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CNN Source: Trump Considering Address To The Nation; Trump's Doctor: President May Not Be "Out Of The Woods"; White House Coronavirus Cluster Keeps Growing; Twenty-Two States Report Upward Trend In New COVID-19 Cases; CNN Poll: Percentage Who Say They Would Get A COVID-19 Vaccine Drops. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired October 06, 2020 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

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JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Hello to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I am John king in Washington. Thank you for sharing your day with us. The unmasking of the president is in full focus today. We are four weeks to Election Day, and how he sees things is well very different than how most voters here in the United States see them.

Our new CNN Poll shows Joe Biden with his biggest lead of the 2020 campaign, a stunning 16 point national advantage over President Trump. This past week was a turning point. A "New York Times" report, the president paid little or nothing in taxes a disastrous debate performance.

A turn for the worse in the national Coronavirus case count, and then a White House COVID outbreak that includes the president being hospitalized with a virus he told us would disappear six months ago.

Joe Biden now has a 21 point edge when voters are asked which candidate can better handle the pandemic and a whopping 25 point edge when likely voters are asked which candidate is honest and trustworthy.

You might think a number like that would get one like the president may be to stop lying but here he goes again. A morning tweet saying, we can live with COVID like we live with the flu. A tweet flagged that's untrue by both Facebook and Twitter.

Remember, the president is on tape, telling Bob Woodward eight months ago, he was briefed that the Coronavirus is far more deadly than the flu, but that tweet, part of the president's come back script, a script that ignores facts and simply blows through public health red lights.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Don't let it dominate you. Don't be afraid of it. You're going to beat it, and I know there's a risk, there's a danger, but that's OK. And now I'm better and maybe I'm immune, I don't know. But don't let it dominate your lives. Get out there, be careful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Don't be afraid is the motto much easier to live by if you're the president. You have easy access to experimental drugs, a helicopter to rush you to the hospital. The president last night turned that return to the White House into a photo op.

And now a senior campaign official tells CNN, the president is considering a nationally televised address from the White House. Let's discuss now with Maggie Haberman, White House Correspondent for "The New York Times" and CNN White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins.

Maggie, it is striking, the campaign sees in the president's infection, the potential for a comeback script. The issue is their plan says show empathy; show that you have a greater understanding now of the pain this has caused the country. The president's script is a little different.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: That's right, John. The president's script includes trying to say and show that he isn't really sick. By every account of everyone I have spoken to at the White House and around it today, he is still sick. Now he is clearly doing better, but he's also on a drug cocktail that includes steroids that can suppress your symptoms when you are really sick.

I spoke to a bunch of folks this morning and I reported earlier this morning that the president and his advisers are discussing, have been since last night, some kind of a nationwide address. It would likely have to be in prime time.

Not clear whether it's going to happen or not, but he is very eager to show that he is back and nothing hurt him. And that is at odds with telling people yes, I've learned a lot about this, I understand it, I understand what you all are going through. And again, to your point, his advisers often have an idea for what he can do and he up ends it.

KNG: Right. He takes maybe their thought and then writes it in his own way. And Kaitlan Collins, it's important given the momentary, the possibility of a nationally televised address. The president tweeting this morning, feeling great and also tweeting, I'm looking forward to the debate on the evening of Thursday, October 15th in Miami. It will be great.

Look, I hope everybody watching wishes the president well, whether they agree or disagree with how he's handled the pandemic or agree or disagree with his policies. But the doctors also say that even if he is doing well right now, any COVID patient, we have to wait another three, four or five, maybe eight days to see if there's a setback.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. They say the president is not out of the woods yet, those are words of his own doctor from less than 24 hours ago.

Yet the president is very much acting in a different way. And as Maggie noted, he wants to project the sign that he has gotten over this and that he is now on the mend of it. And that's why he shot that video last night after he stood on the balcony of the White House went inside to recreate the entrance so you could shoot that video that he posted on Twitter later on.

And that's likely why he also wants to hold this nationwide address, because of course he's someone who's been behind closed doors mostly for the last several days while he was hospitalized, and now he is trying to change it.

The logistics of the president actually doing an address tonight would be a little more difficult than normal, given the fact that he is quarantining in the residence currently. They've set up offices for him downstairs. But he is not in the West Wing like normal.

And also, so many of his aides aren't there working with him, his Press Secretary is at home, his daughter Ivanka Trump is at home, quarantining, even though she's tested negative.

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COLLINS: His body man, his other top aide, Hope Hicks, so many advisers to the president currently isn't in the West Wing. And many others are quarantining because they either worked closely with someone who's tested positive or they were in that circle or they themselves have tested positive.

But the president projecting this and saying that he is going to go to the debate in Miami next week, that he wants to get back on the campaign trail logistically when that actually happens still remains to be seen, because the doctor say that the president would not breathe a sigh of relief until next Monday when the president has progressed a little bit further, and of course you know, we're still several days away from that.

KING: And Maggie another great piece of your reporting today is the jitters this causes outside the White House among other Republicans. He is losing by the record margin in our CNN polls, the NBC, The Wall Street Journal poll also had a big 14 point lead, ours is 16 points.

Then you look at the state battlegrounds, including the New York Times, Siena College Polls, Joe Biden has a great advantage in many of the battleground states as well. This is from your piece today from Brendan Buck, a long time Republican Strategist who worked for the former House Speaker, Paul Ryan.

"You would hope someone who has been in a serious health crisis would have a bit of an awakening, find a little religion on this, but he seems incapable of doing that." So it doesn't pass the laugh test, he says the president I'm sorry, he said it doesn't pass the laugh test for a super serious situation that has ruined millions of people's lives.

Here is the path that jumps out of me. He said he was still concerning because half the country takes their cues from him. What is interesting to me in looking at the polling is that the past week seems to have been a breaking point, and not as many people, which means even some of the president's people, are not taking their cues from him anymore? Something has happened in the last week.

HABERMAN: There is no question, John that something has happened. And I think some of it frankly is owed to the fact that, and we won't know more about whether this is the case for several days.

But there's reason to believe that the fact that the White House was so dissembling about what's actually happening with the president's health, that the president himself didn't want this information out, and then you have the White House doctor who is the president's doctor, he is not the same as other government officials in terms of accountability to the public.

But the president's doctor clearly dissembling when talking about his condition on Saturday, all of this has added to a sense that they're hiding something. So when you are trying to tell people this disease really isn't that bad, they have not helped their own case.

And to your point, I think that looks, the mask issue, the president has been on the wrong side of in terms of public opinion for many, many months. And a lot of his advisers have tried explaining that to him.

He just will not hear it. He has gotten a little better, but he still made fun of Joe Biden for wearing a mask at their last debate. I think there are increasingly people looking at what has happened around this White House and this satellite of people around the president who have gotten sick and realizing the things that president has been saying might not be correct.

KING: And so, Kaitlan take us inside the White House right now. We know the First Lady, confidants who don't work at the White House anymore like Kellyanne Conway and Chris Christie, but were helpful in debate prep, and political advice.

Hope Hicks who did work at the White House, the Press Secretary and two of her deputies, what it like is the ghost town was the phrase used in "The Washington Post" reporting about the White House today. What is happening there, and what can't happen there because it is the source of a big COVID outbreak?

COLLINS: It's changed really fundamentally the way it looks inside the West Wing for right now. It's unclear how long this will last. I remember a few months ago when we had first reported on some cases happening inside the West Wing, you're starting to see people wearing masks, they had to wear them going into the West Wing, and that quickly evaporated.

And so, now you are seeing staffers who do come to work, wear a mask, but there are way less of them than you had a team before. Today, there was only one press aide in the area where there normally are half a dozen over there.

And that was as reporters are having to be tested, because they have been in the vicinity of Kayleigh McEnany who is now tested positive, despite being told last week that she had close contact with someone else who is tested positive, yet continued to come to work. So it really has changed things. Because there are so many people who are not coming into work.

And it's not just in the West Wing as well, this is something that's being felt throughout the East Wing and the residence as well, given the fact that that's where the president is now quarantining, and the First Lady also has it.

We reported this morning that a military aide who is assigned to taking care of the president in the oval and in the residence has also tested positive for coronavirus, and now several other of these military valets are having to quarantine as a result of that.

So it is something that is widespread inside the West Wing and has continued to grow by the day. And a lot of officials are learning about some of these cases in press reports, and not from their colleagues, and not from contact tracing.

And so, that's caused another round of concern that if someone does tests positive, they may not be the first people to know about it, even though they have been working around that person.

KING: And yet, Maggie, we know from reporting in "The New York Times" matched by CNN that the White House said no, when the CDC offered help with contact tracing around the Supreme Court event and around others who've been at the White House.

[12:10:00]

KING: So we know from "New York Times" reporting today the White House is trying to reject FDA recommendations that would probably delay by a couple of weeks to release of any vaccine, they want to be extra careful in checking the science.

We also know the president is probably too sensitive to media coverage and he watches television, was watching in the hospital, he didn't like the way he was being portrayed that he was in the hospital. Around the world right now, America frankly is being laughed at.

This is from Donald Tusk, who's the Former President of the European Union tweeting last night after the president's message. Don't be afraid of COVID; be afraid of cynical powerful people spreading lies about it. Don't let them dominate your life. That from the world stage, a direct rebuke of the President of the United States.

HABERMAN: The president is looking at this, John, the way that he has looked at every other challenge that he has personally faced as if it is in line with the Mueller investigation or impeachment enquiry or media coverage.

This is a virus. This is an infectious illness that he is suffering, he is not over it yet, that he could be infecting others with if he is not taking proper precautions, and taking that mask off like last night before he went back into the White House sent a pretty questionable message.

And there are some advisers who are encouraging him to direct his energy that way as opposed to again recognizing this is something that is afflicting a number of people. And also look, I understand there's a long history of presidents not being honest, not being forthcoming, and sometimes lying about their medical circumstances.

We have not seen in a very long time, if ever in the past century that I can think of, a president with an infectious disease, with something that could hurt other people. And acting as if that is not the case, and acting as if you're still a private citizen who just happens to work in the Oval Office is not something that's sustainable here.

KING: Right. And clearly, you see the reaction of voters in the polls, they agree with you in the sense that they're living this every day of their lives, either trying to get their kids to school, still working from home, all the other challenges they face. Many people with COVID or lost a loved one because of it, that's why the reaction is so strange.

The president tweeting just moments ago this, the fake news media refuses to discuss how good the economy and stock market, including jobs under the Trump Administration, are doing. We will soon be in record territory. All they want to discuss is COVID-19, where they won't say it, but we beat the Dems all day long, also.

So the president has too much time on his hands like I guess at the moment in the sense that the economy, Kaitlan Collins has come back some from the February crash, but there is still 11 million, 10.7 million jobs missing, jobs that are not there now, that were there in February.

And even that number is not fair in the sense that the recovery is so uneven. Yes, those with stocks are doing OK, although the last week or so have been a little more iffy, but around the country small business is closing, especially African-American and Latino and small businesses closing. And the president tweets out this again trademark fake news stuff.

COLLINS: Yes, and the White House has been pointing for the last several weeks to how many millions of jobs have been gained in just three-month period, while ignoring how many were lost in the months before that and still have not been recovered.

And they're also ignoring how many airline workers have now been laid off, and they're also ignoring stories like the one Kyung Lah told this morning on CNN, where there is a woman who is making 20 dollars an hour.

And now she's interviewed for 50 jobs recently, trying to feed her family, and talks about the struggles with that and the struggles with trying to communicate what's going on, these real world problems that she's dealing with to her small children. Those are real things. And those are real messages of suffering that are still happening.

And if you listen to the Fed Chairman, are still likely going to happen for the next several months if things don't change rapidly. And that's a message you don't hear from the president when he comes back to the White House and he removes his mask and he tapes this video. He doesn't talk about the Americans who have died from Coronavirus, but he also doesn't talk about the Americans who are suffering from it. The president is living in a different reality than a lot of Americans.

Who if they get Coronavirus and it doesn't affect their health in the long term, they still have to deal with the fact that they can't go to work for at least two weeks. They may put other people that are going to work in their households in jeopardy.

And that is the aspect of this that the White House has overlooked so much as they have tried to vilify the media for covering a pandemic that is happening and effecting millions of people in the United States.

And it's not a message necessarily that campaign aides believe is something that the president should be touting, they think he should be focusing on this in a different recovery focused way and that's not what that tweet conveys at all.

KING: Kaitlan Collins and Maggie Haberman grateful for the reporting and insights. And up next for us, we continue this conversation. The president says it one way. We'll give you the real numbers. Where are the Coronavirus cases now rising across the country? And how Dr. Anthony Fauci sees trouble signs looking ahead to Thanksgiving another fall holidays?

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[12:15:00]

KING: Don't be afraid is the president's message when it comes to the Coronavirus. You should be concerned is the approach taken by Dr. Anthony Fauci. Let's take a look at the numbers and they tend to support Dr. Fauci's view, not the president's. Let's take a look at him.

If you go through the 50 states right now, orange and red is bad, orange and red means trending in the wrong direction. 23 states right now trending in the wrong direction that means more new coronavirus infections now compared to the data one week ago.

23 states trending up in terms of new infections, 24, that's the base, are nearly half of the states holding steady right now, holding steady. Only four states right now are reporting fewer infections compared to a week ago so not an optimistic map at the moment.

23 states heading up, if you look at the trend line of states, here's what's troubling the public health experts? We are averaging now more than 40,000 new infections a day in the United States, more than 40,000 new infections and some indications in recent days that are starting to trend up a little bit from that.

We need to watch the numbers as we go through the rest of this work week. But remember, it was about 18,000 new infections on average before the big summer surge that got us up above 60, some days above 70,000 cases.

Now we're at a baseline of over 40,000 as we head into the colder months and if you look at the death trend right now, I don't want to call this optimistic, because all of these numbers are horrible, but the numbers are down a little bit. 460 deaths recorded on Monday.

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KING: There has been some down days, but most projections say they're with the rising case count this will follow up eventually. Let's hope that's not the case, but that's what just about every projection tells you, it will go up.

And one of the reasons for worry, six states reported record hospitalizations yesterday on Monday. And notice where they are Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana, all of them in the northern half of the country. It's getting colder.

These states, many of them don't have giant populations, but we're starting to see the case count go up in these states. So you look at a map like this, record hospitalizations, you look at a case trend like this above 40,000 new infections a day, Dr. Anthony Fauci looks a bit down the road on the calendar, says things are getting bad now, and he is worried that by Thanksgiving they could be even worse.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Some people in this country are going to be able to have a relatively normal type of a Thanksgiving. But in other areas of the country, it's going to be you better may hold off, and they'd be just have immediate family.

Make sure you do it in a way that people wear masks where they have and you don't have large crowds of people. I'd like to say that everything is going to be great by Thanksgiving, but honestly, Chris, I'm not so sure it is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Let's discuss this with Dr. Leana Wen, our CNN Medical Analyst and Emergency Room Physician at George Washington University. Dr. Wen, it is good to see you. Dr. Fauci says, be concern the president says, don't be afraid. Averaging about 43,000 new infections a day right now, what's the right word?

DR. LEANA WEN, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN AT GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: Well, Dr. Fauci is correct. We are trending in the wrong direction here. We are starting off coming into fall, winter season at far too high of a baseline level of infection. And what's really concerning to me, John, is also that our test positivity is going in the wrong direction.

We have more than a dozen states where the test positivity is over 10 percent. Three states, Wisconsin, Idaho and South Dakota have test positivity of over 20 percent. That means we have infections going up, we don't know how many tests are being done and actually we may be missing many cases in these states.

And coming into the cold weather months, Coronavirus is spread a lot more. This is a Coronavirus; it's going to spread more. It's going to be hard for people to be outdoors rather than indoors. And I just also worry about the confluence with other respiratory pathogens and the flu especially with inadequate testing.

KING: And you mentioned that in your view inadequate testing. I just want to show you the seven day average of testing across the United States of America. It is up now right around one million tests a day, which the administration says is progress and it is progress from where they were.

But help us as someone who does this for a living. Where does it need to be, if a million is progress, close to a million is progress, what would be better?

DR. WEN: We need to have at least tens of millions of tests per day. And the administration recently announced that they have 150 million tests that are being distributed. That's good. But when you think that ideally we get to the point that we are testing every student going to school, every employee going to work at least twice a week.

We're going to be using up those 150 million tests within two weeks. And so, what we really need is a national strategy around smart testing. For example, having a two tiered system for people who are asymptomatic, at low risk, they get this rapid test.

But for people who are symptomatic or at high risk, they get that more accurate PCR test. We need to have that type of smart thinking around testing and really ramping up overall testing to the tens of millions per day.

KING: We've had this conversation too many times Dr. Wen. But one of the important issues here is that, people have confidence in their public health officials and in their political leadership in the middle of a pandemic.

We see more evidence in our CNN poll today that trust is eroding. This is on the question of would you get a vaccine. Would you try to get a Coronavirus vaccine if one existed?

Now Biden voters, 60 percent of Biden voters say yes, that's down from nearly 80 percent in May. Only 4 in 10 Trump voters say yes, down from 51 percent in May. So there's an erosion of trust among voters out there, among Americans out there that they would trust a vaccine, the source of that I assume you would say is, because we've had so many mixed signals from the president and scientists.

DR. WEN: That's right. We know that if we want people to actually take a vaccine, of course it needs to be safe and effective for it to work, but it also needs to be trusted. And at this point, I know that I and many other physicians have trouble trusting a vaccine that's going to be rushed through and potentially not have the appropriate safeguards, if it's somehow tied to Election Day or election prospects. At the end of the day, people are going to be listening to their

doctors. And we physicians in the scientific community, we trust the scientists at the FDA, who are some of the best in the world. They know what to do, they know how to do their job of providing regulatory authority and ensuring the safety of vaccines.

But they need to be allowed to do their job free from political interference and political manipulation.

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DR. WEN: And until we get that reassurance, I'm not sure that I would feel comfortable taking a vaccine, much less recommending it to my patients.

KING: Sober words there, Dr. Leana Wen, grateful for the expertise and insights. Thank you so much. Up next for us to the campaign trail, Joe Biden returns, he wants to message of unity you know today and get his first speech today as a brand new CNN Poll shows him with his largest lead of campaign 2020 over the president.

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