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Federal Judge Refuses To Stop Mail-In Voting In Montana; 5 Titans Players, 6 Staff Test Positive For COVID-19 This Week; Boston In The "Red Zone" Amid Uptick In New Cases. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired October 01, 2020 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Listen to Ben Ginsberg this morning saying essentially what that judge in Montana said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN GINSBERG, REPUBLICAN ELECTION LAWYER: The President's allegations of fraud now have to be proven in court. And I know from my years of looking for this, that that proof is not going to exist.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: So you've mentioned all these cases in play, I guess, if you are the Democrats or just a good government group trying to expand voting, these early rulings will be critical, correct?

RICK HASEN, CNN ELECTION LAW ANALYST: They will be. But, you know, it's not just about the fraud issues. And that's why I think the Trump campaign and the Republicans generally may have better success as they work their way up to the Supreme Court, because some of what they're claiming is that state courts are taking away powers from state legislatures and setting election rules. Some of it is about the timing and whether the constitution allows for what they're calling an extension of Election Day.

So it's not just arguments about fraud, and those other arguments, you know, are still being developed. So we're kind of in the middle of, I think we're close to 300 cases, right now. They're working their way through the courts. It's just a phenomenal amount of litigation. It's hard to know where everything ends up.

KING: Right. And because of that, you mentioned some of the -- this is, look, this is unprecedented. So states and local jurisdictions are doing things they've never done before. And some of them are going to try to adjust midstream as they see problems play up. This is the President tweeting about what happened in New York, 100,000 defective ballots in New York, they want to replace them. But where, and what happens to the ballots that were first sent? They'll be used by somebody, end this scam, go out and vote.

Help us with some context on New York. And again, to your point, unprecedented mistakes happen. The question is midstream, can you change them, or you sort of stuck with what you got?

HASEN: So here's the thing, you know, there are five states that have all voting by mail that Jennifer (ph) years very successfully. The problem is when you're a state like New York or some other states that had very little mail-in balloting, and now you have, you know, 30, 40 percent of people wanting to vote by mail, mistakes are going to happen, and things are going to have to be corrected.

And the important thing is not to allow small changes or small problems, be parlayed into some claim that there's widespread chaos or massive voter fraud. That's what the President's trying to do. He's trying to take small issues that are really generally administrative errors, and turn them into some claim that the election is chaotic. The election is not chaotic. And we're voting during a pandemic. It's not going to be perfect, but we've never had a perfect election in this country. We just have to have an election that has integrity and the President's statements are undermining that very integrity.

KING: Well, let me try to sneak one more in. And this is the President, he's at a rally in Minnesota last night, but he's talking about he tried to send supporters to some locations in Philadelphia, they were turned away. Listen to how the President described it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm merging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully, because that's what has to happen. I am urging them to do it. As you know, today, there was a big problem. In Philadelphia, they went into watch. They were called poll watchers a very safe, very nice thing. They were thrown out. They weren't allowed to watch. You know why? Because bad things happen in Philadelphia, bad things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: It's from the debate, not from the rally last night. But that's not exactly what happened right, Rick?

HASEN: Right. So there are provisions for poll watchers, they are for poll watchers on Election Day. This was a satellite absentee voting site. This is not where poll watchers are allowed in. And so this, you know, there was no violation of the law. Pennsylvania election officials are following what the rules are in that state. And again, it's the President trying to make something out of nothing and do it for political -- to score political points.

KING: Really important. We follow the facts, follow the rules, and often ignore sadly, what the President of the United States says recasts and appreciate your time today. We'll continue the conversation, the very important weeks ahead.

[12:33:42]

Coming up for us, new COVID-19 cases hit the National Football League. What the Players Association now saying about the safety of NFL athletes? (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Changes in the NFL schedule this weekend because of the coronavirus. A fifth Tennessee Titans football player just testing positive for COVID-19, prompting the NFL to tweet, the Steelers-Titans game will be moved to later in this season. There are now five players and six staff on the Titans who have tested positive for COVID this past week.

I'm joined now by the executive director of the NFL Players Union, DeMaurice Smith. Mr. Smith, thank you so much for being with us. Do we understand what happened here? This is a stubborn, horrible virus. Sometimes it gets us even if we're being safe. But we know from the beginning of the baseball season, sometimes it gets people who step outside the protocols. Do we know what happened?

DEMAURICE SMITH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NFL PLAYERS ASSOCIATION: We don't know fully what happened yet, John, and thanks for having me on. But this is something that we plan for. I think that what you're seeing in the National Football League right now is a good partnership between us and the league. It requires vigilance. It requires daily testing. It requires contact tracing. And it also requires swift intervention once we know where the virus is.

But, you know, our job simply isn't done. It's to remain vigilant. But I'm happy about where we are. I'm happy about the protocols that we have in place. And we'll find out exactly what happened.

KING: And so take us inside how this plays out. Now we have the example of these Titans players and personnel staff members on the team as well. So you suspend one game, you'll reschedule it later in the season. We saw in baseball, there was a domino effect, right? And I know that's what the NFL does not want to happen. You want to try to limit this to these two teams and this one weekend, if you will. What is happening in each of the organizations the Titans that last week to make sure we got this, we can control this?

SMITH: Well, you know, one giant step backwards. What's going to happen is all based upon protocols and just to be blunt, scientific, making scientific decisions back in earlier this summer. We test daily in the National Football League. We have all of our players wearing contact tracers in the National Football League.

[12:40:21]

So what we will do is simply rely on the information and the data that we get from what's happened down in Nashville. We're checking the players from the team that they played the week before. But basically, John, the idea is we believe that daily testing, just like it would be extremely effective in our country is going to allow us to quickly identify who tested positive, contact tracing will allow us to determine how many people they came in contact with, we'll be able to quarantine, isolate, shutdown, if necessary, and we will simply follow the evidence where it leads us.

KING: Trust, obviously, is a giant issue here and not always, you know it well better than I do. The Unions and the management, if you will, don't always get along on everything. But and this is -- I guess, yes, you do know it better than I know it. But there has been remarkable cooperation across most of the sports leagues actually is. And we've watched this play out because this involves health and safety, in addition to playing the game that so many people love.

Troy Vincent, who's the League Executive Vice President of Operations, says that, you know, if we are to play a full and uninterrupted season, we all must remain committed to our efforts to mitigate the risk of transmission of the virus. You know, that's a pretty common sense statement there. We've seen a bunch of coaches fined for not wearing their masks on the sidelines, as you get out of camp and now a couple of weeks into the season, just what's your general assessment of, you know, of people, are they getting a little lazy getting a little lacks, people more locked in, I suppose something like this would probably get you more locked in?

SMITH: Yes, you know, John, I don't know. You know, we can speculate all day. And you certainly work in a business where you see a lot of speculation playing out on a national stage. The Union decided back in March that we were going to take a common sense scientific approach to this. We were going to rely on our experts. We were going to rely on the people who explained to us how pandemics work. We were going to rely on all of the evidence that talked about just how viral the strain of corona or COVID-19 is. And we were going to set up protocols that hopefully protected our players. But knowing the level of virus that is out there, the manner in which it is spread. And frankly, football is a business that theoretically could be designed to spread the virus given the daily work activities of our players. We decided, this Union decided early on that that we needed to have strict protocols and have them be evidence based.

So going forward, I'm not going to speculate on what happened. We will be able to do an internal investigation to find out what happened. We will be able to genetically analyze those people who tested positive so that we then can work back and find out exactly where they contracted the virus. And we will fix our problems. But that's the only way that we will be able to play a full football season. I would also say that that if we would have approached this in exactly the same way as a country, I know that all of us would be back to work now in the way that our guys are back to work in football.

KING: Well, we certainly hope that the seriousness of the effort pays off within the NFL of course. DeMaurice Smith, appreciate your time today. We'll circle back as you learn more information about how this one played out. And we do hope it stays quite limited. Thank you, Sir, for your time.

SMITH: Thank you.

[12:43:50]

KING: Up next for us new coronavirus warning signs for the city of Boston just as it reopens in person class for some students.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) KING: Today highest needs students returning to school in the city of Boston. The Boston Mayor, Marty Walsh, there to bump elbows with a few of them. You see it right there as preschoolers, kindergarteners go next starting the week of October 15th. All of these moves taking place though in a very close scrutiny at the moment because the city has moved into the red zone for coronavirus risk.

Boston, one of 29 Massachusetts communities that are not advancing in the state's reopening plan because of a rise in cases, many of them among college students. The Boston Mayor Marty Walsh joins me with more. Mr. Mayor, it's good to see you. I wish the circumstances were a little different here.

So you have the highest needs students going back. In two weeks, preschoolers and kindergarteners, so four year olds and five year olds, but you may have to pull the plug on that and you blame the conduct of what, 18 and 19 year olds college students?

MAYOR MARTY WALSH (D), BOSTON, MA: Well, we're watching. We're watching our cases here in Boston. And about half of our cases are showing up in people under the age of 29 years old, many of them college students were -- and also the other half in the Latino community where we're having language barriers and trying to get information out to people.

So, I mean, you played a little earlier, yesterday, I was pretty hard on, on younger people saying that we have to be careful here. We have -- we do not want to see an uptick. Last week we're at a 2.0 positive rate, testing rate in the city. This week, we're at 3.5 percent. Many of our neighborhoods in the city of Boston, East Boston and Dorchester, 0212125 are above 7 percent. So we have seen an uptick in the last couple weeks here.

[12:50:03]

KING: Well, I'm an 02122 guy. So I know the neighborhoods there as you know. I just want to show what you just mentioned. Nationally, the positivity right now, just below 5 percent, a 4.7 percent, state that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts done a pretty good job, especially if you go back to the hard times at the beginning, down below 1 percent but the city is at 3.5 percent.

You mentioned some of the problems there. So how do you surge resources in whether it's Latino community where you have the language issues and on the college campuses? Do you view this as your responsibility or is this up to the administrators of those schools to do a better job?

WALSH: It's everybody's responsibility in the Latino community and East Boston, three weeks ago, we saw an 11.4 percent rate. We're able to bring it down to 5.5 percent this week. It's snuck back up to 7.7. And this is a seven day average. So we're making some investments. And we're also getting more information out to people when it comes to colleges, which send very clear messages to the universities themself.

But a lot -- some of these students live off campus. So it's a little different getting information to them. And we -- they need to take this area. So we are working with colleges, I know colleges have sent some students home for the semester. They're implementing very tough guidelines on campuses. And unfortunately, we need to keep that up right now because we don't want to see this surge. I mean, at 4 percent, we won't be opening schools. We won't be going to that next phase.

The kids that are in school today will have to make some decisions on what to do with them. So we don't need this right now in Boston. We don't need to see the spike. Well, I'm hoping that is a kind of a one week trend that we're seeing here. We start to see the numbers go back down. We have not been in 3.5 percent for probably 16 weeks in the city of Boston. So, all indications are going the right direction except for this week.

KING: So what's the health team telling you? Is it just this behavior, again, language barrier maybe in some communities, behavior on college campuses, things you can fix? Or is it or I guess your biggest concern is especially as it gets colder, people start to head inside, that that rate gets up 3.5 above 4 percent and keeps going, then you're back into real community spread.

WALSH: Yes. And then you have community spread. And then we're shutting down restaurants and we're shutting down businesses, and we get back to where we were in April and May and June. And we don't want to go there. I mean, that's something that it's incumbent upon all of us to do the right thing, to wear masks, to continue physical distancing, to wash hands.

The virus is still very much with us, as we know, and it's going to be with us for some time. We're asking people stop gathering. We've heard complaints in different parts of the city of people having cookouts and outdoor gatherings and with more than 20, 25 people on them. We're not going to go to the next phases if we think it's not safe. And a lot of people have lost a lot including a lot of lives in this country, 200,000 people have died. And really it's incumbent upon all of us to do our part.

KING: Mr. Mayor, Marty Walsh, Mayor of Boston grateful for your time today, Sir, best of luck.

WALSH: But your brother-in law-today, your brother-in-law is one of our great schools. He told me say hello to you, Mark.

KING: He is a great man. I'm glad he's working. I'm glad he's working.

WALSH: Yes.

KING: I'll send him a hello back. Mr. Mayor, thank you so much.

Up next for us, Europe right now in the midst of a very real second wave of coronavirus as the colder weather comes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:57:39] KING: A rising case count across Europe now, coronavirus pandemic hitting a second wave after Europe spent months tamping down the first wave, the global headlines now from our CNN correspondents around the world.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AL GOODMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Al Goodman in Madrid, the Spanish government announcing a new lockdown from Madrid and nine suburban cities around it expected to be in place by this weekend.

Madrid is now the hardest hit area of Spain by the second wave of the coronavirus. The new measures will affect more than 4 million people in the Madrid region. Residents won't have to stay home but they can't leave their city to go to another city unless it's for work, to go to the university, to visit a doctor, and a few other exceptions. The government is trying to slow down the sharp increase of coronavirus cases in Madrid is putting pressure on the hospitals.

We're now more than 40 percent of the ICU patients are COVID patients. Social gatherings will be limited to six people. And restaurants and bars will have to close early and reduce the number of their clients. Spain has now tallied more than 760,000 cases of the coronavirus the most in Western Europe. And that's half a million more coronavirus cases than when the nationwide lockdown was lifted just over three months ago. Officials worry that the regular flu season hasn't even started yet.

DAVID CULVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm David Culver in Beijing where the first significant travel holiday since the coronavirus outbreak has begun here in China. It's called Golden Week. And it marks the founding of the People's Republic.

And this year, it's eight days in which you've got folks flocking to train stations, to airports, and to tour sites within China. Masks are required in some of those places. But still people are standing shoulder to shoulder in crowds. It's a surge in domestic travel given that most do not feel safe leaving China due to the rising case numbers in other parts of the world.

But no question, this is also the first major test of China's containment effort, something that officials have touted as being a model to other nations albeit here it's under an authoritarian government. The coming weeks could reveal how successful the central government here actually is in keeping the spread under control.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: David Culver for us and China. Thanks for spending some time with us today. Hope to see you back here this time tomorrow. The September unemployment report will be out more evidence of the economic impact of the coronavirus.

[13:00:01]

Very busy News Day, stay with us. Brianna Keilar picks up our coverage right now. Have a good day. Stay safe.