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Trump and Biden Battle for Florida, Will Hold Dueling Rallies in State; Supreme Court Allows Longer Deadlines for Mail-In Ballots in North Carolina and Pennsylvania; Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) Not Familiar with Trump Access Hollywood Tape. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired October 29, 2020 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: Top of the hour. Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

Today, the fight for Florida, just five days out from Election Day, both campaigns are duking it out in dueling rallies in that key state. We're seeing a record early voter turnout there and across the nation. Just moments ago, we learned that North Carolina, it surpassed 80 percent of the total turnout from 2016. That's five days before the election, partially fuelled by interest in the election but also a pandemic that sadly is getting worse in this country. Right now 41 states, the map just keeps getting hotter, are battling surges in new infections.

HARLOW: You're so right. Look at the orange and deep red. Not a single green state, meaning nowhere is going in the right direction. And the White House task force is warning of, quote, unrelenting, broad community spread in the Midwest, upper Midwest and the west. And Dr. Fauci says, brace for more.

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DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: There's going to be a whole lot of pain in this country with regard to additional cases and hospitalizations and deaths. We are on a very difficult trajectory. We are going in the wrong direction.

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HARLOW: We begin with Drew Griffin. He joins us in Florida this morning. Good morning to you, Drew.

As we go in the wrong direction, you've got the president and Joe Biden in that state very focused on the center of the state, which is geographically the center but also politically the center, that is the I-4 corridor today. DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, certainly the I-4 corridor is the tossup, but Joe Biden is going to start in the Democratic-rich Broward County. He has really got to outperform in these highly Democratic areas to overcome the super red areas in the rest of the state. But then you'll see both candidates in Tampa.

Hillsborough County is a swing county. Hillary Clinton did win it but not by much. But Trump has to get a hold of every single Republican that could possibly vote in the Tampa area just to counterbalance what's going to take place on the east coast of Florida. So that's the political drama that's going on there.

What is the good news, even though COVID numbers are surging in the state of Florida, Poppy and Jim there's no sign that that is affecting anybody who wants to come out and vote in Florida. Today, the new numbers show that half of all registered voters in the state of Florida have already voted and we still have plenty of days of early voting behind me. The voting has just started again for the day here in Tallahassee.

If you looking at the trends, the mail-in ballots were favoring registered Democrats but Republicans are catching up in the early voting, like you see behind me. So it is really going to be a Florida battle like we've seen so many times, millions and millions of votes cast, but the margin of victory could be very small. Poppy, Jim?

SCIUTTO: Yes. Isn't that the story of Florida on Election Day? Drew Griffin, good to have you there.

Well, Jill Biden, she is in Michigan today ahead of her husband, Joe Biden's, first joint-appearance with President Obama there this weekend. Remember all the talk about Hillary Clinton did miss of those states in the final days before 2016.

CNN National Correspondent Miguel Marquez joins us now. Miguel, who else is popping into Michigan today?

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Lots of visitors, not only Jill Biden today, but Tiffany Trump and Eric Trump will be here today. The vice president was here yesterday, Donald Trump was here two days ago. The president will be back in Oakland County, just north of Detroit, that's a county that Hillary Clinton won in 2016 by about eight points, and then Joe Biden and Barack Obama will appear for the first time together in Michigan on Saturday.

Now, the secretary of state says that they expect about 5 million votes to be cast in this election. They expect about two thirds of those will be in before Election Day. And because of concerns about the mail, they say, if you want to vote, this is the way to do it. These guys have been out here all day collecting ballots at the Detroit Department of Elections. They make sure that people have signed their ballots and they can drive through and drop it off. This is the best way to get your vote in if you don't want to vote in person on Election Day.

But that is still a choice, voting in person on Election Day, both campaigns working this state very hard, both hoping to pull out victory in a must-win Michigan.

[10:05:03]

Back to you guys.

HARLOW: No question about it. Miguel, thank you so much.

Well, more than a million-and-a-half people have already voted in Wisconsin, that is more than half of all the ballots that were cast in that state in 2016. Our Bill Weir is there again for us this morning. Good morning, Bill.

A quiet day on the campaign trail there, but five days out, right? Where do we stand in the key battleground state?

BILL WEIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the story of the day this morning is really the future of the state is being written in lines. Lines to vote, as you see drive-in sort of curbside service here in Madison, and lines to figure out if you're part of this wave of the pandemic, they're calling a nightmare scenario. 3,800 new cases yesterday, 45 deaths, the positivity rate now 27 percent. So if you do the math, if this continues, they're going to run out of ICU beds within the next two weeks.

I was at a testing center where they're churning out a test every nine seconds, the line of cars with several hundred long. They had to shut down a testing center because they're running out of tests. And this, of course, will all be exacerbated by Trump style politics, probably another big, maskless rally is scheduled for Green Bay tomorrow. The president coming back to the state as polls show Joe Biden has a lead of anywhere from 5 to 17 points, depending on which poll you believe.

But here is thing to think about in Wisconsin, Jim and Poppy. Right now, there are about a million-and-a-half ballots sitting in dozens -- hundreds of municipalities around the state. At 7:00 A.M. on Tuesday is when they can open those and start counting them. In my old hometown of Wautoma, it will take about five minutes. In Milwaukee, it will talk all night.

So the warning that Wisconsin could be one of those red mirage states, where the early returns look like they're going to Donald Trump. But then as those absentee ballots are coming in from the north side of Milwaukee, and the youth vote, and the 30 percent lead it has in women, it could go the other way the next day.

SCIUTTO: Big story this election is just the enormous turnout, I mean, with big ramifications. Bill Weir, good to have you there in Wisconsin.

To the growing health crisis, Dr. Anthony Fauci says the U.S. should have had a more coordinated response from the onset, not an outlier position.

HARLOW: No. Our Senior Medical Correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, is with us. Good morning, Elizabeth.

Something seemed different in some of the responses from Dr. Fauci yesterday. What did you think?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It did. I think it seemed more intense. I've known Dr. Fauci for many, many years, and he really is quite even-keel. He has worked for presidents of every stripe since the 1980s. And this seems more intense. He seems more direct and more like he's speaking his mind.

I think it's very clear what he's feeling now, which is that, as you said from the beginning, there should have been some kind of an organized response rather than various officials talking here and there and contradicting each other, leaving Americans sometimes really not knowing exactly what to do.

SCIUTTO: Yes, definitely a difference in tone.

Okay, let's talk about vaccines, because pharmaceutical companies, of course, that are making these things. Looking back, they made predictions that haven't panned out. That said, nationally, we are making progress. Where does that stand?

COHEN: So, where we stand now is that there are four trials going on in the U.S. Two are much further ahead than the other two. So the ones the people have an eye on are Pfizer and Moderna.

But to speak to what you were talking about, Jim, there have been some predictions. We looked backwards and saw the pharmaceutical companies have made predictions about their vaccines where enough time has passed that we know they haven't come true. And I want to point them out. So let's take a look at them.

So, we're talking about pharmaceutical companies saying, hey, we think we're going to have data that points to results in our trial. We're going to have results with data to show you. The University of Oxford this spring said, we'll have data by September at the latest, didn't happen. Pfizer said they would have data by the end of October, but in an earnings call this week, they made it clear that that is not going to happen.

And it's important to point out this because we all need to keep things in perspective. We're going to be hear things not just from outside experts but from companies themselves that might not be true. So all we need to take all of this with a grain of salt while keeping in our heads that eventually there will be a vaccine.

HARLOW: Yes, it's a great point, because never before has the public ever followed progress of a vaccine trial the way we are now with the 24-hour news cycle. You're not used to going by what a pharmaceutical company says that can't be checked, right? There are parties until the end. Elizabeth, thanks as always.

Let's bring in Dr. Jeffrey Gold, he is the Chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Dr. Gold, it is good to have you, and, I think, appropriate especially given that you and your team were among those to treat the first COVID patients all the way back in March when they were coming to you off these cruise ships, et cetera.

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You've gathered so much information since then.

And I wonder how it has helped you now and what you are thinking about the fact that the entire map is almost all red in terms of surging cases.

DR. JEFFREY GOLD, CHANCELLOR, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA MEDICAL CENTER: Yes. So there's no question as we look at the map, it is extremely red. And we can spend a lot of time lamenting what may have caused that, whether it's change in weather, back to school, high school and college sports, whether it's pandemic fatigue. But whatever it is, we just need to continue to deal with it as we get closer and closer to a safe and effective vaccine.

We know the number of things that can help us. It's all of it non- pharmacologic interventions. It's the use of masks, social distancing, hand sanitizer, limiting gatherings. But that's tough for people who are used to being social, particularly as we face the holidays in the very near future.

SCIUTTO: All right. So this country has not had a national planned response. It hasn't for months. Regardless of what happens next week in the election, either you have a re-elected President Trump likely to continue on this path or you have a new president but he won't be in charge until the end of January, which is past this fall period that folks like Dr. Fauci and others are warning about.

Given that, what does a patchwork response, an inconsistent one, mean for the nation's ability to get the second wave under control?

GOLD: I think we just need to all roll up our sleeves, those that have -- what I like to call influencers, whether they're people such as myself, whether they're elected officials, whether they are at local public health districts or whether the principals of our schools and others and get together around things that we know are truly effective.

In this instance, science is key and the science tells us unequivocally that if we implement these non-pharmacologic interventions, we can lower transmission rates. We can't stop it but we'll lower it. We can definitely prevent hospitalizations and most important we can prevent deaths most importantly.

HARLOW: There is this new study out of Vanderbilt on masks. And granted it just looks at the state of Tennessee but it's still really telling in terms of hospitalizations where at least 75 percent of patients were subject to a local mask requirement. COVID hospitalizations were about the same level now that they were at the beginning of July. In places where fewer than 25 percent of patients were subject to a local mask mandate, they saw a 200 percent increase in hospitalizations now versus the 1st of July.

I mean what more do we need to show that everyone needs to wear masks and that a national mask mandate might not only be in the health benefit of this country but the economic benefit of this country? GOLD: Yes, for sure. It's both in the economic and the social benefit of the country. Frankly, I'd love to be able to hug my grandchildren over the holidays. And the only way that we're going to be able to do that is to understand that the science tells us pretty clearly that the use of masks, social distancing, et cetera, is important.

And not just in large public gatherings, supermarkets, post offices, stores when we go out to vote, but also when we're in smaller gatherings with folks that we normally would consider close friends and family. But we know that being indoors, particularly as the weather gets colder in areas where there's not as much ventilation as it would be in better open areas, that that's where it's going to make a difference. And so mask-up, America, I guess, is the message.

SCIUTTO: Yes, because it works, right? I mean, we said multiple times a day, smart people like you say it multiple times a day, and the data shows it. Folks just have got to listen. Dr. Jeffrey Gold, thanks very much.

GOLD: Thank you. Good to be with you.

SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour, President Trump says he should be prosecuted, the acting head of his former department call himself serving. We're going to speak to Miles Taylor. He is the man now revealed as anonymous from the op-ed in the book.

HARLOW: Also two major Supreme Court decisions just handed down. How this shakes up the race for 270 electoral votes come Election Day.

Plus three people are dead after a knife attack at a church in France, one of those victims beheaded. What authorities know at this hour.

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SCIUTTO: All right. Folks, you want to hear this because it matters. This morning, two major Supreme Court decisions on mail-in ballots just days before Election Day, in two big states too. In Pennsylvania, the court refusing to expedite a case that would have re-examined the state's rule allowing those ballots to be counted for three days after November 3rd. I mean, bottom line there, that sounds very confusion. Ballots will be counted for days after Election Day, ballots that are mailed in. That means likely more ballots counted.

HARLOW: There, that's the bottom line on that one.

In North Carolina, the high court is allowing votes to be counted for nine days after Election Day, so the same sort of premises here. That is considered a big win for Democrats. Let's go to our Mark Preston and Harry Enten. Good morning, gents. Forgive people for being confused, Mark, at what this all means for them. Can you talk about the significance about the Supreme Court's ruling here in both of those states?

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Sure. It's complicated but it's very simple. Look, let's start with North Carolina. And what we see in North Carolina is that they're saying is that if you get your ballot postmarked by Election Day, then it has, what, up to

seven, eight, nine days to get there, seven days, to get there, for folks to have it counted.

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Well, what's interesting about North Carolina, by the way, and we do say this is a big victory for Democrats, but North Carolina is also a heavily military district, right, where we have a lot of military bases, you have Lejeune, you have Fort Bragg, you have about multiple Air Force bases, smaller ones throughout the state.

You would think that Republicans would want some extra time in order to get some of those ballots back because the military traditionally has been Republican voters, right? So you would think it would work that way. Of course, what we see up in Pennsylvania gives a little bit more breathing room, a little bit different than what we see in North Carolina. But the fact of the matter is, the idea that we're opening the doors for people to vote and do it in a legal way, I think, should be herald with (ph).

SCIUTTO: You would think, right? I mean, it's America.

Harry Enten, I bother you every day, as you know. Tell us, big picture, where the race stands, in your view.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL WRITER AND ANALYST: Yes. I mean, look, former Vice President Joe Biden is favored. And there is no doubt about that. And rulings like this only help that, right, especially in a state like Pennsylvania, where we know Joe Biden is winning overwhelmingly with absentee voters. And you can see that right here on your screen right there. You see Trump winning among Election Day voters in Pennsylvania. Among absentee, according to the polling, Biden holds a very significant lead.

But just talking about the race at large, right, Joe Biden is favored with now, you know, less than a week to go. And that has just been the consistent case throughout this election cycle, Joe Biden has a lead and Donald Trump is either going to really need to close very, very fast or he's going to need a massive polling effort, and right now, I'm not betting on either one of those outcomes occurring.

HARLOW: Harry, can I ask you about CNN's new poll that shows women breaking in a big way for Biden? 61 percent for Biden, 37 percent for Trump. What struck me was 54 percent of women voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election. So why is Biden doing even better with women? Is that a pro-Biden mark or is that an anti-Trump mark by women?

ENTEN: I think it's anti-Trump. And we've seen this throughout the Trump presidency. Record gender gaps being driven by the fact that women voters are so overwhelmingly against the president of the United States. In fact, I think we're going to have a record gender gap in this election.

And if you believe the pre-election polling, Joe Biden is going to win by a larger margin among women voters than any Democratic candidate in the polling era. And we saw a similar thing that occurred during the midterms, women, women, women, even as men are mostly sticking by the president.

SCIUTTO: Mark Preston, I mean, look at the number on our screen there. Nearly 80 million people have already voted five days to Election Day. We just got this data in from Texas, 8.4 million people there. That's already 94 percent of the total vote in 2016. Who does a high turnout election favor? Do we know?

PRESTON: Well, I think that Harry has been, you know, charting the data for the past several months now. Early voting tends to help Democrats because they tend to have a better operation on trying to get them out.

Now, Republicans will say they vote on the day, on Election Day. That's where their stronghold is. And that's where they're probably hoping to make up some ground. I think we're in a different era right now though, and I think it's fair to say that. Look, the fact there's so much interest in voting right now is being driven by COVID, it's being driven by people's lives being upended, it's being driven by the fact that people are afraid to actually go to the polls themselves because they don't want to catch the coronavirus.

So, look, we should be heralding and happy that all these folks are out there voting. We should be happy that we're seeing celebrities getting involved in trying to get people to vote. But the bottom line is, I think, that when we look at these votes, we have got to take every vote for what it's worth. And it's extremely important. And when we see people who are trying to push back against that or trying to deny people the vote, we shouldn't be supportive of that, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes. That should not be a partisan issue, right? And, by the way, you've seen Republicans, George Will wrote about this, saying, we should not be standing as a party, he said of his own party, in the way of voting.

Listen, guys, I think we'll be bothering you guys a couple more times in the next few days. Harry Enten, Mark Preston, thanks very much.

HARLOW: Thank you both.

All right, so just five days left in a tight Senate race in Georgia. Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler is putting zero distance between herself and the president, the appointed senator now racing to the right. And she claimed that she is, quote, not familiar with the president's now infamous Access Hollywood tape from 2005.

SCIUTTO: Well, judge for yourself whether that's credible. CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju, he joins us now from Capitol Hill.

Manu, you spoke to the senator. How did she explain that?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. She is in a race to the right with her Republican rival in that Senate race. This is unlike any other Senate race in the country because it's actually a special election, and there was no primary.

[10:25:01]

So she and her Republican rival, Doug Collins, are trying to court conservative voters in this state in order to try to get into the runoff. And the top two finishers on Tuesday's election will get into the runoff in January.

So she and Doug Collins are trying to see if they can compete against the Democrat, Raphael Warnock, in that January runoff. And what Loeffler is doing in this race is trying to say that she has completely aligned with the president. She says she has a 100 percent voting record with the president.

So when I asked her yesterday in Buford, Georgia, whether or not there was any issue she disagreed with the president on, she said there wasn't. And she also claimed she was not familiar with that tape infamous tape that came to light in 2016 of the president bragging about sexually assaulted women.

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RAJU: On the campaign, you've been boasting about having a 100 percent pro-Trump voting record. Is there any issue in which you disagree with the president on?

SEN. KELLY LOEFFLER (R-GA): No. Look, the president, like myself, he's a political outsider, he is a business person, he is a conservative champion, fighting to put America first. That's what I went to Washington to do.

REPORTER: You were asked during the debate last week if President Trump had said or done anything you disagreed with. You know that President Trump was caught on tape talking about sexually assaulting women. You didn't disagree with that. What does that say?

LOEFFLER: Look, what I agree with is the approach President Trump has taken since day one to put America first. What I am here focused on is working for Georgians in Washington.

REPORTER: And you're still not disagreeing with that particular thing that President Trump said? You're still not disagreeing with that?

LOEFFLER: What are you referring to?

REPORTER: You're not disagreeing with President Trump's statements about personally sexually assaulting women.

LOEFFLER: I'm not familiar with that.

RAJU: The Access Hollywood tape. He was referring the Access --

LOEFFLER: Yes, no. Look, this president is fighting for America. That's what I'm fighting for, to make sure every that American has their chance to live the American dream.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAJU: This is the kind of thing that Republicans in Washington have been concerned about this race because they wanted to unite behind one candidate who could potentially appeal to more moderate voters, more swing voters. But because that there are these two Republican candidates fighting with each other, they are moving further to the right and could risk the Senate seat.

And, of course, it's not just this Senate seat that's at risk of flipping to the Democrats, it's the other seat too, David Perdue's seat. There could be two Democratic pickups there, and David Perdue is on the ropes in that race as well. So a lot of concerns that Republicans have in Georgia, including in this race that could end up in a January runoff. And we'll see how these candidates -- so if Kelly Loeffler gets in there, how she deals with those kind of comments if she's got to court those swing voters come January, guys.

SCIUTTO: Let's be frank, it is not difficult to find that tape online if she wanted to. Manu Raju, thanks very much.

Anonymous no longer, why Miles Taylor wrote the scathing op-ed in 2018, why he is going public only now.

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