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Judge: Some USPS Election "Extraordinary Measures" Mandatory; Trump Suggests To Crowd He May "Fire" Fauci After Election. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired November 02, 2020 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:30:00]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: The U.S. Postal Service in the spotlight in the campaign's final day. Some of those extraordinary measures the Postal Service rolled out last week for the election now being made mandatory by a federal district court judge. Among other things, the judge's order gives the Post Office specific guidance and specific deadlines for handing -- handling ballots including a same day deadline for processing local election mail.

CNN's Kristen Holmes joins us now to explain what impact this ruling have. It is striking, depressing pick the right word for it. But that our election right now, the performance of the Post Office in the next 24 to 48 hours is critical.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is it'll look something like this isn't going to hurt. But also we are just one day from the election at a point where we know millions of people have cast their ballots, some of them through the mail.

And a lot of these states they have a deadline of the day of. Now, this comes as the Postal Service reported days of slowing down processing on ballots. And some of that was in these critical swing states, one of them being Pennsylvania where we already know more than 2.2 million people have cast an early ballot and absentee ballot there.

[12:35:01]

So let's go through those extraordinary measures one more time. You talked about one of them which was the day of local mail. Now that can definitely help move things along a lot faster. Express mail, for longer distances, that's one to two day processing. So if they put that in place now there is still a chance that those ballots will get in. We're also talking about daily sweeps for election mail, making sure there are no missing ballots anywhere. And also that plant managers must certify that these measures are being used.

But again, John, I mean, this is really striking. We've been talking about the speed and the delivery performance of the Postal Service since the beginning of this election, because we knew it was going to be critical. The Postal Service said multiple times that they were up for this, that they know they could do it. Now we're in a situation in which a judge is mandating these certain steps be taken the day before the election.

KING: Grateful we have you to keep an eye on it. It is depressing that we can't count on the basics, like the mail. Kristen Holmes, appreciate the reporting. I know you'll stay on top for the next 24 hours when it is absolutely essential and see if they meet those deadlines.

Up next for us, the President suggests he may try to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci if he wins reelection even though he doesn't really have the power to directly fire him. Joe Biden addressing that topic, just moments ago.

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JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: And last night, Trump said he was going to fire Dr. Fauci. Isn't that wonderful? I got a better idea. Elect me, and I'm going to hire Dr. Fauci. And we're going to fire Donald Trump.

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[12:40:55]

KING: A whole lot of hurt, those are the words from Dr. Anthony Fauci. He says the United States facing a whole lot of hurt in the coming months because of spiking coronavirus infections. He tells "The Washington Post", the United States could not be positioned more poorly, think about that.

He says the United States could not be positioned more poorly right now to deal with the coronavirus. And this is what Dr. Fauci is talking about a spike across the country, 35 states right now that's the orange and the red trending in the wrong direction, right, those of you familiar with this map.

Red and orange means more new COVID infections now than a week ago. Red means at least 50 percent more new infections now compared to a week ago. And you see Colorado, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, West Virginia, Connecticut, and Maine.

Fifty percent more new infections now than a week ago, the rest of the states in orange 10 -- between 10 percent and 50 percent more infections, 10 holding steady, 5 states turning in the right direction. This is the troublesome line. Again, you don't need to be a rocket scientist. You don't need to be a public health expert. You see that trend line going almost straight up.

That's a problem, higher than the first peak, higher than the summer surge. Now the fall surge 81,000 plus cases yesterday, that's the highest Sunday on record. We are now averaging more than 80,000 cases a day. And again, here's the comparison. Back at -- one month ago beginning of October, averaging 41,900, so just shy of 42,000 new infections a day. Fast forward, almost double 81,336 heading in the wrong direction when the President says we've rounded the final turn. The numbers just speak for themselves there.

The death trend has stayed down. Every one of these is pain. Every one of these is pain. I don't mean to minimize this. It has stayed down a little bit. It's starting to trickle up, 447 deaths yesterday. Again, the weekend totals sometimes are down. The reporting is slower. The public health experts believe this will trend up, let's hope they're wrong, on this one but we'll keep an eye on that in the days ahead.

One reason you're keeping an eye on it, you see hospitalization starting to go back up, not quite yet where they were the first peak and the second peak around 60,000 but now approaching 50,000. Just a week or so ago we were talking about 40,000.

And this is why, this is the serious problem, this is why you have more cases more hospitalizations, the darker the shading, the higher the rate of positivity in the state right now, 36 percent in Iowa, 34 percent Kansas, 50 percent in South Dakota, half the people getting tested for coronavirus are finding out they are positive infected today more likely to spread infections to others, 43 percent in Wyoming, 34 percent in Idaho, 16 percent Montana, double digits pretty much across the Mountain West, in the upper Midwest and out.

But double digits in other places, 19 Alabama, 14 percent Pennsylvania, a problem that's why Dr. Fauci is upset. But listen to the President. He's a candidate now. He's not really doing his day job when it comes to the coronavirus not once has he talked to you about this. Not once has he talked to you about this. Instead he's campaigning for reelection saying when we in the news business talk about this or when Dr. Fauci sounds the alarm, they're wrong.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You turn on the news, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, we'd like to talk about COVID and then next thing, here's what happens November 4th, you won't hear too much about it. You won't hear too much about it.

CROWD: Fire Fauci, fire Fauci, fire Fauci, fire Fauci, fire Fauci, fire Fauci.

TRUMP: Don't tell anybody but let me wait until a little bit after the election, please. But he's a nice man, though. He's been wrong in a lot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Let's continue the conversation. Dr. Seema Yasmin is the CNN medical analyst and a former CDC disease detective. Dr. Yasmin, what goes through your mind as a serious public health professional when the President as a political candidate is essentially, you know, playing with the idea of firing Dr. Fauci says, just give me a little bit of time here.

DR. SEEMA YASMIN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Well, John, not to mention the mechanics of trying to fire a career civil servant employed by a federal health agency. There's the fact that Dr. Fauci is America's top infectious disease expert, and that he's guided six different presidents, six administrations, both Republican and Democrat through major American public health crises including 911, anthrax incidents, pandemic flu, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Ebola, Zika, so many others.

[12:45:08]

So for the spokesperson from the White House today to say that Fauci is breaking with norms, that Fauci is being politically partisan, it's just patently false. This is an expert whose guidance has shifted over the past few months, of course, because that's what good scientists do. They change their mind as more evidence, more rigorous evidence becomes available.

So this to me is just in line with this administration's very consistent attacks on science and scientists and really discrediting the profession and making it very difficult for the American public to know exactly who to listen to and what to do.

KING: Well, the source of his exasperation is that the President won't spend any time with the experts and talk about this candidly with the American people. And that the President listens to Dr. Scott Atlas, we've discussed this before, who's a radiologist, he's not a public health, not an infectious disease expert. Dr. Fauci in "The Washington Post", talks about this idea of herd immunity.

Now, Scott Atlas says he's not pushing it inside the White House, but he's talked about it repeatedly in his public appearances, the idea of this false narrative that if you don't die, everything is hunky dory. That's just not the case. But to say, let people get infected, it doesn't matter, just make sure people don't die. To me as a person who's been practicing medicine for 50 years, it doesn't make any sense at all.

Dr. Fauci is being outspoken in this interview, because he's losing patience and he sees the case count going up. And he sees the President and others in the White House saying and doing nothing about it.

YASMIN: Yes. And no matter where you sit on which side of the political line, you can just look at the numbers. In America, our cumulative COVID-19 death rate per million people is about 700, 700 deaths from COVID-19 per million people. In Vietnam, that number is nowhere near 700. It's 0.36. In South Korea, it's 9, 9 deaths per million people compared to our close to 700. So these numbers do speak for themselves.

And unfortunately, as cases are increasing, and deaths are likely to triple we think by the early months of next year. I just don't see a shifting of that really tragic trajectory, because the government isn't doing anything different. In fact they're just going further off course, confusing people on the president even at his super spreader rallies, pointing to people wearing masks and making fun of them in front of everyone and calling them politically correct.

KING: Dr. Yasmin grateful for your insights. Another place where the President is wrong is saying we won't be talking about this after November 4th, no matter who wins the election, we're going to be talking about this for months because of the scope of the problem in the country. Dr. Yasmin, again, thank you so much.

YASMIN: Thank you.

KING: Let's take a live look now in Atlanta, the former President Barack Obama, campaigning for Joe Biden today. He will speak a little bit later, busy final day on the campaign trail. How the state of Georgia could factor in the race to 270? That's ahead.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- because Georgia in addition to sending Joe and Kamala --

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[12:52:32]

KING: Any moment now the former President Barack Obama will take the stage in Atlanta. His appearance there underscores just how strange this campaign is. That's Atlanta, Georgia on the final day of a presidential campaign. We're talking about Georgia, a state that is normally red that the Democrats think just might be winnable this time.

Let's look at the map. This is the 2020 map. We'll fill in Georgia tomorrow night. Let's go back to the 2016 map. It was a six point race or a five point race four years ago, if you look at that 51 to 46, if you round that up. You see Atlanta is critical. Columbus is critical. Savannah is critical for the Democrats. But you have to go back in time, a long time, a long time, a generation ago. 1992, 1992 is the last time a Democrat carry Georgia in a race for President.

That was Bill Clinton he did it with 43.5 percent of the vote just barely over George W. Bush with a lot of help back in the day. This was a fun campaign to cover against Ross Perot. Three candidates in the race that Bill Clinton winning Georgia with 43.5 percent of the vote, again a big win for Donald Trump in 2016, what will happen in 2020 is prepared to wait. Listen to the former President Barack Obama there to turn out African Americans. Let's check in with CNN's Jason Carroll. He is live on the ground for us in battleground Georgia that in and of itself is a statement.

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. It most certainly is and, you know what, Democrats builds up, if they play their cards right and everything sort of lines up that Georgia could actually be in play if people get out to vote. And that's going to be part of the message that we're going to hear for President Barack Obama when he takes the stage in just a few minutes. You know, John, Democrats feel encouraged here because they've seen thousands of new voters, an influx of new voters into the state, young voters, young educated voters, African American, their hope is that Barack Obama can tap into that. I heard from a senior Obama advisor who told me that will be the message. It will be an urgent message. But not only that, it will be to vote at the top of the ticket and down ballot as well for folks like Jon Ossoff, a Democrat. He's in a competitive Senate race here in the state.

You know in this final sprint, we've seen Barack Obama out campaigning for Biden in a number of states. Last week, we saw him in Orlando over the weekend making two stops with Biden in Michigan today. Once again here in Georgia, and then later today, he'll be in South Florida in Miami campaigning there as well.

Again, the goal is to get more African American, white suburban voters who didn't turn out the way the Democrats needed in 2016 that will be the message, that will be the message that we heard from Kamala Harris. When she was in Georgia over the weekend, Biden for his part was in the stage making two stops last week.

[12:55:09]

So once again, John, as you know, this is a state they very much think is in play, if everything lines up, and folks come out to vote, John.

KING: If everything lines up. If that's what makes it such a fascinating final day Jason Carroll, grateful you're on the ground for us. Again, battleground Georgia that in and of itself tells you, this is a very different election year. Jason, thank you so much. And thanks to all of our reporters across the battleground states. We'll be right back.

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KING: This news just in to CNN. The Department of Justice saying it plans to send personnel to 18 states to monitor for compliance with federal voting rights laws. The 44 jurisdictions that will be monitored include Miami Dade County, Florida, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, and Fulton County, Georgia. The Department of Justice not saying why those jurisdictions were selected their Democratic strongholds that's what people are going to guess.

In anticipation of election protest, federal authorities are expected to put up non scalable fencing now around the entire perimeter of the White House. This type of fencing last use of course during the protest this past summer, a source says Lafayette Park across the street from the White House will be inside the perimeter, many businesses in Washington also boarding up their windows in case of protests around the election.

Thank you so much for spending your time with us today. Stay with us throughout our important election coverage in the days ahead, hours ahead, perhaps days ahead. Don't go anywhere, final day of the campaign, a very busy news day, a lot of fun happening out there on both sides of this election. [13:00:01]

Brianna Keilar picks our coverage right now.