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Infections, Hospitalizations Rise Across Nation, the Virus is Winning; Biden's Town Hall Beats Trump's in T.V. Ratings; Vindman's Wife Speaks Out for First Time Since Impeachment Trial. Aired 1-1:30p ET
Aired October 16, 2020 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:03]
JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Thanks for morning us today. I hope to see you back here next week. And if you're up early on Sunday morning, we'll be here at 8:00 A.M. Eastern as well.
Brianna Keilar picks up our coverage right now. Have a good day.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Hi there. I'm Brianna Keilar. Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world.
The virus is now winning. That is a blunt warning from the governor of New Mexico where new cases of COVID-19 have surged 50 percent from a week ago. And New Mexico is one of 32 states that is showing an upward trend in infections. Just three are on the decline while 15 are holding steady.
On Thursday, the U.S. topped 60,000 new cases in a single day. This is actually the first time that's happened since mid-August. Nine states are reporting their highest single day of new infections, while seven posted record hospitalizations. Nationwide there were just other 37,000 hospitalizations.
And when it comes to shortening those hospital stays or preventing deaths from the virus, the only drug given emergency use authorization for treating COVID-19 is now showing some disappointing signs. According to a new study from the World Health Organization, the antiviral drug, remdesivir did not help patients live longer or get out of the hospital sooner.
Despite all of this, President Trump continues to paint a rosy outlook for the nation that is diverging from reality while he is spreading misinformation about the use of masks to prevent transmission of the virus.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: As far as the mask is concerned, I'm good with masks. I'm okay with masks. I tell people to wear masks. But just the other day, they came out with a statement that 85 percent of the people that wear masks catch it. So this is a very --
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, MSNBC HOST: They didn't say that. I know that study. That's --
TRUMP: That's what I heard and that's what I say.
And what we have done has been amazing, and we have done an amazing job, and it's rounding the corner, and we have the vaccines coming and we have the therapies coming.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Dr. Saju Matthew is joining us now to discuss this. He is a primary care physician who specializes in public health. And, Dr. Matthew, these are words coming from the president that matter, especially in the middle of a pandemic. And yet, he continues to downplay the threat while the numbers point to a difficult winter. Can you give us a sense of how you are seeing the months ahead of us here?
DR. SAJU MATTHEW, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Brianna, we are not where we need to be. In fact, I am disappointed that we are talking about how the cases are rising. Listen, what happens is the cases can go in this type of a fashion and then all of a sudden in a week it can go up linearly.
And we're seeing already 60,000 cases. This is the cold and flu season. And next, what happens is hospitalizations. We're already seeing hospitalization rates go up in a lot of cities and states where it's really cold.
In Georgia, for example, which is not considered to really be a state that that's cold when it comes to temperatures, we're at 89 percent, Brianna, already of hospital capacity. And after hospitalizations, unfortunately, follows deaths. So we are not doing well at all. In fact, we're doing much worse.
KEILAR: The former governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, who is a close ally of the president's, is now out of intensive care after he contracted the coronavirus apparently in connection to either his participation in debate prep or from his attendance at that White House ceremony that honored the Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett. There were multiple people at this event that were infected.
But let's listen to what Christie said happened afterward.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), FORMER GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY: Well, I know that there was no contact tracing done with me, George. My contact tracing was done by my local county board of health. They called me while I was in the hospital to contact trace and make sure they had all that information.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: I mean, what happens if you just don't contact trace a super- spreader event? Can you explain why this is so essential?
MATTHEW: We have been talking about contact tracing for such a long time, eight, nine months in the United States. Contact tracing is key because that's the only way that you can backtrack from the time that somebody develops symptoms or tested positive and contact everybody or at least as many people as you can that they have been in contact with.
And so to give you an example with like that Rose Garden party that happened in the White House, that was an ideal opportunity to show how effective contact tracing can be because the White House has the capabilities, they have the money to do it and they have the convenience to have done it correctly.
So it's disappointing that Mr. Christie did not get a call from the White House. If you skip a family, remember, one person can infect three people, and each one of those people can infect 60,000 people in a matter of weeks. So you can imagine how exponentially this can get out of hand.
KEILAR: It's huge. Dr. Saju Matthew, great to see you. Thank you so much.
[13:05:00]
MATTHEW: Thank you, Brianna.
KEILAR: The White House has refused to answer questions about when the president last tested negative for coronavirus before he tested positive. At issue is did he actually get tested before that first presidential debate.
At last night's presidential town hall, here is what he claimed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Before the debate, which I thought it was a very good debate and I felt fantastically, I was -- I had no problems before.
GUTHRIE: Did you test the day of the debate?
TRUMP: I don't know. I don't even remember.
GUTHRIE: Did you take a test on the day of the debate, I guess, is the bottom line.
TRUMP: I probably did.
GUTHRIE: And you don't know if you took a test the day of the debate?
TRUMP: Possibly, I did. Possibly, I didn't.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Now, the president has claimed that he has one of the greatest memories of all time. Perhaps you recall that. And, of course, his doctors would know when he tested, they would know if he was tested leading up to the debate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GUTHRIE: Did you take a test though on the day of the debate?
TRUMP: If you ask the doctor, they'll give you a perfect answer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Only if you think the perfect answer is not an answer, because reporters have pressed the doctors. They have pressed the president's physician, Dr. Sean Conley, on this. And his answer was far from perfect.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Do you remember when he had his last negative test?
DR. SEAN CONLEY, WHITE HOUSE PHYSICIAN: I don't want to go backwards.
REPORTER: When was his last negative test and what was his viral load?
CONLEY: Everyone wants that.
REPORTER: Why is there hesitancy to say when the last negative test was?
CONLEY: Again, HIPPA kind of precludes me from going into too much depth to things that I'm not in liberty or doesn't wish to be discussed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: He won't say.
As for next week's debate, former Vice President Joe Biden says he will demand that President Trump take a COVID test and receive negative results before he will share a stage with the president.
With me now is CNN Political Director David Chalian. And let's talk about these town halls, David. Let's start with the president's, and it was full. It was full of disinformation that NBC's Savannah Guthrie had to repeatedly interrupt.
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, there is no doubt about that. It was disinformation about coronavirus, of course, saying, we have rounded the corner. You just went through the numbers, Brianna. That clearly is not the case. But also this sort of touting the QAnon conspiracy theory that the president did where he said that he understood that they like to fight pedophilia but that he really doesn't know what it's about. Well, that doesn't really make sense either.
He went on to say, you see there, that he did indeed owe money to somebody the way that The New York Times reported it after digging into his tax returns. And he also, when pressed on health care, offered again no plan to replace Obamacare. Though he has promised that for four years now as a presidential candidate and as president, he has not offered a specific plan, and he didn't last night either.
KEILAR: Okay. Let's talk now about the other town hall, Vice President Biden's town hall. It was a lot different. It was a mellower scene over there on ABC, but he still got some tough questions. How were his answers though?
CHALIAN: He did. And it was a totally different universe. You are absolutely right about that. On vaccines, he had suggested making vaccines mandatory, that he would look at a way for sort of a national standard on that, if that was possible.
He did make some news and say that he was going to answer the question he's been dodging for weeks now about whether or not he supports the idea of court packing on the Supreme Court, changing the number of seats from 9 to a greater number to add more presumably Democratic- friendly justices to the court. He now says he's going to answer that question before the election because voters deserve to hear an answer.
Though I will note, we have already had between 10 percent and 15 percent of the overall expected electorate in this election cast their ballots. But he did say he's going to answer that question that he's been dodging. He talked about sort of scenarios of what it would mean for the country if indeed he lost the election.
And he was pressed on his authorship of the 1994 crime bill, criminal justice, race in America. He was pressed on some of those topics in a way that he had to grapple with the audience before him. But you're right, it was much more substantive, policy-focused and the former vice president stayed long after the town hall was off the air on ABC to take every participant's question there in the audience.
KEILAR: That's very interesting.
All right, David Chalian, great to see you. Thank you so much.
And there is a big question as the U.S. is getting deeper into this crisis. Where is the White House coronavirus task force? We're going to take a look at that.
Plus, disturbing new reporting that the president was warned, Rudy Giuliani was being targeted by Russian agents.
And I have an exclusive interview with the wife of retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who is flagging the president's phone call with Ukraine's president ultimately led to his impeachment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:10:00]
KEILAR: We are still very much in the middle of a pandemic, so where is the White House coronavirus task force? Gone are the briefings despite nearly 220,000 people in this country losing their lives, despite the fall wave that is surging in the country right now when the first one never even really subsided, when the president is delivering disinformation and lies about the virus, the president, the boss of those on the task force.
And it is not just briefings that have gone away. Behind the scenes, Dr. Fauci says they're hardly meeting at all.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We were meeting, you know, sometime seven days a week, then it won't down to five. We're down to about, I would say, a consistent one day a week.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[13:15:00]
KEILAR: This makes no sense that they have basically disappeared from the conversation because more than 800 Americans died yesterday alone, and the U.S. just topped 60,000 cases in a single day for the first time since August.
And when it comes to the individual members of the task force, they have either disappeared from public view or they have been sidelined by the white house. You will remember looking at this picture from March that Vice President Pence used to lead some of the briefings. So, where is he?
While defending the Trump administration's response during the V.P. debate, he took shots at the Obama administration's handling of the swine flu, the H1N1 virus, which killed 12,000 Americans. But he dodged questions about how almost 20 times as many people have died on his watch.
And then Dr. Birx, she out is on the road, she is talking to some local media outlets, but she hasn't been in the briefing room informing reporters and Americans about what's going on since July. CNN reported last month that she was frustrated with her role, that she was distressed with the direction of the task force.
Then Robert Redfield, the CDC director, his agency, now marred by political intervention from the White House, from the president, and we haven't seen much of him since this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, DIRECTOR, CDC: We have clear scientific evidence they work and they are our best defense. I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take the COVID vaccine.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Now, the president hours later, because that did not fit with his narrative, would say that Redfield was wrong in that assessment.
Vice Admiral Jerome Adams, the surgeon general, he rarely gives briefings. Last that we heard from him was during a trip to Hawaii over the COVID response there, when the state cited him for violating local orders when he took pictures at a park that had been closed.
Alex Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, also rarely gives briefings. We saw him recently at that apparent super-spreader event at the White House not wearing a mask.
And Stephen Hahn, the FDA commissioner, also rarely gives briefings, the president has accused his agency of playing politics by rebuking Trump's push for a rush on vaccines.
And, of course, there is Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been targeted by both the president and his campaign even as they use his words to indicate that Fauci thinks the president's coronavirus response has been good.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FAUCI: I think it's really unfortunate and really disappointing that they did that. It is so clear that I'm not a political person and I have never either directly or indirectly endorsed a political candidate. And to take it completely out of context statement and put it in, which is obviously a political campaign ad, I thought was really very disappointing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Now, Fauci has also said the White House determines which media outlets he is allowed to talk to. They are limiting his profile as he tries to warn people about a deadly virus, about which information is constantly changing as doctors learn more about it.
Not pictured in that March photo, a few notables. There is Ben Carson, the HUD secretary, also a doctor. He has rarely made public comments about the virus. The ones who are out in public often include Larry Kudlow, Director of the National Economic Council, who has said things like this over the course of the pandemic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LARRY KUDLOW, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: We have contained this. We have contained this. I won't say airtight, but pretty close to airtight.
There is no second wave coming. It's just, you know, hot spots. They send in CDC teams. We've got the testing procedures. We've got the diagnostics. We've got the PPE. And so I really think it's a pretty good situation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: No, Lawrence, it's not a pretty good situation, and it wasn't back in June when he said that.
The president's disinformation squad also has a member with a white coat, Dr. Scott Atlas, a radiologist, not an epidemiologist, who has pushed herd immunity in the past, despite denying so.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. SCOTT ATLAS, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS ADVISER: It's not just a lie. It's an overt lie. It is a disgusting lie.
TRUMP: You will develop like a herd mentality. You look at Scott Atlas. You look at some of the other doctors that are highly from Stanford, look at some of the other doctors, they think maybe we could have done that from the beginning.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: The White House coronavirus task force is missing in action. The White House clearly thinks that if they aren't out there talking about the virus, maybe it will look like the virus isn't so much of a thing anymore.
But while they can hide these officials from the media spotlight, they can't hide bodies. People are dying. This is far from over and Americans need information that they can trust from their government.
Just in, there are ratings for last night's town halls with the president and Joe Biden.
Plus, my exclusive interview with Alexander Vindman's wife, who is speaking out for the first time after their worlds have been turned upside down.
[13:20:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEILAR: Just in, the ratings from last night's dueling town halls, who did most Americans tune in to watch? Was it President Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden?
[13:25:01]
Here with the numbers is CNN Chief Media Correspondent and the Anchor of Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter.
Okay. We knew this was shaping up to be a ratings battle. So, the winner is who?
BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Hey, Brianna. Yes, these numbers are just in from the Neilsen Company. And they are really surprised. Everybody in T.V. business assumed that Donald Trump would prevail in this ratings race. The Trump campaign predicted that he would out rate Biden's town hall. But, in fact, the Biden town hall just on one channel, ABC, averaged about 14 million viewers last night.
The Trump town hall was on three different channels. So we'll break down the numbers you see on the screen there. Trump on NBC had about 10.6 million viewers. He was also on MSNBC, add a couple million viewers to that. And he was on CNBC. So, he was on three different channels. But all combined, Trump totaled 13 million viewers across those three different channels.
So, notably, Biden prevailing in this head-to-head ratings matchup, a matchup that Trump seemed to want, right, because there was this expectation that today, Trump will be able to brag about being the ratings champion, beating Biden when, in fact, it is the Biden campaign that came out ahead.
KEILAR: That is fascinating. All right, Brian, thank you so much for that, Brian Stelter.
In July of 2018, an army lieutenant colonel stationed at the White House was listening on a phone call in which President Trump threatened Ukraine's president withholding up U.S. military aid if Ukraine did not launch an investigation of Joe Biden, President Trump's political rival. That Army officer is Alexander Vindman, whose two decades of service garnered him a Purple Heart, a Ranger Tab and a Combat Infantryman badge and that prestigious post on the president's National Security Council.
Vindman flagged Trump's phone call to a White House lawyer. And to hear his wife tell the story, Vindman believed that flagging the phone call would lead to a course correction in the president's interactions with Ukraine. He had no idea that it would set a motion a whistleblower complaint that led to President Trump's impeachment.
I sat down with Rachel Vindman, retired Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman's wife, for her first interview about what her husband and their family have been through during these past two years that have just turned their lives upside down. And we began with a night in September of 2018 which was, it appeared, a regular night in the Vindman household.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KEILAR: Take us back to the moment that you realized your husband was embroiled in something very big.
RACHEL VINDMAN, WIFE OF LT. COL. ALEXANDER VINDMAN: I had been reading and he got in bed and he was like, so, here is a whistleblower complaint that's gone to Congress. And I was like, oh, yeah, I think I heard something about it but I haven't had a chance to read about it. And he said, well it was about a phone call to President Zelensky.
And I said, you heard the phone call. Was it okay? And he just kind of stopped there and dropped off and asked me to check on his personal liability insurance the next day. Then he promptly fell asleep. And I stayed awake all night.
KEILAR: Did you have a real sense of how big this could be?
VINDMAN: No, not a real sense of how big it could be. No, I don't think anyone did. Well, maybe some people, but not me. You know, I didn't have the ability to put it in context.
The following week, there was more information that came out. The more the president talked about it, the more I thought there was probably something to it, and then when the whistleblower complaint was made public.
So I guess my concern was that even if he wasn't involved, that he would somehow be a fall guy or something, you know, I just was concerned about him being any part of it.
KEILAR: Because what's clear at this point is that the whistleblower complaint is about a phone call --
VINDMAN: Right.
KEILAR: -- that your husband was listening to.
VINDMAN: Absolutely.
KEILAR: Were you nervous reading the complaint?
VINDMAN: Yes, absolutely.
KEILAR: Was he nervous?
VINDMAN: Maybe a little, but he doesn't really get nervous or ruffled. So I know he was ready to see it and to read it with the rest of America. But if I would say there is one moment in all of this, it was maybe reading that complaint that -- you know, I could tell he was serious. And he's not someone who takes things seriously that don't deserve to be taken seriously, and I felt that.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: The most damning testimony in the impeachment inquiry is expected to happen today, an active duty military officer currently working inside the White House. His name is Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman.
KEILAR: Was there ever a question of whether he would cooperate with the subpoena?
VINDMAN: Never. Never. He would say, it's the co-equal branch of government who subpoenaed him, and he would answer that subpoena.
KEILAR: You helped him write his personal statement. What was the objective to you in that statement that really introduced him to the country?
[13:30:02]
VINDMAN: I wanted to talk about his service, about what brought him here.
