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COVID Surges Two Weeks Away From November Election; Trump Campaign Ad: Biden "Has No Plan To Defeat The Coronavirus"; Trump Repeatedly Questioned How Effective Masks Are At Stopping COVID Spread; Poll: Biden Has Higher Favorability Compared To 2016 Clinton; Dr. Anthony Fauci: "Nightmare" Scenario I Worried About For Years Has Happened. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired October 20, 2020 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: As more and more people head inside to family gatherings as well, cold and the holidays. The president treks to Pennsylvania today, a big battleground key to his 2016 win. But a state which he currently right now is trailing and consistently so.

It is impossible to separate the campaign from the Coronavirus. Just look at the numbers. They show us a resurge in virus, virus voters picking the president whole will manage this pandemic response come January. Across the country, orange and red are bad, and you see right there a lot of orange and red.

31 states right now recording more cases this week compared to last week. 18 states treading water, meaning holding steady. Only one, Hawaii making measurable progress right now. Monday, 58,000 plus new infections. That is the worst Monday since July 20th. July 20th being at the peak of the summer surge the country added 400,000 infections to the case count in just the last week.

The daily average of cases nationwide now north of 58,000. And Monday, 16 states, you see them highlighted there, 16 states recording their highest daily average of new cases across this pandemic. The public health message crystal clear. The United States "Never got over the first wave" that according to the Director of the National Institutes of Health.

It's just not safe to have Thanksgiving as normal, the public health experts say. And we won't know until the end of November at the earliest if a Coronavirus vaccine will work or not. Yet, despite all that, despite the rising case count, despite rising positivity, the president's message, stay the course.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN KILMEADE, FOX NEWS HOST: What is the plan to live with it while steadily staying safe from it?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Well, we are living with it and we're having the vaccines coming out very soon. With or without the vaccines, we are rounding the turn. We will never shut down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Joining our conversation to start the hour, Margaret Talev from AXIOS and CNN's Dana Bash. Margaret, I want to start with you and I want to listen here to Francis Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health.

The president wants the Supreme Court nominee confirmed. He says, the president is elected for four full years. He is. It's an argument he can make. But there's a pandemic in the country right now. If the president was elected for four full years, listen to Dr. Collins, why isn't he doing his job?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS, DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: We have not met with the president in quite some time. I think the president primarily is getting his information from the vice president, from Dr. Atlas. There's not a direct connection between the task force members and the president as there was a few months ago, but this seems to be a different time with different priorities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: There's a pandemic in the country. You see the numbers on your screen. 8.2 million cases in the United States, 220,000 deaths and counting, and the president doesn't want to meet with the experts.

MARGARET TALEV, POLITICS AND WHITE HOUSE EDITOR, AXIOS: Yes. John, you're hearing the president in these closing arguments that he's making in these crucial battleground states, really rein into the idea that the scientists are wrong, he's right, that somehow if you listen to scientists, there would be more casualties or at least the economy would be a mess.

In particular, we've seen him focusing on Dr. Fauci who ironically is like the most trusted public health official in the country, so you might think why is the president doing that. But if you look at it more closely, you can see in polling over the last month or so that among Republicans in particular, there's really declining trust in Fauci, even though the rest of the country thinks he's still the person to listen to, the voice to be trusted.

And so, the president is as we know driving into his base. He is attempting to maximally turnout his base and to depress turnout of people who are either voting for Joe Biden or might be voting for Joe Biden. And that's where we are seeing this strategy address right now.

KING: Right. But it's just such an interesting moment, Dana, in that Tony Fauci does a CBS 60 minutes interview, since then the president has been taking the bait and answering questions about him. It's Trump versus Biden on the ballot, but listen to the president again yet today, it might as well be Trump versus Science.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: The only thing I say is he's a little bit sometimes not a team player. But, he is a Democrat and I think that he's just fine. It's a view, we have others. Scott Atlas is fantastic, but they go after him so much, he has a different view. By the way, everybody has a different view. Different views are everything.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure.

TRUMP: Doesn't mean they're wrong or they're bad people. But people have different views.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But to be clear Mr. President--

TRUMP: And ultimately, I make the decisions.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Of course.

TRUMP: And we've saved millions of lives by the decisions I've made.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: So Tony Fauci is a Democrat, Scott Atlas is fantastic. Tony Fauci is an Infectious Disease Expert, Scott Atlas is a Radiologist who says don't wear a mask.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENCE: An up is down and right is left. And we can continue this for the rest of the hour. Look, I have been talking to a lot of Republicans about this, because I frankly as a reporter have been trying to figure out is he being crazy like a fox here, he the president.

Is he trying to do something that he thinks will work? And a lot of times things that he does that seem completely farfetched at the time do have some grain, maybe like one little grain of benefit for him politically, because that's all we're talking about here, right, just the benefit for him politically.

[12:05:00]

BASH: I haven't found anybody who said the answer is yes. And yes, I've talked to people who are close to him, who know him, members of congress. And I have not found anybody who has said you know what, this is actually, here's the secret sauce and what you're not seeing here. No. One of the people who knows him well said remember the following about Donald Trump.

He has no impulse control and it is all about him. And when you saw that interview with 60 minutes with Fauci saying that he thought that the White House event was a super spreader and he covered his eyes, and he couldn't believe what he was seeing, that set the president off.

Having said that, John, there is a segment of the population that Margaret was talking about who tend to think that everybody in Washington, including Anthony Fauci, they don't get what they're going through. And the president is clearly trying to appeal to them much like he did in 2016 and get out that vote as much as possible.

KING: The question is, is it enough votes, Margaret? And one piece of evidence that suggest to me that the campaign knows this, maybe the president doesn't know this, but the campaign has for months.

And the president's remarks tried to shove the Coronavirus to the side, make it about something else, make it about the Democrats, make it about Joe Biden, and make it about the economy. They don't have an economy to run on anymore, and they haven't been able to make it about Joe Biden yet. So look at this new Trump Campaign that Coronavirus front and center.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Joe Biden has no real plan to defeat the Coronavirus, just criticize, complain, and surrender. President Trump is leading, attacking the virus head on, and developing a vaccine in record time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: So a couple of important things there. Number one, the president wearing a mask repeatedly in the ad. The president does not wear a mask repeatedly in life, only in his TV ads does he do it. But he says Joe Biden doesn't have a plan. You can disagree with if you want, but you go to the Biden website, he does have a plan.

He has a plan to make free testing widely available to establish the public health jobs core to use defense production act to do more PPE. Invest 25 billion in vaccine; create COVID-19 Racial Ethnic Disparities Task Force. Restore relationship of the world class organization.

You don't have to like any of those things Margaret, but what the president's campaign is saying in that ad is just simply a lie. And this is what they do, this is what he did in 2016. They don't like me, so drag down the other guy so if voters view us all is the same mess.

TALEV: The campaign is trying something here that Trump himself won't try in the rallies and AXIOS and our polling partners IPSOS have been tracking Coronavirus behavior and reactions for several months.

And what our latest findings these are just out today show is that, increasingly the public, including Republicans are rejecting some of the president's theories around Hydroxychloroquine or suggesting that mask don't really reduce transmission.

And then what it adds up to and this has been particular problem with women, with independents and with senior citizens. So what it adds up to is that, since the president himself became sick, became Coronavirus, COVID-19 positive, since then these Americans and voters are saying that they are less able to trust him to give them good information.

Now that doesn't mean they won't vote for him, but it does mean that it is harder for him to steer around the pandemic issue or to change the way the pandemic is viewed.

KING: Right. And so Dana, you have this thing and look, the president is good at this some time. So you have to give whether you support him or not, he is good sometimes at creating a different ads but you see him repeatedly in that ad wearing a mask, he is trying to get the American people to simply forget this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I think wearing a fake mask as a great president, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don't know, somehow I don't see it for myself.

And I don't agree with the statement, that if everybody wear a mask, everything get disappears. A lot of people don't want to wear a mask. So a lot of people think that masks are not good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Four of the top five states in the United States of America right now in terms of the highest positivity rate for Coronavirus testing today, four of the top five states that do not have a mask mandate.

BASH: Right. I mean, you can believe what he says or you can believe what's in front of your eyes. And the answer is, you should believe what's in front of your eyes. And just basic common sense that we have developed over the past six months thanks to the researchers and scientists, and virologists that have figured out that mask wearing does help.

It allows for even remote normalcy, the kind that the president says that, the people who are really hurting economically and otherwise, never mind with their health are not understanding and they're not understood.

Well, they could be understood if the president was consistent in the mask wearing message, not just in their paid advertising targeted to people who maybe aren't seeing the clips that you just played, but it's about the most inconsistent and frankly flagrant example of a leader not doing a basic thing than we've ever seen. And again, we talked about this last week.

[12:10:00]

BASH: Just look at Chris Christie, the guy who helped him get ready for his debate. He did not wear a mask in the White House Rose Garden, he did not wear a mask inside debate prep. He got COVID, he was in the ICU for a week, and he came out and said, I was wrong, wear a mask.

KING: Right.

TALEV: But I think there is - that is - that there are many Republicans and some independents who we know this anecdotally, we also know it from polling who are saying, they don't agree with what the president is doing on Coronavirus, they don't like it, they think it's the wrong advice.

But they may still vote for him, because they like his approach on taxes or because they're concerned that Biden would usher in a more liberal era. And I don't think there's any argument that you can make that says that the president's general Coronavirus messaging is helping him. But it doesn't necessarily mean that it will cost him the election. And that's where we are two weeks out.

KING: That is where we are two weeks out. Margaret Talev, Dana Bash, I appreciate the insights and to that very point. When we come back there are most polls show Biden comfortably ahead. Any cracks, anything to suggest the Trump come back is about to begin. We'll break that down with our pollsters next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

KING: Two weeks from today, we count the votes, we start to fill this in, and Trump versus Biden might take us more than one night to count them all. But two weeks from now, we start to fill them in. Let's go back in time and look at where we are in the race right now as we discuss it. Remember what happened four years ago.

Hillary Clinton wins the popular vote with 48 percent. Donald Trump trails, but he wins the presidency because of the Electoral College. Let me bring up some numbers just to show you a little bit of difference in the race right now. Where are we right now? This is our CNN poll of polls, this averages out the five most recent national polls.

Joe Biden at 53, Donald Trump at 42. So in a 11 point national lead right now for Joe Biden heading into the final two weeks. Well, how does that compare? Let's take a look, let's bring this up. Let me shrink it down for you. Couple of important things to note here.

Number one, Hillary Clinton was at 47 percent back then, President Trump at 41. So six point Clinton lead, notably though Clinton under 50, Joe Biden above 50. Why? Because the third party candidates were getting a bigger chunk of the vote four years ago, the libertarian candidate, the green party candidate.

So, Joe Biden above 50, Donald Trump is at 41 at this point four years ago. He is at 42 essentially at the same place right now. Let's start the conversation there with our two pollsters, Republican Pollster, Neil Newhouse joins us, Democratic Pollster, Margie Omero.

Margie, if you're a Democrat, you're looking at this right now, that's a distinction I see in the national polls. We'll go state by state in a minute, look at some historical dynamics. But if you're looking at the national polls, the Biden is above 50 at this point, how significant is that?

MARGIE OMERO, DEMOCRATIC POLLSTER: Well, for an incumbent to be below 50, that's always a sign of vulnerability. Because you have people now voting on the record that President Trump has. Last time it was an open seat. You had two non-incumbents. And so, people were trying to assess which candidate they thought would do a better job.

Now you have a president who has been underwater since the day he took office. And so, this is very much a referendum on him and his performance which relative to Biden is not going very well, because if you look at the "New York Times Poll" all the different traits, who would you trust more on this issue, on that issue. Biden is very strong beneath the surface and that's why you see him over 50 and not the incumbent over 50.

KING: Right. And Neil, to that point, we're right now in the early stages of another up the hill in terms of the Coronavirus we're heading up towards a third peak in the country. And if you look at the Coronavirus right now, it's front and center on every American's life. So it's obviously front and center of the campaign.

The president's handling of this over time. These are NBC, Wall Street Journal numbers was disapprove 51 percent back in March, it is disapprove 57 percent now. So nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of how the incumbent President of the United States has handled the biggest issue in the country right now. How with two weeks do you change that or can you?

NEIL NEWHOUSE, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: John, I don't think you try to change it. I think you focus on the economy. The Coronavirus numbers aren't going to change overnight. I think if you - can you, you pass that stimulus which is the current "New York Times" poll shows is so popular and you move on. You're not going to prep those other numbers, you focus on the economy.

The key here is all those comparative numbers between Biden and Trump, they're not that different than the numbers four years ago between Trump and Hillary Clinton, and yet Trump still came out ahead.

John, one thing you want to know is the polling we've gotten over the last couple days on individual Senate and congressional campaigns that we're involved in have all shown a little bit of a bump up for the president. This race is beginning to tighten a little bit. Now whether there's enough time left, I don't know, but it feels like it's tightening.

KING: But let's switch maps as we have that conversation then. Because part of it is that just Republican DNA, people have been waiting on the fence to come back in or are it a significant shift. That's what makes the debate Thursday night so important. But this is where we are in terms of the race to 270.

Dark blue solid Biden, light blue, lean Biden saying dark blue, solid Trump, light blue, lean Trump. We've got Joe Biden already over the finish line Margie with 290 electoral votes, the president at 163. But there is a lot of - the toss up states on the ballot here, if the president can win all of those and he won them all back in 2016, that would put him back in play.

But here is one thing that is different. Neil thinks there's a tightening perhaps happening out there in the country. One thing that's different is favorable, unfavorable. If you go back and look, Hillary Clinton, 46 percent favorable view of her if you go back at this point in 2016. 52 percent unfavorable. It's a flip if you will.

Joe Biden is above water. 53 percent favorable, 43 percent unfavorable. Heading into the last debate, we expect the president to be quite aggressive in trying to change those numbers. What does Joe Biden need to do?

OMERO: I mean, what he has been doing is, and he has been boosting his favorability. Usually anybody running for any kind of competitive office will emerge as they get closer to Election Day, their unfavorable role go up and they will just become a little bit less popular as the back and forth happens in any race.

But if you look at the favorable minus unfavorable margin, Biden's actually improving, while Trump has stayed the same where he is.

[12:20:00]

OMERO: I mean, to go back to your original question though, John, where you said well, what should Democrats do when they're looking at the polls? Democrats should not look at the polls; Democrats should instead be volunteering, texting, voting, and calling, all of those things.

KING: Well, I should be listening to you two. But if course any voter should be listening to. So Neil, I'm going to go through a little scenario here. Look, these are the yellow states here, the gold, those are our toss ups. It's perfectly conceivable the president wins Iowa, he won it last time, it has Republican DNA. Perfectly conceivable the president picks up Ohio, Republican DNA.

North Carolina is competitive, but the president could win it, he won it last time. Mitt Romney won it four years before that. Georgia, not since Bill Clinton way back in the days, so we'll give that to the president, and battleground Florida. Again it's very competitive.

But even if I give all of those to the president and Maine second congressional district, let's for the fun of it just turn that - let's bring that out of it. We want to turn that red and turn this blue, bring this back, I messed that up a little bit.

But if you look at this right now, even if that happens, you still have the president shy which tells me Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania and what else?

NEWHOUSE: And Wisconsin. Listen, this race, Wisconsin has significant Republican DNA. I think Pennsylvania, Wisconsin are the states you got to play in.

KING: Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Go ahead.

NEWHOUSE: But John, this comes out to a trial by battle. And the question if the Democrats were going to ask is, have they banked enough votes to overcome the Election Day turnout among Republicans, have they built their wall high enough? And we're not going to know really until Election Day. KING: Election Day or maybe a day or two after as we count those votes

and get the lawyers involved. Neil Newhouse, Margie Omera, grateful for your insights two weeks out from today. Up next for us, leadership in a time of crisis. Dr. Anthony Fauci and the lessons learned so far in this COVID-19 pandemic.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

KING: Dr. Anthony Fauci calls the president's attacks on him a distraction, and emphasizes he just wants to do his job. That job of course includes consistently speaking out since the very beginning of the Coronavirus crisis. Dr. Fauci telling us where we stand, how we got here, and what he thinks we need to do to get out of it? Still much to learn of course several months in, but a pandemic like this has been Dr. Fauci's fear for years.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, U.S. NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALIERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: In an interview, I don't even know when, but something that you interviewed me 20 years ago, whenever it was, you asked me what keeps you up at night. What worries you? And if you go back, I told you, I said it's a respiratory borne illness. It may be influenza, but maybe it isn't influenza, that has a multiple characteristics.

One, it's readily transmissible from human to human. And two, it has a high degree of morbidity and mortality. That's the nightmare that everybody who's in infectious disease is always worries about. And here we are in 2020, it's happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That from one of many conversations Dr. Fauci has had with the gentleman you see right there, our Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay joins us now. That's back at the beginning Sanjay, a little haunting.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. No, April 1st that was and we are still learning things. But those were two of the ingredients that Dr. Fauci had been worried about for some time. And it's actually one of my first interviews ever John at CNN, almost 20 years ago, when I interviewed him about that.

And he said look, if something is both contagious and lethal as a high degree of mortality, that's sort of the nightmare scenario. H1N1 was very contagious, but not very lethal. Sars, very lethal, but not very contagious. This was sort of both.

And then there was another ingredient, John, which we really are learning about that point, and that has to do with the fact that people who didn't even have symptoms could spread this. That was a new ingredient in all this. Typically you're sick, you're coughing, you're sneezing, you stay home, you're less likely to spread. Asymptomatic spread became a significant component here. As you see John, 50 percent of the transmission likely occurs before symptoms. If you're not testing, you have no symptoms, you don't know. And that's been a real problem with this particular outbreak.

KING: And these many, many conversations you had with Dr. Fauci include one yesterday in which you were having a conversation about if there's a vaccine, who should be at the front of the line, and how eager should you or I be to try to get to the front of the line? Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. GUPTA: There's going to be different versions of the vaccine. You're going to, like an iPhone10 or iPhone 11, that's the way somebody framed that question to me recently. But should everyone go and get the first iPhone? If they can, if they qualify, or would people be reasonable to say look, I'm going to wait for version two to come out, just likely to be more effective or safer, whatever.

DR. FAUCI: You'll see a hierarchy of recommendations of who should get the vaccine. And I think you have to factor into that how effective it is and what risk category you as an individual are in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: What did you find most significant there?

DR. GUPTA: Well, everyone is talking about the vaccine as a single entity.