Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

U.S. Records Worst Day Of Pandemic: 88,000 Plus New Cases; COVID-19 Spike Shatter Records Heading Into Election Day; Trump: Campaign May Stay At White House On Election Night; Biden, Trump Focus On Midwest Battlegrounds; Appeals Court Rules Minnesota Ballots Must Be In By Election Day. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired October 30, 2020 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN KING, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Hello to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I am John King in Washington. Thank you for sharing your day with us. The final week end campaign sprint. Four days until America picks its president. And clear objectives today for each candidate.

The president's mission, retrace his 2016 path to 270 electoral votes. Joe Biden rebuild the blue wall the tour, President Trump down. The president tour down, excuse me, already nearly 85 million if you have cast your votes. Well, the voting closing today in seven states including two battlegrounds, the Biden Campaign views is in play this time around in Arizona and Georgia.

Look at the map markers for today on the trail and it is a study in battleground math with a lot of overlap and a very big Midwest focus. The president visits Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Vice President Pence campaigns in Arizona. Joe Biden is in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Senator Kamala Harris spends the day in a most fascinating 2020 question mark, Texas.

The president is in a very familiar place in need of a giant come back. Unlike in 2016 this time, scant evidence of any late Trump momentum. The Coronavirus surge right now perhaps the biggest head wind. Thursday was officially the worst day of the pandemic, if you view this by case count. 88,000 plus added yesterday.

The U.S. daily average is now 76,000. Everywhere you look on that map, red and orange, that means more new infections. 43 states, more infections this week compared to last week. Only two pushing the case curve down. The president blames that dramatic rise in cases on testing. That is simply a lie that defies science. And it's a lot the president repeats often.

Yes, testing is up, but so is test positivity, so are hospitalizations, and the increase in the number of cases far outpaces the increase in the number of tests. In a new closing ad up this morning, Democrat Joe Biden appeals to science and to unity.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I am running as a proud Democrat. I will govern as an American President. We will act on the first day of my presidency to get COVID under control. If we do so, we'll once more become one nation, under God, indivisible. The nation united, the nation strengthened, the nation healed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Four nights from now we start to fill this in. We think of campaigns in red and blue, we talked about this quite a bit. But we need to in this campaign think about something else. We have to think about the Coronavirus, which is everywhere in America.

Never mind red and blue. Red and orange here, the pinks, the darker the colors, the deeper the shading, the higher the case count in counties across America. And it's just; it's the collision of the campaign in the Coronavirus. A lot of this happens - happening everywhere, but things are hurting right now in places that matter.

We just talked about where the president is going today. He is going to Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota; I'll do with one big circle instead of three. Wisconsin in particular, incredibly hard hit right now. But you'll see a lot of red everywhere, the upper Midwest and across.

So while the president is traveling today, they're seeing the pain of this virus without a doubt. As you blank it out and just look at Florida, Texas, everywhere, it's everywhere. Arizona, a key battleground state, painful summer surge there. Small counties that have supported the President and Republicans for years, dealing with a huge Coronavirus problem right now.

But if you just think about where the president is traveling today, let's just take a look at some of this. He is traveling to Wisconsin and to Minnesota and to Michigan. Wisconsin especially a hard hit right now. Hospitalization issues, but a 13.2 percent positivity rate.

The public health experts say try to get the positivity rate, what percentage of people who take a test are positive. Try to get it down to 5, and then push it down more. 13.2 percent, nearly 8 percent in Minnesota. 6 percent in Michigan.

Michigan performing best right now, but the president is at war with its Governor who thinks she's doing a good job trying to fight the Coronavirus. That is one way to look at it. Again Joe Biden is on the ballot against the president, but this virus is also his opponent in this campaign without a doubt.

Here's another way to look at it in the sadness of this campaign is, just in the last week, just in the last week including yesterday, we are breaking records. The president says we've rounded the final corner. The president says things are fine. Thursday, 88,000 cases. 83,000 cases. 83,000 cases. The experts tell us 100,000 cases are just a few days ahead of us. But

as we set records this week, on these three days, the president's message on Coronavirus, this is alarming. Not the president.

[12:05:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We have the vaccines; they're going to be great. But with or without it, we're rounding the turn. Normal life is all we want fully resuming, we want normal life to fully resume, and that's happening. Did you hear him the other night?

It's going to be a cold, dark winter very inspiring guy. We are rounding the turn, we're doing great. Our numbers are incredible. We know the disease, we social distance, we do all the things you have to do. If you get close, wear a mask. You know the bottom line; you're going to get better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Joining our conversation to start the hour, CNN's Dana Bash and Maggie Haberman of "The New York Times." Maggie, we talked about this before. But in these final days, especially as we watch the case count surge, the president, it sounds at time, what I am about to say, people say it is disrespectful, but it sounds like he is in a parallel universe.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: No, John, I think there's no other way to describe it. Look, I understand that the president and his supporters constantly say they have been under siege over the last four years. But what we're talking about is objective data, about case counts and about deaths that he is insisting just isn't there. I mean, that is just simply what we are talking about.

He is describing a universe in which, and he has been saying this for months now, we are rounding the corner on this virus. In fact, it is getting worse as we are heading into winter. That is what his own government is saying, and he's sounding totally detached from that.

He is saying this as you know in places as part of the blue wall, formerly blue wall states in the Midwest where he is competing and where there are surge in cases and there are large concerns about the Coronavirus.

He says we have this figured out, and yet he constantly makes fun of people for wearing masks. So I understand that this is the reality he wants it to be. He has been pushing this reality for a while, but objectively if you're just talking about the math and about the numbers, these are not good figures.

KING: Right, they're not. And Dana, you get in a political campaign, any politician wants to try to bend the truth, shade the truth, even stretch the truth that there's sort of norms of political hyperbole. But his is something the president is trying to tweet away or talk away or simply ignore.

He blames that I want you to listen here; he blames it on bad communication, not on a bad plan. He hasn't done anything to change the administration's strategy even as we watch the cases go up and up and up over the past few weeks. He blames it on bad communications plan. And as you listen to him do that, his son right after seems to contribute to the problem.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We are doing the greatest job of this, except with one thing, publicity. Our public relations, we're spending too much time working and not enough time talking. But no matter what you say to these people, it won't make any difference.

DONALD TRUMP JR., DONALD TRUMP'S SON: If I went to the CDC, that I kept hearing about new infections but I was like why aren't they talking about this? Oh, because the number is almost nothing, because we've gotten control of this thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Number one, the president says he has a PR problem, as Maggie said, they're just its facts, its data, its thousands of Americans getting infected with COVID every day. But to his son's point, the number is almost nothing. The number is a quarter of a million Americans dead and their projections are that it will pass 300,000 in the next 100 days.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: And let's just play this out. I mean, it's almost as ridiculous that we're having to fact check that kind of remark. But it's important to and I understand why. Let's just say that he is right and that you are still getting the case numbers through the roof across the country. That's not nothing.

I mean, there are people who get sick and they're fine. There are people who get sick and have the remnants of it, the long haulers, for a very long time and it is a truly novel disease. No health expert really knows ultimately the long term effects and that's a really big public health problem, no matter what the president's son said.

On the president's comment, John, the fact that he says, he has a PR issue. He is his own communications director, he is the one who sets the tone, he is the one who has the biggest megaphone, and the most twitter followers.

If there's a PR problem, it's his problem. It is not a PR problem, it's a problem of the disease, it's a problem of the government's handling it under his leadership or maybe in this term in this vain, lack thereof. And that's why these four days out from the election; this is a referendum on the president.

KING: It is indeed. And Maggie, before the president left the White House or as he left the White House to hit the campaign trail today, he was asked about some new reporting you had this morning, that the original plan was for the president on election night to go over to his nearby hotel, the Trump International Hotel just a few steps from the White House, and now you say that those plans are at least on hold or on pause. This was the president's explanation a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We haven't made a determination. We have certain rules and regulations, you know, Washington, D.C. is shutdown. The Mayor shut it down. So we have a hotel.

[12:10:00]

TRUMP: I don't know if you're allowed to use it or not, but I know the mayor shut down Washington, D.C. And if that's the case, we'll probably stay here or pick another location.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Does that track your reporting, that the reason he thinks he can't do it is, because you're not allowed to have a large crowd in D.C. or is there more to this?

HABERMAN: It tracks one explanation that I've heard John. And I understand that they're trying to suggest that we're still assessing it, my understanding is that, it's not happening and maybe they'll get to that statement later. But yes. Look, there's a cap on gatherings in Washington, D.C., its 50 people.

Now they clearly knew this before they started sending out fundraising solicitations - people to show up at this party. But if the hotel violates that, they could be putting among other things to liquor license at risk. This is controlled by local authorities.

So I do think that, that is one reason. I also think another reason is that, we don't know what kind of a night this is going to be for the president, right? And so, I think showing up triumphs and at his self named hotel, if this is not looking like a great night for him, or if it is not clear, might not be the best option.

I think that again, we're going into a very uncertain Tuesday, unlike any we have seen in recent years and I think they're aware of it.

KING: And to that point, I am grateful to have two great reporters at the top of the hour. To that point, Dana, you can look at the polling, you can look at the fact that Senator Harris is in Texas today, you can read things saying oh, this is going to be Reagan versus Carter.

Biden is going to have a ten point victory, just like Reagan did have a Carter, the Senate is going to flip, so you can read that, see Harris in Texas, and say Democrats are bold and optimistic or you can hear Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is going to spend an entire day on Monday in Pennsylvania. I'm trying to just protect those 20. So which is it? Nervous, play defense? Optimistic, play offense. All the above? OK.

BASH: It's all of the above, because so many of these critical battleground states are so tight according to the modeling in both parties, according to sources I have been talking to, that in some of them they really could go either way. The thing that is most interesting about the Biden Campaign and the Biden strategy is yes, they're playing for Florida, but it is unlike Donald Trump, it is not a must win.

Joe Biden as you well know can win with another path that doesn't include Florida. That's why you're seeing a really heavy push in the upper Midwest, in Pennsylvania because that is the kind of voter that they think that they can get.

Rebuild the blue wall, bring back some of those working class white voters who were traditionally historically Democrats, went for Donald Trump, took a chance on him four years ago.

And Arizona and Texas, those are from the perspective of the Democrats, would be nice. But they feel that they have played ball there before, whether it was two years ago in the Senate race against ted Cruz or look at Arizona and they have not been successful.

Democrats I am talking to, I'm sure both of you as well, think that the demographic shifts in both of those states make it worth a try. And that is why Kamala Harris is going to Texas.

KING: Right, and so Maggie, then let's flip the table. The Biden Campaign does have a wider menu if you will more choices on the menu to get to 270. The president has a much more narrow path. Their take when you talk to them is, we did these four years ago, we're going to do it again.

The polls were wrong four years ago, we're going to do it again. Our people came out of the wood work four years ago; they're going to come out again. Is that spin, and especially when you look at again, the Democrats have to finish.

They've done, the early voting in most places is advantage Democrats, which is a great asset as long as you finish and execute in the final four days. But does the Trump Campaign really see this?

HABERMAN: I think there are members of the Trump Campaign who see it, John. The president himself I think does believe he is going to win. But I think part of that is because he tends to believe that things work out for him.

And this will be one of those times. They absolutely know they have a narrow path, they absolutely narrow - if the president does win, he is still likely to have a larger popular vote loss than he had last time, when it was about 3 million votes, and that he would squeak by with fewer electoral college votes than he do when he got 306 last time.

But look, it is a narrow path. They're serious, that they think that there's a chance that it can happen. In terms of the polls being wrong, I don't know what the Trump Campaign internal polling is showing right now and we are obviously was very careful about internal polling.

But I suspect that if it showed Trump doing really well or largely counter to the public polling and the Trump was up in a bunch of places that they felt reliable about, they would release it. So I think that they're seeing a tight race in a bunch of states, the same as the Biden people.

Both campaigns have said it does not match the larger margins of the public polling. This is not 2016. That's not to say the president can't win, but it's just not the same race.

[12:15:00]

KING: Right, it's not the same race. And just to echo that point, I know several republican pollsters who have seen this RNC Republican National Committee Analytics analysis that shows a path to a Trump victory and that they'll just simply don't believe it, some of those republican pollsters. But we will see. That's why we have elections. Final weekend. Maggie Haberman, Dana Bash, grateful for the reporting and their insights.

Up next for us, a big ruling in Minnesota up ends that state's plan to allow absentee ballots to arrive past Election Day. And another one of our late campaign flashbacks. This one to the final days of 2008, a year America made history.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN MCCAIN, U.S. SENATOR AND FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Friends, we need to bring real change to Washington and we have to fight for it. I've been fighting for this country since I was 17 years old and I have the scars to prove it.

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: One voice can change a room. And if the voice can change a room, it can change a city. And if they can change a city, they can change a state. And if they can change a state, they can change a nation. And if they can change a nation, they can change the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:20:00]

KING: Another key court ruling just came down on how to handle ballots in a key 2020 swing state. This time Minnesota. Federal Appeals Court says Minnesota's mail-in-ballots must be received by Election Day to be counted. Minnesota now the latest state to hear last minute judicial decision impacting ballot rules. You see some of the headlines there.

Court ruling just mandated. Ballots in Wisconsin also must be in by Election Day. But if Pennsylvania, North Carolina of the courts are allowing those states to have more time to receive ballots, as long as they have an Election Day postmark. Joining me now CNN Election Law Analyst Richard Pildes, a Constitutional Law Professor at the NYU School. Well, Richard thanks for being with us. So as a layman, my advice to people when you see one state does this, the rulings about - the different rulings for different states, my advice is a lame with your people as go online, figure out your own state's plan, do it yourself. You have to take personal responsibility.

But as a constitutional scholar, are you seeing any legal theory come into play here that not only could in the next couple of days before the election, but could be meaningful for challenges after the election?

RICHARD PILDES, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR, NYU SCHOOL OF LAW: Yes. The big legal issue across a number of these cases like Pennsylvania and Minnesota now is the question about whether the state legislature in those states by setting dates in the election code cannot be interfered with by state courts, by state secretaries of state who have been agreeing or by federal courts I should say who have been agreeing to postpone the receipt deadline for absentee ballots by several days after Election Day, given that the election code says they have to come in on Election Day.

So the big question here is how much are state legislatures constitutionally protected by the federal constitution when they set these rules. And this is a very big question which could have significant implications; there are a lot of dimensions in play for litigation after the election.

KING: And so let me try to follow up on that point. So let's say you have a ruling in one state that's allowed to accept ballots, at least they believe they're allowed to count ballots that come in after Election Day as long as they're postmarked by November 3rd.

If that state becomes critical to the race to 270, is it possible let's say, I'm going to say, it's a Trump Campaign to go challenge in the courts and say no, in this state and that state, you ruled they had to be in by Election Day.

The legislature did not change the deadline here, a Judge did or the Governor did or some executive action therefore. Can you challenge it then or do you have to challenge it before the election?

PILDES: Well, this is one big dimension to these problems. There are tremendous reliance interests voters now have in a state like Minnesota. Up until yesterday, they have been told they can get their ballots back six days after the election and they're still valid.

Now these ballots are being put in a separate pile, they're also be put in a separate pile in Pennsylvania, the ones that come in within three days there after the election. And the question is are the courts really going to turn around and say even though we've let you vote this way, even though the state policy have let you vote this way, now we're going to tell you sorry, too bad, these are invalid ballots.

These are very powerful reliance interest voters have in voting under the rules that are in place before these midnight hour, 11th hour decisions. So there's a substantive legal issue, but there is also these reliance issues which are very powerful in this context. We'll see how they come together after the election.

KING: So this is a collision of politics and law. So help me through this one. The president tweets about the North Carolina decision. This decision is crazy and so bad for our country. Can you imagine what will happen during that nine day period? The election should end on November 3rd.

One of the scenarios Trump critics worry about is that, he comes out at 1:00 am on election night, just through the past midnight we get to Wednesday, and he says look, I am leading, we're done. I win. No other ballots should be counted, it's rigged, it's illegitimate, who knows where those ballots are coming from. What happens then?

PILDES: Well, let's also calm this down a little bit first. Because one of the huge benefits of this massive volume of early voting and getting absentees back already in lots of these states, it puts that issue in a smaller box. But yes, this has always been one of the scenarios we have worried about. We know that the absentee ballots are likely to favor Joe Biden.

We know the president is going to do what he did with the Florida races when this came up, start proclaiming we should start counting. Now that's not going to have any effect, the election officials and courts are going to do what they normally do.

But there's a risk of a lot of turmoil around this, certainly litigation is imaginable. And the courts are, this Minnesota decision is really a troubling one, because we are so close to the election.

[12:25:00]

PILDES: And to tell voters sorry, these ballots that you cast and mailed back and are coming in after Election Day when that's been completely legitimate up to this point are now going to be tossed out. You know, that would be a really stunning result if that were to happen.

KING: And I suspect there will be follow-up lawsuit from somebody that happens to, somebody who says, I mailed it two weeks ago, not my fault. We'll see if that one plays out. Richard Pildes, we'll keep in touch as we watch all these cases make their way through. And we'll see, hopefully not, hopefully it goes smoothly, but perhaps some post election challenges as well. Richard, thank you.

Up next for us, new projections say the Coronavirus death toll could soar to almost 400,000 by February.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)