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The Situation Room
Dr. Deborah Birx Wishes U.S Lockdown Resembled Italy; Virus Testing Declines In 15 States; Louis DeJoy To Testify To Congress; Former Trump Official Endorses Joe Biden; Interview With Jared Kushner About Coronavirus, Elections And Middle East; UNC Chapel Hill Returning To Remote Learning Due To Rise In COVID-19 Cases; Trump To Give GOP Acceptance Speech From W.H.; Soon: Democrats Begin Unprecedented Virtual Convention. Aired 5-6p ET
Aired August 17, 2020 - 17:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer in THE SITUATION ROOM. We're following breaking news.
A blunt assessment by the White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx of why the United States has been unable to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking just a little while ago, she said she wished the U.S. lockdown had looked like Italy's where people weren't allowed out of their houses. The coronavirus death toll in the United States has now surpassed 170,000 people with more than 5.4 million known cases. And at the same time, testing is on the decline in 15 states right now.
Also breaking, the postmaster general of the United States and Trump donor Louis DeJoy has agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee as President Trump steps up his attacks on mail-in voting. I'll talk about all of this and a lot more with the president's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner. He's standing by live.
And we're just hours away from what will be a truly historic and unprecedented virtual Democratic Party convention that will officially make Joe Biden its presidential candidate.
Let's get some more on the breaking pandemic news first. CNN's Nick Watt is in Los Angeles for us. Nick, some pretty surprising, very blunt remarks from Dr. Deborah Birx.
NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, it was basically an admission that we did not do lockdown well enough. She says she wishes that we'd look like Italy where people weren't allowed out of their houses. But she says Americans don't react well to that type of prohibition.
Comparison of how the two countries are doing. On Friday Italy reported three deaths from COVID-19. On Friday, the U.S. reported 1,342.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WATT (voice-over): A college party in Georgia, can't see any masks. Not a lot of distance. Crowds also snapped outside student bars in Alabama. And four COVID clusters uncovered this weekend at UNC Chapel Hill where classes resumed one week ago. UNC will now, from Wednesday, shift to online-only for all undergraduates.
ANDY SLAVITT, FORMER ACTING ADMINISTRATOR, CENTER FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES: You're going to get cases at colleges. There's no question about it. The question is whether you can stop at five cases or have 500 cases.
WATT (voice-over: Meanwhile, the COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. just passed a staggering 170,000.
TOM FRIEDEN, FORMER CDC DIRECTOR: COVID is now the number three cause of death in the U.S.
WATT (voice-over): But K-12, Florida is mandating schools offer in- person teaching. One principal who already lost three current and former staff to COVID is asking parents to keep kids home.
JIMBO JACKSON, PRINCIPAL, FORT BRADEN SCHOOL, FLORIDA: The last thing that I want is to have another employee, or even worse, a child to become either seriously ill or possibly experience a fatal case of COVID-19.
WATT (voice-over): Young people are not immune. Infection rates among under 18s rose steadily from March through July, says the CDC. Meanwhile, more evidence that minority communities are hardest hit. A study just found that, for example, in Ohio, 13 percent of people are black, but 31.8 percent of hospitalized COVID patients were black.
In Virginia, less than 10 percent of people are Latinx, but more than 36 percent of hospitalized COVID patients were Latinx. But in those crucial vaccine trials, only 10 percent of volunteers are black or Latinx.
SEEMA YASMIN, FORMER CDC DISEASE DETECTIVE: Those people do need to be included in the trials. Historically, though, people of color or black Americans have not been included in trials because of these legacies of unethical experimentation and people having very legitimate reasons, the distrusting the medical establishment.
WATT (voice-over): And the latest on testing, experts have long said we should be doing 5 million a day. Here's President Trump late April.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're going to be there very soon.
WATT (voice-over): But we have never achieved even one-fifth of that 5 million goal.
WILLIAM HASELTINE, FORMER PROFESSOR, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: We're probably missing eight out of 10 people who are contagious.
WATT (voice-over): And since July, the average number of tests every day is actually falling. HASELTINE: Supplies aren't being shipped to places that could test. I
think its part of a strategy not to count how many people are infected.
WATT (voice-over): But a newly authorized quick and cheap saliva test could be a game changer.
ANNE WYLLIE, ASSOCIATE RESEARCH SCIENTIST IN EPIDEMIOLOGY, YALE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: We think this can give same-day results in most situations. And that alone can allow it to help guide activities and re-openings strategies.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WATT (on camera): Now, that test could be crucial for schools and colleges trying to reopen.
[01:05:01]
And that news from UNC Chapel Hill is pretty devastating. Their experiment with at least some in-person teaching lasted just one week. Now, Wolf, for undergraduates, they are going online only, remote only from Wednesday.
BLITZER: Like so many college campuses across the country. All right, Nick Watt reporting for us. Thank you very much. Let's go to the White House right now where our White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins is joining us.
Kaitlan, I'll be talking with the president's senior adviser, Jared Kushner, in a few moments about a number of things including the president's increasing attacks on mail-in voting and the Middle East among other issues, but you can update us on the very latest first.
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, right now, Wolf, we are looking at what's going to happen next Monday when the postmaster general Louis DeJoy is going to go for the House Oversight Committee for a hearing where Democrats say they want to know what's behind these big changes that he's making at the post office, changes that they are questioning the timing of, given the fact that it's a pandemic and we are just months out from the election.
And the president himself is complaining about the timing of that hearing asking why it's going to happen during the Republican convention instead of during the Democratic convention this week.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS (voice-over): A showdown is brewing in Washington tonight as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling back members from recess to block major post office changes that President Trump is defending.
TRUMP: And I also want to have a post office that runs without losing billions and billions of dollars a year.
COLLINS (voice-over): The changes were put in place by new U.S postmaster general Louis DeJoy, a GOP mega donor with no experience at the post office. Trump says DeJoy wants to, "make the post office great again" and denied instructing him to slowdown mail delivery that could impact mail-in voting.
TRUMP: I have encouraged everybody speed up the mail, not slow the mail.
COLLINS (voice-over): But Democrats want to hear from DeJoy himself and he's agreed to testify next Monday shortly after lawmakers return to Washington to vote on legislation that would block his new policies for the time being.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): It's now being 100 percent undermined by the postmaster general, a political hack appointee of Donald Trump.
COLLINS (voice-over): Democrats are proposing a bill that would include $25 billion in funding for the postal service and require it to keep current delivery standards in place through the end of the year.
TRUMP: This is a con game by Pelosi and Schumer.
COLLINS (voice-over): DeJoy became postmaster general in June and made changes he says will cut costs and make the post office more financially stable. But critics say eliminating overtime and banning workers from making extra trips to ensure on-time delivery has caused delays and backlogs.
The Postal Service has also been criticized for plans to remove more than 600 sorting machines in dozens of cities causing workers to fear they'll have less capacity to process mail during the election.
MARK MEADOWS, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: I'm saying that sorting machines between now and the election will not be taken off line.
COLLINS (voice-over): Meanwhile, the president has continued to sow misinformation, tweeting today that drop boxes for mail ballots could cause a "rigged election" even though they've been used for years without widespread problems.
With two stops in swing states today, President Trump gave a shout out to Mike Lindell, a booster of his and the CEO of My Pillow.
TRUMP: When I sleep well, I'm using his pillow.
COLLINS (voice-over): Lindell recently pitched the president and HUD Secretary Ben Carson on a botanical extract he claims can treat COVID- 19. There are no peer reviewed studies showing so, but Lindell told CNN the president was "enthusiastic about the idea," even though the product comes from a toxic plant and hasn't been approved by the FDA.
TRUMP: Is it something that people are talking about very strongly? We'll look at it.
COLLINS (voice-over): Today a new CNN poll of polls shows that 51 percent of registered voters nationwide back Joe Biden, while 42 percent are behind Trump. But for a former Trump administration official, it's not even close. The former chief of staff to the Department of Homeland Security secretary Miles Taylor endorsed Biden today.
MILES TAYLOR, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: And for me after two and a half years of that administration was terrifying. We would go in to try to talk to him about a pressing national security issue, cyber-attack, terrorism threat. He wasn't interested in those things. The president wanted to exploit the Department of Homeland Security for his own political purpose.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS (on camera): Now Wolf, in that video, Miles Taylor also cited an instance where they were on the phone with FEMA during those California wildfires. He says the president told them to cut off assistance because he didn't think the state made up his political base.
He talked about border policies. He said the president wanted to do things that were not only impossible but were illegal and the president didn't want to be told they were illegal. Miles said he is not a Democrat but he's supporting Joe Biden because he says he believes that he would not make the same mistakes that President Trump has.
[17:10:00]
BLITZER: Kaitlan Collins reporting from the White House, thank you very much. So let's get some more on all of this. The assistant senior adviser to the president, Jared Kushner, is joining us.
Jared, thank you so much for joining us. I first want to offer our condolences, deepest condolences to you and your family for the loss of the president's brother, Robert, may he rest in peace.
JARED KUSHNER, ASSISTANT AND SENIOR ADVISOR TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much, Wolf. And it's an honor to be with you.
BLITZER: Well, thank you for joining us. We have a lot to discuss. You're involved in all sorts of areas including coronavirus, the presidential election, the Middle East, of course. Let me start with what we just heard from Dr. Deborah Birx, a woman you know well, the White House Coronavirus response coordinator.
She now says she wished our lockdown here in the United States had looked like Italy's lockdown where people essentially weren't allowed out of their houses. Do you agree with her?
KUSHNER: So, I don't know the content in which Dr. Birx said that. The president was very forward leaning when he put forward 15 days to stop the spread. This was done at the time to make sure that we had enough hospital capacity and supplies so that we didn't end up like Italy where there were people dying in gurneys in waiting rooms.
Italy had a big ventilator shortage. President Trump made sure that we had enough ventilators, used the Defense Production Act in order to mass produce. We now are on track to have over 200,000 ventilators produced this year. And no American who needed a ventilator didn't get a ventilator. So, I think we've done much better than Italy with regards to how we handled this initially.
And again, I think that right now we're making great progress on a vaccine. We had the fastest vaccine ever to a phase three trial. Previously, it was 13 months. We've done it in four and the second candidate was done in four months and one week and we have six candidates that were producing.
So, hopefully we'll get to the phase very soon where we have the vaccine out there and we're able to start moving back to rebuilding our country and cleaning up the aftermath of what this global pandemic has caused not only to America but to the rest of the world.
BLITZER: I will just point out, Jared, that the United States has been averaging about a thousand deaths a day over these past several weeks. Italy has been averaging about three deaths a day over these past few weeks.
They're clearly on a much better track than we are. I want to play a clip. This is a prediction you made back in April about the U.S. recovery. I want you to listen, I want to get your response. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KUSHNER: I think you'll see by June a lot of the country should be back to normal. And the hope is that by July the country's really rocking again. And federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: So we're passed July obviously. More than 170,000 Americans are now dead from this pandemic over the past five or six months. Are 170,000 dead Americans, would you still report -- suggest that this has been a success story?
KUSHNER: Yes. Look, there was a lot of challenges. This has been a global pandemic, a lot of unprecedented challenges. Again, the first phase of it, people didn't know what to expect. A lot of it was happening in different states. The president was able to rush the supplies that we needed.
Now, we're in the middle phase where we're using all the knowledge we have right now to deal with strategically, how do we learn from what we had and protect the vulnerable? Right now we're rushing resources to the nursing homes. There were a lot of nursing homes that were left unprotected early on by different governors in different states. Right now we're making sure that we're doubling and tripling down on the nursing homes.
If you look at the economy, which is what I was referring to, we were in a position where the entire economy was locked down and President Trump passed the first stimulus. He did a lot of interventions. Our economy contracted by much less than our European counterparts who may have done, you know, different things in different ways. And what we've been able to do is have a very strong rebound.
So, I do think that, again, we're getting the vaccine, we're making great progress. This pandemic will pass. This is a pandemic that was not the fault of Democrats or Republicans. It came over from China. It hit us like it hit the rest of the world. We've done our best.
The case fatality rate has dropped tremendously. We've developed a lot of therapeutics. If you get the virus today, the risk of dying is much less than it was five months ago that's because we've learned a lot. We've continued to operate but we're still allowing Americans to live their lives obviously with some restrictions.
The president has strongly encouraged people to wear masks, to socially distance, to wash their hands, practice good hygiene, but we have to keep America's economy going because you don't want to end up on the other side of this with a country that can't be rebuilt.
And so, we will emerge from this much stronger than ever before. The president has invoked the Defense Production Act many times. We've started bringing back a lot of our jobs from overseas, from China, from other places. We're manufacturing now hundreds of millions of masks and all different kinds of PPE. We're bringing a lot of the essential drugs back on shore. T
So, look, this has been a big challenge for America. It's been a big challenge for everyone in the world. But President Trump's leadership has definitely brought us to a place where we're able to get through it as strongly as possible, given the tremendous challenges that we face.
BLITZER: I will just press you, Jared, a thousand Americans dying every day is not a success, right?
[17:14:58]
KUSHNER: Well, look, you want to keep that number to be as low as possible. One American, you know, dying every day is too much. But if you look at where we were back in April, we had 2,500 Americans dying a day. And, again, it was because the virus was spreading out of control. We didn't have a lot of knowledge of who would face this.
But if you look at the case fatality rate, obviously it's gone down. So the people who are most vulnerable are people who are over 70 and people who are in nursing homes, people who have co-morbidities. And what we've been able to do is figure out the right calibration of policies to strategically deploy our resources.
So, again, we could talk about the virus. I came on today to talk about the president's historic Middle East peace deal, which obviously was the first peace deal in the region in the last 26 years. I believe you were at the last one which was with Jordan. You've mentioned that to me at the White House, but at some point I'm hoping we'll get a chance to talk about that today. BLITZER: We will. I was there in Arava, Jordan when Israel and Jordan
signed a peace agreement. I covered the Israeli/Egyptian peace agreement back in 1979 when I was a young reporter. And this is the third agreement between Israel and an Arab state.
We're going to discuss that. But let me get some other news of the day. I wanted your reaction because you're involved in all these issues. As far as mail-in voting, the slowdowns at the U.S. Postal Service, the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi describes all of this as a campaign by the president to, quote, and I'm quoting her now, "to sabotage the election by manipulating the Postal Service to disenfranchise voters."
You're involved in the presidential campaign on behalf of your father- in-law. How do you respond to that?
KUSHNER: Yes. So, I will say there's no such thing as a slow news day in the Trump White House. So, we'll get through all these issues. Look, the president's just been very clear. He wants a fair election. I have a friend in New Jersey, he just got married. His wife has got two ballots, one in her new name, one in her old name.
The president has real concerns with universal mail-in ballot. There are things like absentee ballot, which have been done for many, many years, which is tried and true. But, you know, five months before an election or now three months before an election, it's really a tough time to change the processes for how we do these things.
So the president just wants a fair election so that Americans can have confidence in the election. And he feels like he's doing quite well. We are in much better shape now than we were in 2016. The enthusiasm is great out there.
And I will say that after three years, last campaign the president was saying I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. He has three years of results, whereas in Washington you have a lot of people who have done nothing but provide empty promises for a long time.
President Trump has solved a lot of the problems. We've had more problems in this country thanks to this pandemic. But it's furthered our resolve and we're very confident that we'll be able to bring our economy and our country back to stronger than ever before.
BLITZER: Before we get to the Middle East, I want to get a quick question about politics. The Democratic National Convention's starting tonight. A former top official within the Trump administration, Miles Taylor, with the Department of Homeland Security, as you heard, has just come out and endorsed Joe Biden.
He's taken direct aim at the president saying, and I'm quoting him now, "the president was one of the most unfocused and undisciplined senior executives I have ever encountered. I came away completely equipped based on first-hand experience that the president was ill- equipped and wouldn't become equipped to do his job effectively."
And he added, what's worse was actively he says, the president was doing damage to our national security. That's obviously a very damning indictment. So, I want to get your reaction.
KUSHNER: Look, Miles was a nice kid. He worked here for a couple of years, but I will say that it makes a lot of sense to me that he's endorsing Joe Biden when he was working at the Department of Homeland Security. No wall was built and the border was wide open. That's why the president changed up the team there.
Again, President Trump, unlike politicians, demands results and he put in a new team. Now we're -- I think this week we're going to pass 300 miles in terms of border wall. The numbers are down dramatically. Our southern border is more secure than it's ever been, which means that we're stopping human smugglers. We are stopping a lot of drugs from coming into the country.
And so again, right now, the president, if you can't make it, he demands results. He's a very tough boss. He's a very impatient boss, but he's a very focused boss and he demands results and clearly he wasn't up to the task.
BLITZER: All right. Let's talk about this historic peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. You were obviously very much involved in helping to put all of that together. This is really an historic and important step for the region, but where does it leave the Palestinians?
KUSHNER: Thank you, Wolf. You really made me work for this one to get to this point. So, I will say -- so let me just talk about the deal for a second. President Trump had the first peace agreement in the last 26 years between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. It was a major breakthrough.
Over the last three years, President Trump has been heavily criticized by a lot of the conventional thinkers for not approaching this file in the way that it's traditionally been done. And by doing an unusual diplomacy, by doing things differently, he was able to achieve a result that hasn't been achieved before.
So, it's a tremendous credit to him, to American leadership, and obviously brings a lot of hopefulness to the region. To your question on the Palestinians, I think the Palestinians have an incredible opportunity. Thanks to President Trump's leadership he put out a vision for peace which was 180-page document.
[17:20:04]
We laid out a whole economic plan for how you can double their GDP, create a million new jobs and reduce their poverty rate by 50 percent. It's actually not that hard. It's only 5 million people. We can execute it. I think I spoke with you in my last interview when I was in Bahrain when we laid that out.
President Trump got Israel to agree to a Palestinian state and he also is the first president to ever get Israel to agree to a map. So, right now, they have an opportunity to go forward. What they've lost though is the veto over what happens in the Middle East. When President Trump put that plan out, everyone in the Middle East saw that President Trump was actually serious about making peace and he was the first president that earned the trust of Israel and was able to get them to offer these concessions to the Palestinians that were in writing, that were legitimate, that were very detailed.
So, that happened. That showed the rest of the region that Israel and President Trump were serious about moving forward, which created the breakthrough for what we've accomplished here today. So look, I feel very badly for the Palestinian people. I think they've been used as pawns in the Middle East for a long time, as you know very well.
I do hope that their leadership will see the opportunities that can be possible. They've lost their veto but they still have their telephone. President Trump is a dealmaker. If they pick up the phone, we're ready to engage with them. And I do think that we can finalize this issue so that we can bring the Middle East forward which is very badly needed.
BLITZER: Jared, can you assure the Palestinian authority, the Palestinian leadership that if they too come back to the table, sit down with the Israelis, the United States will support what's called a two-state solution, Israel and a new state of Palestine?
KUSHNER: I'll do even better for you, Wolf. If you go on the internet, you can find the plan that we put out. It was a 180-page detailed plan, right. The problem with politicians is it's very easy to posture or use words that have ambiguous meaning. I always find that if you want to get a deal done.
And again, I've been involved in some very successful deals for the administration, whether it be the OPEC Plus oil deal or the USMCA trade deal, which was the largest trade deal in the history of the world, the China trade deal, the deal for the World Cup, for FIFA, for the Olympics. We've got a lot of deals done.
We've laid out 180-page detailed proposal that anyone could go online. It's translated into Arabic and they can read it. And that's exactly where we think the starting point should be for negotiation. Israel has agreed to negotiate on that basis. The Palestinian leadership rejected that plan before it even came out before they knew what was in it.
So, it's a two-state solution. There is a map. It's the first time there was ever a map. And again, we need to resolve this issue. One last point I just want to make is that one of the big significant things about this breakthrough with the United Arab Emirates is that there's been a myth in the Arab world that Muslims are not able to go and pray at the Al-Aqsa mosque.
It's been a symbolic gesture used by the radicals and the Islamic jihadist for hundreds of years to basically rile up the populous to say that the mosque is under attack.
Under this agreement, Muslims from throughout the world will be able to travel from Abu Dhabi or Dubai to Tel Aviv and visit and pray at the mosque peacefully. This hopefully really takes the tension down on this issues and will leave the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to really a territorial dispute that's happened based on a lot of bad policy, a couple of wars, and hopefully we can wrap it up, move it forward so that the region can go and achieve its full potential.
BLITZER: I know we got to wrap it up, but can you assure the Palestinians that the Trump administration will support a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine?
KUSHNER: Yes. Again, if you look at what we've put forward, we've put out our vision and that's what we're going to propose. The president has endorsed that. And, again, President Trump has the trust. You know, if you look at the last administration, especially after the terrible Iran deal, a lot of America's traditional allies were very alienated.
President Trump contrary to what people said, he hasn't started wars, he's making peace. He's bringing our troops home, but he's been able to regain the trust of our traditional allies to the point that they don't always love what he says, but they know that when he says it, he means it. And his strong diplomacy has helped him achieve a breakthrough that politicians have not been able to achieve in decades.
So, again, I am very hopeful. Over the last three years, I think I was one of the only optimistic people about what was possible in the Middle East. But what I'm feeling from the last couple of days is that there are a lot more people who are optimistic as well.
So, I'm very hopeful that it's an exciting time ahead, and this is all really thanks to President Trump's unconventional deal making style, but his very unique leadership.
BLITZER: Jared Kushner, thanks for spending some time with us. You're always welcome to come back here to our "Situation Room." Thanks very much for joining us.
KUSHNER: Thank you very much, Wolf. An honor to be with you.
BLITZER: Thank you. The breaking news here in "The Situation Room" continues next with more on the surprising remarks by Dr. Deborah Birx saying she wishes the U.S. lockdown had been like Italy's where people couldn't leave their homes.
And we're also just getting excerpts from the speech Michelle Obama will deliver tonight as the historic virtual Democratic Party convention gets underway just a few hours from now.
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[17:25:00]
BLITZER: More now on the breaking news. A really remarkable statement by one of the president's top White House coronavirus officials. I want to bring in our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, we just got that word from Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator on lockdowns and what she wished the U.S. had done. Let me play the clip what she just said. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DEBORAH BIRX, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE COORDINATOR: I wish that when we went into lockdown we looked like Italy. But when Italy locked down, I mean, people weren't allowed out of their houses. And they couldn't come out, but once every two weeks to buy groceries for one hour and they had to have a certificate that said they were allowed.
[17:29:57]
Americans don't react well to that kind of prohibition.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: So, Sanjay, what do you make of that rather blunt assessment by Dr. Birx?
SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, if we had done that at that time, even for a few weeks, Wolf, we'd be in a very, very different position right now. So I, you know, she's right, the models have sort of demonstrated that. We saw what's happened in Italy, and frankly, you know, the European Union as a whole in terms of their numbers versus our numbers. So the infection continued to spread.
If you go back and look at just how locked down where are we in the United States, probably, you know, closer to 50 percent of the lockdown of where Italy was. But I will say this as, Wolf, a more optimistic note, we've learned a lot about this virus. We know, for example, that if 95 percent of the country just simply wore masks at this point, it would start to bend this curve downward and save tens of thousands of lives.
So, you know, we're not anywhere close to where Italy was. And we're not even doing, you know, across the board the more basic things like universal mask wearing, not even in some campuses and schools.
BLITZER: Yes. The numbers, if you compare the numbers in Europe and the numbers here in the United States or South Korea, for that matter, it's really shocking to try to make those comparisons. As you know, Sanjay, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, this weekend identified four clusters of coronavirus cases on their campus. And they have now just announced they're suspending in-person learning. Do you expect we're only going to see much more of these kinds of announcements on college campuses going forward?
GUPTA: Yes. We will, Wolf. I mean, you know, this is a strange time. I think as somebody who's just been covering this reporting on it for some time, I think strange for public health epidemiologists. What we're watching is basically what many can see as a preordained situation. There is a virus that is spreading. There are 1,000 times more cases now than when we decided to try and shut things down in this country. You know, so there's 170,000 people who've died and we say, hey, let's start to open up schools, again, college campuses again.
Wolf, it doesn't make any sense, right? So the only thing that I think we don't know is at what point these schools start to shut down again. The virus is still spreading. I mean, this is not the time to open up. I mean, and I -- I don't know if they sound like a crazy person saying that or not, but that is the truth. So it's just at what point are you willing to accept this at this point and what is the cost that you're willing to pay?
More people will become infected, more people will become hospitalized, and more people will die as a result of these decisions. That's, you know, that is the nature of this virus. The virus has been the one constant in all of this. We're not -- we don't have this under control yet. This is not the time to be opening. So we will see what's happened in North Carolina.
And there may be some bright spots will say, hey, look, we went several weeks or several months without infections, but that doesn't mean that, you know, the viruses become any less contagious or this is any less of a problem, Wolf.
BLITZER: And you don't sound like a crazy person to me. You never sound like a crazy person to me.
Sanjay, this new chemical of being discussed as a, quote, potential coronavirus therapeutic that the creator of my pillow says the President is, quote, enthusiastic about what exactly, if anything, really, what do we know about this?
GUPTA: Wolf, we don't know anything really about this in connection with coronavirus. We do know that this particular plant, the oleander plant can be quite toxic to people. In fact, it's been used as a poison. It's what the book, "White Oleander", if anyone's ever read that book or seen the movie, that's what it's based on poisoning people.
This is concerning, Wolf. I mean, we're talking about schools opening, we're talking about potentially toxic substances being used as a therapeutic. I mean, we're not talking about the important things in terms of moving us forward here. I would not use this substance. It has not been tested. There's nothing to suggest that it would work and it could really harm people, especially when it comes to their hearts. So be very careful.
BLITZER: Very careful indeed. All right, Sanjay, thank you very much. Dr. Sanjay Gupta always helping us understand what's going on.
There's more breaking news coming up here in "The Situation Room". President Trump confirms he'll give his Republican National Convention acceptance speech from the White House. Plus, we'll have a preview of what the former First Lady Michelle Obama will say in her speech tonight at the Democratic Party's first ever virtual presidential convention.
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[17:39:26]
BLITZER: More breaking news coming into "The Situation Room". President Trump has just made it official he has now publicly confirming he will be accepting the Republican presidential nomination for a second term from the White House. He sets up with remarks just now out in Wisconsin, a key battleground state.
Let's dig deeper with our Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger, and CNN political Correspondent Abby Philip. So what's your reaction, Gloria? What do you think he's going to accept the Republican nomination with a speech at the White House?
GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, he's gotten legal clearance for it. And I think this is a President who wants to remind people that he lives in the White House.
[17:40:03]
I do think there is a sort of a political problem here for this which is if you are campaigning as the outsider as the -- even though you're inside the White House, as the person who came to Washington to bring change, and make things better, and then you are giving your speech at the White House, I think is kind of a mixed message. And I remember that his Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows said, I want him to give this speech as far away from the White House as he possibly can. And I think he was right about that.
I think there's a sort of a noted strikes that -- to the American public, which is you're not an incumbent for life. You're not president for life. And this is everyone's House, Democrats and Republicans, and perhaps it's just not the right place to do it.
BLITZER: It is an extraordinary development. But then again, Abby, this is a pretty extraordinary season.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely. I mean, I think it's just one of many things that has been going on in recent months that I think would be unthinkable just a few months ago. The President probably himself wants to do this speech elsewhere. He wants to be in these large rallies as much as he possibly can, he said as much today, but he has been restricted by this virus.
And I think that what we're going to see with this White House acceptance speech is the President trying to cloak himself in the presidency in the same way that you would see him doing a Fox News interview at the Lincoln Memorial, or going to Mount Rushmore for the Fourth of July. They want to remind the American public that he -- this is the job that he has. But as Gloria says, it is a little bit of a mixed message.
And I do think that for prefer President Trump, he's going to have to figure out how to not sort of seem as if he is sullying the office. If this is a message that's being done in the West Wing, in the Oval Office, you're going to expect that message to also have quite a bit of red meat in it.
It is very unusual, Wolf, to have that kind of sharply partisan attacks being lobbed from the White House, and that is almost certainly what we will see from President Trump next week. So the optics of that I think are going to be very interesting. And we'll see how the American people will see that.
BLITZER: Yes. The Democratic Convention this week, the Republican Convention next week. Gloria, we just received an excerpt from the Democrats, the former First Lady, Michelle Obama's, a keynote speaker, a major speaker tonight at the start of the convention. Here's a little excerpt that they've just released.
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MICHELLE OBAMA, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: And he will govern as someone who's lived a life that the rest of us can recognize. When he was a kid, Joe's father lost his job. When he was a young senator, Joe lost his wife and his baby daughter, and when he was vice president, he lost his beloved son. So Joe knows the anguish of sitting at a table with an empty chair, which is why he gives his time so freely to grieving parents.
Joe knows what it's like to struggle, which is why he gives his personal phone number to kids overcoming a stutter of their own. His life is a testament to getting back up. And he is going to channel that same grit and passion to pick us all up, to help us heal and guide us forward.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: So, Gloria, what do you think? What does that tell you about the focus of tonight the next few days?
BORGER: Look, she is an extraordinary character witness for Joe Biden, not only because she knows him personally, obviously her husband having served with him for eight years, but she knows the personal struggles the Bidens went through, particularly when Beau died. And what she is doing is talking about the greatest distinction between Joe Biden and Donald Trump which is the question of empathy.
Someone I've spoken to about his empathy who used to work for him said to me, it's his superpower. And that is I think what Michelle Obama is addressing here. And in terms that people can really understand, as they are suffering, as they are losing members of their family, and as they are losing income, and everything else in the middle of a pandemic. So I think the -- what they're trying to do is say, this is Joe Biden, and he is not what we have right now.
BLITZER: Gloria, thank you. Abby, thanks to you as well.
Coming up, the DNC Chair Tom Perez, on what's gone into making a virtual convention into a real statement first party's nominee. There you see Tom, we'll discuss when we come back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[17:49:25]
BLITZER: A busy night shaping up here in Washington, we have more breaking news. CNN has just learned the Secret Service's codename for the Presumptive Vice Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris. A law enforcement official telling CNN, the code name is pioneer.
Joining us now the person overseeing the convention that kicks off just hours from now, the Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez. Tom, thanks so much for joining us. And as you and our viewers know, this is perhaps the most unconventional convention we've witnessed in our history. How confident are you that your party, the Democratic Party, will be able to generate the same kind of enthusiasm, the same kind of energy we've come to expect from a week as big as this one is for the Democratic Party?
[17:50:09]
TOM PEREZ, CHAIR, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: I'm very confident, Wolf. And it starts with what happened last week, we made history with Kamala Harris. And that energy was just all over the map, all over the country and that energy is carrying into this week. This is, as you correctly point out, an unconventional convention. I think it's going to be a really exciting convention, because it's anchored in Milwaukee where I currently sit, but it's a convention across America.
And people will see not only the recognizable figures like Michelle Obama as the clip of which you just showed, but they're going to hear from ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things. We did a lot of crowdsourcing, ask people, give us your stories. And we've been planning for this for months because we understood that we had to plan for every contingency and we have an A plus team putting this together.
And so, you're going to hear from remarkable people. You'll hear from the paramedic down in Florida who is saving lives and he's a dreamer. We want people to know that this is a convention about everything we add as a country and as a party and as a nation. It's about uniting America. You'll see people across the ideological spectrum on our stage, all united in their support for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
BLITZER: There's certainly a lot of notable speeches of this week, as you pointed out tonight, we'll hear from the former First Lady Michelle Obama. We all remember back in 2016, her words when she said when they go low, we go high. It became a refrain out there on the campaign trail. Do you expect we'll hear some of that in her speech tonight?
PEREZ: I think she's going to be a character witness for Joe Biden, as Gloria correctly pointed out. I mean, the foursome of the President, the Vice President, the First Lady and the Second Lady, they not only were a team of governance, but they grew as friends. They had each other's backs. And there are few people that know Joe Biden better than Michelle Obama. And I think the nation will get to see insights about Joe Biden, his character that I think are going to be inspiring.
We want to commander in chief who has empathy and compassion, who understands the struggles of people. And this President is fundamentally incapable of understanding the struggles of everyday Americans. That's why he sits there and does nothing while people run out of their unemployment insurance and he continues to do away with coverage for people with pre-existing conditions are trying to do that. And that's what we're going to see tonight from Michelle Obama, a character reference of empathy, compassion, results, judgment, leadership, that's what it's about.
BLITZER: We're also going to hear tonight from the former Ohio Governor John Kasich. He's a Republican, he's a former Republican presidential candidate. It's pretty unusual, isn't it, you think -- we're going to be hearing from this Republican on the first night of this convention in a big speech?
PEREZ: Our party is all about welcoming everyone. This is not simply a convention for Democrats. This is a convention for everyone in America who wants a president who is truly inclusive, a president who will fight for everyone. I disagree with Governor Kasich on so many issues of importance, such as the right to form a union and workers, women's reproductive health. But I agree with him wholeheartedly on the issue at hand, which is that our democracy is on fire.
This President has totally obliterated the guardrails of our democracy. And this is a moment for people to put country over party. And John Kasich, I will note, Wolf, is not the only Republican who will speak this week. Joe Biden practices the politics of arithmetic.
Addition beats subtraction every day of the week. And we are indeed a convention about uniting America where a convention for everyone. And you will see as we build this coalition that includes everyone across the ideological spectrum.
BLITZER: We'll, of course, have extensive live coverage of the Democratic Convention, which begins later tonight, the Republican Convention next week.
Tom Perez, thanks as usual for joining us. Good luck this week.
PEREZ: Thank you so much.
BLITZER: There's more breaking news we're following, the Postmaster General of the United States agreed to testify before Congress amid accusations that the Trump administration is trying to hamstring the U.S. Postal Service as President Trump steps up his attacks on mail-in voting.
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[17:59:54]
BLITZER: Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world, I'm Wolf Blitzer in THE SITUATION ROOM. We're following breaking news, a stunning acknowledgement from the White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx.
