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White House Says, Decision on Trump's Discharge from Hospital to be Made Later Today; Fauci Says, Everyone at Rose Garden Event Should Absolutely be Contacted by Contact Tracers. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired October 05, 2020 - 10:00   ET

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

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POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: Morning, everyone, top of the hour. I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: I'm Jim Sciutto.

The White House says that the decision on President Trump's possible discharge from Walter Reed will be made later today. Of course, the big question, will science and medicine drive that or the president and politics?

Multiple sources tell CNN that the president has been demanding to go back to the White House, saying that he is concerned the sight of him hospitalized, quote, makes him look weak.

It comes after a weekend of misleading, sometimes flat-out false statements on the president's health. We do know that he experienced two drops in his oxygen levels as he has battled COVID-19, and as a result, was given supplemental oxygen on Friday.

HARLOW: We know also know that he is getting a variety of treatments, those include remdesivir, also an experimental antibody cocktail from Regeneron and a powerful steroid, which makes this sight yesterday just so stunning, the president going on a photo-op joyride, a surprise to everyone, including the media, going outside Walter Reed, to greet supporters, risking the health of his own Secret Service agents in the process.

Let's begin our coverage this hour with Joe Johns. He joins us outside of Walter Reed for more on the president's condition. Good morning, Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy.

According to the doctors, the president's condition is improving. He hasn't seen any fever since Friday, according to the doctors. The White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, talked about this earlier this morning, saying, in fact, the president is going to meet with his doctors and they're going to make a decision later today. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK MEADOWS, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: Obviously, he continued to improve overnight and his health continues to improve. The doctors will actually have an evaluation sometime late morning and then the president, in consultation with the doctors, will make a decision on whether to discharge him later today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: Now, about the president's drive-by out here on Rockville Pike in Bethesda, Maryland, it was essentially a political photo-op, driving past to essentially wave, if you will, at people out here who were showing support for the president.

It did raise concerns, not just about the president's health but also about the health of the people who are protecting him. Because if you look at the pictures, you can see on the passenger's side an individual, clearly, a Secret Service agent in full protective gear.

But the concern is that may not have been enough to protect him from being exposed to COVID if the president continued to be contagious just because it was such an enclosed space with the windows up. So, real concerns out there about what all of that means and it's created a controversy here in Washington.

One other note, the White House Management Office has finally gotten information out to people who work on the White House complex telling them after the president came over here to Walter Reed on Friday, don't come to work if you're feeling sick but also don't call the medical office for testing. Reach out to your own personal medical provider. Back to you.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Well, isolation is pretty clear. To isolate means to be alone, not with others, certainly not in a car. Joe Johns, thank you very much.

At least one Secret Service agent is now criticizing the president's joyride around Walter Reed, telling CNN it, quote, never should have happened.

HARLOW: Our Jessica Schneider is with us this morning. Good morning, Jessica.

What else are we hearing from the agency?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Poppy and Jim, Secret Service agents, of course, take that oath to protect and defend the president often at the risk of their own lives but a lot of the Secret Service agents that our team have talked to really say that this simply went too far. One Secret Service agent telling our team it was simply reckless.

Now, of course, we saw the president in that presidential limousine. The two Secret Service agents who were with him, they wore the hospital gowns, the respiratory masks, as well as eye protection. But Secret Service agents that we've spoken with are criticizing the president and his team for letting this happen.

This is what one agent told us, saying, that should never have happened. I mean, I wouldn't want to be around him. The frustration with how we're treated when it comes to decisions on this illness goes back before this though. We're not disposable.

That quote was from a current Secret Service agent who is on the presidential detail, as well as the first family detail, really upset about not only this situation that happened yesterday, but it sounds like previous situations as well, when they believed that they've been put in harm's way.

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Now, the White House is pushing back on this. They've released this statement from Press Secretary Judd Deere, saying, appropriate precautions were taken in the execution of this movement to protect the president and all of those supporting it, including personal protective equipment. The movement was cleared by the medical team as safe to do.

We also heard from Mark Meadows. He was on Fox this morning, and he put this way. He said, look, these Secret Service agents are always with the president. They were on Marine One with him when he went to Walter Reed Hospital on Friday evening. So, really, Jim and Poppy, the chief of staff brushing this off.

But many of these agents, again, taking this oath to defend the president but really saying that this really goes a step too far here. Guys?

HARLOW: Jessica, thank you for that reporting.

Let's discuss with our Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Good morning, Sanjay. Thank you for being here.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

HARLOW: I know it's been around the clock for you, literally.

So many questions about the president's condition and a lack of clarity or transparency, to put it mildly, in terms of updates from his medical team and the White House chief of staff.

If you could take a listen to this and give us your reaction on the other side from his doctor, Dr. Conley.

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DR. SEAN CONLEY, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S PHYSICIAN: I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude that the team, the president, this course of illness has had. I didn't want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction. And in doing so, came off that they were trying to hide something, which wasn't initially true. And so he is -- the fact of the matter is that he's doing really well. (END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: So, Sanjay, are those doctors telling the American public everything they need to know? That was referring to the oxygen level questions and lack of answers.

GUPTA: Right. No, they're clearly not telling the people everything they need to know. And, you know, he was justifying that by saying he's trying to keep this upbeat attitude and be hopeful, which one can understand. I mean, I talk to patients' families all the time about their loved ones and you do want to be hopeful. But honesty has to lead the way, 100 percent, full and transparent. And that wasn't happening here.

So what we were getting was a narrative rather than concise medical information, and that's unfortunate. I mean, I think Dr. Conley was put in a really tough spot here. He cannot divulge any information that his patient, in this case, the president, doesn't want him to reveal. So, if he is told, yes, go out and do a briefing, but whatever you do, do not tell them I was on supplemental oxygen. Then you saw Dr. Conley sort of bending himself into pretzels to not answer that question on the first day, on Saturday.

So, it's not helpful, really. I think if you're going to allow the doctors to come out, you have got to unbridle them and say, our goal of having you guys go out there is to be fully transparent here. And we're still not sure. We still don't have answers to a lot of questions.

SCIUTTO: Otherwise, you've become part of the messaging shop, right, and you're not doing your job.

Dr. Gupta, staying in the realm of science and medicine, as I know you occupy every day. If you or I or anyone else tested positive for this and began showing symptoms on Thursday, Friday last week, based on what we know about the regular course of this illness, how many days before you can say -- before his doctors can say, he's turned it around, he's better, right? Which is what they're starting to hint now about the possibility of going home today, or does it run a longer course based on what we know?

GUPTA: Yes. This is the critical question, and we still have a murky timeline here. So if he got diagnosed and needed hospitalization all within a day of each other. That suggests one of two things. One, that he was actually infected much earlier because it typically takes several days after you become infected before you would need hospitalization, if you do need hospitalization, five or six days, so did he get, actually, infected much earlier? Or did he get a very significant dose of the virus that led to a more severe illness right away? That matters, because it helps answer your question, which is what is the likely time course now of illness.

If you look at data, what you find is that you have the infection, the body starts to react to it, it's a combination of the viral infection and the inflammation that needs controlled. Typically, some of the most challenging days are going to be five to seven, eight days into the course of the illness. That's when those two things are sort of at their crescendo. So where are we in the illness?

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We don't know.

I got to tell you, it surprises me for lots of reasons that they would consider sending him home because he may still have a period of time where he's going to be sick from this illness. It doesn't mean he's not going to recover. Odds are very likely that he will. But where does he need to be at the time when he's going to the sickest, at the hospital and it's not clear to me that he's gone through that time period yet.

HARLOW: The fact that on Friday, the president was administered the Regeneron's experimental monoclonal antibody cocktail, what does that tell you about where he was on Friday, because it was I guess a compassionate sort of exemption? I mean, most Americans, as sick as they are with COVID, cannot get that and the president got it and it's not yet fully FDA approved.

GUPTA: It's interesting. What that suggests to me -- so this is a medication where you're essentially giving antibodies. You're giving antibodies that have been tested as sort of these neutralizing antibodies. And it seems that the sort of desire there was to give that early enough in the illness, which is when you should give it to try and prevent him from developing any symptoms at all. I think that was sort of the goal at that point. Interesting, right?

It's not an emergency use authorized drug but the idea that, okay, now we know he has this illness, perhaps if we give a bunch of antibodies right now, maybe we can prevent him from developing any symptoms, and who knows what they were going to do after that.

But I think that that was the goal there and he still became symptomatic, still spiked a fever, still dropped his oxygenation levels and that caused an understandable level of concern in the White House that led to essentially a medevac out on Friday afternoon, evening.

SCIUTTO: That's an interesting point there. They used a treatment to prevent and yet the symptoms came on. I haven't thought of that.

Okay, unanswered questions here, and I'm cheating off you, Dr. Gupta, because you tweeted these out. But I want you to explain to our viewers why it's important, and they're unanswered. Did the president have pneumonia? Has he shown signs of inflammation? When was his last negative test, if he's had one and why this steroid? Tell us why those questions are important.

GUPTA: Well, first of all, this is a respiratory virus. We know it can affect many organ systems but we need to know about the status of his lungs. It amazes me that they still won't answer this basic question, does the president have pneumonia or not, what did his scans show? I mean, I don't know if we still have this exchange with the -- again, with the doctors. But if we do, let's listen to that really quickly to see how they answered it. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: What do the X-rays and C.T. scans show? Are there signs of pneumonia? Are there signs of lung involvement or any damage to the lungs?

CONLEY: Yes, so we're tracking all of that. There's some expected findings but nothing of any major clinical concern.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: Look, I mean, I have got to say, first of all, the reporters are asking really good questions over there, these are the important questions, but they're not getting answers. Does the president have pneumonia? He has expected findings? Well, what does that mean? Does he had expected findings for someone who has serious disease, mild disease? It's not normal, clearly, what he's saying.

Inflammation is critical. People have heard this term, cytokine storm. Once you get a bad infection, sometimes what can be most problematic is that the inflammation ends up being destructive in the body. Does he have indications of that? You can test for some of those using simple blood tests.

We do need to know what the course of his illness, when his last negative test was to predict the timeline sort of going forward. And, finally, the steroids is an interesting medication. Because, if you think about it, you're giving medications to stop the virus from replicating so quickly and you're giving steroids to stop inflammation.

Now, inflammation also helps fight the virus. So now, you've created these two counteracting forces in the body. You typically only do that when the disease has become quite serious. There's painting a rosy picture, the treatments would suggest otherwise. And, again, is it because he's the president and they're just saying, hey, let's just throw the kitchen sink at him or is he sicker than they're letting on? We still don't know the answer to that.

SCIUTTO: They're painting a rosy picture, the treatments indicate otherwise. Dr. Gupta, great to have you on, as always.

GUPTA: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, days after the president's diagnosis, how is the White House handling contact tracing, alerting those who may have been exposed? There are signs they're just not doing it properly.

HARLOW: Also, after new hot spots of COVID-19 are emerging right here in New York City, the mayor said he expects a decision soon from the governor on another potential round of lockdowns. We'll have a live update from New York, ahead.

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[10:15:00] HARLOW: So just this morning, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that everyone at that White House Rose Garden event announcing Judge Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court nomination should, quote, in the words of Dr. Fauci, absolutely be contacted by contact tracers. Several who were at that event tested positive later for COVID-19.

SCIUTTO: Yet, for days, CNN has learned that White House staffers did not know what to do after the president's positive test. In fact, just last night, the White House Management Office sent its first staff- wide email which stated, staff should not go to the White House medical clinic for testing inquiries. Where should they go then?

With us now is Peter Nicholas, White House Reporter for The Atlantic, and Jackie Kucinich, Washington Bureau Chief for The Daily Beast.

Peter, if I could begin with you, because contact tracing is what's called for here, that is you reach out to anybody who had close contact with people who have now tested positive and kind of go out from there.

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But Michael Shear of The New York Times, who has tested positive, cover this event. He said he hasn't been reached out too by the White House.

I mean, to your knowledge is the White House doing contact tracing for journalists present but even for its own staff?

PETER NICHOLAS, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE ATLANTIC: Well, you really wonder how seriously the White House is taking this whole thing. And I think this is reflective of their approach to this pandemic from the beginning. We just haven't seen rigorous use of masks, that's something I've witnessed and written about. We haven't seen requirements that staff wear masks as they walk around the White House complex. I mean, I was there a few hours after the president tested positive. I didn't see senior aides wearing masks.

And my sense is that this is a virus, a pandemic that the president has hoped would go away, does not want to talk about and it seems like they don't want to feed any impression that this is a serious problem and thereby giving necessary contact tracing. It's part of a pattern of downplaying, underplaying and ignoring a very serious public health crisis.

HARLOW: Jackie, one would hope that from this experience that the president might change how he operates his campaign and especially those rallies, that maybe they would start mandating masks after the president had to go through this himself. But listen to this exchange from a senior campaign adviser, Jason Miller, last night with our Ana Cabrera.

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ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: Are you going to mandate they wear the masks? JASON MILLER, SENIOR ADVISER, TRUMP 2020 CAMPAIGN: I'm answering --

CABRERA: Yes or no?

MILLER: -- we're going to tell people, just like we always have, that they need to wear the masks.

CABRERA: Okay. So you're going to continue to do what you've done before, is what I'm hearing you say, you will not mandate them to wear masks, you will encourage them. But if they don't, it's okay.

Let me ask you a question about why the president --

MILLER: We're going to take their temperature, we're going to give them the masks and we're going to continue to be safe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Do you believe, as some in the Republican Party as The Washington Post outlined this morning, will pay a political price for that, for not changing behavior even after the president has contracted COVID?

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I mean, we already know that most of the public doesn't think that this administration has handled the virus well to begin with. And the fact that they're not changing course, Mike Pence is going to do a rally in Arizona the day after the debate. Their messages on masks have been inconsistent at best. The president was making fun of Joe Biden on the debate stage as recently as last week before we knew about his diagnosis about mask-wearing.

So how this impacts, they're already underwater with independent voters, according to the polls when it comes to this issue and they're not really doing anything to inspire public confidence that they're starting to take this seriously now that the president has been infected. There really hasn't been any -- as you said, they're kind of just doing what they've done in the past and that hasn't been good enough. We've seen it.

SCIUTTO: Peter, you covered the White House for some time, a hallmark of this administration. And I've heard it, you'll hear private criticism of some of the decisions but very rarely public. I wonder are White House staffers you speak to, do they feel hard done by in these circumstances, that they're not getting -- I mean, to be told don't call the White House medical unit for testing? What is their sense of confidence in their own health being protected?

NICHOLAS: Well, you know, the White House has -- resembles a Petri dish. I mean, it's a vector of infection to some degree. I mean, with the all the staffers who were coming down with this, testing positive for this.

And my sense and the I've talked to who can refund (ph) this say that there's a real sense of confusion about what the protocols should be, what they're supposed to be doing. They're not getting sufficient information. They feel in the dark about this. They're learning about their president's diagnosis and condition not from their superiors, supervisors, really, but from press leaks and the news media. So it's part of a pattern.

I think what's happened here is you have a White House that has tried to suppress leaks unsuccessfully and has nearly circumscribed the flow of information and there's a consequence of that. A price of that is that White House's own staffers really don't know what to do and how to proceed in the face of this horrible crisis and threat to their own health.

HARLOW: Nicholas, what happened when you walked into the White House a few hours after the president's diagnosis was made public?

NICHOLAS: Well, one thing I saw -- the first thing I saw is staffers walking around the compound without masks. Then we saw Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, come and talk to the news media and do a press gaggle, and he was not wearing a mask. He was asked why not by a reporter and he said, well, I'm tested regularly. Well, you know who also was tested regularly? President Trump. And where was he that day? He was sick in the residence and later went to the hospital with COVID.

So that justification, that rationale is not really holding up anymore. It's clear that it's not just testing that's needed but tighter, stricter protocols that have been at any number of retail stores where masks are required.

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I can't go into my grocery store without a mask. Why can you walk into the White House compound without a mask? So, you really have to wonder.

SCIUTTO: Jackie, in our experience, this is not a course-correcting president, or very rarely is he assuming he's out of the hospital soon and healthy, and, of course, we wish him the best. Does his campaign in your view revert to its previous default setting of being out and about, big public gatherings, no required mask-wearing? I mean, that seemed to be what Jason Miller was saying. Where do we go from here for the rest of the 30-some-odd days before the vote?

KUCINICH: Well, you're not seeing any course-correction from the president's campaign. What you are seeing is other entities like the Commission on Presidential Debates now mandating that people who come and watch the vice presidential debate have to wear a mask.

We saw the president's family take their masks off when they entered the Cleveland Clinic during that debate. And the presidential commission is putting an end to that to make sure that people stay safe, so whether there are other entities that decide to take a different course as a result of this.

But what they seem to be doing more so is projecting strength. The president is going to beat this, which, of course, they should be saying. But instead of saying, this is -- you should exercise caution, it's more about this beating the virus and coming back stronger than ever. But, no, the other side of it, which is this is a reason to be more careful and protecting -- it's his own supporters. I mean, that's at the core of this. It's making sure the people that support the president the most are safe. And there doesn't seem to be a willingness to do that and mixed their message even more.

SCIUTTO: And, listen, most Americans don't have Walter Reed at their disposal, right, and a helicopter to get there.

KUCINICH: Exactly.

SCIUTTO: Jackie Kucinich, Peter Nicholas, thanks to both of you.

HARLOW: Thank you both.

So coronavirus cases are surging in nine zip codes right here in New York City. That may mean a return to lockdown for those areas. We'll have details on that, next.

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