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Dr. Richard Besser, Former Acting CDC Director, Discusses Trump Testing Positive for Coronavirus, Pence Testing Negative; Biden Tests Negative for COVID, Will Continue Campaign; Impact of Trump's Infection on Election, National Security; White House Official: Pence Still Plans to Attend Debate Despite Exposure; Trump Is Now 6th Head of State to Test Positive for COVID-19; CNN's Original Series, "First Ladies," Premiers Sunday at 10:00 P.M. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired October 02, 2020 - 14:30   ET

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

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, says the president has mild symptoms of coronavirus, but Meadows declined to talk about the president's treatment.

I want to bring in former acting director of the CDC, and president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Dr. Richard Besser, with me now.

So, Doctor, the president and the first lady are being treated at the White House. We don't have any specifics about the president's condition. The White House is clearly keeping this under wraps.

They have mild symptoms, which raises issues because the White House has a credibility problem and it's hard to believe them. Hard to know when to believe them.

What would you do in the case of mild symptoms, as a doctor?

DR. RICHARD BESSER, PRESIDENT & CEO, ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION & FORMER ACTING CDC DIRECTOR: I would follow the recommendations of the CDC. And those would be that someone with mild symptoms should isolate at home if possible.

Many people in America can't. I know a lot of states and localities are looking to provide circumstances for people to isolate away from other people.

But you isolate and monitor for danger signs, difficulty breathing, shortness of breath.

And the president and first lady will be getting top-notch medical care so there would be opportunity to detect any worsening of symptoms and address those.

KEILAR: So, that's something they would know very quickly, which is good news and bodes well for the recovery, which is expected. I do want to ask you about the vice president, because the vice

president was in the Oval Office with the president on Tuesday.

And according to reporting by Kaitlan Collins, his doctor says he's not considered a close contact with any individuals who have tested positive with COVID, including the president, and says Vice President Mike Pence does not need to quarantine.

Is that true? Does he not need to quarantine?

BESSER: The recommendations of the CDC, you're considered a close contact if you've been within six feet of someone who has been infected for at least 15 minutes.

I don't have any personal information in terms of who has. But anyone who fits that category should quarantine for 14 days.

And in these circumstances, where you're talking about heads of state or major leaders in our country, you would expect they would get tested frequently to see if they develop infection.

The importance of quarantine is a significant number of people infected will show no symptoms. And by quarantining, you can help insure one case doesn't lead to a small cluster or mini outbreak.

KEILAR: He has tested negative, right? The vice president has tested negative.

For instance, we know of people who test negative, to only test positive because of the incubation period.

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Can you explain to us, when it comes to aides or being exposed to President Trump, how they need to handle quarantine and testing and retesting?

BESSER: It's true with every infectious disease. There's a period of time from when a virus or bacteria gets in your body and starts to set up shop and multiply.

There's the period between that and when you develop symptoMs. For coronavirus, on average, it's four to five days, four to six days. But it can be as long as two weeks.

So, you could be infected and not have a positive test for close to two weeks, which is why the recommendations are that you be quarantined and you stay away from people in that period.

If you do that, and you still have no symptoms, then you're good to go. In these circumstances, frequent testing is likely what is being done and should be done.

KEILAR: Dr. Besser, we really appreciate your insight. Thanks.

BESSER: It's a pleasure. KEILAR: So what does this uncertainty mean for the election? It has

already impacted the president's campaign schedule, the campaign schedules of his family members, with just a month to go here.

Plus, we're going to take a look at how other world leaders have dealt with a positive diagnosis of coronavirus.

This is CNN's special live coverage.

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KEILAR: Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, is on his way to Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's a departure that was delayed, while the former vice president and his wife, Jill, were awaiting the results of their coronavirus tests, which were negative.

I'm joined now by CNN political correspondent, Abby Phillip, and also CNN analyst and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, Carl Bernstein.

Abby, the president, when he was almost -- almost -- how would you say it? Very likely, very possibly contagious sharing a debate stage with Joe Biden. That's what we're hearing from experts.

Hope Hicks tested positive Wednesday and yet they didn't give the Biden campaign any information.

How is the campaign reacting to all of this? They should have been told.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I really do think they should have been told because it's really still not clear where the origin of this outbreak really is. Is it with Hope Hicks or perhaps someone else in the president's entourage?

But it's in keeping -- the lack of communication is in keeping with how the White House has behaved around outbreaks within the White House and specifically with this one.

The Biden campaign are moving forward with what they've been doing for months, which is an incredibly careful strategy, not just to protect the former vice president but to demonstrate a set of behavior that they want to be proof positive of how Biden would govern.

And that includes keeping Biden away from other people. And he is almost always, except when in the company of his wife, wearing a mask. And I think that is the kind of thing they were doing Tuesday.

And it was in stark contrast to what we saw the president's entourage doing that night as well.

KEILAR: Carl, we have to play out the possibilities, when it comes to the president being sick. How does this impact national security?

CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: This is the biggest and most disturbing national security crisis that perhaps we faced in a generation.

First, we had the COVID crisis itself, which, indeed, goes back to Donald Trump's negligence in not dealing with the crisis in the way that he should have, by mobilizing the whole government.

Now we have, once again, a national security crisis that is really the bitter fruit of his character, by allowing himself and the country to not have the guidance endorsed by the president of the United States to take the appropriate safety measures that would have protected the American people and would have protected the president of the United States himself.

As a result, we now have a government in quarantine. We have an executive branch increasingly in quarantine. We have Senators, Congressman, increasingly going to be in quarantine, as a result of the recklessness of the president of the United States.

But meanwhile, the very stability and, hopefully, all the continuity in government measures are being taken and people are being responsible.

But we've never faced a crisis like this in which the very institutions that we depend on, the national security apparatus, has been undermined to some extent by this event.

And we have to hope that, for instance, the Russians, how are they going to take advantage of this. We know they're going to try. We know this is Putin's greatest dream, the instability we have as a result of this.

Other countries, the markets, our whole political system, we do not know where this election is going in terms of how it will be conducted. We don't know whether the president will be able to campaign.

Everything, our whole political, cultural governmental system is now on hold in a way that it has never been.

And hopefully, responsible leaders, both on Capitol Hill and in the executive branch, are going to step up and take the appropriate action and also in the states.

It is time that masks and the scientists, that their guidance be followed at last.

KEILAR: No. It really is time.

And I'm certain this White House is looking at other world leaders who have gone through this.

[14:45:02] I mean, when we look to Britain and look at Boris Johnson, it was, from the time of his diagnoses, where he didn't look all that bad, remember, in that video we initially saw of him.

It ended up being a very serious hospital stay, where he said it could have gone either way. And it was a full month before he even returned to work.

Well, Abby, here we are. We're a month out from the election. The Trump family, they're not going to be campaigning in person. President Trump not going to be campaigning in person for the foreseeable future.

The vice president is, even though every doctor I have spoken with today said this makes no sense. He may have tested negative but he's still within the incubation period and it can take a while for a positive diagnosis to show up.

What is the point of making sure the vice president is out on the campaign trail when this may not be safe?

PHILLIP: They want to campaign. Look, it is understandable. We have so close to an election. Being sidelined from the campaign trail is obviously not something any candidate wants.

But the reality is all any person who was around this White House, in the last week, really, really needs to be following public health guidelines and quarantining themselves for several days, at a minimum, until we get past part of the incubation period. It seems like there's a hesitance to do that.

We even saw this morning, for example, chief of staff, Mark Meadows, at the White House, having been in close contact with multiple people who are positive coronavirus contacts, refusing to wear a mask, still showing up in the White House building.

If this were a normal workplace, any other workplace in America, you have known close contact with someone who has the coronavirus, you would be at home.

And so, there's some real questions about whether the White House and the campaign are willing to take those measures for the time that they last.

It is not forever. Some of these people can be cleared after a few days. It's not forever. But it's necessary to prevent more people from contracting the virus.

KEILAR: Yes, even now the practices, just watching them today, they make absolutely no sense.

Abby, Carl, thank you so much to both of you.

President Trump is now the sixth head of state to be diagnosed with coronavirus. Among them, the prime minister of Britain and the president of Brazil, who also downplayed the severity of the virus. We're going to take you live to those countries to discuss how they

recovered and how politics played out there.

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MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Matthew Chance, in Moscow, where Vladimir Putin has sent President Trump a telegram wishing him and the first lady a speedy recovery.

Putin said their, quote, inherent vitality, good spirits and optimism would help them cope."

But, of course, it is more than just those qualities that the Russian leader has depended on to defend himself against COVID-19.

Unlike Trump, Putin has spent much of the pandemic in a virtual bubble, usually speaking to his officials by video conference, canceling all foreign trips, according to the Kremlin.

And working mainly from his residence outside of Moscow where disinfectant tunnels that spray visitors down as they pass through have been installed.

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KEILAR: U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro, have undergone their own public battles with COVID-19.

I want to bring in CNN's Shasta Darlington, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Nic Robertson, in London, to talk about this.

Nic, let's start with Boris Johnson. When he fell ill, we remember the video. He seemed to not be doing too badly. And there ended up being a lot of spin coming from 10 Downing Street that he was doing well when we know it got very serious.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, and it was really serious. And when the prime minister got out of hospital he praised the two nurses who gave him through oxygen through one of the nights where it was touch and go if he would survive. It is a near- death experience for him.

I think there were several takeaways. You talk about the spin, 10 Downing Street continuing to tell the British public, even after the prime minister was admitted to hospital, that he was reading his ministerial papers.

And then the next day, the country wakes up to the fact that the prime minister is now in ICU in intensive care.

That in and of itself, that spin was one thing but getting into intensive care really shocked the nation and there was a surge of support for the prime minister. He hadn't been handling the pandemic well but this boosted his popularity.

When he got out of hospital, however, that fell away. And I think it was when he got out of hospital, he made some statements on camera.

And I think people could see how weak he was looking. But he had to take two weeks off work because he wasn't strong enough to get back in the game of running the country.

So I think those were the big takeaways.

But there's one other piece of the picture that doesn't get talked about a lot and that was, while the prime minister was ill, his ability to control 10 Downing Street, control his office and his key ministers, seemed to unravel a little.

His chief adviser, who had COVID symptoms, drove hundreds of miles across the country against COVID lockdown regulations. They even suggested later that he'd done to test his eyesight because he wasn't sure how he would cope with all of the driving.

So while the prime minister was away, his control and ability to get people to do what he wants, that was not in place.

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And that really, that issue about his chief adviser driving the length of the country, that is something that has really come back to haunt him a lot in these many months later.

KEILAR: What an odd thing.

Nic, thank you for that.

And, Shasta, what about President Bolsonaro, how did he handle it, especially considering how much he downplayed the virus before falling ill with it.

SHASTA DARLINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, his case was really very different from Boris Johnson. For months, Bolsonaro referred to COVID-19 as a, quote/unquote, "little flu." He slammed governors and local governments for closing schools and businesses.

And then in early July, he tested positive. But he reported a very mild case. He went into isolation. But he spent a lot of the time boasting about how the use of Hydroxychloroquine was keeping him safe.

He continued to greet supporters who would line up outside of the residence across a water canal. He would greet them and, in some cases, get quite close to them. In the end, he even did cross the canal and see some of them in person.

After a few weeks, he was back on the job. He was able to use the fact that recovery was quick, that he didn't have serious symptoms, to continue arguing the dangers of the virus were overplayed.

He insisted that hunger and unemployment could end up killing more people than the virus itself.

And so he continued to hold in-person meetings and hold rallies. And this in a country where more than 4.8 million people have contracted COVID-19 and some 145,000 people have died -- Brianna?

KEILAR: Shasta and Nic, thank you so much. It is great context. We appreciate it.

In the last few hours, we've learned of at least three new cases of coronavirus in people who have been in or around the White House. We'll take you there live with an update on the president's condition and his postponed campaign events.

First through, a sneak peek at this Sunday's premier of the CNN original series "FIRST LADIES."

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(CHEERING)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I would not be standing here tonight without the first lady.

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: When you were little, did you want to be the first lady?

MICHELLE OBAMA, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: I didn't know I could be the first lady.

(SINGING)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What she was interested in was changing the world.

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES & FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Humans rights are women's rights.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My god, a woman who is actually trying to do something different.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All he wanted to hear was I was wonderful and all she was going to do was tell him the truth.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She would ask questions. She stepped up when she saw things were going the wrong direction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She gets the last word.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She's 31 years old. She stands up to all of the president's advisers.

M. OBAMA: When they go low, we go high.

(CHEERING) (SINGING)

ANNOUNCER: The new CNN original series, "FIRST LADIES", premieres Sunday at 10:00 on CNN

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