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Interview with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee; Obama Criticized for Ebola Czar Ron Klain Appointment; Poor Messaging Fuels Ebola Concerns; Obama Not Showing Up in Battleground States; Eric Holder Talks Criticism of Obama

Aired October 20, 2014 - 13:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting from Washington.

In Texas right now, 43 people are out of quarantine. That's three weeks after coming into contact with Thomas Eric Duncan. He was the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States. He was from Liberia diagnosed at a Dallas hospital. The mayor says they are still monitoring 120 other people, which includes health care workers from Texas Presbyterian Hospital where Duncan was treated and unfortunately passed away.

Joining me from Houston is Texas Democrat, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.

Congresswoman, thanks very much for joining us.

Let me get your quick response to the president is getting a lot of criticisms from Republicans and a few Democrats on his new Ebola coordinator or czar, whatever you want to call him, Ron Klain, because he doesn't have any medical experience. Do you think that was a good appointment?

REP. SHEILA JACKSON LEE, (D), TEXAS: I do. And what our Republican friends do not realize is Ron is part of a very large team. You just heard from the head of USAID, Dr. Shah, who has done an excellent job and came back from the infected areas, World Health Organization, the CDC. Ron's job is to make sure that domestically, going forward, we're doing everything we can with the leaders of NIH, CDC, Health and Human Services and, as well, Homeland Security. What is good about Ron is he was there during a crisis a few years ago and that, of course, was the economic crisis and handled the distribution of stimulus dollars. He knows how to max funding, how to save money and how to get people to do the job. We need a manager and we have one. We've got to fix our communications and our education and the support and protection of our health professionals in the case of another Ebola case that comes up.

BLITZER: You won't be surprised that Texan Senator Ted Cruz has a different assessment. I'll play you a clip of what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ, (R), TEXAS: We don't need another White House political operative, which is what Mr. Klain has been. What we need is presidential leadership. The person who needs to be on top of this is the president of the United States standing up and leading and treating it as a public health emergency.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: You probably saw that story in "The New York Times" on Saturday saying that the president was, quote, "seething" because he didn't think his team did a good job, especially when that Liberian showed up at the Dallas hospital and the fallout after that. Have you been in touch with the White House? Was the president seething at his aides?

JACKSON LEE: The president is a perfectionist. He's had a mountain of trials and tribulations from international to domestic. He wants the American people to be protected. And I would venture to say he was clearly not happy with the response that should have been more immediate, say, for example, from the Centers for Disease Control, as you well know, has established a crisis team, an alert team. The Pentagon is establishing an alert team. And Dr. Frieden himself indicated that maybe he should have sent a team there. Now, the president -- let me say to my good friend, the Senator from Texas, just needs to read a little more. The president was issuing immediate support to the infected areas in Liberia and Senegal, Sierra Leone, New Guinea, and he was on top of it from the perspective of stopping it at its source because he desires to have our citizens protected. He was not happy and none of us were happy. None of us were happy when we had the Homeland Security hearing, when I asked the Centers for Disease Control representative, what are you telling hospital workers, and unfortunately the word was not there and we see what happened.

BLITZER: I know you have a strong view on nurses, that if they don't want to be involved in treating the Ebola patients, they shouldn't necessarily be involved in it. As you know, two nurses contracted Ebola and one is now being treated at Bethesda, Maryland, and one in Atlanta, Georgia. Explain to me what your position is on nurses and their refusal to care for high-risk patients.

JACKSON LEE: Well, I met with nurses just last week and everyone knows that the image of the nurse is Florence Nightingale but they are citizens of the United States and they have freedom of choice and expression. And if for some reason, their own medical condition, their own relationship to their family, their age, then they should have the opportunity to be able to say that to their employer of their condition and be assigned elsewhere, even if they are a critical care nurse.

But what I will say to you is that it is clear that the nurses at Texas Presbyterian neither had the information or the equipment. They didn't know how to not put on layers of gloves, how not to take your hands. They didn't have the head covering that they should have. You have shown it on air. I support these nurses by saying that nurses should only be taking care of one Ebola patient at a time if this was to ever happen again and they should be able to have the kind of full- dress equipment that you've seen either in the infected countries, either that the military has with the full headgear, and not using tape around their body, if you will, to try to protect them.

So, yes, I think nurses all together, overall will be willing to treat any patient that comes into their hospital. But I do believe that if, in the case of treating the Ebola patient, that they make the point, for whatever reason it is, dealing with their own health or status, there should be that conversation. That should not count, as I might say, when Mr. Duncan came and was turned away from the hospital, and I believe his situation was exacerbated by him showing up a few days via ambulance.

By the way, If I could, Wolf, just say this, the 14 people taking care of Mr. Duncan, the EMS drivers, the community members and four loved ones, are included in those 44 persons who is now, according to the CDC -- I spoke to them this morning. 44 of them are now Ebola-free and can be in the community. And I hope and pray that they are not stigmatized because they are free under the incubating time and the determination of the Centers for Disease Control.

BLITZER: You know a bunch of people are not going to necessarily believe the government when they say these people, after 21 days of quarantine, are completely free of Ebola, so they will be resisting that, but let's hope for the best.

Sheila Jackson Lee, Democratic Congresswoman from Texas, thank you for joining us.

JACKSON LEE: Thank you. We'll continue to monitor. I know that. Thank you.

BLITZER: I know you will.

Thank you very much.

So how did the White House handle this whole crisis of Ebola? My next guest says the Centers for Disease Control is learning its lessons. He says the White House still has lessons to learn as well.

And speaking of the White House, the president of the United States is not showing up in some crucial battleground states with only about two weeks to go until midterm elections. We'll take a closer look at why he isn't where a lot of the action is.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Ebola has certainly eroded the confidence in the way the Obama administration and medical professionals have handled it. It requires a delicate balancing act between telling people the hard facts without overly scaring.

When the president confidently said America can handle the Ebola threat, he overstated the case, at least initially. The public seemed to have lost some confidence. The president is trying to fix all of that. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention obviously made some mistakes as well in initially dealing with the virus, putting some people potentially at risk as far as initial protocols were concerned, especially for some nurses. So getting out the message right now, learning the message is critically important.

I'm joined by the president of the American Health Policy Institute, Tevi Troy, who is here with me.

Tevi, thanks very much for joining us.

What were the biggest mistakes made so far from your perspective?

TEVI TROY, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN HEALTH POLICY INSTITUTE: There were some communication missteps. Public health 101 is that you've got to tell people not to panic. Panic is terrible. But you also have to be very upfront about what the facts are. If you give them overly optimistic projections, they are not going to believe you. Another one is the protocols appear to not have been right in Dallas.

BLITZER: Why were those protocols so bad? The nurse -- the nurses didn't have complete protection around their necks. There was tape on the necks. That sounds so ridiculous.

TROY: There's a very good reason for this. We have excellent medical care in the U.S. But we have very invasive medical care. We do more intubations, blood draws, more changing of bed sheets, more than is done in Africa. There's a lot more exposure to bodily fluids because of our more modern system. I don't think our protocols took that into account. It's paradoxical but it's the case.

BLITZER: People are saying that there have been three cases of Ebola in the United States, and let's hope that is it, but they are braces potentially for more.

TROY: I am, and I am concerned that it could happen. But it's possible that the Dallas episode, while tragic, could be the end of this. Hopefully, this won't continue any further. That's the hope.

BLITZER: And then the U.S. would be Ebola-free as Senegal and Nigeria are. They've got to get a handle of what is going on in West Africa to make sure that the world is Ebola-free and that's an enormous challenge.

TROY: West Africa is much more complicated. We've had over 4,000 deaths there and they don't necessarily have the public health facilities, the ability to track and trace, or the same type of patient care that we have here in the U.S.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Was it a mistake, from your perspective, for the president to have Ron Klain, well known in the Clinton and Obama administration, knows politics very well, but really no medical experience or degrees or anything like that, to be the so-called Ebola coordinator or czar?

TROY: Ron Klain is a very smart and very talented individual. Everybody that knows him says that. He does not have a public health background and he's also seen as a campaign person. To the extent that some of the president's problems are that we're not dealing this well from a public health perspective and also he does too much through the lens of partisan politics, I think it was a problematic choice.

BLITZER: From your perspective, the president should have brought in someone less political but with more medical experience, who could coordinate the U.S. Agencies and the government in dealing with this crisis? Some people have said former Senator Bill Frisk, who is a surgeon himself. Someone like that?

TROY: I think Bill Frisk would have been a great choice, but Mr. Klain has been picked, and hopefully he'll do a good job.

BLITZER: Tevi Troy, thanks so much for coming in. Appreciate it very much.

We're just about two weeks until the midterm elections here in the United States. Everyone is looking at the crucial battleground states to see who will determine who will be the majority in the U.S. Senate. So why is President Obama showing up in states that are seen as not necessarily all that crucial? We'll take a closer look at that, whether Republicans will take over the Senate. Gloria Borger is standing by.

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BLITZER: Here in the United States, critically important midterm elections a little more than two weeks away, two weeks from tomorrow. Early voting has begun in 34 states including Washington, D.C., as well.

President Obama cast his ballot a little while ago in his home state of Illinois. Last night, at a rally at Chicago State University, he revealed who he was voting for.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The first thing I'm going to do tomorrow is cast my vote to re-elect Dick Durbin and give my friend, Pat Quinn, four more years as governor of the great state of Illinois.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: He's not shy telling us he's voting for Democrats.

Many candidates in the midterms have distanced themselves from the president.

Joining us now is Gloria Borger, taking a closer look at this.

Interesting that he's gone to Maryland. He's gone to Illinois to campaign. He's not showing up in a lot of those battleground states where Democrats are clinging on for their political lives.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. He's not being asked to go to those battleground states, Wolf. I was talking to a senior Democrat who is very involved with these campaigns. He said to me, look, you could not imagine a more hideous cycle for the Democrats. They've got a lot of folks up for re-election in red states. The president is very unpopular in these states. While he can raise money for them in other states, they're not asking him to come to their own states to campaign because they know that it can backfire. As Republicans nationalize these elections, the president becomes a target, and they don't need that aggravation right now when they are running these tight races.

BLITZER: You were just in Colorado where there's a very close Senate race under way. What was your impression?

BORGER: Senator Udall is one of those Senators who now, if you believe the polls, is polling five to six points behind his Republican challenger. He's a Democratic incumbent who is trying to distance himself from the president in any way he can. The president has a 37 percent popularity rating in the state of Colorado.

But here's the unknown factor for all of us as we head into the midterm elections, and that is that the Democrats now have a real ground game advantage. In the state of Colorado, for example, you have mail-in ballots. Ballots are at home right now. I was told that 80 percent of the people in Colorado will vote before Election Day. Democrats believe they have an advantage in telling people, knocking door to door, focusing on people, and saying we're done persuading them. Right now, we either have to get them out to vote or get them to cast their ballots. And they believe that they can make up any deficit with organization. And if you go back to the last presidential race, we know Democrats out organized the Republicans so that's a difference that we can't quantify yet.

BLITZER: In 2012, the Democrats did a better job getting Democrats out, but in 2010, the Republicans did a better job. What are Republicans doing now?

BORGER: The Republicans are saying that they are organizing. They are nationalizing this election. Instead of making it a bunch of races state by state, what they're saying is, it's ex-Obama. Everyone is tied to Obama. They are using the issues of competency. They are including health care as part of the competency question. They are using this question, which polls very well for them, about the so- called imperial presidency, the overreach of this president. And they are saying, look, this president believes in big government. We don't believe in big government. We believe that we need to make government smaller and more efficient. So what they're trying to do is take a bunch of local races, whether it's in congressional districts or whether it's in states, and nationalize them as a referendum on this president, tying every candidate to Barack Obama.

BLITZER: We don't know how the Ebola scare or ISIS war or any of that is going to play out.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: It doesn't help. I was talking to this Democrat who has looked at polling in many states. He said to me that, at the height of Ebola scare and ISIS, their general polling went down for the Democrats. So they know that these are not issues that help them, because if the president is seen as not managing them well and not leading on them well, there's a trickle-down effect to Democratic candidates.

BLITZER: We know also that Republicans will need a net gain of six in the United States Senate to be the majority. Two of those races, in Georgia, for example, and Louisiana, if no one gets 50 percent, there has to be a runoff, in December in Louisiana and January for Georgia. So we might not know until January who the majority is in the Senate.

BORGER: That's right. Election night will be very exciting, Wolf. Not only will we determine who controls the Senate but it could go on and on and on. We've had elections that have done that in the past, 2000 presidential. But control of the Senate is at stake here and that would mean that Republicans control the entire Congress, Wolf. This could go on, way beyond November 4th, as you point out. In Louisiana, it's all about a foregone conclusion that there is going to be a runoff.

BLITZER: Because there are so many candidates.

BORGER: Yeah, because there are so many candidates in that race.

BLITZER: Gloria, thanks very much.

BORGER: Sure.

BLITZER: We'll all be busy over the next several weeks.

BORGER: Yeah.

BLITZER: Tomorrow night, by the way, is debate night here in America. Jake Tapper will moderate the debate between Florida's current governor, Rick Scott, and Florida's former governor, Charlie Crist. CNN, at 7:00 p.m. eastern. On Thursday, I'll be in New Hampshire to moderate the debate in the Senate race there as Scott Brown takes on Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Thursday, 11:00 p.m. Eastern. Stick around. Debate night in America.

We'll take a quick break and be right back.

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BLITZER: The United States attorney general, Eric Holder, is wrapping things up at the Justice Department. He's getting ready to step down after six years. He will step down as soon as a replacement is confirmed by the United States Senate.

Holder sat down in the meantime with our own justice correspondent, Evan Perez, to talk about criticism of the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: There was some really strong criticism recently from Leon Panetta, who led the CIA and the Pentagon. He called into question the president's ability to make decisions, especially on Syria. You were in some of those meetings. Did you see an indecisive president? How do you feel about the criticism that's been made?

ERIC HOLDER, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I have to disagree with his characterization of the president. The president is a deliberate person in an appropriate way, but he's also resolute once he makes up his mind. I think that what Leon said in the book is unfortunate. And frankly, I don't think it's something that a former cabinet member should do while the president you served is still in office. That's not something that I would even consider doing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: We'll have more of Evan's conversation with Eric Holder later today on "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. We'll have more in "THE SITUATION ROOM" as well.

That's it for me. Thanks very much for watching. I'll be back at 5:00 p.m. Eastern in "THE SITUATION ROOM."

For our international viewers, "AMANPOUR" is next.

For viewers in the United States and throughout North America, "NEWSROOM" with Brooke Baldwin starts right now.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Wolf Blitzer, thank you so much.