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Erin Burnett Outfront
Trump, Who Frequently Politicizes Pandemic, Tells Biden to Stop "Playing Politics" With Virus; Trump Doubles Down on Opposing Postal Service Funding to Stop Main-In Voting: Trump: Funding USPS Will Lead to "Fraudulent" Mail Ballots. Aired 7-8p ET
Aired August 13, 2020 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[19:00:00]
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They say that is exceedingly dangerous, especially trying to mix ethyl alcohol which they say can cause contact burns and even start fires, Jim.
JIM ACOSTA, CNN HOST: CNN's Brian Todd, thank you for that. I'm Jim Acosta. Thanks very much for watching.
Erin Burnett OUTFRONT starts right now.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: OUTFRONT next, the President with a straight face accusing Joe Biden of ignoring science and playing politics with coronavirus, adding fuel to a new and unfounded birther theory about Kamala Harris.
Plus, Trump says it out loud, he's opposing funding the postal service because he does not want to expand mail-in voting. Colorado's Secretary of State says it's voter suppression, clear and simple. She's OUTFRONT.
And the starkest warning tonight yet from the Director of the CDC, as a new study shows this virus could be as deadly as the 1918 flu pandemic. A pandemic which killed 50 million people around the world a century ago. Let's go OUTFRONT.
And good evening. I'm Erin Burnett.
OUTFRONT tonight, playing politics with coronavirus. The President tonight accusing Joe Biden of doing exactly what he's been doing, playing politics with the deadly pandemic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: To Joe, I would say stop playing politics with the virus. Too serious. Partisan politics has no place here. It's a shameful situation for anybody to try and score political points while we're working to save lives and defeat the pandemic.
(END VIDEO CLIP) BURNETT: Well, the President has been playing politics with the virus.
Remember, it was just a few days ago that President Trump actually tied a vaccine to his election chances.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I'm rushing it. I am. I'm pushing everybody. If you had another president, other than me, you wouldn't be talking vaccines for two years.
GERALDO RIVERA, IHEARTRADIO HOST: So what's the earliest we could see that, a vaccine?
TRUMP: Sooner than the end of the year. Could be much sooner. These companies are fantastic.
RIVERA: Sooner than November 3rd?
TRUMP: I think I think in some cases, yes, it's possible before, but right around that time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: The President also suggesting Biden is trying to score political points when it comes to masks, after the former vice president called for governors to mandate masks for the next three months.
Now, keep in mind, this is a president who has politicized masks. I mean, since the very beginning, he resisted and is still resisting wearing one. And now, this is what he's saying tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We have urged Americans to wear masks and I emphasized this is a patriotic thing to do. Maybe they're great and maybe they're just good. Maybe they're not so good. But frankly, what do you have to lose? You have nothing to lose.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Maybe great, maybe not good. You know what, acting as if like who knows maybe what you have to lose. Look, about the only thing that every single top experts says, they all agree on this, is that the best thing we can all do to stop the virus, save lives and get the economy back is wearing a mask.
It is the only thing his own experts have said is as good as a vaccine, which he went on to say to Geraldo wouldn't hurt if he had won by election day. So what do you have to lose? Your health, your economy, your life, you can answer his question. Since the CDC recommended everyone wear a mask back on April 3rd though, we have actually only seen President Trump wear one in public, fewer than a handful of times.
In fact, he's even mocked Joe Biden for wearing one, retweeting this tweet. Remember this, "This might help explain why Trump doesn't like to wear a mask in public. Biden today." Yes, Trump retweeted that.
And what may have been the most revisionist history moment of the day, the President claimed that he is actually the one listening to the scientists.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Joe doesn't know too much. Unlike the Biden approach, our approach is guided by science.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Wow. OK. Trump's approach, his personal approach to this as the leader of the United States has not been guided by science. His approach actually has been to attack the experts, to undermine his own experts at pretty much every single time he could.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Dr. Fauci is a nice man, but he's made a lot of mistakes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: And he's gone on again and again and again. Remember when he called Deborah Birx pathetic? Look, the fact of the matter is when Trump says stop playing politics with the virus and listen to the experts, the person that he is giving that advice to should be himself.
Kaitlan Collins is OUTFRONT live outside the White House tonight. And Kaitlan, this was a very defensive President Trump at the podium tonight.
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And it's not normal for a president to come out into the briefing room. It's been the beginning of his remarks going after his opponent when the election just a hundred days away. But that's what the President did and he was reading from prepared remarks.
These attacks on Joe Biden and these responses about coronavirus were not in response to questions from reporters. This is what the President came out and did, along with his updates on vaccines and what else they're doing. He primarily went after Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris and that was after yesterday. They attacked the President for his response to COVID-19 saying that it was a failure from the start, because he didn't take it seriously. It wasn't listening to the experts.
[19:05:09]
And basically, what you heard him accused Biden and Harris of doing today was what he's been accused of doing. Like you pointed out, not listening to the experts, not taking it seriously, things of that - and playing politics with the science, of course on all of this. So that's how he spent the beginning of the briefing. We should note he ended that briefing. He took several questions in
between, but he ended it after he was asked by a reporter about this completely discredited op-ed claiming basically that Sen. Kamala Harris is not eligible legally to be the Vice President of the United States because her parents are immigrant.
Erin, the President did not take the opportunity to knock this down. Instead, he said, "I heard today she doesn't meet the requirements." He said he had no idea if that was true. It's not true. It's ridiculous to float that it is in any shape or form possibly true because she was born in California, I believe, in 1964. She is American. She is legally eligible to be the vice president of the United States.
So there is no merit to that but, of course, this is a president who has a history of pushing birtherism. He started it in 2011 with President Barack Obama. And it's notable he did not take the opportunity today to say, no, that op-ed is ridiculous. It's not true. Instead, he just said he wasn't sure whether or not it was.
BURNETT: Which is, of course, ridiculous. He is sure. Thank you very much, Kaitlan.
I want to go to Jeff Zeleny now covering the Biden campaign. So Jeff, you have this now and I wonder if they were even expecting this, that the President is now starting a birther campaign on Kamala Harris, as you know. What do you think the campaign response to that will be?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORREPONDENT: Well, look, I mean, the law is clear that as Kaitlan said, Sen. Harris was born in California in 1964. It matters not that her parents were immigrants. So this is something that is going to get a lot of attention.
I mean, but it just simply is not a fact. It's very reminiscent of the Obama a situation, the birtherism, but it just is not the fact of the matter. But, I mean, what the Biden campaign was doing today, I mean, there's no question, this is a pandemic election. This is a serious matter. This is not some abstract issue in Washington. This is affecting every single family and every life out there.
So what the Joe Biden was trying to say today was trying to frame this choice and it's, of course, is a referendum on the President. Every election is a referendum on this incumbent president. They were trying to make the distinction here that they are listening to the science.
And when Joe Biden came out and said that he, if he was president, he would put a mask order in, urge governors for the next three months to put a mask order in. That's the conversation that he wants to have with this White House, not whether Sen. Harris is eligible or not to be president. That simply is ridiculous.
BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much, Jeff Zeleny.
And I want to go now to David Axelrod who was the senior adviser to President Obama, Senior Strategist to both of his presidential campaigns and CNN Political Correspondent Abby Phillip. Also, with me, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, Director of the Cardiac Cath Lab at GW, who advised the White House under President George W. Bush and the medical team.
All right. There's a lot to talk about here. And David, I do want to talk about this birtherism with you, because you were there through all of this when this happened for Barack Obama. I want to start though, first, with what the President tried to say today, which was that he accused Joe Biden of playing politics when it comes to coronavirus after Biden said he wanted a three month national mask mandate.
DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. This issue is what's dragging the President down and he knows this. I mean, there was a Fox News poll today that showed Biden with a 14-point edge in terms of the person who people feel most confident in dealing with coronavirus.
And so the problem for the president from the beginning, Erin, is you cannot spin a pandemic. You can spin lots of things, but the entire country is living this experience and he has tried to downplay this and give himself high grades throughout what has been an abject failure on the part of the federal government. And now, he is using those typical techniques of kind of accusing the opponent of doing what he has done.
I just don't think it's an effective tool here and the irony of the whole thing and I've said this before, if he had behaved like the governors have behaved, many of the governors and he had just followed the science from the beginning, he'd be in a much stronger position now.
Last point I'd make about this Fox News poll, when people were asked who the strongest leader was, Biden was even 47-47, Trump was minus 10, 44-54. That for a president who prides himself on strength is a real wound and a lot of it flows from the way he's handled this coronavirus.
BURNETT: I mean, and Abby, when he says that he follows the science, I mean, the man knows that we can pull up sound bite of his own team saying till they're blue in the face that hydroxychloroquine, that it is not recommended.
[19:10:07]
His own FDA pulls it. He still says to take it. He suggests injecting bleach. He calls Deborah Birx pathetic. He says he disagrees with Dr. Fauci. He says Dr. Fauci is wrong. I mean, the sound bites just keep coming. The scientists speak and he criticizes them pejoratively and their advice again and again and again. But he still thinks people will listen to him when he says he listens to the science.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And that doesn't even include the hydroxychloroquine obsession, which still doesn't make a whole lot of sense and defies everything that the science says about that issue. But Erin, it reminds me of - in the 2016 campaign when then Donald Trump, candidate Trump was accused of being a puppet by Hillary Clinton and then he comes back at her and says, no, you're the puppet.
He typically takes attacks that are coming his way and just loves them right back at his opponents, even if it doesn't line up with the facts or the reality that we see. As David said, this is not something that the President can just talk his way out of. This sort of positive thinking that he subscribes to is not applicable here, because people are living this pandemic in some of the most horrible ways.
I mean, people are going to food banks for the first time as they are dealing with the loss of loved ones. And the President continues to be tone deaf to that reality. And as long as that's the case, you're going to see, as the polls show many Americans saying the country is headed in the wrong direction and that this issue of the pandemic is the single most important issue to them, the far and away more important even than the economy which even for Americans that's a huge deal right now as well.
BURNETT: And we see those lines at food banks. They have to go up in helicopters to show how long they are in cities like Dallas and across this country.
And Dr. Reiner, Sen. Harris, they clearly, she and Joe Biden, believe that saying there with science is the right political message. But it's also how they're guiding their policy. Here's how she put it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), PRESUMPTIVE VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: These are some of the brightest minds, not only in our country but internationally. And as the Vice President has been saying since the beginning of this pandemic, it should be the public health professionals that are leading policy in our country to address this lethal pandemic.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: So Dr. Reiner, the President, right, that infamous mask of Joe Biden with his glasses and his black mask on early on when the President mocked it, retweeted Brit Hume. And now you have Joe Biden. There it is, Joe Biden saying that he wants a three-month national mask mandate.
So from a policy perspective, what's your evaluation of that, three month mandatory from the White House mask mandate?
JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: It would help tremendously. On our current trajectory right around Labor Day, we'll have 200,000 Americans dead. Actually, there are probably already 200,000 Americans dead if you look at the CDC excess mortality data. The way to get off of that track is to do something different and why haven't we done it, we haven't had a universal mask mandate.
Historians will argue for a long time about why this president refused to embrace this. Maybe he's just incapable of acknowledging that he made a mistake. But unless we do that right around Labor Day, we'll have 200,000 Americans dead and more to come. One of the things that struck me from the briefing today is that they
mentioned the delivery of these rapid assays to nursing homes, which was a tacit acknowledgment of maybe the most heinous failure that we've had in this whole pandemic response, which was failure to predict our most vulnerable. Only 1 percent of Americans live in nursing facilities, but they account for 43 percent of our COVID deaths, over 65,000 deaths. About 350,000 Americans in nursing homes and long-term care facilities have been infected.
That's more than every European Union nation with the exception maybe of Spain. It's been a heartbreaking failure.
BURNETT: David, I want to ask you, as the President goes on in these in these press conferences, where he hits on everything, now, it's these personal attacks primarily directed at Sen. Harris, whether it's that she's nasty or mean. But tonight, it was frankly one that - it's amazing on many levels. It's questioning her because of what she looks like. It's questioning and saying that because that somehow immigrants are bad and this is the President Trump suggesting that Kamala Harris is ineligible to be vice president of the United States.
It was a claim actually started earlier today retweeted by a lawyer for the Trump campaign and let me play the exchange in the briefing room for you, David.
AXELROD: Yes.
[19:15:05]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you or can you definitively say whether or not Kamala Harris is eligible or meets the legal requirements to run as vice president?
TRUMP: So I heard it today that she doesn't meet the requirements. And by the way the lawyer that wrote that piece is a very highly qualified, very talented lawyer. I have no idea if that's right. I would have assumed the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for Vice President. But that's a very serious. You're saying that she doesn't qualify because she wasn't born in this country?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: So David, let's just be clear, she was born in this country. She was born in California.
AXELROD: Yes.
BURNETT: Where your parents are is irrelevant. I don't know any person of any level of any kind of professionalism in the legal field who would say that because your parents weren't born here, but you were. I mean, that's crazy. This is a conspiracy theory that he is obviously giving oxygen to on purpose. AXELROD: Yes. But look, let's kind of put it in the context of Donald
Trump's politics. He is a white identity politician. He is a cultural warrior. He likes to separate people by race. I mean he thrives on that and he tried to do that to President Obama. He's trying to do that to Sen. Harris.
The idea that she's alien, she's the other, she's not really American, that's fundamental to Donald Trump's politics. It's also the politics that many Americans are rejecting. It's one of the reasons why the suburbs have turned so sharply against them, and particularly the suburban women.
He handled the aftermath of the George Floyd murder in the same way, looking to divide rather than unite the country and I think it really hurt him. I think his handling of race issues in this Fox News poll, he had terrible marks on this as compared to Biden. So I don't think this is a productive route for him, but in his mind, this is what enlivens his base. This is what enrages them and he's going to go at it. I think it's to his detriment. But I don't think he'll stop.
BURNETT: Abby, it's a barely coded racial point.
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, it's not coded at all. But I also think that Republicans last time around could - by the time Donald Trump became the nominee and became president, they could say, well, he sort of walked back his birtherism with Barack Obama. The question for Republicans right now is where do they stand on this issue?
He's the President of the United States doing the - some people are saying when it comes to the issue of whether or not Kamala Harris is eligible to be vice president. It is reprehensible and Republicans ought to be held to account about whether or not this is acceptable in politics. It's a pattern that he has demonstrated against the first black president, against Ted Cruz, Hispanic-American man who ran for president in the Republican Party and now against Kamala Harris.
And I don't think that it is one of those things that Republicans on Capitol Hill can say, oh, I didn't hear about it. It has to be responded to and denounced, because it's coming from the President, it's coming from inside of his campaign, and it's part of a strategy to play to racism in this country.
BURNETT: Thank you all three very much. I appreciate it.
And next, the President admits why he's really withholding funding from the postal service. He said it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: If we don't make a deal, that means you don't get the money. That means they can have universal mail-in voting. They just can't have it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Plus, Trump's coronavirus testing are, questions why experts say millions of more tests are needed. This as the CDC Director gives a dire warning for the month that are starting now.
As deadly as the 1918 pandemic was, 50 million people were killed around the world a century ago. That is what one researcher now says this pandemic is, is just my guest.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:23:00]
BURNETT: Breaking news, President Trump doubling down on his opposition to giving $25 billion in needed funding to the U.S. Postal Service in order to block expanded mail-in voting for November's election, because he believes it will benefit Democrats.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: They need that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots and you said that would be fraudulent. So it sounded like said (inaudible) ...
TRUMP: No. I said it will end up being fraudulent because if you look at what's happened over the last few weeks, just look at the few instances where this has happened. It's turned out to be fraudulent.
We have to have an honest election and if it's not going to be an honest election, I guess people have to sit down and think really long and hard about it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: This as a federal judge gives the Trump campaign one day to produce any evidence of vote by mail fraud in Pennsylvania, something that Trump campaign claims exists. Kristen Holmes is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Trump admitting he's opposed to funding for the postal service for political reasons.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They want $3.5 billion for something that'll turn out to be fraudulent. That's election money basically. Now, they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots, those two items. That means you can't have universal mail-in voting, because they're not equipped to have it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES (voice-over): Fueling outrage over the Trump administration's attempts to use the postal service to meddle in the election.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: 1920 [00:04:26] election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES (voice-over): With more people than ever expected to vote by mail in an election held in the middle of a pandemic, President Trump has spent months making false claims about widespread fraud.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: This is a thing that will be a disaster like never before.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES (voice-over): Meanwhile, both the Democrats and Republicans raising concerns over changes made to the agency by the new Postmaster General, a Trump fundraiser and ally, including major shakeups in leadership and cost cuts that some workers say have slow delivery.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): Now is not the time to be cutting back services.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[19:25:02]
HOLMES (voice-over): All this as postal workers across the country are sounding alarms this week over the removal of hundreds of Mail Processing machines from postal facilities. Documents obtained by CNN outline the plan to remove nearly 700 machines used for organizing letters and other mail.
Well, a spokesperson for the service describes the removal as a cost saving measure, postal union leaders warned that something like this just months before the election could cause delays. In a statement, the Postal Service saying it quote, "Routinely moves equipment around its network as necessary to match changing mail and package volumes."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't understand why they were taken out. I heard someone report that they might have been taking out to use for spare parts made little sense to me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HOLMES (voice-over): And new revelations over the Postal Service's urging that states use more expensive first class mail to make sure the ballots are prioritized or risk that voters will not receive their ballots in time to return them by mail. The influx of mail-in voting causing some states already financially unstable during a pandemic to bulk at the cost.
Now, Democrats are asking for a new USPS inspector general investigation. This time to look into Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's finances. New financial disclosures obtained by CNN showed DeJoy apparently did not divest millions in stock from his former company, a current Postal Service contractor, and that DeJoy hold stock options in a major USPS customer, Amazon.
The Postal Service says he has followed all of the ethics requirements.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: And, Erin, just to recap here, on one hand, you have a president who is openly undermining the system. And on the other you have Democratic and Republican lawmakers. You have postal service workers, you have state officials, who are all sounding alarms not just about the administration's actions, but about the state of the postal service and we are just months from a critical election in which the Postal Service will have utmost importance.
And we are talking about election integrity here. And it's just not clear if this will be able to be sorted out before November, before people really need to have it sorted out so you can get those election results.
BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much, Kristen.
And OUTFRONT now the Colorado Secretary of State, Jena Griswold, who is a Democrat. And Sec. Griswold, I appreciate your time. So after President made his comments this morning, you tweeted, "This is voter suppression, plain and simple." Tell me why.
JENA GRISWOLD (D), COLORADO SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, hi, Erin. Thank you for having me on. And this is just such an important conversation, so thank you for covering it. The President clearly stated that he's trying to defund the post office to stop mail ballots and its voter suppression because mail ballots are the best way to vote during a pandemic.
So to force Americans into the choice of risking their lives to cast a ballot is a measure to decrease turnout in November. We should all be very alarmed at where the present is going.
BURNETT: OK. So when you say that the President - he was confronted with the point you're making at that press conference and he says, no, no, no, he wants people to vote. He's not trying to suppress anybody. Here's how he answered the question.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I'm not saying anything wrong with voting, I want them to vote. But that would mean that they'd have to go to a voting booth like they used to and vote.
COLLINS: Even if they don't feel safe voting in-person? People want to vote by mail because ...
TRUMP: Well, they're going to have to feel safe and they will be safe and we will make sure that they're safe. And we're not going to have to spend $3.5 billion to do it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: What do you say to the President, Sec. Griswold?
GRISWOLD: Well, I would say to him and with all your viewers that my mom is a nurse and she's been saving people's lives on a COVID unit. And vote by mail is like wearing a mask. It's the way that we can save Americans lives.
And the fact of the matter is that Americans shouldn't have to choose between risking their very life and casting a ballot. And we just have to look towards Wisconsin's election, Milwaukee alone, 180 polling centers were reduced to five, because of fears over COVID-18.
So it's just not realistic to say that every American should go to a polling center. And also, I just think it is so reprehensible that the President is willing to risk American lives to try to shift the power in this election.
BURNETT: So President Trump has, as you know, made a point of saying mail-in ballots are not going to be accurate, there's going to be corruption, there's going to be a fraud again and again and again. Here he is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Voting by mail is wrought with fraud and abuse and people don't get their ballots.
When you do all mail-in voting ballots. You're asking for fraud. People steal them out of mailboxes. People print them and then they sign them and they give them in.
These mail-in ballots, where they send millions of them all over the country, it's going to be a rigged election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[19:30:01]
BURNETT: All right, so every voter in your state is sent a ballot by mail. Have you seen anything -- anything at all -- that would back up any concern about mail-in ballots being rigged, being corrupt?
GRISWOLD: President Trump is lying about vote by mail. He is lying about mail ballots.
Colorado has a very clean history of running great elections with vote by mail. We have safeguards in place to make sure we would catch any type of double voting, including signature verification, rules about ballot collection and a lot of other safeguards.
But what is true is that there's over 160 American who is have died from COVID-19. It's thousands of times more likely for an American to pass away because of the coronavirus than any type of fraud. And I think the president would do himself and the nation a lot of
benefit by focusing on the crisis at hand, that's COVID-19, and leave it to me and folks who actually understand elections to make sure that we're setting up the election in the right way during a pandemic.
(CROSSTALK)
BURNETT: So, what do you do then if the USPS does not get the funding? If he blocks that funding, then what do you do? I mean, does that then put the sanctity of the election in question if it doesn't get that funding?
GRISWOLD: Well, Colorado's election model has built in contingencies. So, for example, we send out ballots weeks, three weeks before Election Day, and there's hundreds of mail ballot drop boxes across the state, and the majority of Coloradans, about 75 percent, actually take their ballot to a drop box.
So, one of the things that I've been doing is increasing the number of drop boxes. We added 91 last year and I announced funding for an additional 100 this year.
So, those are some of the measures that states can do. But I will tell you the president is going to all links to try to suppress the vote. The RNC is suing in Pennsylvania about drop boxes.
It doesn't matter what you do, they are coming with a lawsuit and lies to try to suppress turnout in November.
BURNETT: All right. Secretary Jena Griswold, thank you very much. I appreciate your time.
GRISWOLD: Thank you.
BURNETT: And next, testing everyone and frequently creates a false sense of security?
Well, that's what a member of the president's coronavirus task force is saying tonight. We've been told it's the only way to open the economy. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to weigh in with facts.
And the coronavirus death toll could rival that of the 1918 pandemic, which is according to a new study just out, the lead doctor on that study is OUTFRONT in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:36:27]
BURNETT: Tonight, coronavirus deaths rising, now nearly 167,000 in the United States. Yesterday's death toll, 1,499. It is the highest single day toll since May.
And tonight, the director of the CDC warns the next few months could be worse.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, DIRECTOR, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: This is the greatest public health crisis this nation in a century that we were underprepared. I'm asking you to do four simple things. Wear a mask, social distance, wash your hands and be smart about crowds. If we don't do that, as I said back last April, this could be the worst fall from a public health perspective we've ever had.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: We've ever had. Look, it's alarming, and it completely contradicts what the president has been saying, which of course is that the virus will go away. There's no evidence of that, and yet, this was the message from Trump's new testing czar today.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
ADM. BRETT GIROIR, ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR HEALTH, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: You beat the virus by smart policies supplemented by strategic testing. You do not beat the virus by shotgun testing everyone all the time. Not only do not we not recommend this strategy of testing everyone on a frequent basis, but I think it could instill a false sense of security.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
BURNETT: Dr. Sanjay Gupta is OUTFRONT.
So, Sanjay, what's your response to this? I mean, this goes against what testing experts like Ashish Jha have been saying for months which is that we need to be doing ten of millions of tests per day to actually be able to stop this and get the economy started. This is -- this is like flying directly the opposite of what we've been hearing from experts.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's flying in the complete opposite direction. It's also at odds with what much of the world that has had success with combating this virus has been doing. Their focus has been on testing.
I've got to say I've had a lot of conversations with the admiral. We talk about testing quite a bit both on and off the record. You know, sadly, I think that this is just basically trying to justify what is unquestionably an abysmal failure when it comes to testing in this country, now basically saying, hey, we actually don't need that much testing and we should only be testing symptomatic people anyway.
Well, come on, I think everybody in the country knows at this point that a significant amount of spread from this particular virus comes from people who are asymptomatic. Forty percent of the spread probably comes from people who are asymptomatic. It's up to 50 percent if you include people who are pre-symptomatic. They don't have symptoms yet.
Point is, there's a lot of people carrying this virus who don't know it and they're not getting tested. We've been crushed by those people. Symptomatic people, if you're really sick, you should stay home anyways, right?
This is a question of finding those people out there who are sort of the silent carriers. And, clearly, for the admiral, this is still not a priority and I think everybody thinks that's a mistake.
Let me show you in New York. I don't know if I have the graphs quickly. But, you know, what happened in New York in terms of bringing the numbers down was almost in direct relation to the amount of testing as the testing went up, the numbers went down. They weren't just doing symptomatic people. They were starting to do surveillance testing.
So, this is a major point, Erin, maybe one of the most central points of this entire pandemic. And the fact that the admiral is saying, hey, look, we just don't need to be testing that much I think is completely the wrong headed strategy from a public health perspective and based on what the science shows.
BURNETT: Right. I mean, look, it's pretty clear. For example, if you could have tests every day before you went to school or went to work, people could go to school or go to work whereas now you're keeping them out because we don't know who has it or who can infect the vulnerable.
[19:40:03]
I mean, it does -- it defies common sense. He did say something today though about cases. He said that the decrease we've seen is real, and on these front cases are down 6 percent compared to this time last week. I know that experts like yourself, Sanjay, like to look at the seven-day rolling average. He also noted that hospitalizations are down.
Dr. Fauci though today was very clear saying that, you know, he was saying we're not anywhere near out of the woods. Here's how he put it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: When you look at other parts of the country, this is the thing that's disturbing to me, is that we're starting to see the inkling of the upticks in the percent of the tests that are positive, which we know now from sad past experience that that's a predictor that you're going to have more surges.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: So, yes, cases are down, but, you know, cases went down after the surge in New York. And then they went up higher than we had ever seen, right, when you had Florida and Texas, and now down a little bit.
Should we be focusing on that like the admiral says or looking at the fact it's about to surge in other places like Fauci's saying?
GUPTA: Well, I mean, clearly, we have real time historic data now within our own country. I mean, when you have positivity rates going up, we're not doing enough testing still, you know?
So, we're not even -- I guess the real question is this -- how much virus is out in our country right now. How many people are infected? Admiral Giroir says numbers are going down. What I'm saying based on the positivity rates going up is that we have no idea.
All we can say for sure is that we're missing lots and lots of people out there who right now are watching your program who have the virus and don't know it. That's the fundamental problem. And they can still spread the virus.
BURNETT: Right. So, people who, of course, can get very sick and people who could die.
Thank you very much, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
And next, what the 1918 pandemic tells us about today. A new study out with sobering details about the number of deaths as Dr. Redfield of the CDC says this could be the worst fall ever in American history from the pandemic.
And the people who shape the views and values Kamala Harris carries with her now. Who was she?
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[19:46:10]
BURNETT: Tonight, Kansas City, Missouri, already extending its state of emergency and mask mandate into next year, one of the first cities to take this drastic step. It comes after the U.S. reports its highest number of deaths in a single day since May.
Martin Savidge is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the past week, the average daily number of new coronavirus cases dropped slightly, but Americans are still dying at a rate of more than 1,000 people a day.
Wednesday the deadliest day of the summer so far with close to 1,500 deaths, a number not seen since May. It's not the only worrisome news. A new study finds the number of deaths in New York City in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic comparable to the deaths in the city during the 1918 pandemic when it was at its worst.
The 1918 pandemic is believed to have killed 50 million people worldwide. Researchers say the comparison demonstrates just how serious the coronavirus pandemic really is.
FAUCI: For goodness sakes, we are living, all of us, in a historic pandemic. We've never had anything like this for the last 102 years, since the pandemic of 1918. SAVIDGE: But not everyone sees it that way. Tuesday, Marion County,
Florida, saw its deadliest day of the pandemic so far. That same day, the local sheriff issued a mandate banning office visitors from wearing masks, also banning his deputies, though he offered some exceptions.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My thoughts on that is that it's totally moronic.
SAVIDGE: Also in Florida, one day after the Barton County School District reopened for in-person learning, an entire elementary school was placed in quarantine after a student showed COVID-19 symptoms. That same day, President Trump gave Florida's education commissioner a shout out of praise.
TRUMP: Great job you're doing in Florida.
SAVIDGE: Nationally, more than 2,000 teachers, students and staff across five states have been quarantined after at least 230 positive coronavirus cases have been reported. Schools aren't the only thing reopening. So are movie theaters. AMC, the world's largest movie theater chain, saying it's reopening more than 100 U.S. theaters August 20th.
The company says an opening day ticket will cost you 15 cents. They will require masks and reduce seating.
Many businesses have been relying on temperature checks as a safety precaution. But Dr. Anthony Fauci today discounted their effectiveness.
FAUCI: We have found at the NIH that it is much, much better to just question people.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SAVIDGE: Even as he continues to speak out about the seriousness of this pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci today also said that people do have to sort of establish some kind of normalcy in their life. And by that, he doesn't mean go back to pre-COVID living. He means that you have to accept all the safety precautions and medical advice.
But to get out there, he encourages people spend more time outdoors. If you can't do that, open a window whether it's in your room or in your car because he says airflow is also an important way to combat the coronavirus -- Erin.
BURNETT: All right, Martin. Thank you.
As you heard in Martin's piece, there is a new study out today which finds the coronavirus death toll could be as great as the 1918 flu pandemic. That pandemic, of course, the deadliest in recent history.
A third of the world's population was infected and they estimate 50 million people were killed over two years.
OUTFRONT now, Dr. Jeremy Faust, the lead researcher on that study. Also, an emergency physician in Boston and an instructor at Harvard Medical School.
So, Dr. Faust, look, this is a really sobering conclusion because we've tended to look at 1918 as a percentage of population and say, oh, well, this won't be anywhere close to that. But you've looked at the numbers and the first two months here in New York City, you found the relative increase in deaths was substantially greater than during the peak of the 1918 flu pandemic.
[19:50:08]
So tell me, you know, what you saw and how you get to this very sobering possible conclusion?
DR. JEREMY FAUST, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN, BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL: Thank you for having me.
The point of this research that Carlos del Rio and I did in JAMA Network Open is to really try to contextualize just what it is we are all living through, how does COVID-19 compared to 1918 H1N1. And the early outbreak in New York, COVID-19 appears to have been killing at a rate of 70 percent as bad as 1918 H1N1.
And what's more amazing is, we've actually leapfrogged. The death -- actually more dangerous to live in April in New York in 2020 than you were to live in 1915, just a hundred years ago.
So it's amazing that we now are sort of living with the death count that rivals what was common 100 years ago. I think people don't realize that.
BURNETT: So why is that? You look at this and say 1918 was an H1N1. It was a flu, that could never happen now because of the technology and the ventilators and intubation, all these things we could do now that we couldn't do then. And yet, you're telling that the conclusion is that your increase was even greater than 1918.
I mean, how is this possible?
FAUST: It's really humbling. The -- we humans live in a very diverse world. There are viruses that are very strong. And this one is proving to be a formidable foe. And we need to acknowledge that immediately because, even -- as you say, with our technology, we're having a lot of trouble keeping up with it.
If we didn't have all the things you said, the numbers of the dead would be higher. So all we know is that even with our technology, we're -- New York experienced something 70 percent as bad and, again, actually from our baseline, it's actually more of a shock to our system because we're used to less death at baseline.
BURNETT: Right, right, because -- because of all the technology, the preventative care and everything, right?
Well, OK, so the University of Washington model, that influential model, right, that gets used a lot. So, it's the best kind of projection that we have, and they're now projecting the death toll this time could reach 300,000 Americans by December 1st.
Now, when you look at the 1918 flu pandemic, it came in three different waves over two years. Everyone now is counting on this vaccine to do some magical stoppage of this thing early next year.
Putting that aside, what do you expect this pandemic will look like in terms of waves and death? Have you been able to come to any conclusions there?
FAUST: Well, what I can say is that COVID-19 belongs in the conversation, in the ballpark of 1918. And what I can say is we don't know where we are. We're six months in, but some places just started. They could -- they could be one month in.
So, it could be that we don't get to 1918 numbers and it could be that we surpass them. What we find in this study is that we actually have to ask that question and our policies need to reflect that immediately. Congress has to act to support health care and keep everyone safe. So, I hope they do that.
BURNETT: All right. Dr. Faust, I appreciate your time. Thank you.
FAUST: Thanks. Thanks for covering it. Really appreciate that.
BURNETT: All right. And next, the one person that Kamala Harris credits above all others with her success.
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[19:57:19]
BURNETT: Tonight, Kamala Harris tweeting out this photo with her mother who passed away in 2009, writing: I dearly wish you were here with us this week.
Nic Robertson is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR (voice-over): Kamala Harris speaks passionately of her heritage.
HARRIS: You know, my mother and father, they came from opposite sides of the world to arrive in America. One from India, and the other from Jamaica.
ROBERTSON: A daughter shaped by the world.
HARRIS: My grandparents were phenomenal. We would go back to India like every other year.
ROBERTSON: Her grandfather, an accomplished diplomat. A young Kamala Harris would walk the beach with him and his buddies.
HARRIS: They would talk about the importance of fighting for democracy, and the importance of fighting for civil rights and that people would be treated equally regardless of where they were born or the circumstances of their birth.
ROBERTSON: Values Kamala's mother, Shyamala Gopalan, embraced and her parents indulged.
Her brother, Harris' uncle, awed by her drive.
GOPALAN BALACHANDRAN, SEN. KAMALA HARRIS' UNCLE: Can you imagine 1959, a 19-year-old girl who has done home science (INAUDIBLE) in college, going to a PhD program in biochemistry at University of California at Berkeley all by herself.
ROBERTSON: She met Kamala's father, Donald Harris, an economic student, together becoming civil rights activists, and marrying. They had two girls, Kamala, then Maya, divorcing when Kamala was 7. Those early years, spending time with Jamaican grandparents too.
Her father, well-regarded in Jamaica.
RICHARD BERNAL, FORMER JAMAICAN AMBASSADOR TO THE U.S.: Professor Harris is a very thoughtful, calm person.
ROBERTSON: Although Ambassador Bernal never met his friend's daughters, he's sure they benefitted from his country's qualities.
BERNAL: It is this quality of self-confidence. And I'm sure that (INAUDIBLE) some of that from Jamaican, born in Jamaica.
ROBERTSON: But it was her mother who would raise her and influence her the most.
HARRIS: She was a brown woman. She was a woman with a heavy accent. She was a woman who many times people would overlook her or not take her seriously, or because of her accent assume things about her intelligence. Now, every time, my mother proved them wrong.
ROBERTSON: Like mother, like daughter, a trailblazer, and maybe all the way to the White House.
Nic Robertson, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BURNETT: And thanks for joining us.
Anderson starts now.
