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Average Daily U.S. Infections More Than 50,000, 700 Deaths a Day; Trump, Biden to Appear in Competing Town Halls; Obama Takes Aim at Trump Ahead of Campaign Blitz for Biden; NYT: Eight Million Americans have Slipped into Poverty Since May; Source: AstraZeneca Took 1 Month to Get Vaccine Safety Data to FDA. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired October 15, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:26]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Very good Thursday morning to you, I'm Jim Sciutto.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Poppy Harlow.

Day four of confirmation hearings for the president's pick for the Supreme Court, Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Those are today and today Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are expected to push for a vote to approve her nomination that would then send it to the full Senate. Democrats will likely take up, though, this procedural move that they can make to delay the vote until next week. We will bring you those developments as they happen.

Also this morning we are seeing increasing evidence that the U.S. is heading in the wrong direction in the fight against coronavirus. Dr. Fauci is warning against those pushing to lift restrictions in a move toward herd immunity. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: If you just let things rip and let the infection go, no masks, crowd, it doesn't make any difference. That, quite frankly, George, is ridiculous because what that will do is that there will be so many people in the community that you can't shelter, that you can't protect, who are going to get sick and get serious consequences.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: And despite the CDC warnings of even small gatherings, things like our Thanksgiving dinners, the president is holding massive rallies with few in attendance wearing masks. Another one planned for just hours from now.

Later tonight no debate but there will be dueling town halls, the president and Joe Biden set to take questions, make their case to voters as we close in on election day.

First let's get to CNN's Adrienne Broaddus. She is in Wisconsin for more on the rising number of new infections there and also sadly across most states around the country.

Adrienne, you know, I feel like we talk to you every day on this kind of thing. We'd like to report better news, but the facts are as they are.

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jim and Poppy, you're right. The facts are what they are. But here's the deal, behind those new numbers we're talking about people and their families, people who are hurting and suffering. For the first time here in Wisconsin reports of more than 1,000 hospitalizations.

The state's positivity -- COVID-19 positivity rate is at 22 percent. ICUs are strained. And every region in this state has at least one hospital, in some cases more, reporting current or imminent staff shortages.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROADDUS (voice-over): This morning the United States is facing a dangerous coronavirus wave. New cases are on the rise in at least 35 states over the past week and the country is averaging more than 50,000 new cases per day for the first time in about two months, recording nearly 60,000 new cases on Wednesday, the highest since August.

With holidays like Thanksgiving just weeks away, Dr. Anthony Fauci encouraging Americans to rethink travel plans.

FAUCI: That is a risk. You may have to bite the bullet and sacrifice that social gathering unless you are pretty certain that the people that you're dealing with are not infected.

BROADDUS: As Iowa reached a positivity rate over 18 percent, President Trump held a rally in Des Moines with few masks in the crowd and no social distancing. Trump is also scheduled to hold an event in Wisconsin Saturday as the state experiences a coronavirus surge, reporting more than 3100 new infections Wednesday.

A circuit judge temporarily blocking Governor Tony Evers' efforts to restrict public gatherings to 25 percent.

GOV. TONY EVERS (D-WI): Just because some folks out there want to see full bars and full hospitals, doesn't mean we have to listen. The longer it takes for folks to take this virus seriously, the longer it will take to get our economy and our communities back.

BROADDUS: Fauci says holding large gatherings like the president's campaign rallies are dangerous.

FAUCI: When people are close to each other and you don't have virtually everyone wearing a mask, that is a risky situation that could very well lead to the kind of spreader events that we have seen in similar settings.

BROADDUS: Meanwhile, the virus sidelining the University of Florida football program after at least 21 players tested positive. And Alabama football coach Nick Saban is now self-isolating at home after a positive COVID test.

NICK SABAN, HEAD COACH, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA FOOTBALL: This was routine every day. We test our players every day, I get tested every day. I feel fine. I felt fine. I was very surprised, you know, by this.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[09:05:04]

BROADDUS: As we look to the future perhaps we'll end here on a high note. Dr. Anthony Fauci said a safe and widely effective COVID-19 vaccine may be available by April 2021. A year after the start of the pandemic.

Back to you guys.

HARLOW: Adrienne, thank you. Sobering headlines for sure.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Still a few months to go for that -- for that vaccine. Well, today the president's campaign blitz takes him to North Carolina, another swing state, for a rally before he heads to Miami for his town hall tonight. The president and Joe Biden will face off, kind of, in separate dueling simultaneously scheduled town halls tonight during what would have been their second face-to-face presidential debate.

HARLOW: Let's go to our John Harwood, he's following the latest for us.

Good morning to you, John. I mean, it's too bad that they're at the same time because not everyone is going to DVR and watch them all and that's just unfortunate. However, I wonder if the president may be more likely to actually answer questions from voters than he was from Chris Wallace.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I think no doubt, Poppy. I think we're not going to see the truculent Trump that we saw in the first debate with Joe Biden when he was constantly interrupting and hectoring.

You can't do that in a town hall setting. It is unfortunate that they are both going to be at the same time and more people are likely to tune into the president because the president has better drawing power, but that's probably fine with Joe Biden.

Joe Biden is ahead substantially. He's going to have his with ABC in Philadelphia. Stakes are much lower for him. He tends to do well at connecting and projecting empathy and that's what the town hall format underscores. For President Trump stakes are much higher. He's significantly behind

in every state that he's going to be in today, North Carolina as well as Florida, and the state that Joe Biden is going to be in. And the topic that's going to be front and center is what caused the cancellation of that debate that we were going to see tonight, the town hall debate, and that is the fact that the president himself caught coronavirus, many members of his staff have caught coronavirus.

He will have that rally in North Carolina where as in other states he is appearing without a mask and there is no social distancing, no masks or few masks in his crowd. All those things are relevant to the spread of the virus. The issue of herd immunity, which he has talked about, his aides have talked about, Anthony Fauci said is nonsense, and also the economic ramifications of that that we heard from Christine Romans earlier. That is, 898,000 new weekly jobless claims.

The spread of the coronavirus is slowing the economic recovery. We've had 30 consecutive weeks of unemployment claims higher than in any week -- any single week before the pandemic and so the president is going to be on the defensive. We'll see how he can perform tonight.

SCIUTTO: John Harwood, thanks very much.

Let's speak about all this, the pig picture, with Dr. Peter Hotez, professor and dean of tropical medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine.

Dr. Hotez, always good to have you on in the morning. You know, so we're going to see this again, right? A Trump rally in a state as it happens today, Iowa, that's seeing an alarming spike in cases here, 18 percent positivity rate right now. That's well above the safe margins. What does that mean to the overall national response to this as we're seeing cases tick up in really most states. I mean, as of yesterday it was really all of the states.

What does it mean? You know, does it mean we're not going to be able to get a handle on this, right, as a country when you see the president setting an example like this?

DR. PETER HOTEZ, DEAN, NATIONAL SCHOOL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Well, that's right, Jim. I think you've hit on it. We're now about to exceed 60,000 new cases a day, so we're looking at a doubling of new cases a day over just the last few weeks.

And this is a very ominous sign. I think we're in for a pretty bad fall and winter and some estimates suggest this could be the worst yet so that we could double the number of deaths between now and the time of the inauguration or a week after the inauguration. So 400,000 deaths.

So this is a time when Americans need to be reflective. And I understand people are scared and upset, and that's a normal reaction. And so we can have a whole separate conversation on what to do about the country's mental health and how we prepare for that, but this is not a time for rallies. This is not a time for bringing -- crowding a lot of people together, especially speaking loudly and cheering, which is releasing virus.

This is the time when we could be entering one of the worst periods of our epidemic and one of the worst periods in modern American public health. I'm very worried for the nation.

HARLOW: You bring up mental health and I'm so glad you did because if this is worse than it was at the outset, well, guess what else is worse, the unemployment. Unemployment so many millions of more people, Doctor, out of work, people are sick of staying at home, there's no stimulus deal yet, and so there's no more aid for folks right now.

I mean, that just seems like that is going to exacerbate this health and mental health crisis so much more this winter.

HOTEZ: Yes. Absolutely. Remember people are scared and remember we're not hearing any comforting words from the White House or the executive branch of the federal government. There is still no national plan to control COVID-19. There never was. It was always about having the states in the lead with the responsibility of the U.S. government to provide manufacturing support and that will not be adequate.

So this could be a very troubling time for the country and this is why I've been recommending now, you know, start thinking ahead in November, December, January, who are the group of people that you want to social distance with? If you can avoid it, try not to be alone through this or at least have numbers to call, friends to call, have mental health counseling available even if you decide not to use it now, realize you might need it.

I think this is the time when we need to build in belts and suspenders and recognize that if you're going to get upset and depressed, this is a normal reaction to a very tough situation and especially since we're being largely abandoned by the federal government.

SCIUTTO: Dr. Hotez, can you help me understand the scientific answer to this question because you hear it a bit, you've heard it from the president make the case that in terms of deaths per population, the U.S. is not doing so badly when compared with, say, Europe, although Asian countries certainly well ahead of both Europe and the U.S.? Is that a correct comparison to make?

HOTEZ: No, I mean, you can look at the -- for instance, if you go to the Johns Hopkins dashboard, they have a very nice -- in a troubling way, but a very accurate portrayal of the death rates from COVID-19 by country and we are pretty up there, unfortunately, and remember also that death rates vary potentially by season. There is a few papers out showing that the death rate is higher during the colder months than the warmer months.

And we're not entirely certain why, whether there are more virus around but -- so that it potentially not only could we be seeing an increase in the number of new cases but potentially an increase in mortality rates. I hope we don't reach the situation like we did in March and April and that terrible time in New York City and multiple cities in the country, but that is a possibility.

HARLOW: I hope so, too, having lived through that here in New York.

Dr. Hotez, thanks very much.

HOTEZ: Let me just say one thing.

HARLOW: Yes. Sure.

HOTEZ: The good news is this will get better. You know, this is not a time to despair either. By this time next year and probably a little earlier we'll have vaccines and we will be in a better position. So it's a matter of getting through these next few months.

HARLOW: Good.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Good words. Thank you, Doctor.

Well, the former president, President Obama, set to hit key battleground states campaigning for Joe Biden as we close in on election day. This as he takes on the president in a new podcast. You'll hear from him next.

Also this morning we're learning about -- more about AstraZeneca's vaccine trial that has now been on hold in the U.S. for more than a month. We're going to tell you why.

SCIUTTO: Plus long lines, really long lines, not keeping record numbers of early voters from casting ballots in Texas and other states as well. What's fueling this surge and who in particular is coming out? Which party has the advantage here?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

SCIUTTO: Well, President Obama is set to hit key battleground states for his former Vice President Joe Biden. But we are seeing a preview of some of his attacks on President Trump already. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Central foundation stones of a democracy is the idea that you do not -- you do not allow the politicization of the criminal justice system, the intelligence system, the military, right? That is stuff that you keep out of politics --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right --

OBAMA: Because it's too dangerous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Let's bring in Ron Brownstein, senior editor for "The Atlantic", and Molly Ball; national political correspondent for "Time". Good morning, guys, I feel like I used to see your face every day, and I'm so glad you are back with us. Let me --

RON BROWNSTEIN, SENIOR EDITOR, THE ATLANTIC: It's good to be here --

HARLOW: Let me -- it's good to have you guys. If I could start with you, Ron, actually, about like this incredibly troubling piece on the economy in the "New York Times" this morning, and as this relates to the rest of this race, right?

And I'm sure you saw it and it lays out the research from Columbia University and Notre Dame, pointing out 8 million Americans have slipped into poverty since May, and yet you have Congress fighting and bickering, not reaching a stimulus deal, and Karl Rove writes in the "Wall Street Journal" this morning, "the president must close on his strength, the economy, which is where people trust him", right? Is that right?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes --

HARLOW: Is that the right assessment? And then, is anything going to be done for these folks in the weeks ahead of the election?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, there are two questions. I mean, first -- yes, I mean, in polling, the economy has been Trump's one remaining strength over Biden. And you know, you can go back to the Democratic convention and say they chose to focus on the personal qualities of Biden, and as a good man and contrasting it with Trump rather than driving a clear economic message.

And a lot of things they have done well in this campaign, that's probably the biggest blind spot. They have not driven a strong economic message, but the fact that Republican senators are not making a deal --

HARLOW: Well, neither is Pelosi.

[09:20:00]

Neither is Pelosi --

BROWNSTEIN: Well, but I think -- but I think that, you know, the fact that McConnell and it is reporting to the White House how reluctant his caucus is, I think is a pretty ominous sign about what they think Trump's chances are, and what they think their own chances are, and they simply don't want to put in place something that might help a Joe Biden presidency.

SCIUTTO: Molly Ball, early voting has been off the charts this cycle. "Washington Post" reports in total 15 million Americans have already cast their ballots. You look at a state like Georgia, it's already 50 percent up on where we were at this point in the 2016 cycle. According to the "Washington Post" analysis in the crucial swing states that do provide a partisan break down of who is voting early, Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one.

I wonder if it's possible that the president's attacks on mail-in voting sort of is burning him here to some degree, right? And that you have many Democrats coming out and saying, hey, I want my vote counted, I'm going to go wait in line and I'm going to go early.

MOLLY BALL, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, TIME: Yes, I mean, I think anecdotally that's certainly something that I have heard from a lot of voters that because of both the president's attacks and the controversy surrounding the Postal Service, that convinced a lot of voters that in order to make sure their vote gets counted, they should vote in person, but go early to make sure that they get it done, that they don't forget or run out of time.

But we do see tremendous grassroots enthusiasm really on both sides surrounding this election. The major worry for Democrats is of course they're happy to see these numbers, but they're very nervous to, A, keep it going and, B, make sure that those are not just people who would have otherwise voted on election day, that they're turning out --

SCIUTTO: Right --

BALL: All their voters from start to finish.

HARLOW: Ron, you write so much and so well about the suburbs and how critical they are in every election, pretty especially this election. You literally -- you actually heard the president begging suburban --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

HARLOW: Women, begging to vote for him. He knows their importance. At the same time as we saw in the September data, four times as many women, Ron, have dropped out of the workforce in a month, in the month of September than men, four times, over 800,000 women and a lot of this is because of COVID, lack of child care, et cetera. My question to you is have either candidate -- they all want the suburban women, but I don't see major policies and them highlighting here is our plan for all these women who are being so adversely affected.

BROWNSTEIN: Great question. I mean, first, President Trump is heading for the largest deficit ever among college-educated white women, and for that matter, college-educated white voters overall who simply look at, you know, the way this is unfolding, kind of the chaos, the vitriol and do not see themselves anymore in that coalition symbolized by Cindy McCain endorsing Joe Biden.

The bigger question -- kind of the other -- you know, the unresolved question is what happens to more blue-collar white women, Hispanic and African-American women numbers are going to be off the charts for Biden even as the men may underperform for him.

But the blue-collar white women, you know, they're still varying in the polls, they were critical to Trump's winning last time particularly in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the states that decided the election. There is some evidence that he is eroding with them, and I think it is largely because they have concluded that they will remain economically vulnerable so long as the coronavirus is out of control, and also as in 2018, health care is proving a very powerful issue for Democrats with those women, and that is front and center with Amy Coney Barrett. HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Molly, before we go, the president's blitz strategy, right? Running up in the final days of the election appears to be a rally strategy, right? Going out, appealing to the base, get the base out there as much as possible as opposed to expanding, right? Going more after middle of the road voters or voters still on the fence. Do Republican strategists, do Republican lawmakers think that's the right approach?

BALL: Sure, the answer is not necessarily. Going back to Ron's point, you know, for a lot of these particularly college-educated suburban women who have been turned off by the president, it's primarily his behavior that alienates him.

SCIUTTO: Yes --

BALL: So, you have the president going back to the tricks that he believed worked for him in 2016, where he was able to drive a message that Hillary Clinton did not have the, quote-unquote, "stamina", and that she was not as active on the trail. The question is, does that help or hurt him this time around? It may be that the very tactics that he believes buoyed him to victory four years ago are this time actually not an advantage and potentially even harming his chances.

SCIUTTO: Yes, well, listen, we're going to know, right? Nineteen days to go, Ron Brownstein, Molly Ball, thanks to both of you. I know we'll probably talk about this again.

HARLOW: Thanks, guys --

SCIUTTO: Coming up still this hour, new details about why a phase three coronavirus vaccine trial has not yet restarted in the U.S., that from AstraZeneca more than a month after it was paused.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:25:00]

HARLOW: Well, we're learning new details about why AstraZeneca's vaccine trial has not resumed here in the United States.

SCIUTTO: Sure --

HARLOW: Remember, it's been more than a month now since it was halted because of a participant becoming ill.

SCIUTTO: Yes, and a source tells CNN that the FDA had to wait weeks for critical safety data from AstraZeneca over this. Let's bring in CNN's Elizabeth Cohen for more. So, that delay concerning. What took so long and do we know any more details about what caused concern about this person's symptoms?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know what, Jim, there is so many -- there are so many questions here. There's so many things that are not clear. Let's first go through the sequence of events. So this AstraZeneca trial started on August 31st, a big phase three trial with tens of thousands of participants. On September 9th, so really quite soon afterwards, this pause was announced, the company announced it.