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Five Days Left in 2020 Campaign; Biden has more Paths to 270 in Closing Days of Campaign; 41 States Report Increases in New Cases. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired October 29, 2020 - 11:00   ET

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

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[11:00:40]

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everybody. I'm John King in Washington. Thank you so much for sharing a very busy news day with us.

Five days until America chooses its next president, and a very packed campaign trail today. Both President Trump and the Democratic nominee Joe Biden make pitches in the giant prize of Florida. The president visiting North Carolina as well. The vice president stops in Nevada and in Iowa. Senator Kamala Harris here in Washington.

Nearly 79 million early votes have been cast so far. 79 million. That is an enormous number. The 2016 experience colors how Democrats see everything, so they remain nervous in these final days. The polls however, beyond clear. The president is losing and there is little evidence of any momentum as he tries now to rally his way to another dramatic comeback.

There is something for the president to crow about today. The U.S. economy grew at the fastest rate on record last quarter, 33 percent. But just about every statistic is warped right now because of the coronavirus disruption, even that historic growth does not make the U.S. economy whole.

And there's giant worry climbing coronavirus numbers will bring more economic pain. No states at the moment are pushing down their coronavirus numbers. Look at that sad map. 41. 41 states of the 50 recorded more cases this week compared to last week. 41.

The United States added just under 79,000 new cases on Wednesday. That ranks as the third worst day of the entire pandemic in terms of cases. Look at the list right there. Four of the most painful coronavirus days, four of the most painful days have come in just the last week.

One expert says get ready and bets 100,000 cases per day by December. Another says we could pass 100,000 in a single day this week. The president tells every rally we are around the turn. The experts tell us the truth.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: If things do not change, Shep, if they continue on the course we're on, there's going to be a whole lot of pain. We're going to be in much worse shape a month from now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: As I noted a busy day on the campaign trail. This is the 2020 map. Five nights from now we start to fill this in. We get to see who you choose as the next president.

Let's go back to 2016 to reflect on today and how it tells us how much this campaign is unlike the last campaign. As I noted, the president and Joe Biden both in Florida. President moves on to North Carolina, the vice president in Iowa. What do you notice about all those states? They are Trump red from 2016.

Well, let's switch maps because we have a different campaign this time around. We come to our race to 270 not only do we have Joe Biden, if nothing change right now across the finish line at 290 electoral votes. Florida, North Carolina and Iowa, Trump red four years ago, tossup states right now. This map tilts in Biden's favor. You see the tossups, Iowa, Georgia, North Carolina, Iowa, Ohio - excuse me, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida, plus Maine second congressional district.

Joe Biden is competitive or leading in all of them. It doesn't mean he'll win all of them, but the map is tilting his way. He has so many more menu options to get to 270. And if nothing else changed we believe he's already there.

Just a reflection right here of how this is so different. How this is so different. Watch me pull this up here and bring this up on the screen. Let's pop this up here.

You look at these polls right now. Joe Biden a 10-point lead in national polls. Joe Biden leading - a narrow lead but leading in Florida. President Trump well below his 2016 number in all of these states. Joe Biden leads in Michigan. He leads in North Carolina. He leads in Pennsylvania. He leads in Wisconsin.

And again, that doesn't rule out a Trump comeback but it tells you the map is tilted his way. So, when you're looking at this map, the president has to have Florida. There's just no way the president can start a comeback without those 28 votes from Florida.

He needs North Carolina as well. That's where he will be today. He's trying to get back into play, even if he picked up those two, Joe Biden can win the presidency without Florida, without North Carolina, without Ohio. That's why he has the money edge in the final days, he has the map edge in the final ways. As they come back, now it's about turn out. New ads on the campaign trail aiming at Latino voters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nearly three years after Trump's order, over 500 children are still not back with their parents. On his first day as president, Joe Biden will issue an executive order creating a federal task force to reunite these children with their parents.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: America will never be a socialist country.

I'm Donald Trump and I approve this message.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:05:12]

KING: Joining our conversation, Toluse Olorunnipa of "The Washington Post" and "Politico's" Laura Barron-Lopez. Laura, I want to start with you because you look at those advertisements now it's all about turn out and in some states Latino votes will be absolutely critical. In many, many states you think of Florida, you think of Arizona, you think of Nevada but also a swing constituency could be in a place like Pennsylvania, could be in a state like Virginia.

You wrote about this in the paper that some Democrats - in "Politico" excuse me - that some Democrats are a little nervous. Here's what you wrote, "...some Democrats say there's still cause for concern, Latino voters in Philadelphia are returning mail ballots at slower rates than other demographics. Outreach to this group, the Democrats say, came too late."

How worried are Democrats, especially in this environment where a lot of people requested these ballots, the challenge is to get them back.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "POLITICO": Yes, when I was in Pennsylvania, a lot of the voters that I spoke to, the Democratic voters that I spoke to were very wary of placing their ballot in the actual mail. They wanted to go drop them off. And some were even considering, you know, voiding their mail absentee ballot and just going in person because they were concerned about what they were hearing about the process.

Democrats, you know, there are local Democrats that are concerned. I think a lot of that comes down to worries, as you said, John, earlier, about the ghosts of 2016 and if numbers aren't at the certain level that they would like them to be at with Latino voters for Joe Biden, if he isn't able to offset with enough white voters does that mean he ends up losing Pennsylvania. And Latinos have been a growing population in that state for some time.

And so, higher turn out with that group would certainly boost him. Because despite President Trump's attempts to win over some Latinos at the margin, Joe Biden would win the majority of Latino Latinos in a state like Pennsylvania. But despite President Trump attempts to try to peel them off, we're not seeing any real increase in support from that demographic from the president. So, for Biden it's really all about making sure that those Latinos, who are primarily Puerto Rican turn out and vote for him.

KING: One of the fascinating to watch in the final days. And Toluse, Laura notes and I know at the top, Democrats have 2016 PTSD. So, they're nervous. They sometimes can't believe what they see when they read all these polls because some of the polls were wrong in 2016. But the president himself, if you listen to him campaigning, he sounds like he understands the steepness of the hill. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Joe Biden, Sleepy Joe has betrayed Pennsylvania. How the hell can you vote for this guy? Is this a serious - how can you vote for this guy? Congressman, how do you vote for this guy?

If I lose, I will have lost to the worst candidate, the worst candidate in the history of presidential politics. If I lose, what do I do?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: You write about this because it is a snapshot in the president's mindset in these final days.

"...his unscripted remarks bemoaning a potential loss and preemptively explaining why he might suffer one - offer a window into his mind-set as he barnstorms the country in an attempt to keep himself from becoming the one thing he so derisively despises: a loser."

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, that's right. We've been listening to these campaign rallies for the past several weeks, multiple rallies a day. And every once in a while, the president goes off script and he say, wow, I can actually lose to Joe Biden. How horrible would that be. Now uses it as a way to sort of (INAUDIBLE) Joe Biden in talking negatively about him. Say, he's the worst candidate in history.

But it does offer a window into the president's mindset as he's constantly sort of thinking about the idea that he could be a one-term president. We've heard from aides who say that's something that really bothers the president. The fact he could go down in history as one of the few one-term presidents in modern history. And that's not something he's looking at positively. He's looking at it as a major fear and one of the reasons he's campaigning so feverishly.

But I think he's looking at the same polls that a lot of us are looking at. Even as he talks about how he believes he's up big and the polls are wrong and the polls are all false and suppression polls, he has similar numbers to show that he has an uphill climb. That he has a very narrow path to 270 electoral votes. Now, he's trying to draw an inside straight and do what he did in 2016 and win in some of the places where the polls show him behind. But the fact that he is constantly talking about losing and constantly talking about how horrible it would be to lose to Joe Biden shows that he knows the hill is very steep and that he has very few days to try to close the gap.

KING: And so, we're at this fascinating moment in the final days of any campaign, you see Laura, you see the Biden campaign using the financial advantage, new digital ads targeting young people on climate change. But the broad message from the Biden campaign even in more digital spending now is to focus on the big picture, which is COVID, which is spiking just as we head into the election season. [11:10:01]

Joe Biden was off the campaign trail yesterday in Wilmington, Delaware he made a point, a briefing with public health experts and then a speech where he stared down and mocked the president's pandemic response but then offered a fairly sober assessment. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I'm not running on the false promise of being able to end this pandemic by flipping a switch. What I can promise you is this, we will start, on day one, doing the right things. We'll let science drive our decisions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: It's crystal clear, and you get it, number one it's the number one issue in the country all year, but especially giving the horrible state of play right now, the rising case count, Joe Biden began and wants to close on this.

BARRON-LOPEZ: Yes. He really wants to focus on coronavirus, John. Even in a state like Arizona which I've been in the past week and a lot of the people that I talked to there, some of the pollsters that ran focus groups with older voters found that the one thing that helped Trump was the economy but as soon as you started talking about the coronavirus that was his Achille's heel. And so, that's why Biden is hammering it so hard in a state like Arizona which is also one of the states that Trump really needs to win if he's going to pull off this reelection.

And in Arizona, Biden is outspending the president twofold. It's -- Phoenix is his number one media market for the past six weeks leading up to the final Election Day. So, again, even though Biden may be in Delaware and isn't traveling as much as President Trump because of that cash advantage that you mentioned, he's able to really be front of mind for voters in a state like Arizona with those TV ads.

KING: And he has, Toluse. The president has defied the laws of politics and the laws of gravity in the past. But I just want to show you a number. I keep looking every day under every rock is there any evidence that Trump momentum, is there a data point where you can say, OK, he could build from this.

Are things going well in the country today, look at this here. The dates tell you what you need to know, October 1984, Reagan running for reelection. 74 percent felt good. Reagan won in a landslide. 1996, Bill Clinton running for reelections, 67 percent felt good, Bill Clinton won pretty comfortably. George W. Bush just won in 2004, Obama won in 2012. It's those last three. That's George H.W. Bush losing in 1992. That's Jimmy Carter losing on October 1980.

Donald Trump is just above them at 39 percent. That is a tough place to be. A, you're in a middle of a pandemic which is part of why people are pessimistic. But they also don't feel great about the economic prospects at the moment. Anyway, it's just hard to navigate that mood if you're the incumbent.

OLORUNNIPA: Yes. The pandemic came in the early part of the year and it has not gotten better and it's getting worse. We're seeing the worst stage of this right before the election, so it does make it very hard for the president to campaign and say give me four more years when over the past six months we've seen the pandemic surge across the country, we have seen the president put across disjointed messaging about whether people should wear masks. He's holding these superspreader kinds of rallies.

And that is really turning off a lot of the voters that he needs. Now it's helping him with his base and it's driving up some enthusiasm but when it comes to sort of moderate voters that he needs to pull over to his side, that's really repelling them. He gets very low marks for his handling of the pandemic.

And now, even though he has gotten pretty high marks over the course of the year for his handling of the economy, those numbers are starting to slip as well. We saw the stock market drop significantly yesterday and there's concern that right ahead of the election even with these new GDP numbers, that things may not be as solid on the economy as the president would like people to think they are. And that may be one reason why the numbers predict that he is likely to be a one-term president.

Now, we don't know what's going to happen in a few days on Election Day but it's clear that he faces that uphill battle and he is struggling to try to close the gap with just a few days to go.

KING: Smart to say we don't know but the head winds are strong. Toluse, Laura, grateful for the reporting and the insights as we head into this final stretch. And to the segue from Toluse there, the U.S. economy posting its fastest growth on record and latest count on new jobless claims falling to 751,000. Yes, those number going in the right direction but the recovery is uneven and very fragile.

CNN's chief business correspondent Christine Romans takes a closer look.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, John. The American economy grew at a record rate last quarter but the crisis is far from over. Growth hit a record 33.1 percent annual rate over the summer. That when the U.S. economy started bouncing back as states slowly reopened. And all that relief money was flowing, it fueled consumer spending.

But this number is a rebound, John, from a record economic collapse in the second quarter. We are still not back to pre-pandemic levels. Also, the data is stale. It's a look back. Right now, coronavirus cases are surging, there's no federal stimulus as a shock absorber this time. Industries like travel and hospitality are struggling, women are leaving the workforce in droves.

[11:15:05]

And the U.S. has only added back about half of the jobs lost during the pandemic. In fact, in terms of jobs another 751,000 Americans filed for first time jobless claims last week. Economists frankly are growing more concerned that the rebound won't continue in the final three months of the year. John?

KING: Christine Romans, grateful for those insights there. We hope it gets better but it's a rough spot. Up next for us, cases spiking in more than 40 states. Hospitalizations hitting record levels across the Midwest. First though, a campaign flashback. This from the final days of the 1996 election.

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BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Every day for four years I have gotten up and gone into that Oval Office and tried to do something that would help to create more opportunity, to insist upon more responsibility and to bring us closer together in an American community. We are better off than we were four years ago.

BOB DOLE, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you don't want Bill Clinton then you want to vote for Bob Dole, it's that simple. Vote for Bob Dole.

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[11:20:20]

KING: The coronavirus right now surging in ways that alarm public health experts who worry about exponential growth when the case count gets this high and the calendar forces more people indoors.

This map take a look. It's sad and stunning. 41 of the 50 states right now trending in the wrong direction. 41. Zero states reporting fewer new infections now compared to the data a week ago. The country now averaging more than 74,000 new infections a day. Yesterday's case count, third highest on record since the start of the pandemic. Hospitalizations also soaring. Many states reporting new record highs.

Joining us is Dr. Craig Spencer. He's the director of Global Health and Emergency Medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center.

Dr. Spencer thank you for being with us. When you just see these record days, record days, record days, four of the top five days in the past week, how much do you worry about just exponential growth once you're if in the 70s and then you're in the 80s and then we hit 100. And then what?

DR. CRAIG SPENCER, DIRECTOR, GLOBAL HEALTH AND EMERGENCY MEDICINE AT NEW YORK-PRESBYTERIAN/COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER: I think that is likely in the next coming weeks. I would be surprised if we don't get to 100,000 cases quite soon. You know the retort that we're going to hear is because we're doing more testing. It's true that testing has gone up since October 1st by 14 percent which is great.

But new cases have gone up by over 60 percent. So, it's not just testing. It's a lot more virus. And this virus is everywhere. If you remember early on in March and April, the virus was primarily in the northeast and then we saw it at the sunbelt. And we saw it in Florida and a couple other places. It's been rolling around the country.

What we see right now is the virus everywhere. Only three states have fewer people in the hospital now than the beginning of the month. And the highest per capita rates of COVID are not places like New York City or New Jersey. It's in North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Montana and Wyoming. So, I'm quite concerned as we this explosive increasing cases because it's going to be followed by more hospitalizations as it already has. And then inevitably more deaths.

KING: Months ago, if we were having a conversation, we'll be having a conversation about as you mentioned, the northeast came first, including where you are in New York City and then a lot - most of the northeast has done a remarkable job of pushing down the curve. I think we have the positivity rate in New York right now, you know, still below 2 percent. But you see the line starting to trickle up just a little bit, right? You see it just started to trick up a little bit and you're looking around the country and you're thinking uh-oh. Listen to the mayor, saying you know, yes, that's a good number but I'm still nervous.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D-NY), NEW YORK CITY: The whole focus here, singular focus is to stop a second wave from hitting New York City. We have to hold this virus at bay. We've shown it can happen. But now we have a threat from everywhere around us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: So how do you handle that in the sense that you went through an exhausting, deadly, painful phase. Everybody does their job and gets it down. It starts to trickle back up, how do you convince people you know essentially strap back in. We don't want to go through that again.

SPENCER: I think in New York people have gone through this and they're taking it seriously. You can see that. You can attest that by looking at the percent positivity over the summer, for example, which was around 1 percent. And even though we've seen explosive growth across the country and in the percent positivity in New York City, it's ticked up to around 1.6 percent.

That's still amongst the lowest in the country. Yes, we have more cases now in New York state than we did at the beginning of the month, about double. We have you know 1,000 people in the hospital. We still have you know a handful of deaths, around a dozen every day, that's still too many.

But I think what we've seen here is we've increased testing dramatically. We're doing around 130,000 tests per day in New York state, which is you know 11 or 12 percent of the total for the whole country. What you're seeing is a lot more testing but not necessarily a lot more cases. People have gone through this here, they know to take it seriously. And I think we're all hoping that everyone around the country heeds the calls and our experience to let people know that you don't want to go through what we went through here in New York City earlier in the year.

KING: You would think that would be the case. It was a dominant national and international story. And yet when you see some of the positivity rates above 30 percent or above 20 percent across the upper Midwest and across the plains states. I mean what do you think, when you think about we talk to colleagues around the country in terms of were you not watching what happened here, why did you think you were immune from this?

SPENCER: Well, early on a lot of people didn't think it was going to get as bad in other places as it did in New York City or as it did in Italy or in Wuhan. And to date that's largely been true, right? We were completely overwhelmed here in March and April. That hasn't necessarily been the case at least up until now.

We're hearing about field hospitals in Wisconsin and in Texas. We have gotten better at treating this disease. The likelihood that you'll have a severe case and that you'll need a ventilator, that you'll die from it, has definitely decreased based on a lot of that experience that we learned here in March and April. And we shared with our colleagues all around the country.

[11:25:06]

The problem is, is that even if the death rate, if you get it, has decreased, if we increase dramatically the number of people that are getting COVID that are in the hospital. The total number of deaths will continue to increase as it has over the past few weeks. We just saw you know recently over 1,000 deaths. We're back to that point a day. The numbers that we were seeing over the summer and thankfully got down but we're winching back up, hospitalizations are backed up, cases are backed up.

We need to heed this advice all over the country because really no area is immune from a really exponential outbreak.

KING: Just about all the numbers heading in the wrong direction at the moment. Dr. Craig Spencer, grateful sir for your time and for your insights.

Up next for us in the pandemic election. A lot of court challenges about mail-in voting. Democrats get two wins in battleground states, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

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