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Inside Politics
Joe Biden: Trump "Promoting Hatred, Prejudice, Racism"; Michelle Obama A Headliner On Tonight's Convention; Four Republicans Speaking At Democratic National Convention; U.S. Death Toll Surpasses 170,000 Ahead Of Flu Season; Democrat Leaders Say They Expect The House To Return Saturday. Aired 12-12:30p ET
Aired August 17, 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]
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JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Hello, everybody. I'm John King in Washington. Thank you so much for sharing this day with us. It is Joe Biden's big week unlike everything else it's changed and challenged by the Coronavirus.
Democrats open their nominating convention tonight and you will hear a lot about the Coronavirus disruption as the Biden/Harris ticket and its allies make the case President Trump's pandemic performance is a disaster.
The numbers out this morning do show a little promise a weekend dip in the Coronavirus case count but the daily death number still averaging over 1,000 now for the 21st consecutive day. 170,000 Americans in all have now died from the Coronavirus.
There is new reporting today that the president is enthusiastic about another unproven and experimental drug, a botanical extract called --. The president says maybe or one of his allies says it would help treat the virus. It is not a medical expert urging the president to do this. It is getting this my pillow guy who just happens to be on the board of the company that makes that product.
That fits with the case the Democrats' case that the president and science remain strangers seven months into this pandemic. Biden enters his convention week with a big asset the polling lead but beating an incumbent even a historically weak one is a very difficult task so team Biden is looking for venues to reach voters. Watch here, this is a new interview with the rap star Cardi B.
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JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The rest of the world's always looked to us. Why have they looked to us? Not because we're so powerful but the power of our example. Look what they're seeing now with this president?
He's literally promoting hatred, promoting prejudice, promoting racism this is all about, all about the game of making people hate each other because that's how he wins by dividing us. You are going to change it. Your generation is already doing it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: The goal there building voter enthusiasm that's always a major convention goal but that challenge made much more difficult this year because there is no packed arena, no funny hats, no confetti, no balloon drops. Bernie Sanders gets a big role on opening night so does the Former Ohio Governor John Kasich.
He is a Republican who says the country needs Democrat Joe Biden to end the Trump chaos but the headliner is the Former First Lady Michelle Obama. Remember back in 2016, her message when they go low, we go high but Democrats this morning appear very determined to set a much tougher tone for this year's event.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): Donald Trump is going to do his best to raise every racist, nasty, ugly, false argument that he can. But we are all there to support Kamala Harris.
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ): Everybody gets the fact this is the most consequential election of our lifetime.
PETE BUTTIGIEG (D), FORMER MAYOR OF SOUTH BEND: The president seems to have a project of undermining the confidence of the American people in our own institutions in a way that undercuts democracy itself.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Let's get straight to Wilmington, Delaware CNN's Jessica Dean, Wilmington of course, the hometown of Joe Biden. He will not be in Milwaukee Jessica but this is a giant moment, a big week for the presumptive nominee?
JESSICA DEAN, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Yes, a pivotal moment for Joe Biden in his long storied history in public service, John. I mean, you have to think back 1972. He was first elected to the U.S. Senate. He's run for president three times and finally made it this to moment in time and like everything else in this campaign season it is not normal.
To your point we are in a parking lot in Wilmington, Delaware when we were supposed to be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to watch Joe Biden accept this nomination. So it is a huge moment for him personally and professionally to accept this nomination here in Wilmington, Delaware but certainly very different than what anyone had anticipated.
We do know that he will be accepting in person at the arena just behind me as well as Kamala Harris. Now this convention coming as you mentioned new polling out from CNN, I want you to take a look at those numbers. We see a bit of a tightening race between Joe Biden and President Donald Trump.
Biden leading 50 percent to 46 percent and then take a look at the all-important battleground number Biden at 49 percent to President Trump's 48 percent. So again showing the race narrowing between when we last had some polling from CNN, john, but the Democrats hoping that they can get a conventional convention bump.
We'll see if that actually happens. You said Michelle Obama, John Kasich, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar we're all going to see them tonight as the Democrats go remote for their 2020 convention.
KING: It's going to be fascinating to see it. Jessica Dean will be with us throughout as we watch this very unconventional convention and joining us now to continue the conversation, CNN Senior Political Commentator and Host of "The Axe Files," David Axelrod.
David it's good to see. You write on cnn.com today Joe Biden is in the strongest position of any challenger to an incumbent president in recent history.
[12:05:00]
KING: If you average our polls, Jessica just showed you the new CNN poll. If you average out the recent polls you get 51 to 42 so a nine- point lead there for Joe Biden if you look at it. But as you know, as you know you were in Obama '08 but also Obama re-elect in 2012 when a lot of people thought Mitt Romney might have a shot.
It is very difficult to unseat an incumbent president. We have had three two-term presidents in a row, that's an anomaly in American history. What is challenge number one for Joe Biden with this convention?
DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think getting people to know Joe Biden. You know it's an interesting thing to say because he has been in politics for 50 years. But people don't know that much about Joe Biden. They have a - they know he was Vice President under Barack Obama.
They don't know that much about what he did as vice president. And there is a good story to be told there. They understand and lived through with him the loss of his son Beau and they see in him empathy and connection with people who have struggled and have suffered loss, that's important, that's something to be burnished.
But he also needs to I think, John, tease out his economic message here and make clear what his vision for the future is. This election can't just be - this convention just can't be a look back it has to be a look forward and the economy is one place where Trump has maintained a small lead in terms of people's confidence. It is important for him to lay out an economic vision during these four days.
KING: And opening night tonight if you look at the speakers, you see Jim Clyburn, Member of the House Democratic Leadership very key ally to Vice President Biden in the primary campaign. Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, he will help prosecute the Democrats' case on the Coronavirus tonight.
Senator Klobuchar, one of the campaign rivals. John Kasich, the Republican who's never Trump Republican who is going to say, hey Republicans, give up the Trump chaos. Bernie Sanders, obviously critical to unifying the party, Gretchen Whitmer the Midwest the State of Michigan also a COVID focus there.
But I want to focus on someone you know very well, the Former First Lady Michelle Obama. This is the tone we heard from her at Hillary Clinton's convention four years ago.
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MICHELLE OBAMA, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: We tried to guide and protect our girls through the challenges of this unusual life in the spotlight. How we urge them to ignore those who question their father's citizenship or faith? How we explain that when someone is cruel or acts like a bully you don't stoop to their level? No, our motto is when they go low we go high.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: What do you expect to hear from the Former First Lady tonight? And how important is she they obviously chose to make her the headliner on night one but the Biden/Harris campaign clearly thinks she is very important here.
AXELROD: Well look, she is extraordinarily popular figure in this country, a best-selling author, par excellence and someone who people relate to, particularly women. And so, I expect you're going to hear more of the same. I think Michelle Obama is a - she is very frank, she speaks her mind.
She speaks with great passion. And I expect that, you know, though I said earlier that the goal is to boost Biden and I think you will hear that in all the speeches. Tonight reads to me like a recitation of indictment about the crisis we're in.
And then they're going to turn the corner and talk about how we get out of them and that Biden is the key to that. But I think that she will come with a pretty tough critique of what we have seen in the last four years, that's my suspicion.
They have given - I understand they have given her quite a bit of time in the context of a virtual convention so they're betting a lot on Michelle Obama and I can tell you from my own experience she is a very good performer in these kinds of settings.
So I think she will be outspoken, I think she will be blunt about where we are? And I think she will embrace Biden and tell people why he represents a contrast to what we have.
KING: One of the few people we can speak to, Karl Rove would be on the other side, which has been a part in a top leadership role in a campaign that's won two presidential elections. It's hard to do; it is incredibly hard to do. What are your takeaways from having watched 2016 and now where Biden is in 2020 what is - in your view is the single biggest lesson the Democrats better learn, don't run this way, run that way? AXELROD: Don't allow your opponent to define you. Make sure you fill in the gaps and this convention as I said earlier is very important. John, you only get a few times in a whole campaign when you gather an audience of the size of the Democrats is going to have for the next four days.
It is an essential task for them to not only define who Trump is because I think that is well understood by people but really define who Biden is and where Democrats want to leave and give people a clearer sense of that coming up because next week he is going to be torn apart by Republicans.
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AXELROD: The road to re-election for Donald Trump is to try and destroy Joe Biden. This week is all about fortifying him and giving people a clear sense of a way out of the kind of crisis that we are in right now and making him the hero of that story.
KING: David Axelrod, appreciate your time and your insights today. We'll come back to you during the week. And I'll see you bit later tonight. You should join us, don't miss the first night of the Democratic National Convention. Our Special Coverage starts right here 8:00 pm eastern live on CNN.
Up next, is "Operation Warp Speed" slowing down? Why some Coronavirus vaccine trials could be delayed. First though, a convention flashback Hillary Clinton having a ball in the 2016 balloon drop, this year of course, no balloon drops, no big crowds as Joe Biden's convention. And then Donald trump's to follow in the midst of a pandemic.
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[12:15:00]
KING: President Trump today again asserting all is well in the fight against the Coronavirus.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This happened to the world, not only us. You know? When they report, they don't report what's going on because they have new flare-ups in Germany, they have new flare-ups in France and Spain and Italy. They have flare-ups all over the place. You know they keep saying it--
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Australia.
TRUMP: --we have done phenomenally on this thing and we are very big country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: You hear the president there say we have done phenomenally. He says he disagrees with his CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield who is warning now this could be the worst fall in U.S. history from a public health perspective.
We do begin this work week at another grim milestone more than 170,000 Coronavirus deaths here in the United States. Let's take a look at the other trends as we begin the week. 13 states you see the orange and the red higher case count now as opposed to a week ago. So this is moving up this way,
13 states up higher. 16 states holding steady, 21 states in the green. They are trending down. If you look compared to a week ago the map not in as good shape now as it was one week ago. We got 8 states heading up, 16 steady and a majority heading down. So a bit of blip in case count statewide, state by state.
The death trend, 15 states in red and orange they're going up, 20 holding steady and 15 states you see in the green heading down. The death count lags the case count. So you need to get the case map in better shape than the death map will improve.
We do know this over time here's the interesting question as we begin the work week. Yesterday 42,000 cases reported, 42,048 that is down from recent days but as you can see Sundays over the weekend often you get a lower number on a Sunday and then you go back up during the work here's the challenge as we go through this work week.
This is a stubbornly high baseline in case counts. Can it be shoved down or will it trickle back up? We'll watch that. It's Monday now, we'll watch it through the week. This is Coronavirus testing. You go back to June, yes, more tests in the United States then it kind of flattened out so we're around 800,000 tests a day.
The administration says that's good, that's enough they'll surge them when necessary a lot of public experts say no it is not. Here is another thing to look at here is the positivity rate, right now national average in the country 5.5 percent nationally. You go state by state; you go different rates but nationally 5.5 percent coming back positive 2.5 months ago it was 5 percent.
So that's not a giant spike but the goal is to push this down. 2.5 months after June 1st when it was at 5 it is higher still an issue in positivity. Again, the White House says especially its testing CZAR says things are better. They have what they need. Listen here, this is a public health expert Dr. William Haseltine saying no that's not true.
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WILLIAM HASELTINE, CHAIR AND PRESIDENT, ACCESS HEALTH INTERNATIONAL: The testing situation is not good in the United States. What we're not picking up are people who are contagious. That's the right word to use contagious. We're probably missing 8 out of 10 people who are contagious and any decrease in testing is worrisome because we're already not doing well.
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KING: With me now is Dr. Seema Yasmin she is a CNN Medical Analyst and Former CDC Disease Detective. Dr. Yasmin, it is good to see you. I want to start by we're all going through this, this struggle about back to school, the calendar telling us we're now moving into later August coming up on the fall. I want you to listen here to the Former Surgeon General who says we better be careful because if things are bad now, when flu season comes it's more complicated.
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DR. VIVEK MURTHY, FORMER U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: The symptoms will be hard to distinguish from COVID symptoms and because of the challenges ongoing we have with testing capacity it may take us a while to figure out with a person with a fever actually has COVID or something else which means if more people will be isolated for longer and also means that it will harder to keep schools and workplaces open.
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KING: Help us better understand that challenge. A stubborn high Coronavirus case baseline and the B the flu season right around the corner.
DR. SEEMA YASMIN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: So, John, we really worry about these two epidemics and pandemics converging because just in an average pretty bad flu season when you're just dealing with flu alone that in and of it can start to overwhelm the American health care system.
Now factor into that a pandemic that we have not been able to get under control for the last five, six, seven months and that's why the CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield is saying we could be looking at the worst fall in American history.
The other thing to bear in mind is we've been saying for months that the rates of infection and rates of COVID-19 serious disease in children are very low but that data's been coming from the last few months when kids have not been at school. They have been at home. They have been sheltering in place.
What we are seeing now as kids start to return to school is increasing numbers of cases of COVID-19 and clusters. And that's not just in kindergartens middle schools and high schools. But it affects people at university, as well so less than a week into the fall semester.
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DR. YASMIN: At University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill we are already seeing four clusters of COVID-19. Oklahoma State University an entire sorority house is quarantined and then of course we're seeing about 700 schools across the states that have either cases or clusters of COVID-19.
It is very challenging to manage this in the context of increasing numbers of hotspots. Parents who are watching this, having this very difficult debate and this decision about whether you send your kid back to school so much of it depends on local COVID-19 transmission. And if rates are high where you live that just increases the likelihood of there being COVID-19 outbreaks when your kid returns to school.
KING: And so we are watching all that play out in some of the pictures you see just make you shake your head at I'm just going to call it knucklehead behavior. People should know better by now. One of the questions is we wouldn't have to worry as much and they were showing pictures here.
This is North Georgia University of North Georgia on Saturday night, a large crowd there. We wouldn't have to worry about if we had a vaccine but we don't know exactly where we are in that? And when you look at the recruiting numbers, explain why this is important?
Recruiting for U.S. COVID-19 vaccine trials, 350,000 people have registered online but only 10 percent are black or Latino and we know that about half of the cases, more than half of the cases have been in black and Latino Americans. Why does that matter when it comes to trying to find out is a vaccine safe and more important will it work?
DR. YASMIN: It's really important that the people who are in clinical trials for vaccine represent the general population because you don't want to end up in a situation, John, which is very typical where something like a medicine or a vaccine makes its way through those clinical trials but 90 percent of the people who it was tested on were white, were young, were very healthy.
Your want you want to know how this works. How this can protect people from different backgrounds? And of course what we're seeing is as you mention is that COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting and killing people from communities of color so those people do need to be included in the trials.
Historically though people of color, black Americans have not been included in trials because of these legacies of unethical experimentations and people having very legitimate reasons for distrusting the medical establishment.
So it's on us in medicine in public health to build those bridges with communities of color and say, look, these are going to safe trials and we need your involvement because when you want to know that the vaccine will protect not just some Americans but all Americans.
KING: Dr. Seema Yasmin, as always grateful for your expertise and your insights. Thank you so much.
DR. YASMIN: Thank you.
KING: Coming up for us, the president denies again he has any interest in slowing the mail. Listen.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: --Postmaster General a big donor to you to slow the mail? TRUMP: No, not at all. I have encouraged everybody, speed up the mail. Not slow the mail.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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[12:25:00]
KING: The House is interrupting a planned August recess to challenge postal system changes. The Democrats say are designed to undermine mail-in voting. Lawmakers expect to return for a rare Saturday session sandwich between the two presidential nominating conventions.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a letter to House Democrats says alarmingly across the nation we see the devastating effects of the president's campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the postal service to disenfranchise voters, lives, livelihoods and the life of our American democracy are under threat from the president the speaker says.
The Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer wants the Senate to come back too, but that decision lies with the Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. And at home in Kentucky today Leader McConnell said in his view "The postal service is going to be just fine". CNN's Phil Mattingly is live on Capitol Hill following this controversy. Phil, what will the Democrats do?
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're going to actually have a multi-pronged approach John. And they just had a private conference call with the caucus. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer will hang out the details of the legislation that the will be voting on, on Saturday.
Making it official that that weekend vote in the middle of the August recess sandwiched in between the two national nominating conventions will in fact occur. And the bill itself will be a bill that would block organizational and operational changes to the U.S. Postal Service starting at the beginning of this year through either the end of this year or the end of the pandemic.
And it would also include $25 billion to deal with some of the fiscal issues that the U.S. Postal Service has had. Now there was also the investigative side as well. The House Oversight Committee announcing yesterday that they will be holding a hearing next week on this issue inviting the Postmaster General, inviting some of the leadership.
There still haven't got any response yet as to whether or not that will occur and that has let a number of House Democrats to say look, if they don't want to come if they don't want to comply with the invitation we should subpoena them and perhaps go further. Now the big question is where does this all end up?
And I think it underscores two really key points here John. And that is one, this is - an urgent issue given the fact that so many mail-in votes are expected to occur over the course of the next several months in the numbers to 70 to 80 million.
But also it's a potent political issue, the Democrats are very clearly seizing on. They know how much people care and recognize their own post offices. They recognize this is a difficult issue for Republicans if they want to fight it and they're making sure it is in the forefront from here on out, John.
KING: Phil Mattingly live on Capitol Hill. I appreciate that Phil, keep us in touch with us all week as this plays out. State election officials of course carry the burden of helping people vote amid all of this post office controversy, not to mention amid a pandemic.
