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Coronavirus Cases Surge as the U.S. Closes in on Critical Election; Trump Mocks Biden for Believing the Scientists; Michigan Governor Slams "Lock Her Up" Chant at Trump Rally; Videos, Photos and Texts Reveal Details of Plot to Kidnap Michigan Governor Whitmer; Coronavirus Hospitalizations Surging in Wisconsin and Utah. Aired 9- 9:30a ET

Aired October 19, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:02]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good Monday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

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

Fifteen days before the election, and the nation is in crisis. New coronavirus cases are surging in at least 27 states. The country is now averaging more than 50,000 new cases every single day, and one of the nation's top experts on this says brace yourself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: When you actually look at the time period for that, the next six to 12 weeks are going to be the darkest of the entire pandemic. What we have right now is a major problem in messaging. You know, people don't know what to believe, and that's one of our huge challenges with going forward is we've got to get the message to the public that reflects the science and reflects reality.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Reflects reality. Case in point, the president is set to hold two rallies today despite those rise in cases and warnings to stay away from large groups just like this. Twitter has even removed a tweet from the president's COVID-19 adviser, Scott Atlas, which undermined masks. Twitter's decision welcomed by key members of the White House's own task force. That is the contradiction we have right now between what we know and bizarre claims out there.

Let's start with the state of cases here in the U.S. CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now.

Elizabeth, you know, we watched that map and I suppose this is what experts have been warning about for months that as we come into the fall, particularly as people get exhausted with coronavirus restrictions, we might see a rise like this. ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: All right, Jim, I

think we're seeing two things. One as you mentioned exhaustion with the restrictions. It's hard to keep this up month after month. Also the weather is getting colder. Before maybe you could go outside and have a picnic with your friends socially distanced. But now it's hard to have that picnic or that barbecue. It's just getting too cold. People head inside and that means the virus can spread more easily.

Let's take a look at a map that we have that shows that the cases are rising or heading back in the direction to the peak that we had last summer. That is the wrong direction. That's not the direction we want to be heading in. And while all of this is happening, the president of the United States is making fun of people who wear masks. And last night Dr. Jonathan LaPook on CBS, he asked Dr. Anthony Fauci about this. Dr. Anthony Fauci, he asked him, what do you think about what the president has had to say about masks?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JONATHAN LAPOOK, CBS HOST, "60 MINUTES": He hasn't worn masks consistently.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Yes, but --

LAPOOK: He's pushed back against what you said.

FAUCI: See, I think that's less an anti-science that is more a statement.

LAPOOK: What kind of a statement?

FAUCI: You know, a statement of strength, like we're strong, we don't need a mask, that kind of thing. He sometimes equates wearing a mask with weakness.

LAPOOK: Does that make sense to you?

FAUCI: No, it doesn't. Of course not.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: And of course wearing a mask being associated with weakness is ridiculous. Masks are what protect people, good, strong people want to protect other people. They want to wear masks. So that whole association with weakness I think Dr. Fauci is right, and it is quite ridiculous.

Also Dr. Scott Atlas, an adviser to the president, Twitter had to remove a tweet that he made saying people shouldn't wear masks -- Jim, Poppy.

HARLOW: That's a big deal because he's a member of the task force and someone the president repeatedly, you know, cites in interviews, even though this is not his area of expertise.

Before you go, you've got new important reporting on Johnson & Johnson and their vaccine trial that was paused. What do you know?

COHEN: Well, the trial was paused exactly a week ago. And we asked Johnson & Johnson two very basic questions. We asked them, is this the first pause for your trial? And we asked them, a participant who became ill, that illness is what prompted the pause. The participant who became ill, did they get the placebo or the vaccine? And Johnson & Johnson, the spokesman, would not answer those questions.

And we're hearing from public health experts, that's a problem that when questions don't get answered, that makes Americans suspicious about vaccines and we want Americans to roll up their sleeves and get the vaccine. The more suspicious they are the more they will hesitate to get the vaccine -- Poppy, Jim.

HARLOW: Thank you, Elizabeth, important reporting. As always, we appreciate it.

So as this virus continues to spread, the president is still holding these rallies. Two more rallies in Arizona today, in fact.

SCIUTTO: Exactly the kind of events, crowds, not a lot of social distancing or masking, that health experts say are dangerous.

CNN White House correspondent John Harwood join us now.

President Trump, listen, he's doubling, tripling, quintupling down, I don't know where we are right now, on this attack on the facts and the science, and now mocking Joe Biden by saying he will, quote, "listen to the scientists." Well, what is the strategy here for the president?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Jim, at this point, the dangerous rallies that the president is having is the -- serving the same function as the dangerous advice he's getting from Dr. Scott Atlas, and that is to say at a time when most Americans are rejecting President Trump's performance as president, they're rejecting his handling of the coronavirus, they provide a pocket of minority view that comforts the president, makes him feel good about having given up on the fight against the coronavirus.

[09:05:16]

He has gone so far away from reason and rationality that's he's actually mocking Joe Biden for listening to the genuine experts on this pandemic.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He's going to lock down. He's going to want to us lock down. He'll listen to the scientists. If I listened totally to the scientists, we would right now have a country that would be in a massive depression.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARWOOD: Now of course that's false on a couple of levels. Joe Biden has said he would only move to lock down if the scientists recommend it. Secondly, it is understood by all in public health that if you can get control of the pandemic, that's how you have a sustainable recovery. Look at what's happening in China, which is going to have a growing economy this year.

That's very hard for the United States to get a handle on the virus, as long as Trump's dividing the country. Joe Biden says he's going to bring the country together.

HARLOW: Right, and the question is, how do you do that? If he wins, how do you bring Republicans who didn't support him into the fold for a unified strategy here?

Before you go, what is his message on the trail today?

HARWOOD: Joe Biden's message on the trail is we're going to end this divide that has caused, as Elizabeth was just saying, a significant chunk of the country to think that mask wearing is a sign of weakness, and get every -- try to get everyone on the same page. Not going to be easy, but that's Joe Biden's goal.

HARLOW: Thanks, John, reporting for us from the White House this morning.

Let's bring in Dr. Chris Pernell. She is a physician at Newark University Hospital. She's also a volunteer in Moderna's phase three vaccine trial. And Dr. Peter Hotez, professor and dean of tropical medical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

Good morning to you both. Dr. Parnell, let me begin with you because not only are you in the final stages of this vaccine trial, your family members have had this. I mean, I just -- it's heartbreaking what your father went through, and Dr. Atlas, who is on the president's task force tweeting over the weekend that masks don't work. I mean, it's so untrue that Twitter had to take it down.

DR. CHRIS T. PERNELL, VOLUNTEER FOR CLINICAL TRIAL FOR COVID VACCINE: Poppy, that anti-science behavior is detrimental to this nation, and I stand by the statement that the public health is really a threat. The White House, this president, this administration has threatened public health.

I was just speaking with a high school classmate the other day who lost her husband, who was also a police officer in Glenridge, New Jersey, to COVID-19. So when we continually pose winners versus losers, we're only further deepening the skepticism, we're only further deepening the suspicion and we need to stop that.

SCIUTTO: Dr. Hotez, let's look ahead here if we can, 15 days after the election, either you have a second Trump term or you have a President Biden. If you sat down with either one of them to recommend what is necessary to get this growing outbreak under control, what would that be? Would it be a national lockdown, more targeted lockdowns in areas where you have severe outbreaks? What exactly would be on your to-do list for the new president or a second Trump term?

DR. PETER HOTEZ, DEAN, NATIONAL SCHOOL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Well, look, Jim, you know, the first thing I would do is explain to either president or president-elect where we're at nationally. We are seeing now a steep acceleration where yesterday I believe we were over 70,000 new cases a day. It goes up and down on a daily basis, but when you look at the seven-day trends, it's quite ominous. We are -- we'll be easily by 70,000 new cases per day by the end of the week, and who knows where it goes from there.

If you look at some of the models of the Institute for Health Metrics or some of the Philadelphia models, in some cases they look almost apocalyptic in terms of numbers of new cases per day and deaths. So we are headed into a very scary place indeed, one of the worst parts of the epidemic as Dr. Osterholm said earlier. So the question is now, what should we be doing? I think, one, getting Americans ready.

There is good news. We will have vaccines by the middle of next year or the third quarter of next year. I'm pretty confident of that. We're developing a vaccine as well so we're not asking for Americans to do this forever, but at least get ready for the next few months, and if things go as bad as some of the models suggest, yes, it's possible in some parts of the country, we will have to do aggressive social distancing measures.

I would not take that off the table, and remind the president when he says, you know, when he mocks Joe Biden for listening to the scientists.

[09:10:00]

If the president had listened to the scientists this year, we could have averted most of those 200,000 American deaths, deaths of Americans who perished during this epidemic, and averted public health catastrophe, which is now declining further into homeland security threat, because people are so scared and upset. So this is going to be a tough winter, and I've been talking to a lot of Americans about looking for some mental health counseling this winter as well, and think about who you're going to social distance, try to avoid living alone if you can. This is going to be a tough time for us.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: To your point about the president, let's play for our viewers what Dr. Fauci said last night on "60 Minutes" when he was asked essentially, are you surprised, the president contracted COVID?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAPOOK: Were you surprised that President Trump got sick?

FAUCI: Absolutely not. I was worried that he was going to get sick when I saw him in a completely precarious situation of crowded, no separation between people, and almost nobody wearing a mask. When I saw that on TV, I said, oh, my goodness. Nothing good can come out of that. That's got to be a problem. And then sure enough, it turned out to be a super spreader event.

(END VIDEO CLIP) HARLOW: Dr. Pernell, the thing is after, you know, Governor Christie contracted COVID he had an awakening, right, and he said I should be wearing masks, I made a big mistake. We haven't heard that sort of awakening from the president. What do you think the public health consequences are of that?

PERNELL: Those consequences are devastating. I've said this before and I'll continue to say it. It will take some time for us to restore faith in our public institution, some time to restore faith in our public health infrastructure. And that's just deadly and concerning. Right now coronavirus is tracking to be the third leading cause of death in 2020, and if we had followed the science, if we had leaders who exemplify smart leadership and that truth prevailed, we wouldn't be in the predicament that we're in now.

So whatever we can do as a public health community to beat back the false notions and the false narratives, it's imperative that we do it.

SCIUTTO: And it's going to take the American people, right, listening to those facts, reading those facts, not get snowed by all the disinformation out there.

Dr. Chris Pernell, Dr. Peter Hotez, thanks to both of you.

Still to come this hour, at the same time that the president is revving up crowds to chant, "lock her up," disturbing new video, evidence appears to show field training exercises in the alleged plot to kidnap Michigan's governor. It's alarming stuff, that video, next.

HARLOW: And it's a race against the clock as millions of Americans are waiting for economic aid. Speaker Pelosi this weekend giving the White House a 48-hour deadline to make a deal on stimulus funding before the election. Will she make a deal and will it happen by tomorrow?

Also 27 million early voters already cast their ballots. We'll head to the polls.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

SCIUTTO: Well, President Trump is amplifying his attacks on the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, just days after authorities foiled an alleged plot to kidnap her. Governor Whitmer and the president have clashed over her response to the pandemic.

HARLOW: Over the weekend, the president compared her to a prison warden, accused her of needlessly locking down the state. That led to crowds breaking out into chants of "lock her up!" It's similar to the language used by those --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

HARLOW: Accused in the kidnapping plot, and here is a response from Governor Whitmer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER (D-MI): It falls on deaf ears every time. They haven't done a darned thing. And in fact, ten days after a plot to kidnap, to put me on trial and then to murder me, ten days later, they're back in Michigan using the same rhetoric I've been asking them to turn the heat down. It is dangerous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Now, we're seeing new evidence in this alleged plot including what authorities say is video of field training exercises as well as encrypted messages laying out the scheme. Our Sara Sidner reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You are looking at evidence that was played in federal court of the field training exercises federal prosecutors say were carried out in a plot to storm Michigan's capitol and kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer. CNN affiliate "WXMI" obtained the video from the U.S. attorney's office after the preliminary hearings for six men federally charged with conspiracy to kidnap a sitting governor. Several pieces of federal evidence were played in court.

BRANDON CASERTA, SUSPECTED OF PLOTTING TO KIDNAP MICHIGAN GOVERNOR: I'm sick of being robbed and then enslaved by this state, period. I'm sick of it, and these are the guys who are actually doing it.

You know -- so, if you know -- if we're doing a recon or something and we come up on some of them, dude, you better not give them a chance. You either tell them to go right now or else they're going to die, period. That's what it's going to be, dude, because they are the -- enemy, period.

SIDNER: The suspects' alleged deeds and words were shown to the federal judge so she could decide if there was enough evidence to go to a grand jury. In this video, the lead FBI agent acknowledged in testimony that the defendant Adam Fox is inside a basement appearing to be speed reloading his weapon to quote, "minimize the time that your weapon is inoperable in case of a gun fight". Prosecutors say the video was taken inside this vacuum shop in Grand Rapids.

(on camera): The owner of this vacuum shop says Adam Fox lived here for the last couple of weeks. He says he lived behind this door and down into the basement.

[09:20:00]

BRIANT TITUS, STORE OWNER: Basement where he stayed.

SIDNER: OK --

TITUS: And he was only going to stay there to 1 November.

SIDNER: Why did you decide it was time for him to go? TITUS: He was buying more like attachments for like an AR-15 than he

was buying like food, and I'm not stupid. I was in the Marine Corps, so that -- I told him he had to go.

SIDNER (voice-over): Briant Titus says he had no idea what was going on in his business' basement after-hours. The FBI testified this is inside another defendant's basement where you can see an arsenal of weapons in a gun locker, including an illegal short-barrel rifle.

Beyond the videos, the FBI says they also infiltrated encrypted chats and text chains laying out the plot. In one encrypted chat, the suspects allegedly used code names and discussed killing Governor Whitmer, not just kidnapping her. The FBI identified the code name Beaker as suspect Daniel Harris who writes, "laying in bed, craziest idea, have one person go to her house, knock on the door, and when she answers just cap her. At this point, f it."

Someone with the code name Tex responds "lol, only if it would be that easy." Beaker replies, "I mean, f-ing catch her walking into a building and act like passers-by and fixing dome her, then yourself, whoever does it, why create a manhunt? Do it in broad daylight and then end it." Tex replies, "good point or recon the house and snipe her." The alleged plot was never carried out. The six men along with seven others were arrested in an October FBI raid. Six were charged federally, the rest charged by the state for acts of terror.

(on camera): We're now learning that an eighth suspect has been arrested in the state's case, bringing the total number of people allegedly involved in this plot to 14. Now, we did hear back from one of the defendant's attorneys.

The federal suspect Ty Garbin's attorney told us as soon as his client learned of this alleged plot, he disavowed it and withdrew from the plot, and he says he's innocent of all charges, and he goes about saying, all of the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Sara Sidner, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: The details of this plot truly alarming. Well, experts are warning about what they call lockdown fatigue, but put yourself in the shoes of a doctor treating the surges of new patients infected with COVID-19. We're going to speak to two -- in two major hot spots of the country.

HARLOW: We're also moments away from the opening bell this Monday morning on Wall Street. Futures are pointing higher. Investors keeping a close watch on stimulus talks, and if something happens or if they break down, house Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the weekend putting out a 48-hour deadline to reach a stimulus deal. Will she agree to the $1.8 trillion offer from the White House? We'll have a live update next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:25:00] HARLOW: Welcome back. So, the time to get additional stimulus aid to millions of Americans that are struggling before election day is apparently running out. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is saying 24 more hours to cut a deal. Over the weekend, she announced a 48-hour deadline, this as Senate Republicans prepare to vote again on a plan that Democrats have flat out rejected. Let's go to Capitol Hill Lauren Fox is there.

Lauren, good morning. The speaker is going to talk to the White House as I understand it in a few hours. I know that she's had a big issue with the language changes from the White House on testing. But what are -- I mean, is the bigger sticking point, the top line number here or does she sound like she's going to agree to $1.8 trillion?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Well, the biggest sticking point, Poppy, is really what we've been talking about all Summer long. I mean, there are a myriad of them. There's not just one anymore, and I think one thing to remember is this testing language is a perfect example of just how tough it is to come to some kind of an agreement over the next 24 to 36 hours.

Remember, Pelosi essentially thought that they had some kind of deal in terms of the testing language, and that there were just a few small changes that the White House wanted. But then they got that language back over the weekend, she argued that language and the changes made to it were much more substantial and would have an adverse effect especially on minority communities, and that's just one of the sticking points.

Other sticking points include top line number like you said, the other ones include things like unemployment insurance, something we've been talking about all Summer long. Child care credits, another issue that we've been talking about, state and local government funding. So these remain some key sticking points, and that's before we get to Republicans red line, liability insurance, something that Democrats have been fighting in these negotiations.

So while there is a deadline because that's what's going to be needed if they're going to get a deal before the election, Poppy, it's hard to imagine how you get even Pelosi and the White house on the same page. And that's before you introduce this to Senate Republicans who have been very clear, there is no interest in going above $1.8 trillion in a deal like this.

So that's where things remain, and yes, there is a deadline. There is a timeline at this point, but whether or not they can come to some kind of an agreement, even now that they have that time clock, it still remains to be seen, Poppy.

HARLOW: OK, let's hope they can for everyone out there. Lauren, thanks for the reporting. To Wisconsin, where cases of COVID are surging. It was --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

HARLOW: One of just ten states that reported their highest single-day case count on Friday.

SCIUTTO: And yet the president still holding a campaign rally there.