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Researchers Say Additional 134,000 Could Die by December if No Further Measures are Mandated; Trump Baselessly Accuses FDA of Deliberately Delaying Vaccine Until After Election; House Passes Bill to Pause Postal Service Changes; President Falsely Claims Democrats Skipped the Words "Under God" in National Convention Pledge of Allegiance. Aired 7-8p ET

Aired August 22, 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]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. This is the special edition of THE SITUATION ROOM.

As the United States deals with the pandemic that yesterday alone claimed the lives of another 1,108 Americans and more than 8,000 Americans died in the past week, there is a new projection showing just how much worse things could get here in the United States.

The University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, often cited by the White House, says if no more safety measures are mandated, our nation could see an additional 134,000 deaths by December. That could bring the death toll to a staggering 310,000 killed by the coronavirus.

But today, as millions of Americans wait for a vaccine, the President actually accused without evidence the Food and Drug Administration of delaying vaccine trials until after the Presidential election on November 3rd in order to hurt his chances of re-election. We'll have more on that - much more on that coming up in a few moments.

Also today, the House of Representatives was back in a very rare Saturday session, called back from the August recess by the Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And only moments ago, the House passed a $25 billion bill to provide emergency funding desperately needed by the U.S. Postal Service just ahead of the November election, funding the President insists the post office does not even need.

Our National Correspondent, Suzanne Malveaux, is up on Capitol Hill for us.

Suzanne, just moments ago, the legislation passed the House of Representatives. So what happens now?

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell just put out a statement essentially reacting to this, saying that of course they are not going to come home from the recess or come back to work in an early fashion and that this is not something they're going to deal with in some sort of piecemeal fashion, that if there is some sort of relief that the Postal Service will get, it will be through a comprehensive coronavirus package. And that has been a talking point as well as the position of the Republican Party.

I have to tell you, I just spoke with the Chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, Carolyn Maloney, and she is absolutely thrilled and excited. She said this is not a joke and that this is an extraordinary victory, a victory for the American people, because if you look at this, Wolf, this was totally unexpected, 26 Republicans to join the Democrats and supporting this legislation.

This is a scathing indictment, a rejection of the talking points and of the position that the Republican leadership in the House presented to its members when they were whipping them up and trying to get them to reject this. They were saying it was a hoax, it was a sham, it was a scam. These are the kinds of things they used previously.

I mean, it was all very familiar when we heard those words coming out of Representative Jim Jordan's mouth and many other people who were saying the same thing. But these Republicans as well as Democrats, they have been saying anecdotally that their voters had real stories about how the mail was slowing down and how they had real fears about the post office being able to deliver what they need, the essentials that they need.

What we saw from Chairwoman Maloney today was not only it was anecdotal, she presented evidence. She had a document, an internal document from the Postal Service that reportedly showed a 10 percent slowdown, if you will, of the mail, that the mail was not getting to people in a timely way.

We heard from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who made the case earlier, saying that this was a cultural issue, that this was - whether it was democracy or whether it's voting rights or social justice, she used this example to kind of encapsulate all of those priorities by saying, look, it's the packages that you get from Santa Claus, it's the letters you get from the tooth fairy, but it's also the 1.2 billion Americans who get their prescriptions each year through the Postal Service; 80 percent of the veterans are receiving their medications through the Postal Service.

And I think what this really is telling the Republicans is that the playbook doesn't always work. There are real voters and real constituents on both side who see this as a very serious issue. Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes. If you look at the polls, almost everyone in the United States has high regard for the U.S. Postal Service.

Suzanne Malveaux on Capitol Hill with the breaking news, thank you.

President Trump, meanwhile, making an extraordinary and baseless accusation today that some people in one of his administration's key departments is actually working to keep him from getting reelected and deliberately hampering a possible cure for the coronavirus pandemic.

These words from the President earlier today, you see this tweet. "The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd."

Once again, there is no evidence that anyone at the FDA is trying to delay any of this - deliberately trying to slowdown a cure for the coronavirus with so many thousands of people dying, clearly no evidence that they're trying to hurt the President politically by slowing down the possibility of getting therapeutics or a vaccine.

[19:05:00]

CNN's Jeremy Diamond is over at the White House for us.

Jeremy, the President also mentioning by name in that tweet the FDA Commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, whom he himself appointed. This is an incredibly serious allegation. Any word from the White House today that the President has anything at all to back up this accusation?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No, Wolf. We've asked the White House. We've asked the FDA for comments on this. And silence, so far, on this. And I suspect that that's what we'll hear going forward because, frankly, as you just said, Wolf, there is no evidence to back up what the President is saying here as far as the FDA or anyone at the FDA trying to slow down vaccines or therapeutics or their approval.

In fact, it's been, frankly, record pace in terms of developing a vaccine. And the thing is that this phase three trial that several companies are now in, this is the part that you can't speed up. This is the part where you need to inject this vaccine into thousands and thousands of people. And in fact, one of the major companies, Moderna, has already injected this vaccine into about 13,000 people, which is a pretty rapid pace for moving along with those trials.

So there is certainly no evidence to back up what the President is saying here, but we should note, Wolf, it is not the first time that the President has been at odds with health officials in his administration or, frankly, sought to undermine those very efforts aimed at accelerating, getting this pandemic under control.

BLITZER: The President also made another claim today that needs some fact-checking, Jeremy. He tweeted once again, and I'll put it up on the screen, "The Democrats took the word GOD out of the Pledge of Allegiance at the Democrat National Convention. At first I thought they made a mistake, but it wasn't. It was done on purpose."

So - I watched all four nights of the Democratic convention, Jeremy, and I heard the words "under God" when they did the Pledge of Allegiance, in primetime, all four nights. So what is he talking about?

DIAMOND: Yes. There is no basis for the President's claim here, certainly no basis for the claim that Democrats did something like this intentionally. All nights of primetime programming, you had the Pledge of Allegiance at the very top of those performances of the nightly conventions. And the words "under God" were uttered as part of the Pledge of Allegiance by all of the people on each of those nights of the convention.

What did happen was there were two caucus events earlier in the day when individuals not associated with the official DNC activity, certainly not part of the official nightly program, did not utter the words "under God," which is, of course, their right as individuals. But for the President here to suggest that the Democratic National Committee intentionally removed the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance as part of their nightly programming for this convention just utterly false, no basis in reality. Wolf.

BLITZER: All right. Jeremy at the White House, thank you very much. Jeremy Diamond reporting.

I'm joined now by the Communications Director for the Trump re- election campaign, Tim Murtaugh.

Tim, thanks so much for joining us. I know you guys are incredibly busy on the eve of the Republican convention. So, as you heard, earlier today, the President actually accused a deep state or people at the FDA of deliberately trying to delay a COVID vaccine until after the election. Does the President have any real evidence to support that claim?

TIM MURTAUGH, TRUMP CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: I haven't spoken to the President about that, Wolf, but I would note that the FDA has been criticized over the course of many years for being too slow to get drugs to market and hampering the ability of people to receive those drugs in a timely fashion.

We all know that the President has been eager to get a vaccine through testing and into the hands of Americans so that tens of millions of doses can be administered. That's absolutely true, and everyone knows that. So I haven't talked to him about this.

I would suggest that maybe it would be a good question for the Democrat ticket because they seem to have a difference of opinion on that side. You had Joe Biden saying that he was worried about the safety of the vaccine that is eventually developed. And his running mate, Kamala Harris, on the day that she was introduced as his vice presidential pick said that she demanded to know when it was going to be ready. So Joe Biden says it's potentially dangerous. Harris says it's - she wants it sooner than - rather than later. So I think the two of them should make up their minds.

BLITZER: Well, everybody wants a vaccine, everybody wants therapeutics, everybody wants this coronavirus to go away. But the accusation that Dr. Stephen Hahn, who heads the FDA, a key member of the coronavirus task force, is actively - or others working for him are actively trying to undermine this effort to get a vaccine or some therapeutic for political - for political reasons. Is there any evidence of that?

MURTAUGH: I mean, again, I haven't spoken to the President about this, but we all know that the President wants to speed this along. And he has, every step of the way, cleared all the bureaucratic hurdles that would normally slow down a process like this. And he wants to get the vaccine in the hands of people who will administer it to as many millions of Americans as they possibly can, as soon as they possibly can. And I think that's been the President's goal all along.

BLITZER: Yes. Everybody wants that, as safely as possible.

[19:10:00]

Tim, the biggest crisis clearly facing the United States right now is the coronavirus pandemic. So many people are dying. Does the President want this election to be a referendum on his handling of the pandemic?

MURTAUGH: Well, I mean, I think every election is a binary choice, Wolf. In the end, it's going to be a choice for voters between President Trump and his record of achievement for Americans and Joe Biden and his record of 47 years of failure, frankly.

But on the coronavirus, it is something that many Americans - most Americans and many voters will be concerned about. And the President has been leading the nation in this effort, and Americans can see that. He acted early on back in January. His coronavirus task force started meeting. And he also restricted travel from China early on.

Now, we remember that Joe Biden, at that time, on the China travel restrictions, criticized the President for doing it, called it xenophobia and fear mongering. So we know that Joe Biden would not have made that decision.

And if he had not - if Joe Biden had been president back in January, he would not have restricted travel from China. And all the medical experts agree, including Dr. Fauci, that that decision the President made saved American lives. If Joe Biden had been president, we'd be in a far worse position today than we actually are.

BLITZER: It's true that that decision he made at the end of January was very important in blocking travel from China, but there were a lot of loopholes and a whole bunch of people, thousands of people from China did come. But most of them--

(CROSSTALK)

MURTAUGH: No, they let American citizens return, Wolf.

BLITZER: A lot of people - a lot of people were coming from Europe. And that ban on travel from Europe to the United States where the coronavirus was escalating dramatically, that ban on travel from Europe didn't go into effect until mid-March or so, and a lot of people - lot of experts say that was the real problem, not necessarily China. But let's talk about what's going on right now.

MURTAUGH: Well, Wolf, again, I would point out that Joe Biden criticized the European travel ban as well. And so--

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: You could criticize - you can criticize Joe Biden for--

(CROSSTALK)

MURTAUGH: --criticize the President's timing of the decision, then you have to criticize Joe Biden for even opposing it.

BLITZER: But there's only one President of the United States at that time, and it was the President who's the leader in all of this. Let's talk about what's going on right now. You just heard 1,100 Americans died yesterday from this virus; last week alone, more than 8,000. More than 1,000 Americans are dying every day. And the University of Washington model suggests now that by December 1st, 310,000 Americans might die. This is emerging as a disaster, and it could be the biggest issue facing the President's re-election. Do you agree?

MURTAUGH: It is a big issue facing voters. There is no question about that. And I think what we will put in front of voters is everything that the President has done. As I mentioned, he restricted travel from China and then from Europe early on. The President has engaged the private sector and the government together in an unprecedented effort to produce things like personal protective equipment and ventilators.

Remember at the very early going here, we heard a lot about possible ventilator shortages that were projected. And the production of those ventilators ramped up, and we now know that no American who needed a ventilator went without one.

We heard a lot from New York and Washington State and California about how people were going to die without a ventilator. That never materialized. And indeed the governors of those states, Governor Cuomo even, have praised the President for responding to every request and giving the states everything that they have needed.

And so I think that when people look at what the President did and was able to mobilize in this country, how we lead the world in testing, I think that the evaluation has to be that President Trump did absolutely everything that is within his power to do to fight the coronavirus.

BLITZER: There's no doubt when it comes to ventilators, the U.S., under his leadership, did a lot. There's no doubt about that.

Look at this. A lot of polls, including the most recent Fox News poll, asked the question, who do you trust more in dealing with coronavirus, Joe Biden or the President? 50 percent said Biden, 36 percent said Trump. Does that worry you going into this election?

MURTAUGH: No. And in fact, we discount public polls really just because of the way they're constructed. You know if you use the sample a concern way and under-sample Republicans, over-sample Democrats, you can get the results that you want for these media outfits who want to construct a narrative.

But the fact is, when Joe Biden, just the other day, comes out with what he says is his coronavirus plan, it looks like another case of plagiarism on Joe Biden's behalf because all of the things - and this has happened over the course of the last five months. All of the things that Joe Biden says that he prescribes to fight the coronavirus are things that President Trump has done or is already doing, such as using the Defense Production Act.

Joe Biden says he'd always been calling for that all along. By the time Joe Biden called for that in March, the President had already invoked it a dozen times. And you can also use - the President has used the DPA, the Defense Production Act, as a sort of leverage against private companies. You don't have to invoke it.

BLITZER: All right.

MURTAUGH: You just have to know that he could invoke it. And that has gotten a lot of private companies to actually get involved and do the things that the President wanted them to do.

BLITZER: I want to move on. But you include Fox News in that rant against the media?

MURTAUGH: Oh. The Fox News poll is really one of the worst offenders. Absolutely, Wolf.

[19:15:00]

BLITZER: Why do you believe that's the case?

MURTAUGH: I don't believe that that's the case. All you have to do is look at the sample of the poll and find out that only - in most cases in these polls that we talk about, 24 percent of the poll in the CNN poll, 24 percent of the sample is Republican when, in fact, the exit polls showed that it was 33 percent. In the Fox News poll, they tremendously oversample Democrats. I think the number is 46 in their poll - 46 percent of their poll being Democrat in the one that I'm thinking of--

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: I will say--

(CROSSTALK)

MURTAUGH: When you go back and look at these things, it's not too hard to get a Democrat leading a poll when you start that high with a Democrat sample.

BLITZER: I will say that all the major polls, including The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, NBC, ABC, FOX, CNN, all the major polls are pretty much consistent when it comes to their results. But let's move on to some other sensitive issues while I have you here.

MURTAUGH: They're consistent in their flaws too. Wolf, I want to say, internally, we only trust the polls where we know that the methodology is sound. And those are the polls that we conduct. We're not trying to create a narrative and make headlines. We're trying to find the real information. And so that's what we trust, the ones where we know we're actually getting a clear picture. And in the 17 states that we track, we know that the President is

either tied with Joe Biden or ahead. We feel very, very good about where the President stands. And I would say - look, if your viewers and anybody else who reads these polls, if they want to think and live under the impression that Joe Biden has a gigantic lead and this thing is about over, we encourage them to continue to think that way.

BLITZER: A quick question on QAnon. The President claims to be the law-and-order candidate. Why is he welcoming in effect the support of QAnon followers, a group that the FBI itself has suggested represents potentially a domestic terror threat?

MURTAUGH: Look, we don't spend any time - I've never talked about this with the President. I've never heard him mention it. The White House Press Secretary says she's never discussed it with him. This is a conspiracy theory. We have a lot more important things to do.

We're 70-some days away from the election. We're trying to gather support for the President. We have a convention that starts in 48 hours or so. The only time we ever hear about this conspiracy or even other conspiracies is when the media asks us. We have a lot more important things to do, and we just dismiss that out of hand, and we go about our work, which does not involve conspiracy theories.

BLITZER: Let's talk a little bit about the convention itself. The Democratic convention, which we all watched last week, several prominent Republicans endorsed Joe Biden, including Colin Powell, Former Ohio Governor John Kasich, Former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel who's the former Republican Senator from Nebraska. Will we see any prominent Democrats appearing at the Republican convention to support President Trump?

MURTAUGH: Absolutely, you will. You will. And those Republicans you just ran down, not one of them supported President Trump in 2016. So I don't know why any of their opinion--

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Can you tell us who the prominent Democrats are going to be?

MURTAUGH: I mean, I think - I think those announcements will be forthcoming, but I think people will be pleased to see - people on our side will be pleased to see. This is the walk-away movement, as it's called. People who are fed up with where the Democrat Party is going because it really has taken a dramatic lurch to the left. And there are a lot of Democrats who don't like the way their party is headed, they have come over to be supporting President Trump, and absolutely, we're going to be showcasing a number of them.

BLITZER: A number of Democrat - prominent Democrats. Well, we'll be anxious to see.

MURTAUGH: That's a number of known prominent Democrats. Yes, that's right.

BLITZER: All right. We'll be anxious to see. We did see at the Democratic convention, former Democratic presidents, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, come out and speak and endorse Joe Biden. Will we see George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, the former president - the Former Vice President, at the Republican convention?

MURTAUGH: I'm not aware of their participation, but I would say that President Trump has taken the Republican Party and made it appeal to a very wide swath of Americans. We know that we're making great inroads among black voters, among Latino voters. And really, to prove that, all you have to do is look at the behavior of Joe Biden.

Joe Biden is spending a lot of money running television ads aimed at building support in the black community. You don't see Democrats doing that in a general election, practically ever. And that means he knows that his support in the black community is pretty soft. And they take a look at the President's record before the pandemic, before the global pandemic hit the American economy, an all-time record low unemployment for black Americans.

The President dedicated more money than any other president before him to historically black colleges and universities, getting for the first time, bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform passed through and signed into law, reuniting families, giving people a second chance at life. And then, of course, school choice. The President wants to give kids who are trapped in failing schools the opportunity to get out of those failing schools into better schools.

BLITZER: All right.

MURTAUGH: The Democrats and Joe Biden oppose school choice because they're in the hip pocket of the big powerful teachers' unions.

BLITZER: Can you just tell us - and I know you got to run - if Bush and Cheney were invited to speak at the Republican convention?

[19:20:00]

MURTAUGH: I don't have any knowledge of that, Wolf. I'm sorry, I can't help you out.

BLITZER: Tim Murtaugh, the Communications Director for the Biden (ph) re-election campaign. Tim, it was kind of you to join us. We'll be watching all this week. Thanks so much for joining us. We hope you'll come back.

MURTAUGH: Thanks very much, Wolf. Thanks for your time.

MURTAUGH: Thank you. The President today falsely accuses his own Food and Drug Administration, the FDA, of purposely stalling development of a vaccine and therapeutics in order to hurt his chances of re- election. We're going to ask doctors how that's hurting the nation's fight against the pandemic. Much more right after this.

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BLITZER: A key research model is now predicting that by December 1st, nearly 310,000 Americans will have died from coronavirus. But if every American wore a mask, researchers at the University of Washington now say 69,000 lives could be saved.

[19:25:00]

Joining us, Dr. Jeremy Faust. He's an emergency room physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Also with us, CNN Medical Analyst, Former CDC Disease Detective, Dr. Seema Yasmin.

Dr. Faust, first, your reaction when you hear those numbers.

DR. JEREMY FAUST. EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN, BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL: My reaction, Wolf, is that 2020 might become the first year in history in which more than 3 million Americans died in a single year. That has never occurred. Last year was the record, 2.8 million. We could see a 5 or 10 percent increase in all deaths.

This is not rearranging of deck chairs. This is not people who are just on death's doorstep and coronavirus is getting the blame. We didn't know about it first. We know it now, and we know that these are real lives being lost and we need to confront that, because when we slow down this virus, that means when the vaccine comes, there are more people who can actually benefit from it. I want people to know that this is - no one is cooking the books. This is a historic situation.

BLITZER: Certainly is.

And Dr. Yasmin, the Director, Dr. Robert Redfield, of the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, now says he's hopeful that deaths and case numbers will start to drop as early as next week. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, DIRECTOR, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: These interventions are going to have a lag. That lag is going to be three, four weeks. You and I are going to see the cases continue to drop. And then, hopefully, this week and next week, you're going to start seeing the death rate really start to drop again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: All right. So, for about a month, the U.S. has been averaging more than 1,000 coronavirus deaths every single day. Do you agree with Dr. Redfield's prediction? Because he also went on to suggest if we don't take immediate action, the numbers could dramatically increase.

DR. SEEMA YASMIN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST & FORMER CDC DISEASE DETECTIVE: Well, Wolf, Dr. Redfield says he's hopeful, but his own agency just yesterday released numbers that are already grim. CDC scientists predict that just in the next few weeks we could expect to see about 30,000 more Americans die from COVID-19, bringing the death toll to around 200,000 deaths or just over that by September 12.

So I think he's hopeful because some states are seeing things either headed in the right direction or they're already seeing some declines and they're in a good place, especially states in the north and the northeast.

The problem is, when we see some states make some gains, we see other states become hotspots. So, even really badly affected states like Arizona and South Carolina likely seeing a decline in deaths. But then at the same time, Minnesota is starting to see an increase. And also, we're worried about the Midwest in general becoming a next hotspot for COVID-19.

So I'm about as worried as he is hopeful because we're still seeing somewhere between 100,000 to 0.5 million new infections every day. And Wolf, as you know, there's always a lag between the number of new cases and the number of deaths.

BLITZER: Dr. Faust, at least 19 states are now reporting COVID-19 cases at colleges and universities. This week, the University of Notre Dame announced it would shift to all online learning for two weeks as they report more than 300 cases on campus. Should more colleges be doing this?

FAUST: I don't think they have a choice. I think that if we had wanted to prevent this, we would have had to do the work ahead of time. Everyone was asking the wrong question. Should we open our schools? It was never that question. The question was, if you open, how long would you be able to stay open? And the longer - the more you suppress the case loads, the longer you could stay open, and it takes work to get to that point.

So if we want to keep the schools open, we have to do the things that we don't want to do. We cannot go to bars and indoor dining. We have to wear masks. We have to do the hard work to do the thing that matters the most, which is to get our kids through this school year. We're going to have a lost year of education, and all of the competition between us and overseas, we're going to get just pilloried by that. So I'd like to see people realize that what we do today matters tomorrow. Let's put in the work.

BLITZER: Yes. That's an important point. Dr. Faust, thanks for joining us.

Dr. Yasmin, as usual, thanks to you as well.

Coming up, Florida, at one point, was the epicenter for the coronavirus, but now the state is beginning to see a downward trend. We'll take a closer look at what's behind the turnaround. We'll be right back.

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[19:34:09]

BLITZER: The Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Jimenez says he will start to draw plans to reopen as the daily coronavirus cases are falling.

Jimenez says he will meet with local business owners this week. The entire State of Florida is seeing a downward trend, but still reporting more than 4,000 new coronavirus cases for the last four days straight.

Joining us now, one of the mayor of Miami-Dade County, Miami Beach Mayor, Dan Gelber.

Mayor Gelber, thanks as usual for joining us. Have you spoken with Mayor Jimenez about reopening businesses and restaurants in Miami Beach?

MAYOR DAN GELBER (D), MIAMI BEACH, FLORIDA: We speak pretty regularly and we try to do this on a countywide basis because that makes a lot of sense. We've done it before where some of us opened up later and others opened up earlier, but we're trying to get on the same page and I think we will be.

BLITZER: The last time Miami Dade lifted curfews, reopened businesses was back on May 18th. The state's case count was then just in the hundreds. Now, it's in the thousands with Miami being of course, one of the hardest hit.

Is there something about this time that's different? Do you think it's too soon perhaps?

[19:35:15]

GELBER: Well, it's definitely too soon right now. We're at 10 percent positivity. We still --although everything is going in the right direction, it's still way too high, and it's going in the right direction slowly.

So you know, we still are getting 50 to a hundred people every day, new patients in just Dade County. Obviously, dozens of people or more are dying every day. So we can't go too early because we're going to end up doing exactly what we did last time, which was open up -- we opened up later than the county. We waited a few more weeks and still the amount of activity and the lack of contact tracing created surges that really --

I mean, we've got about 2,200 people who have died in Dade County and the state just got past 10,000 deaths this week. So that was a very painful and tragic reopening.

BLITZER: The state, as you know, is currently in a downward trend, which is good. What's behind this trend?

GELBER: Well, I think people are wearing masks. In my area, they are wearing masks, we fine people if they don't. There's a curfew. We're doing the kinds of limitations of activity that stop the kind of gathering that spreads.

I think people are learning and I think people are beginning to get on the same page. Before they were, you know, masked to really -- and they still are a little bit, but they weren't a political statement to some people, which is obviously ridiculous, but it was stopping a lot of enforcement.

So we have fines now down here and we're really demanding that people do the right thing. Most do it willingly, but some need to be told or even fined to make them do it.

BLITZER: You've still got a lot of problems with Florida.

As you know this week, Florida's largest teachers union actually sued the governor, Ron DeSantis after the Education Commissioner ordered schools to reopen. That ruling is expected to come this week.

Do you think it is safe now to send kids back to school for in-class learning?

GELBER: Well, in my county, we're not doing it. And we shouldn't do it. We are putting 400,000 young people and adults and staff and teachers and, you know, bus drivers and workers into the commerce when you have 10 or a percent more of a percentage of positivity in the community. There's too much bias to do that.

So I think that these mandates or these directions coming from either the Governor or the President to just do things without an awareness of what's happening in the community where they're demanding that happen is absurd. It's dangerous.

And so I don't think it's a good idea at all right now and I have a high school kid I want to send to school, but I don't want to do something dangerous and I don't want to do something that could endanger the community he's in.

BLITZER: The Florida Department of Health actually announced yesterday that an eight-year-old little girl has died from coronavirus in Florida. "The Tampa Bay Times" says eight children -- eight children have now died of coronavirus since the pandemic started. This is a real problem. Kids are not essentially immune, are they?

GELBER: No. No, they're not. And by the way, a lot of this, we're not sure -- there are a lot of things we're not sure about. Anybody who has certitude about you know, these kinds of things really is making a big mistake. We are getting better at dealing with the disease.

You know, certainly a lot of the things that we're using are better, and our therapeutics are better. So actually put -- you know, stopping people from getting infected now helps. I would rather be infected in three months than I would three months ago, obviously, the treatments are better.

So we've got to learn more about it and we've got to be cautious. We've got to be careful and we cannot make the mistake we made last time, which is opening up because people and the Governor and others and the President says you've just got to do it. That is wrongheaded and dangerous and we have already gone down that tragic path already.

BLITZER: Yes, the numbers are clearly horrendous, horrendous right now, not just numbers, these are real people we're dealing with as well.

Mayor Gelber, thank you so much for joining us. Good luck.

GELBER: Thank you. BLITZER: We're going to have much more of the coronavirus pandemic

coming up here in THE SITUATION ROOM, but also there's other important news we're following.

Protesters are in the streets of Portland, Oregon who once again today. This after a night of protests that were declared a riot by police there. We will go live to Portland when we come back.

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[19:43:35]

BLITZER: Much more in the pandemic in just a moment, but first, other important stories including protesters. They're back on the streets in Portland, Oregon today after a police declared a riot last night when crowds outside a police precinct refused to disperse.

CNN's Omar Jimenez is joining us from Portland right now.

Omar, I understand more than 500 people have been arrested since the protests started more than two and a half months ago there in Portland. What more can you tell us?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, for starters, Wolf, what we saw play out over the course of this afternoon was slightly different than what we have seen play out over the course of now 86 nights in a row here in Portland. It was just behind me a little bit earlier.

Today, we saw on one side, we had a group of made up of Proud Boys. It is a far right group, a group of Trump supporters and a group of Blue Lives Matter supporters all on one side, and then they clashed with counter protesters, who are also supporting Black Lives Matter.

And those were really the classes we saw play out over the course of today, a lot of drawing back and forth, a lot of pushing and shoving, a lot of projectiles being thrown and shot in the form of paintballs back and forth.

And even at one point, our CNN crew observed a far right protester pull out an actual gun, a weapon and point it at the counter protesters. We're working on getting that video in, but again, I can't stress enough, these types of clashes were different than the traditional ones we had seen where Black Lives Matter protesters and even some Antifa in cases would clash with police.

Now, it started in front of the Federal Courthouse behind me here and then it eventually made its way across the street to this park here, and when it did that, it was at that point, the far right demonstrators had left and the Federal Police then lined this park and it was shortly after that the Federal law enforcement here declared it an unlawful assembly.

[19:45:30]

JIMENEZ: And, again, that was only after the far right demonstrators left they declared it an unlawful assembly and then that became similar to what we had seen in previous nights with a line of law enforcement and people right in front of them as law enforcement held that line and they were eventually pushed back into the Federal building here, just off of camera.

Now what we are expecting to see tonight is likely going to be an 87th straight night of protests here in Portland over the course of all of which we have seen at least 19 riots be declared by law enforcement. The latest, of course, coming last night -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right. We'll stay in close touch with you later tonight. We'll see what happens. Omar, thank you very much.

An important note to our viewers, this Sunday, W. Kamau Bell is back with an all new episode of United Shades of America. He heads to Miami to take a look at the booming Venezuelan population here in the United States, which has increased by over 300 percent in the last 20 years as a result of the economic collapse in Venezuela. Here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When something happens in Venezuela that is important, we need to -- we came to that as possible.

I think is the heart for the Venezuelan community in Miami.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking in foreign language). Embassy.

W. KAMAU BELL, CNN HOST, UNITED SHADES OF AMERICA: Embassy. All right, I got you.

BELL (voice over): Carlos Pereira is a comedian and a Democratic socialist active in local politics in their life. Jose Calina is a former Venezuelan military officer who came to the U.S. fleeing political persecution.

He spent two years in detention centers across America before he was granted asylum in 2006.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He is very concerned about the other leader.

BELL: And you wore the white shirt, you wore the black shirt.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, because we are opposed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: The brand new episode of "United Shades of America" premieres tomorrow night 10:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN.

Coming up, claims of a cover up this evening after a top critic of Vladimir Putin is hospitalized following a suspected poisoning.

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[19:51:57] BLITZER: The Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny is fighting

for his life right now in a Berlin hospital after a suspected poisoning. He was medically evacuated out of Russia early Saturday for treatment two days after he got sick.

Navalny is well known as a critic of President Vladimir Putin.

CNN's Matthew Chance is in Moscow.

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MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, tonight, Alexei Navalny remains unconscious and in a serious, but stable condition in a Berlin clinic where doctors are working to save his life, but also to find out what made one of the Kremlin's most outspoken critics so sick so suddenly.

CHANCE (voice over): In Russia, the price of opposition can be painfully high. The groans from Alexei Navalny as medics evacuated him from this commercial flight, forced to make an emergency landing when he was suddenly taken ill.

A fellow passenger recorded the anti-corruption campaigner appearing unconscious being stretchered into an ambulance on the tarmac outside.

Russian doctors say they found no evidence of poisoning, but Navalny's his wife and his supporters insist there is a cover up and that delays to his evacuation from Siberia to Germany for medical treatments were an attempt to hide the truth.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): We certainly believe that it was made to make sure that a chemical subspace, which is in Alexei's body were dissolved. That is why he is not handed over to make sure that particles of this substance will dissolve.

CHANCE (voice over): The hospital says that's not true and that it's worried about his clinical state.

Navalny certainly knew the risks more than any other opposition figure in Russia. He got ordinary people out to protest with an unrelenting campaign to highlight corruption, challenging the Kremlin making enemies of Russia. That's dangerous.

CHANCE (on camera): A man appeared with a gun and shot her three times in the chest and once --

CHANCE (voice over): Over years now, Russia has gained an appalling reputation for silencing critics.

CHANCE (on camera): You can see, there's still a bullet hole.

CHANCE (voice over): This was me in 2006 reporting on the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, one of the journalists most critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin's policies. She was gunned down in her Moscow apartment block. Shortly afterwards, Alexander Litvinenko, also critical of the Kremlin

suffered a slow, agonizing death after being poisoned with a radioactive isotope in London.

In 2015, Russia's leading opposition politician, Boris Nemtsov was shot and killed as he walked over a bridge near the Kremlin with his girlfriend, and more recently in 2018, a sleepy corner of England was shocked when a military grade nerve agent was used to poison a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.

In all the cases, the Kremlin has denied any involvement.

It isn't accepting any connection to the sudden Navalny sickness either, but for the moment, at least yet another outspoken Kremlin critic has been silenced.

CHANCE (on camera): But we are expecting updates on the condition of Alexei Navalny in the days and in the weeks ahead.

[19:55:11]

CHANCE: In the meantime, there is some relief among his supporters that he is at least out of Russia, where they hope he will soon return to health and where some light can be shade on what exactly happened to him -- Wolf.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Matthew Chance in Moscow, thank you, an important story indeed. Coming up. The President makes an extraordinary and baseless accusation that the F.D.A. is hampering a cure for the coronavirus. We are live at the White House when we come back.

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