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Trump and Biden Storm Trail as U.S. Records Worst Day for Cases Yet; U.S. On the Brink of 9 Million Cases; 9 Million Early Votes in Texas Passes Total 2016 Turnout. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired October 30, 2020 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:01]

JOHN KING, CNN INSIDE POLITICS: Thanks for your time today. Brianna Keilar picks up after a very quick break -- I'm sorry, she picks up our coverage right now. Have a great day.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN RIGHT NOW: Hi there, I'm Brianna Keilar, and I want to welcome our views here in the United States and around the world.

We're in an unprecedented place now. More than 84 million ballots have already been cast, that is well over half the total turnout in 2016. And experts say that we are entering a scary time in this pandemic. The highest single-day total for coronavirus cases since the pandemic began was yesterday. Nearly 90,000 Americans were infected and almost 1,000 Americans died. Experts are warning that death rate could triple by beginning of next year.

And this chart shows you how bad this moment is compared to others. It took more than three months for the U.S. to reach the first million cases. We are now recording 1 million new cases in just two weeks. And as 43 states are increasing cases, they are seeing increases in cases, President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are both in battleground states. Biden is pitching himself as the candidate to lead America out of this crisis and President Trump is arguing that the crisis is overblown.

CNN's Omar Jimenez is in Waterford Township, Michigan, where the president is set to hold a rally this hour, and CNN's Jeff Zeleny is in Des Moines, where, any minute now, Biden will hold his own campaign event.

So, Omar, Michigan is seeing big numbers. They just set a record single-day high for new cases. Are they taking any precautions at this event?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, that's exactly right. They set a record for daily single cases yesterday as we have seen numbers grow. And at this rally, we have thousands of people here, some have masks but a lot don't. And you can probably see over my shoulder here how closely a lot of people are packed in. So that has to be concerning from a public health standpoint.

The enthusiasm on the voting side seems to be alive and well here in Michigan. Obviously, this is part of a final push by the Trump campaign to campaign in the state they won by less than a percentage point going back to 2016 presidential election. The question is, though, how many people are there left to actually influence when you look at the turnout we have seen so far.

Based on the early vote numbers that we have seen, we have already eclipsed more than 50 percent of the total voter turnout coming from the 2016 presidential election. And the secretary of state here in Michigan is saying that they have had 78 percent of people who have requested absentee ballots return them already. Again, this is just days before the presidential election.

Also here in Michigan, we do expect President Obama and Joe Biden to be here tomorrow campaigning as part of that final push. And today, this is only the first stop for President Trump. He is expected after this rally in Michigan to head to Wisconsin and then finish up the day in Minnesota. He is expected to arrive here any minute now, as you hear people cheering behind me.

KEILAR: All right, these long days ahead of Election Day.

And, Zeleny, tell us about Iowa, how does this factor in Biden's path to victory?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, as you well remember, President Trump carried Iowa by nine percentage points back in 2016. So this was not viewed as a top battleground state for Joe Biden at all. Things, of course, have changed.

The presidential battleground is indeed pandemic battleground. Iowa has a rising number of cases as well, a rising number of deaths as well. So, Joe Biden is coming to this state. You can see, this is going to be a drive-in rally, just the same ones he has been hosting all across the country.

And they are embracing and, in fact, leaning into the difference in campaigning, not doing big rallies like President Trump is doing but holding these socially distant -- these drive-in rallies. But the sheer fact he is coming to Iowa is a sense that he is trying to encroach on President Trump's territory.

President Trump, we're told now, is going to be also campaigning here in Iowa in Dubuque, Iowa, on the eastern part of the state. That is one of the counties that he flipped from Obama to Trump. There were 31 such counties in Iowa. That is what changed from President Obama winning here in Iowa in 2008 and '12, and President Trump winning in 2016. So we will see if the map resets here.

But as Joe Biden begins here in Iowa, he is also going to Minnesota and then he is going to Wisconsin. So it is this area of the Midwest and the upper Midwest that we will all be looking to on election night to see if these Trump states are going to turn or not. But, Brianna, so interesting, so many other races going on. There's big race for the U.S. Senate going on as well. We'll be watching for control of the Senate on Tuesday night. Joni Ernst, the Republican incumbent, in a tight race with the Democratic challenger, Theresa Greenfield, several congressional races as well. So, Joe Biden coming here to lead the ticket. He didn't expect to be here nine months after placing fourth in the Iowa caucuses back in February.

[13:05:00]

Brianna?

KEILAR: A very good point. All right, Jeff, Omar, thank you so much to both of you.

It was hard to imagine the cruel dismissal of this virus from the White House and its allies getting more absurd until last night. On the day that nearly a thousand American were recorded to have lost their lives to this virus, leaving broken hearts and homes behind, a grinning Donald Trump Jr. decided to show up on Planet Fox trying to convince millions of those viewers that people are not really dying from this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP JR., PRESIDENT TRUMP'S SON: I went through the CDC data. So I kept hearing about new infections. But I was like, well,, why aren't they talking about this? Oh, because the number is almost nothing, because we have gotten control of this thing. We understand how it works. They have the therapeutics to be able to deal with this.

If you look at that, look at my Instagram, it has gone to almost nothing. We're outperforming Europe in a positive way, so well because we have gotten a hold of this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: These people are not almost nothing. These people are everything to their friends and families.

My next guest is Carlos Sanchez, the Director of Public Affairs for Hidalgo County in Texas. And after less than six months on the job, he contracted COVID-19 and almost died. He penned a powerful piece for The Atlantic entitled, COVID is killing my people and no one seems to care.

Carlos Sanchez, I want to thank you so much for being here to talk about your experience and that of your community. And you describe your hospital stay in gut-wrenching detail, really. Can you tell our viewers what it was like?

CARLOS SANCHEZ, PUBLIC AFFAIRS DIRECTOR, HIDALGO COUNTY: I think the operative word, Brianna, is fear. It is a very scary fact when you realize that you may have contracted this disease from which we have been hearing about since the February, March timeframe. I felt initial symptoms July 1st on my 60th birthday. I went through 12 days of on and off fever and body aches before a doctor said, get to the hospital now.

And that was also a time when the Hidalgo County itself is turning into a hot spot and the numbers that are being seen today had been seen in the July period not only across the country but in particular in South Texas where I live.

KEILAR: And you share in what you wrote some of the exchanges you had with nurses. I am going to read part of what you wrote. You said, quote, one night, I saw sadness in the eyes of a nurse from Georgia and I asked, everything was all right. I've had three patients code on me tonight, she said, using the medical term for cardio pulmonary arrest. How many survived, I asked. One, she said.

On another night, I was awakened by a nurse checking my vital signs. As I chatted with her, she leaned forward and whispered to me, you have to get out of here, this place is dangerous.

What did you think she meant, how did you feel when you heard her say that?

SANCHEZ: I know exactly what she meant. First of all, I have to commend all of those nurses that came from as far away as Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi to supplement the local staffing which had been overwhelmed in July. I got to know many of them by simply sharing with them every time they checked my vitals, and that was fairly frequently.

And it began a process of opening my eyes as to what was happening in the rest of the hospital. It was a hospital that was overwhelmed much as the entire medical structure in Hidalgo County had been overwhelmed.

And when the nurse, in particular, said, you have to get out of here, I knew exactly what she meant because I had seen so much evidence of death and dying through the eyes of these nurses that had come to check on me around the clock.

KEILAR: And I know that you used that in your policymaking as well. I wonder, as someone who is so intensely involved in making policy around this and as someone who is listening to some of the minimizing of the deaths, you just heard the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., say that deaths from COVID are almost nothing.

[13:10:11]

What's your reaction to that?

SANCHEZ: Imagine similar to the reaction I had when President Trump himself went into the hospital and emerged several days later with the stature of a conquering hero. This is not a disease to be trifled with. This is a disease that can kill you and it's certainly a disease that can affect you.

I have been out of the hospital now for three and a half months and I am still suffering from symptoms of the disease. Just a couple weeks ago, I had a C.T. scan, which indicated that there is still scarring in my lungs.

So for those who minimize or suggest that this disease is nothing, I take great issue with that.

KEILAR: Carlos Sanchez, I want to thank you so much for what you wrote. I want to thank you for coming on. It is great to see you. Thanks.

SANCHEZ: Thank you for having me.

KEILAR: The second wave of the pandemic in 1918 was much worse than the first. We're going to discuss what that tells us about what to expect.

Plus, new evidence that Republicans are starting to narrow Democrats in early voting in four key states, and new reporting that Joe Biden is zeroing in on one state to spend the last day before the election.

This is CNN special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:15:00]

KEILAR: The U.S. is on the brink of 9 million coronavirus cases and we could hit that milestone as soon as this afternoon. The country just recorded its highest number of new infections in a single day. That's nearly 90,000 Americans. You can see it there on your screen. That is more than one new case per second. And this is getting worse.

Right now, 43 states are seeing an increase in cases. And look at this, there are 971 new deaths reported just yesterday. Three states have logged a record number of deaths, 17 states reported more hospitalizations than they ever have before.

And as we see these records, the president's son, Donald Jr., is claiming coronavirus deaths have dropped to, quote, almost nothing. Clearly, America is not doing its best and you can trace it right to the White House.

We learned about the mindset in the White House at the beginning of this pandemic when we learned that Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, boasted early on that the president had cut out doctors advising him on the pandemic. We're in a fall surge right now five months after Vice President Mike Pence claimed there wouldn't be a second wave. And the president of the United States continues to falsely claim that the country is rounding the corner on the pandemic.

Dr. Roshini Raj is joining us now. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine and NYU Langone Health. Dr. Raj, it's great to see you again.

We do know that the last time the U.S. dealt with a pandemic, tracking similarly to this, was in 1918. And I think this was one of the things that a lot of doctors were looking at in the beginning because they felt like a lot changes in 100 years, but human behavior does tend to be formulaic in some ways. So what is the second wave of that pandemic a century ago? Tell us about what to expect right now.

DR. ROSHINI RAJ, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE, NYU LANGONE HEALTH: Well, Brianna, there are some similarities and some big differences, and I think we should talk about both. But, yes, the 1918 pandemic, which is also called the Spanish Flu, did have a second wave which was, in fact, deadlier than the first.

Now, the good news is, so far, it does not look like coronavirus is mutating into a deadlier form, which is what happened in 1918. So that is good news. But some of the same conditions that made that second wave worse for the Spanish Flu still exist today, and that is the winter colder months, bringing people closer together, and the fact that it is flu season during that time, so that more people are going to be overwhelming hospitals, getting sick, there will be some confusion of diagnosis, all of that is going to lead to a bigger crisis in the hospital than what we're seeing now in the next two months.

But I will say that a lot has changed. Antibiotics did not exist back then. On the flipside, there is much more global travel right now, so it is easier for the virus to spread. So it is not easy to make a lot of direct correlations or comparisons. But the truth is, in the winter months, these types of viruses do get much worse mostly because of the proximity of people and coexistence of regular flu.

KEILAR: And then can you tell us what we are seeing with survival rates? Because they do appear to be improving, even for seriously ill patients, and yet experts are warning the death rates could triple by mid-January. So, why is that?

RAJ: Right. So you're getting two pieces of information here. So, the good news is, even for severe patients that are in the hospital, the death rates have decreased very dramatically. So, if you were talking about almost 30 percent of hospitalized patients back in March, this was a study done in NYU, now that death rate seems to be down to about 8 percent.

Now, 8 percent is still very high for hospitalized patients dying of any disease, but still much better than before. We can attribute that to more knowledge about the disease, better treatments, better resources of doctors and nurses and researchers have learned a lot more about how to treat the disease more effectively.

On the flipside, numbers are rising dramatically. And because of that, you are going to see more people getting sick, more people becoming severely ill, and, ultimately, more people dying. So, yes, if you go by percentage basis for the people in the hospital, there's lower chance of dying, but, overall, we're going to have more deaths in this country, for sure.

KEILAR: Dr. Raj, thank you so much. It's great to see you.

[13:20:00]

RAJ: Thank you.

KEILAR: Early voting in Texas is already surpassing the entire 2016 turnout. We're going to take you live to battleground states.

Plus, there's new evidence that Republicans are starting to narrow on Democrats in early voting in four key states.

And as the president downplays the virus, the risks of coronavirus, many of his Republican allies in Congress are echoing that, and it's showing up in their infection numbers. We're going to roll the tape on that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:25:00]

KEILAR: Texans are turning out in record numbers to vote early. The state has already passed the 9 million vote mark, that is more than the total turnout in 2016. And our CNN correspondents are covering all of the action in the battleground states.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Sara Murray in Westchester, Pennsylvania. This is one of the suburbs of Philadelphia, where the president needs to stop the bleeding as well as running up those numbers in some of those red counties here across the state of Pennsylvania.

More than 2 million people have already voted by mail here. In this area, already 115,000 mail-in ballots have been handed in. They can't be counted yet, but already the county is working hard to sort those.

And, look, it is going to be a sprint for Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes. The president is holding four rallies here on Saturday. Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden, his wife, Jill Biden, kamala Harris are all expected to be in the state the day before Election Day.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And I'm Miguel Marquez in Oakland County, Michigan, it's just north of Detroit, a big suburban county, lots of votes here, some voters already lining up to vote. They can do in-person absentee vote. If you really want to do it in person, you can still do it in person. But it takes a bit of doing. You have to come to your Clerk's Office.

Donald Trump is in Oakland County today in a little bit. Interestingly enough, he lost Oakland County in 2016 and then went on to win the state by 10,704 votes. Joe Biden and Barack Obama will appear together in Michigan tomorrow, the first joint appearance. Both sides trying to change the math here in Michigan in the last few days and win this state.

BILL WEIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And I'm Bill Weir in Madison, Wisconsin, where the line starts over here, goes past the Mexican restaurant, the laundry and the martial arts studio way down there, 100 people or so in line here. 1.75 million ballots or so already cast in this key battleground state. They expect at least a million-and-a- half more to show up between now and Tuesday.

The president will be in Green Bay today, making up a cancelation from when he had COVID. He is trying to shore up that blue collar vote up north. Joe Biden will be in Milwaukee trying to motivate the black pastors who are leading souls to the polls. They haven't turned out that demographic as high of numbers as they did for Barack Obama back in 2008.

And one other sort of disturbing sign, more and more businesses in Madison are boarding up their windows. In fact, my hotel, I asked is this why I think it is? They say, yes, election protection. Brianna, I never thought I would see home state preparing for election the way they do for hurricanes down south.

KEILAR: Yes. Bill, thank you so much. Bill Weir, and my other colleagues, I appreciate it, Miguel and Sara.

There are early voters that are shattering records with well over 80 million ballots cast and the earliest of the early votes seem to favor Democrats. But now, Republicans are catching up as we're getting closer to November 3rd.

CNN's Phil Mattingly is joining me now on this. So, Phil, what states are you looking at here where Republicans are closing the gap?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Look, I think if you look at the data right now, and one key thing, Brianna, you know this as well as anybody, you can only divine (ph) so many things out of the early vote, right? You can't necessarily say that this means this is definitively going to happen.

But one thing we expected coming in through the early is, one, there would be a surge. I don't think anybody expected it would be this enormous, this much vote coming in. But, two, and these four states are a good example of just this, Florida, North Carolina, Iowa and Nevada. Democrats were expected to vote in huge numbers by mail. And that has, in large case, turned out to be true. They have very large vote-by-mail leads in almost all of these states.

Republicans were expected to vote in person. And in all of these states, there are in-person early voting options. And as those options have opened up, as more people have taken advantage of those options, Republicans have started to whittle the gap. You've seen it happen in Florida, you've seen it happen North Carolina, obviously in Nevada and also Iowa. You've seen it in a couple of others states too. And that largely reflects, I think, what everybody is expecting in Election Day too.

Democrats know going into Election Day, they needed to bank a lot of votes and some significant leads in that early vote. They knew more of their party -- more of their voters were going to vote by mail. They expected that, and they knew that Republicans were more likely to turn out on Election Day. You're seeing that in the early vote as well between vote-by-mail and in person.

The big question, based on the numbers we seeing right now, is going into the actual Election Day, when early voting ends, the Democrats have enough cushion to hold on to those key battleground states.

KEILAR: And, for instance, Pennsylvania, which is so key -- I mean, both of these candidates, it's so key to them.

[13:30:00]

On the day before the election, you have Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, you have Kamala Harris and her husband, and they're all going to be campaigning there as a final push.