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White House Embraces Herd Immunity, Critics Say This Is Mass Murder; Trump's Treason Conspiracy Blows Up, Joining Long List Of Others; Early Voters Enduring Long Lines To Cast Ballots In Texas, Georgia. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired October 14, 2020 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: But Democrats still remain very -- even Democrats will tell you that they are skeptical about whether or not Biden can flip Texas.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: We'll see how close it is, 20 days as we count. Ed Lavandera live on the ground, thanks so much. We'll see you tomorrow.

Brianna Keilar picks up our coverage right now. Have a good day.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: He there. I'm Brianna Keilar, and I want to welcome viewers here in the United States and around the world.

Not a single state in this country is heading in the right direction with coronavirus infections. Right now, with nearly eight million cases on record and more than 215,000 American lives lost, we see zero states in the green. And instead, we're seeing 36 reporting a surge in infections. Hospitalizations are on the rise nationwide as well as are the percentages of people who are testing positive.

The situation is so dire in some regions, like in Wisconsin, the state there opening a field hospital on the state fairgrounds, Iowa, meantime, where the president is set to hold a rally later today, just surpassed 100,000 cases. The positivity rate among those tested there is almost 22 percent over the last 24 hours according to the state's Department of Health.

And despite this, the president is describing a rosy state of play that doesn't exist.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We'll beat this virus, and we'll eradicate this pestilence and all of the things that happen to our country, our lives and our planet. Our aggressive and early action saved up to 2 million lives. If you look at the original numbers, it was projected 2.2 million lives. We're at 210,000.

we've reduced the fatality rate 85 percent since April.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KEILAR: As we watch these numbers continue to move higher, the president and his administration are embracing the controversial and widely disputed theory of herd immunity. On a call this week, White House officials explicitly supported the approach and they cited a recent petition called the great Barrington declaration which argues herd immunity will, quote, allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally, to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection while better protecting those who are at highest risk.

President Trump echoing that sentiment in front of thousands of supporters at his rally yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Who has had it here? Who has had it? Yes, a lot of people, a lot of people. Well, you're the people I want to say hello to, because you're right now immune.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, here is how one health expert summed up what this really is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM HASELTINE, FORMER PROFESSOR, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: I'm extremely concerned that the president is being advised by people who speak of herd immunity. Herd immunity is another word for mass murder.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Dr. Leana Wen is a CNN Medical Analyst and former Baltimore Health Commissioner. Dr. Wen, thank you so much for coming on.

And if you can just explain to viewers how herd immunity would look like in this country and what would have to happen to achieve that.

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: So, herd immunity is not a public health strategy when it comes to COVID-19. Public health is about protecting the public's health. But trying for herd immunity through natural infection with COVID-19 means that we would be deliberately, knowingly, purposefully facilitating infections and deaths. That's a worst-case scenario.

So what herd immunity means that if you get 60 to 80 percent of the population infected and they recover and ideally have immunity, you're able to protect everyone else in the community. Here is the problem, though.

To get to that level, we're talking about 200 million Americans who will have to get COVID-19. Even if you have a death rate of 1 percent, that's 2 million Americans who would have to die. And in this case we don't know how long immunity will last. It could be only a matter of months, maybe up to a year. That means to reach this herd immunity concept, that's 2 million or more people will have to die every year. That's not a strategy. That's deliberately killing many Americans.

KEILAR: And just last month, there were reports, I know you're aware of them, the White House coronavirus adviser the president refers, Dr. Scott Atlas, was advocating for herd immunity. But then when he spoke with Michael Smerconish, he staunchly denied that. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN HOST: Five people at a senior level on the record claiming that you have been arguing for herd immunity within the White House. You told me that's a lie. Do you want to underscore that here?

DR. SCOTT ATLAS, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS ADVISER: Sure. It's not just a lie, it's an overt lie. It's a disgusting lie and it's a harmful statement to make. I have never advised the president to push a herd immunity strategy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[13:05:00]

KEILAR: There seems to be this affliction coming from the president's advisers where they are arguing for herd immunity but they don't want to admit it. And part of that is clearly because of what that actually is. You just described what it is to argue for herd immunity.

So, can you explain this reticence, even for folks who maybe are arguing for herd immunity to be kind of caught outright doing so?

WEN: When we look at what President Trump is doing right now, having these massive rallies in areas that are undergoing spread and talking about how he himself is immune and others are immune, he is essentially advocating for that herd immunity strategy. When you hear other top advisers make comments about how children don't get infected, which is not true, or that somehow you can wall-off older people who are more vulnerable, they are advocating for a herd immunity strategy.

It doesn't even matter what we call it, it's a matter of what it is that we're doing. The actions in this case speak a lot louder than words. And I just hope that the American people will recognize how dangerous this strategy is. It's not a strategy. This is the worst- case scenario that we're trying to prevent.

KEILAR: Let's talk about what it means to have COVID and have at least short-term immunity, because there are three newly published reports that show it can actually last for months, which signals potentially positive news when we're talking about the effectiveness of a vaccine.

One of these reports reads this, quote, this study suggests that if a vaccine is properly designed it has potential to induce a durable antibody response that can help protect a vaccinated person against the virus that causes COVID-19. Is this promising, in your view?

WEN: It's promising in some ways because it means that we can get to a vaccine that provides immunity for at least a substantial period of time, ideally at least a year. I mean, we think about the flu shot, we do get a flu shot every year. Maybe we can get the coronavirus vaccine to that level, at least something that we can get and anticipate every year.

But I think it's also a warning, these studies that re-infection can occur. The virus that causes COVID-19 is a coronavirus. And coronaviruses are seasonal. You can get colds multiple years in a row or every year even. And so we have to remember that just because you get it once doesn't mean you're protected forever.

And if you get coronavirus, it's not just a matter of could you die from it, you could recover, you could even have mild illness but you could have long-term effects on many organs, some of which we're just beginning to understand.

KEILAR: All right. Dr. Wen, always a pleasure. Thanks for coming on.

WEN: Thank you.

KEILAR: Tomorrow night was supposed to be the second presidential debate but the president's COVID-19 diagnosis threw a wrench into that plan sparking a messy debate of its own over making the town hall debate virtual.

Well, the president refused that option, so it was canceled. And instead we will now see both President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden in primetime Thursday but on separate channels. The candidates will join dueling network television town halls. Biden will be appearing on ABC while President Trump will be joining NBC at the exact same time.

With me now is CNN Media Analyst Bill Carter. He's a former Media Reporter for The New York Times. And, Bill, you say that these dueling town halls are worse than no debate at all. Tell us why?

BILL CARTER, CNN MEDIA ANALYST: Well, essentially, what they are doing is they're disserving the voters, because the voters would have seen both guys together. Here, they are going to be separate. And, obviously, people will make a choice which one they're going to watch.

I mean, one of NBC's defenses is, well, it's the modern age, where people can watch both debates if they record them and watch at different times. People are going to do that. They're going to take a choice. They are going to say, Well, I like Biden, so I'm going to watch him, or I like Trump.

But let's face it. Trump is the television performer and the last debate was him creating all this distraction and noise and cacophony and it's like a traffic accident. People like to watch a traffic accident. And he is probably going to do much better. By the way, NBC is running this across multiple networks at the same time. To Trump is doing to try to have the advantage of saying, look at my ratings, look at how much better I did versus Biden, and they are giving him what he wants, essentially.

KEILAR: So, is this, in your view, a candidate bailing from a debate and then being rewarded with a primetime audience at the same time that his opponent is on?

CARTER: Yes, it essentially is that. And NBC can make the point they gave Biden a town hall so they can give Trump one. The fact that it's at the exact same time is the issue. Of course, they should have Trump on if he wants to do it but why not do it Friday night, why not do it Saturday night. And the argument that they have to do it at the exact same time makes no sense to me because there are other avenues to do it. So you're obviously disserving the voters by putting them in this position where they have to choose.

[13:10:01]

KEILAR: I mean, so this is what we're going to have, right? We're going to have these two primetime events at the same time. And with that in mind, how should these networks be challenging these candidates since there is no town hall debate where they would be challenging each other?

CARTER: That is clearly the big question about these debates. I mean, you know, people will ask questions and the candidates will probably be rather polite to them. Even Trump, when he did a previous town hall on ABC, he was kind of a little deferential, which he is not usually going to be against Biden, obviously. But the moderator has to press them this time. They can't let them run roughshod over, which is what happened to poor Chris Wallace.

And I think Savannah Guthrie is doing this for NBC, and there are so many things going out there at the same time that Trump is putting out there that she really should step in and say, wait a minute, that isn't the case. It's going to be a real challenge for them. And especially now that it looks like they have made a deal favorable to him. I think there's real pressure on NBC. They have to really step up.

KEILAR: Yes. I mean, I am very curious. It does seems like having watched that last town hall that there was more intervention on the part of the anchor than there would be just traditionally in a debate. So I guess we'll be watching tonight, Bill. We'll be checking in to see what you think and how it goes. Bill, thank you very much.

CARTER: Nice to be with you, Brianna.

KEILAR: Voters standing in massive lines to cast their ballots in Texas and Georgia. We're going to take you there. We're going to speak with some of them.

Plus, it's a conspiracy the president and his Fox allies pushed for months and months, and now it's gone up in a puff of smoke.

And weddings, funerals, family gatherings, and now a sweet 16 party being blamed for a COVID outbreak.

This is CNN's special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:15:00]

KEILAR: Repeat, repeat, repeat. That's the strategy the president and his favorite cable channel used to make their claims stick in the heads of millions of viewers. Many times, it's just complete B.S. And then when the baseless and paranoid conspiracy theories are proven not to be true, they just shrug their shoulders and move onto the next conspiracy theory.

Today is just another example but this one climbed all the way to the tippy top of the Department of Justice. For months, President Trump, Fox and other Republicans have hyped Obama era unmasking requests as an enormous scandal. Unmasking is revealing the withheld identity of an American who was not a target of surveillance but is caught in intelligence reports or foreign targets.

Trump tweeted over and over again that Obama era officials spied on his campaign and improperly requested the identities of individuals whose names were redacted in these intelligence documents. Here is just a small sample of what he said on this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: The Obama campaign spied on our campaign and they've been caught, all right? And now let's see what happens to them. But they have been caught. They have been caught red-handed. It's probably treason.

Obamagate, it's been going on for a long time.

Unmasking, it's a massive thing. It's -- I just got a list. It's -- who can believe a thing like this?

This was all Obama. This was all Biden. These people are corrupt. The whole thing was corrupt. And we caught them. We caught them.

And it gets released that he was one of the unmaskers, meaning he knew everything about it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A new lead, classified documents identifying more than a dozen Obama administration officials involved in the unmasking of Michael Flynn, and at the top of that list, former Vice President Joe Biden.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: Joe unmasked one himself and Biden might want to start thinking about getting his story straight if he's capable.

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: They know Michael Flynn is not a dangerous criminal. If he was a dangerous criminal, they would be working to free him from jail. No, they wanted Flynn crushed purely because he happened to be in the way of the power they seek.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Trump's Department of Justice at the request of Attorney General Bill Barr started investigating these allegations. And now, The Washington Post reports that the result of the investigation is nothing. There is apparently no evidence of substantive wrongdoing. And I should note, the investigation ended without a public report.

Joining me now is CNN Senior Law Enforcement Analyst Andrew McCabe to talk about this. He is former deputy director of the FBI and he is the author of The Threat.

So, first, Andrew, this conspiracy, this one, in particular, has been out there for months. It's not the first of the president's conspiracy theories that has been investigated and then resulted in no charges or no substantiation. You have the Clinton Foundation, Comey, you have you, right, all resulting in no charges, not to mention things like his voter fraud commission that didn't find any voter fraud. But you've lived this. Is the damage from this conspiracy theory already done?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, this is yet another example of the politicization of the Department of Justice and this president's ability to use the institutions of our federal government, the institutions we rely on, in this case, the DOJ, to pursue his own political agenda.

And I think you can't say it often enough, this is different. This has not happened with other -- we've never seen this happen before. Every attorney general is somewhat beholden to the president because they are a political appointee but this is very different.

So, to have people like Devin Nunes, who was the chairman of House Intelligence Committee, Rand Paul, others, people who know how intelligence works, how the unmasking process works, why it's essential to understanding intelligence, to turn this into some sort of a conspiracy in an effort to support the president's political narrative and for the Justice Department to pick that up and pursue an investigation on absolutely no grounds, it's disgusting.

[13:20:23]

It's just absolutely horrible.

KEILAR: And what does it mean the attorney general's office not releasing the results of this investigation publicly? What does that tell you?

MCCABE: Well, you know, you can, I think, very easily assume that we aren't getting a report here, because if they wrote a report about what they didn't find, that report would not support the president's narrative. The president wants the country to believe that the Obama administration and intelligence officials and deep staters were engaged in some sort of illicit spying on him and his campaign and his administration. That never happened. And so to write a report saying, we found no evidence of the crazy things that the president has been saying for years would be, I'm sure, not very well received by this president. So, instead they slink away into the night. The U.S. attorney who was responsible for the investigation has left the Justice Department and we hear nothing officially.

KEILAR: Where is Bill Barr in all of this? I mean, we don't -- obviously, there's no report here. We don't see him, I guess, understandably putting his face publicly on this but we also haven't seen him in the issue of these domestic terrorist plots that have been thwarted. Where is he right now?

MCCABE: You know, that is a real mystery. With respect to the terrorist plot, I can tell you from years of experience, not just working and overseeing and running investigations of plots like that but also years of experience briefing multiple attorneys general on these sorts of counterterrorist operations.

This is the exact sort of case the attorney general would be briefed about through the -- across the entire investigation. This one will remember, started on June 6th. So this issue has been around for a long time in DOJ and the FBI. There is no doubt that the attorney general is fully aware of it.

How he wasn't present for the takedown and on stage with his U.S. attorneys is really very strange. That's not something I've seen before.

I think it's probably more understandable that he's not out trumpeting the complete failure of the unmasking investigation because I would suspect it's not something he wants to associate himself with especially when the president seems to be already frustrated with him for other reasons.

KEILAR: All right. Andrew McCabe, thank you so much.

MCCABE: Thanks, Brianna.

KEILAR: It is a big story that is unfolding three weeks before Election Day, early voters standing in huge lines. We're going to take you there.

Plus, after Florida's football coach said he wanted to see 90,000 fans in the stands, a cluster breaks out on his team.

And under way now, the second round of questions to the president's Supreme Court nominee, but it's the questions that she is not answering that are making headlines.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:25:00]

KEILAR: Up to eight hours of standing and waiting, that is what some Georgia voters are enduring in order to cast their ballots early. And they are far from alone. There are thousands of folks across the nation encountering these long lines as voters are coming out in droves. They are setting records, doubling, even tripling in some states the early voting numbers seen in 2016.

CNN's Amara Walker is in Georgia watching all of this for us. I mean, eight hours to vote, Amara, that is a considerably long line.

AMARA WALKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's wild, isn't it? So that eight-hour wait time was up in Gwinnett County about a half hour north of here in Fulton County, an early voting site, and that was happening on Monday.

On Tuesday, the wait times are down to six hours. And now, from what I saw, the line and the wait time there in Gwinnett County is two hours.

Here at Fulton County at this particular polling site this morning, people are lining up starting at 6:00 in the morning. The wait time was about three hours. Now, it's down to about 45 minutes.

Part of the reason why we've been seeing such long lines around the state, Brianna, is that many polling site are still having problems related to the electronic poll pads. That's basically the electronic check-in system, where it verifies the voter's registration and then generates an I.D. card for the voter to go ahead and then vote on the touch screen machines.

The Georgia the secretary of state today said in a news conference, yes, this is a statewide issue that we're seeing, that we're seeing these slowdowns in the system because there's just not enough bandwidth. All of these polling sites are logging onto the digital record data system for the state at the same time.

In fact, in Gwinnett County, just north of here, a spokesperson there told me that, yesterday, this system crashed for about a half hour.

[13:30:04]