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COVID-19 Cases Continue to Rise; Trump Addressed Race at Debate; Hundreds Banned from Flying Delta. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired October 23, 2020 - 14:00   ET

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

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST, NEWSROOM: The president is still not modeling CDC guidelines even after contracting COVID, but his secretary of Health and Human Services is urging Americans to.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEX AZAR, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: This is being driven by individual behaviors at this point. The community spread is happening because we've got to keep focused on washing our hands, watching our distance and wearing our face coverings when we can't watch our distance. And in particular, being careful in household gatherings. This has become a major vector of disease spread.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, more than half of the U.S. -- that is 32 states -- are showing an upward trend in cases. There is only one state, Oregon, that is heading in the right direction. The number of deaths? Increasing. The seven-day average for deaths is 763, this is the highest that it's been in a month. Hospitalizations are soaring with more than 41,000 yesterday. That is a 33 percent jump since the beginning of the month.

And an influential model of the coronavirus pandemic predicts more than 385,000 coronavirus deaths in the U.S. by February 1st. That projection is just that, it's a projection. So if we all work together and we wear masks and we do these other things we know we need to do -- washing our hands, socially distancing -- we can stop this from becoming a reality. The science backs that. The latest study shows more than 100,000 lives can still be saved if Americans just wear masks.

Senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has been going over this data. Break this down for us, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, this is so interesting, how these numbers work out. Let's take a look at how many Americans are currently wearing masks dependably, always when they're out in public? Only 49 percent.

So what this study found is that if 85 percent -- if we could get that number up to 85 percent, we would save 95,000 lives from late September through the end of February. If we could get that number up even higher, to 95 percent, we would save more than 129,000 lives. Masks are not perfect, we are not going to mask our way out of this pandemic. But as you can see from these numbers, they help enormously -- Brianna.

KEILAR: And let's talk about remdesivir, which I think so many folks have been hopeful would be extremely wonderful, right? That it would very much help people. It just became the first COVID-19 treatment to receive FDA approval. Who is this going to be given to?

COHEN: So let's talk about sort of the technicality that's going on here. remdesivir received authorization, emergency authorization, back in May from the FDA. So people have been getting it since May, including President Trump. So lots of people have been getting it, not just the president.

So now the fact that it has a full FDA approval, that doesn't really mean anything for patients. It was authorized before, now it's approved: It's all kind of the same for people who are sick with COVID-19.

But that does bring up certain questions. When it was approved, it was proved based on a study that didn't say remdesivir saved lives. That study showed that it shaved a few days off the hospital stay. That's a good thing, it's better to be in the hospital for a shorter amount of time than a longer amount of time. But still, it didn't save lives.

Since then, the World Health Organization has come out with a study that says, you know what, guys, we didn't see that remdesivir did anything. It didn't save lives, it didn't make for shorter hospital stays, they didn't see that it did anything.

Now, you can poke holes in both studies. There are lots of things to say about both of those studies, but certainly it has given people pause when you have this large World Health Organization study coming out saying remdesivir doesn't do anything -- Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Elizabeth, thank you for walking us through that.

COHEN: Thanks.

KEILAR: There is new data that shows students at the University of Michigan are responsible for 60 percent of the local coronavirus cases. Health officials have issued an emergency stay-in-place order to stop the spread. So what happened on campus? CNN correspondent Adrienne Broaddus has the details for us.

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, the University of Michigan is struggling to contain an outbreak. According to the university's president, 99 percent of COVID cases on campus are among undergraduate students.

Earlier this week, we told you about an emergency stay-at-home order for undergraduate students. Just because those students are supposed to stay at home, it doesn't mean they can't leave. They can go to the grocery store, they can go to medical appointments, and they're also allowed to go for a walk with one other person.

The president also says they've learned the virus isn't spreading in classrooms or on campus, but it's happening in small gatherings -- Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Adrienne, thank you so much.

And tonight at 7:00 Eastern, the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, will be joining our Erin Burnett live. So you do not want to miss that, very important information that we'll be getting there.

[14:05:03]

Moments from now, Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden is going to lay out his plan to defeat this pandemic and get millions of unemployed Americans back to work. CNN's MJ Lee is in Wilmington where the event is going to get started here shortly.

So, MJ, what are you expecting that we'll hear from the former vice president?

MJ LEE, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, the day after the debate, Joe Biden is back here in Wilmington, Delaware. And in just a few minutes, we are going to see him deliver a speech that is centered around COVID-19 and the economic recovery.

This just goes to show, is another example that no matter what is sort of happening in the 2020 race and no matter what kinds of attacks President Trump is directing his way, this is a campaign that is very set on making sure that they continue to make the coronavirus pandemic central to the Biden campaign and his candidacy.

And obviously, last night, we saw the two very different perspectives from the president and the former vice president when it comes to the pandemic and how things are going in the country when it comes to the virus.

Obviously, the president, often almost painting a rosy picture of what we have seen, whereas the former vice president basically said, look, if you are a president who presided over more than 200,000 deaths when it comes to this virus, you do not deserve to be re-elected.

And one other thing that was pretty clear was that they have very different predictions and outlooks when it comes to the coming colder months, as it is related to the virus. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We're about to go into a dark winter, a dark winter. And he has no clear plan, and there's no prospect that there's going to be a vaccine available for the majority of American people before the middle of next year.

KRISTEN WELKER, NBC HOST: President Trump, your reaction? He says you have no plan. (CROSSTALK)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't think we're going to have a dark winter, and -- at all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: And, Brianna, another central aspect of the Biden candidacy is that he is the candidate of decency. He is somebody who is empathetic. And we have seen him, over and over again, use COVID-19 to try to demonstrate that. We saw that last night, when he directly addressed American families who have suffered losses during this pandemic, including talking about wives and husbands who are reaching over at night in bed and realizing that their partners are no longer there.

Also just want to note that when it comes to the final days of this election, the Biden campaign says that they do expect the former vice president to have a robust campaign schedule. Tomorrow we are going to see him campaigning in Pennsylvania. This, of course, is a critical state that President Trump won narrowly in 2016. But according to a new CNN poll out of the state, shows Joe Biden with a 10-point lead right now over the president -- Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, M.J. Lee, thank you so much for that report from Wilmington.

And as Trump and Biden are looking to shore up support in these final days, CNN has learned a record-setting 50 million Americans have already cast their vote. CNN's Kristen Holmes is following the numbers for us.

So, Kristen, what do we know about who is voting early and where are the numbers most striking here?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, these numbers are incredible. This is 36 percent of the entire votes cast in 2016, we're still 11 days out from the election. And of course, we have Election Day.

So let's take a look at the where first. We have this map for you, we'll pull up some of the big numbers. You see in Florida here, 4.7 million people. There are 6.3 million people voting in Texas, nearly 2 million in Michigan.

The big one I really want to point out here is Georgia. You see it's about 2.4, 2 million. This is 125 percent increase in voter turnout compared to 2016, so huge numbers. We've seen those long lines in Georgia.

Now, who is actually voting? And that is actually slightly changing in the last several days. The pattern we had seen before was that Democrats were really outpacing Republicans in terms of early voting. Now that gap is narrowing , particularly in the swing states of North Carolina and Florida, where we're seeing that in-person early voting ramp up. Now in North Carolina, for example, from last Monday to now, that margin between Democrats and Republicans, it was cut in half. So the one thing that Democrats still are far outpacing Republicans in

is this. Take a look at these numbers here, these are ballots requested. Mail-in ballots are still exponentially higher among Democrats than Republicans, no surprise there, all the data, all the research we have shows that Republicans would prefer to vote in person on Election Day. But again, Brianna, these numbers are just absolutely incredible, and we still have 11 days left.

KEILAR: Yes, we still have a while. All right, Kristen, thank you so much.

Still ahead, CNN gets the very different reactions of Biden and Trump supporters after the debate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN CLINTON, PHILADELPHIA MAYOR'S OFFICE: Joe Biden, when he said it's human decency, American values are on the ballot in November, I thought that really spoke to me.

[4:10:06]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Trump didn't answer that at all.

PAUL BROWN, TRUMP SUPPORTER: Mr. Joe Biden is talking a lot of trash and lies, he's not being truthful with the American people.

JEANIE QUIRAM, TRUMP SUPPORTER: Trump nailed him.

ELLE REEVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What was your favorite moment?

QUIRAM: Just all of it, I thought it was absolutely the best debate by far.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Plus, a closer look at how Biden and Trump addressed race in this country.

And just in to CNN, Delta Airlines announces it had to ban more than 400 people for not wearing masks on flights.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: The final presidential debate is over, and thanks to a new muted mike policy and an admitted change in strategy from President Trump, Americans were treated to moments of substance and real policy discussion at long last.

[14:15:10]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You keep talking about all these things you're going to do and you're going to do this, but you were there just a short time ago and you guys did nothing. BIDEN: We did --

TRUMP: You know, Joe, I ran because of you, I ran because of Barack Obama, because you did a poor job.

BIDEN: You know who I am, you know who he is. You know his character, you know my character. You know our reputations for honor and telling the truth. Character of the country is on the ballot, our character is on the ballot. Look at us closely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: All right, let's talk about how it went. We have CNN political commentator Angela Rye, she's the former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus and CEO of Impact Strategies. And Sarah Isgur is with us, she's our CNN political analyst and she's also a staff writer for "The Dispatch."

OK, so I wonder what you guys think. Sarah, you say that this race isn't actually about issues, it's about the candidates themselves. Do you see President Trump's apparent discipline that we saw last night, which stood in stark contrast to the first debate, really helping him over the next few days? Or is this just no more damage done?

SARAH ISGUR, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think an interesting question is what would have happened if this had been his performance at the first debate? And maybe that could have made a difference.

Because what we saw, especially on some of these down-ballot races and the Senate races around the country, is that all of a sudden their numbers fell out of the bottom and a lot of races like Alaska, Montana, Texas, races that had no business being competitive, suddenly are.

I think having it this late in the game, we've already had 50 million people vote. And it's -- you know, compared to that first debate. So that first debate was so bad that this one being a little bit better, I think it might stem the bleeding but I don't think it's going to turn around some of the worst outcomes that we saw in that first debate, moving some of those Senate races into the competitive field.

KEILAR: Angela, what did you think?

ANGELA RYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I thought last night's debate was rough. I still -- I posted an Instagram selfie last night, was like, what was that?

So I appreciate the low bar, but I also have to say that in a crisis like the one we're experiencing right now, which in some communities is threefold -- it's not just COVID, it's economic injustice and racial injustice -- there wasn't a lot said that meets the needs of communities that are desperate for real leadership and change.

And so I think what we really have to be analyzing is how someone who has had such a disastrous response to COVID, with now the United States topping 1,100 deaths daily, someone who says that he's the least racist person in the room -- not at all saying he's not racist -- and someone who, in the last debate, told the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by.

No (ph), Joe Biden must have been hungry on the debate stage since he said "Po Boy," I wouldn't mind a fried shrimp po boy myself right now. But I think the reality that we have -- Sarah, I see you agreeing with that point --

(LAUGHTER)

-- I think the reality that we have, right? Is that there's a lot on the line. And I don't even think this election is about partisanship, right, Brianna? It's about human decency and morality. Whether you're a single-issue voter on the economy or health recovery or COVID or disaster relief -- since the Senate won't even pass the HEROES Act -- there are a lot of single issues that you could vote on, and it could be a whole slate of things to vote Donald Trump out.

KEILAR: So let's -- I mean, you mentioned racism, you mentioned racial injustice. Let's talk about this. There was one moment from the debate last night where President Trump was attempting to reach out to black voters -- or at least it seemed that way. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Nobody has done more for the black community than Donald Trump. And if you look -- with the exception of Abraham Lincoln, possible exception, but the exception of Abraham Lincoln -- nobody has done what I've done.

I am the least racist person, I can't even see the audience because it's so dark. But I don't care who's in the audience, I'm the least racist person in this room.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Angela, what the --

(LAUGHTER)

RYE: Brianna. You can keep a straight face if you want to, but here's the reality --

KEILAR: I'm (ph) trying (ph).

RYE: -- the reality is, there's been a lot that's happened since the Emancipation was signed in 1863. And I think what that really tells us is the fact that Donald Trump comes from a party that doesn't appreciate the advancements of civil rights. Donald Trump comes from a party that really started undoing civil rights progress under Ronald Reagan and has not pivoted since then.

Donald Trump comes from a party where, in their budgets, this year, they're zeroing out offices of civil rights all throughout the federal government. He's not done more for black people, he's actually caused more harm.

And he wants Joe Biden to apologize for the crime bill, which I actually agree with, but he also should apologize for calling for the death penalty for five young men -- of course the Central Park Five -- and all that he said he would do that hasn't really meant the rubber meeting the road in this administration.

[14:20:14]

There's been four years, and he's spent more time fighting a black man who's no longer in office. That black man is of course Barack Obama, who haunts him every day. He's busy undoing executive orders that actually would help the black community and have helped the black community. That's what he's been doing.

KEILAR: You know, Sarah, I wonder what you think. I've spoken to conservatives who feel like President Trump is doing a disservice to the party, right? That when it comes to how he speaks to black voters, they cringe when they hear these kinds of things.

ISGUR: So two things that are interesting coming out of this. One, I think there's this assumption that when he's saying things like that, he's trying to speak to black voters. I actually think there's a really decent chance that they're looking at their numbers among suburban white women that are just plummeting right now in double digits, a gender gap that may actually be larger than what we saw in 2016.

And that what they're actually speaking to is trying to control those drops by making those white suburban women feel more comfortable voting for him, because those voters are giving feedback that they're not comfortable with his language around race.

Second of all, speaking of gender, we've also seen something really interesting happening among communities of color, which is that the gender gap that Donald Trump has between men and women, who -- in general, is also reflected in communities of color, that he's actually winning a few more black men than black men, for instance. And quite a few more Latino men than Latino women.

So you know, to some extent, I think he was trying to talk to communities of color, but I think that actually some of that was aimed at these suburban white women that he has got to do better with if he has any chance of winning in states like Florida and Pennsylvania.

KEILAR: And I --

RYE: That's such a good point, Brianna --

KEILAR: -- Angela, yes.

RYE: Sorry, really quick. I was just going to say that's such a good point by Sarah. You know, I think that that is spot-on. And I had not considered that at all, but it makes a ton of sense.

Because when you hear the rhetoric around "I'm the least racist person" instead of "I'm not racist," or you know, the people who are probably in all of our friend circles who say, "I have black friends"? Those folks that speak in those defensive terms, that language resonates with them a whole lot more.

What we really need to be talking about is why communities of color, particularly in this instance -- black voters -- are used as a political football. Instead of trying to get points with whatever your language is, your policies at some point have to align with that language so people feel comfortable not only saying they will vote for you when the pollsters come around, but actually going out to exercise their right to vote on your behalf and to your benefit.

KEILAR: Thank you guys so much, I really enjoyed this conversation. Angela Rye, Sarah Isgur, it's great to see you. I know I'll be seeing a lot more of you in the coming days.

RYE: Thank you.

[14:23:04]

KEILAR: Any minute now, Joe Biden will be delivering a speech on his plan to fight the pandemic after hammering President Trump on his response at last night's debate. We're going to bring that to you, live from Delaware.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Just in to CNN, Delta Airlines says it has had to ban hundreds of flyers for not following the company's mask policy. Pete Muntean is following this for us.

So what is the airline saying? And you know, what does this ban mean? Is this a lifetime ban, is this something that's over once COVID is over? What is it?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Airlines are essentially saying that you can be banned at least until their pandemic policies change. The new number, Brianna, 460 people have been banned from flying on Delta for refusing to wear a mask on board its flights.

The last time I got an update on this was about two months ago, when Delta's CEO, Ed Bastian, said about 270 people had been banned. It's so interesting here, when you do the math on this, it works out to an average of two people per day being banned from flying on Delta since its mask mandate went into effect on May 4th.

What's so interesting here, other airlines requiring this. But this is also coming at a time when the CDC is saying, in its strongest language yet, that masks must be worn by travelers on every part of the trip. New studies show the risk of contracting coronavirus on board an airplane is actually not all that high because of the way the air is filtered through every few minutes. But the CDC says the risks are higher in places like terminals, where people can get bunched up and close together.

Airlines have been requiring masks starting at check-in, but they do not get any help here from the federal government. So far, the FAA, the DOT has been silent. No new regulations from the federal government requiring that passengers wear masks on board flights.

KEILAR: All right, Pete, thank you so much for that.

Now, besides suggesting that he would phase out the oil industry, Joe Biden's attempt to clarify his position on fracking put him on the defense during last night's debate. Here's what happened when he was pressed on this by President Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It's all a pipe dream. But you know what we'll do? We're going to have the greatest economy in the world. But if you want to kill the economy, get rid of your oil industry. If you want -- and what about fracking?

WELKER: All right, let me --

TRUMP: Now we have to ask him about fracking.

WELKER: -- let me have -- let me allow Vice President Biden to respond.

[14:30:00]

BIDEN: I have never said I oppose fracking.

TRUMP: You said it on tape.

BIDEN: I did -- show the tape, put it on your website.

TRUMP: I'll put it on.

BIDEN: Put it on the website.