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837,000 Americans Filed for First-Time Unemployment Benefits Last Week; Biden Makes Appeal to Swing State Voters Democrats Lost in 2016; Commission Mulls Changes for Presidential Debates. Aired 11:30a- 12p ET

Aired October 01, 2020 - 11:30   ET

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

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[11:30:00]

JOHN KING, CNN INSIDE POLITICS: New numbers today from the government highlighting the COVID-19 economic punch. 837,000 Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week. That is a slight decline from the week before but still a very tough number.

Today's Labor Department report also shows continued claims. That counts workers who have filed for benefits for at least consecutive two weeks, fell by almost a million, just shy of a million. But even with that drop, look, nearly 11.8 million Americans are filing for continued unemployment.

And the jobless numbers perhaps about to take another hit. The global fashion retailer, H&M, announcing today it will close 250 of its stores next year, and more than 50,000 airline workers face losing their jobs today, that after Congress failed to expand or extend the paycheck support program.

American and United Airlines report that, combined, just those two airlines, some 32,000 workers will be cut loose. This morning, Delta's CEO telling CNN there is an urgent need in the airline industry for more help from Congress.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ED BASTIAN, CEO, DELTA AIR LINES: At the time we got the first CARES Act, we all thought we'd hopefully be in a better position relative to the virus than we are today. If we don't get the support from Congress, we will be required as an industry to furloughed tens of thousands of workers.

Hopefully, in six months' time, we'll be in a better spot. We're not going to be through this virus. There's no question about that. But we'll at least be in a more stable position to start to see how the recovery is taking shape.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Let's bring in our Business Editor at Large Richard Quest. Richard, the airline industry, just one example of the continued punch in pain from COVID-19.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS EDITOR AT LARGE: Yes, and the airline industry, nobody should be surprised, that it's gone over the cliff in the last 24 hours. This was well telegraphed. When I listened to Ed Bastian then, John, I'm not sure what more the industry could have done. They have told the president several times, they have told Congress numerous times that if you do not put in place extra provision after the CARES Act, we will have to let staff go simply because there's not been the number of people flying. And that's what happened.

If you look at what United has announced, 13,000 job losses or furloughs. And if you look at what American has announced, 19,000. Delta is merely waiting until their next intern along with all the other carriers.

And, John, these are not temporary furloughs if these jobs go. The nature of the airline industry requires recertification, both at engineering, flight attendants, pilot level.

[11:35:05]

So if these jobs are allowed to go, it will be very difficult to bring them back anything other than just a few days or a week or two down the road.

But, John, bear in mind this, the politicians were warned that this is what was going to happen if they didn't act by the end of last month. They didn't and it has.

KING: They didn't and it has. Richard Quest I appreciate the perspective. We'll watch this one playing out.

And to that very point that Richard just made, struggling Americans and businesses looking to Washington for help are at best being put on hold. Lots of discussions in recent days between White House and Democrats about a new stimulus plan but no emphasis and no breakthrough as yet.

So, House Democrats, instead will bring up a plan of their own but consider this vote later today to likely be more after campaign marker than an indication of any progress.

CNN's Manu Raju tracking this for us up on Capitol Hill. Manu, no breakthrough. So this is -- am I right? This is more about the campaign than about helping people?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. This is about the Democrats showing what they would do if they had their way but, of course, they need Republican support particularly to get it out of the Senate and, of course, as a Republican in the White House.

So this bill will probably pass along party lines later today. It won't go anywhere in the Senate. And then the focus will be back again on Nancy Pelosi and Steve Mnuchin, the treasury secretary and the House speaker, about whether or not they can actually come to some sort of agreement. They have been talking in recent days. They have moved a bit closer on the overall price tag but they are still far away.

The administration has come back to say they are willing to go up to about $1.5, $1.6 trillion. The speaker has come down from her $3.4 trillion approach to now down to about $2.2 trillion. But that's just on the price tag. There are a whole host of policy differences that they are far apart on, whether it's how to deal with funding for schools, whether it's how to deal with those $600 a week in expired jobless benefits, whether just to provide states with more money for election funding in the fall. Those are just a handful of the very difficult issues that they have to resolve.

Then there's the problem in the United States Senate, Republicans don't want to go nearly as high as the administration does at the moment. One top Republican, John Thune, told me yesterday that the higher you go, the more Republican votes you're going to lose. And going over $1 trillion means there will be fewer Republican votes. So it's a very difficult needle to thread. And as Nancy Pelosi just told reporters, John, she said, we come from two very different places, referring to her and the administration. She says talks will continue but it's a sign there's a long way to go. John?

KING: It's a sign that increasingly looks like voters at the ballot box are going to have to try to settle this one as oppose to big votes in the Congress. Manu Raju on Capitol Hill, keep us posted if anything changes. I appreciate the live report.

Up next, Joe Biden hits the rails to Trump country.

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[11:40:00]

KING: In 33 days, we start to count votes and we start to fill in this map. Watch the candidates in the final weeks. Where they go tell a lot about campaign strategy.

So let's take a closer look at Joe Biden's train tour, from the debate site in Cleveland into Pennsylvania. And let's do it using the 2016 election map. Hillary Clinton wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College. Joe Biden started in Cleveland, critical. Cuyahoga County, critical to Democrats, you need big, high turnout there.

But more importantly was where he went from there. He took a train ride down and skipped through here stopping at Alliance. Alliance is right up here on the border of Stark County. Look what happened in Stark County four years ago, 56 percent for President Trump. He won Ohio, won it pretty handily. Remember that. That's 2016.

Look at 2012, Barack Obama carried Stark County. Look at 2008, let's go back a little bit more, Barack Obama carried Stark County. This is the defection of white blue collar workers away from the Democratic Party, absolutely critical to the Democratic ticket in 2020.

Then the train ride went on into Pennsylvania, absolutely critical for Joe Biden. One of those states, the blue states, President Trump flipped four years ago. There were stops near Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, that's a Democratic union stronghold. Democrats need to run it up here.

Most interesting though is that Joe Biden's train tour ended here in Westmoreland County with several stops here. Now, look, John McCain carried that in 2008. Mitt Romney carried that in 2012. So you say this is Republican territory. But look at that number, Mitt Romney at 61, John McCain at 57. If you're going to win Pennsylvania, remember how narrow it was, Donald Trump at 64.

The Democrats don't have to win Westmoreland County, they just have to do better. They have to do better with blue collar workers. Joe Biden saying on this trip, he thinks a lot of people who live here who work with their hands think the Democratic Party has forgotten him. At the end of the train ride, he said he thinks he at least got a listen.

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REPORTER: Did you think you made an effective argument today on the economy issue?

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Well, we'll find out in the election. I felt good about the whole day. I felt good about what's happened last couple of days it. And it looks like based not on our polling, independent polling, that we're making -- we're picking up an awful lot of the folks who used to be Democrats.

[11:45:08]

They are coming back home. But we'll see.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Let's discuss this with Alex Burns, New York Times National Political Correspondent. Alex, just interesting to watch the train ride. Number one, it's the busiest day on the campaign trail for Joe Biden in memory since the coronavirus changed everything, but you can tell what a candidate is trying to do by where he goes.

And the math is pretty simple. If Joe Biden can do well in Stark County, Ohio, if he can do well next door in Youngstown and when you move into Pittsburgh and then Johnstown and that area, Latrobe, he doesn't have to win all of those towns, but if you can just do better than Hillary Clinton, we have a different election.

ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: That's absolutely right. And, John, in some of these places, you know, the area around Johnstown, you are talking about counties that Barack Obama lost by a huge double-digit margin in 2012, but Hillary Clinton lost by about twice as much four years later. And part of the Biden theory of the case is that for you hold down Trump's margins in rural areas and outer, outer suburban areas, then that makes a big difference to the overall statewide picture.

And this is happening according to our polling, The New York Times polling, across the map, that when you look at other states in the Midwest, places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, President Trump is still winning white men. He's still winning white voters without college degrees, still winning rural voters, sometimes by very considerable margins, but by smaller margins than he won in 2016.

KING: And that's what makes it critical. So you mentioned your polling. Let's just look at the Pennsylvania version of that. This is the New York Times/Sienna College poll. Among white voters with a college degree, Joe Biden leads 59-33. If you look at white non- college, you see Donald Trump up 52-39. You would say, oh, the president is winning with those non-college voters. But it was double that, it was 32-64 Hillary Clinton. So Joe Biden is moving the race on the margins.

In a way, remember, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, that was the blue wall. President Trump flipped those. That's why he's in the Oval Office. As we speak today, a little under five weeks, a long time, things can change, Joe Biden has that advantage.

BURNS: He does. And, John, I think it's worth setting back to sort of take in what a dramatic shift this is from some of the post-2016 conventional wisdom within the Democratic Party that there were loud voices in the Democratic Party up through much of the primary campaign last year saying, essentially, those voters are gone. They are not coming back. They are all for President Trump.

And, you know, again, President Trump is going to win those areas, but Biden from the beginning of this campaign has staked his candidacy, first in the primary, then obviously in the general election, on the idea that, yes, there are persuadable voters out there who are going to be willing to vote for Democrats if you run a more moderate message and if you really hit those kitchen table issues where he saw the president as really vulnerable.

It is really worth emphasizing here that these are voters who supported President Trump, yes, because of his views on issues like immigration but also because he said he was going to be a different kind of Republican than people had seen in the past. He was going to protect social security, he was going to deliver a health care plan that was better and cheaper than the Affordable Care Act. And, yes, he was going to do some stuff for unions. It's obviously not how he has governed and it's become a huge vulnerability.

KING: It's one of the great tests in this campaign. As Joe Biden noted on this train trip, Donald Trump said, I am your voice, Biden trying to make the case that he has forgotten them, one of the fascinating subplots. Alex Burns, I appreciate your time today to walk through it.

And coming up for us next, changes to the debate formats are in the works after Tuesday's off-the-rails night.

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[11:50:00] KING: The Commission on Presidential Debates now promising some rules changes before President Trump and Democrat Joe Biden meet for their second debate two weeks from now.

More than 73 million Americans tuned in to watch the first debate Tuesday, so many of you already understand why the rules are getting a new look.

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CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS HOST: Sir --

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: With a billion dollars --

WALLACE: Sir --

BIDEN: That is absolutely not true.

WALLACE: Gentlemen, I hate to raise my voice but that seems to be -- why shouldn't I be different than the two of you?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: CNN's Jessica Dean joins us with more. I'm laughing about because there was a comic element to it but there was a reprehensible element to it in that the president just decided from the beginning to blow through the rules that his own campaign signed off on, blow through the time cues, blow through common courtesy. And now, the question is, what does the commission do about it, Jessica?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, and it's a good question, John. The commission has come out and said, look, we are going to look at some rule changes. They have not specified what exactly those changes are but they said they want to add additional structure to the upcoming debates.

Here is what The New York Times is actually reporting that some of the possibilities could be. They could include new speaking limits, a new time speaking limit for the two candidates. It could also include penalizing, interruption, having to yield back time if the candidate continues to interrupt, or giving the moderator the ability to turn off the microphone if it's not that candidates turn to speak. But, again, we don't know exactly what they're going to decide to do.

And a key thing here too is how will these new rules be enforced. And will the candidates, particularly President Trump, who you mentioned, blew through a lot of the rules that his campaign had agreed to during the debate earlier this week, how will they way -- will those new rules stick at all?

[11:55:01]

John, of course, as you know, we've got three more debates on the horizon. We've got the V.P. debate on October 7th. We've got the presidential debate on the 15th and then the 22nd. And, John, I think it's important, on the 15th, this next presidential debate will be a town hall format. So it will be interesting to see if the dynamic shifts at all once they're having to take questions from voters.

KING: It is a little different to be rude to your opponent, rude to Chris Wallace as opposed to a voter who may decide whether or not you get to be president. Jessica Dean, I appreciate that. And godspeed to my good friend, Steve Scully.

Next, a new study discovered about the role of kids and super- spreaders in this coronavirus pandemic.

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