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Trump Accusations about Fauci's Politics Don't Hold Up; Trump Claims Kids Separated from Parents at Border Are "Well Taken Care Of"; Update on Coronavirus Responses Around the Country; Joe Biden's Promise about Oil Is Raising Eyebrows; Fact-checking Trump Claim on Windmills and Birds; At Least 55 Million Watched Final Debate, on Par with 1st One. Aired 1:30-2p ET
Aired October 23, 2020 - 13:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:30:00]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: After calling Fauci a disaster, an idiot this week, the president has added Democrat to his resume.
But Fauci says he is not one. He is not registered to a party. And he worked for presidents from both parties, six presidents in all.
He has overseen response to HIV/AIDS, to Ebola, Zika and tuberculosis. He has run National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 when Ronald Reagan was president.
And Republicans and Democrats alike, with the exception, of Trump love the guy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE H.W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think of Dr. Fauci. Probably never heard of him. He is a very fine research, top doctor at National Institute of Health, working hard, doing something about research on this disease of AIDS.
GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Three decades ago, a mysterious and terrifying plague began to take the lives of people across the world.
Before the malady had a name, it had a fierce opponent in Dr. Anthony Fauci.
For his determined and aggressive efforts to help others live longer and healthier lives, I'm proud to give the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thank you to Dr. Tony Fauci and Nancy Sullivan, incredible scientists at NIH who work long days, late nights, to develop a vaccine. All of you represent what is best about America and what's possible when we lead.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Anthony Fauci doesn't serve a party. He serves the nation's health. President Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he serves himself at the expense of the nation's health. So it makes sense these two maybe don't see eye to eye.
There's another megachurch seeing a coronavirus outbreak as more churches refuse to enforce mask use.
Plus, see how Biden and Trump supporters reacted to the debate, including what surprised them most.
And the president says, don't worry, the children separated from parents at the border are well taken care of.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:36:42]
KEILAR: A key moment, Joe Biden slamming President Trump for separating families at the border.
This week, court documents revealed the U.S. government has been unable to reunite 544 children with their parents whom they were separated from between 2017 and 2018.
They can't locate the parents. Many of the parents thought to have been deported to home countries without their kids.
Instead of explaining his administration's policy, Trump repeatedly tried to argue that the cages that some children were held in were built under the Obama administration.
And he boasted how the children separated from their parents were being treated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: What happened? Parents were ripped -- kids were ripped from their arms and separated. And now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone, nowhere to go, nowhere to go. It is criminal.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They are so well taken care of. They're in facilities that were so clean.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Raul Reyes is an attorney, an immigration analyst, and he writes opinion pieces for CNN.com.
Raul, I'm glad you're here to clear this up.
You have written extensively about the conditions. But also talk about the conditions and also explain to us where the kids are. As we have understood from reporting, they're not actually being held
in detention facilities, which brings up the question of would President Trump be OK if they had been for all these years.
But tell us about the facilities and tell us where the kids are.
RAUL REYES, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: First of all, I want to start with that the government has not been involved in the process of locating and potentially reuniting the children.
Our government hasn't done that. It is largely done by ACLU and other nonprofit groups. They've faced and enormous task, where they think the children are. They have been placed in shelters. They may be within foster care.
To be honest, some of them may have been placed and adopted by other families, even though they do have parents, because under some U.S. state laws, adoptions can take place without parental consent.
We have these children scattered across the country and going through multiple traumas. Remember, they came from Central America to the United States. That's one trauma. Separated from their parents, another one. At least three years apart from parents.
And were they to be reunited, under the best scenario in the future, again, talking about trauma because whoever they are with now, even if it is just a shelter or foster family, they'll go through wrenching separation again, likely they have bonded with them and will be separated again.
The whole situation is -- the reason the president deflected this is because it is indefensible. At best, this is some type of gross bureaucratic meltdown, malpractice. But at worst, it is government- sanctioned kidnapping.
KEILAR: So fact-check his claim about what the Obama administration did and did not do because there were some separations, but to be clear, under the Trump administration, this was actually a deterrent policy adopted that became widespread as we have seen by number of kids separated.
[13:40:06]
REYES: Right.
One thing quickly before I get to that. The president talks about the facilities that children are well taken care of. We know from journalists and doctors, nurses, volunteers, there are horrific conditions in detention. Children died in detention.
To the president's claim that basically he is saying Obama did it, that's not true.
In 2014, the Obama administration did have a pilot program that they initiated, they kept migrant families in detention, but they were together. Children were only separated under instances where the government
suspected they were perhaps trafficked by an adult they were not related to.
To be clear, under the Obama administration there was no policy of family separations. It was not widespread.
And it was certainly nothing on the scale of the so-called zero- tolerance policy of 2018 that Trump instituted, defended, and only walked back on after international and global bipartisan outrage.
To make the comparison with the Obama administration is extremely misleading.
KEILAR: Raul Reyes, thank you for coming on.
REYES: Yes, ma'am. Thank you.
KEILAR: Up next, Joe Biden is playing cleanup after his debate comments on the oil industry.
Plus, why Santa Claus won't be visiting Macy's stores for the first time in 159 years.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:45:58]
KEILAR: A long running holiday tradition is being put on hold in the era of COVID-19. Macy's announcing that for the first time in 159 years, Santa won't be visiting any of the department stores due to concerns about coronavirus. The department store tradition started in 1861.
For more coronavirus headlines across the country, let's check in with our team of CNN correspondents.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I am Dan Simon. An L.A. megachurch that defied public health orders and held large indoor services has been hit by an outbreak of the virus, according to L.A. health officials.
The Grace Community Church right now has three confirmed cases, though it is not known if those are among staff or members.
The church announced over the summer it would resume large indoor services, despite public health orders in place. Thousands of people have attended services and the church was cited nine times by the public health department.
CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN POLITICS & BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: I am Cristina Alesci in New York. An Israeli company created technology designed to get reluctant workers into the office.
Here's how it works. Sensors mounted on workplace ceilings can record the number and location of people in buildings, including offices, hotels, restaurants.
Then workspace managers can set up alerts for when more than two people are closer than six feet apart for more than 30 seconds.
ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I am Alexandra Field in New York. In the northeast, new COVID cases linked to indoor ice rinks. Officials in Massachusetts have decided to shut down indoor ice rinks and skating facilities for the next two weeks.
That, after health officials said 108 cases of COVID were connected to organized hockey. The new orders don't apply to professional or college programs.
But health officials say the plan is to reopen rinks in two weeks and strengthen protocols for social distancing. This plan comes on the heels of a similar plan announced by the state of New Hampshire last week.
COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: I am Coy Wire in Atlanta. The Big- 10 football season kicks off tonight. Mayors representing 11 of 14 cities where schools are located are asking the conference to help combat spread of coronavirus.
Even though there won't be fans in the stands, the mayors wrote in an open letter, quote, "We know the history of football games, they generate activity, social gatherings and consumption of alcohol. Activities within our communities have also been associated with an increased spread of COVID-19, " unquote.
The mayors would like the Big-10 to consider the positivity rates for the surrounding cities when making decisions regarding practices and games.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KEILAR: Thank you so much to my colleagues for those reports.
The risk of a bigger recession is growing as cases continue to surge. Here's the warning on that.
Plus, we will fact-check the president's claim about wind and birds.
And also, Joe Biden's promise about oil that's raising eyebrows.
[13:48:56]
More than 50 million Americans have already voted in record breaking numbers. What that tells us about this race.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:53:42]
KEILAR: President Trump and former Vice President Biden do not agree on much, but they certainly do not agree on how to handle climate change, or even if it's real. President Trump is adamant about keeping the fossil fuel industry
going. And as Biden is pushing a big move toward clean energy, he made a statement that raised some eyebrows.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: I would transition from the oil industry, yes. In a transition.
TRUMP: Oh, that's a big statement.
BIDEN: That is a big statement. Because I would stop --
KRISTEN WELKER, DEBATE MODERATOR: Why would you do that?
BIDEN: Because the oil industry pollutes significantly.
TRUMP: Oh, I see.
BIDEN: Here's the deal --
TRUMP: That's a big statement.
BIDEN: If you'd like me finish the statement.
Because it has to be replaced by renewable energy over time. Over time. And I would stop giving -- to the oil industry, I would stop giving them federal subsidies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Bill Weir is our CNN chief climate correspondent. He's with us to go through this.
This is one of the needles that needs to be threaded, because the oil industry, Bill, is responsible for a lot of jobs. At the same time, it's a huge contributor to climate change.
What did you think about Joe Biden's answer?
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: It was interesting. You could see his hesitation. And he's been this way since he won the primary.
He was much more middle of the road, mushy on this issue until he absorbed a lot of Bernie Sanders' Sunrise movement, Jay Inslee folks, and came out with a $2 trillion plan that's 20 times more ambition than what Barack Obama put forward.
[13:55:09]
But at the same time, he remembers 2016, and the so-called War on Coal turned off voters in West Virginia and other places to Hillary Clinton.
So in Pennsylvania, fracking is not exactly a slam dunk there, either. It's been around for a while. Some people got rich. Some people got sick.
In some of those western counties, there's no chance they'll go for Joe Biden anyway. So maybe that's the calculation he's making right there.
But if we step back, Brianna, just to appreciate this from 40,000 feet, only in America is it controversial for a debate candidate to say this.
While the rest of the world, given the giga-fires that won't go out or the flooding that won't stop in low-lying areas, they're moving on because of the market forces and morality.
Just last week, a renewable energy company was briefly more valuable than ExxonMobil.
The international energy folks, who are hardly tree-hugging lefties, put out a report this week that solar power is the cheapest form of energy ever invented by humans.
KEILAR: I think that's why we heard Biden saying he would take away subsidies.
WEIR: Right.
KEILAR: He was focusing on why to give an advantage to the oil industry.
But I want your perspective that Trump was saying he knows more about wind than Biden. Let's listen to this moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We don't need all of these countries that we had to fight war over because we needed their energy. We are energy independent.
I know more about wind than you do. It's extremely expensive, kills all the birds. It's very intermittent. Got a lot of problems. And they happen to make the windmills in both Germany and China.
The fumes coming up -- if you're a believer in carbon emissions, the fumes coming up to make these massive windmills is more than anything we're talking about with natural gas.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: All right. Bill, fact-check that for us. I know windmills have killed birds. But there's a lot of things that kill way more birds than windmills.
WEIR: Exactly. Windmills kill a couple -- 250,000 birds. Feral cats kill 2.5 billion.
Winds on office buildings kill way more than windmills. And that number is going down because the Norwegians figured out, if you paint one blade of the windmill black, it decreases bird kills by 70 percent.
And as far as it's intermittent or whatever, the U.S. is late to an off-shore wind explosion. They opened a first windward on the east coast recently. And it's laying groundwork for what's happened here on Europe.
As I wrote on CNN.com, it was like watching two different candidates from two different planets.
Planet Trump, where the fires aren't burning and the scientists aren't saying this is just the beginning, it's hell and high water and we've got to get ready, and then here on planet earth where we have to deal with it.
KEILAR: Planet reality, which we are all facing, whether we want to admit it or not.
Bill Weir, thank you so much for joining us.
Just in, the ratings for the final presidential debate.
Brian Stelter, our CNN chief media correspondent, the host of "RELIABLE SOURCES," is here with us to tell us how it shaped up.
OK, what's the word?
BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT & CNN HOST, "RELIABLE SOURCES": And this matters because this was, by far, the biggest TV event remaining in the election cycle. These candidates will not have a big audience like this again.
The early preliminary numbers just in from Nielsen, show that at least 55 million people watched the debate on the six biggest channels in the country.
That compares to 63 million who watched on the same six-channel group for the first debate in September.
Ultimately this number will end up being higher. Ultimately it was 73 in September. So the ultimate tomorrow will probably by 65 to 70 million people.
That's a massive number in this fragmented country where none of us watch the same thing anymore. So it just speaks to how important these debates are, Brianna, in this polarized age.
The country stopped and watched this debate and consumed it. And we'll see who ultimately benefited from that fact.
These are really, really impressive numbers, on par with 2016, ahead of 2012's debates. It shows that this country is plugged in for this election.
KEILAR: Yes, some kind of watch party there was last night.
STELTER: There was. KEILAR: Brian Stelter, great to see you. Thank you.
STELTER: Thanks.
KEILAR: It is the top of the hour. I'm Brianna Keilar.
The coronavirus pandemic in America is a disaster. The U.S. case count is above eight million, the highest in the world. Hospitalizations are overflowing and overwhelming in many states. And flu season only started.
[14:00:02]
The president is still not modeling CDC guidelines even after contracting COVID, but his secretary of Health and Human Services is urging Americans to.
