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Trump Declares he won't Appear for Virtual Debate; Pence and Harris Trade Jabs at V.P. Debate; Trump Touts Regeneron Antibody Cocktail as COVID-19 "Cure". Aired 11-11:30a ET
Aired October 08, 2020 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[11:00:50]
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everybody, I'm John King in Washington. Thank you for sharing this very busy news day with us.
The presidential debate's plan now in jeopardy because President Trump is mad. A second debate scheduled one week from tonight and the debate commission this morning announcing it plans to switch to a virtual format because the president is being treated for coronavirus and it is too risky to put him in close proximity to Joe Biden and to the voters invited to the Miami town hall.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (via telephone): I heard that the commission a little while ago changed the debate style, and that's not acceptable to us.
I'm not going to waste my time on a virtual debate. That's not what debating is all about, you sit behind a computer and do a debate. It's ridiculous. And then they cut you off whenever they want.
They called up two minutes ago and it was announced, and they're trying to protect Biden.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: We all know the president's first debate performance was a disaster, but there is already grumbling among Republicans that backing out of the second debate is a bad idea, because the president needs every opportunity he can find to change the trend lines of a race he is at this moment losing and losing badly. Joe Biden says he's happy to play by the new rules, and like the rest of us, now waits to see if the president blinks.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We don't know what the president is going to do. He changes his mind every second. So, for me to comment on that now would be irresponsible. I think that -- I'm going to follow the commission recommendation. If he goes off and he's going to have a rally, I don't know what I'll do.
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KING: There was a debate last night, of course, the one and only showdown of the candidates for vice president. It will go in the history books as a first for a black woman and it will be remembered as much as for how it looked than what was said.
Plexiglass barriers separating Mike Pence and Kamala Harris as they sparred over the administration's coronavirus response, the best ways to reduce the economy and how the Supreme Court confirmation fight could bring it in to Obamacare and maybe a rollback of abortion rights.
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SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country.
MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want the American people to know that from the very first day, President Donald Trump has put the health of America first.
HARRIS: He passed a tax bill benefiting the top 1 percent and the biggest corporations of America, leading to a $2 trillion deficit.
PENCE: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want to raise taxes. They want to bury our economy under a $2 trillion Green New Deal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: We count your votes in 26 days. There is another count we do every day, and today it is again quite troublesome. Look here. Half of the 50 states now trending in the wrong direction, wrong direction. More new infections now than a week ago. Only two states right now reporting fewer COVID infections this week compared to last.
Let's get more now on the president's big decision this morning and its impact on the campaign. CNN's Arlette Saenz is in Phoenix following the Democratic ticket. White House correspondent John Harwood here in Washington.
John, I want to start with you. The president simply mad. The debate commission, he says, they're trying to protect Biden. They're trying to protect Biden and those voters from him. It seemed a pretty logical decision, but the president says no.
JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It did seem to be a logical decision. But look, the president made clear this morning, he is not just unwell physically and politically. He's also in a bad place psychologically as well.
Phoned in to Fox, berated Kamala Harris as a monster, said that Hillary Clinton should be indicted, suggested that the debate commission and also his own cabinet members. Mike Pompeo, Bill Barr, Christopher Wray, the FBI director have turned against him, reversed himself on negotiating stimulus with Congress and even suggested he wants to go out and hold debates as soon as tonight even though he has coronavirus.
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TRUMP: I'd love to do a rally tonight. I wanted to do one last night, but I think I'm better to a point that I feel better than I did -- you know, I jokingly said 20 years ago. I feel perfect. There's nothing wrong. I don't think I'm contagious at all.
[11:05:00]
Well, first of all, if I'm at a rally, I just stand by myself very far away from everybody. So, whether I was or not. But I still wouldn't go to a rally if I was contagious.
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HARWOOD: I feel perfect. There's nothing wrong. I'm not contagious.
John, he doesn't know any of that. He said he had not been tested in the last few days, and his White House still will not tell us when he last tested negative which would tell us when he contracted this coronavirus.
And depending on when he contracted it, if he contracted it further back in time, he might be getting out of the woods, he might be on the verge of not being contagious, but if it's when the White House told us, that is middle of last week when he started showing symptoms and tested positive. He's still got ways to go with this and his health could take a turn for the worst. Not a good situation for the president right now.
KING: You're right, he certainly sounded paranoid on that call this morning with Fox Business. John Harwood, stand by.
Let's get to Phoenix with Arlette Saenz. Arlette, the former vice president - look, the race is his at the moment. He has the lead in the national polls, a pretty healthy lead. He has the lead in battleground states. You're in a state today that the Democrats hope to turn blue for the first time since Bill Clinton back in 1996, and Joe Biden now doesn't know. Will he be in a debate next week or what?
ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John. You know, Joe Biden's campaign says this is pretty straightforward for them, that they have long committed to participating in these debates. And that that isn't changing as this debate next week is expected to go virtual.
Now, Biden has said that he would listen to whatever the recommendations of the health experts are relating to this debate. Just a few days ago, he did say that if the president still has coronavirus, that this debate shouldn't go forward. But today, Kate Bedingfield, his deputy communications director saying that Biden looks forward to talking directly to the American people and offering this contrast with the president's leadership. Now, you heard Biden speaking to reporters, saying that the president is unpredictable.
So, he's not entirely sure what to make of the fact right now. But for the time being, the president says he's not going to participate in this debate next week. But Biden and his campaign making it clear that he is willing to do anything in a virtual format if it gives him that opportunity to speak to the American people.
Now, while the president is back in Washington still at the White House, you know his coronavirus diagnosis, the Democratic ticket will be here in Arizona in just a few hours. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris making a rare joint appearance together as they campaign here in this critical battleground state.
They'll be launching a soul of the nation bus tour through Phoenix and Tempe to talk, to its small business owners in this area. You also have Vice President Mike Pence on the West Coast today campaigning in Nevada and then here in Arizona.
The state is going to be critically important as we head into November. As you mentioned, it has long been a Republican leaning state when it comes to those presidential contests. But latest polls have shown that Biden is up here in Arizona at this moment in time.
So, the Biden campaign making - Joe Biden making his first west coast swing as a general election nominee, as he's trying to put these - these states in play and also committing to participating in that virtual debate where the president for now says he's sitting out.
KING: That's one of the most fascinating states in American politics right now. We will see the changes this year. We'll see if they playout as the Democrats believe.
Arlette Saenz on the ground in Arizona, John Harwood at the White House. Thank you both so much for the reporting there. Now, backing out of that second debate is a giant risk for a president to is losing.
Dan Balz is chief correspondent for "The Washington Post." Dan, thanks for your time today. I want to read a little bit from your article this morning, because yes, the two candidates for vice president went at it, last night. Both campaigns can say we made our point on this. We made our point on that. We could break that down.
But you make the most important point in your article saying, there is a debate next week, "if there is a debate next week or the week after, it will be left to Trump and Biden to advance the battle. For the president, running from behind and with time running out, the stakes will be even higher than they were a week ago or on the stage at the University of Utah on Wednesday night. He has put himself in a bad position and it will be his, not Pence's, problem to correct." That is spot on. And the if rather present in your writing last night because now we don't know if there will be a debate a week from now. A lot of people think the president is going to have to blink here. This is a gamble, right?
DAN BALZ, CHIEF CORRESPONDENT, "THE WASHINGTON POST": It is a gamble. I think a lot of people do think that he will blink in the end. But he is unpredictable. And we don't know at this point kind of what his mood and posture will be as he looks to the debate.
If it continues to be a virtual debate, perhaps he will resist it. If he doesn't think that that's advantageous to him. But another point, John, is that he's got himself now, today, trapped in another conversation about process as opposed to pressing the case against Joe Biden.
[11:10:02]
And every day, as we've said many times, every day that he is doing something other than that, he is not turning the campaign in his direction. So, this is, for him, a distraction that he did not need and should not have kind of fallen into. And we'll have to see in a day or two or three what the situation is. But until - until everybody knows more about his actual health, some of these questions are unanswerable.
KING: Right. Some of them are unanswerable. Let's stay on the campaign for a minute because a lot of Trump supporters will say, OK, but remember 2016. He was losing and he came roaring back and won the presidency. He is the incumbent now, number one.
Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton. Joe Biden does well not only with the base Hillary Clinton had with white working-class voters which is a straight for Joe Biden. But if you go through the battleground state polls and you mentioned a day or two or three.
Every day that passes and the president doesn't make up ground, he's in trouble because it's not just the national polls. Look at here. Pennsylvania, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Wisconsin, Ohio. That Iowa and Ohio are competitive at this point that Joe Biden has healthy leads at Pennsylvania, Florida.
That tells you we have a very different map right now. And the momentum after the first debate has been Joe Biden's, and the problem for President Trump as you know, every day that passes is a missed opportunity, because he needs -- if he doesn't turn that around soon, trouble.
BALZ: Yes, John. I mean the -- since the first debate and since the president's diagnosis, the national polls have moved away from him. Now, we can say that those are transitory, and they may well be. But if they settle back, they're going to settle back closer to where they were prior to that, which, again, is not a particularly good place for the president.
He needs to -- he needs to find a way to change the dynamic, and he's not been able to do it. It may be that it's impossible to do. I know everybody is a little spooked about what happened in 2016 and for good reason. Campaigns do change in the final week or the final 10 days or the final 72 hours. We know that from history. But this one - this one appears to be different or has been up to now.
In 2016, the national polls were certainly more volatile. I mean the Clintons' lead would go up and then it would come back down. And there were times including around this time four years ago when she looked at me in very good shape. But prior to that, the polls have been in a different spot.
So, what we've seen in this campaign so far is that the Biden lead has been pretty steady and the movement away from Trump in the last five or six days should be very worrisome to him. If he thinks he is a strong debater, he could be a strong debater on a Zoom conference or in a studio, whichever he wants to do. Millions of Americans have had to adjust at doing things remotely, and it's now maybe the president who is going to have to make that adjustment.
KING: And millions of Americans, Dan, are watching whether you support Trump or whether you don't, whether you're still undecided in this race, that's a small slice. But no matter you politics, you're watching the president of the United States right now and you're asking the question, what is his health? Is he up to this? Listen to the president this morning on the question of his health.
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TRUMP: For me, I walked in, I didn't feel good. A short 24 hours later, I was feeling great. I wanted to get out of the hospital. And that's what I want for everybody. I want everybody to be given the same treatment as your president. Because I feel great. I feel, like, perfect. So, I think this was a blessing from God that I caught it. This was a blessing in disguise.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: That was the video released by the president last night, not this morning where he called into Fox Business and also talked about his health. But Dan, 210,000 Americans are dead, and the count is going up. More than 7 million Americans, more than 7.5 million Americans you know have been infected with the coronavirus. To have the president to his access to this treatment, then most Americans can't get. The type of care most Americans can't get. A blessing in disguise, a blessing from God, that's an odd message.
BALZ: It is an odd message - excuse me, John. And I would think that the families of people who have passed away from this disease will look at this and wonder, what in the world is he thinking? Their loved ones did not have access to the kind of health care that the president of the United States gets, and understandably should get.
The president is the president. But for him to say, I want everybody to have it is a nice thought, but there is no practical way for that to come about, and I think people who hear him say that know that it is impossible. So, I don't know why he continues to kind of make that case.
The other notion is that he felt badly and 24 hours later he felt better than he has felt in 24 hours seems disingenuous at the least. I mean that is not the normal course of events of somebody who contracts COVID-19. And while he was, you know, he was given multiple drugs that aren't available to most people, perhaps that did help bring him back, and more rapidly than others. But he is a unique case in the way people are being treated, and he should recognize that.
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KING: He should recognize that, but he has his own way, as we all know. Dan Balz, grateful for the reporting and insights this morning.
Up next, we continue this very conversation. President Trump claiming the experimental drugs he gets from Regeneron, it's the name of the company. Well, the president says they've cured him.
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KING: President Trump today gives himself a clean bill of health, this less than one week after telling us he had tested positive for coronavirus.
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TRUMP: I don't think I'm contagious at all. Well, first of all, if I'm at a rally, I stand by myself very far away from everybody so whether I was or not. But I still wouldn't go to a rally if I was contagious.
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KING: Joining us now, CNN medical analyst Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips. Dr. Compton-Phillips, good to see you today.
We can't answer that question. The president says I don't think I'm contagious now. We can't answer that question because the White House doctor keeps putting out vague statements every day, and we have no idea, number one, what the president's -- the treatment right now.
And number two, the last time he tested negative. Does what you just head make any sense to you, or do you trust it?
DR. AMY COMPTON-PHILLIPS, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Well, you know, unfortunately, it's not what CDC guidance says is actually safe. So, what the CDC says is that anybody with mild or moderate symptoms should isolate for 10 days because they're at risk of infecting others for 10 days.
Anybody with serious illness should isolate for up to 20 days. And because the president got dexamethasone, the concern is did he have serious illness? Should he be looking at 20 days of isolation, not just 10 days. So, no. We can't just go based on symptoms.
KING: Well, it would be nice if we would hear more details from his medical team about that. About the course of treatment, whether in the case of the steroid you just mentioned. Were they just being extra aggressive because he's the president and his conditions actually more modest, more moderate or did he have a serious illness? It would be nice if we knew that information. Instead, we have to listen to at times. The president playing doctor on TV. This is the president talking about his experimental treatment.
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TRUMP: We have drugs now that we didn't even know about four months ago, like Regeneron, like -- and I'm not even talking about remdesivir. Remdesivir, you know, it's fine. But the Regeneron was -- I view it as a cure, not just a therapeutic, I view it as a cure because I took it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Regeneron is a company. It is not the treatment. The treatment is a monoclonal antibody treatment the president received. He calls it Regeneron. That's not what it's called. That is the company that makes it.
But again, is it a cure? It's an experimental drug. The company says they believe it is helpful. What do we know about it?
COMPTON-PHILLIPS: Well, we do know that what the antibody cocktail does -- first of all, there's two different doses that are in clinical trials right now. They're not proven as a cure. They are definitely being investigated and they're promising. But there's two doses, one is 2.4 milligrams, one is 8 milligrams.
The president got the high dose. What those antibodies do, think about the spikes on the coronavirus. Those antibodies buy into the spikes, the proteins on the ends and keep the virus from joining up with cells. And so, they lower the infection rate. Which is - which is not the same thing as a cure, right?
And, by the way, again, matter of semantics about cure versus therapeutic. If you had (INAUDIBLE) pneumonia and you got an antibiotic, we could say the antibiotic cured the infection, but the body still takes time to heal, right?
And so, whether or not it's a cure or a therapeutic, the president -- I am -- I don't know his individual medical records but the average person who gets any kind of treatment for a germ, it takes the body a while to heal from that. And so, we're still looking at recovery. And so, miracles - I would say it's a miracle that we have drugs that work this effectively at this point but saying somebody is cured six days into what is likely a moderate to severe infection, is - is pretty far on the cusp of believability.
KING: In this year of everyday, things we never experience before. There's a new one this morning and it's "The New England Journal of Medicine" for the first time in its 208-year history deciding to get involved in politics.
This is the editorial they write. "When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs."
How significant do you view it? That's "The New England Journal of Medicine" which is where we look for studies on cancer and studies on COVID and studies on everything else has decided it wanted to step forward for the first time in more than 200 years and say we need a new president.
COMPTON-PHILLIPS: I would say that "The New England Journal" is channeling what many of us in the scientific and medical community have been saying for several months. That we have to depend on science. We have to depend on the evidence. We have to depend on what has historically been a political organization to look at what is it we should be doing to keep our country safe and move us forward.
And unfortunately, between misinformation and conspiracy theories, that belief in science and progress has gotten politicized. And so, what "The New England Journal" is doing is actually putting into words what those of us on the ground trying to fight an epidemic of misinformation along with an epidemic of a viral pathogen have been doing now for many months.
KING: Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips, as always, grateful for your expertise and insights. Thank you for your time.
COMPTON-PHILLIPS: Thank you.
[11:25:00]
KING: And still ahead for us, as just discussed with the doctor there, coronavirus is making a very troublesome comeback. More than half of the 50 states trending up right now.
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