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Inside Politics
Trump Holding Multiple Rallies A Day In Battleground States; COVID-19 Infectious, Hospitalizations Surge Across U.S.; Biden Holds Advantage In Most Battleground State Polls; Global COVID-19 Leadership Test: Surges In Europe And U.S.; Turnout In this Year's Election Expected To Exceed 2016. Aired 8-9a ET
Aired October 18, 2020 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[08:00:34]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN HOST (voice-over): The coronavirus is surging just about everywhere.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is going to be a very tough winter.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There should be warning bells going off around the country.
KING: Plus, the pandemic election effect. Early voting is off the charts.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We make sure we get our vote counted today.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I hate the division, because that's not who we are.
KING: And two weeks out, Republicans are in a panic.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Suburban women, will you please like me? I saved your damn neighborhood. Okay?
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: How many of you have been unable to hug your grandkids the last seven months?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KING: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John king. To our viewers in the United States and around the world, thank you for sharing your Sunday.
The numbers tell the coronavirus is surging again across America and dangerously so. More than 57,000 new infections reported Saturday. More than a half million new U.S. cases added in just the past ten days.
The trend line is up and it is ominous. But the president of the United States wants you to ignore the numbers, to ignore the facts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: Vaccines are coming soon, the therapeutics and, frankly, the cure.
Just mortality, we're a winner, on the excess mortality, and what we've done has been amazing. And we have done an amazing job.
And we're rounding the corner. We got the vaccines rolled up. But even without it, we're rounding the corner. You'll see it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Joe Biden's 2020 bet is that you can handle the truth.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: He's living in a dream world. He keeps telling us that this virus is going to disappear like America.
My Lord. It's not disappearing. In fact, it's on the rise again. It's getting worse as predicted.
Mishandling the pandemic isn't enough for Trump. On top of that, he's still trying to take away your health care.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Election Day is two weeks from Tuesday. But America is picking its next president right now. More than 22 million ballots cast as records early and mail-in voting are being shattered by the day.
Biden is leading, convincingly if you study the numbers. But 2016 is a haunting memory for Democrats. Biden's campaign manager wrote a memo against putting too much faith in poll numbers. Republicans, though, clearly believe those numbers. The president trail so badly among women, and in the suburbs, his party is in a panic, worried it will lose not only the White House but the Senate and more.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
SEN. BEN SASSE (R-NE): I'm looking at the possibility of a Republican blood bath in the Senate. That's why I've never been on the Trump train. I think we're staring down the barrel of a blue tsunami.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
KING: The president thinks or at least he says he'll shock us again.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The enthusiasm and not only in Michigan, but the enthusiasm all over the country is far greater. And it was great four years ago. It's far greater right now than it ever was.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: With us this Sunday to share their reporting and their insights, Maggie Haberman at "The New York Times", Josh Dawsey at "The Washington Post".
Maggie, it's a different campaign but it is the same question we face at this point in 2016. Can the president of the United States, he was candidate Trump then, he's an incumbent now, which is a big difference, can he pull this off with 16 weeks to go when all the numbers say it looks bleak?
MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Look, John, that's the open question, right? There's two weeks and two days and one more debate to go. And that debate is what the Trump folks see as their chance to try to change the arc of the race. If they do, it will be at a time when a large percentage of the voter who is voted in 2016 have already voted this time.
Just in terms of numbers. So, look, it's not over until it's over. I think it's a mistake some people want to call the race today because we still have two more weeks to go, but none of these trends are good for the president.
Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton, John. He has not been in the public eye the same way Hillary Clinton was over 30 years. He's not a woman, and he's harder for Trump to caricature.
So, for all those reasons, Trump seems to think the answer is seeing more of Trump and nothing has indicated that that's a wise strategy over the last year.
KING: Right, it's a great point you make, and we can show our viewers just the activity on the campaign trail this week.
Joe Biden is being cautious and careful. He says the coronavirus mandates that and is doing debate prep. The president has been running around to states.
[08:05:02]
You see all the rallies for the president. In part, he's trying to prove he's recovered from the coronavirus, and he looks energetic on the trail. The question is, does the same approach work?
Josh, you write about this with one of your colleagues in "The Post" today, an internal debate within Team Trump over what to go focus on how and to do it in this final couple of weeks. If you listen to the president on the campaign trail, some of it is attacking Biden personally, some of it is about the economy, there still seems to be -- the candidate at least can't pick one thing. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: He makes Hillary Clinton, I call her crooked Hillary, as you've possibly heard, look like amateur hour.
This election is a choice between a Trump super recovery and a Biden depression. And, you now, they're going to raise your taxes substantially, like quadruple.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: There is a debate, both of you reported this, Josh, that there's a debate over, should it be more about the economy what a second term would like? Should it be try to do what Joe Biden what they did to Hillary Clinton, say she's corrupt, too? You should hate all politicians, hate us all.
The president seems to want the kitchen sink.
JOSH DAWSEY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: He does. And the president has continued to make the argument about corruption this week.
But one of the arguments has made is that Biden is a senile and doddering old man, but some of his advisers said to him your poll numbers among seniors are low. It's a problem for you and you're not helping yourself.
You saw this week he tweeted Biden for president with a senior citizen home. The president, he seems to be falling about a bit in his messaging. He's trying to depict Biden as too liberal at times and sometimes he says he's too conservative on certain issues like crime and policing.
And there's lots of places where he hasn't figured out exactly how to caricature Joe Biden. We have 16 days left, and his team is trying to push a more ebullient economic message that he can do a recovery, but that's hard when you have an unemployment rate that's, you know, 8 percent or so, and you have a lot of people still out to work and you have a country that's not back to normal. It's hard to make the economic message resonant as it would be otherwise.
KING: And it's harder, Maggie, because he's the incumbent president.
Now, everybody knew Donald Trump in 2016 because of his celebrity, but he was a blank slate as a politician and as a leader and he could say, I'm a great businessman, that's how I run the government. Now, we've had almost four years of him running the government.
And you touched on this shortly, but it's just the difference is Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton. That's an important point.
If you look at the exit polls from 2016 and you go back here, Hillary Clinton won women by 13 points. It went up to 19 points for the Democrats in the midterms in 2018.
Look at this, 23 points, and this is "New York Times"/Siena College poll, some saw even bigger gender gap. In the suburbs, the president won narrowly but he won the suburbs. That's why he's president of the United States. Joe Biden is up 14 points in the suburbs right now.
And to Josh's point, Maggie, the president carried senior citizens, candidate Trump did by 7 points, Joe Biden is now up plus 9. So, as the president tries to plot a comeback, he has more holes to fill, if you will.
HABERMAN: That's exactly right. And, look, his folks have tried to suggest they can try to fill it with other segments of the population. They hope to get a rise in his support among black voters. They hope that they can get a rise in his support among Latino voters. They hope they can have an increase in non-college educated white men who are voting for him.
And that's clearly their plan. It remains to be seen whether that's enough and polling indicates that it is not.
To your point on seniors, this is where the president's mishandling of the coronavirus over a very long period of time now has really damaged him. Those briefings he would do at the beginning of the pandemic where he would scream at reporters and complained that he was being unfairly and acted erratically, those frightened seniors, who are people who watch a lot of television.
And he did himself no favors and has continued not to instead of after getting the coronavirus himself, and coming out of the hospital and saying, I really understand why so many of you were scared, he tried to essentially cover up the idea that he had been sick in the first place. And none of this has been to his help.
KING: And, Josh, part of the challenge now is the president is being outspent nearly two to one on television by Joe Biden, the Democrats campaigns at every level, flush with cash right now.
And, look, the Trump campaign pulled it off in 2016. They took money out of Florida. They took money out of North Carolina. They put it into Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan and they trusted the DNA of North Carolina and Florida to be Republican in the end, even though they were closed.
But the issue, as I just discuss with Maggie, there's so many states where the president needs help right now.
Can they pull it off again?
DAWSEY: Well, they have money, but they certainly don't have as much as Biden or as much they would like. They're kind of playing proverbial whack-a-mole in some ways. I mean, they have certain states where if you believe the polling, their internal polling, and public polling, where they're in real trouble.
You know, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, you know, Arizona, places that are not looking good for the president. And there are other places where they look better. You know, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, states where they're more sure of.
But none of these states are sure fire bets for them. And they even have places like Georgia where they have to play defense. You saw the president in Macon on Friday.
[08:10:01]
So, they have a -- they have resources that are pretty right now scant for what they want to do. They need to be in a lot of places all the time. And that's the challenge with 16 days to go. KING: And we're beginning to see some Republicans who think this is
lost already. Again, we all lived through 2016. So, I will go there after we count the vote. So, we'll count first and decide who wins.
But you see Republicans who think they're about to lose who are now trying to separate themselves from the president. Listen to Ben Sasse at a town hall, tele town hall with voters earlier this week.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
SEN. BEN SASSE (R-NE): At the beginning of the COVID crisis, he refused to treat it seriously for months. He treated like a news cycle by news cycle PR crisis rather than a multiyear public health challenge, which is what it is. The United States regularly sells out our allies under his leadership, the way he treats women and spends like a drunken sailor.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
KING: Some of this is, the battle for Republicans think the president is going to lose, and so, they're trying to plant their flag for the post-Trump Republican Party fight.
That right will be fascinating if -- if we get to that point. In the 16 days left, does that dissidents in the Republican Party, I know the president says Ben Sasse is a never Trumper, Ben -- he's a RINO or whatever, but does the dissidence in the party, maybe not in Nebraska, but in other places, is that another complicating factor for the president when you have more and more, not a lot, but more and more Republicans saying I've got a problem here?
HABERMAN: There are a lot of senior Republicans, John, who would like to see the president doing more to help the Senate majority. Even if he's attacking people who are in better shape, frankly, than he is in his own race, like Ben Sasse, or Susan Collins. Overall, he's creating a climate where it looks as if the Republicans are going after each other.
Republicans in some of the battle grounds who are running behind the president in their own races need his help. And creating this sense of division does not help. I think there is the point that's very important here which is some of this is looking forward to what this could look like, again, could -- could look like on November 4th.
The president I think believes he has a tight-fisted grip over his party and people will not abandon him and do whatever he wants. I think you're seeing signs that Republicans, if the president loses are going to move to drop him somewhat fast.
KING: We'll watch how that plays out. It's going to be fascinating. As Maggie noted at the top, one more presidential debate this week.
Also, some fascinating Senate and House debates will happen this final two weeks. We'll keep track of all and to watch these dynamics.
Maggie, Josh, grateful for the reporting and insights. Ahead for us, how Democrats see the final two weeks.
Next, though, the coronavirus case count is surging and the president's top COVID adviser says, get this, he says skip the mask.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:16:53]
KING: The doctor the president listens to most about the coronavirus is mocking masks again. The views of the doctor run counter to the verdict of public health experts and his green light for recklessness comes at a dangerous moment.
Let's look at the latest numbers. If you look at the trend map right now, we have 29 states, red and orange in the states trending in the wrong direction, 29 of them. Deep red, 50 percent more new COVID infections right now compared to a week ago. Orange, between 10 and 15 percent, more new infections right now than a week ago.
So, 29 states trending in the wrong direction, 19 states holding steady. Many of them at high levels today, only two states reporting fewer than a week ago. The country is trending in the wrong direction.
If you look at the case curve, again trending in the wrong direction. First peak, second peak, now heading up again, top of the third peak still uncertain. More than 60,000, close to 70 new infections on Friday, just shy of 60,000 on Saturday, weekends, the numbers tend to go down a little bit.
The red line tells you all you need to know. We're heading back up in the ballpark of 60,000 new infections a day. Nine of the last 11 days, 50 plus. You see the line heading back up.
Now, the line is heading up because states are setting records, 21 states reporting records in the past week of their average new cases, 21 states. This is not around the final turn. This is trouble. You see it laid out on the map here.
In terms of regions going up, that's across the country, the Midwest trending up. The Northeast trending up. Lower case counts because they pushed the curve down early.
The South plateau, trending up a little bit. Maybe the West starting to trend up slowly.
Why is this happening? Well, here's why this is happening. Look across the country, the deeper the blue and gray on this map, the higher the positivity rate.
Twenty-six percent in Idaho, 29 percent in Nevada, 37 percent in South Dakota, 49 percent in Iowa, 25 percent in Wisconsin, double digits down here in the Southeast, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. Higher percentage of positivity now means more cases today. A higher percentage of people with COVID, guess what, means infections more cases tomorrow. Let's begin our Sunday conversation with our two favorite doctors. Dr.
Ashish Jha, he's dean of the Brown University of public health and Dr. Megan Ranney is an emergency room physician and researcher at Brown.
Dr. Jha, I want to start with Dr. Scott Atlas in the middle of this, and I want to go back to this case curve in the middle of this, going back up, in the ballpark of 60,000 cases a day when Dr. Anthony Fauci says wear a mask, when Dr. Redfield at the CDC says wear a mask, Scott Atlas tweets out yesterday, masks? No. Masks? No.
Is there any doubt about the science here? Is there any doubt at all about the science here?
DR. ASHISH JHA, DEAN, BROWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALHT: Yeah. Good morning, John. Thank you for having me on.
From the beginning of this pandemic, we've really faced two enemies. The virus which is infectious and deadly and a campaign of disinformation that has made it so much hard tore fight the pandemic. And it's really striking to have the top doctor in the White House be a source of that disinformation.
The evidence on masks is pretty clear at this point. They help. They help a lot.
[08:20:01]
The debate is are they -- will they bring the whole pandemic to an end or end up being an important part of the solution? No serious person is debating whether they are an important part of fighting this pandemic or not.
KING: You say no serious person, but a person who has the ear of the president of the United States at a time the president could be talking truth to the American people.
Dr. Ranney, I want to bring up the issue here, let me move down here, the hospitalizations. This is the business you live in every day, and even in places like the Northeast which shoved down the curve sees we're trickling back up again. We have hospitalizations early on April, we came down some, back up in the summer surge.
Here comes the bend again. Hospitalizations starting to go up, and I'll go below here and look at the death. You can tell the death line has been the number of rates. They're horrific. But it's been relatively plateau, but you see all the red above the blue. That means the trend line is going to start going back up.
What is the situation now in emergency rooms like yours and your colleagues across the country getting worse again, right?
DR. MEGAN RANNEY, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN, LIFESPAN/BROWN UNIVERSITY: Yeah. John, it is absolutely getting worse again. My colleagues across the country are sharing stories of their ERs being overwhelmed, their ICUs being full, running out of nursing staff because their nurses are getting sick. We are facing the same situation we're in in April and May in the Northeast and in July in the South.
And the trouble now is we're seeing it literally across the country. So, of course, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin are the worst of it right now. But we're hearing similar stories from my colleagues literally across the country, including here in the Northeast.
We're starting to see hospitalizations tick up. We are seeing people who are much sicker than they have been since that first wave in the Northeast in the spring.
KING: And, Dr. Jha, from the beginning you've been calling for testing and more testing as much as possible. I just want to show some numbers here. First is positivity right. If you look at the national positivity rate, above 6 percent. 6.2 percent.
The average is not there, but you're seeing more days above 6 percent. That's bad. Everyone from the beginning says get it to five and try to shove it down to stop community spread.
I just showed the map -- I just showed the map of these double digits in the states we talked about this for months getting colder and everything and the like. But the issue is when you look at the -- there's more tests, right? There's more tests.
But is there enough testing?
The president says we're getting more positives because we have more tests. Is that fair?
JHA: Yeah, so what we've been talking about for months, Sean, is what's driving the cases is more infections. And, you know, 6 percent nationally is bad, but you have to remember, California is at about 2.5 percent. New York is about 1 percent. These are big states.
And if California and New York are that low, that means there are lots of places in the country at 10, 12, 15 percent or even 30 percent. And the key thing your viewers need to know is when you're at 10 percent or 20 percent, it means you're missing most of the cases out there. I suspect North Dakota is probably missing 80, 90 percent of all infections. You can't stop the outbreak if you miss most of the cases.
KING: And so, Dr. Ranney in that context, we have Halloween coming up, we have Thanksgiving coming up. I just want you to listen quickly here to Dr. Fauci who says please, please, I know you have coronavirus fatigue. Be careful.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: My children are in three separate states throughout the country, and in order for them to get here, they would all have to go to an airport, get on a plane, travel with public transportation. They themselves because of their concern for me and my age have decided they are not going to come home for Thanksgiving, even though all three of them want very much to come home for Thanksgiving. (END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: How do you balance the urgency again of the count going back up with the inevitable coronavirus fatigue many people have?
RANNEY: You know, John, this is the impossible situation that we're in this fall, that we don't have to be in it. Had we followed the basic precautions earlier, we could have been in a situation where we could have seen our families for Thanksgiving.
But, unfortunately, given the rising case counts across the country, it is most likely unsafe to get together with elderly relatives for Thanksgiving. If you are going to do it, do it outside for a very short period of time, and not including food. So, get together with people who are close by you who don't have to travel and see each other outside.
And for a Halloween, I'm a parent myself. I have young children who are looking forward to trick or treating. We're going to try to do it safely. We have cloth masks and social distancing. Staying in stable pods of the same kids they see every day at school. And that's what our governor is recommending here in Rhode Island and what I hope Americans across the country do.
No big parties. No huge groups of kids going house to house. We have to maintain some sense of normalcy, but we have to do it with extra precautions in place given that this virus unfortunately is still spreading like wildfire among us.
KING: Dr. Ranney, Dr. Jha, grateful again and as always for your insights, especially leaning on you a lot as we start to go sadly back up.
[08:25:03]
Doctors, thanks so much.
Next for us, back to the campaign. It is deja vu for the Democrats. A big lead over Donald Trump with two weeks to go.
Plus, what would losing mean?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Can you imagine if I lose? My whole life, what am I going to go? I'm going to say I lost to the worst candidate in the history of politics. I'm not going to feel so good. Maybe I'll have to leave the country. I don't know.
BIDEN: I hope that it doesn't say that we are as racially, ethnically and religiously at odds with one another as it appears the president wants us to be.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [08:30:11]
KING: Sixteen days to election day and here is the biggest question. Can Donald Trump change this map? Can Donald Trump find a path to victory meaning a path to 270 electoral votes?
You see how we have it right now. Lopsided for Joe Biden, 290 electoral votes now either solid or leading Biden's way. Only 164 for President Trump. So he needs to engineer a huge comeback.
Look at the tossup states on our board plus Maine's second congressional district. Just look at these tossup states. Let's assume they've all voted Republican before they all voted Republican in 2016.
Even if Trump won Iowa, won Ohio, won North Carolina, won Georgia, and won Florida -- even if he swept the tossup states on our board it would still not be enough. Joe Biden would still have the lead.
Donald Trump's hill is steeper than steep because Joe Biden is competitive in every one of these states. And yet, Democrats are nervous, warning against complacency, worried they have seen this movie before.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Sixteen days out, here's the biggest question. Can you find a viable path to victory for Donald Trump? A viable path to 27 electoral votes. Well, it's incredibly difficult because of the state of play right now.
We have Hillary Clinton at 307 electoral votes. Donald Trump at just 179. It takes 270 to win. Can Trump turn it around? Yes, but it would be extraordinarily hard.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: With us this Sunday, Lisa Lerer of "The New York Times" and NPR's Asma Khalid. That's a little creepy when you look back at the flashback. But that is where we were four years ago on this day.
The question Asma, is the Biden campaign sent out this email from the campaign manager yesterday to supporters and donors saying don't believe the numbers. Please don't believe the numbers.
But one of the interesting things about this race that makes a difference is the stability. If you go back to Joe Biden's lead, this is NBC/Wall Street Journal polling, a 12-point lead over Donald Trump at the beginning of the year. There you go right there, a 9-point lead now if you play it out there. So stability in the lead.
If you look at the biggest most important voting group in America, that is women voters, let me try to slid this one over here. Look at this. This is the gender gap, NBC/Wall Street Journal numbers. It was big at the beginning of the year. It is even bigger now.
So there are comparisons to 2016 but there also are big differences including the stability of the Biden lead.
ASMA KHALID, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NPR: That's right. I mean, I think, you know, for a long time over the summer, I was looking at some sort of inflection. We're trying to see if there would be an inflection point. And really, I would say the story line of the summer leading into the fall has been the remarkable consistency of the polls.
You know, that being said, I also think that there are key demographic groups that Joe Biden seems to be doing better with than Hillary Clinton was ever able to do, and chief among them to me, honestly John, perhaps the most fascinating demographic group is white voters.
We recently did a poll, the NPR-PBS News/Marist poll that actually showed Joe Biden winning with white voters. You know, that is a phenomenal statistic if true, because no Democrat in recent presidential history has been able to win white voters.
You know, I would say I hear the same in my reporting when I was out there doing, you know, interviews with young, disaffected, disillusioned black and brown voters. They may not like Joe Biden but they understand the stakes are very different than they were in 2016.
KING: Right. And that is a big difference in a sense Lisa. You have an incumbent president, Hillary Clinton was viewed by some voters as the incumbent, I guess, because she had been Obama's secretary of state.
But you have an incumbent president in the middle of a pandemic, and the American people have cast a pretty decisive verdict. They don't like what they've seen from the president.
And to that Joe Biden tries to, you know, almost send the message, I'm not flashy, but I'm steady. Listen here to part of his message is, you know, when the president speaks, you must be able to trust it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The words of a president matter.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Absolutely.
BIDEN: No matter whether they're good, bad, indifferent, they matter. And when the president doesn't wear a mask or makes fun of folks like me when I was wearing a mask for a long time, then as you know, people say well, it mustn't be that important.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: I always joke my first campaign was 1988. Michael Dukakis said this election is not about ideology, it's about competence. I guess he was 30 years ahead of his time.
LISA LERER, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Yes, I mean I think that's been the message that Joe Biden since the beginning. He's cast his candidacy as sort of a return to normalcy where voters don't have to think about what's coming out of the White House every day and they can escape this chaotic tone of this administration, a tone and a feeling that's only escalated in the midst of this extraordinary pandemic.
But I also think it's really important to remember something else about 2016 which was that then as you point out, Donald Trump was, of course, running against Hillary Clinton. And when you look at the numbers, you had a race between two of the most divisive, polarizing candidates that the country had seen in a really long time.
[08:34:56]
LERER: That is not this race. I mean, I've talked to people who have run focus groups for both candidates. And those who ran focus groups for Hillary Clinton recounted voters giving this tortured sort of explanation of her personality and whether they could vote for her and even if they didn't like Trump, they felt like maybe Hillary Clinton had been in the public eye in a divisive way for too long.
And when talked to people who've run focus groups for Joe Biden, they say what they hear from voters is that people don't know a lot about him but you know, they like him.
So he has a very different brand, a very different reputation in the American public. And that's really helping him in this moment.
KING: You have both spent time in recent days talking to the people who drive American politics, and that would be women. Women will be 50 percent plus, probably 52 percent, 53 percent of the electorate nationally. It will be around that number, higher in some states as we get through it.
Also this is from a piece you did. "I think we trust him after seeing what he's done. That's a lot of our reservations. I don't know that we like him, but our goal isn't to be liked, it's to be respected." That's from Linda Holloway out in very important Bloomfield, Michigan. She's a Trump supporter.
And Lisa this is from your reporting. "In the last four years, my children have grown and developed more than he has in regards to the way he speaks to other people and the way he speaks about other people." That from an Ohio voter who's going to vote for Biden now who voted for Gary Johnson last time.
Asma, to you first, when you talk to these women, especially suburban women -- who again, that is why Nancy Pelosi is speaker -- the suburban revolt against Trump in 2018 changed America. The question is will it change America again?
KHALID: You know, I was out in Michigan. And I specifically spent time in two key congressional districts that did flip from Republican to Democrat in 2018. And what I consistently heard from, you know, you could call them suburban women, right. This is the key demographic that Donald Trump had been pleading to support him.
They said that they were sort of awakened to politics in 2018. Many of them are energized and engaged more far more so this election cycle. You know, I think where Donald Trump still retains support in the
suburbs is among sort of a key core base of women who say, you know, we don't like how he speaks, but we're still going to back him.
The challenge for him is that is less than 50 percent of the public and really at this point, he needs to be expanding the base. He has shown no signs specifically among suburban women that he's capable of doing that.
KING: And Lisa, your voter there is important because the third-party candidates are not polling anywhere near like they did last time. So you have a Johnson supporter from '16, who's a Biden supporter now. In the newspaper today, you also write about other disaffected Democrats or Independents who couldn't vote for Hillary Clinton who can vote for Biden. So as we talk about Trump trying to find new voters, Biden may have a pool, too.
LERER: Right. When we look at the numbers for people who voted third party, which as you point out isn't as strong -- it doesn't have as strong of appeal this time around or didn't vote at all in the 2016 election, a lot of what we're seeing is those people are in higher numbers going to Joe Biden.
But I do think as you point out, the suburbs will be key here. Republicans have really never won a presidential race in recent history without winning the suburbs.
And part of what's happening here is the suburbs are changing. I think Donald Trump when he tries to, you know, talk about suburban housewives and law and order and win back these areas of the country, the suburbs, he doesn't quite have a sense of what they are now.
They're increasingly diverse. They're the bulk of America. These are areas that have followed a lot of the demographic trends that are hurting the Republican Party in the long-term.
And so the question is not only whether Donald Trump will lose these areas and perhaps cost himself the presidency, but whether Republicans can win them back or are these voters lost for the Republican Party for a very long time?
KING: That's a fascinating -- one of the fascinating questions we will deal with in the next 16 days and then beyond.
Asma, Lisa -- grateful for the reporting and the insights.
Up next for us a global perspective, America almost alone. In a global pandemic, most other leaders respect science and they acknowledge facts.
[08:38:52]
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KING: This is a global pandemic and as a result of that, a global leadership test. New Zealand's prime minister instituted an early coronavirus lockdown and her Labor Party was just rewarded with a landslide in national election. The virus is surging again across Europe where several leaders this past week imposed new restrictions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANGELA MERKEL, GERMAN CHANCELLOR (through translator): I am convinced that what we do or do not do in the coming days and weeks will be decisive for how we get through this pandemic.
We can see the infection figures curve is going up. In some cases very steeply.
BORIS JOHNSON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: No one wants to have to implement these measures which damage local businesses, curtail individual freedom and impose significant strains on people's mental health. But these decisions were necessary because of the rate of increase.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Notice the chancellor and the prime minister acknowledged the COVID spike, meaning they acknowledge the facts. President Trump ignores them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The lockdowns are doing tremendous damage to these Democrat-run states. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself, can it.
The vaccine will end the pandemic, but it's ending anyway. I mean they go crazy when I say it. It's going to peter out and it's going to end.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: CNN chief international anchor, Christiane Amanpour is with us this Sunday. Christiane, grateful for your time.
When you listen to the president of the United States and you listen to these other world leaders, I would say it's Mars and Venus, but Mars and Venus are at least in the same galaxy. This is a parallel universe.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Well look I didn't see the data to that last President Trump sound bite but clearly it's not going away. And what we are here in Europe in the midst of the second wave which everybody warned us about at the very beginning. There was going to be a first wave and a second wave. And of course, we haven't yet got to the flu season in full flung.
So yes, Europe and parts of the world are experiencing a big spike because what happened was at the very beginning they really did take very harsh lockdown measures and you saw it flatten very quickly across most of Europe.
And then you saw what now looks to be a rather early and scattershot lifting of the lockdown. They were desperate to get this so-called V- shape recovery, desperate to get the economy. Obviously, people were desperate.
But over the summer you had socializing and you had travel for vacations. At the end of the summer, you had kids going back to university. And that's, you know, a big source of the spike.
And now you have the leaders making their comments about how they need to take very careful measures now in restricting. Boris Johnson is still a little bit all over the place because he doesn't want to do a national lockdown. People don't really understand his three-tier system and his regional restrictions. So that's a little bit of a problem. And also hospitals across Europe are seeing an uptick in the number of cases going into hospital.
KING: And it's an interesting moment here because we're 16 days away from the American election. The president always says we're the envy of the world. Well, we are not.
[08:44:59]
KING: We're leading in cases and we're leading in deaths. His response has been criticized. And people around the world seem to agree.
This is from a Pew poll. If you look at this here. Has the United States done a good job in dealing with the coronavirus? 20 percent of the people in Spain say that. 18 percent in Italy. 16 percent in the U.K. 15 percent in France. Only 9 percent in Germany.
You know this better than I from your program "AMANPOUR" and from your conversations. But my inbox from diplomats and others around the world is they keep asking what the hell is going on in the United States of America?
AMANPOUR: Well yes. And if you see some of the rather the latest polls on the international view of the United States, It is all based around COVID. And over the summer and over the spring they were at the lowest levels since the height of the Iraq war which was when the last time America was so unpopular abroad. So that was a big, big deal.
I think it's interesting to see the levels there. You see that Germany only 9 percent thought the U.S. was doing a great job. That's because of all the large European economies, Germany did the very, very best at the beginning. It had a very sophisticated test and trace. It had ICU beds. It had surplus, medicine, surplus beds, surplus you know, resources. And it really dealt with it very, very strongly.
So the people there were saying, well hang on a second. You know, look at the catastrophe that's happening in the U.S. which has -- what does it have? It has I think 4 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's cases. So it was pretty dramatic to watch.
And I think leadership here, John, is very important to focus on and you've been doing so at the beginning of your program.
You mentioned correctly that Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand has been reelected in a landslide. That's because of competence. That's because eliminated the virus. And that's a very specific and technical word.
Here Boris Johnson has not done such a good job and even his own party members consider him the second worst cabinet minister in the U.K. and his polls are in the -- I was going to use a word I shouldn't -- but his polls are pretty, pretty low below, you know, where they would like to be right now. And it's all because of competence.
And really people, we're being told by public health officials now in the United States and around the world, need also to cooperate. They need to wear the masks. They need to socially distance. They need not to be jammed up against each other indoors.
There are fairly simple things individuals can do that actually make a difference. And one can't overemphasize that enough.
KING: And when people in your program ask about the response in the United States, what comes up the most?
AMANPOUR: I think what comes up the most is this lack of reverence or lack of respect for facts and for science. Lack of respect for doctors and nurses who up until now have been held up as the most, you know, respected professions, right.
I mean wherever you go people want to be a doctor. they want to be a nurse. They want to be a teacher. They want to be a scientist. But yet, these professionals who are giving their best advice are being disrespected by a very, very large part of society.
And that's something that in most parts of Europe, most parts of the world including places like Vietnam, let's not forget, and South Korea and other places, Asia has got this under control. They have respected the science and they have respected those professionals.
People can't understand why masks have become in England as well, in the U.K., which has got its own populist problem here, have become such a bone of political contention.
And the notion that the United States and Britain believe themselves to be exceptional nations has also backfired in the view of a lot of people around the world. That it can't happen to us. We can't be in such a terrible situation. It will magically go away. Well, we've seen that it takes actual action to make it go away.
KING: We have seen that and we're now going through it both on your side of the Atlantic and ours, back up the hill; back up to another uncertain peak.
Christian Amanpour, grateful for you time this Sunday. Thank you.
Up next for us, voting in a pandemic. Long lines, very long lines for early voting and yes, lots of lawsuits.
[08:49:02]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) KING: Election day is 16 days away. But everyday right now is voting day. The early voting lines are simply eye-popping. You see voters waiting here in Georgia, in Texas, North Carolina and Louisiana.
Early voting records are being shattered. Look at these numbers, more than 22 million ballots cast already climbing toward 3 million in Texas, more than 1.2 million in Georgia and nearly 1 million early votes cast in North Carolina.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How long have you been waiting in line?
SEAN TERRELL, BIDEN VOTER: About two hours now. Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What do you think about that?
TERRELL: It sucks but, you know, I'd rather be out here doing my civic duty than not. I don't trust the whole mail-in voting thing so I will be here and I will sign it and make sure it goes where it needs to go.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Just about every state is doing something new because of the coronavirus pandemic. And because of that, there are mounting legal challenges. More than 350 cases making their way through state and federal courts. Many of them attempts by President Trump and Republican allies to limit the use of mail-in ballots or to make it harder to drop off a ballot, say, if you don't trust the mail.
"The New York Times" today details an emerging trend. In at least eight cases so far, victories for Democrats and voting rights group at the federal district court level have then been reversed by a more conservative federal appeals court.
Jim Rutenberg of "The Times" is with us this Sunday. And Jim, it's an important trend because those of us who follow this administration know that appeals court is where the president is focused on. Many Trump judges on these courts, it's not all Trump judges in these cases but voting rights groups and the Democrats are finding there is a road block out there, right?
JIM RUTENBERG, WRITER-AT-LARGE, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Yes. Well, that is true. And John, President Trump has done more to appoint judges to that bench than any president in more than 40 years. Only Jimmy Carter outpaced him and that seems to be making a difference.
And it's not partisan decisions. It's such ideology that is more hostile, voting rights lawyers would say, toward traditional civil rights litigation.
KING: And so one of the questions, we're 16 days out now. You have all of these cases, dozens and dozens and dozens, it seems everyday more. And they range all over the place.
Arizona is suing to extend a deadline. Let's say you voted by mail and your ballot is challenged it allows you to, you know, come in for a few extra days to try to correct the record.
Other sates are suing over the drop boxes issues, filing mistakes on ballots. Ballot deadlines. What is the sense? Will voters have clarity before election day or some of this might carry over until after election day which causes a mess?
RUTENBERG: Well, unfortunately, I think it's a little bit of the both and as you noted, there are so many cases that it makes your head hurt trying to get through them.
[08:54:52]
RUTENBERG: But the truth is what this is all about is, yes, ease of access to voting and the time that the election officials will have to count ballots.
And what Democratic lawyers are very worried about is that this litigation is going to go right up to the wire so you're not going to know.
You know, right now, you have to get a ballot in at a certain time but the mail might not get it there in time to be counted. So they want people to understand that this is a moving target and that's why they want everyone to vote early. So that is what's happening from the Democratic side.
KING: Right. Democratic side in some ways has shifted. Early on they were saying vote by mail is not safe, we're in a pandemic.
Now, because of questions about the post office, questions about these suits, you see Democrats saying if you can, get in line and vote early in person.
If you look so far, Democrats are outpacing Republicans in early voting. Now, we have to be careful here.
The polls tell us, most Democrats are going to vote for Biden and they tell us most Republicans are going to vote for Trump. But we don't know just because if you look at the 54 percent of pre-election ballots cast you look at the lopsided advantage.
Look at 2020. Democrats have a huge advantage. Look at 2016 it was a much smaller Democratic advantage. Again, we cannot be certain all those Democrats are voting for Biden but Democrats do seem to believe early that the message, have a plan, vote early is helping.
RUTENBERG: Right. And that also focuses the litigation. The litigation is very much about those what tend to be over-indexed Democratic votes. That's what the president and his lawyers have been going after in the mail.
Early voters snuck up on the president. But early voting has been traditionally something Democrats have really mustered their organizational forces around so we're seeing it in spades right now.
KING: And in terms of this -- some of this likely to go to the Supreme Court is -- do the lawyers you're working with on these cases worry that again, that some of this will not be decided by election day which adds to the confusion for people out there?
I think that they're primarily worried in terms of after election day that right now what we are seeing is a setting of the rules. And that yes, then these cases will go to the Supreme Court. Now it already had a balance that they viewed -- the Democratic lawyers viewed as hostile it their position. Now presumably will be more so with Amy Coney Barrett.
KING: Bush v Gore in steroids could be in our future.
Jim Rutenberg of "The New York Times". Grateful for your reporting. Grateful for your time today, but especially for the months you're spending on this important issue.
We will talk again.
And that's it for us today on INSIDE POLITICS. Hope you can catch us weekdays as well. We're here at 11:00 and noon Eastern.
Up next a very busy "STATE OF THE UNION WITH JAKE TAPPER". Don't go anywhere. Jake's guests included Lara Trump, Democratic Senator Chris Coons, the Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and CNN's Fareed Zakaria.
Thanks again for sharing your Sunday.
Have a great day and stay safe.
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