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Candidates Blitz Battlegrounds as Election Calendar Ticks Down; State of the Race in Rust Belt States of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin; New Crisis Point of COVID-19 Surge Heading into Final Week of Campaign. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired October 26, 2020 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:00]

AMANDA TYLER, FORMER CLERK FOR JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG: We'll think that's another indication of where she's calling on the American people get invested and vote and make it your Constitution. What she did of work to build a more inclusive Constitution but it's up to all of us to keep that work going.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Professor Tyler, we are out of time. I look forward to reading the book. Thank you very much. I know it'll be released with her other friend's book, Herma Hill Kay's book, "Paving the Way." Thanks for being with us this morning.

TYLER: Thank you so much.

HARLOW: And thanks all of you for joining us. We'll see you tomorrow morning.

I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto. NEWSROOM with John King starts right now.

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everybody. Top of the hour. I'm John King in Washington. Thank you for sharing this very important day with us.

It is the last full week now of the 2020 campaign. And it is an ominous moment in the fall coronavirus surge. The campaign trail is busy. Headlined by three stops by President Trump in Pennsylvania. Including a big rally this hour.

The vice president is heading to Minnesota, despite a coronavirus cluster in his office that would land you or me in quarantine. The White House says he tested negative again this morning and insists he can campaign safely.

The polling numbers are crystal clear. Joe Biden's national lead right now bigger than Hillary Clinton's lead eight days out back in 2016. And a brand-new batch of swing state polling tells us today the 2020 dynamic is this. The president needs a historic come back if he wants four more years.

This complicates things for Team Trump. More than 60 million ballots already cast. More people have now voted in 2020 than in all of early voting back in 2016. The coronavirus of course weighs heavily on how you vote and who you vote for.

You see the numbers on your screen. Overall, look at any of them. They are bleak this hour. And the trend says there is no end in sight. 60,000 new cases on Sunday. That's the second highest Sunday of new cases since the start of this pandemic. We finished the week with two consecutive days over 80,000 new infections. We start this week at a new high of cases per day, nearly 69,000 new infections a day on average right now.

Tough it out is the president's plan. And his claims of tremendous progress while they simply infuriate the experts who see no new national plan despite new infection numbers that tell us the country's most difficult COVID stretch is in front of us.

The vice president's chief of staff is known for not wearing a mask. He now one of a handful of Pence aides infected. The president's chief of staff today again mocking Joe Biden for wearing a mask. He says vaccines and therapeutics are the ways to defeat this virus. That chief of staff, Mark Meadows, insists the president is not waving the white flag he had to say that today to clean up this message of surrender he sent Sunday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK MEADOWS, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics, and other mitigation areas because --

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Why aren't we going to get control of the pandemic?

MEADOWS: Because it is a contagious virus just like the flu. It's contagious --

TAPPER: Yes, but why not make efforts to contain it?

MEADOWS: Well, we are making efforts to contain it --

TAPPER: By running all over the country and not wearing a mask?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Let's take a closer look at the numbers. And again, they are so brim (ph). And we start here. Just look at the 50-state trend map. Just look at this map. 37 states, 37 of the 50 states now heading in the wrong direction.

The president says tremendous progress. Just look, decide for yourself. You live here. You live here. 37 states now reporting more COVID infections now than a week ago. 37. And you see six of them reporting 50 percent more new infections or more. 50 percent or more new infections this week than a week ago. Wisconsin among them, Alabama, among them Vermont, among them ominously California again among them. One of the states that drove the summer surge.

If you look at this, seven states, seven states this weekend reported new records for cases looking at the data. New records. We're setting new records as we head up the hill into this fall surge, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Alaska, setting new records over the weekend on the count.

This case trendline spells it all out. Remember, who were down here, 17,000 new infections in June, up the hill we went to the summer surge, only came back down to about 40,000. Sunday was 60,000. Sundays are traditionally low numbers. Again, that's the second highest, Sunday. The whole pandemic.

Friday though, we set a record for new infections, 83,757. All of the experts say we're going up. That 80,000 is now going to be our new normal.

If you look at this positivity map, you understand why. Use this to highlight. Just look at this. 25 percent of coronavirus tests in Iowa coming back positive, 21 in Nebraska, 40 percent, 40 percent in South Dakota, 29 percent in Wyoming, 33 percent in Idaho.

This is where it's the worst. But if you look at the map, 24 percent Alabama, double digits. 10 percent in Florida, 10 percent Arkansas, 10 percent Oklahoma. It is everywhere. It is worse in some places than others, but it is everywhere.

And sadly, sadly, right now, Sunday was a low number. It's still a horrific number.

[11:05:02]

340 Americans reported dead yesterday from coronavirus, but the experts say that line is starting to trend back up. Something we need to keep an eye on and hope it stays down in the week ahead. Again, you watch the trend lines, hospitalizations going back up. And if you look here, 11 states, 11 states set records for hospitalizations this weekend.

Again, think about the positivity map, remember this part of the country, records for hospitalizations. 25, 21, 40. Same spot, the high positivity rates are now having records for hospitalizations. So, the country is in a crisis, right? Yesterday, the White House chief of staff said we cannot control the virus. Today, call this clean up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MEADOWS: The only person waving a white flag along with his white mask is Joe Biden. I mean, when we look at this, we're going to defeat the virus. We're not going to control it. We will try to contain it as best we can.

Any suggestion that we're waving the red flag - I mean, the white flag is certainly not in keeping with this president. You know him, he doesn't give up and he's not going to give up until all Americans are safe and we've defeated this virus.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Let's begin our conversation today with Josh Dawsey of "The Washington Post." Josh, you listened to the White House chief of staff there. A very different message than he delivered just yesterday. There was a lot of frustration in the White House when Mark Meadows appeared to be saying yesterday, look, there's nothing we can do. We just have to wait this out until we have a vaccine. He's trying to send a different message today but at the same time, still once again, mocking Joe Biden for wearing a mask.

JOSH DAWSEY, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Right. And Mark Meadows has been one of the fiercest critics of some of the restrictions as measures to try and contain the spread of the virus. Meadows has pushed for in-person events. He wanted the convention this summer. He has not forced employees to wear masks. He's repeatedly questioned Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci. He's pushed to reopen the economy.

Mark Meadows has not been in line with a lot of the public health experts. And you saw the president today, John, or yesterday saying you know COVID, COVID. People are tired of this. People don't want to talk about anymore.

His message is not that different from his chief of staff's message. Fatigue has set in. We've done everything we can. It's time to go out and live our lives. To have these large unmasked rallies, to you know continue to basically act as if nothing has happened.

But obviously that was cut into abet this weekend when you know when five people around the vice president, including his personal aide, including his chief of staff, including his top political adviser who are, you know, all infected with the virus.

KING: Right. And so, we can put that up and show. Because the vice president is going to be back on the trail again today. He's off to Hibbing, Minnesota. Look, you get it, it's the final week of the campaign and they're trailing, but the vice president, his chief of staff, his top political advisers, and outside adviser, three other aides at least have tested positive.

The vice president was in contact with all of them. And yet the -- he did test negative again this morning, the White House says he can get on a plane and travel again. I get the political imperative. But Josh, if that were you and me, we would not be allowed to go in the office we would be in quarantine.

DAWSEY: The recommendation would be quarantine, yes. The vice president's team says they're closely monitoring his condition. He's being checked every day and that you know he has not been around some of these folks for several days. He was around Marc Short, his chief of staff, sooner than that, but a lot of the others not for several days and they think he's fine to travel. Obviously, as you said, the recommendation is if you have close contact with someone, you quarantine. KING: And so, let's listen to the president. You mentioned, this is the president on the trail yesterday. It's Manchester, New Hampshire. The president is out there. He has a tough map. He lost New Hampshire narrowly four years ago. Just like he's going to New Hampshire.

The vice president is going to Minnesota. States they lost narrowly four years ago because they expect to lose some of the states, they flipped red in 2016. They're looking for new opportunities. But the president is saying things that simply contradict the numbers. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We are coming around. We're rounding the turn. We have the vaccines. We have everything. We're rounding the turn. Even without the vaccines, we're rounding the turn. It's going to be over.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: He even corrected himself there. He said we have the vaccines and he corrected himself because we don't have the vaccines yet and we are weeks, if not months away from any mass distribution. But how do you say we're coming around or rounding the turn when on Friday and Saturday we had the two highest days of new infections over the course of this entire pandemic. It just simply does not compute.

DAWSEY: Well, this has been the message of the president, right John, for many months. I mean he's tried to have downplayed the virus, told to say you know, in his defense he would say you know most people are doing OK. We're getting more therapeutics. We're getting more treatment.

But as you said, the numbers are just going up. They're staggering by the day. A lot of this rhetoric is just not in line with what polls say the American people believed about this virus. You know 80 percent are still concerned of having it. You know, lots of - a lot of folks say, they think it could still get worse. Maybe 50 percent on some polls say they expect it to still get worse.

[11:10:02]

A lot of the president's advisers are trying to convince him to strike a bit of a different tone. He was hospitalized. He was taken by helicopter to Walter Reed as you know for several days. And when he came out, they wanted him to kind of strike a more empathic tone to talk about the folks who have it. But if anything, he's been more defiant since his hospitalization.

And now, you're seeing him straight up mocking the virus on the trail, saying - or mocking the news media's frequent coverage of the virus on the trail. He has not taken any different tone. In fact, he may be less you know empathic about it than he was.

KING: Right. And to your point, some advisers wish he would change his tone. Advisers wish he would say it simply, Josh, the way you just said it. That this is tough. This is hard. We're making progress with therapeutics. I need you all to help, social distance, wear a mask. We're making progress as fast as we can.

If the president would talk like that, people would think, OK, he was taking this seriously. Instead, listen. This is just moments ago in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: He has. He's waved the white flag on life. He doesn't leave his basement. This guy doesn't leave his basement. He is a pathetic candidate. I will tell you that.

We're doing a great job. We are absolutely rounding the corner. Other than the fake news wants to scare everybody, we are absolutely rounding the corner.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: More than 200,000 Americans were diagnosed with COVID over the weekend. It's not fake news. It's not fake news. You see the other numbers on your screen there. But he's a pathetic candidate, that's what he says of Joe Biden.

We know that one of the things the president is furious about that he doesn't think Joe Biden is a very strong candidate. But he also understands he is losing at the moment. But again, we're doing a great job. We're absolutely rounding the corner. It's not a fact.

DAWSEY: The president's campaign frequently mocks Joe Biden for not having events and Joe Biden's folks will say you know it's because they're trying to follow coronavirus you know protocol. They're trying to stay safe. But the president is going to be having three, four, five rallies a day in the next week, John. I think in the next weekend he'll be having four, five rallies every single day.

He loves these large crowds and the adulation. He thinks that's just political strength. And his team is saying you know that the more people they're getting out and seeing in the last few weeks are feeling you know more optimistic about this presidential race. Obviously, the polls show the president behind.

But the president wants to cast this you know narrative, this picture of the country is back to normal. It's fine to kind of view what you want, to come out to these events, not wear masks, at least events you know a lot of his supporters don't. And that things are getting better.

And Joe Biden is taking a totally different tone. He's largely staying at home as the president says. He does a few speeches here and there, but he's not out all the time. And I guess the question will be you know in eight days we'll know what do the American people want. What division do they want? Do they think Joe Biden, or the president has a better idea on how to handle the pandemic?

KING: Without a doubt. Despite you know, he always talks about taxes and spending, roll a government, those are always big presidential issues. Now it is which example do you want? You're absolutely right. People will watch this in the final eight days and make their choice in part based on how these two have decided to campaign in this age of pandemic.

Josh Dawsey, grateful for the reporting and insights.

A very important week ahead for us. Contrast the president's all is well coronavirus message to what we are hearing and seeing across the country.

Look right here, our Utah affiliate reporting to us, one hospital system is 10 days away from care rationing, meaning medical teams would start deciding who does and who does not get the highest level of treatment. And a federal disaster team on the way to El Paso, Texas as the ICUs there hit 100 percent capacity.

Those are the exceptions right now. Most states are managing hospitalizations. But former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb says the trend show that could change quickly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: Outside of states like Wisconsin or Iowa, most states just have a lot of spread but most states aren't to the point where they're extremely pressed right now. That is going to change over the next two to three weeks. I think things are going to look much more difficult.

I think masks are one thing that we could be doing. We need to look at targeted mitigation, starting to close congregate settings where we know spread is happening.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Joining me now is Dr. Tom Inglesby. He's director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Inglesby, grateful for your time today.

I just want to put up on the screen as we start the conversation. Just the case trend, where we are right now. Two days, Friday and Saturday, above 80,000 new infections. 60,000 on a Sunday, second highest Sunday of the pandemic. Just when you look at these numbers, and you sit and go through all of the numbers, the positivity rates, the hospitalizations. What do you see when you look a week or two ahead?

DR. TOM INGLESBY, DIRECTOR, JOHN HOPKINS CENTER FOR HEALTH SECURITY: Yes, I mean John, it looks like we're continuing to move in the wrong direction. I think if you look at what's happening across the Midwest, the Mountain West in particular, but other places as well. You mentioned Texas, certain parts of Texas, hospitals are filling up with COVID patients.

And while it is true that there's been some improvement for the outcomes of individuals, overall, when you add up all of the sick people from COVID, enough of them are sick enough to be in a hospital, enough of them are sick enough to be in the intensive care unit.

[11:15:04]

But those hospitals will get fuller and fuller unless we change direction. Those intensive care units will get more and more full. You mentioned that in Utah, they're already talking about rationing care for people going into the ICU. And that would affect not just people who have COVID but people who need to go to the ICU for other medical purposes. So, it's very serious.

KING: It is very serious. Forgive me for interrupting, sir. And so, you look at the positivity rate across the prairie states, the Mountain West as you noted. Double digits in a lot of other places too. And you just hope it stays you know at 10, 11, 12 and doesn't double or triple like you see in some of those states.

But we also see what is happening in Europe. And listen here, that has a lot of public health experts like you, saying remember, back at the beginning, this you see the chart right here. You see Europe is the green line there. The European Union went up the hill first, right? If you look back to the left on your screen in March. And you see them now, more cases per 1 million residents than the United States.

The question is, if we were two or three weeks behind them then, will we be two or three weeks behind them now in our climb? Listen to this analysis.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM HASELTINE, FORMER PROFESSOR, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: I think we're looking forward to a number of record weeks in the very near future that will drive this daily rate above 100,000. And I can see, if I'm looking across the world, looking at Europe as a predictor of what will happen here as it was in the spring that there could be 200,000 cases, which if you project forward, could mean up to a million deaths a year from now. It is a really dangerous situation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: You run that by people at the White House and they call it alarmist. They say that people are just too fearful of the future, just ride this out, we'll have a vaccine soon enough. Will we?

INGLESBY: Well, we certainly hope we're going to have a vaccine, one or more vaccines. Hopefully by the end of the year but we don't know for sure. And even if we do, it will take time to make enough doses to get to people. It will take time to get a second dose. It will take time for them to get immunity.

So, we're going to have to go many months before the impact of a vaccine will be felt in a large way. Probably the first quarter of 2021 a number of months into before a vaccine can have a measurable impact on the overall population. We'll start in the wintertime, but it will take a while.

So, in the meantime, we got to change the direction. I mean, Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing every day and expecting different results. And I think at this point, we should see that we have been on a rise for six weeks, the number of deaths every day is beginning to go up, unless individuals in large numbers and leaders in large numbers start to make changes, we're going to continue to see this rise.

KING: Well, leaders in large numbers would include the president of the United States or the vice president of the United States who's traveling right now even though his office has a cluster. They're sending a signal there. And look, there's -- I get it, there's an election in eight days.

And so, to do anything drastically different would be admit to do - would be admitting what you've done in the past is not correct. But if you listen to Dr. Haseltine there, if we're talking about 100,000 cases a day, which some say could be just days away, 100,000 new infections a day, 120,000 new infections a day. What is the domino effect on the hospitalization issue you were talking about earlier and other challenges to public health, just in terms of medical supplies, medical capacity to handle that?

INGLESBY: Well, I think what we saw in March was one major city going through that. We saw New York beginning to go into crisis when they had hospitals, they couldn't care for all the patients they had. So, patients not only could they not be in the ICUs, but they had doctors who had never taken care of person on a ventilator trying to take care of someone on a hallway, elsewhere in the hospital.

If that begins to happen in multiple states, we're going to have hospitals in crisis around the country at the same time. In the springtime it was terrible, but it was relatively concentrated in some places. And now it's much more distributed across many more states.

And so, there could be a domino effect not only on supplies but also on health care providers. There's only -- we have the doctors and nurses that we have. We have the intensive care unit specialists that we have. We can't make more. And if they are completely overwhelmed, then care will start to be diminished to people who are in hospital and who are very seriously ill.

KING: Dr. Inglesby, grateful for your insights. I wish we're having more optimistic conversation. But it's very important to get the smart context to help people think about what lies ahead. Appreciate it very much.

I want to show you here some live pictures. This is the president in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He has three stops today in Pennsylvania. You know what that is? That is proof the president knows he's in deep trouble.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:24:04]

KING: To battleground Pennsylvania now. You see the live pictures right there. President Trump speaking in Allentown. It's the first of three Pennsylvania rallies today. Just this morning, new poll numbers that show the president is well behind in a state that is crucial to his comeback hopes.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond is right there at that rally and joins us now live from Allentown. Three stops in a state that was so critical, Jeremy, to the president four years ago, but if in the final week, you're doing three stops in the same state, that tells you, you understand you're behind.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. No question, John. And this is a state that campaign officials have told me over the last couple of weeks, this is the state that the president is going to visit most often before Election Day because his campaign sees the state of Pennsylvania as so critical to their path to 270 electoral college vote. Many experts believing that this state of Pennsylvania could be the tipping point.

Right now, the president is down in the polls by an average of 6 to 7 points against Joe Biden. Now, we should remember though, John, that this is a state where the polls were wrong in 2016.

[11:25:02]

But even if they are as wrong as they were back in 2016, Joe Biden would still eke out a victory by about 1 percentage point if they were wrong by the same margin as in 2016. So, what we're hearing from president here in Allentown, he just took the stage, and he has focused immediately, and the first thing he talked about right out of the gate is this energy issues and the issue of fracking which is a key issue here in the state of Pennsylvania.

The president talking about former Vice President Joe Biden's comments in that last debate where he said that he would phase out subsidies for oil companies. And of course, Joe Biden has also pledged to no longer allow new fracking permits on public lands. President Trump of course, characterizing Biden's position in broader terms.

But one thing we should note, John, is that this election, even here in the state of Pennsylvania isn't just going to swing on the issue of fracking and on the issue of energy. It's also going to swing on the issue of the coronavirus pandemic and on health care.

And of course, the president just last night in that "60 Minutes" interview that aired said that he hopes that the Supreme Court will indeed overturn Obamacare, despite the fact that the president does not have a plan.

And of course, his administration has struggled to rein in this coronavirus pandemic. So, those issues will also play in very much the voters' minds here in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. John?

KING: Always fascinating. Last full week of campaigning. Jeremy Diamond on the trail. Jeremy, thank you so much for the live report. Very important. Keep an eye on the candidates. Follow the candidates this week, follow the money as well.

Team Trump's refrain throughout this week is remember 2016, yes, he was trailing then too. And yes, he pulled off a remarkable comeback, cracking that so-called blue wall and flipping Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin from blue to red.

But new numbers out today tell us 2020 is not 2016 and the comeback hill this time is a lot steeper. With us now is the director of Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Barry Burden. Barry, thank you for your time today.

You just heard Jeremy Diamond. The president is in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin have been the three most spoken words in presidential politics since 2016. I want to look first just at the horserace numbers you've released today.

If you look at -- this is Michigan up first, Biden plus 10, Pennsylvania next, Biden plus eight. Wisconsin, Biden plus nine. And significantly, to me, in all three of these states, Joe Biden is above 50 percent, 52 in Michigan, 52 Pennsylvania, 53 Wisconsin. Take us inside the numbers and what you see as most significant.

BARRY BURDEN, DIRECTOR, ELECTIONS RESEARCH CENTER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON: Well, I think the lead is substantial. These are bigger leads than Hillary Clinton had in most of the polling in these states four years ago. It reflects a real change from the surveys that our center conducted even just last month where Biden's lead was more in the range of four to six points across the three states. Now we're talking about 8 to 10-point lead across the states.

And I think it reflects a real build-up of support in early votes. Biden is far ahead in those who have already cast ballots. Trump is likely to lead with those who vote on Election Day but it's not going to be enough if the poll is accurate to make up for the big leads that Biden has built over the last couple of weeks.

KING: Well, let's look at that because with this record early voting, I think that's one of the key dynamics and one of the key challenges for your business and for mine to make sure as we count votes. We remember, they're coming in in two different blocks, if you will, early votes and Election Day votes.

In Michigan, you have Joe Biden for those already voted up 52 points. You say in the polls of people who have not voted yet, the president is up 22. Biden's lead is even bigger in Pennsylvania. It's enormous. The president will win on Election Day or people who yet to vote still.

Same in Wisconsin. Biden plus 47, of those who haven't voted, Trump 18. But you know, so Trump has this late vote, Election Day vote, but your calculation when you crunch the number says if nothing else changes it's simply not big enough?

BURDEN: Yes, that's exactly right. I think it is one of the uncertainties of this election cycle just how many Trump voters are still out there waiting who are reliable and will show up on Election Day for him. His success in these three states in 2016 was partly the late breaking movement of undecided voters in his direction. That could still happen.

Polls are only a snapshot in time but right now you would rather be Joe Biden building up these large margins and really locking in the vote as the surveys are being done. We should point out. These are surveys of people who have actually already voted and you know really relying on additional voters who have not yet shown up and hoping that you could turn them out is a riskier strategy for Trump.

KING: And one of the most fascinating things, I was reading the research this morning. Joe Biden's lead is growing at the end. But if you look deep into the numbers, we look at the gender gap, we look at you know support among different demographic groups. It is the remarkable stability that jumps out.

We had a lot more volatility in 2016. I just want to look at the gender gap here. Back in August, your poll across these three states had Joe Biden 57, 38 among women. Right now, 58, 38 among women. When you dig in deep, one of the characteristics of this race has been the stability. Why is that important in the sense that if there's not a lot of volatility, in part, helps you trust your numbers, right?

BURDEN: Yes, you're exactly right about that.