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Trump and Biden Set to Meet Thursday for Final Debate; Obama Hits Trumps on Coronavirus Response; Trump Rallies in Battleground State of North Carolina; U.S. Intel: Iran, Russia Interfering In U.S. Election; Early Voters Turn Up in Record Numbers Before Election Day; COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalization Rising Across U.S.; Trump Says He Wouldn't Change Mush About His COVID Response. Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired October 22, 2020 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:00]
ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us here in the United States and all around the world. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM and I'm Rosemary Church.
Just ahead, former President Barack Obama hits the campaign trail for Joe Biden going after Donald Trump like never before. What he said, and how the current President responded.
Then election interference, the U.S. says Iran and Russia are meddling. We will tell you how.
And later.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because he really is for, you know, your hard- working people. Do I think he's racist? No, I think he's racist against lazy people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Hear what's motivating some of the President's middle-class voters with time and money to spend at a dune buggy rally for Donald Trump.
The final Presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is set to get underway in the coming hours with the election less than two weeks away. And with Mr. Trump trailing Biden in most polls, the match up could be the President's last best chance to make a compelling case for reelection.
But it's clear many Americans have already made up their minds. So far, some 40 million people have voted in person or by mail. That's almost a third of all the votes tallied in 2016. The President says he is preparing for the debate by holding campaign rallies and doing interviews. Biden, on the other hand, is at home pouring through briefing books while former President Barack Obama campaigned for him in Philadelphia, slamming President Trump's handling of the pandemic. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Tweeting at the television doesn't fix things. Making stuff up doesn't make people's lives better. You've got to have a plan. You've got to put in the work, and along with the experience to get things done, Joe Biden has concrete plans and policies. We literally left this White House a pandemic playbook that would have shown them how to respond before the virus reached our shores. They probably used it to, I don't know, prop up a wobbly table somewhere. We don't know where that playbook went. Donald Trump isn't suddenly going to protect all of us, he can't even take the basic steps to protect himself.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: And despite his own hospitalization for COVID President Trump continues to regard the pandemic as a nuisance that he and his supporters are sick of hearing about.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: All you hear is COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, that's all they put on because they want to scare the hell out of everyone.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Well, the President may wish the virus would simply disappear, but the fact is the pandemic has infected well over 8 million Americans and killed more than 222,000 of them in just seven months and the outlook is not encouraging. The former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration predicts a sharp rise in new infections will begin sweeping across the country before election day.
And we'll have the latest on the COVID-19 crisis in the U.S. and around the world in just a few minutes. But we want to begin with run up to Thursday night's presidential debate. CNN's Jeff Zeleny is in Philadelphia.
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JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Former President Barack Obama delivering one of the most mocking and blistering assessments of his successor. Coming out on the campaign trail for the first time this year, certainly touting Joe Biden, but making more of an effort to say why Donald Trump does not deserve a second term in office, talking first and foremost about coronavirus, and the Trump administration's handling of the virus.
Saying the President did not take it seriously, saying that the, you know, mask mandate is something that should have been done, and also talking about how other countries around the world did, indeed, handle this better than the United States did.
Now from there, the former president went on to really deliver a broadside against President Trump, making fun of how he has conducted himself in office, also talking about the exhaustion factor. Just the day in and day out the since the former president said, look, this is not a reality show. This is reality.
[04:05:00]
But at the end of the speech, some more than 30 minutes or so, delivered in Philadelphia, Mr. Obama also talked to Democrats directly, delivering some tough medicine to them, saying four years ago, many Democrats thought Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump. That didn't happen. So, he called on Democrats to not be lazy, to not be complacent, and he urged them to come out and vote. This is the first of many stops that former President Obama is going to be making in the next two weeks, certainly, making the case against Donald Trump, and for Joe Biden.
Back to you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: Thanks for that. And President Trump continues barn storming with rallies that ignore basic precautions to keep the virus from spreading. We get more now from CNN's Ryan Nobles in North Carolina.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: President Trump making yet another trip to the important battleground of North Carolina, a state he won four years ago, and a state he desperately needs in the win column if he were to win reelection in 2020.
And as the President was making his way here to the Tar Heel state, President Obama was crushing him and his administration in a speech in support of Joe Biden. President Obama making his first appearance on the campaign trail and had some pretty harsh criticism for President Trump. President Trump had the opportunity to respond here in North Carolina. And this is what he had to say.
TRUMP: There was nobody that campaigned harder for crooked Hillary Clinton than Obama, right? He was all over the place. The only one more unhappy than crooked Hillary that night was Barack Hussein Obama.
NOBLES: Surprisingly, the President held his fire for the most part against Obama, refusing to get to in-depth in his response to President Obama's remarks. This is not going to be President Obama's last trip, though before election day on November 3rd.
So, President Trump will have plenty of time to respond. The President saying here tonight, in North Carolina, telling this crowd, that he promises that he will deliver North Carolina, and said it is a key to his reelection bid.
Ryan Nobles, CNN, Gastonia, North Carolina.
(END VIDEOTAPE) CHURCH: U.S. intelligence officials say they have evidence Iran and Russia are interfering in America's upcoming election and are trying to undermine voter confidence. Iran rejects the allegations, calling them absurd. CNN, Evan Perez reports now from Washington.
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EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR U.S. JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: U.S. intelligence official says Iran and Russia have obtained U.S. voter registration information, in an effort to interfere in the election. Officials say Iran is behind intimidating e-mails, received by voters around the country and purporting to come from the right-wing group known as Proud Boys, associated with supporters of President Trump.
The e-mails telling people to vote for President Trump or spoofs and appear to be designed to pit Americans against each other. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe tried to reassure voters that the intelligence and law enforcement agencies are working to ensure that votes won't be compromised.
JOHN RATCLIFFE, U.S. DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: We will not tolerate foreign interference in our elections and we will continue to work with our many partners to disrupt and impose costs and consequences on any adversary that attempts to interfere in our democratic processes.
PEREZ: Officials say that Russia has obtained some of the same data. But officials don't know what the Russians are planning to do with that information in coming weeks. In recent months, intelligence officials say Russia has been waging a campaign to help Trump's reelection and spreading disinformation about fraud in the U.S. elections amplifying some of the fears that are fanned by the President himself. FBI director Chris Wray has told voters that those concerns about fraud are bogus.
CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI DIRECTOR: We've been working for years as a community to build resilience in our election infrastructure, and today that infrastructure remains resilient. You should be confident that your vote counts. Early unverified claims to the contrary should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism.
PEREZ: And U.S. officials in recent days have warned states and vendors that supply their voting systems to patch vulnerabilities after detecting intrusions.
Evan Perez, CNN Washington.
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CHURCH: And CNN's Frederik Pleitgen joins us now live from Moscow. Good to see you, Fred. So, what's been the reaction from Russia and Iran to these accusations of interference in the U.S. election?
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Rosemary. For Russians of course, it's not the first time that they've been accused of allegedly trying to interfere, not in just this election, but elections in the past as well. The Russians have always shot those allegations down, have denied those allegations.
So far this morning we have not yet heard from the Kremlin. We do believe that there is going to be a phone call with the press secretary for the Kremlin coming up in the next hour, maybe in the next couple of hours, and certainly, we'll keep you posted as to what exactly the reaction of the Kremlin is going to be.
Now is far as the Iranians are concerned, we just heard that those e- mails were mentioned, those phony e-mails that the Iranians allegedly sent out apparently representing the Proud Boys group.
[04:10:00]
Now the Iranians also have said that that is absolutely not true. They have denied those allegations. They came out quickly with a reaction. It comes from an Iran spokesperson with the U.N. mission in New York, Alireza Miryousefi. I want to just show some of what he said.
He said, unlike the U.S., Iran does not interfere in other country's elections. The world has been witnessing the U.S.'s own desperate public attempts to question the outcome of its own election at the highest level.
Essentially of course, throwing this back at President Trump, saying that President Trump is the one who has been sowing doubts as to the legitimacy of the upcoming U.S. election.
He then goes on to post on Twitter, these accusations are nothing more than another scenario to undermine voter confidence and are absurd. Iran has no interest in Iran has no interest in interfering in the U.S. election and no preference in the outcome.
That's something the Iranians, Rosemary, have been saying for the past couple of weeks. The Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was also actually asked whether Iran has a preference as to who should in their minds be the next president of the United States. The Iranians are saying they do not have any sort of preference.
But of course, one of the things we've been saying is that the relations between the Trump administration -- if one can call them relations -- and the Iranians have been at rock bottom for a very long time. It really seems like almost ages ago, but it was just last year that these two countries were almost at war at various stages of that time. Of course, with the Trump administration following that campaign of maximum pressure which has done a lot of damage to the Iranian economy -- Rosemary.
All right, Fred Pleitgen bring us that live report from Moscow. Many thanks.
Well, voters across the U.S. aren't leaving anything to chance with this election turning out early in record numbers to cast their votes. With more than a week and a half left until election day, early votes are up nearly 180 percent from the 2016 Presidential election and here's our Pamela Brown with more.
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PAMELA BROWN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With the election less than two weeks away, voter intimidation is coming to the forefront. Election officials in Florida and Alaska went to the FBI after dozens of people reported receiving e-mails threatening to vote for Trump or else.
RYAN KENNELLY, FLORIDA VOTER: I think calling it out and letting it be seen for what it is will hopefully encourage people to ignore it.
BROWN: The e-mail was made to look like it came from a far-right group, the Proud Boys. The extremist group Trump failed to disavow at the last debate.
TRUMP: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.
BROWN: But Proud Boys have denied involvement and a CNN analyst found the e-mails were actually sent in a sophisticated way, routed through foreign services.
More cries of possible voter intimidation in Miami. A police officer in full uniform wearing a Trump mask inside a polling place called out by the mayor.
Mayor Francis Suarez, Miami Florida: His actions have violated departmental policy and he will be disciplined.
BROWN: And in Memphis, a poll worker was fired for asking voters to turn their black lives matter shirts inside out.
SUZANNE THOMPSON, SHELBY COUNTY ELECTIONS COMMISSION SPOKESWOMAN: This particular incident was the bad behavior of one poll worker.
BROWN: Tennessee laws ban any clothing worn to polling places that endorses a political candidate or party. Social justice messages like BLM are allowed.
But overall, early voting remains in high gear. More than 40 million ballots have been cast nationwide so far. It's clear many Americans have been relying on the Post Office to deliver their votes. But as election day approaches, Michigan Secretary of State is encouraging voters to turn ballots in personally to drop boxes or their county clerk's office if they can.
JOCELYN BENSON, MICHIGAN SECRETARY OF STATE: There are a lot of uncertainties and variables with the Postal Service.
BROWN: A new Post Office inspector general report finds the Post Office never investigated how controversial cuts to service in the summer would affect mail delivery.
BENSON: My office used the CARES Act funding from the federal government to install close to a thousand -- over a thousand drop boxes all over the state for that very reason.
BROWN: The Postmaster General who has defended the cuts as nonpolitical postponed the changes. But on time mail delivery is still suffering and triggering new lawsuits.
And North Carolina an appeals court upheld the state's deadline to receive absentee ballots, nine days after election day. A decision Republicans are signaling they'll challenge at the Supreme Court. The second win for Democrats, on Monday, the high court handed down a ruling, allowing mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania to count if they're received within three days of November 3rd.
(on camera): Well, given the issues with the Postal Service and how close we are now to the election, election experts say that your best bet if you haven't already requested a mail-in ballot is to go vote in person, early.
Pamela Brown, CNN Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: As important as each vote is, the Electoral College is key o to winning the White House.
[04:15:00]
A candidate needs 270 electoral college votes earned by winning individual states. And we will look at the all-important path to 270 later this hour.
And we'll discuss what to expect in the final presidential debate tonight. Special coverage of that begins at 7:00 p.m. Eastern here on CNN.
And COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations now climbing across the U.S. A doctor weighs in on President Trump's latest comment that he wouldn't change much about his response to the pandemic.
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CHURCH: Some U.S. states are now taking a closer look at just how many hospital beds are available as COVID-19 hospitalizations surge. Wisconsin already has set up an overflow medical facility, and this comes as the FDA commissioner says the agency doesn't have a timeline to review a vaccine, but the goal is to get a vaccine out by spring. Our Nick Watt has more.
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[04:20:00]
TRUMP: Normal life, that's all we want. You know what we want? Normal life.
NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sure, we all want it. But we can't have it. Not yet, nowhere close. Cue the actual experts.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: This looks like we're going to have a very different fall and winter. DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: We're about a week away
from starting to enter a period where we're going to see a rapid acceleration in cases.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You'll start to see closer to 2,000 deaths per day.
WATT: Average new case counts, not a single state is trending in the right direction. Not one. But schools are open many places. In Michigan, infections now reported in 84 of them. Infections among kids jump 13 percent in just the first two weeks of this month. Very few serious cases or deaths in those under 18. But --
DR. AMY COMPTON-PHILLIPS, CHIEF CLINICAL OFFICER, PROVIDENCE HEALTH SYSTEM: Those kids live with adults, right, and those kids bring that germ back home to adults.
WATT: In El Paso, Texas, more tests coming back positive now than ever. In California, under new guidance, Disneyland might not reopen for months. Some of us are tired, given up on masks and distance. For others --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Probably giving up isn't the right term. Most of them never started.
WATT: Some due to a wink from the White House. Twitter just took down a Dr. Scott Atlas post undermining masks. He's now the President's closest COVID adviser, also promotes herd immunity, let it rip, among lower risk demos.
DR. SCOTT ATLAS, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS ADVISOR: We should be fine with letting them get infected, generating immunity on their own.
WATT: Today the surgeon general pushed back hard.
This could overwhelm health care systems and lead to many complication/deaths.
A vaccine might bring normal life, a volunteer in the Oxford University AstraZeneca trial just died in Brazil. Unclear if they had been given the vaccine or a placebo, and the trial goes on. Following careful assessment of this case in Brazil, there have been no concerns about safety, Oxford University told CNN. Moderna and Pfizer meeting with an FDA advisory committee to discuss efficacy, safety, manufacturing, but not to present new data from trials. Not yet.
Nick Watt, CNN, Los Angeles.
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CHURCH: With us now, Dr. Murtaza Akhter, an emergency physician at the Valleywise Health Medical Center and an assistant professor at the University of Arizona's College of Medicine in Phoenix. Always good to talk with you, doctor.
MURTAZA AKHTER, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN, VALLEYWISE HEALTH MEDICAL CENTER: Great to be back. Thanks for having me, Rosemary. CHURCH: So more than 221,000 U.S. COVID deaths, and not one state is trending in the right direction, but President Trump claims he wouldn't change much in the way he responded to the pandemic if he had his time over. What is your medical response to a leader saying that when this country represents 20 percent of the global death toll but less than 5 percent of the global population?
AKHTER: Yes, well, I would've done everything differently. Now I'm not surprised that President Trump has so much hubris as to say that he wouldn't change anything, that's very like him to say that even though he's clearly wrong on this.
Listen, there are many other countries who have done it the right way and we could have done at the right way as well. And I'm not saying the President is to be blamed for everything, but he clearly sent the wrong message multiple times on this pandemic, even though he often had answers that most people didn't have.
There is some clear things he could've done like advocating for masks more strongly, not advocating for opening of the economy while we're in the midst of a pandemic. And as you said, we are one of the worst countries, if not the worst, depending on how you look at it in the world, in terms of COVID cases and deaths per capita, and to say, you know, to be the worst country to say I wouldn't do anything differently. That's like saying I wouldn't be the worst president possible. I would continue to be that way, and I wouldn't change that, which is, I don't know why he would say something like that, but definitely medically, there are way better things we could've done.
CHURCH: And doctor, the CDC has redefined what constitutes close contact with a COVID patient. They now say it's considered high-risk if you are exposed for a cumulative or a total of 15 minutes, previously it was at least 15 minutes of continuous exposure. How significant is this?
AKHTER: Well, I think that everything in medicine, there is very few black and whites in medicine. Obviously, close contact is bad, obviously longer exposure is bad. I've been saying that from the get- go. So, for the people who pass each other on the job, in the pathway, that's very short, and probably not a close contact.
For people who are in a room together, that's not well ventilated, even if they are 10 feet apart, but they've been in that room for an hour that's probably pretty bad.
[04:25:00]
Now you can talk about 15-minute cut offs, or 20-minute cut offs, or 10-minute cut offs, but again, nothing in medicine is a binary, everything is in gray scale. And so, I think, in general, that advice to take from this is avoid close contact with people in particular who isn't your family, distance as much as possible. And when you have to be by people, when you have to be by them, wear a mask. It's actually a simple fix, it's unbelievable that people certainly need to be told that.
CHURCH: Dr. Murtaza Akhter, thank you for talking with us.
AKHTER: Thanks for having me, Rosemary. Stay safe.
CHURCH: You too.
A volunteer in Brazil's trial of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine has died according to health officials there. It's not clear whether the volunteer received a vaccine or a placebo as part of the trial, and why the person died. No more information was released due to privacy concerns. AstraZeneca said nothing happened to justify stopping or pausing the test, so the trial in Brazil will continue.
And here in the U.S., a top health official says AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson may soon be able to resume their vaccine trials. They had been placed on hold in the United States because of illnesses among volunteers.
Well, a new CNN poll shows a tight race between President Trump and Joe Biden in the key battle ground state of Florida. More on CNN's latest polling just ahead.
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CHURCH: All right, returning now to the U.S. election, and CNN has just released new polls in the battle ground state, so Florida and Pennsylvania. They indicate that Biden is leading Trump in Pennsylvania by 10 points. It's an important swing state, of course, which Trump carried four years ago. But the polling is tighter in Florida, 50 percent for Biden, 46 percent for Trump. That is within the margin of error.
Now, along with his edge in the polls, Joe Biden has a big advantage.
