank, a pleasure to talk with you.

EISEN: Thanks, Rosemary.

CHURCH: In less than 24 hours U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden will square off in the first of three high stakes presidential debates. CNN's Arlette Saenz joins us or shows us how they're preparing and why Tuesday's debate will look very different from past debates.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Joe Biden and President Trump have sparred from afar for about the past year and a half, but they will come face to face here in Cleveland for their first presidential debate as they make their case to voters. Each of these candidates preparing for the debate in their own way.

Biden started out by reading briefing books and he's huddled with his top advisers as he prepares for what he describes will be personal attacks from the President. Now the President has also been studying up on possible lines of attack from Joe Biden. He had Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie stand in for Biden at times during debate preparations.

One big question is how the story about the President's tax returns will play into this debate. The Biden campaign eager to make this a campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue.

[04:10:00]

Arguing that the President is only looking out for his own interests and not those of everyday Americans. This story about the tax returns amplifies that case.

Now this debate will look a lot different than past debates. There will be no traditional handshakes between the candidates as they take the stage. They will remain socially distanced. The audience is a much smaller size. And everyone on hand will be tested for coronavirus as the debate commission has adapted to this debate in the middle of the pandemic. But later tonight Biden and Trump will be on that stage one on one for the first time after lobbing all of those criticisms at each other, they will be making that case right in front of voters.

Arlette Saenz, CNN, Cleveland, Ohio.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Larry Sabato is the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and author of "The Kennedy Half-Century." He joins me now from Charlottesville in Virginia. Good to have you with us.

LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Thank you, Rosemary. CHURCH: So, Larry, just hours away from the first of three

presidential debates between Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden and the Trump campaign is warning not to underestimate Biden despite previously attacking his mental state. So what is behind that strategy?

SABATO: I think somebody in the Trump operation finally realized that it was kind of stupid the tell everybody that Biden could barely function. When in fact, Biden is a skilled debater. He's been at this for almost 50 years. And people forget he won the two vice presidential debates he was in against Sarah Palin and Speaker Ryan. So you don't want to underestimate someone like that, and yet that's exactly what President Trump did and reinforced with his base and everybody else.

CHURCH: And of course, now we're all aware of the report put out by "The New York Times" that Donald Trump avoided paying any taxes for ten years and then only paid about $1,500 for 2016 and 2017. So how do you expect those revelations to play out in this first debate? How would you think that Biden would handle this?

Well, Joe Biden got a big break that this was released on Sunday and it's been top of the news now for more than 24 hours. So most people who watch the debate will be aware of the issue, though we do have over 80 million people expected to watch, incredible, 80 million plus. So this is a gift to Joe Biden because it's not that ideological a charge. You simply point to the President and say, he paid a lot less taxes than X-percent of you. And mention some average people, maybe feature it in the ad that Biden had out today. Almost everybody has paid more in taxes than Donald Trump did.

Now we pretty much know the approach from Donald Trump. He is going to go on the attack but he's going to be on the defense when it comes to his own taxes. But what strategies do you expect to see from both Trump and Biden and how should each of them respond to the other's attacks to come out on top?

SABATO: Based on past debates, Trump really has only one approach, attack, attack, and attack again. And that's what we should see. He's going to try to get under Biden's skin because if Biden loses his temper entirely, he's not going to look good. It's not a good look for somebody like Joe Biden. I think his people have tried to prepare him so that he doesn't. It's perfectly OK for Biden, as I think he will do, to go after Trump in tough terms, but not harsh terms. You have to modulate these things. So I do expect a lot of back and forth. I expect -- certainly, Trump to disobey the rules and undoubtedly, we'll need a 90-minute period just to evaluate the lies and misrepresentations in the debate.

CHURCH: Right, and as you say, they're both prepared for this. We know that Donald Trump is going to go after Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden and the work that he did in Ukraine. It would be -- this would be the instance, of course, where you could possibly potentially see Biden lose his temper. How would he need to handle that?

SABATO: Well, I assume his staff has tried to work with him on it. I'm sure that he will be angry about it. And of course, you know, the Trump family will be a fair target if Trump does, indeed, go after hunter Biden. And there's a lot of material there.

All right, Larry Sabato, many thanks for joining us. We shall wait, of course, and watch and see what happens in this first debate. Appreciate it.

SABATO: Thank you, Rosemary. Thanks.

CHURCH: And the sure to watch the debate live. Our special coverage begins at 7 p.m. Eastern.

[04:15:00]

That's midnight Wednesday in London and 7 a.m. in Hong Kong for our international viewers.

Coming up, 1 million deaths from COVID-19 and the virus rages on in many parts of the world, including right here in the United States. We will have the latest on the pandemic. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHURCH: More than 1 million people across the globe have now died from the coronavirus, and those are just the deaths we know about. That's 1 million sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, parents and grandparents who have been lost to the deadly virus.

COVID-19 is still spreading across the United States, South America and Europe. It's been less than a year since the first death was confirmed and since then the outbreak has caused heart ache and trauma for everyone.

The United States has been the worst affected nation overall with more than 20 percent of the global death toll. Arguably the most powerful nation in the world has been unable to get a handle on its pandemic response, partly because states are left to decide their own responses.

[04:20:00]

We get more details now from CNN's Alexandra Field.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It honestly looks like it's business as usual.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Pre- COVID Florida in a post-COVID world, packed bars and restaurants all weekend in South Florida, just days after Republican Governor Ron DeSantis dropped virtually all coronavirus restrictions.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's going to have a huge impact.

FIELD: No more fines for people who refuse to wear a mask. The state's new daily case count has been well below its July peak for more than a month, but the positivity rate remains over 10 percent.

Across the country, new cases are on the rise in 21 states. In just the last few days, at least seven states saw their highest weekly averages for new cases, with Wisconsin recording its highest single- day increase over the weekend.

JOE PARISI, DANE COUNTY, WISCONSIN EXECUTIVE: One of the biggest challenges we have is that some people just don't believe that this is a serious disease even to this day.

FIELD: In New York, more than a thousand new cases on Saturday, the most since June. A major cluster in Brooklyn and Queens forcing the city to decide whether to bring back restrictions in impacted neighborhoods.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): It is very targeted and very focused in those clusters.

FIELD: All this as the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, says the White House is pivoting away from daily coronavirus task force meetings and as new task force member and top virus adviser to the president, Dr. Scott Atlas, was reportedly criticized by another top official.

NBC News reporting that CDC Director Robert Redfield was overheard on the phone speaking about Dr. Atlas on a commercial flight, saying, quote, everything he says is false, and going on to suggest that Atlas has provided the President with misleading data.

The CDC has responded with a statement saying Redfield and Atlas have differing positions on those issues and agree on many other issues.

Dr. Fauci weighed in with this.

ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Most are working together. I think, you know, what the outlier is.

FIELD: Alexandra Field, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Well, now after repeatedly claiming more tests lead to more cases, the White House is giving states guidance on how to ramp up testing. President Donald Trump formerly announced a plan on Monday to disperse 150 million tests.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Today I'm pleased to report that we're announcing our plan to distribute 150 million avid rapid point of care tests in the coming weeks, very, very soon. This will be more than double the number of tests already performed. These new avid rapid point of care tests are easy to use, return results within just minutes. You'll have a result and be a maximum 15 minutes. Machine, no machine is required to process them so in the old days

when we started this, you remember we'd go out and we'd have to find these massive laboratories with tremendously expensive equipment. Now we're down to something that you'll see that is really from a different planet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: And Dr. Scott Miscovich is a national consultant for COVID-19 testing. He joins me now from Hawaii. Thank you, doctor, for talking with us.

SCOTT MISCOVICH, NATIONAL CONSULTANT FOR COVID-19 TESTING: Thank you for having me.

CHURCH: So, President Trump formerly announced a plan Monday to disperse these 140 -- 150 million rapid COVID-19 tests that were previously acquired in August. Why weren't these deployed back then? And will this be enough to ensure students, and teachers, and schools and colleges are regularly tested along with other citizens in workplaces and elsewhere? Or should millions more be made available now?

MISCOVICH: Both are good questions. The answer is this technology is now just being made available. This is the rapid point of care antigen test. Now the problem with this test is it's not that accurate, it's probably 75 to 80 percent accurate and it's only accurate when you're actively symptomatic. So, it's not a screening test.

Now most of us do want to see antigen tests widely available. But I agree with your experts prior that we need at least 10 times this many. This is something you want to do every day, or every other day. So, 150 million is such a minor amount relative to what we need in our country.

CHURCH: All right, and I wanted to ask you this too. Because top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci has voiced his concern about false and misleading information being given to President Trump by his new medical adviser Dr. Scott Atlas who is not an infectious disease expert.

But Mr. Trump appears to be following his advice on masks, herd immunity, and the impact of COVID-19 on kids. How concerned are you when you hear this?

MISCOVICH: Well, to give you an example. Right now, all medical experts believe that as we look at our numbers of deaths in the U.S., that if everyone was wearing masks on a regular basis, we would have saved at least 70,000 more lives. That is 7-0. That's a lot of lives that are lost by people not wearing masks.

[04:25:00]

And then herd immunity, new data coming out in the last 24 to 48 hours shows that we only have about 9 percent of our population which has had contact or has been infected with the disease. You need 65 to 70 percent of the population. The amount of death that would be coming from herd immunity would be just astronomical.

So, any expert would look at these data points and say he is so far wrong. It would only lead to more Americans dying, which we don't want to see.

CHURCH: No, definitely not. And doctor, COVID-19 deaths have now topped one million across the globe. And the U.S. leads all other nations claiming more than 20 percent of those deaths despite representing only 4 percent of the global population. How is it possible the richest nation in the world has failed to beat this?

MISCOVICH: I think most of us believe it comes, like any failure whether it's in business or in sports, it comes from the top. It comes from leadership. And you know, we would point our fingers at the CDC, of course. You see the revolving door in Washington.

We have not sent a clear message to every state. Almost every state is doing something different. And they are not following best practices.

Look across the world. We had about five major countries who have been so successful. The roadmap was there for our country to look at whether it was South Korea or Singapore or countries that really were successful. And how did they do it? Broad leadership at the top that explained what practices. They did it with testing. They did it with testing that was ramped up so quickly. They did it with quarantine and isolation which we're not doing enough of. So, I think it comes from leadership. And we still see across the country as your reports showed at the top of the hour.

Look how many states where the numbers are going up. We are not doing enough to get the word out and to enforce the right best practice.

CHURCH: And still ahead, CNN's exclusive with Russia's top state news anchor dubbed propagandist in chief. What he says about Trump and the upcoming U.S. election.

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