Trump Pushes Denial AS U.S. Cases Return to Summer Levels; Obama's Closing Argument for Biden
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Progress lost. The coronavirus threat is growing again. We are back to August levels here. The nation is in jeopardy, the president is in denial.</s>BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT: Just basic competence can end up saving lives.</s>BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: And President Obama going all in for Joe Biden, getting ready to hit the trail. And that's not the only big infusion for the Biden campaign.</s>ROMANS: All right. Welcome to our viewers in the United States, and all around the world. This is EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans. And welcome to Boris Sanchez for sitting in. Hi there.</s>SANCHEZ: Thanks so much for having me, Christine. I'm Boris Sanchez, in for Laura Jarrett. It's Thursday, October 15, 5:00 a.m. in New York, and we are just 19 days until the election. The clock keeps ticking.</s>ROMANS: It is. And in the meantime, a painful reality in the U.S. once again. Almost 60,000 confirmed coronavirus cases yesterday, more than we have seen in a single day since August 1st. Another 985 Americans are dead with trends headed in the wrong direction in almost half the states. At that rate, another 40 families will lose a loved one during just this one-hour broadcast. Still, President Trump remains deeply committed to denial and distraction. He's pushing hard for a return to normalcy in order to keep his job. But for most of the country, normalcy is simply not an option.</s>SANCHEZ: Yeah, notably, Melania Trump revealing yesterday that their son Barron also recently tested positive for COVID. Fortunately, he's now negative. But his father used that to, again, down play the severity of the disease.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He had it for such a short period of time, I don't think he knew he had it because they're young and their immune systems are strong, and they fight it off, 99.9 percent. And Barron is beautiful and he's free, free.</s>SANCHEZ: Remember, health experts say children are less likely to become severely ill than adults, but they can still be infectious and spread the virus to others. Now, the president clearly feels em emboldened, touting his recovery from COVID, helped by a cocktail of pricey, experimental therapies that are available to almost no one else. Not coincidentally, Minnesota health officials have traced 16 COVID cases to a Trump rally.</s>ROMANS: The CDC now posting an optimistic forecast about vaccines, promising something by the end of 2020. Dr. Anthony Fauci says we should know in the next few months if a vaccine could be widely available early next year as hoped.</s>DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASSES: That will likely be within the first quarter of 2021, by let's say April of 2021, but that would be predicated on the fact that all of the vaccines that are in clinical trials have proven to be safe and effective.</s>ROMANS: Whenever a safe vaccine is approved, only a few million doses will likely be available at first, and Fauci says Americans may have to rethink large family gatherings this Thanksgiving.</s>SANCHEZ: Yeah, it's going to be a holiday season unlike any we have seen in a long time. Looking across the country now, Georgia's coronavirus executive orders are set to expire tonight including bans on some big gatherings and mandatory rules for businesses. North Dakota meantime reporting its highest number of daily cases since the start of the pandemic. This week, the state reporting fewer than 20 staffed ICU beds left available. And officials at Brigham Young University Idaho say they are looking into reports that students have been intentionally catching COVID-19 so they can then sell their plasma with antibodies for cash.</s>ROMANS: Oh, my. All right. Tonight on TV, it's the election version of anything you can do, I can do better. President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden participating in dueling town halls after their second debate was cancelled. Biden will be appearing on ABC from Philadelphia, the president on NBC from Miami. Both at 8:00 p.m.</s>SANCHEZ: Yeah. The president also holding a rally in North Carolina today where early in person voting begins and cases as you can see on your screen are spiking. That's after he took the stage last night in Iowa where cases are also spiking and he did next to nothing to protect thousands of Iowans in this crowd.</s>ROMANS: The Biden campaign finally playing its much anticipated ace in the hole against President Trump. Barack Obama interviewed by alums from his administration on their Pod Save America podcast. The former president telling the show's progressive audience, the first priority is winning and then to push for policy changes once Democrats hold the White House. He also talked about the pandemic and how governments should be able to respond if competent people are in place.</s>OBAMA: Just basic competence can end up saving lives, and so, you know, one thing I would say to anybody who's skeptical about what government can do generally is to just take the example of when we were in office. You might not have been happy with everything I did, all my policy choices. I didn't, you know, eliminate poverty in America, but when we had a pandemic or the threat of pandemic, we had competent people in place who would deal with it.</s>SANCHEZ: Not a subtle message at all. The former president also says if Joe Biden wins, he will have to rebuild the State Department and the rest of America's foreign policy apparatus.</s>OBAMA: It's not as if Trump has been all that active internationally. I mean, the truth is he doesn't have the patience and the focus to really substantially change a lot of U.S. foreign policy. What he's done is he's systematically tried to decimate our entire foreign policy infrastructure.</s>SANCHEZ: Obama is expected to be out on the campaign trail for Biden soon, and notably in states where early voting is already underway. Florida, North Carolina there. Former president trying to convert enthusiasm into votes.</s>ROMANS: All right. Concerns about a possible disputed election apparently have the Biden campaign wondering what to do if President Trump refuses to accept the results. Biden's running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, addressed it last night in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.</s>RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Are you working on this kind of contingency plans in the case of a worst case scenario?</s>SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We are, but I also, to your point, I have faith in the American people. But I will say this, our democracy is always going to be as strong as the American people's willingness to fight for our democracy.</s>ROMANS: Harris did not specify exactly what those legal contingency plans are.</s>SANCHEZ: Well, if money is any measure, enthusiasm for Joe Biden is sky high as we approach Election Day. The Biden campaign announcing it raised a record breaking $383 million in the month of September. The fundraising haul surpassing it August record of $364 million. The Trump campaign has not released numbers for September. The august total, though, lagged the Biden campaign by more than 40 percent.</s>ROMANS: All right. It turns out even in the middle of a pandemic and a recession, some of America's biggest banks are still making money. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Citi, have all reported impressive third quarter results. JPMorgan reported $9.4 billion in profit. Goldman Sachs profit nearly doubled to $3.6 billion. Even Wells Fargo still dealing with fallout from various scandals, the bank still raked in $1.7 billion. Now, the profits run counter to what you would think would be a tough time for banks. Interest rates are historic lows, hurting banks' ability to make money lending. People are spending less on credit cards, uncertainty about the recovery, but banks have benefitted from the rebound in the stock market and from stimulus spending. Executives are calling for another stimulus package to help their customers.</s>SANCHEZ: A CNN exclusive to share with you now. Federal prosecutors including special counsel Robert Mueller spent more than three years investigating whether a last minute $10 million donation Donald Trump made to his 2016 campaign, flowed through an Egyptian state owned bank. Two sources told CNN the FBI first became interested after intelligence including from an informant suggested it was a real possibility. Among the questions prosecutors tried to answer but never did was whether Donald Trump was indebted to a foreign power possibly because of an illegal campaign contribution.</s>ROMANS: Ultimately, the Mueller team was unable to obtain the information it needed, nor could the U.S. attorneys in D.C., which investigated into the summer, and decided not to pursue charges. The investigation was one of 11 cases Mueller transferred to other prosecutors when he ended his probe. A senior adviser to the Trump 2020 campaign, Jason Miller, told CNN, quote, President Trump has never received a penny from Egypt.</s>SANCHEZ: Well, a curfew is coming to a major country in Europe. We'll take you live to Paris next.