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Airlines to Cut Over 32,000 Jobs; Trump Under Fire; COVID-19 Cases Surging in Wisconsin. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired October 01, 2020 - 15:00   ET

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

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Today, it was the president's spokesperson straight from the White House podium, offering up yet another vague response during a heated White House press briefing, where Kayleigh McEnany tried to argue that the president did unequivocally condemn and has done it many times before, but did unequivocally condemn white supremacy during Tuesday's debate.

[15:00:15]

But you have heard and seen the tape. You have seen the debate. And let's be honest. If it was unequivocal, why would Republican lawmakers be telling the president that he needs to clear it up?

Kayleigh McEnany decided not to answer that question today. In fact, now the president is taking it another step, launching into racist and xenophobic attacks during a rally last night in Minnesota, this time directed at Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who came to the United States as a Somali refugee.

And he was lamenting that she is -- I'm quoting him here -- "telling us how to run our country."

Do you hear the dog whistling coded language there?

He also said this:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Another massive issue for Minnesota is the election of Joe Biden's plan to inundate your state with a historic flood of refugees, 700 percent increase refugees coming from the most dangerous places in the world, including Yemen, Syria, and your favorite country, Somalia.

Biden will turn Minnesota into a refugee camp.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: That claim is also without basis, and clearly designed to scare the people in the crowd to the polls.

And now there's this, the president tweeting just moments ago that he does not want the rules to change for the next debate, because he thought it went so well.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins is live at the White House.

Kaitlan, is there -- are you hearing any truth behind this tweet from the president?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it was something that was pretty in line with what we heard from the press secretary earlier, when she was asked if the president would commit to showing up to the second debate not knowing what those changes from the commission debates is going to be?

And she did not say yes, that he would show up regardless of what they are. And then, of course, the president is tweeting, why would he consent to having the rules changed for the second and third debate, given, he says, he won the last time?

I'm not sure that that is an assessment that many people, even those who support him and work for him, would agree with of regarding who won that debate. I don't think anyone won that debate.

But the president is right, Kate, that he plays a big role in deciding what the debate is going to look like. It's kind of a split 50/50 between the president and Joe Biden. They both have to agree to what the standards are going to be.

So that's still to be determined on whether or not the president is going to agree to what they propose. But back to what you were saying at the top of the show, Kate, this is the -- we're going on 36 hours of this new cycle, because the White House won't just put out a really simple statement, according to many, about white supremacy and far right extremist groups.

And the press secretary was given three opportunities by three different reporters today in the briefing all from various outlets, and yet she would not just simply put out a statement saying that they do unambiguously disavow those groups, even though, clearly, it's not just critics of the president who are saying he needs to do more. It's his own party.

Republicans have never been eager to come out and criticize the president. So, when they are, it's notable. And you are seeing it come from the highest echelons of the Republican Party, with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, echoing what Tim Scott, who is the lone black Republican senator, saying that the president misspoke, he needs to clarify his comments.

And, today, they said that he did not misspeak. That was the words of the press secretary when she was asked about what the president said on the debate stage the other night.

And so we're really left with the White House perpetuating this new cycle that certainly isn't going to help the president win over any of those moderate voters that he needs come November, because they're too stubborn to simply put out a statement and are only pointing to things that the president has said in the past, scripted remarks that he's often read from a teleprompter, that do not paint the full picture, given what he said in the days following that.

And so now this news cycle, Kate, goes on.

BOLDUAN: And even beyond moderates, Kaitlan, it's as humans. If this is how long it's gone, and this is how many questions that have gone without direct answers when it comes to white supremacy and these extremist groups, that's the answer at this point, because when he says it in a certain other scripted moment come in the next 24, 48, 72 hours, how do you believe it after what we have seen from the debate stage until now?

It's good to see you, Kaitlan. Thank you.

So, it has been said, and it bears repeating. What the president has said and is saying about white supremacy is in direct contradiction to his own law enforcement agencies. It was just weeks ago that FBI Director Christopher Wray, he testified before Congress that racially motivated violent extremism remains the top domestic threat in the United States.

And, in his words, white supremacist-type ideology certainly is the biggest chunk of that. Yet, here again was the president Tuesday:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.

[15:05:01]

But I will tell you what. I will tell you what. Somebody's got to do something about Antifa and the left, because this is not a right-wing problem.

JOSEPH BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: His own--

TRUMP: This is a left-wing--

BIDEN: His own -- his own FBI Director said the threat--

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: -- a left-wing -- this is a left-wing problem.

(CROSSTALK)

BIDEN: -- white supremacists.

CHRIS WALLACE, MODERATOR: Go ahead. Go ahead, sir.

BIDEN: Antifa's an idea, not an organization.

TRUMP: Oh, you got to be kidding me.

BIDEN: It's not malicious.

TRUMP: Oh, really? BIDEN: That's what his FBI--

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: OK.

BIDEN: -- his FBI director said.

WALLACE: Gentlemen, we're going to--

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Well, then, you know what? He's wrong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: At the end there, he says, "Well, then he's wrong."

The president saying that his FBI director testifying under oath is wrong. That's not all. Take voter fraud. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: There is fraud, they found them in creeks. They found some with the name Trump, just happened to have the name Trump, just the other day in a wastepaper basket.

They're being sent all over the place. They sent two in a Democrat area. They sent out 1,000 ballots. Everybody got two ballots. This is going to be a fraud like you've never seen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Except, the FBI director, Christopher Wray, once again testifying under oath, says this about voter fraud -- quote -- "We have not seen historically any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it's by mail or otherwise."

That was six days ago, by the way, from the director of the FBI.

Joining me right now is Miles Taylor. He's a former chief of staff for the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration. He's also a CNN contributor now.

Miles, thank you for being here.

This is now a pattern that we have seen with the president. We have seen it -- we have seen it all along, but especially of recent with Director Wray. Wray was already FBI director. You guys worked at the same time when you were at DHS.

How do you reconcile these two things, when you hear the FBI director under oath, and then you hear what the president has to say?

MILES TAYLOR, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, Kate, I will say this. Christopher Wray is one of the most honest and trustworthy public

servants that I had the honor to work with in the administration. If he says it, Americans should believe it. Unfortunately, that's not something we can say about our commander in chief.

But our FBI director has extraordinary integrity. We worked with him very, very closely. But I have got to say this, not to make it personal, but in both of these cases, white supremacy and voter fraud, the president not only was ignoring the FBI. He was ignoring us at the Department of Homeland Security.

In both instances, we had said to the president, on white supremacy, that the threat was serious, it was growing, and it was primarily from violent racially motivated extremist groups, just what Christopher Wray said in his testimony the past few days.

But this wouldn't be the first time the president's heard that. We have been telling Donald Trump this information for years. We have been sharing the information with his White House for years. And they have been in denial for years.

The same thing with voter fraud. I remember, in 2017-2018, the White House was desperate for us at the Department of Homeland Security to conduct an end-to-end review, a systematic assessment of voter fraud.

And, frankly, we pushed back at the White House and we said, that's a very inappropriate thing for the Department of Homeland Security to take on. That's not something we do.

But we have seen from DHS officials since then, including that CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is they think that the integrity of the vote is solid. I haven't heard any of those top officials from the Department of Homeland Security question the integrity of the mail-in ballots system like the president has.

So he's fallen consistently for Russian propaganda over the information provided by his own law enforcement and intelligence officials.

BOLDUAN: And, look, at the end of the day, it becomes one of the things for, is there anything that Director Wray or the FBI can do about it, when you give the information the best you can, and then the president takes his microphone?

TAYLOR: Well, this is the really frightening thing about it, is, I spent years working with Christopher Wray's team at the FBI and our folks within the Department of Homeland Security trying to design a bulletproof system to fight back against interference.

And we were most worried about the Russians coming back again in 2018 and 2020, and other players like the Chinese and the Iranians getting in the game. So, we built and they're continuing to build out a very sophisticated structure to fight back against this interference, right, to push back against the disinformation, to punish the bad guys, a whole system. But the problem is, when the president of the United States is the one

spreading that disinformation, when the president is the one meddling in the election, what are they left to do? They can't countermessage their boss. They can't sanction the president. All these tools that we would have to punish a foreign adversary for doing this, they can't do, because, again, it's their boss.

So, the president has put our whole apparatus in the government that is responsible for protecting elections in an almost impossible position. That's where Republicans have to step forward. They have to hold the president accountable and draw red lines and tell him it's unacceptable to engage in this type of rhetoric and behavior, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Miles, I want to ask you, what -- in what seems like a blatant political move, something that is being considered, because we have -- CNN has new reporting about this move by the Department of Homeland Security and what they're considering right now, putting up billboards calling attention to immigrants who have committed crimes and were released by local authorities, billboards that would be put up by DHS.

[15:10:17]

It's aimed at sanctuary cities. And it really seems it's a really unprecedented -- it would be an unprecedented move, and it seems it would be pretty blatantly political. I mean, what do you think of this?

TAYLOR: Kate, I'm going to tell you, I'm getting very frustrated with this.

And I made a promise to a lot of people when I came out against the president that the only name on my lips for the better part of this period until the election was going to beat Donald Trump's. He's the one that's on the ballot.

But I have got to say to Department of Homeland Security leadership right now, stop letting your agency get politicized. This president has consistently exploited DHS, an agency built to stop another 9/11, not to help a president's reelection effort, he's consistently used it to benefit himself politically and electorally.

This is wrong. It's not what DHS should be doing. And the nation's largest law enforcement agency should be seen by the American people as being nonpartisan.

There's also reports, Kate, in the past few days that the department might launch major immigration raids and U.S. cities, partly to coincide with the president's narrative around his reelection. That's inappropriate. That's not what this department should do.

DHS leadership should step up and speak truth to the president and prevent their department from being abused by him and the White House.

BOLDUAN: One month to go.

Miles, thank you very much. Good to see you.

TAYLOR: Thanks, Kate. Likewise.

BOLDUAN: Still ahead for us, warnings from Wisconsin.

The state very much in the midst of a COVID surge, yet the president is still full speed ahead with campaign rallies planned there this weekend.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:16:07]

BOLDUAN: Right now, confirmed cases of coronavirus arising and at least 27 states. That includes Wisconsin, where they're facing the highest number of hospitalizations yet, along with the highest number of deaths yet from COVID.

The number of people needing hospital care in the state has doubled in the last two weeks.

Seeing those numbers, the White House Task Force has called on the entire state of Wisconsin to practice maximum social distancing, is how they're putting it. And local officials, they're sounding the alarm, understandably, but, still, that's not stopping President Trump going against science and his own task force yet again, planning to hold two rallies in Wisconsin this weekend.

CNN's Omar Jimenez is in Green Bay, where one of the rallies will be held. He's joining me right now.

Omar, what are you hearing there?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, we just heard from state health officials, who specifically pointed to their seven-day average of coronavirus cases and saying that it is now more than three times what it was just a month ago.

And this is coming off the heels of the deadliest day we have seen for coronavirus in Wisconsin since this pandemic began. And, Wednesday, they set a record for hospitalizations, just days after setting a record for cases in a single day.

Now, it is part of why, when you look back at the numbers, say, in mid-June, for example, we actually were seeing a relatively steady increase, but, from the beginning of September until now, an absolute spike.

And the White House Coronavirus Task Force cited Wisconsin for having one of the fastest rates of spread in the country within a region of the Midwest that is officially the fastest spreading region in the country, according to Johns Hopkins data, and specifically in the northeast part of the state, like here in Green Bay, where at least one hospital we visited earlier today has now resorted to putting beds in the hallway just to keep up with the pace of patients they have had coming in. And the effects of this frightening trend have extended even outside

of emergency departments.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MELISSA MARTENS, COPPER STATE BREWING COMPANY: The first shutdown was hard. But, of course, with the PPP, we applied very early and got that actually very quickly. So that helped to get through that. We laid off pretty much everybody, except it was just me and my husband mostly in here, and our general manager, doing food and to-go beers that whole time.

Coming back, it was actually a better comeback than we expected, like all summer. But now, just in the last two, three weeks, again, we have seen a definite, dramatic slowdown with the numbers rising. So we will see how it goes. I'm just really hoping and praying that we don't have to shut down again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIMENEZ: And that hope is entirely dependent on the people here.

And the county points to COVID fatigue, increased social activity and an inability to enforce the statewide mask mandate currently in place as factors in the rise of numbers that we have seen -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yes. I'm glad you're there, Omar, on the ground. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Joining me right now for more on this is Dr. Jorge Rodriguez, an internal medicine doctor and viral specialist.

It's good to see you again, Doctor.

DR. JORGE RODRIGUEZ, INTERNIST: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: First of all, I just want to get your reaction to that -- what we're hearing -- I mean, what Omar is hearing on the ground in Wisconsin, but also the fact that the president is still planning to hold two campaign rallies in Wisconsin this weekend.

RODRIGUEZ: Well, first of all, Wisconsin is very personal to me, because we have family in Sheboygan. So, we're really alerting them to, first of all, what I'm going to recommend everybody to do, which is not to listen to what the president is saying.

It's that simple for me, and not to take what he is doing as what you should do. We know that the White House has a different agenda. We know that they're not always, for fear of, they say, scaring people, not telling people exactly how serious this is.

We are on the verge of a perfect collision of winter, of the flu, and of COVID. And if you look at the map of the United States, all of the Northern states have increased cases. Maybe it's the weather. We're expecting that to be a factor.

[15:20:05]

So what I'm saying is, do not let yourself be collateral damage. Every state in the United States is going to probably see a surge over the next month to two months. Masks, we know, work. Distancing has to happen all the time.

Even when restrictions are decreased, that means that, yes, we can maybe be more free in where we go. But we still have to abide for our own good with masks and with distancing and with washing our hands. It's really that simple.

BOLDUAN: Yes, it is.

And, yes, maybe folks were exhausted by it. But it's not going to--

RODRIGUEZ: Of course.

BOLDUAN: It's going to get worse. It's not going to get better. It doesn't matter. I mean, what you're saying is so important.

And it also takes me to the White House again and this new reporting that we have into CNN that what we're learning is that masks actually arrived to the White House in February. They were sent over, but staffers we're told by senior officials essentially not to wear them.

And I want to read you a quote from one person in this piece. "If you have the whole West Wing running around wearing masks, it wasn't a good look," one administration official recalled, of the directive that came down from senior staff and lawyers.

Look, as you have mentioned, we have known that the president -- we have known about the president's concern over optics and was driving -- the driving force of his response. But this reporting, I can tell you, takes it to a whole new level. What's your reaction to it?

RODRIGUEZ: Well, I read that this morning, actually, before this, and I thought it was very obscene, to be honest, because this was happening already.

And the national security people in February, if not in late January, were recommending that everybody wear masks. You know what is not a good look? Wearing a ventilator mask. That's not a good look.

So, to give people a false sense of security is not only insulting to the American people, because I think we can handle anything as long as we know exactly what the truth is and what we can do about it. And it's also putting people in harm's way.

The optics, if you want to talk about optics, the optics of the debate the other night at Case Western Reserve, which is one of the medical meccas of this country, where they were enforcing masks, but if you look at the Trump posse, if you will, there was nobody wearing masks.

And that tells people, right -- first of all, it's been weaponized -- and that tells people that it's OK not to wear masks. You know what? It is not. And if you're lucky enough to not have this hit home, unfortunately, they're predicting at least another 200,000 deaths by the end of the year.

We're all going to be touched by it.

BOLDUAN: Yes, I was going to say, what also is not good optics is 200,000, more than 200,000 people dead from coronavirus. Many lives could have been saved had masks been worn earlier.

Dr. Rodriguez, thank you.

RODRIGUEZ: Thank you, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Want to turn now from the health aspect of the pandemic to also the massive economic cost of the pandemic.

The job losses this week have been astonishing. New numbers out today show 837,000 more Americans filed for unemployment benefits for the first time last week. Last night, two airlines, American and United, announced that they're laying off a combined 32,000 employees after stimulus talks and Congress failed again.

Here's CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Kate, the reality for these tens of thousands of airline employees is really setting in, but they have been given a little bit of a glimmer of hope.

They lobbied Congress all summer for another $25 billion to avoid this October 1 furlough cliff by another six months. And what's so interesting here is that airlines are saying, if Congress gets its act together within the next few days, airlines could reverse the furlough process, bringing these tens of thousands of employees back from the unemployment line.

These are the new numbers from airlines overnight. American Airlines says it's furloughing 19,000 people, effective today, at United Airlines, more than 13,000. The total, along with other smaller and regional airlines, more than 50,000 people will be furloughed industry-wide effective today.

They are pilots, they are mechanics, they are gate agents, and they are flight attendants. And they have been given a little bit of hope because of statements from their airlines like this.

United Airlines says that: "We can reverse the furlough process if the CARES Act is extended within the next few days."

It is really hard to wrap your head around the totality of all of these job losses. The number of furloughs at American Airlines alone could nearly fill Capital One Arena here in Washington, D.C.

This could pan out to be the worst single day of job losses in the entire history of aviation.

(END VIDEOTAPE) BOLDUAN: Amazing. Awful. Pete, thank you very much.

Up next for us: "Go into the polls and watch very carefully."

Comments like that from the president, no less, have Minnesota's secretary of state afraid of what might happen on Election Day.

[15:25:05]

He joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: This just in to CNN.