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Conflicting Messages Raise Concerns About President's Condition; Trump's Condition Based on Treatments He'd Received; Conflicting Messages from the White House Raise Concerns About President Trump's Health; New York City Considering New Lockdowns as COVID Cases Spike; Stocks Set to Rise as Investors Pay Close Attention to President Trump's Health. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired October 05, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:21]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Very good Monday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Poppy Harlow.

Well, this morning the president does remain in the hospital. He is still being treated for coronavirus, but Americans this morning are still very much in the dark. There is what the White House is saying, there's what doctors are saying, and then there's what the treatments are telling us.

There is a major lack of clarity and transparency when it comes to the president's condition in Walter Reed. Still, the White House says a decision on his discharge will be made later today. This comes after a weekend of misleading statements and minimizing the seriousness of the president's coronavirus infection.

What we do know now is that the president did experience two drops in his oxygen levels and was given supplemental oxygen on Friday. He is receiving a host of treatments, those include Remdesivir, also an experimental antibody cocktail from the company Regeneron, and a powerful steroid.

SCIUTTO: Yes, that many doctors say reserved for serious cases of COVID. And despite all this the president still did this, went on a photo-op joy ride outside the hospital to greet supporters. The move put his Secret Service agents, you see them there in the front seat, at risk, and attending physician at Walter Reed called the move, quote, "insanity."

We know that this large White House event to announce a Supreme Court nomination has the hallmarks of a super-spreader event. Now at least 11 people who attended that event have tested positive. That number more than some entire countries' total new cases per day. Seven-day average for new cases here in Washington, D.C., 37, that event there, quite a big one by comparison.

Let's get to Joe Johns, outside Walter Reed for more on the president's condition.

Joe, is there any new factual information this morning as opposed to spin on the president's health?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Not much, quite frankly, but we are hearing from the White House as well as the doctors over here that the president's condition is improving. He's expected to meet with his doctors this morning, we're told, and could be released as early as today.

Previously we have been told that the president hasn't shown any signs of fever at least since Friday. All of that of course coming from the president's doctors, who have a bit of a credibility problem, the president's physician among them.

Now let's talk about that drive-by out here on Rockville Pike just yesterday, essentially a political photo-op. It's really created concerns not just about the president's health but also the health of the people who are sworn to protect him. Now if you look at the pictures, a couple of things are clear. There's an agent sitting in the passenger seat in full protective gear, but that might not be enough in an enclosed space like that with the windows up.

There are concerns that the people inside the car with the president could have essentially gotten COVID that way. Now it's become very controversial.

Listen to what the people from the Trump world are saying about last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JAMES PHILLIPS, ATTENDING PHYSICIAN, WALTER REED MEDICAL CENTER: I have a hard time believing that without undue influence based on their chain of command that those physicians would have cleared that. Masks or no masks, being inside of a vehicle that is hermetically sealed circulates virus inside and potentially puts people at risk.

JASON MILLER, SENIOR ADVISER, TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN: I don't think this was a stunt at all. I think this was President Trump showing people that he's very gracious for the hospitality they've shown him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: Now the White House Management Office has finally put out some guidance for people who work at the White House complex about what they're supposed to do. They certainly weren't clear, they told them, if you're sick or you think you're sick don't come in, but also don't try to get tested by the people at the White House Medical Office. Back to you.

SCIUTTO: That of course a hospital where America's wounded veteran service members treated as well.

Joe Johns, thank you.

All right, so what do we know about the president's treatments and what do they mean about his condition?

HARLOW: Our health reporter Jacqueline Howard joins us now.

Good morning, Jacqueline. Let's talk about the -- several, three major ones, Remdesivir, the experimental antibody cocktail from Regeneron, and that coupled with the steroid dexamethasone. What do those three tell us about the president's condition?

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: Yes, Poppy, what we can take away from this is really the level of concern that has been around the president's condition.

[09:05:03]

Now it's important to mention that we still don't know that much, but from the two press briefings that the president's physicians gave over the weekend, one on Saturday and one on Sunday, we can take away that there was some level of concern considering the list of medications that you just mentioned that the president has been given.

So here's what we have been told about what the president has taken so far during the course of his illness. We should have a list here, like you said, there was the investigational monoclonal antibody cocktail from the company Regeneron. We also know the president has taken the antiviral drug Remdesivir that has been authorized for emergency use by the FDA and it's been shown in trials to speed recovery.

We do know the president has been given dexamethasone, a corticosteroid. And it's important to note this is a commonly used corticosteroid but there can be side effects, particularly mood swings. The president has taken zinc, vitamin D, the heartburn drug famotidine, melatonin, and he has a daily aspirin.

So as you see it seems as if, you know, physicians have kind of thrown the kitchen sink at, you know, his illness at this point. There is that long list of what he has been taking and it really speaks to the level of concern. We haven't been told that much, but that's what we can take away from this list.

HARLOW: Jacqueline, thank you for that reporting and your whole team over the weekend helping explain all of this because it's new to a lot of us. Thank you very much.

Dr. Carlos del Rio is with us, executive associate dean at Emory University School of Medicine.

Good morning, Dr. del Rio. Thanks for being here.

DR. CARLOS DEL RIO, EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE DEAN, EMORY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: Happy to be here.

HARLOW: So given what Jacqueline just reported, those three main things, and the CEO of Regeneron on Friday explaining to our Wolf Blitzer that taking that monoclonal antibody not yet approved by the FDA but experimental cocktail, that that was sort of a race against time for the president versus the virus. What do those three things tell you about the president's condition over the last 48 hours?

DEL RIO: Well, Poppy, as I'm trying to put things together, I can say the president was diagnosed, you know, Thursday night, Friday early in the morning, then, you know, at that point in time, apparently he had mild disease. They decided that, you know, most people with mild disease we are currently doing nothing. There's no therapy for them. But some of the monoclonal antibodies are currently being tested in clinical trials and people with mild disease.

So if he was given one of monoclonal antibodies as an attempt to do something, those monoclonal antibodies, the idea is that they will prevent people from getting sicker and that's how they're being studied in clinical trials. But by sometime Friday afternoon he probably got worse, he had a high fever, likely dropped his oxygen saturation so the decision was made to transfer him to Walter Reed.

Once he got to Walter Reed, you know, if your oxygen saturation is below 94 percent, if you have a respiratory rate greater than 30, if you have infiltrates in your chest x-ray less than 50 percent, you by definition have severe COVID.

So we haven't been told but I 'think we've been told by some of the information, is the president progressed to severe COVID? He no longer had mild COVID? And at that point in time, with severe COVID then he received Remdesivir and dexamethasone, which are drugs that are indicated in somebody with severe COVID.

SCIUTTO: Dr. del Rio, given what we know about the regular course of illness. So a diagnosis on Thursday, although the White House was not clear about when his first positive test was, how many days are necessary to gauge based on the science and the medicine, not spin of course from the White House. if it's safe for the president to leave the hospital.

The normal course of this illness for someone who as you say seemed to have a severe case as of, well, 48, 72 hours ago.

DEL RIO: Well, John, there are two issues here. Number one, he needs to complete the five days course of Remdesivir now that he started therapy and of course that could be in the hospital, but that could also be at the White House. The White House has a medical unit and it can certainly do that.

But I think the most important question is how long does he too main in isolation? And he needs to remain in isolation for 10 days after his first positive test, so if I look at things from what I know, he needs to remain in isolation until October 12th and the fact that he was wandering around yesterday, even went outside in the car, just wearing a cloth mask, that is not right. That is not something we would allow anybody in the hospital or for that matter who is at home.

We tell people who have mild disease who are at home to self-isolate and not to be in contact with others so that is actually in violation of CDC guidelines on what to do with people with COVID.

HARLOW: Doctor, from people who have experienced COVID they have recounted the long haul effects for them. Even weeks, months after they are, quote-unquote, you know, "recovered" from the initial disease. Twenty-eight days out from the election, can the president's doctors at this point say definitively, you know, there will not be any long lasting impacts of this? Right, there's just so much unknown and the tail seems long for some folks.

[09:10:00]

DEL RIO: That is correct, Poppy, there's so much unknown. He may very well, you know, in 10 days or so, be totally fine and be back to normal, and I think that's what he was trying to display yesterday that he has energy but the reality is we see many people with COVID who for two to three weeks after having COVID or even longer remain with symptoms of significant fatigue, headache, some people describe almost like a brain fog, just not being able to think correctly, and some people have fairly severe complications such as, you know, myocarditis, inflammation of the heart, arrhythmias and complications at the level of the lung.

So we don't know. And, you know, I hope he doesn't develop a long-term complication because patients we have seen with long-term complications tell you that this is not a disease easy to recover from.

SCIUTTO: Dr. del Rio, given that his medication will continue beyond today if he follows as you noted the prescribed number of days on something like Remdesivir, and given that the White House has significant medical facilities, I mean, is there any medical significance if he does leave to him leaving the hospital?

DEL RIO: You know, not really. I mean, I think if the White House can have the necessary things, I mean, one thing that I would ask, I'm sure they have, is can they get a chest x-ray? Because, you know, obviously if he starts having shortness of breath, if he needs a chest x-ray, you know, can they do a chest x-ray, but if they can, I think a chest x-ray, the ability to draw blood and send it to a laboratory, the ability to get an IV and the ability to have oxygen is things he's going to have.

But again I emphasize that if he's at the White House, he has to be in isolation and anybody going to his room he has to be -- they have to dress up in full PPE. What I mean by that is an N-95 mask, they need eye coverage such as goggles or face shields, they need a gown and they need gloves.

SCIUTTO: Well, the news we're hearing now is the president was demanding to return to the White House yesterday. Of course, the question will be, do the doctors, do the science determine that answer or does the president?

Dr. Carlos del Rio, thanks very much.

There is a crisis within a crisis. Disinformation, sometimes outright lies coming from the White House. We witnessed it. How can we know the truth of the president's health? Plus fewer than 30 days out from the election and both campaigns are

not holding back on events. We're going to dive into the strategies in this final stretch.

HARLOW: Also right here in New York City, once the epicenter of coronavirus, well, now there are plans to reverse re-openings in some neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens as COVID cases there continue to climb.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

HARLOW: Welcome back. As a nation and a president battle coronavirus, we're fighting for the facts from an administration facing another crisis, its lack of credibility. Today, the Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is dismissing reports that the president is furious with him after he spoke off the record with the press about the president's condition, contradicting what the president's doctor had just said.

SCIUTTO: With Tim Alberta; chief political correspondent for "Politico". You know, Tim, following this weekend, it was reminiscent to me of the wake of the Trump Tower meeting in 2016 where when confronted with inconvenient facts or information, the president himself dictated a misleading statement which hid the truth of it, which was later exposed to have been false.

And I just wonder watching this, of course, Meadows contradicting himself, right? But there are a lot of people involved here, the doctors as well not providing accurate fulsome information. And I wonder, based on your reporting, who is directing this? Who is dictating this or is it just a mess of different approaches contradicting each other?

TIM ALBERTA, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO MAGAZINE: Well, it is a mess, and I think to the extent that there is one person at the heart of it, it's obviously the president, not just because he is his own, you know, spokesperson, his own press secretary, his own chief strategist. But also because a lot of this, guys, we have to recognize a lot of this mixed messaging owes to these competing impulses felt by the people around the president, such as his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, also his doctor and the team of physicians at Walter Reed.

They are walking this impossible tight rope, where they want to be able to provide some information, some accurate information, they want to be able to answer these questions truthfully. You can almost see this strain on their faces in some of these instances.

But then, they also recognize that they're dealing with a patient who -- to put it mildly, can be unstable at times. And somebody who is sick, perhaps very sick, somebody who does not want to be in the hospital, who has a long history, well-documented history of being germophobic, of not liking hospitals.

He does not want to be there, he's made that clear, he wants to get out of the hospital as quickly as possible. He also does not like to be portrayed or depicted as weak and frail, and that is precisely what he is at this moment.

He does have a case of COVID-19 that by all accounts is severe. And so on the one hand, you have the White House chief of staff, you have the president's physician trying to, you know, share information and trying to impress upon people that the president, you know, does have a serious illness here that he's dealing with.

But on the other hand, the most important audience for these people they feel is the president himself, and they can't afford at least in their own minds, they can't afford to be overstepping their bounds in telling the American public that the president is in bad shape --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

ALBERTA: Because they feel like that would be betraying him in some way.

HARLOW: Tim, Mark Meadows is the one who came out on Friday to tell the world about the president's condition, right? It wasn't the press secretary, it was Mark Meadows. And I say this because you in your new piece try to explain who Mark Meadows is.

And for most Americans who don't know much about him beyond, you know, some of his time in Congress and the White House Chief of Staff role now, you open your piece by explaining a situation between the former House Speaker John Boehner and Mark Meadows.

[09:20:00]

Can you explain why that is so relevant today, because you go on to write, quote, "the blame belongs to Meadows" in terms of --

ALBERTA: Yes --

HARLOW: The messaging?

ALBERTA: Yes, so, you know, when Meadows was a brand new Congressman in 2013, he had been part of an attempted coup to overthrow John Boehner as the speaker of the house. And when Meadows' involvement was leaked out and Boehner learned about it, Meadows was very scared, frankly, because he was a brand new member and he thought that he was going to be sort of exiled from the House Republican Conference, and so he sought an audience with John Boehner, and he went into the speaker's office as a -- you know, he did in Congress just a few weeks at this point.

He goes into the speaker's office and according to people who were in the room, including the speaker himself who told me this on the record as did his chief of staff, Meadows fell down to his knees in front of the speaker and he clasped his hands together and begged Boehner for forgiveness.

SCIUTTO: Yes -- ALBERTA: And you know, the people in the room said it was the

strangest thing they'd ever seen in Congress, they'd never seen a behavior like that, and Boehner, you know, sort of felt bad for him and said, you know, it's fine. It's -- you know, it's in the past.

Let's move on. And then a couple of years later, Meadows votes against Boehner again, and then he comes back though, and he sends a note to Boehner, telling him what a terrific job he's been doing as speaker. And Boehner looking back on the whole episode, he told me, you know, I just figured the guy was schizophrenic. I don't know what else to make of him.

And that's actually a pretty good window into how Meadows has been viewed on Capitol Hill. Even people who really like Mark Meadows, some of his close friends, they will tell you, he's not always reliable. He's not somebody that they necessarily trust with --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

ALBERTA: Information, that when he's telling you something, you're always sort of turning the wheels in your mind, wondering is he telling someone else the exact opposite, is he running a game here? This is somebody who --

SCIUTTO: Right --

ALBERTA: Just -- people have known as always playing the angles and kind of has this cloak and dagger view of politics. And so that makes him a very unreliable person to have at the --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

ALBERTA: Center of the international crisis surrounding the president's health.

SCIUTTO: Yes, I mean, it sounds like you're saying he doesn't have a reputation for being trustworthy.

ALBERTA: In so many words, yes.

SCIUTTO: All right, there you have it.

HARLOW: Tim Alberta, thank you. I think every -- well, I know every single American deserves clarity, honesty, facts right now. Thanks, Tim, appreciate the reporting. New York City is now preparing to shut down some o its neighborhoods again. Why? Because of the growing number of COVID outbreaks in some neighborhoods in Brooklyn and in Queens. We'll get live reports ahead.

SCIUTTO: And we're moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Right now, all three indices show a likely rise at the start of trading as doctors suggest the president could be discharged from Walter Reed today.

What that means about his actual state of health, still an open question. We'll know over the next several hours. Investors also hoping for a new stimulus package despite an apparent lack of progress, stocks around the globe fell Friday after the president said he was infected with the coronavirus.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:25:00]

HARLOW: Well, health officials in the state of Wisconsin say the state is nearing a crisis.

SCIUTTO: A surge of new COVID-19 infections is causing both a frightening jump in hospitalizations and sadly deaths. CNN's Adrienne Broaddus, she has more on this. First of all, Adrienne, welcome to the network. It's great to have you on the team.

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Pleasure to be here and pleasure to share the news about what's happening, but the news out of Wisconsin this morning is somewhat grim. As we enter the second full week of October, Wisconsin is bracing for a beginning they hope they would never see.

Over the weekend, an explosion of new COVID cases. Saturday, more than 2,000 new cases. On Sunday, more than 1,800 new cases, and with Saturday and Sunday combined, about 24 new deaths.

That's all according to the state health department in Wisconsin. The explosion of cases we are seeing in Brown County -- keep in mind, the president was supposed to hold two rallies in Wisconsin over the weekend. That was before he tested positive for COVID-19. Those rallies were planned for La Crosse and Green Bay.

Now, at the last minute, the Trump administration did change the location from La Crosse to Janesville. The Trump administration said they changed that location due to a leasing issue. But that change came after Governor Evers pleaded or requested for a cancellation of that La Crosse rally. La Crosse is in Brown County where we are seeing a lot of these cases.

Janesville is in Rock County where the cases aren't as high there. Keep in mind, about 80 percent of people in Wisconsin who are diagnosed with COVID recover, but the recovery for some of them comes with long-lasting implications. CNN spoke with a woman who says she is now testing negative for COVID, but she still has some lingering effects. The hope is that this trend will not continue upward.