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Vice Presidential Debate Clash; Unemployment Numbers for Last Week; New York's New COVID Plan; New Reporting on Pence; Watches and Warnings on the Gulf Coast. Aired 9:30-10a
Aired October 08, 2020 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[09:30:25]
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the debate last night was different, of course, vice presidential candidates, a somewhat different tone, but the same backdrop, the same driving story, a nation still battling a pandemic, 211,000 American deaths so far.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Our Jason Carroll is with us this morning and has the key moments.
Good morning, Jason.
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And good morning to you.
The vice president was really on defense when it came to the issue of the coronavirus pretty much throughout the debate. Senator Harris arguing that the failure of the response of the administration really started at the top, starting with President Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CARROLL (voice over): In Wednesday's debate, Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris were not only separated by 12 feet and Plexiglas for social distancing, but also on the issues. Harris saying the Trump administration forfeited its right to re-election based on their handling of the coronavirus crisis.
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country. They knew and they covered it up.
CARROLL: Meanwhile, Pence, who leads the White House Coronavirus Task Force, defending their response despite the massive death toll.
MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And I want the American people to know that from the very first day, President Donald Trump has put the health of America first. HARRIS: Whatever the vice president is claiming the administration has
done, clearly it hasn't worked when you're looking at over 210,000 dead bodies in our country, American lives that have been lost, families that are grieving that loss.
CARROLL: And when it came to a question on the progress of a viable vaccine, Harris said this.
HARRIS: If the doctors tell us that we should take it, I'll be the first in line to take it, absolutely. But if Donald Trump tells us I should -- that we should take it, I'm not taking it.
CARROLL: The vice president also downplaying the Rose Garden event last month that may have started the coronavirus outbreak that infected President Trump and a growing number of White House staffers.
PENCE: It was an outdoor event, which all of our scientists regularly routinely advise. The difference here is, President Trump and I trust the American people to make choices in the best interest of their health.
CARROLL: And while it didn't reach the same level of chaos as the recent presidential debate --
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Can I be honest, it's a very important question.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Try to be honest.
CARROLL: There were still some moments of tension on stage.
HARRIS: He makes less than $400,000 a year --
PENCE: He said he's going to repeal the Trump tax cuts.
HARRIS: Mr. Vice President, I'm speaking.
PENCE: Well --
HARRIS: I'm speaking.
PENCE: The important news is (ph) the truth.
CARROLL: Harris looking straight to camera to tell voters a Trump/Pence ticket is a threat to the Affordable Care Act.
HARRIS: If you have a pre-existing condition, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, they're coming for you.
CARROLL: The vice president dodging questions on the same subject.
MODERATOR: How would your administration protect Americans with pre- existing conditions to have access to affordable insurance if the Affordable Care Act is struck down?
PENCE: Well, thank you, Susan, but let me just say, addressing your very first question, I -- I couldn't be more proud to serve as vice president to a president who stands without apology for the sanctity of human life.
CARROLL: Harris also avoiding answering a question from her opponent about whether a Biden administration would pack the Supreme Court.
HARRIS: The American people are voting right now and it should be their decision about who will serve on this most important body for a lifetime.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Senator Harris.
PENCE: And the people, Susan, are voting right now. They'd like to know if you and Joe Biden are going to pack the Supreme Court if you don't get your way in this nomination.
HARRIS: Let's talk about packing. Come on --
PENCE: You -- once again you gave a non-answer.
CARROLL: Like Trump, Pence warned he may not accept the election results while also falsely claiming that mail-in voting would lead to massive fraud. There is no proof of widespread voter fraud in the United States.
PENCE: We have a free and fair election. We know we're going to have confidence in it. And I believe in all my heart that President Donald Trump's going to be re-elected for four more years.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CARROLL: And one of the debate rules is that everyone inside the debate hall, excluding the candidates and the moderator, were supposed to be wearing a mask. It should be noted that as soon as the debate was over, when Second Lady Karen Pence took the stage, she was not wearing a mask. When Senator Harris' husband took the stage, he was wearing a mask.
Poppy. Jim.
SCIUTTO: Listen, we talked to the head of the debate commission yesterday, said that that rule was going to be enforced without exception this time around.
[09:35:02]
We saw it was not.
Jason Carroll, thanks very much.
Crackdowns across the country now as virus cases go up. We're going to get an update.
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SCIUTTO: Well, this morning, in a reversal, President Trump claims that coronavirus aid talks between his administration and Democrats are now, quote, starting to work out. This is just days after he summarily shut those talks down.
HARLOW: It's totally irresponsible and totally unfair to the millions of Americans whose lives are hanging in the balance in all of this who can't pay their rent, who can't feed their families and this morning we learned 840,000 more Americans just filed last week for first-time unemployment benefits.
[09:40:02]
Our chief business correspondent Christine Romans is with me now.
What is he talking about, the big shebang, the big deal is back on?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: I have no -- I have no idea. There have been so many missed -- mixed messages about where we are in stimulus. We know that the Treasury secretary and the House speaker spoke for maybe half an hour on the very narrow subject of an airline relief package. We also know the president himself called off talks before now saying that they're starting to work out.
Time is running out. There are so many people who need a lifeline here. These numbers this morning just show how chronic the situation is in terms of joblessness. If you add in pandemic unemployment claims as well, you had 1.3 million people for the first time last week filing for unemployment benefits, 10.9 million continuing to receive benefits for two weeks or longer. All together some 25.5 million people receiving some sort of jobless check.
And, you guys, California has stopped processing these first-time claims for a couple of weeks here as it tries to get its head around the backlog that they have in California and fraud prevention there. So really a story of a chronic layoff situation in this country and a job recovery that has really stalled out here. And there's no stimulus. There's no -- there's no shock absorber for these families who are -- who are suffering and trying to pay their bills.
HARLOW: That's what we heard in Kyung Lah's piece yesterday, that woman in California who said, sometimes you eat, sometimes you don't, because her claims are held up in that -- in that backlog you just mentioned, Christine.
Thank you for the reporting.
ROMANS: You're welcome.
HARLOW: So, now, just two states are reporting, just two, a decline in new COVID cases and hospitalizations around the country as we see a spike. The rising number is forcing state leaders to impose new restrictions geared towards curbing the spread of the virus.
Alexandra Field is with us from New York.
Good morning.
So things change here today, right?
ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Poppy, because, look, while New York does still have one of the lowest positivity rates nationwide, these clusters, largely in Brooklyn and Queens, with some just outside of New York City, are really worrisome. Officials are concerned about the possibility of COVID spreading through the city yet again.
So they have implemented a new plan. It kicks off today. The hot spots are designated as red zones and there are firm restrictions in place. Schools have been shut down. Non-essential businesses are closed. Restaurants are only open for takeout. And there is strict, new guidance for religious congregations. They can only meet at a maximum of ten people at a time.
Just beyond these so-called red zones, you've got orange zones and yellow zones where there are new restrictions in place but they are to a lesser degree than what you are seeing in the red zones. Officials are describing this as a very targeted approach.
They're trying to meet the virus exactly where it is. But these areas are also home to a large orthodox Jewish community, as we've been talking about for the last couple of weeks, and some members of that community feel that they, in fact, are being targeted. For the last two nights, in one neighborhood in Brooklyn, we have seen protests against these firm new restrictions now no place.
Poppy.
SCIUTTO: Alexandra Field, thanks very much.
A new report from "The New York Times" details how politics have played a role in the administration's response to the pandemic. How exactly? What it means to you. We're going to speak with one of the reporters who broke that story. That's coming up.
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[09:47:50]
SCIUTTO: Welcome back.
We've heard the president's misleading statements about the coronavirus. Now to impactful actions.
This morning, a new report from "The New York Times" sheds light on how Vice President Pence, as head of the Coronavirus Task Force, allowed politics to play into the administration's response to the pandemic with real health consequences.
Joining me now to discuss a CNN national security analyst and Washington investigative correspondent for "The New York Times," Mark Mazzetti, one of the journalists behind the story.
Mark, good to have you on this morning.
MARK MAZZETTI, WASHINGTON INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Thanks for having me on.
SCIUTTO: So let's talk about some of these instances here because they are concerning. Let's begin with the visit to the Mayo Clinic event where, of course, Pence got understandable criticism for not wearing a mask in the midst of a hospital environment here. Tell us about what led up to this moment.
MAZZETTI: Well, as you point out, it's known, of course, that the vice president didn't wear a mask. The Mayor Clinic tweeted about it during the visit. And it became sort of a public relations mess.
But what we report in the story is that before the visit on the plane there was this dispute about whether the vice president should wear a mask. Marc Short, his chief of staff, said he won't be wearing a mask. They were worried about the images of the vice president wearing a mask when, of course, the president refused to wear one and they were worried about some ammunition the Democrats might have in an electoral season.
Steven Hahn, the FDA director, he pushed back and said the vice president should wear a mask. It was sort of emblematic of what we saw as this collision between politics and science throughout the course of the time the vice president was running the Coronavirus Task Force.
SCIUTTO: Mark, well, notable in that the discussion was not about the health of patients in the hospital but about the sort of political image implications of it.
I want to talk about another decision you write about, and that is direct intervention in CDC guidelines. This related to a meat processing plant where we've seen a lot of very sometimes deadly outbreaks. Tell us about that.
MAZZETTI: Yes, so, in the course of our reporting, we found several people on the task force, you know, gave the vice president decent marks for listening to science, for having reasonable discussions and respecting the scientists.
[09:50:08]
But, at a lower level, it was his staff who very aggressively at times were intervening in scientific decisions. And one of them was in CDC guidelines from churches to schools to camps and, as you said, meat packing plants. In April the CDC sent a team to a Smithfield Food plant in South Dakota, came up with some guidelines for how to make the plant safer, how to make the workers safer.
And Marc Short, again, and other members of the task force, ended up kind of directing Robert Redfield, the head of the CDC, to massage those recommendations into things that were just more kind of suggestions. Instead of saying you should do this, it is, it would be good if the plant did this. Sort of rendering them somewhat meaningless.
SCIUTTO: Yes. MAZZETTI: And -- so we saw this time and time again. And in our -- in our reporting we showed that it -- sometimes it was these very great concerns about the economic impact of shutdowns of CDC regulations because they kind of ran counter to President Trump's message for reelection, which is the economy is going strong and there is going to be robust job growth.
SCIUTTO: We've heard firsthand accounts in public, from Emily Troye, for instance, who was on the task force, Miles Taylor, saying that they saw Pence buckle to the president. In your reporting, did you come across any instances where Pence stood up to the president on some of these decisions or stood for the science over the politics? Did you find instances of that?
MAZZETTI: We didn't see instances where the vice president took on the president head on. And there may have been instances. We didn't see them in the course of our reporting. We certainly saw there were instances at one level below of really pitched battles between, you know, political appointees and the scientists. But the political appointees, you know, were very much of the view that the science, in a way, was a kind of inconvenient truth and they had to keep an eye on the greater political picture.
And so once Vice President Pence took over the task force, what became an -- what was an operation that was very focused on public health, data driven, became kind of attached at the hip to the greater campaign effort of the Trump White House.
SCIUTTO: Mark Mazzetti, thanks so much. And also our thoughts go out to you -- to the loss -- to you, your colleagues, and, of course, his family, the loss of your colleague, Jim Dwiyer (ph). We just learned the news that he passed away from cancer. Our thoughts to you and the whole team at "The New York Times."
MAZZETTI: Thank you, Jim.
HARLOW: Well, millions of people right now are under watches and hurricane warnings as Delta strengthens and takes aim at the Gulf Coast. The latest track and the timing of this storm, next.
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[09:57:20]
SCIUTTO: Welcome back.
Right now, more than 10 million Americans are under tropical storm or hurricane watches and warnings as the U.S. Gulf Coast braces for yet another devastating trek so early in the season too.
HARLOW: Hurricane Delta is getting stronger right now. It is likely becoming a major category three storm.
Let's go to our meteorologist Chad Myers. He joins us now.
What are we talking about in terms of timing here, where it could hit? CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It will be tomorrow and it will be
likely Louisiana. And that just seems unfair. I mean that will be the fourth storm to affect Louisiana. Marco, Cristobal, Laura and now Delta. And Laura came on shore with 150-mile-per-hour winds. Here, with Delta, we're at 100 miles an hour, but it's still in that warm water. Not as warm as we've seen earlier in the season, but certainly there is some warm water out there. And it is on its way, on up toward the northern Gulf of Mexico.
This is the area that we're going to see landfall, somewhere about 15 to 20 miles from where Laura actually made landfall as well. And the rub, guys, is that the area is already damaged. The homes, many of them, don't have roofs. You look at some of the pictures that we see out there, and all we're really seeing are blue tarps. And so all of this debris is all over.
This is just like deja vu. When Anderson and I were in Florida in 2004 with Jeanne and Frances side by side, back to back. People hadn't got done picking up the pieces when another storm came through and moved those pieces around and just blew everything -- all of the things that they tried to get done, that's what really hurt many other people because there was so much more flying debris from the original debris.
We are still seeing the hurricane warnings here. A large area across parts of Louisiana. And there's Lake Charles. There's the storm. For a while in the Gulf of Mexico, 115 miles per hour. That's where you said, category three. That is the major hurricane.
And the line here, the yellow squiggly line, that's Laura and there was Delta right there, right next to it, almost right on top of it.
And we still have another update at 11:00, another at 5:00. But this likely comes on shore tomorrow morning, into the afternoon, with tropical storm force winds and then we start to see the hurricane force winds later at night.
Also the surge. We talked about the surge with Laura, about 15 feet. The surge here is 11. But all the things there have already been knocked down, Jim and Poppy. So surge is irrelevant here because it's going to be the wind that will really devastate the area again when people we just getting -- this is six weeks ago today that Laura hit.
HARLOW: I know. Yes. My goodness.
Chad, thank you for being here. I know you'll be with us around the clock as we wait for this storm to make landfall.
MYERS: Yes.
HARLOW: We appreciate it.
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