i hope you're doing okay there. i know it's hard to see the destruction. just absolutely so tragic. thanks to arwa and thanks to all of you for being with us. "a.c. 360" begins right now. and good evening. a new report from cnn quotes a source who says that not only does president trump still not fully grasp the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, he just doesn't seem to be interested in the topic for any length of time. last night, the president attended his first meeting with the coronavirus task force since april. he put out pictures marking his attendance on twitter last night, but this source is telling cnn that try as the coronavirus task force might, he was just not interested. even tried to change the subject. quoting the source now, he starts talking about something else. he's either not interested, doesn't care, or doesn't think it's a winning topic for his re-election. dr. anthony fauci, a member of the task force, joined my colleague dr. sanjay gupta at a conference today in washington to discuss the virus. >> there's such a divergence of

how people view this and such a divisiveness that has now crept into the political -- remember a little while ago, you know, it depends on whether you wear a mask on how you feel politically, it was completely ridiculous. because a mask is a public health tool. it doesn't make any difference. and yet we've gotten into this. so the atmosphere we're in right now is not conducive to the kinds of things you're talking about. >> reporter: dr. fauci had a number of fact-based points. we hope the president of the united states hears and listens to. one is about how leaders need to change when the facts change. >> the true nature of science is that particularly when you're in an evolving situation, you've got to be flexible enough and humble enough to say, you know, two months or three months down the line, we're starting to see a different set of data and a

different set of facts that we may want to modify a bit the kinds of decisions and recommendations that we make. >> humble, those adjectives were not on display at the president's news conference a short time ago. there were props on display that said health care president. as the president who vowed and failed to replace obamacare. kept promising a plan, never came up with one. but now he's calling himself the health care president. and as of just over two weeks ago, he is still making the same claim about health care. >> we're signing a health care plan within two weeks. a full and complete health care plan. >> that was over two weeks ago. he just says things about health care and the virus, like it's under control, repeatedly. the same things over and over. like this one at same news conference about when the epidemic will end. >> it's going away. no, it will go away like things go away, absolutely. no question in my mind, it will

go away. please, go ahead. hopefully sooner rather than later. >> coronaviruses don't always just go away, nor does the president's promise that it will go away. he's actually been saying that since the start of the pandemic. it's going to disappear. one day, it's like a miracle, it will disappear. it will go away. just stay calm. it will go away. it will go away. you know it is going away. and it will go away. and we're going to have a great victory. it's going to go away. hopefully at the end of the month, and if not, hopefully it will be soon after that. i think what happens is, it's going to go away. this is going to go away. >> i feel about infections like i feel about tests. this is going to go away. >> i say, even without it, it goes away. i think that at some point, that's going to sort of just disappear, i hope. >> you still believe so? disappear? >> i do, sure, at some point. you know, i said, it's going to disappear. i'll say it again, it's going to disappear. the virus will disappear. it will disappear. >> you know, i say it's going to disappear. and they say, oh, that's terrible, but it's true, it's

going to disappear. >> hope is not ar plan. there were plenty of leaders back then who had a lot of hope about what might happen, the levees will hold. hope isn't a plan. this president has no national plan. it is what it is, in his words. he won't listen to his top health officials, even when the lies are potentially dangerous ones. >> i'm talking about of, from getting very sick. if you look at children, they're able to throw it off very easily. and it's an amazing thing, because some flus, they don't. they get very sick and they have problems with flus and over things, but for whatever reason, the china virus, children handle it very well. and they may get it, but they get it and it doesn't have much of an impact on them. and if you look at the numbers, the numbers of -- in terms of mortality, fatality, the numbers for children under a certain age, meaning young, their immune systems are very, very strong, they're very powerful. and they -- they seem to be able

to handle it very well. and that's according to every statistic. >> you know, just before he said that, facebook actually announced it had taken down a clip of the president saying basically the same thing during his interview on fox from this morning, because it's not true. and it's harmful to spread the idea that kids are basically immune. a south korean study established by the cdc said children at least ten years of age are just as like to spread the disease as adults. they get sick, just like everybody, and spread it. and a new study from doctors at children's national hospital and george washington university in washington found that not only can the disease infect children, which we knew, but looked at which children are most often exposed to the virus, and the answer is black and hispanic kids and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. out of the children that were studied, 7.3% of white kids were positive, 30% of black kids were, and 34.6% of hispanic kids, even when adjusted for age

and sex and median family income, the inequality still exists even among children. the president can't pay attention long enough to hear these facts. it just is what it is, i guess. more reaction from president trump's news conference and with our chief white house correspondent jim acosta and our chief political correspondent, dana bash. jim, what we saw from the president today seems to square with your reporting that he just -- i don't know if he doesn't grasp the severity of the pandemic or it doesn't play into what he thinks is a winning plan for re-election. >> reporter: i think that's a good question, anderson. i do think it was notable that a source familiar with this meeting that the president had in the oval office yesterday with members of his task force would say something along the lines of, he doesn't get it. and repeatedly said in this conversation i had with a source that the president doesn't get it when it comes to the severity of this pandemic. obviously, members of the coronavirus task force can't go out on television or feel like they can't go out on television and say that the president doesn't get it publicly, but it

not only squares with the president's performance today not only on fox, but in the briefing that he had this afternoon with reporters, saying once again, as you just laid out, the virus is going to go away and so on. but when you have members of the task force going out there publicly, as dr. deborah birx did with dana the other day and saying that the virus is extraordinarily widespread, when dr. anthony fauci testified up on capitol hill last week, that the virus is not just going to disappear. brett jirar is saying that hydroxychloroquine is not a good treatment for the coronavirus. you have members of the task force distancing themselves from the president. and some of the quotes i was getting from this meeting, there are people inside the administration who just don't believe the president gets it. >> and it's interesting that there's a saying he doesn't get it. that's that person's opinion, obviously. and it's allowing the president

a certain, sort of premised on the idea that it's just a matter of trying to make him understand it and then he'll get it and then he'll change, as opposed to, what if he does get it. what if he does understand the numbers, which are put in front of him. and he actually sees what we are all seeing, but he just doesn't believe that this is a winning topic for him to get re-elected and so, he has a strategy of just push it to the states, get as far away from it as possible, state protected in a biological bunker, hope it goes away, and just say it's going away and say it's under control. >> i think that's a very good question. and i will tell you, talking to my sources over the last several months about this, one of the other words that comes up when it comes to how people inside the administration close to the task force describe the president's thinking, it has been described as a state of denial on the part of this president. that he is just in denial when it comes to the severity of this pandemic.

and i think that goes to why he is engaging in this magical thinking that it's going to go away. now, perhaps you're right, anderson, and perhaps he just -- he is seeing the data, understanding the data, and just flat-out lying to the american people, lying to everybody, but at this point, our sources are not telling us that. they're telli ing thau ing us t denial and just doesn't get it. and i think that there's a sense you get from these press conferences when the president -- i think he sort of engages in this magical thinking that hydroxychloroquine can fix things and so on and we've seen this happen where he doesn't trust generals, doesn't trust the scientists. >> dana, it's all -- it may be magical thinking, but it's all magical thinking to an end, which is, don't listen to what the experts are saying, it's not that bad, it's under control and things are great.

it's not as if it's magical thinking that hurts him to his own benefit. >> it is, except that it is to his detriment, politically, talking to sources that i'm, you know, in touch with, when he ignores reality. and maybe that was working for him for a little while, potentially working for him for a little while, but now it's like ignoring, you know, the nose on our faces. i mean, it's as plain as anyone can see, and the fact that he is trying to whitewash it is, is not necessarily beneficial to him politically. because people are more and more seeing him, not just with the leadership crisis, but with questioning whether or not he is living on the same planet that everybody else is living in. you know, a lot of times, frankly, most times in politics, politicians can give spin on

something, because it doesn't necessarily touch people's everyday lives. you remember a time when something like this pandemic touched more people's everyday lives, that crossed party lines, that crossed generations, that crossed geography? it's unbelievable. and so -- and he can't face it with the tools at his disposal, which is the power of persuasion and the desire to bend reality. >> yeah. >> dana bash, jim acosta, thank you. appreciate it, as always. from a medical perspective, let's bring in dr. sanjay gupta, who interviewed dr. fauci today, and dr. richard besser, former acting cdc director under president obama. he's president and ceo of the robert wood johnson foundation. sanjay, the president stood on the podium today with the screens behind him calling him the health care president. he still doesn't have a plan to battle this virus. and again, just saying that it's going to disappear some day, hopefully soon, that's not a

plan. >> no, it's not a plan. and, you know, i think the thing i was really struck by is that there's this tendency to want to hit the home run, right? everyone talks about the vaccine and the magical therapeutic. and everybody wants those sorts of things. most people do, anyway. but there are many things that can be done, should be done now that can make a big difference. and we've sooecheen evidence of well these things work in other places around the world. it may seem silly to talk about social distancing and masking and avoiding large spaces when the other part of the conversation are a vaccine, but these need to be part of the plan. there's so much confusion now, i can tell you personally, making lots of calls to people around the country, they don't know what the plan will be in terms of opening schools, going back to work, will there be testing available? what is the mask policy in places? some have it, some don't. there's a lot of confusion as a result of not having a plan. >> dr. besser, you used to run

the cdc. do you think it is that the president doesn't get it? i'm not sure how anyone doesn't get it at this point. at a certain point, it just becomes intentional you're not getting it. >> well, you know, i think we are in an extremely dangerous situation. as we're moving to try and get children back to where they belong, which is in schools, learning, to be hearing these kinds of mixed messages about where we are and what needs to be done, i was on calls today with the seven-state regional commission that's looking at what efforts can be done in the northeast. and i was on a new jersey call looking at what we can do in our state. these are many states that are doing the right thing in terms of reducing community transmission. but even with that, if there's not the leadership from the top at the federal level, as we start to reopen schools, as we get children back into the classroom, we're going to see disease spread in out of control ways. you can't think about things like school reentry, getting

kids back in the classroom as separate from the measures that have to be done, that are basic, that have been done all around the world, to get this under control, in communities. and that has to start from the top with the president really leading the charge that this is what we need to do. >> and sanjay, when you look at these studies now, the one that we talked about at the top of the program, coming out of a thousand kids who were tested at a center, at a testing center in washington, d.c., you know, a little more than 7% of white kids were positive, some 30% of black kids and i think it was 36.6% of hispanic kids, even when you put out sort of medium incomes, when you factor that in, these inequalities exist, even the fact that, you know, these inequalities that exist in society impact children's lives, from the earliest ages. >> yeah, they really do. and i saw that study and i was,

you know, obviously, you've got to put that in the backdrop of, there's still not enough testing, as well, because when you're getting that sort of positivity rates, that means you probably have way more kids who are actually infected than you even realize. so, that's part of the problem, is if you know that you're testing enough people if you start to see 5% positivity or below. when you're getting that percentage here, it's exactly like you said. first of all, the black and brown america are disproportionately affected by this, as rich besser has talked about for so long. but we also still don't have enough testing, you know, across the board. >> and dr. besser, in terms of testing, when it takes days and days to get results back, you know, and we've -- you know, we've discussed this with others, it does become essentially meaningless, doesn't it? i talked to the admiral, girau about this, who didn't want to say it's meaningless, but if it takes you ten days to get a test

result back, how valuable is that test? >> i wouldn't say it's meaningless, but what it does is it expands the circle of contacts you have to be looking for. so if i get tested today and i don't know for a week that my result is positive and contact tracing starts then, they'll be able to find my contacts at that point, but at that point, it's the contacts of my contacts who are also at risk. and if we're not looking at testing broken down by those demographic factors you were talking about, by race, by ethnicity, by neighborhood, by income, we are going to miss the fact that the resources for testing, the resources for control are not being distributed evenly, they're not being distributed targeting the communities that are getting hit the hardest. and as we move forward, you know, to open schools, we're going to see the same communities and same populations get hit even harder. >> sanjay, you spoke to dr. fauci earlier and we played some of that. i want to play what he said,

specifically on testing, because you brought up the fact that you couldn't get a covid result for one of your patients when you were going to be doing brain surgery on them. you could get all sorts of other tests done, but not a covid test. you had to suit up in ppe, which ate up a lot of valuable ppe that could have been used elsewhere. let's listen to what fauci saying. >> it's unacceptable, period. the gap between the time you get the test and the time you get the result, in some respects, obviates the reason why you did the test. we've got to correct that. the ultimate goal is that you would have a test that you could do and get a result in ten minutes that's sensitive, specific, and, upscaled in the sense that you can do it any place, anywhere. >> i mean, we're six months in on this. when would such a ten-minute test become a reality? >> well, you know, we have been talking about needing the big

breakthroughs in testing for some time. i had a few long conversations about this today with people who are working in this area. and there's probably going to be a couple of what are called emergency use authorizations for ae antigen tests. these antigen tests are different than the genetic tests that we've been talking a lot about. they can be more widely distributed, they're easier to do, they're cheaper. the problem with these tests is they're not as sensitive, typically, than the other type of tests that we've been talking about. one of the strategies that comes up is, look, let's say you have a test that's 80% sensitive or 85% sensitive. it's missing 15% of the people, that's not a good thing, but if you have enough of those tests and you can do them repeatedly, then you start to catch people that you would otherwise miss. it's not a perfect solution, but right now, we simply don't have enough testing, period. so we're probably going to see some of these innovative sort of approaches starting to take place in all sorts of places around the country. >> dr. besser, thank you. appreciate all you're doing. sanjay, as well.

sanjay, stick around. we'll speak with one of the top research officials at novavax. and later, i'll talk with a man who quite literally should be dead right now. he and his wife will be here to discuss how he survived the coronavirus, despite multiple intubations and his heart stopping. he was in the hospital for months. it's an amazing story and a cautionary one, as well. my name is christine payne, i'm an associate here at amazon. step onto the blue line, sir. this device is giving us an accurate temperature check. you're good to go. i have to take care of my coworkers. that's how i am. i have a son, and he said, "one day i'm gonna be like you, i'm gonna help people." you're good to go, ma'am. i hope so. this is my passion. if i can take of everyone who is sick out there, i would do it in a heartbeat.

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report. today's u.s. death toll has topped 1,000 again. right now it's at 1,053. it's the second day in a row we've topped 1,000. that only increases the urgency for a vaccine. the most recent promising result comes from what is now the third u.s. company to release results showing the efficacy of its vaccine. novavax says after two doses of its vaccine, participants developed neutralizing antibodies more than four times on average than people who have recovered from the virus itself. the report has been submitted to a medical journal, it has not yet been reviewed by scientists outside of novavax or it hasn't been published. lots to discuss. dr. gregory glenn and back with us dr. sanjay gupta. dr. glenn, can you walk us through the results of the phase i data and how those results differ from what we've learned about the other two american vaccines that have released their results from phase i trials? >> thank you for your interest and thank you for having me and i think you framed it well. this was a test with 131 subjects. we gave them two doses of our

vaccine. and in the context of respiratory viruses, you can take the actual virus itself and mix it with the antibodies you induce and see whether you can essentially inactivate it. that's called a neutralizing antibody. i think most people in our field believe that that's going to be something that will correlate or could induce protection. and what we tried to do, and of course, it's all blinded, so we didn't know until a couple of days ago when you pushed the button, we didn't know how well it compared to serum from subjects who had been sick. we had a colleague at the baylor college of medicine, he had a number of subjects that had been really quite ill in the er or the icu, and, you know, to our pleasant surprise, the vaccine was making antibodies, neutralizing antibodies, that were about four times higher than what you see in convalescent subjects. and what that means, if you get really ill, i think we're all, in my field, all convinced if

someone gets really ill from a virus infection, they're very likely to be protected. where you wouldn't see protection is if you have a minor illness, you have low neutralizing antibodies, and that's common with flu, rsv. you have lots of exposures to viruss where people have neutralizing antibodies, but they're not at a level of protection. that's why we're so buoyed. we see these very robust antibody responses that we know are functional and could kill off the virus. so that's got us excited and really ready to move on to the next stage of testing. >> sanjay? >> dr. glenn, i wonder if you -- first of all, this is a nano particle vaccine. so i think this is new for a lot of people. i'm curious, has there ever been a nano particle vaccine? and if you could, very briefly, for our audience, explain, how do you make a nano particle vaccine? >> so you know, nano means it's at the scale or the size of a virus. and so what you're trying to do with a vaccine, obviously, is create immunity without ever getting sick.

the immune system is programmed to see the nano size. if it sees a nano particle, it becomes activated and you get these very robust immune responses. there are a few different nano particles. by the way, hepatitis "b" vaccine, which has been -- as you know, has been very successful, very good vaccine, was kind of the first particle vaccine made recommandantly. we have a little bit of a different take on that. these are respiratory viruses. they have a complex mechanism by which they bind to a human cell and basically this protein called the spike protein acts like a syringe to inject the virus genetic material into a host cell, and that takes over and your lung cell now becomes a virus factory and it's very, of course, very destructive to that tissue. so if we can block that, if we can make an antibody through that spike protein. so to do that, we have to make the spike protein almost, you know, exactly like it is in the virus, but we put it into a little particle and that's all in our particles.

it's not living, it's like the syringe, as i said. and if you make antibodies, you're going to block the infection with, you know, with a lot of certainty. that's what we do. that's why it's such a good vaccine. >> of the 106 study subjects that got the vaccine, five developed severe side effects, which i think lasted on average two days or less. have you adjusted future trial phases based on that or adjusted dosing based on that? and what sort of side effects did it have? >> look, you know, it's always important to explain. collect safety and explain it well. so what we're doing in a trial, we're blinded. so in the trial, did your arm hurt? did you feel tired? did your muscles hurt, et cetera. and there are going to be a certain number of people in the placebo group that report many

of these symptoms. and in fact, you know, severe symptoms. so there's a smattering of things, what severe means, these are short-lived, severe outcomes like malaise or, you know, muscle aches, they're transient, and so, you know, i think that's pretty, that's pretty normal, if you look across the whole percentage of subjects, these are one and two, you know, subjects having these kind of events. so that's pretty normal for a vaccine. we've compared our nano particle vaccine, for example, with flu and so it's pretty similar to that, and i think that's not terribly unusual for a vaccine. so, you know, there's no such thing as a free lunch. there's going to be some arm pain in some of these symptoms. and one of the things our vaccine does not do, which complicates a covid vaccine, is we don't induce fever. and some of the other vaccines have some levels of fear, and

that's a hard one, you know, so, we're -- that's, you know, one of the positive things in our safety profile that we saw. >> it's always one of these things, i image, dr. glenn, when you study it in phase i, it's mostly healthy people who are younger, maybe don't have pre-existing conditions, so how much do you worry about those side effects you're just talking to anderson about, when you start to really widen the population of people who are getting this? >> the good news is, you know, and i used to be an army doctor. the biggest babies in the world are the ones that are 18 to 25. when you get old like me now, the symptoms tend to be much -- to be less. okay, people who are older complain of less pain, et cetera. so actually, it goes the other way around. and you're right, we're in a population of 18 to 59 and now we're going to go into older adults. we just have very recent experience -- you know, we also -- we're a flu vaccine company that has a really good

new flu that addresses -- you would understand this, the changes, the antigenic drift that goes on, where you choose a strain one year, it reappears as a new strain in the coming year, and your vaccine isn't relevant. we just unblinded a phase iii pivotal trial in march, showing that we can address that. and in that, we have safety, with our formulation. it's very similar to covid in 65 years and older. so we have a lot of experience with this older group that have comorbidities, et cetera. and our vaccine performed very well there. we met all eight co-primary inpoints. we had a very good result. we've transitioned to covid. we know that's going to be an important population. i think you'll see, you know, the kind of things we're talking about in terms of safety. they'll tone down a little bit in that older population. >> doctor, i've got to go. but just briefly, you have said before, a while ago, i think, that you were looking for as early as december for, you know,

front line responders. is that still possible? >> yeah, i think that's possible. i can't tell you, this is an amazing global collaboration that are focused in a way that it's just really incredible to be a part of it. and that's a goal. to have people set out that goal by the end of the year, maybe we'll be deploying the vaccines and changing all of the curves that we have with us right now in terms of the virus. >> dr. glenn, thanks for all you're doing. appreciate it, sanjay. ahead on "360," the man called the miracle covid survivor. he was on an ventilator, coded once, his leg was amputated, his wife was told he was not expected to survival. he did. how he spent 132 days in the hospital and survived, when we continue. i wanted to tell you about my great-grandmother. she was not able to vote in her lifetime, but i wanted to honor all that she had done to ensure a lasting legacy of education and civic involvement.

i'm very proud to carry on her story.

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with peacock premium included at no additional cost. no strings attached. with the number of coronavirus cases in the u.s. topping 4.8 million and the death toll approaching 158,000, tonight we continue to share stories of survival, and this is incredible. i want you to meet chris roggin. some call him the miracle survivor. he's 29 years old from new jersey, was hospitalized in march. doctors didn't expect chris to survive. chris' wife was planning his funeral. he had been intubated twice, coded once, his heart stopped for four fito five minutes, suffered a blood clot, had to have his leg amputated. his situation very similar to that of broadway actor nick cordero who lost his life, but thankfully, nick rogen is a survivor and survived. he spent more than 132 days in

the hospital, more than four months. he joins me tonight along with his wife, crystal. i'm so glad you are both here, in so many ways, and i'm sure both of you are, as well. chris, you were just released from the hospital yesterday. how are you doing? to be out of the hospital after 132 days. what's that like? >> it's amazing. i'm elated. it felt like there was a point that i was never going to come home, so to have been released yesterday was a success. it was wonderful. >> how much -- how long were you in a coma for? i guess i'm assuming it's a medically induced coma, is that right? how long were you out for? >> so the second stretch, which is the longest, was about 61 days. >> something like that. >> wow. >> yeah. >> and i read that when you woke up, usually people can't even speak when they wake up. i heard that was not the case with you. >> no, my first words were, good morning, to the nurse.

and they were shocked. i bet she was freaked out. >> i didn't know that was going on. i didn't know that wasn't the case normally, and it didn't even feel like it had been 61 days. it felt like it had only been two weeks when i woke up. >> and i understand that when you woke up, you didn't -- nobody -- you didn't know that your leg had been amputated and it wasn't until -- how did you find out? >> so, the surgical team had come in and i didn't know what they were doing, but one of them had asked me, do you feel like there's a leg there, and i said, what do you mean, is there still a leg there? and so, yeah, that was shocking news, but i figured from that point, it had to be serious, to have lost my leg. yep. >> and crystal, i mean, obviously, you're aware of everything happening to chris. were you ever to be with chris

in the hospital? >> not at first, i was able to visit him a couple of times and i also was able to get his parents in see him. at first, they were saying how you don't want to be able to see him, because if you're allowed to come visit, it means he's dying. >> for you, i mean, when someone's in the hospital, it's -- their loved one is in the hospital as much as anybody. i mean, their loved one is going through this in the same way. what's it been like for you, the ups and the downs of this? >> to be honest, it hasn't been great. you know, i would not ever want to relive the last couple of months, but it's all worth it, because he's okay. it's been, literally, we were

taking it day by day, sometimes hour by hour, and it's just how we had to roll. just literally rolling with the punches. >> and you were following crystal, nick cordero's journey, he had a very long battle with the virus, tragically died after months of treatment. in many cases, chris' case was very similar. have doctors been able to -- i mean, is there an explanation for why one person does better and another doesn't? >> no, they have no -- they have no idea how he's doing, as well as he's doing. >> chris, what do you want people to know about the virus? because there's, you may not know, yound you've been there 132 days. there's places where people aren't wearing masks. there's all sorts of different perspectives on this. you have seen this, you've gone through this, you know, as tough as anybody.

what do you want people to know? >> definitely to take it seriously, because when i had gotten sick, i never thought it could be me. back in march, masks still weren't mandatory. new york wasn't under lockdown yet, and i figured, i'm young, there's no way it's going to happen to me. and if it did, it's probably going to be mild. and here we are now, almost four months later, and that wasn't the case. so, you know, it's not a joke, you know, you could get unlucky, you could get lucky, but either way, it's better to be safe than sorry. >> and you're out of the hospital. are you -- is recovery a long process from here on? >> it's still a continuing process, for sure. but it was definitely a blessing and a miracle that i made it through, even after everything my family said i went through. >> and i'm looking at this video of you being wheeled out of the hospital and they're all applauding and cheering for you. what a feeling that must have been. >> yeah, it was -- i had heard

about it being done for other covid patients, but to go through it myself was definitely a unique experience. and again, you know, just made it, just made it more serious, like, that so many people have died from this virus. and it's a thing to celebrate when people do recover. >> and crystal, you give hope to a lot of people out there who, someone tonight might be watching this, whose loved one is in the hospital somewhere in this country or somewhere around the world and you give them hope. and if you can make it out after 132 days, that is -- that's just inspiring for all of us. i'm so happy you're home and i wish you the best in the road ahead. >> thank you, anderson. >> all right. i would say stay strong, but you don't need me to tell you that. you're way stronger than i'll ever be. so, all right, well, i wish you continued health. and i hope to see you again. up next, we're going to go

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to solve the problems we know are coming. authorities in beirut say they're launching an investigation into that explosion that rocked the city yesterday. more than a hundred people are now confirmed dead and as many as 5,000 injured. drone footage shows major sections now look like

moonscape. it's extraordinary the effects of this blast. president trump today continued to indicate the blast might have been intentional. he said, quote, perhaps it was an attack. just speculating. his own defense secretary, mark esper, said he felt the incident was an accident. cnn senior international correspondent ben wedeman has the latest from beirut tonight. >> reporter: george federones has come with a friend to see what they can salvage from the remains of his parent's apartment, which looked directly on to beirut's port. tuesday's blast turned it into a moonscape, a panorama of utter destruction. dried blood marks the spot where his mother was resting in bed when the explosion sent a wall slamming on top of her. she's still in hospital. this was his parent's retirement home. >> this is their life. everything they did here. look what happened. >> reporter: given the damage, they probably will never be able

to move back. many neighbors were badly injured. others killed. in addition to the dead and the wounded, many, many people have lost their homes. according to the governor of beirut, more than 300,000 people in the city have been made homeless. officials believe the blast emanated from a warehouse filled with 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate, sitting there under lax security for six years. the government has promised a quick, transparent investigation, yet going back decades, lebanon has witnessed a series of high-profile assassinations and rarely, if ever, has the truth emerged. >> this accident here, this crisis, for 20 years, are going to talk about. the investigation is never going to end. no conclusion, no results. >> reporter: and no confidence among many here that the truth

will ever be known. >> it's so extraordinary, ben. and i mean, i know you felt the blast yourself in the bureoroug. i can't believe you said more than 320,000 people are homeless because of this. how are search and recovery efforts going? >> reporter: they're pretty much over at this point, in terms of looking for people who may be alive under the rubble. at this point, what we saw today were hundreds, if not thousands of people, mostly young people, who flokd to tcked to the area the port to help people who needed to remove their belongings from their damaged homes, to clean the streets, to help shop owners sort things out. what was remarkable was that there wasn't much in the way of government involvement. this was very much a community effort and i think you may

recall, anderson, when you were covering the aftermath of the assassination of former prime minister rafael halili in february of 2015, how there is this community spirit that has -- how there is this community spirit that is very much alive in lebanon despite decades of war and tumult and troubles for this country. but that spirit is still very much in evidence despite it all. >> that is a hopeful thing. it's a remarkable city. you know better than anybody, all that that city has been through for decades, it's extraordinary that they now have to deal with this. to see people coming out of it is amazing. up next, president trump's latest attack in nevada. when you shop with wayfair, you spend less

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more breaking news, president trump's remarks coming in today's white house briefing. tonight arizona's republican governor, now he supports arizona's mail-in ballot plans but not nevada with a democratic governor. the president's concerns had no basis in fact. all this coming after the trump campaign filed a lawsuit against the nevada commission. back with me, dana bash and kaitlyn kohlens. he attacks the mail-in voting in nevada, it won't work because pure, basic, beautiful intelligence. i have no idea what that means. with republican governors in florida, elsewhere, it's fine. could it be any more just nakedly political? >> no, it couldn't. it really is, in florida and in

arizona, there are republican governors. that means there are republicans who he can trust to better control the situation. whatever that means. now, in nevada, there is a difference, to be fair. in how they have crafted their new law. i know you talked to the governor last night. anybody who's a registered voter will get a ballot. that is what the president in the white house now say they're complaining about in order to differentiate between that state which is a very important swing state and two others. also important. but are run by governors. >> kaitlyn, the president has already used the white house for political surprises. attacking vice president biden from the podium. he said today he may give his convention speech from the white house. mark meadows tried to differentiate the president giving the speech from the oval

office or the residence or the west wing. i mean, the white house is the white house, no matter what wing it's in? >> and if you're doing it from the south lawn of the white house, where you very often see the president hold events for the white house. that doesn't help you make your distinction. it doesn't mean the president is going to be holding the speech from his bedroom in the white house. which is taxpayer funded. you saw the explanation after the president floated the idea, he seemed to say he may get criticism over it, and he did. john thune the second senate republican said he thought it would be illegal if the president did that, and you saw john cornyn of texas raise questions about the legality of the president doing that. several others raising questions of the optics and doing that on federal property, maybe the most major political speech. mark meadows is trying to say, well, if you're over on the east wing, it's not as political as if you did it in the oval office, which no one had really floated the oval office.

the idea is to do it on the south lawn. what it shows you is, they run out of venues, they've been thinking of for the president to give this speech. they want it to feel convention style, it seems they're not really sure where else they can hold it. >> there's a cnn film on the trail. it follows a number of reporters, embeds on the campaign trail as they cover the 2020 presidential elections. what do we expect to see? >> you expect to see a bunch of the women that we work with, who have been out on the trail, particularly the younger women who are embedded and covers the trump campaign in action. anderson, you know, i say this in a very complimentary ray much you're a road rat like we are, you love to be out there, you know how it feels and how different it is and important it is to be out. unfortunately the pandemic has

changed everything. but how important it is to be with the voters, with the candidates and it really does a fantastic job of showing not just the people we see on the air like myself and kaitlyn, but the embeds who are eating, sleeping, breathing the campaign, sometimes on four planes a day. >> and often eating very poorly from my memory. >> eating very poorly. >> yes, it's amazing to see -- i mean, kaitlyn, and folks out there, especially really young -- the youngsters, i would just -- the grind of it is extraordinary, i really look forward to this, on the trail debuts thursday on hbo max. we look forward to that. as you just heard, they are several of the correspondents in on the trail, inside the 2020 primaries, follows them as they report on the 2020 presidential primary. another programming note, don't miss full circle, gives us

a chance to dig into in depth topics. streaming monday, tuesday and fridays at cnn.com/full circle. you can watch it there or any time on the cnn app or on demand. the news continues right now, i want to hand things over to chris for cuomo prime time. >> i am chris cuomo, welcome to prime time. the president has revealed to us his method for getting rid of the pandemic. there's no need for testing, except to test our ability to simply wish it away. >> it's going away. no, it will go away, like things go away, absolutely. there's no question in my mind. it will go away. >> tell the families of the dead. the answer is, as he likes to say, it is what it is. this answer. pathetic and painfully indicative of why we are stuck with all these cases. he really wants you to believe things are getting better.

without having