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CNN Live Event/Special
CNN Vice Presidential Debate Analysis: Cuomo & Lemon; Pence Claims White House Always Truthful; Opinion: Harris's Missed Opportunity; Vice Presidential Debate; Pence and Harris Clash Over COVID in Debate Separated by Plexiglass; CNN Poll on VP Debate Winner. Aired 1-2a ET
Aired October 08, 2020 - 01:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[01:00:00]
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: All right, Now we're talking. I'm Chris Cuomo along with Don Lemon. This is CNN's --
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: Wait. You said my name wrong.
CUOMO: What'd I say?
LEMON: You always say D. Lemon. Why? Because it says Don Lemon (inaudible).
CUOMO: Well, I say it right the first time.
LEMON: All right.
CUOMO: Because there's a formality to it.
LEMON: OK.
CUOMO: Now that they are aware of what your official name is, Donald, we can get to what we're really talking about and get familiar. Because that's what this is about.
It's going to be about an intimacy of 27 days.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: It's about feel now. How do you feel about which set of candidates would best represent the selection of what kind of country you want to see over the next four years?
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: This is our special live coverage of the vice presidential debate.
Twenty-six days to go, of course. We started when it was 27 days, now it's after midnight, 26 days until election day.
LEMON: Yes. CUOMO: Pence and Harris facing off, very different debate. It actually was a debate.
The president is in the White House, he was doing his tweeting. Nothing really there --
LEMON: The president was tweeting?
CUOMO: -- of any impact. He was saying what you would think he should say. As was Pence's role today.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: Pence very much on message. Obviously, in a tough spot.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: Because as the head of the task force and Kamala Harris coming after him about it being the biggest failure in presidential history, he had his hands full. How do you think they handled it?
LEMON: So this is going to surprise a lot of people. I liked it. I actually really liked it. There was substance, we got substance in the debate.
They talked policy. I actually thought senator Kamala Harris talked more policy than the vice president. The vice president was doing a lot of attacking and what have you.
But I thought it was a substantive debate. That's what the American people wanted, that's what they got this time.
They didn't get the bombastic crazy rah-rah-rah-rah (ph), you know who I'm talking about. Right?
CUOMO: No, who? Me?
LEMON: Yes, you.
CUOMO: Oh.
LEMON: No, I'm talking about the president.
CUOMO: I'll tone it down.
LEMON: The president was, as we said last time, we don need have to rehash. But so bombastic last time, came in hot.
I thought it was very good. I thought -- and it gives us something to analyze now that is normal. Right?
Did they make their points? Did they push back enough? I thought the vice president talked a little bit too much. He steamrolled the moderator and I thought Senator Kamala Harris missed a lot of opportunities to push back on the vice president just lying on certain things. Especially the part where he said that she was attacking the American
people or not respecting what the American people had done during the COVID and during quarantine.
That wasn't what she said. She said that the administration had failed the American people and he did a jedi mind trick on her. And I would have called him out right away.
CUOMO: Yes. That's called debating.
LEMON: That's called debating. And I would have called -- she didn't call him out. But people were saying she had to walk this tightrope because she's a woman.
CUOMO: Did you think that's what was going on, black woman syndrome? That she had to be more reserved?
Now, by the way, we haven't seen that from Kamala Harris --
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: -- in past debates. She almost took Joe Biden out at the knees --
LEMON: Two things.
CUOMO: -- and had the T-shirt ready to prove it.
LEMON: I'll put it this way. I am aware that that does happen, right? That we do live in that -- and I'm aware, as you know, from being friends with me and your other friends of color -- is that the standards are different and -- they're different standards. Let's put it that way.
CUOMO: Toughest thing to be in American society --
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: Woman of color.
LEMON: Yes. But being a man of color and, as you call me the unicorn in prime time -- I've gotten so used to just saying how I feel that I guess I'm in a position of privilege where I just don't care.
I would've cut him right off and I don't care what people think of me. Because people are already going to think you're uppity and you're this and you're that. I don't really care anymore.
CUOMO: Right.
LEMON: But I'm not --
CUOMO: Hence the bracelets.
LEMON: Yes, yes. But I'm not -- but this is because I need protection from all -- you and all this craziness going on. But I'm not running for president and neither is she, and that's the
point. She was there to do no harm. She was there to handle herself in a professional manner and to promote Biden-Harris ticket, not the Harris-Biden ticket.
And so she referred to the person at the top of the ticket a lot, as she should have. And I think she -- do no harm. And I think she accomplished that.
But I would have pushed back a lot more. And she missed the opportunity to say the biggest hot spot in this country right now or one of, is what? The White House.
CUOMO: Yes. It's a cluster.
[01:05:00]
LEMON: And I would have pointed out that here we are -- what, eight months into this, nine months into this, by the time election day comes it'll be almost a year into a pandemic -- and you are the head --
CUOMO: Yes.
LEMON: -- of the coronavirus task force, and here we are divided by two pieces of plexiglass. That is physical evidence that what you have done, how you have handled is, as we would say is a pure D failure (ph).
That's what it is. That's what I would have pointed out.
CUOMO: So the early polling, to the extent that you need any guide for how you feel about what happened tonight, has Harris as the winner.
But you have to put it in quotes. Why? Because people don't vote for vice president.
LEMON: Right.
CUOMO: And when you look at the numbers, the cross references that I'm sure we'll put up at some point tonight, people didn't really change their vote based on tonight.
Now that's not that different than debates in general. Certainly, last week's debate you had people saying that Biden had won. But the general feeling was, at the end of the night, you didn't learn anything new about who these men are.
LEMON: It wasn't so much last time that Biden won, it was that Trump lost.
CUOMO: And that it was something that seemed of no value.
LEMON: Right.
CUOMO: Which is a kind of, though, a little bit of a commentary on what's going with our political culture in general.
Look, Pence had a much harder job tonight.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: He's defending a record. It is a problematic record, especially with the pandemic. He did something that the president does not do well. He sees their successes and he is blind to their failures.
LEMON: Right.
CUOMO: So he just doesn't mention them. The president makes the mistake of trying to explain and change the failures and gets caught out looking absurd very often. Pence didn't do that. He shows message discipline, he's very good at that.
So Harris had more opportunity, more to work with, therefore more of a burden to show that she exposed what she could.
LEMON: That's --
CUOMO: So she had a harder job tonight.
LEMON: That's why I thought she should have defended herself a little bit more. Especially when -- and listen, we sit here every single night and listen to Daniel Dale's fact checks, we do our own fact checks.
And when someone says the president -- if he said the president shut down travel from China, we go no, no, it wasn't a travel ban. There were restrictions and there were a lot of people who got through those restrictions.
And the virus -- the evidence shows the virus did not come from China, the one that came into this country, it came from Europe. So it was basically ineffective.
But I don't know why she didn't do that, I certainly would have done it. I would have defended my record and also hit him where it hurts.
CUOMO: You've got to pick your spots. The format, also, remember -- not you, but you could easily make as an assumption based on format -- she should have cut him off more. They were following the rules. Trump wasn't following the rules.
LEMON: She was following the rules more than him. (Inaudible) see --
CUOMO: He was talking more -- but look, again, it's what do you compare it to?
LEMON: Well --
CUOMO: Compare it to last week, they were very orderly in their discussion tonight.
LEMON: Yes. They talked about the same number of minutes but she had a different -- he had a different tactic, right? He started --
CUOMO: Yes. He was more of a bully in terms of time.
LEMON: -- to cut her off and then I think she was like, "Mr. Vice President --
CUOMO: Right.
LEMON: -- I'm still talking." When she did that, I said that's the part where I said she's got to be careful. Not because she shouldn't have done that but because of the different standards for women.
CUOMO: I used to feel that way until I had -- ready for this? This is why you watch us at night, by the way. Until I had daughters and watched my daughters in school.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: Here's why I changed. You go into a classroom -- and I know many of you are already nodding your heads if you're parents or women or both. And you see the boys raising their hand first --
LEMON: Right.
CUOMO: -- with nothing to say 80 percent of the time.
LEMON: Nothing. And the girls know all the answers.
CUOMO: And the girls know the answer and they're quiet because that's the dynamic --
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: -- that is allowed. So I changed. I used to feel like that, like well, this is the stereotype but I was actually falling into it myself.
Now I respect the assertiveness, no matter who it is; male or female.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: And Kamala Harris is one of the best one-two throwers I've seen in political debate in a long time.
LEMON: She was reserved.
CUOMO: She can really throw punches in bunches. She didn't do that tonight as much.
LEMON: Do no harm.
CUOMO: But again, I believe -- a little bit of it is do no harm, I think she was trying to score some points. But she had so much to work with that there was such high expectation for what she would say.
To Don's point. We are suffering through a crisis -- LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: -- that bad leadership has made a tragedy.
LEMON: Terrible.
CUOMO: Those aren't my words. That's the New England Journal of Medicine. They never put out political editorial signed by the entire staff about who's in power. They don't do that, it's a medical journal.
They said this president has to be voted out because of a failure of leadership during a pandemic --
LEMON: There it is.
CUOMO: They turned a crisis into a tragedy. Pence is there --
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: -- had no big defense. In fact, I think we have some sound -- do you have sound you want to play in the control room about how they did on the coronavirus?
[01:10:00]
LEMON: We have sound where they pressed him on -- about the spread, I think, at the White House.
CUOMO: All right. Same thing I said.
LEMON: All right. .
CUOMO: Don said it in more words. Here it is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SUSAN PAGE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "USA TODAY" & VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE MODERATOR: Vice President Pence, you were in the front row in a rose garden event eleven days, what seems to be a super spreader event for senior administration and congressional officials. No social distancing, few masks and now a cluster of coronavirus cases among those who were there.
How can you expect Americans to follow the administration's safety guidelines to protect themselves from COVID when you at the White House have not been doing so?
MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE USA: That rose garden event, there's been a great deal of speculation about it. My wife, Karen, and I were there and honored to be there.
Many of the people who at that event, Susan --
PAGE: Yes.
PENCE: -- and it was an outdoor event which all of our scientists regularly and routinely advice.
The difference here is President Trump and I trust the American people to make choices in the best interest of their health.
And Joe Biden and Kamala Harris consistently talk about mandates. And not just mandates with the coronavirus but a government takeover of health care --
PAGE: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vice President.
PENCE: -- the Green New Deal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: She did him a favor cutting him off and I'll tell you why. This was the only moment of the debate were I felt like the vice president earned the same judgment that people make about the president which is shame on you.
Shame on you for being full of it about the answer you gave.
It's not just that things outdoor are OK, you know that. You know there wasn't social distancing, you know you don't encourage masks. And you know you do it as an act of defiance like you know better. And --
LEMON: Like his wife came up on the stage afterwards --
CUOMO: That's right.
LEMON: -- no mask.
CUOMO: And every clinician has told you that it's the wrong thing to do, except Dr. Scott Atlas. And I will just tell people that the shift to Atlas as this guy who has no particular pedigree when it comes to epidemiology, disease science, but they all believe in him because they say whatever he wants.
And now we have the White House as a case cluster and the vice president is going to say there's much speculation about that event --
LEMON: (Inaudible).
CUOMO: Oh, is there? No, there's a lot of sick people. You've got Chris Christie sitting in a hospital.
LEMON: Kellyanne Conway.
CUOMO: You've got Kellyanne Conway sitting at home.
LEMON: Hope Hicks.
CUOMO: Why didn't you give them the medicine that you gave the president?
LEMON: Yes. CUOMO: I think for him to have his stoic face, which is often an asset, there was contempt for the reality.
LEMON: And you know he lied right there, right? And we have the proof because it wasn't just outdoors. There were --
CUOMO: Oh, yes. They had different -- they did (inaudible) of --
LEMON: This is an indoor reception. And for him to say oh, it was outdoors, it was socially distanced. Look at that.
CUOMO: But it was a baby lie compared to his boy.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: Because his boy said I don't need a mask tonight because we've all been tested at this debate. That's what the president said to you --
LEMON: At the last debate.
CUOMO: -- last week.
LEMON: And what did Chris Wallace say?
CUOMO: He didn't take the test. He showed up late.
LEMON: He didn't take the test because he showed up late.
LEMON: And now there is reporting that the president over the past couple of months -- he's not been getting tested every day, as he said.
CUOMO: Well, here's the thing. They say that's not true.
LEMON: On a regular basis.
CUOMO: I have people from the White House doing something that they always say is trying to be helpful to me but I never buy it. Which is be careful, be careful with him not having been tested. Show me the negative test results from last week.
LEMON: Then make us wrong.
CUOMO: Just show them.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: I'll put them on, it'll be the top of my show.
LEMON: When was the last time he tested negative and let's see the actual test where he was positive too.
CUOMO: Because, look, they actually have access to good testing; most of this country does not.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: For them to have a case cluster in the White House can only be recklessness. They have every reason to be safe.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: You have the best doctors, the best tests, and you have access to miracle cures. Which also I thought Harris was going to bring up tonight.
LEMON: Well, I can't believe she didn't bring up the White House being a hot spot. And I think it's -- is it the number one place in Washington D.C. right now or close to that --
CUOMO: No. Unless you do by percentage of people who were there.
LEMON: Well --
CUOMO: But I'm just saying the idea that command central in a fight against a pandemic is breaking out because of bad guidance. Bad doctoring by Dr. Scott Atlas -- look, he's invited on all the time.
They keep him on state news because they want him protected from any kind of scrutiny. But look, the patient is dying, you have everybody getting sick in the White House. So look --
LEMON: But then they also try to bring up too H1N1.
CUOMO: Yes.
LEMON: Which is -- it's like c'mon. If H1 -- there are all these hypotheticals. Well, H1N1, it didn't happen.
CUOMO: Right.
LEMON: And --
CUOMO: But a good debate tactic.
LEMON: But --
CUOMO: Because it confuses people with a false equivalence.
LEMON: Yes. But there's no there there. And I'm surprised that Kamala Harris did not point that out.
CUOMO: But that's on her.
LEMON: Again, that is on her. She actually missed opportunity --
CUOMO: That's on her. It's like you say to me, hey you just walked in a couple of minutes -- yes, but Don, you were late yesterday.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: Yesterday, we didn't have a show yesterday. That's on you. LEMON: Right.
CUOMO: That's on you to say that.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: Now -- or it's on Daniel Dale. So let's bring in CNN's fact- checker extraordinaire, Daniel Dale. Let me start off with the whopper of the night for you, Daniel. What did you think people need to know?
DANIEL DALE, CNN REPORTER: I think the whopper of the night was Vice President Pence's claim that they always tell the truth.
[01:15:00]
It's vague. But this it was on the subject of the pandemic where I can -- you can check my work, others' work. We have dozens -- I think it's hundreds of false claims from the president alone let alone Vice President Pence writing an infamous op ed saying we have no coronavirus second wave, playing it down like Trump does.
And Trump himself acknowledged that he wasn't always truthful because he admitted to Bob Woodward on tape that he was playing it down. So to me, it's not a specific policy claim or something but that to me was egregious.
CUOMO: He lied about being tested. Last week. The president. He's shameless about it.
Now look, people have to judge the vice president, I don't know.
If you can tell somebody's being histrionic and saying things that are wild, how does that play to you compared to a vice president who has such a stone face and seems to ooze such integrity who is jazzing you the same way?
Now another one for you to look at it is President Trump's -- the assertion about what they did on China. And they had a back and forth.
Let me play it for the people at home.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PENCE: There were more than five cases in the United States, all people who had returned from China.
President Donald Trump did what no other American president had ever done. And that was he suspended all travel from China, the second largest economy in the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: Now I personally prefer my mendacity with madness. I like for people to go all in, to be absurd and overreach. I find the vice president's kind of prevarication which is a more
sophisticated type of parsing for deception more unnerving. Because it seems like he actually believes what he's saying sometimes.
What's the reality?
DALE: Sometimes. Well, Don did this fact check for me minutes ago, I think possibly because I've done it like ten times on Don's own show.
It was not a complete suspension of travel from China. It was a restriction with many exemptions for citizens, permanent residents, many of their family members, many others. All those people could still come over from China.
Tens of thousands of them did after these restrictions were put in place in February.
And as Don said, research suggests that the virus was coming in from travelers from Europe at the time. Not from China.
So as the president was shutting the back door -- or the front door, the other door was left open until March and that's where New York City and the area got its early outbreak.
LEMON: If ever you need a day off, Daniel, I got you.
DALE: Thank you. Thank you.
CUOMO: They say it is about -- who's they? The numbers of what we saw on entry into the country after the ban with the exemptions comes out certainly in the tens of thousands. The estimates go up to about 40,000 people from China came back in.
The more important part, though, is the distraction which you're referring to.
We know in New York from the contact tracing that it was from Europe. Because -- it's not a different virus, the virus moved. People got sick and they moved from Asia into Europe --
DALE: Correct.
CUOMO: -- and then were coming here to the big international travel hubs. And obviously, as we did last week, New York City is the biggest travel hub in the country.
All right number three. The candidates sparred on manufacturing jobs -- the economy, it's going to matter to people even in the midst of a pandemic.
Here was a big moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS, DEMOCRATIC VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The vice president earlier referred to as part of -- what he thinks is an accomplishment, the president's trade war with China. You lost that trade war, you lost it.
What ended up happening is because of a so-called trade war with China, America lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs.
PENCE: I'd love to respond. Lost the trade war with China? Joe Biden never fought it.
Joe Biden's been a cheerleader for Communist China through -- over the last several decades. And again, Senator Harris, you're entitled to your opinion, you're not entitled to your own facts.
When Joe Biden was vice president, we lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs and President Obama said they were never coming back, he said we needed a magic wand to bring them back.
In our first three years after we cut taxes, rolled back regulation --
PAGE: Thank you, Vice President Pence.
PENCE: -- unleashed American energy, this administration saw 500,000 manufacturing jobs created.
PAGE: Thank you, Vice President Pence.
PENCE: And that's exactly the kind of growth we're going to continue to see as we bring our nation through --
PAGE: Thank you, Vice President Pence.
PENCE: -- this pandemic.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: The growth we are going to continue to see, Daniel, except for the pandemic.
Right now the unemployment rate is the highest it's been since the Forties.
But it's an interesting -- it's an interesting strategy by the president and vice president. They are the first tandem in modern American history to deny any responsibility for a crisis on their watch.
Let me ask you this, a little bit of a curveball. Your take on who refused to answer more questions and, more meaningfully, avoided what they needed to answer?
[01:20:00]
LEMON: Pence.
DALE: I have to avoid your question.
LEMON: Pence. DALE: Because I listen for fact checks, for dishonesty. So I don't feel confident in my own watching of the debate generally. And I don't like to be wrong on TV, so I'm going to dodge.
LEMON: I found two instances where she did not answer the question.
DALE: OK.
LEMON: Which was about packing the courts. And the other one was about had they had a discussion about if the vice president, the former vice president, became incapacitated, how she would -- who would take over the job and that sort of thing. So that's -- those two questions.
CUOMO: Well, one was a question from Susan Page.
LEMON: Right.
CUOMO: The other was a question for Mike Pence.
LEMON: Yes. And the simple -- look, I think she should have had a better answer for that. But my answer would be like the moderator asks the questions, not you.
CUOMO: What's your answer to the court packing question?
LEMON: What, if we're going to do that?
CUOMO: Yes.
LEMON: If we're going to pack the courts?
CUOMO: Yes.
LEMON: Well, I don't know. Listen, I'm not a Democrat and I'm not -- I would --
CUOMO: I'm saying what do you think would've been a better answer for her?
LEMON: A better answer would have been --
CUOMO: And please don't distract from the question. We all know you're not --
LEMON: A better answer would have been that's not really the point.
CUOMO: That's the good answer?
LEMON: That's not the point right now.
CUOMO: That's the good answer?
LEMON: No, no. That's not the point right now.
CUOMO: Put up the poll numbers of how I'm winning this debate (inaudible) saying anything yet.
LEMON: No, listen to me. That's not really the point right now about whether we're going to pack the court. And then I would've gone to what she said, let's talk about packing the courts. And who's actually --
CUOMO: Bring Daniel Dale back up here.
LEMON: -- who's actually packing the courts.
CUOMO: I want him to judge what's about to happen.
LEMON: And then why do you want to talk about these hypotheticals when right now the reality is we have 210,000 people who are dead in this country?
We have an administration and a party who's trying to -- how would I have said it -- who's trying to rush a justice in when the last time you said that you wouldn't do it.
So you're lying to the American people. You lied to them in 2016 now you're lying to them again. And now you're trying to bring in a hypothetical about something that may or may not happen.
I refuse to answer that question because that's not what's important right now. What's important right now is the dead people and you trying to rush through a supreme court justice.
CUOMO: All right. That's his answer. He got going, he got into a little bit of a flow there once his head kind of collected.
Here is what I expected, OK. Was you want to ask about what my reaction is going to be and you are ignoring your action that may have forced it. You have perverted the system.
You did something that you said was wrong and then you did it anyway. And it's because you perverted power, just for your own personal advantage. You want to ignore that.
Having a straight face doesn't mean you're playing straight with the American people.
And you did it. And now, you're upset about how we may respond to your perversion of what is right and wrong.
LEMON: So you --
CUOMO: Actions have consequences. And I know perversion is a tricky word for you, Mr. Vice President, because you find a lot of things perverse, like being gay.
Now answer the question about what you would want Indiana to do when it comes to Roe V. Wade --
LEMON: That's a good one.
CUOMO: -- and how you feel about whether gay people should have rights in this country? That's the kind of thing --
LEMON: That's a good one.
CUOMO: -- Kamala Harris can do. And look --
LEMON: No, I was just going to say --
CUOMO: -- the fact that I slap you around like a naughty child is not the point.
LEMON: No, you said it. I said the same thing that you said but I said it --
CUOMO: Fact check, fact check, Daniel Dale.
LEMON: -- like a blue collar guy.
CUOMO: I'm drinking a cup of victory. Please tell us what you heard.
LEMON: A blue collar guy who went to LSU. You said it like some Ivy League guy.
CUOMO: Listen -- no. No, no, no.
LEMON: We said the same thing. Except for the gay thing.
CUOMO: Go ahead.
LEMON: I don't want to bring up the gay thing. Because you know I live it.
CUOMO: I live it too. Yes. Go ahead. Which is the better answer? Fact check, please. I'm drinking my cup of victory.
DALE: No, I recuse myself. You guys made me sit in the middle.
CUOMO: You are something. You're going to make it a long time in this business.
LEMON: Oh, my gosh. Recused himself.
CUOMO: You're going to make it a long time in this business.
DALE: How could I --
CUOMO: Buddy, let me tell you. I hope that fence doesn't get uncomfortable that you're sitting on.
DALE: I love the fence.
LEMON: And who are you, the former attorney general --
CUOMO: He loves the fence.
LEMON: -- who's going to recuse himself.
CUOMO: I take offense to your defense.
LEMON: All right, Daniel.
CUOMO: Thank you, brother. Appreciate the fact check.
DALE: Thank you.
LEMON: Here's the fact. We're going to let you go. That's a fact check.
CUOMO: Terrible judge.
LEMON: We'll see you.
CUOMO: Good man, good reporter.
LEMON: Let's talk about this. Maybe they can help us out and see who had the winning argument. I have to say that was pretty good.
Our senior political reporter, Nia-Malika Henderson is here, the former Michigan governor, Jennifer Granholm, and Mike Shields who was chief of staff to Reince Priebus at the RNC. How you guys doing?
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SNR. POLITICAL REPORTER: Great.
LEMON: What did you --
JENNIFER GRANHOLM, CNN SNR. POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: All right.
LEMON: All right. What did you think -- Nia, what did you think about the debate? Quite different, different atmosphere --
HENDERSON: Yes.
LEMON: Oh, wait a minute, you want to ask. Who won this past --
CUOMO: It's a rhetorical question. We know what happened --
LEMON: Who won the past --
CUOMO: -- everybody heard it.
LEMON: What do you guys think?
CUOMO: Everybody heard it. Mike doesn't even like me, and he knows I just whooped you.
HENDERSON: Oh. Who won the debate -- I'm going to go with Don.
LEMON: No. Who won the debate, between us?
HENDERSON: I think Don -- yes, I'm going to go with Don.
CUOMO: Awf (ph).
HENDERSON: I like this answer because I think people don't necessarily care about court packing. I think white Evangelicals care and that's why you see Pence talking about it.
But I think shifting to COVID, shifting to the 200,000 dead is a much better answer --
LEMON: Boom.
HENDERSON: -- and it's where the American people are.
LEMON: I told you.
HENDERSON: So point to Don.
CUOMO: First of all never trust people with three names.
[01:25:00]
Second of all, if you had to shift you've got a problem with your answer. That's all I'm saying.
LEMON: All right. So I'll ask you, Governor. This was very different than last -- I didn't not think this one was chaotic, I thought there was policy.
They clashed on coronavirus, they talked taxes, the environment. What did you think?
GRANHOLM: Yes. I have a processed response, and a substantive one. I felt -- I felt because it is about how you feel -- I felt so happy because I felt like Kamala Harris made women proud.
She was strong, she was on it, she was in command, she had a sense of -- there was a little joie de vivre about her. Pence just looked like he was -- I honestly truly thought that he might have been a bit ill. Because he looked so -- he just didn't look well.
LEMON: Excuse me as I sniffle here.
GRANHOLM: But he didn't look happy, he didn't - yes. He didn't look like a happy warrior.
LEMON: That was me sniffling, sorry. That's a little allergy.
GRANHOLM: I hear you. I hear you. OK.
LEMON: You have them too, don't you?
CUOMO: Uh-huh. Killing me.
LEMON: So. I agree with you --
GRANHOLM: Yes.
LEMON: I didn't really think about it because I'm sitting there watching this guy, I don't want to mansplain anything -- but this did mean a lot to women, didn't it?
GRANHOLM: Oh. It meant a huge amount.
LEMON: Especially women -- obviously I knew it meant a lot to women of color.
GRANHOLM: And women of color, of course. But women overall. I've taught classes on this issue. About how women need to present themselves in the debates and all that.
Women -- you know all this, you can't come across as too aggressive, we still have all these stereotypes and all that. But what she did -- she did have to go in doing no harm, we know that. But she was able to, I think, weave between the danger zones in such a great way.
I was so happy for her, and for women overall.
And for what it means, hopefully, for the next women who follows her. So that's number one.
Number two --
HENDERSON: Yes. I think women politicians --
GRANHOLM: Yes. Go ahead.
HENDERSON: -- will study what she did tonight for decades.
GRANHOLM: Yes.
HENDERSON: Because she came across as so appealing, she was very winsome even as she was very aggressive. With Mike Pence talking -- as he was trying to interrupt her, she said Mr. Vice President, I'm talking, please stop talking.
So I thought she did quite well tonight in introducing herself to a lot of Americans who might not be familiar with her.
And I thought Mike Pence has this sort of like phony Ronald Reagan effect to him, it's almost prayerful at times --
GRANHOLM: Cold (ph).
HENDERSON: And I think over the course of that 90 minutes, it didn't really wear very well for him.
CUOMO: Mike.
HENDERSON: And there she was smiling the entire time.
CUOMO: Let's bring Mike in.
LEMON: Mike, you get to talk now.
CUOMO: I feel like you should be feeling like you had a good night.
LEMON: Yes.
MIKE SHIELDS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, yes. Look, couple of things.
CUOMO: VP had a lot of things to be worried about. He never seemed flustered, he seemed to be very confident with every answer that he gave. And yes, he was --
LEMON: There were a couple of times where I thought he was flustered. Especially in the beginning. He was a bit fidgety and she just -- but go on, Mike. You're right, I think, Mike, you should be happy about tonight.
SHIELDS: I am. I think he did a great job. First I want to comment on what was just talked about which is I just love when Democratic women talk about women at large as if they speak for all of them.
There are a lot of conservative women who just flat out disagree with Kamala Harris and they watched them tonight, including my wife who's a very successful Republican woman, and there's going to be a conservative woman who has a supreme court nomination hearing coming up.
And it's going to be amazing how all of a sudden the agency of that one is going to be completely removed because she's conservative. So what we're really celebrating about Kamala is that she's a liberal woman.
But on to Mike Pence. I thought Mike Pence did exactly what he needed to do.
When you look at policy positions between Pence and Trump, and Harris and Biden, there are some that have been lost.
As a Republican, we've been a little frustrated especially with the first debate that we haven't talked about our strengths.
The conversation that Pence had on taxes and on the economy and getting Kamala Harris to say we're going to repeal the Trump tax cuts including, apparently, the middle class tax cuts that got $2,000 per family, the doubling of the child tax credit.
That is an ad. He created an ad out of the debate tonight. And just for that alone, he was incredibly successful. Not to mention Kamala --
LEMON: But Mike, you're speaking about that as if that's a negative that they want to repeal the Trump tax cuts. But as you said, about --
SHIELDS: It is if you look at polls, Don. If you look at polling, that is an issue that, over and over again, the president as well on with swing voters.
And if we're going -- and voters that the president is losing, the way to get them back is when you talk about his economic positions and his tax policies. That's a winning issue for the Trump Campaign.
LEMON: I think you have to -- SHIELDS: (Inaudible) put it on the table.
LEMON: I think you have to separate the economic policies from the tax policy. I don't think people are happy with this tax policy. We'll have to look at some polling. I don't know which polling you're looking at but --
CUOMO: Well, what about the women number?
[01:29:44]
LEMON: The economic -- yes. You talked about women, if you look at women overwhelmingly thought that Harris did better. 69 percent of women said Harris won, 30 percent said Pence won. Men 48 percent -- it's basically split. 46 percent for Pence.
So I'm not sure about the women. I think people are -- I think what people are reacting to, they're not saying that, you know, Harris did great or anything. That there was a woman for the first -- well, not for first time -- a woman sitting up there, a woman of color really for the first time being in that position.
I think all women should be proud of that regardless of if she's a Democrat or a Republican.
MIKE SHIELDS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Sure, I agree with, and I think they should be proud. But --
LEMON: Sarah Palin got to sit there.
SHIELDS: The next Supreme Court Justice is going to be a woman.
LEMON: Yes. Well, I mean --
CUOMO: What did the women think?
What's the response to -- let's start with Nia. What's your response to what Mike said that you guys are only happy because it's a leftie woman?
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, listen I'm not a Democrat. I'm just a objective observer of politics and particularly women in politics. And I was talking more about her presentation. She seemed very comfortable. She seemed very loose.
If you compare her presentation to women we've seen in that position before, particularly Hillary Clinton, you always got the feeling with Hillary Clinton that she was sort of not really settled into who she. Not really comfortable being the full Hillary Clinton. She was criticized obviously for everything from her policy to her laugh to what she wore.
And it feels like to me Kamala Harris obviously standing on the shoulders of people like Hillary Clinton. But she was just a woman in full tonight, and I thought that was incredible for women to see across the country that kind of presentation that you can give. You can be warm, you can be funny, you can also be aggressive and push back. A lot of people were saying that, you know, maybe shouldn't she get enough time because Pence was actually interrupting her so much. But if you look at the time she got, it was essentially equal to Mike Pence, because she kept pushing her way in there in a way that women like that -- and she also broke even with men.
LEMON: All right. Mike, let me ask you this. How do you think that the vice president did as it relates to his handling of the pandemic? Him being the head of the task force, the president and the administration. How do you think he answered the questions on that?
SHIELDS: Look, I though he gave the best argument you can give. And I thought he did a great job of laying out a lot of things that are lost that this administration has done successfully that you just don't hear very often in the coverage.
And look, I think it's a tough -- it's a tough assignment because we're living through a terrible pandemic and the government in charge has to answer for it.
But I thought that there are things that they have done in terms of getting the resources necessary to New York, to New Jersey to the states where the governors and the convention were complimenting them for that. And that gets lost a lot. And I thought he did a really good job of laying that out in a way, you know, unfiltered where people could hear from the administration.
We don't hear that -- as Republicans, we don't see that from our surrogates enough explaining what they've done. I though he did a great job of that.
CUOMO: That's because Mike, when somebody is hanging on by a hand and they say help me, help me and you grab them and pull him up a little bit and then let go and they fall back down, they say help me, help me again and you don't do anything. People don't remember the first time because they're still hanging on by a thread.
Governor Granholm, in terms of prosecuting the case of the pandemic to the American people about why we are here, why we're the worst when we're supposed to be first. How big a deal do you think that is in this election vis-a-vis for what Mike refers to which is it's usually the economy?
JENNIFER GRANHOLM, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, obviously, the pandemic is the precursor to the economy coming back. The reason why we have the worst economy since Herbert Hoover is because this administration has been so utterly inept with respect to the pandemic.
I thought that Kamala Harris in that first answer did a great job of prosecuting the case. And then when Mike Pence was asked why doesn't the U.S. at least has as good a record as Canada much less all these other countries, he did not answer because he doesn't have a good answer because it has been an abomination.
I think you were right to talk about why wasn't the fact that the White House itself a cluster? There was a release this evening or this afternoon of a FEMA document that now says that there's 34 people that are connected with the White House, that have come down with the virus. It is a mess.
And so I thought that Kamala Harris did a great job of going after it but honestly I might have gone after it several times during the debate, as much as I possibly could, because it's the issue in this election.
CUOMO: It's a mess (ph) -- also a metaphor.
LEMON: There will be more -- there will be more people coming out of this.
And there's more show ahead. Thank you very much.
[01:34:52]
CUOMO: Granholm mentioned Herbert Hoover. The line, Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.
LEMON: Didn't need no welfare state.
CUOMO: Everybody pulled his weight.
LEMON: Gee, our old LaSalle ran great.
CUOMO: Those were the days.
That's how old we are. All in the family.
Jeanne Stapleton --
LEMON: So that means you're the bigot?
CUOMO: Yes. Bigot, I am no damn bigot.
Herbert used to say that.
LEMON: You would call me meathead now.
CUOMO: I am no damn bigot.
You know, we mocked him as a caricature.
LEMON: And now he is -- he could have been president. I think he would have --
CUOMO: Maybe he is president.
LEMON: Come on.
CUOMO: He is from Queens. That was Queens, too.
(CROSSTALK)
CUOMO: That was Queens.
LEMON: So yes. The White House and the hot spot thing. I cannot believe that she didn't hit him harder on that. The fact that there were two physical barriers there. That would have been the first thing that came out of my mouth. There are two barriers, two plexiglass barriers.
CUOMO: And look. We'll talk about it. We've got a lot of time tonight.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: But you know, there are many people in America who are saying even if you think that people have been too panicky about this and the left has been too much about shutting it down, what was your alternative? What did you offer in terms of keeping things open other than rash open-ended suggestions that got states in trouble? I think this is a hard issue for them.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: Pence was good in terms of being stoic. But when you're responsible stoicism may not be enough.
LEMON: Yes. So tonight's debate happening in the shadow of the coronavirus with the president infected and holed up in the White House. And Mike Pence, who heads up the coronavirus task force, trying to convince you that the administration did a great job. So tell that to the families of more than 211,000 Americans who've died.
We will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[01:39:52]
CUOMO: Vice President Pence did his best to defend a bad record when it comes to the record on coronavirus, dodging some questions about reckless decisions from the White House. Senator Kamala Harris arguing the American people have witnessed the greatest failure of any presidential administration in our nation's history.
Joining me now former Baltimore City health commissioner Dr. Leana Wen. Good to see you, Doc.
DR. LEANA WEN, FORMER BALTIMORE CITY HEALTH COMMISSINER: Good to see you.
CUOMO: Your reaction to the "New England Journal of Medicine", not just putting out a political editorial, but all of them signing on to say Trump should be voted out because he turned crisis into tragedy with bad leadership, making America worst in cases and in deaths.
DR. WEN: It's really extraordinary. And it comes on the heels of other scientific publications that have never done this, endorse someone for president based on purely -- this is about saving lives. We have seen in this country the abject failure of leadership when it comes to responding to a public health crisis. Instead of letting public health lead, our political leaders have actually pushed scientists and doctors under the bus.
Our muddled messaging even continues with the president and vice president flouting guidelines for isolation and quarantine. I mean even the fact that Vice President Pence was there in person today and the president himself tweeting out beforehand that there is a cure for coronavirus.
I mean there are so many examples of how we have failed all along, but continue to fail when it comes to this crisis.
CUOMO: Would have ever Dr. Scott Atlas, period. Let alone as a public health policy expert or a pandemic crisis expert?
DR. WEN: He is not someone known to the public health world. There are many exceptional experts in public health. Dr. Atlas is not known to be one of them. and I think it's even more so that his actions and words since he became in this position, that's been the most worrisome because he has the president's ear.
And he has been touting things like cures that aren't. Obviously there is no cure for coronavirus. He's also talked about herd immunity and promoted this concept that actually could result in two to three million Americans dead as a result.
CUOMO: Now, the counter to that is, no, no, no, no -- it won't happen like that, Doctor, because what we see in Sweden and other places is you only have to worry about the old people and people who are immune- compromised so they quarantine.
Everybody else, especially the kids, they go about normal life because they don't have the same risks. And then you have the economy going. You have schools going and the people who need to be protected are protected.
DR. WEN: Chris, that's a great hypothesis. The problem is that it has been proven wrong over and over again. There was a CDC study looking at the number of people, the types of people who first became infected in May to July period.
And they found that the individuals who are getting infected at the highest rate were people in their twenties, thirties, and forties. But within two weeks of younger populations getting infected, it immediately translated into people 60 and older getting infected as well.
It just doesn't happen with an illness as contagious as this one, that you can somehow cordon-off all those who are the most vulnerable and somehow only have this affect those who are younger.
And let's not forget too that children have died, that young adults who are previously healthy have suffered and are living with, as you know well, long term consequences because of COVID-19. This is a very serious disease. There is no silver bullet and I think that's important for us to note, too. I think President Trump keeps on looking for this magic cure, this one pill that you can now take and this goes away.
CUOMO: Yes. He says he found it.
DR. WEN: It doesn't work like that. This is a very --
CUOMO: He says he found it. He discovered Remdesivir.
DR. WEN: He says he found it.
CUOMO: And discovered the antibody treatment that Regeneron has been working on for months, and has been funded by the government, and is completely out there. But he just discovered them.
LEMON: There's also a lot of steroids, so he's probably feeling --
CUOMO: Well, he's looking a little bit more jacked. The White House officials conceded today that the president has not been tested daily for the coronavirus. Trump is tested regularly while people around him are tested daily. Two people in contact with President Trump say they have seen him having some trouble breathing since returning from Walter Reed.
Now, this -- an adviser cautions it's not serious, but noticeable. Why shouldn't it be? He is struggling through coronavirus. I went very slow on this news because I would be surprised if he weren't having any type of difficulty in any way one week into coronavirus.
[01:44:51]
DR. WEN: And I watched that video that he tweeted out tonight. And I was concerned because he clearly had increased work of breathing. It looks like he wasn't able to speak in full sentences. It looked as if he was struggling.
And again, as you said, Chris, it's not unexpected because he most -- almost certainly has pneumonia. We don't have his doctor being on record saying it. But the fact that he had the drops in oxygen saturation, the fact that he was on dexamethasone which is for people with severe or critical illness. I mean all that points to him having some level of pneumonia. So he should be recuperating.
He certainly should not be touting that somehow he had a cure, when actually, we need to be doing the hard work of trying to prevent this illness and he should be doing the hard work too of trying to recover, knowing that we still may be days away from him still having the most severe course of this illness.
CUOMO: Yes. God forbit. Hopefully he stays on this path. He is certainly looking a heck of lot better than I was that same period. And he found a miracle cure. I know he has enough right now to give it to the other people who got sick in that White House. It would be nice if they got the same treatment at a minimum that he gets.
Dr. Wen, as always, thank you for the sober advice in the reckoning of our current situation.
Lies, mistruths, dodges -- they happen at debates, ok? Including even about the pandemic that we are living right now. Nothing is sacred. So, where does it leave us?
Next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[01:49:51]
LEMON: Senator Kamala Harris slamming the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic in the only vice presidential debate with Mike Pence and a poll of debate watchers shows it may have had an impact. 59 percent say Harris won while 38 percent say Pence won. That as President Trump makes this bizarre and stunning claim in a White House produced propaganda video released earlier tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think this was a blessing from God that I caught it. This was a blessing in disguise. I caught it, I heard about this drug, I said let me take it. It was my suggestion. I said let me take it. And it was incredible the way it worked. Incredible.
And I think if I didn't catch it, we'd be looking at that like a number of other drugs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: I can't get over the makeup or the bronzer. He's as dark as me, it's so weird. What is going on there?
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: The gap between his hands and face was jarring.
LEMON: I didn't hear a word he said. So I'm going to bring in now CNN senior political analyst John Avlon and Republican strategist Alice Stewart. Did you see that, Chris? Did you see his bronzer? That's a lot, right?
So, hello. Good morning to both of you.
ALICE STEWART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Hi, Don.
LEMON: Let's talk some big picture here, ok? And you know the coronavirus front and center -- 211,000 Americans dead from COVID. Mike Pence is the head of the White House coronavirus task force. And tonight the president is in the White House suffering from the disease, even though he's fine, he says he is fine.
Pence played this off or said it was a success. How is it a success?
STEWART: I don't really see how it is and I'm not going to sit up here and say that it has been because there are a lot of things that could have and should have been done differently and need to continue to be done differently moving forward.
I do think that it was important for the vice president, as he did tonight, to make the case for what they have done right which directing funding, trillions of dollars in funding for coronavirus for masks and other essential necessary medical equipment, ventilators that need to go to certain places, but also working to open up the economy and stimulate the economy.
More important than money and masks is what they need to do with regard to messaging moving forward. They need to do this not just by saying the words but talking the talk and walking the walk.
They need to remind people, as many people have been doing, wear masks, social distance, avoid enclosed places, wash your hands and practice what the CDC and health regulators are encouraging other people to do. This administration and leaders need to be doing that as well. And that is just as important as the money they're putting out.
LEMON: It is but I mean some people may say it's a little late for that because when people, you know, we in the media, when professionals, the scientists, the doctors have been stressing that this administration had not.
So, is it too little -- is it too late, John, for that messaging that Alice speaks about?
AVLON: I mean you can't have the kind of gap we've seen persistently with this White House that has led to a major outbreak of people in the White House and the Trump orbit that exceeds some countries' you know, current new COVID cases. And then all of a sudden say, do as we say not as we do.
Every little bit helps. The hope is that the president and the administration would, because the fact that this has come home to them, take it more seriously and not treat it as a problem that's been overblown by Democrats and media.
LEMON: Do you think people bought his answers, John?
AVLON: What's that?
LEMON: Do you think people bought his answers?
AVLON: Look, he's got -- he had an incredibly tough job as the head of the COVID task force, it's is difficult to spin your way out of 210,000 deaths. I mean -- and just objectively, we've got 4 percent of the world's population, 20 percent of the world's COVID deaths -- there is no way to make that look good.
LEMON: Ok.
AVLON: And that is just the hard reality of where we are.
LEMON: Hold that thought. I to get a break here, and I want to talk to you. I want to see how this 2020 relates to 2016, if it does at all.
We will be right back.
[01:54:16]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: Ok. So we're back now with John Avlon, Alice Stewart.
So John, let me ask you this. Beyond the debate tonight, when you look at what is going on, and how it impacts the race, how hard is it to see a presidential debate happening next week? Does anyone feel safe about that?
AVLON: Safe? No. I mean I think, you know, we've just got to deal with the obvious, which is that Donald Trump seems -- we don't know when he was first tested, so we don't know definitively when he had his first symptoms. And so he needs to be clean for at least 10 days before the next debate.
He does not seem to be abiding by anything resembling quarantining guidelines, typical medical guidelines. And so that's really a question that the Biden campaign is going to have to deal with, but I think they'll ask the Debate Commission to make that call.
This is a surreal circumstance, but there's no way Donald Trump should be out there for his own health and the safety of everybody else right now.
LEMON: Alice, you are agreeing? Because they still haven't told us the last time he tested negative. So shouldn't they tell us that?
STEWART: Absolutely. I completely agree. And look, I would like to know when the last time he tested negative, or when the next time he will be tested and we find out. That's a critical component to even planning the next debate.
But if we find out that he has been negative in the right amount of time it can be done safely. It could actually be done outside. It will be in Miami. It couldn't be more beautiful. And they can use proper distance. They can use barriers, plastic barriers in between them to keep it safe.
But as John said, this needs to be the Presidential Debate Committee that makes these decisions. If I was the Biden campaign, they can't come out too forceful in trying to push it back, or delay because it, you know.
