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Biden Reaches across Political Divide in Pennsylvania; Physician Clears U.S. President to Return to Active Schedule; Coronavirus in Europe; Iraqi Woman Survives COVID-19 with Help from Autistic Son; Trump's False Claims, Ballot Rules, Cyber Attacks Stoke Concerns; Hunger in the Time of COVID-19; Hurricane Delta Aftermath. Aired 3-4a ET
Aired October 11, 2020 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN HOST (voice-over): Given the green light: the U.S. president is cleared to get back on the campaign trail as questions linger about his health. Also:
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ROSE RODRIGUEZ, FURLOUGHED QANTAS EMPLOYEE: We all live check by check. But now it's not a check, it's a box.
BRUNHUBER (voice-over): Pushed to the limit, many families in the U.S. are going to sleep hungry with no end in sight to the pandemic. Some wonder how much longer they can last.
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BRUNHUBER (voice-over): And it's not just in the U.S. Europe is also seeing worrying spikes in coronavirus cases.
Live from CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta, welcome to you, our viewers, here in United States, in Canada and around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is CNN NEWSROOM.
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BRUNHUBER: Little more than a week after U.S. president Donald Trump announced his coronavirus diagnosis, his doctor has cleared him to return to an active schedule. In a memo, Dr. Sean Conley says is Mr. Trump is no longer a transmission risk and meets the CDC's criteria to stop isolating.
But there are still so many things we don't know about the president's illness, including whether he has tested negative for the virus. Dr. Conley's memo does not say and Mr. Trump certainly was not waiting for that information to be made public before he started holding rallies again.
Hours ago, he gave an outdoor speech at the White House to hundreds of tightly packed supporters. It was the president's first public event since his coronavirus diagnosis and he said, without evidence, that the virus is starting to go away.
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TRUMP: We'll get rid of it.
All over the world, you see big flare-ups in Europe, big flare-ups in Canada, a very big flare-up in Canada, you saw that today. A lot of flare-ups, but it's going to disappear. It is disappearing. And vaccines are going to help, and the therapeutics are going to help a lot.
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BRUNHUBER: Now that memo from President Trump's doctor clearing him to leave isolation was full of positive news about the president's condition. But it did not give a lot of detail. Jeremy Diamond breaks down what we know and what we don't.
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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The president's physician, Dr. Sean Conley, is now clearing him for a return to public activities. Dr. Conley writing in a new memo released late Saturday night that the president is no longer considered a risk of transmission for the coronavirus to others.
Now let me read you a part of this memo by Dr. Sean Conley, where he writes, "This evening I'm happy to report that in addition to the president meeting CDC criteria for the safe decision of isolation, this morning's COVID PCR sample demonstrates by currently recognize standards he is no longer considered a transmission risk to others.
"Now at day 10 from symptom onset, fever free for well over 24 hours and all symptoms improved, the assortment of advanced diagnostic tests obtained reveal there is no longer evidence of actively replicating virus."
The doctor goes on to say that he will continue to monitor the president's health as he returns to a more active schedule. Now President Trump, of course, did not wait for this memo before holding a event on the White House South lawn on Saturday.
Trump did stay at quite a distance from the several hundred people who attended this event on the South Lawn of the White House. While most folks were wearing masks, they were not observing any social distancing, packed quite closely together just two weeks after the event at the Rose Garden of the White House that is now considered a superspreader event and perhaps the origin point for many of those positive coronavirus tests that we have since seen at the White House.
President Trump needed this memo to get some more public confidence in his return to an active schedule. And that is exactly what he's going to be doing this coming week. He'll be hitting 3 battleground states, Florida, Iowa and Pennsylvania, this coming week -- Jeremy Diamond, CNN, the White House.
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BRUNHUBER: Meanwhile, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is working to win independents and disaffected Republicans. He stopped in his birth state of Pennsylvania Saturday. He also linked America's current economic rose to the president's mishandling of the pandemic. CNN's Jessica Dean has more.
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JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Former Vice President Joe Biden campaigning in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania on Saturday.
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DEAN: He traveled here to Erie, Pennsylvania. It's in a county President Trump won narrowly in 2016 and it's tailor made for Biden's economic message that he's been delivering specifically to white working class voters in towns like Erie.
Notably, Biden touring a train facility and a union hall before giving a message that can be described as his economic bread and butter message.
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BIDEN: The top 100 billionaires in the middle of this pandemic, they made $300 billion additional. Hear me now? One hundred individuals made $300 billion this year.
And what did the bottom half get?
They got the kick, they got the slide down, because the fact is the president can only see the world from Park Avenue. I see it from Scranton, I see it from Claymont, for real. You all know what I'm talking about. Y'all see it from Erie.
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DEAN: In the meantime, vice president Biden's campaign reported that he underwent PCR testing. That's the gold standard COVID test on Saturday and that test came back negative. The campaign has said that Joe Biden will be continued to be tested regularly and always when he travels -- Jessica Dean, CNN, Erie, Pennsylvania.
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BRUNHUBER: The modeling that has often been looked at during this pandemic is giving the U.S. A serious wake up call. The model is based on current conditions, so let us look at what those are right. Now.
As you can see there, most states are seeing an increase in cases compared to a week ago. Now at this hour, Johns Hopkins University has the number of lives lost in the U.S. at slightly more than 214,000. The University of Washington model projects a total of almost 400,000 COVID-19 deaths by February 1st.
The model also says that social distancing mandates or lacked that number could go over half 1 million but that a model predicts that if almost everyone in the U.S. Wore masks, tens of thousands of lives could be saved.
The current case counts in the U.S. is more than 7.7 million cases since March. Now, of course, that is a staggering figure. But a former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the actual number is likely five times higher.
Dr. Tom Frieden speaking earlier at a CNN town hall says, that is why so many Americans have died.
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DR. THOMAS FRIEDEN, FORMER CDC DIRECTOR: The death rate is a fact. And it's a tragedy. And we need not to get hardened to the reality that these are health care workers. These are mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, and it's going on every day. We are having 1000 more deaths.
And next month, we're going to have 20,000 more deaths in the U.S. But we can turn this around if we understand that it's a matter of learning how to do one thing, right, which is, follow the science, be guided by the facts. Tell people what we know when we know it, work together, recognize we are all connected.
You may not get sick at all from this, but you may spread it to someone who then dies or spreads it to someone else who dies. And that's why we all have to recognize that we're in this together. There's only one enemy, and that's the virus.
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BRUNHUBER: And Dr. Julie Gerberding also used to head the CDC. She told the CNN town hall that mixed messages from public officials are undermining Americans' confidence in an eventual vaccine.
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DR. JULIE GERBERDING, FORMER CDC DIRECTOR: Americans can tolerate really tough truth, but it has to come from reliable and credible sources. And I think the other thing is consistency. One of the reasons that we have so much anxiety among the Americans is because they're hearing different things from different political leaders. We haven't consolidated and cascaded the messages from reliable sources.
We kind of have a free for all, where everyone can invent their own interpretation of the truth. So if we want people to have trust in the vaccines, we have to tell them what we're doing and why we have to explain how we're managing the safety and the efficacy evaluation. We need to prepare them for whatever side effects we might realistically expect to occur. And then we have to keep them informed as we go forward.
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BRUNHUBER: Global health experts say they are very worried about the resurgence of COVID-19 cases in Europe, even more than in hotspots like the U.S. and Brazil. We're going to go live to our CNN reporters there.
And from Iraq, a story in a family that is finding new hope despite the war, devastating loss and the coronavirus. Please stay with us.
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BRUNHUBER: Our top story this hour, Donald Trump's doctor has cleared him to return to an active schedule. In a memo Dr. Sean Conley says Mr. Trump is no longer a transmission risk and meets the CDC's criteria to stop isolating.
So to talk about that, and other COVID issues, let's bring in Dr. Scott Miscovich, a family physician in Hawaii and an expert on coronavirus testing.
Thanks so much for being with us again. Let's start with a memo from the president's doctor. We saw he said Mr. Trump is, quote, "no longer considered a transmission risk to others."
Now the doctor cited the result of a COVID PCR sample as well as a mRNA test. What he said was, ambiguous at best.
What do you make of?
It
DR. SCOTT MISCOVICH, FAMILY PHYSICIAN AND NATIONAL CONSULTANT: I would say, I agree. They are following guidelines with CDC to say that, if you are 10 days into the diagnosis then one day after no symptoms, no fever, you can be released. So we don't go with the 14- day mark anymore. It can be 10 days plus one if there are no symptoms.
Now what most of us are raising our eyebrows about is the PCR. The PCR is so sensitive, if you read the CDC guidelines, you are not supposed to repeat a PCR for 90 days after the initial diagnosis.
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MISCOVICH: And it's because it is so sensitive it's almost always positive for at least 3 weeks, probably up to 45. Many patients we have are positive for 90 days after they have it.
BRUNHUBER: So what about the mRNA test?
Does that give us any more clues then? MISCOVICH: Now I think they are being very ambiguous as you stated. That does not give you the information for you to say that the patient, that the president is not a transmission risk.
The other thing, that test is not used broadly, it's not used by the CDC, it's not used by standard state. To use that as the definition as to why he's not a transmission risk I don't think any of us would really be looking at that as valid.
BRUNHUBER: All right, so if you were in the audience, wherever he was, you wouldn't necessarily be confident he wouldn't be transmitting. He did give a speech yesterday, he's going to be holding rallies. He has a fairly taxing campaign schedule.
What's the chance of a relapse?
And the situation getting much worse, based on what you've seen with patients?
Especially ones who are older.
MISCOVICH: Actually I think he's fared quite well. I've seen some of the clips of him looking at the way he's moving and breathing. Remember, he would have a lot of shortness of breath and fatigue. I think he's actually recovered quite well. So the chances that he would have a relapse, most of us would feel as quite low.
Does he have any other side effects or any other symptoms that we're not aware of?
He's not showing us that he does. Again, I would be looking at these rallies, that people would be heeding the advice of wearing masks and social distancing because we all have to lead by example for that. Hopefully we will see that for the rest of the people in the audience watching out for that.
BRUNHUBER: Yes, for what we've seen so far that seems unlikely. In that address from the balcony, the president said, it's going to disappear, it is disappearing, which is what he said in February.
And as "The Washington Post" pointed out, more than 213,000 people have died since then. So obviously, it is not disappearing.
What's your sense of where the country is right now?
MISCOVICH: The biggest issue we are all worried about, as earlier we talked about the projections from the University of Washington, which we all respect, is we're going into the winter season. We go indoors, we don't have open windows, we have rooms where we're sharing the same air. That's how flu spreads.
So we are all very concerned, after Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's that January and February will be devastating. So unless America really understands to wear the masks, even though you're home for the holidays, to do social distancing, to use the right ventilation, we could have a very serious first quarter of the next year. And we're all worried about. That
BRUNHUBER: All right, we will definitely be following this. Thank you so much for speaking with us, Dr. Scott Miscovich. Appreciate. It
MISCOVICH: Thank you.
BRUNHUBER: And much of Europe is also struggling again to control the coronavirus even though the region appeared to have largely contained it. Some countries are having to bring back strict coronavirus restrictions. And one of them is France.
On Saturday, the country hit yet another all-time high and COVID-19 cases just after day after it broke the previous record.
And the British prime minister is expected to announce new restrictions on Monday to try to end a new surge of cases there. So let's bring in our correspondent who's in London.
But first to Melissa Bell in Paris.
Melissa, just give us the latest there. We were just talking yesterday about the record number of cases. And today we get a new record.
MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. It is the third record set this week for France. And, of course, the fear with that, as we see more and more people testing negative and the positivity rate is another figure, it's 11 percent nationally, put that into context, on the 1st of September it was just about 4 percent. That's how quickly it is risen.
And as you has a positivity rise and a number of new cases rising with each day and with each week, getting worse and worse, the effect that it'll take a little while to filter through that you get more people entering the ICU.
This is the real figure to look at. Just to give you a bit of an idea, we are just about shy now of 1,500 people in ICUs who are COVID-19 patients. Again, on the 1st of September, it was 26. That's how quickly it is risen. Fresh restrictions as you mention from Saturday here on France, several towns entering maximum alert zone, that we have been in in Paris now for more than a week with those fresh restrictions.
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BELL: The question is will they act fast enough, will they have an effect quickly enough to protect the health care system?
What we're hearing from inside is a lot of fear that that may not be the case.
BRUNHUBER: All right, thank you so much, Melissa Bell in Paris. Let's go to now to Salma Abdelaziz in London.
Restrictions there in England as well? SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN PRODUCER: Well, Kim, that is what we are waiting to find out here. Prime minister Boris Johnson will be making a statement to the House of Commons on Monday.
And this really comes after a week of confusion and worry across the U.K., in which various reports were leaked to the media. They believe that there would be new and tougher restrictions imposed particularly in the north. Those did not come through. So much of the country is going to be having their eyes on the prime minister Monday, waiting for him to clarify what the country's position is, particularly because the country is in a perilous moment.
COVID restrictions need to be taken if the U.K. is to avoid a second wave. The fear and the worry is that the U.K. government is not acting quickly enough. Again, there's been so much criticism of the way Boris Johnson's government has handled this pandemic.
And again we are hearing controversy before he's even stepped out. But what we are expecting on Monday is a clear set of steps that would carve up the country in 3 tiered levels, depending on the rate of infection and the number of cases in those areas, and based on a geographic region, you will be subject to different restrictions, based on a number of cases and the rate of infection in that area.
So all eyes on the House of Commons as the country waits for clarification and in understanding what happens. Next
BRUNHUBER: All right, ,thank you so much, Salma Abdelaziz in London.
Well India is now reporting more than 7 million COVID-19 cases. That is the most in the world after the U.S. The 7 million mark was passed as the Indian health ministry reported more than 74,000 new cases in the past 24 hours. And also reports that more than 108,000 people have killed died because the virus.
And Brazil has now surpassed more than 150,000 COVID deaths, second only to the U.S. But hordes of people crammed into a department store on Saturday with just total disregard for social distancing. You can see the store owner there firing up the crowds.
He is now a vocal supporter of president Bolsonaro, who, of course, downplayed the virus. CNN Brazil said police ordered the store closed hours later.
Well, CNN has been following the story of an Iraqi woman through years of hardship as she endured sanctions, war and corruption. After all that, she's recently recovered from COVID-19. She did it with the help of her 19-year-old autistic son. And she told Arwa Damon, this pandemic has a lesson for all of. Us
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ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "I tell you that we shouldn't use black. It's sad," Nahla gently reminds her son. Nineteen year old Ussayid is autistic. He uses colors, not words to communicate the depths of his anguish. Nahla can sit next to him now. We assure him that she's OK. After
Nahla and her husband contracted COVID-19, Ussayid had to care for them, a reflection of just how dire the situation of hospitals is in Iraq.
"My first thought was, what if Ussayid also catches it?" she says. "I was scared, I was shaken."
I will never forget the first time I met Nahla shortly after her first husband, Ussayid's father, was killed in a car bomb in 2007. She spoke in gentle tones after about having to identify the love of her life from a photograph of his teeth and a metal pin to his knee. His body was so charred and melted along with nine others.
How she felt as if she was wearing a cloak of death, that life lost its color, becoming black and white. Ussayid was just 6 years old at the time.
Four years later, Nahla looked transformed. She spoke with pride about how Ussayid had just transferred out of the special needs school but that he still carried darkness inside because of the death of his father, a darkness that came out in his drawings, a cloud with rain painted over in black.
"We worked for years to get him away from the black of death," she says. "Corona brought the black back into his drawings."
That in so many ways is the story of Iraq, a nation whose history is more defined by death and bloodshed than the beauty of its people.
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DAMON (voice-over): The beauty of people like Nahla, fighting for her country's soul.
"I always say there is a positive side of any struggle," she tells us. "The positive side is that we discovered that my son has more capabilities than what we thought."
She feels as if Iraqis as a whole are discovering how strong they are when they come together.
"We are saving each other by uniting during COVID-19 and not looking toward the government," she explains. "We could possibly emerge from coronavirus with a great lesson," she continues, "but we should we should all be united to find the beginning of a path of light."
And that is a lesson for us all -- Arwa Damon, CNN, Istanbul.
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BRUNHUBER: That's a great story.
Iran is mandating masks in its capital, Tehran, as the country tries to curb a growing death toll from the coronavirus. The president announced on Saturday that anyone who violates the mask mandate will be fined. More than 28,000 people have died from the virus and the country's health ministry reported 195 new deaths on Saturday, ,along with almost 3,900 new cases.
Iran is the worst country hit in the region and it's also struggling with a an economy crippled by U.S. sanctions.
Still to come in the NEWSROOM. President Trump just lost a big court challenge on early voting in a battleground state. How he's still trying to sow doubt over the integrity of the election. And the latest battleground over voting is now the ballot box. We'll show you how difficult it is to vote in Texas under a controversial order from the governor. Please stay with us.
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BRUNHUBER: And welcome back to you, our viewers in the United States, Canada and around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber and you're watching CNN NEWSROOM.
A federal judge in Pennsylvania has denied a Trump campaign effort to make campaign drop boxes in the state unconstitutional. This continues as Trump continues to spread more false claims about potential voter fraud. Abby Phillip explains.
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CEDRICK BROWN, DETROIT VOTER: I'm not comfortable sending my ballot through the mail. I'd rather just come in and drop it off.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As millions of voters begin casting their ballots in person or by mail, the Postal Service acknowledging in court documents that there has been a significant drop in first class on time mail delivery.
The USPS saying it will increase staffing and make other changes to fix the problem. In battleground Michigan, voting is ramping up and so are the worries from voters.
MARTEZ ROBERTSON, DETROIT VOTER: I want to personally make sure it got handed in. With all the talk of problems with the mail and that sort of thing, I wanted to be sure.
PHILLIP: In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott is facing at least two separate federal lawsuits after he issued an executive order restricting ballot drop boxes to one per county because he feels they'll be more secure. Opponents say this is no less than voter suppression.
CHRIS HOLLINS, HARRIS COUNTY CLERK: To make it so that our voters who have disabilities, our elderly voters have to drive over an hour, more than 50 miles in some cases to drop off their mail ballot, it's unfair, it's prejudicial and it's dangerous.
PHILLIP: Millions of voters have just hours left to register to vote for the 2020 general election, including competitive states like Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Texas. Already some 2.6 million general election ballots have been cast according to CNN and Edison researchers survey of election officials in 24 states reporting voting data.
And in six of those states where party data is available, registered Democrats make up more than half of the ballots returned.
In Pennsylvania, ongoing disputes over the changing ballot rules, poll watchers, new voting machines and the spread of disinformation are adding to the challenges some from the President himself.
TRUMP: They had Trump written on it and they were thrown in a garbage can and this is what's going to happen.
PHILLIP: Today we are also learning about a new cyber security threat. CNN has obtained an e-mail from the Democratic National Committee warning campaigns about fraudulent Team Blue Take Action e- mails sent by a hacking group with malicious attachments.
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BRUNHUBER: Abby Phillip reporting there.
On Saturday federal appeals allowed the governor to allow only one location per county for ballot drop boxes to stay in place for now.
So for millions of Americans voting by absentee ballot, uncertainty and inconvenience have become central themes of this year's election. In Texas that means many may have to travel long distances. Ed Lavandera shows us what they face.
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ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Welcome to Harris County, Texas. There are 2.4 million registered voters in this county.
And if you're one of those voters who is skeptical of voting in person because of the coronavirus pandemic, or you're concerned that the postal service won't get your ballot to the elections office in time, county officials here had set up 12 satellite drop boxes where people could drive their mail-in ballots and then drop them off at these locations across the county.
But the governor of Texas has ordered all counties across the state to close all of those down and that they can only have one of those satellite drop boxes open in the weeks leading up to the election.
So, this is the story of what it will take to get to that ballot box in Harris County.
It's just after 9:00 in the morning. We are in the far northeast corner of Harris County. The only drop box now available in this county is at NRG Football Stadium, which is 45 miles away.
But one of the locations that was closed down was just over 20 miles, so it's kind of along the way so we're going to drive by that location first. Harris County, which includes the city of Houston, is nearly 1,800 square miles, much larger than Rhode Island.
This county building is one of the 11 drop sites that was shut down by Governor Greg Abbott.
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LAVANDERA: It took us about 31 minutes to get here.
It's where we met Peaches Sullivan, who was dropping off voter registration forms for nursing home residents.
PEACHES SULLIVAN, NURSING HOME ASSISTANT: People are still worried. Why would you risk being -- having people come out even more when they don't have to, especially with the preexisting conditions that they have.
LAVANDERA: This is a drive where you're going to see -- it's almost a slice of America. You'll see a little bit of everything on this drive from northeast Harris County to NRG Stadium where this drop box location is.
Of course, critics of the governor say this is really just a masquerade way of suppressing voter turnout, making it more difficult for voting populations in highly Democratic towns like Houston and Austin to be able to safely submit their votes in the age of this COVID pandemic.
The Texas governor says his decision will increase ballot security and help stop illegal voting, though there are no widespread problems with voter fraud.
So, this is the one drop box ballot site in Harris County.
Harris County clerk, Chris Hollins, says the Texas governor's move to close down the ballot drop sites is an abuse of power.
CHRIS HOLLINS, HARRIS COUNTY CLERK: To make it so that our voters who have disabilities, our elderly voters, have to drive over an hour, more than 50 miles in some cases, to drop off their mail ballot, it's unfair, it's prejudicial and it's dangerous.
LAVANDERA: The drive took us about an hour and eight minutes, So round trip, you're looking at about two hours and 15 minutes.
And quite honestly, it was an easy drive. We caught the traffic at a good time. It was actually relatively smooth sailing considering how bad traffic can get in the city -- Ed Lavandera, CNN, Harris County, Texas.
(END VIDEOTAPE) BRUNHUBER: CNN was first to view a new Joe Biden campaign ad featuring Cindy McCain, the widow of Arizona Republican senator John McCain. Cindy McCain has endorsed Biden for president and it's called "Like John Did," making the case that Biden is a leader who can cross party lines and unite the country.
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CINDY MCCAIN, JOHN MCCAIN'S WIDOW (voice-over): In the Senate, they disagreed on almost everything. They'd fight like hell on the floor and then they'd go eat lunch together because they always put their friendship and their country first.
Now, more than ever, we need a president who will put service before self.
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BRUNHUBER: U.S. leaders are still at a stalemate over a new COVID 19 stimulus package. Meanwhile, millions of American children are not getting enough to eat. We'll bring you the story of a mother furloughed because of the pandemic.
Also, North Korea's largest latest weapon. Experts think it could be the largest ballistic missile. We'll tell you how powerful it might be. Stay with us.
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BRUNHUBER: The U.S. House Speaker says President Trump's latest stimulus proposal does not go far enough. Senate Republicans are indicating that the $1.8 trillion offer is too high, so that makes it all but certain Congress won't pass another economic relief package before Election Day.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans are struggling to buy food and pay bills. According to the Hamilton Project, 14 million children are not getting enough to eat in the U.S. They say that's 5 times more than before the pandemic. CNN's Kyung Lah reports on a mother who was furloughed and now struggles to feed her family.
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RODRIGUEZ: Mami (ph), wake up, Mami (ph). You got to go to school.
KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR U.S. CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The morning routine for Rose Rodriguez and her three girls.
RODRIGUEZ: (INAUDIBLE) in school?
(INAUDIBLE)?
LAH (voice-over): Three-year-old Alejandra (ph) --
RODRIGUEZ: Come on, get up.
LAH (voice-over): -- and 12-year-old Terri (ph) sleep in one bed; 13- year-old Yalitza (ph) sleeps on the couch. Breakfast --
RODRIGUEZ: You want this one?
LAH (voice-over): -- is what she has scrounged from the day before.
RODRIGUEZ: It's good?
Yes?
We will eat whatever is left over.
LAH (voice-over): Everything has changed since coronavirus.
RODRIGUEZ: (INAUDIBLE).
My pantry, that's all I have.
LAH: Before coronavirus, was this full?
RODRIGUEZ: Everything was full.
LAH (voice-over): This was Rodriguez at a full time job at LAX airport. She worked for Qantas Airlines cargo, making more than $20 an hour.
RODRIGUEZ: I thought everything will be good. I thought, you know what, I have money for my rent, I have money for the food, I don't have to worry about the girls' health.
But I never thought that, on Wednesday I will show up to work. But no, it wasn't that way. You could lose your job in any time.
LAH: How about the food?
I mean, how much -- ?
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RODRIGUEZ: The food, that's how we struggle more.
LAH: Tell me about that struggle.
RODRIGUEZ: The struggle is, sometimes we eat, sometimes we don't.
LAH (voice-over): What she manages is cheap, unhealthy food. Rodriguez says she has applied for 50 jobs; 30 interviews later, still nothing. Her unemployment application stalled, part of the more than 1 million stuck in a logjam in California's system. Her car and most of her furniture repossessed; she's months behind on rent.
RODRIGUEZ: When we go to the Laundromat, we see homeless washing themselves. And one day if I don't go back to work, I'm going to be one of them. We all live check by check. But now it's not a check, it's a box, a box that I have to stretch out for seven days.
LAH (voice-over): That weekly box is donated food from the L.A. Food Bank and Salvation Army. While her older daughters learn virtually on public school laptops...
RODRIGUEZ: Who is ready for lunch?
LAH (voice-over): Alejandra (ph) gets free child care and lunch at the Salvation Army, too young to understand a virus' impact on her family.
RODRIGUEZ: I know she wants what she sees. But I tell her, Mami (ph), I can't. I have to tell her tomorrow so she could forget.
LAH: And every day it's tomorrow.
RODRIGUEZ: Yes, everything is tomorrow.
LAH (voice-over): Food banks across the country have seen hours' long lines as record unemployment devastates working families.
MORTIMER JONES, THE SALVATION ARMY SIEMON CENTER: So we do have RRPs.
LAH (voice-over): At the Salvation Army Food Bank in Los Angeles, they fed 10 times the number of people as last year.
JONES: It is not like it happened for a week or two weeks. It's been happening for months. And even though we're trying our best to help, we know that we barely are scratching the surface because we can only do so much with the limited resources that we have.
LAH (voice-over): Today, fresh food bank supplies mean their shelves are more full.
RODRIGUEZ: Mac and cheese?
LAH (voice-over): But the joy is short lived. Counting down the days to the next food box has begun.
[03:45:00]
RODRIGUEZ: They shouldn't go through this. They don't have to be worried next, how we can eat the next day?
Like my mom has to go look for food.
Or has my mom eaten?
And they shouldn't worry about that. Like I should be working and they should be just worried about school and their futures. It just hurts.
LAH (voice-over): Kyung Lah, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: What a touching story and there are so many Americans out there like. That.
While millions of Americans earn less than before the coronavirus began, billionaires are making big gains. This according to the Institute for Policy Studies. U.S. billionaires or the 643 wealthiest Americans added a whopping $845 billion to their fortunes since March. That increased their combined wealth by 29 percent during the pandemic and saw their net worth rise by almost $1 trillion. Incredible.
The top earners include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. This trend is not just in the U.S. Globally the report says the wealth of billionaires reached a new record high, increasing their combined assets by $10.2 trillion .
Well we're going to look at what analysts say could be one of the world's largest ballistic missiles. North Korea unveiled it at a parade celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Workers Party. South Korea reacted quickly, calling an emergency National Security Council meeting.
And a senior U.S. administration official says it is disappointing that the North continues to promote its "prohibited nuclear and ballistic missile program." Will Ripley has. More
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Back on New Year's Day, January 1st of this year, when Kim Jong-un promised to unveil a new strategic weapon. That was, of course, before the COVID-19 pandemic ground the world to a halt and left the hermetically sealed Hermit Kingdom more isolated than ever.
Now we're getting our first look at what many analysts believe is that weapon, one of the largest world's largest ballistic missiles. It's massive. It's carried by an 11 axle truck. At the climax of an almost 2-hour military parade in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
I've covered these parades many times over the years and they always bring them out at the end, do it for the drama. The ground is actually shaking beneath your feet as they pass by.
Experts are telling us this missile right here could potentially carry multiple warheads, only increasing the threat to the mainland United States, despite dozens of "love letters" between President Trump and Kim Jong-un -- Trump's words, not mine.
This is the kind of thing that North Korea would typically love to showcase for the foreign media, including CNN, who has been invited almost every year. But this year things are different. Borders are closed due to COVID-19, essentially shutting down trade in an already struggling economy, battered by international sanctions over its nuclear program.
A widespread COVID-19 pandemic inside North Korea -- keep in mind, they have very limited, outdated medical resources. That would be catastrophic. This year we barely saw Kim Jong-un in public when compared to previous years.
He disappeared from public view for weeks on end, leading to speculation about his health. But Kim appeared to be back in full form at this military parade, staged in the middle of the night with slick special effects, including a drone flyby. Certainly the most dramatic North Korean military parade I've ever seen.
Perhaps the most drama came from Kim himself, dressed in a gray suit and appeared to be almost crying, sobbing at times, tears rolling down his cheeks as he thanked the North Korean people for their hard work during exceptionally hard times.
North Korea has been absolutely battered this year, faced crippling sanctions over the nuclear missile programs, the economic catastrophe of closing the border because of the pandemic and natural disasters like a massive typhoon and flooding.
Things got so bad in North Korea that Kim did something that his grandfather and father never did. He admitted that his economic plans were a failure and that millions of his people, already scraping by, are suffering.
That was reflected in his face and echoed by his audience. Many people were heard crying right along with him. North Korea may struggle for food and electricity but they did show the world their missile program is only getting stronger -- Will Ripley, CNN, Hong Kong.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: Seventeen people were killed and 50 others injured when a train hit a bus in Thailand on Sunday. Police tell CNN the bus was crossing the tracks when a cargo train slammed into it. The people on board were on their way to a temple east of Bangkok. Police and rescue teams are still working at the crash site.
[03:50:00]
BRUNHUBER: Americans along the Gulf Coast are reeling from back-to- back hurricanes, flooding, power outages and homes demolished. A look at the damage from Hurricane Delta just ahead. Please stay with us.
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BRUNHUBER: Destruction and devastation are what you're seeing now is from the U.S. state of Louisiana after Hurricane Delta made landfall Friday night. It's now categorized as a post tropical cyclone. The storm knocked out power to a quarter of the state's residence. It
downed power lines and trees and severely damaged homes. Luckily, no deaths have been reported. Heavy rain and flooding were a big problem. Delta dropped more than a foot of rain on Louisiana.
It also affected other southern U.S. states, putting millions under flash flood watches. Thousands of National Guards are in Louisiana helping emergency crews as residents reel from back-to-back storms. CNN's Martin Savidge has more from Lake Charles.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It turns out that Hurricane Delta was not the destructive killer that had been feared. Still, the governor of Louisiana said it had a greater impact on the western part of Louisiana than they had expected.
[03:55:00]
SAVIDGE: Primarily in the issue of knocking out power. More people lost power during Delta than they did during the more powerful Laura 6 weeks ago. The governor says at the height of the outages during Delta, 25 percent of all electricity customers in the state lost power.
The good news is that it's not expected to take weeks to restore. The other good news, so far, no deaths attributed to the storm, although I'll underline "so far."
The awful irony here in Lake Charles is that this community was so devastated by Hurricane Laura at the end of August, it's really hard to tell where the damage of one hurricane ends and where the destruction of the next storm begins.
But we do know there is additional destruction here. We know that by the blue tarps, which were put there by the homeowners starting to make very basic repairs. Now blue tarps are torn, shredded, ripped and strewn all over Lake Charles.
That means the homes have been damaged again and homeowner and all the people who live in them will have to start over again, which they are already doing, relying on the help of their friends and neighbors in their community again -- Martin Savidge, CNN, Lake Charles, Louisiana.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BRUNHUBER: And if you're looking for ways to help the victims of Hurricane Delta, go to cnn.com/impact and you'll find a list of organizations on the ground.
That this wraps this hour of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Kim Brunhuber and I'll be back in just a moment with more news. Please stay with us.
