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West Wing Staffers Prepare "Isolation Cart" For Trump's Return; Washington, D.C. Seeing Spike In Coronavirus Cases; Trump Says He Is Looking Forward To Debate Next Week; White House Press Secretary: "Not Sure" When Trump Last Tested Negative; Tonight: Pence And Harris To Face Off In Vice Presidential Debate. Aired 12-12:30p ET
Aired October 07, 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]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And they're also banning alcohol sales in that time as well.
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. 25 of the 50 United States are trending up in the coronavirus case count today. Only three are trending down. That is a sober October reality and a certain debate flash point.
Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Kamala Harris face off tonight in Salt Lake City. You see a live picture of the debate hall there. They will be 12 feet apart protected by plexiglass, that a stark reminder of today's new normal as the VP candidates debate whether an America needs four more years of Donald Trump or a Joe Biden course correction.
Vice presidential debates don't normally change the course of an election. But as we know campaign 2020 is like no other. Last hour Republican Senator John Barrasso telling me why he thinks this debate, yes, is different.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN BARRASSO (R-WY): I think people watching both of these candidates will be watching to say who is ready to be Commander in Chief, because what we know right now is that Joe Biden is turning 78 next year. We know the president has coronavirus.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: President Trump will be watching from the coronavirus isolation, confined to the White House now as he's treated for the virus he told us would disappear six months ago. The president's doctor has not answered questions since back on Monday. So we are in the dark, really, about his condition and his course of treatment. He is tweeting.
When yesterday pulling the plug on stimulus talks rattled financial markets, the president has since backtracked some saying he does hope to cut smaller stimulus deals, smaller economic aid deals. We're told he's itching to leave the residence and return to the Oval Office.
The White House is already short staffed because of coronavirus outbreak, but aides still there are preparing an isolation cart, that means gowns, goggles and masks for those who might get called in to help the president if he insists on returning to the West Wing.
Take a look here, add Trump Adviser, Steven Miller now to the inner circle infections. You can see all the big names there from the West Wing, the Trump Campaign. And that is just a partial list of all the cases now linked to this White House hot spot.
We do know this, as the vice president is on the stage tonight, he is the head of the coronavirus Task Force. The administration wants to say they have a plan to deal with the coronavirus. The numbers tell us right now, right now the country is headed in the wrong direction.
And let's take a look at that map, 25 states, as I noted at the top of the program, 25, half of the United States now reporting more new infections now compared to the data one week ago, trending in the wrong direction.
22 that's all the beige holding steady, red and orange trending up only three, that's the green, you want this map filled in with green, only three states at the moment reporting fewer new infections now compared to a week ago.
Again, 25 heading up, 22 holding steady. That is not where you want to be as the weather gets colder. And so, you see with more cases you get, sadly down the road a couple of weeks more deaths. 22 states, the red and the orange again mostly across the northern swath of the country where, not coincidentally it is getting colder 22 states trending up, 11 holding steady, 17 states reporting fewer deaths now than one week ago.
If you look at the case time line, this is what's troubling to all the public health experts where we are right now. Above 40,000 new infections a day on average, it was 43,562 on yesterday. You see that line. Is that a plateau, is it trending back up a little bit?
The one thing you do know, it is not trending down. And that's what's so dangerous, if there is to be another surge. We are at about 20,000 infections before the summer surge got up above 70,000. If we're starting from a baseline of 40, 43,000, the worry is where you go if you start to go up again. If you look at the positivity map, this is why.
This is why people are worried about this, especially in the northern half of the country. The deeper the blue, the darker the blue, the higher, the positivity rate 23 percent in Idaho, 23 percent in South Dakota, 15 percent Wyoming, 15 percent Kansas, 20 percent Wisconsin.
Now all of these states were not as populace as California, Texas and Florida, which led us through the summer surge, but when you have high positivity across so much of the country, you're just worried cases today, cases tomorrow, cases into next week. If you look right here right now, the District of Columbia, well, why do we show this, because the White House right here in the District of Columbia is a hot spot? This is the cumulative total right now, 15,000 cases plus since the beginning, 632 deaths.
One of the places being watched most closely right now is supposed to be the safest workplace in the United States of America, the White House. The president is confined. A number of his top aides can't work because they, too, have COVID. The Chief of Staff says we're trying.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK MEADOWS, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: We do mandate social distancing as much as practical. And even with some of your colleagues, a number of your colleagues who may wear masks religiously, they have come down with it. And so, it makes us pivot back to one critical thing. We need to make sure that therapeutics and vaccines are what we focused on.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[12:05:00]
KING: CNN's White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins and NPR White House Correspondent, Tamara Keith joins us now a lot of ground to cover, ladies. Kaitlan, let me just start, you heard the Chief of Staff there saying, we're OK here. We've got this. We don't know about the president's condition.
We haven't heard from his doctor except for vague paper statements since Monday. He's not answered questions. We're told to have these isolation carts outside the Oval Office in case they just get called on if the president returns to the West Wing. What is the situation right now best we know?
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It's pretty chaotic inside the West Wing, John, probably more chaotic than it's been at any other time in the Trump Presidency, which is really saying a lot. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that there are a few staffers who are there. But there than that, it's kind of like a ghost town.
And a lot of staffers are working remotely; they're getting different information on what's going on. That's why you saw the discrepancy this morning with Larry Kudlow saying that the president did go to the Oval Office yesterday and Mark Meadows, the Chief of Staff having to clean that up and say, no, Larry Kudlow misspoke. He actually was not in the Oval Office yesterday; he just wanted to go to the Oval Office yesterday.
And they seem to be prepared for the president to make his way over there at some point today. And that's how they are talking about PPE and what not. But John, we got to remember, it hasn't even been a week since the president was diagnosed with coronavirus and since he first started showing symptoms, if you listen to his doctor yet.
We're not getting daily updates anymore from the president's physician. And you've got to wonder why that is? Because when the president was at Walter Reed, you saw Dr. Conley coming out with the team of physicians to brief every single day.
And while the questions were lacking specificity, any specifics - at best, they still need to come out and answer questions from reporters. And we haven't seen that. Instead we just got that paper statement from Dr. Conley, and we relied on political aides to give us updates on the president's conditions.
And so, those are big questions that people still want to know more about. Because the West Wing, as much as the president and the White House are trying to make it seem like they are getting back to normal, it is still far from that.
KING: And big questions, Tamara Keith, at a consequential moment. You have the vice presidential candidates debating tonight, we're 27 days to the election. Just yesterday the president in a surprise tweet pulled the plug on stimulus talks just when the Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin thought maybe - just a maybe - but thought maybe they were making some progress. Listen to the house speaker this morning. He blames her, she blames him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), HOUSE SPEAKER: It is really important for us to come to this agreement when the president just popped off and make that announcement without even informing us that, that was the case. He insulted the constitution of the United States.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Look, the bad blood between the speaker and the president is very well known Tamara, but millions of Americans are out there struggling right now, hoping for some economic life line, whether it's a personal individual stimulus check, whether its small businesses, whether it's the airline industry. The president now says he backtracked some saying he's willing to do smaller pieces of this.
But you know as well as I do, this is a town that can't get anything done right now. It is pretty unlikely to imagine they are going to pass an airline bill, an individual bill, some other bill. Am I right? It's either one or none?
TAMARA KEITH, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NPR: Typically in this town, as you say, little things are really hard to get done. And sometimes you just have to do a big deal. Typically the big deals are the ones that ultimately get done.
The political wisdom here and perhaps there wasn't much, the political wisdom of the president coming out and saying out loud on Twitter that he was going to just stop negotiations until after the election just doesn't make a ton of sense when there are people actively suffering right now.
And the Fed Chairman just shortly before the president came out and sort of ended negotiations came out and said you can't go too big here. You can go too small. You can't go too big. Act now. And now we're in the sort of phase of uncertainty.
You know, we've been through this cycle covering negotiations between the White House and the Hill how many times in the course of this presidency where President Trump stays out of it, stays out of it, stays out of it, jumps in everything goes to chaos.
And then sometimes it comes back together. But the problem is that, that election is looming and many members of congress want to be campaigning.
KING: Right. And let's add to the uncertainty the fact that Kaitlan Collins, one week from tomorrow, the president is supposed to be at debate number two. Debate number one cost him and cost him early. You can look at the public opinion polls, his refusal to denounce white nationalism, his constant bullying and interrupting of Joe Biden that caused the president dually.
But he says he wants to be there for debate number two. Listen to the Chairman, one of the Co-chairman of the Debate Commission says I hope so, but it depends on luck.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FRANK FAHRENKOPF, CO-CHAIR, COMMISSION ON PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES: It's going to depend on the president's health. Now he said yesterday, I understand from the newspapers that he's ready, raring to go, and we'll be in Miami and want to debate. But it's going to depend on what the doctors say about his health, whether or not if he - not only will he be safe, but the people around him be safe.
[12:10:00]
FAHRENKOPF: We're concerned about our staff or workers who are here. We have a crew of about 65 people who work on these things. So, it's going to depend upon what the medical evidence is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: When the president made his return to the White House, it seemed that they thought they were on the track to get him on the debate stage next week. The fact that we have not seen the president live or any live appearances on video, haven't heard from his doctor to answer questions in two days, we simply don't know, right?
COLLINS: No, we don't know. And they are saying that they are moving forward. His aides are already talking about what kind of mindset on coronavirus he's going to have at this next debate. But there are still so many basic questions about his health.
And you've got to understand that the commission on presidential debates which organizes all of this and does the negotiating between the two sides is going to be skeptical of the White House. And you'll have to wonder how they will verify the president's negative test?
Because so far what we've heard from the White House is, John, they refused to say on the record that the president was tested last Tuesday before he went to that debate. That was the understanding going in.
Reporters like myself had to go in advance to make sure you got tested at the Cleveland Clinic. But of course, the way Chris Wallace made it sound, the moderator, it basically was an honor system for the candidates and the parties that they are with to make sure they were tested beforehand, given they obviously have a greater level of access to tests.
And so, we still don't even know if the president was tested before the last debate. So you can understand why there's skepticism over what they are going to do and what precautions they would take before next Tuesday?
And it also seems to go against his own doctor said about when the president would actually be out of the woods with this? And when he would be through that period to make sure that he's not still shedding the virus, which is obviously a concern.
So it's not just what the president is going to say and how he's going to approach this debate and the politics of it? But it's also just the basic facts of does Joe Biden feel comfortable getting on the stage with the president? And what steps will they take to make sure that the president is in a spot where it's safe for him to get on stage with Joe Biden?
Those are a lot of questions that we still don't have the answers to, but things are moving quickly. We also didn't think that by Wednesday, the president would be trying to get back in the Oval Office just a few days after he tested positive. And that's already playing out inside the West Wing as well. Even though there are very few staffers operating around the president at this point.
KING: Uncertainty is a constant in 2020. Kaitlan Collins and Tamara Keith I appreciate the reporting and insights. Let's continue the conversation now with a doctor who knows what it's like to work in the West Wing, Dr. Jennifer Pena. She is Former White House Physician to Vice President Mike Pence Dr. Pena, grateful for your time today.
You can take us inside a White House that many people don't quite understand. When you hear this morning, and I actually let's listen, Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff says the president is itching.
He's confined in the residence right now in his coronavirus isolation. He wants to get back to the Oval Office. A lot of his senior staff also has coronavirus and they are not there. So they are pulling these isolation carts together. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MEADOWS: We've got a number of safety protocols with full PPE, masks, goggles and the like for any direct interaction with the president in those areas. We continue to have a number of areas where we have disinfectants for hard surfaces and the like.
(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: If you were still working in the White House, would you advise the president that it is safe to leave the residence and go to the Oval Office?
DR. JENNIFER PENA, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PHYSICIAN TO VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: No, I would not, John. And thank you for having me. It's truly an honor. As a practitioner I like to be proactive and not reactive. And I feel like what we're seeing right now is a reactive strategy to what has happened, essentially that the White House has become a seeding event, an outbreak among the ranks.
We know now that the White House medical unit has allowed the CDC to help them with the contact tracing, but we're still hearing reports of folks that have not been contacted or have not been followed up on. And you know this is a no fail mission. So I would say all you need is one person to be infected to create another seeding event. And the attention to detail is crucial.
KING: I get that every patient deserves privacy. But it is different when you're the President or the Vice President of the United States. Maybe even more different when you're the President or the Vice President of the United States and we're 27 days from an election.
The Chief of Staff again this morning would not answer the question. When was the last time the president tested negative for coronavirus? Nor listen here, last night one of the White House spokesmen on CNN.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm asking do you know the answer to when the president's last negative test was. Do you actually know that information, Brian?
BRIAN MORGENSTERN, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: I personally do not. I have not asked him or the doctors to go back through records of things like that. I'm not sure.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Can you explain to our viewers, especially someone out there who might be a Trump/Pence supporter who says, why do you people keep asking these questions, leave them alone? Why it is so important that everybody knows especially in the context, should the president be back in the Oval Office?
Can the president get back to the campaign trail? Should the president be on a debate stage with Joe Biden one week from tonight? Why is it so critical to understand when he last tested negative?
[12:15:00]
DR. PENA: Right. So it's critical because we don't know if he's still shedding virus. That's why we need to know when that last negative test was. If it was ten days ago, seven days ago, we don't know. And that's going to be important to prevent him from continuing to spread disease, especially if he's going to be working out of the Oval Office or walking around the West Wing.
And I will tell you, yes, people are entitled to their privacy, John. But this is the President of the United States; he's the servant of the people. And there is a need for transparency for there to be trust; we should know as voters what his fitness for duty is to hold office especially as we're nearing an election?
And regarding the transparency of this White House, it has been lacking. And when there have been briefs, they have been not truthful all the time. It is not our job as health care professionals to paint a rosy picture and keep in tune with what the president wants you to hear. It's our job to be unbiased apolitical medical consultants. And that's why I say the pills and politics just do not mix.
KING: Well, one thing they have been transparent about Dr. Pena is recklessness in the sense that the president has mocked mask use; the president has been around his aides even taking his mask off the other night when he returned in close proximity to aides.
And the president of course is the person who is master of ceremonies at that Supreme Court event where you now have I think it's 10, 11, maybe a dozen people who have gotten cases of COVID who are at that Supreme Court rollout event. Listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci here saying, none of this had to happen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Right now we have 210,000 people have died and 7.3 million people are been infected. Globally there are over one million have died. That is not a hoax. Take a look at what happened this week at the White House?
That is a reality right there. And every day that goes by, more people are popping up that are infected. It's not a hoax. It's an unfortunate situation when you see something like that, because that could have been prevented.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Someone who is an excellent physician, who was the vice president's doctor, who understands the Trump White House, why wasn't - why aren't circumstances like that, dangerous events like that, prevented? Is there any power of the White House Medical Staff to say, Mr. President, please stop?
DR. PENA: So I know and trust in my colleagues at the White House medical unit that the appropriate counsel has been given. But at the end of the day, we're just consultants, John. And it's up to the individuals whether they want to follow our direction or directive or not. And so, I agree with Dr. Fauci. This was the perfect example of what not to do.
And now we're seeing the consequences of this kind of recklessness and lack of attention to preventive measures. We know as stated by Dr. Redfield from CDC, the best prevention right now is not actually the vaccine.
I heard the Chief of Staff highlighting the need for vaccine and therapeutics. We don't have to get to the point where we need therapeutics. The best prevention right now we know is tested and true wear your mask, social distance, wash your hands and it works.
KING: Leadership and common sense. Dr. Jennifer Pena grateful most grateful for your time and insights today, thank you very much.
DR. PENA: Thank you.
KING: Thank you. Up next for us what Mike Pence and Kamala Harris need to do or not to do at tonight's vice presidential debate? But first, another unforgettable I'll speak debate moment, this from the 1988 VP debate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator you'll know Jack Kennedy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[12:20:00]
KING: Vice President Mike Pence and Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee, Senator Kamala Harris face off tonight in Salt Lake City for the first and only VP debate. We know from history two very different debating styles.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: You know there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools. And she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.
MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Donald Trump has built a business through hard times and through good times. He's brought extraordinary business acumen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Let's discuss the stakes with Ian Sams, Former Press Secretary for Kamala Harris 2020 Presidential Campaign and Alice Stewart, a Republican Strategist. Ian I wanted to start with you, because this is such a big moment. Mike Pence, no offense, he's well-known to the American people. He's been the vice president for four years.
Senator Harris in many ways here is getting a national introduction and a chance to present herself as the new face of the National Democratic Party. Number two to Joe Biden, but an enormous moment. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had some advice this morning. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PELOSI: I think that tonight in the debate should be all about health care, health care, health care. It should be about health care in terms of Mike Pence being the Head of the Task Force on the coronavirus, really? What level of success does he have to offer in that regard?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Is that good advice for Senator Harris and her focus?
IAN SAMS, FORMER NATIONAL PRESS SECRETARY, KAMALA HARRIS 2020 CAMPAIGN: Yes, I think speaker Pelosi hit the nail on the head. She's been around long enough to know exactly what resonates with the American people. And I think in this moment, and what we're going to see in the debate tonight, is really a referendum on President Trump and Mike Pence's leadership on coronavirus.
I think that the point has been made even clearer with the president coming down with the virus himself, but there is rampant irresponsibility and a complete lack of ability to control this pandemic and the outbreaks. And so, I think what Senator Harris is going to do is talk about that failure; prosecute the case, so to speak, against Mike Pence's leadership of the coronavirus Task Force.
[12:25:00]
SAMS: And really force him to answer some uncomfortable questions about the way that they have misled the public and had false promises since March. But not just that, she's going to have to also talk about how President Biden, if he's successful and Vice President Harris if they win will get us out of this mess?
And I think that contrast is going to be front and center and obviously the American people's health care is at the center of that.
KING: And so, Alice you wrote a piece on cnn.com, this is your op-ed talking about the stakes for the vice presidential debate. There are always three main goals of any vice presidential debate, do no harm, reinforce the top of the ticket and pass the Commander in Chief test.
I want to ask you given the numbers, you know the national numbers quite well, and you know the battleground numbers quite well. Does Mike Pence not have an ever bigger task tonight which is o try to turn something around in this race, which 27 days is a long time? We all lived through 2016. But if you look at the numbers right now, the Republicans are worried about a bloodbath.
ALICE STEWART, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Certainly. One thing about Mike Pence, he's not a barn burner when it comes to debates, but he is calm and reassuring and he can certainly pass the Commander in Chief test and his ability to step into the role as president.
But the goal tonight is not so much to make this about a referendum on the Trump Administration, but show the American people the stark contrast between a Trump Administration and Biden-Harris Administration. Because if you look at Joe Biden, we're looking at government-run health care, we're looking at socialized medicine, we're looking at support for green new deal and we're looking at where does he stand on the Supreme Court? Will he pack the court? He's not answering that question.
What will they do with the filibuster? And then in the off chance and the possibility if Kamala Harris were to step into this role, look at her record. What was she saying on the Democratic debate stage? She was co-sponsor for the Green New Deal; she was co-sponsor for Medicare for all. A lot of her policies are far outside of what the mainstream America wants.
So what the Biden-Harris Administration ticket would represent is exactly what Mike Pence needs to put the spotlight on tonight, because it is not what the Americans people want. And I think he has the debate skills and the tone and tenor that will certainly be appropriate to make that case tonight.
KING: I think given everything happening in the country, they are likely to have a larger audience than we might expect for a VP debate. We asked each of you for a favorite debate moment from these contenders to try to illustrate what you're looking for tonight? Ian and this is what you picked for Senator Harris.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: This not only points to the corrupt nature of this administration and the need for these impeachment proceedings to go forward. But it also points to another issue. And back to the question that you asked earlier, which is what does this mean for the American people, for those working people who are working two or three jobs?
If they don't pay that credit card by the end of the month they get a penalty. For the people who don't pay their rent they get evicted. For the people who shoplift, they go to jail. We need the same set of rules for everybody.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Alice, this is what you picked for Mike Pence.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PENCE: She said they were irredeemable, they were not American. I mean, it's extraordinary. And then she railed one after another "ism" on millions of Americans who believe that we can have stronger America at home and abroad.
Who believe we can get this economy moving again, who believe that we can end illegal immigration once and for all. So Senator, this insult- driven campaign, that small potatoes compared to Hillary Clinton calling half of Donald Trump supporters a basket of deplorable.
(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: Ian Sams and Alice Stewart, I wish we have more time and we're going to have to leave it there for today. But very interesting to see especially that table, the Pence debate not going to get that because of the coronavirus.
There's going to be trophy to part, there is going to be Plexiglas. Lot to watch tonight, we'll bring you back to talk about it another day. I appreciate it for both of you. Still ahead, for us though confuse about the stimulus talks has millions of Americans wish Washington would help. And right now can't be helpful.
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