they've also heard of people trying to make their own hand sanitizer at home. they say that is exceedingly dangerous, especially trying to mix ethyl alcohol, which they say can cause contact burns and start fires. >> cnn's brian todd, thank you for that. i'm jim acosta. thank you very much for watching. "erin burnett outfront" starts right now. "outfront" next, the president with a straight face accusing joe biden of ignoring science and playing politics with coronavirus. adding fuel to a new and unfounded birther theory about kamala harris. plus, trump says it out loud. he's opposing funding the postal service because he does not want to expand mail-in voting. colorado secretary of state says it's voter suppression. she's "outfront." and the sharpest warning from the director of the cdc as the virus could be as deadly as the 1918 flu pandemic, a pandemic which killed 50 million people around the world a century ago.

good eveningment i'm erin burnett tonight. playing politics with coronavirus. the president accusing joe biden of doing exactly what he's been doing, playing politics with the deadly pandemic. >> to joe, i would say stop playing politics with the virus, too serious. partisan politics has no place here. it's a shameful situation for anybody to try and score political points while we're working to save lives and defeat the pandemic. >> well, the president has been playing politics with the virus. remember it was just a few days ago that president trump actually tied a vaccine to his election chances. >> i'm rushing it. i am. i'm pushing everybody. if you had another president other than me, show wouldn't be talking vaccines for two years. >> what's the earliest we could see a vaccine? >> sooner than the end of the year. could be much sooner. >> sooner than november 3rd? >> oh, i think -- i think in

some cases, yes, possibly before, but right around that time. >> the president also suggesting biden is trying to score political points when it comes to masks, after the former vice president called for governors to mandate masks for the next three months. keep in mind, this is a president who has politicized masks since the very beginning, right? he resisted and is still resisting wearing one, and now this is what he's saying tonight. >> we have urged americans to wear masks. i emphasized this is a patriotic thing to do. maybe they're great, and maybe they're just good. maybe they're not so good. but frankly, what do you have to lose? you have nothing to lose. >> maybe great, maybe not good. you know what? acting as if, like, who knows, maybe, what do you have to lose? look, about the only thing every single top expert says the best thing we can do to stop the

virus, save lives and get the economy back is wearing a mask. it is the only thing his own experts have said is as good as a vaccine, which he went on to say to geraldo, wouldn't hurt if he had one by election day. what do you have to lose? your health? your economy? your life? since the cdc recommended everyone wear masks back on april 3rd, we have only seen president trump wear one in public fewer than a handful of times. he's even mocked joe biden for wearing one, retweeting this tweet. remember this? this might help explain why trump doesn't like to wear masks in public. biden today. yeah. trump retweeted that. and what may have been the most revisionist history moment of the day, the president claimed that he is actually the one listening to the scientists. >> joe doesn't know too much. unlike the biden approach, our approach is guided by science. >> wow. okay. trump's approach, his personal

approach to this as leader of the united states has not been guided by science. his approach has been to attack the experts, to undermine his own experts at pretty much every single time he could. >> dr. fauci's a nice man but he's made a lot of mistakes. >> and he's gone on again and again and again, right? remember when he called deborah birx pathetic? the fact of the matter is when trump says stop playing politics with the virus and listen to the experts, the person he is giving advice to should be himself. kaitlan collins is life "outfront" the white house tonight. this was a defensive president trump at the podium tonight. >> reporter: yeah, and it's not normal for the president to come out into the briefing room and go after his opponent with the election just 100 days away but that's what the president did. he was reading from prepared remarks. these spontaneouses about coronavirus were not in response to questions from reporters. this is what the president came out and did. along with his updates on

vaccines and what else they're doing, he went after joe biden and senator kamala harris. that was after yesterday they attacked the president for his response to covid-19, saying it was a failure from the start because he didn't take it seriously and wasn't listening to the experts. and basically what you heard him accuse biden and harris of doing today is what he's been accused of doing, like you pointed out, not listening to the experts sh not taking it seriously, and playing politics be twith the science on all this. he ended the briefing after he was asked by a reporter about this completely discredited op-ed claiming basically that senator kamala harris is not eligible legally to be the vice president of the united states because her parents are immigrants. erin, the president did not take the opportunity to knock this down. instead, he said, quote, i heard today she doesn't meet the requirements. he said he had no idea if it's true. it's not true. it's ridiculous to float that it

is true. she was born in california in 1964. she is american. she is legally eligible to be the vice president of the united states. it's notable he did not take the opportunity today to say no that op-ed is ridiculous, it's not true. instead he said he wasn't sure whether or not it was. >> which is of course ridiculous. he is sure. i want to go to jeff zeleny now covering the biden campaign. jeff, you have this now. and i wonder if they were even expecting this, the president is now starting a birther campaign on kamala harris. what do you think the campaign response to that will be? >> well, look, i mean the law is clear that, as kaitlan said, senator harris was born in california in 1964. it matters not that her parents were immigrants. this is something that's going to get a lot of attention. but it just simply is not a

fact. it's very reminiscent of the obama situation, the birtherism. but it just is not the fact of the matter. but the what the biden campaign was doing today, there's no question this is a pandemic election. this is a serious matter. this is not some abstract issue in washington. this is affecting every single family and every life out there. so, what joe biden was trying to say today was trying to frame the choice. and it was a referendum on the president. they were trying to make the distinction here that they are listening to the science. and when joe biden came out and said that he, if he was president, he would put a mask order in, urge governors for the next three months to put a mask order in, that's the conversation he wants to have with this white house, not whether senator harris is eligible to be president or not. that's ridiculous. >> thank you very much. i want to go to david

axelrod who was senior adviser to president obama and cnn political correspondent abby phillip and dr. jonathan reiner who advised the white house under president george w. bush and the medical team. there's a lot to talk about here. david, i want to talk about this birtherism with you because you were there through all of this when this happened for barack obama. i want to start though first with what the president tried to say today, which was that he accused joe biden of playing politics when it comes to coronavirus after biden said he wanted to have a national mask mandate. >> yeah, you know, this issue is what's dragging the president down. and he knows this. i mean, there was a fox news poll today that showed biden with a 14-point edge in terms of the person who people feel most confident in dealing with the coronavirus. and so, you know, the problem for the president from the

beginning, erin, is you cannot spin a pandemic. you can spin lots of things. but the entire country is living this experience. and he has tried to down play this and give himself high grades throughout what has been an abject failure on the part of the federal government. and now, you know, he is using those typical techniques of kind of accusing the opponent of doing what he has done. i just don't think it's an effective tool here. and the irony of the whole thing, and i've said this before. if he had behaved like the governors had behaved, many of the governors, and followed the signs from the begin, he would be in a stronger position now. last point i would make about the fox news poll, when people ask who the strongest leader was, biden was even, 47-47. trump was minus 10, 44-54, that for a president who prides himself on strength is a real wound. and a lot of it flows from the way he's handled this coronavirus. >> abby, when he says that he

follows the science, i mean, the man knows, right, that we can pull every sound bite of his own team saying until they're blue in the face that hydroxychloroquine, that it is not ec are mended, fda pulls it, he still says it, he suggests injecting bleach, he calls deborah birx pathetic, says dr. fauci is wrong. the sound bites keep coming. he criticizes them again and again and again. but he still thinks people will listen to him when he says he listens to the science. >> yeah, and that doesn't even include the hydroxychloroquine obsession, which still doesn't make a whole lot of sense and defies everything that the science says about that issue. but, erin, it reminds me of in the 2016 campaign when then donald trump, candidate trump, was accused of being a puppet by hillary clinton, and he comes back at her and says, no you're

a puppet. he just takes attacks coming his way and lobs them right back at his opponents, even if it doesn't line up with the facts or the reality that we see. as david said, this is not something that the president can just talk his way out of, this sort of positive thinking that he subscribes to is not applicable here because people are living this pandemic in some of the most horrible ways. i mean, people are going to food banks for the first time. they are dealing with the loss of loved ones. and the president continues to be tone deaf to that reality. and as long as that's the case, you're going to see as the polls show many americans saying the country is headed in the wrong direction. and the issue of the pandemic is the single most important issue to them, far and away more important than the economy, which even more americans is the huge deal right now as well. >> and we see the lines at food banks. they have to go up in helicopters to show how long

they are in cities like dallas and across this country. dr. reiner, senator harris, they clearly, she and joe biden, saying they're with science is the right political message. but it's also how they're guiding their policy. here's how she put it. >> these are some of the brightest minds, not only in our country but internationally. and as the vice president has been saying since the beginning of this pandemic, it should be professionals that are leading policy in our country to address this lethal pandemic. >> so, dr. reiner, the president, that infamous mask of joe biden with his mask and glasses on. now you have joe biden saying he wants a three-month national mask mandate. so, from a policy perspective, what's your evaluation of that?

three month mandatory from the white house mask mandate? >> it would help tremendously. on our current trajectory, right around labor day, we'll have 200,000 americans dead. actually there are probably already 200,000 americans dead if you look at the cdc excess mortality data. the way to get off that track is to do something different. and what haven't we done? we haven't had a universal mask mandate. historians will argue for a long time about why this president refused to embrace this. maybe he's just incapable of acknowledging that he made a mistake. but unless we do that, right around labor day we'll have 200,000 americans dead and more to come. you know, one of the things that struck me from the briefing today is they mentioned the delivery of these rapid assays to nursing homes which was a tacit acknowledgment of maybe the most heinous failure we've

had in this whole pandemic response which was failure to protect our most vulnerable. only 1% of americans live in nursing facilities, but they account for 43 bkt of our covid deaths, over 65,000 deaths. about 350,000 americans in nursing homes and long-term care facilities have been infected. that's more than every european union nation with the exception maybe of spain. it's been a heartbreaking failure. >> david, i want to ask you as the president goes on in these press conferences where he hits on everything, now it's these personal attacks, primarily directed at senator harris whether it's she's nasty or mean. but tonight it was frankly one that -- it's amazing on many levels -- questions her because of what she looks like. it's questioning and saying that somehow immigrants are bad. and this is the president trump suggesting that kamala harris is

ineligible to be president of the united states. this was a claim retweeted by a lawyer for the trump campaign. let me play the exchange in the briefing room for you, david. >> whether or not kamala harris is eligible or meets the legal requirements to run as vice president? >> so, i just heard that. i heard it today that she doesn't meet the requirements. and by the way the lawyer that wrote that piece is a very highly qualified, highly talented lawyer. i would have assumed the democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice president. but that's very serious. they're saying she doesn't qualify because she wasn't born in this country. >> so, david, let's just be clear. she was born in california. where your parents are is ir very well rant. i don't know any person of any level of any kind of professionalism in the legal

field who would say because your parents weren't born here, that's crazy. this is a conspiracy theory he is obviously giving oxygen to on purpose. >> look, let's kind of put it in the context of donald trump's politics. he is white cultural -- he's a white identity politician. he is a cultural warrior. he likes to separate people by race. i mean, he thrives on that. and, you know, he tried to do that to president obama. he's trying to do that to senator harris. the idea that she's alien, she's the other, she's not really american. that's fundamental of donald trump's politics. it's also the politics that many americans are ejecting. it's one of the reasons why the suburbs have turned so sharply against him, and particularly suburban women. his handling. he handled the aftermath of the george floyd murder in the same way, looking to divide rather than unite the country.

and i think it really hurt him. i think his handling of race issues, in this fox news poll, he had terrible marks on this as compared to biden. i don't think this is a productive route for him, but in his mind this is what enlivens his base, this is what enrages them. and he's going to go at it. i think it's to his detriment but i don't think he'll stop. >> it's a barely coded racial point. >> it's not coded at all. i also think republicans last time around could -- by the time donald trump became the nominee and became president, they could say, well, he sort of walked back his birtherism with barack obama. the question for republicans right now is where do they stand on this issue? he is the president of the united states doing the -- some people are saying when it comes to the issue of whether or not kamala harris is eligible to be vice president. it is reprehensible and

republicans ought to be held to account about whether or not this is acceptable in politics. it's pattern that he has demonstrated against the first black president, against ted cruz, hispanic-american man who ran for president in the republican party. and now against kamala harris. and i don't think it was one of those things that republicans on capitol hill can say, oh, i didn't hear about it. it has to be responded to and denounced because it's coming from the president. it's coming from inside of his campaign. and it's part of his strategy to play to racism in this country. >> thank you all three very much. i appreciate it. next the president admits why he's really withholding funding from the postal service. he said it. >> if we don't make a deal, that means they don't get the money. that means they can't have universal mail in voting. they just can't have it. >> plus trump's coronavirus testings are questioning why experts say millions of more

tests are needed chlt this as the cdc director gives a dire warnings for the months that are starting now. and as deadly as the 1918 pandemic was, 50 million people were killed around the world a century ago, that's one researcher is saying this pandemic is. he's my guest. it's time for the biggest sale of the year on the sleep number 360 smart bed. you can adjust your comfort on both sides... your sleep number setting. can it help me fall asleep faster? yes, by gently warming your feet. but can it help keep me asleep? absolutely, it intelligently senses your movements and automatically adjusts to keep you both effortlessly comfortable. will it help me keep up with mom? you got this. so you can really promise better sleep? not promise... prove. and now, all beds are on sale. save 50% on the sleep number 360 limited edition smart bed. plus 0% interest for 36 months on all smart beds. ends monday. to learn more, go to sleepnumber.com.

introducing ore-ida potato pay. where ore-ida golden crinkles are your crispy currency to pay for bites of this... ...with this. when kids won't eat dinner, potato pay them to. ore-ida. win at mealtime.

all otc pain relievers including volthave one thing in common none are proven stronger or more effective against pain than salonpas patch large there's surprising power in this patch salonpas dependable, powerful relief. hisamitsu. try wayf♪ r. you got this! ♪ perfect. -you're welcome. i love it. how'd you do all this? told ya! wayfair. let's talk dining tables. yes! blow it up. ♪ wayfair you've got just what i need ♪

. breaking news. president trump doubling down on his opposition to giving $25 billion in needed funding to the u.s. postal service in order to block expanded mail-in voting for november's election because he believes it will benefit democrats. >> the post office work so it take the millions and millions of ballots, and you said that would be fraudulent. >> i said it will end up being fraudulent. if you look at what's happened over the last few weeks, just look at the few instans where this has happened. it's turned out to be fraudulent. we have to have an honest election. if it's not going to be an honest election, i guess people have to sit down and think really long and hard about it. >> this, as the federal judge gives the trump campaign one day to produce any evidence of vote by mail fraud in pennsylvania, something the trump campaign claims exists. kristen holmes is "outfront."

>> reporter: president trump admitting he's opposed to funding for the postal service for political reasons. >> they want 3 1/2 billion dollars for something that will turn out to be fraudulent, that's election money basically. now, they need that money how the post office works so they can take these millions and millions of ballots. that means you can't have universal mail-in votes because they're not equipped to have it. >> fuelling outrage over the trump administration's attempts to mettle in the election. >> with more people than ever expected to vote by mail in an election held in the middle of a pandemic, president trump has spent months making false claims about widespread fraud. >> this is a thing that will be a disaster like never before. >> meanwhile, both democrats and republicans raising concerns over changes made to the agency. the trump fund-raiser an ally,

including shake ups in leadership and cost cuts that some say slows delivery. >> now is not the time to be cutting back services. >> reporter: all this as postal works across the country are sounding alarms this week over the removal of mail processing machines from postal facilities. dock yaumts obtained by cnn outline the plan to remove the machines. while a spokesperson for the service describes the removal as a cost saving measure, postal union leaders warn that something like this months before the election could cause delays. in a statement, the postal service saying it, quote, routinely moves equipment around its network as necessary to match changing volume. >> i don't understand why they were taking out. i heard someone report they might have been taken out to use for spare parts, made little sense to me. >> new revelations over the postal service using expensive

first class mail to make sure ballots are prioritized. the influx of mail in voting causing some states already financial unstable to balk at the cost. now democrats are asking for a new usps inspect inspector gene inspection. new financial disclosures obtained by cnn show he did not divest millions in stock from his former company, a current postal service contractor. and he holds stock options in a major usps customer, amazon. the posting service says he has followed all the ethics requirements. >> just to recap here. on one hand you have a president who is openly undermining the system and on the other you have democratic and republican lawmakers, you have postal service workers, you have state officials who are all sounding alarms not just about the administration's actions but about the state of the postal

service. and we are just months from a critical election in which the postal service will have utmost importance. and we are talking about election integrity here, and it's just not clear if this will be able to be sorted out before november, before people really need to have it sorted out so we can get those election results. >> all right, thank you very much, kristen. and "outfront" now, the colorado secretary of state jena griswold. i appreciate your time. after president trump made his comments this morning, you tweeted this is voter suppression, plain and simple. tell me why. >> well, hi, erin. thank you for having me on. this is just such an important conversation, so thank you for covering it. the president clearly stated that he's trying to defund the post office to stop mail ballots. and it's voter suppression because mail ballots are the best way to vote during a pandemic. to force americans into the choice of risking their lives to cast a ballot say measure to

decrease turnout in november. we should all be very alarmed at where the president is going. >> okay. so, when you say that, the president, you know, he was confronted with the point you're making at that press conference. he says, no, no, no, he wants people to vote. he's not suppressing anybody. here's how he answered the question. >> i'm not saying anything wrong with voting. i want them to vote. but that would mean that they would have to go to a voting booth like they used to and vote. >> what if they don't feel safe voting in person. >> they're going to have to feel safe and they will be safe and we will make sure they're safe and we're not going to have to spend $3.5 billion to do it. >> what do you say to the president, secretary griswold? >> i would say to him and with all your viewers that my mom is a nurse, and she's been saving people's lives on a covid unit. and vote by mail is like wearing a mask. it's the way we can save

americans' lives. americans shouldn't have to choose between risking their life and casting a ballot. we have to look towards wisconsin's election. so, it's just not realistic to say that every american should go to a polling center. and also i just think it is so reprehensible that the president is willing to risk american lives to try to shift the power in this election. >> so, president trump, as you know, made a point of saying mail-in ballots are not going to be accurate. there's going to be corruption. there's going to be fraud again and again and again. here he is. >> voting by mail is wrought with fraud and abuse and people don't get their ballots. when you do all mail-in voting ballots, you're asking for fraud. people steal them out of mailboxes. people print them and then they sign them and they give them in.

these mail-in ballots where they send millions of them all over the kuhn thicountry, it's going rigged election. >> all right, so every voter in your state is sent a ballot by mail. have you seen anything -- anything at all -- that would back up any concern about mail-in ballots being rigged, being corrupt? >> president trump is lying about vote by mail. he is lying about mail ballots. colorado has a very clean history of running great elections with vote by mail. we have safeguards in place to make sure we would catch any type of double voting including signature verification, rules about ballot collection and a lot of other safeguards. but what is true is that there's over-160 american who is have died from covid-19. it's thousands of times more likely for an american to pass away because of the coronavirus than any type of fraud. and i think the president would do himself and the nation a lot

of benefit by focusing on the crisis at hand, that's covid-19, and leave it to me and folks who actually understand elections to make sure that we're setting up the election in the right way during a pandemic. >> so, what do you do then if the usps does not get the funding? if he blocks that funding, then what do you do? does that then put the sanctity of the election in question if it doesn't get that funding? >> well, colorado's election model has built in contingencies. we send out ballots three weeks before election day. and there's hundreds of mail ballot dropboxs across the state. and the majority of coloradans take their ballot to a dropbox. what i've been doing is increasing the number of dropboxs. we added 91 last year and i announced funding for an additional 100 this year. those are some of the measures that states can do. i will tell you the president is going to all links to try to

suppress the vote. the rnc is suing in pennsylvania about dropboxs. it doesn't matter what you do, they are coming with a lawsuit and lies to try to suppress turnout in november. >> thank you very much. i appreciate your time. >> thank you. and next, testing everyone and frequently creates a false sense of security? well, that's what a member of the president's coronavirus task force is saying tonight. we've been told it's the only way to open the economy. dr. sanjay gupta is going to weigh in with facts. the coronavirus death toll could rival that of the 1918 pandemic. the lead doctor on that study is "outfront" in just a moment. ter. when their growing family meant growing expenses, our agents helped make saving on insurance easy usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. usaa

now there's skyrizi. 3 out of 4 people achieved 90% clearer skin at 4 months after just 2 doses. skyrizi may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, such as fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches, or coughs. or if you plan to or recently received a vaccine. ♪ nothing is everything. ask your dermatologist about skyrizi. but some can't do it alone. they need help to stay home... ...and stay safe. they need us and we need you. home instead. apply today. home instead. ♪ take the good, with the bad ♪ live the life you want to have ♪ ♪ send it off, with a bang

♪ ♪ ♪ whistling [ indistinguishable muffled words ] pre-order now and get up to $150 samsung credit. webut you can't lose sight of your own well-being especially if you have a serious chronic medical condition. at aetna, we're always here to help you focus on your health. because it's always time for care. can match the power of energizer. because energizer ultimate lithium is the longest lasting aa battery in the world. [confetti cannon popping] energizer. backed by science. matched by no one.

you say the customers maklet's talk data.s. only xfinity mobile lets you switch up your wireless data whenever. i accept! 5g, everybody's talking about it.

how do i get it? everyone gets 5g with our new data options at no extra cost. -that's good. next item: corner offices for everyone. just have to make more corners in this building. chad. your wireless. your rules. only with xfinity mobile. now that's simple, easy, awesome. switch and save up to $400 a year on your wireless bill. plus, get $400 off when you pre-order the new samsung galaxy note20 ultra 5g. tonight, coronavirus deaths rising. now nearly 167,000 in the united states. yesterday's death toll, 1,499. it is the highest single day toll since may. tonight the director of the cdc warns the next few months could be worse. >> this is the greatest public health crisis this nation in a century that we were underprepared. i'm asking you to do four simple things. wear a mask, social distance,

wash your hands and be smart about crowds. if we don't do that, as i said back last april, this could be the worst fall from a public health perspective we've ever had. >> we've ever had. look, it's alarming, and it completely contradicts what the president has been saying, which of course is that the virus will go away. there's no evidence of that, and yet, this was the message from trump's new testing czar today. >> you beat the virus by smart policies supplemented by strategic testing. you do not beat the virus by shotgun testing everyone all the time. not only do not we not recommend this strategy of testing everyone on a frequent basis, i think it could instl a false sense of security. >> dr. sanjay gupta is "outfront." sanjay, what's your response sots? this goes against what testing experts like ashish jha have

been saying for months which is that we need to be doing ten of millions of tests a day. this is like flying directly the opposite of what we've been hearing from experts. >> yeah, it's flying in the complete opposite direction. it's also at odds with what much of the world that has had success with combatting this virus has been doing. their focus has been on testing. i've got to say i've had a lot of conversations with the admiral. we talk about testing quite a bit both on and off the record. you know, sadly, i think that this is just basically trying to justify what is unquestionably an abysmal failure when it comes to testing in this country, now saying we don't need that much testing and we should only be testing symptomatic people anyway. come on, i think everybody in the country knows at this point that a significant amount of spread from this particular virus comes from people who are asymptomatic. 40% of the spread probably comes from people who are asymptomatic.

it's up to 50% if you include people who are pre-symptomatic. they don't have symptoms yet. point is there's a lot of people carrying this virus who don't know it and they're not getting tested. we've been crushed by those people. symptomatic people, if you're really sick, you should stay home anyways, radio igt? this is a question of finding those people out there who are the silent carriers. clearly for the admiral that is not a priority. that's a mistake. let me show you new york. i don't know if i have the graphs quickly. what happened in new york in terms of bringing the numbers down was almost in direct relation to the amount of testing as the testing went up, the numbers went down. they weren't just doing symptomatic people. they were starting to do surveillance testing. so, this is a major point, erin. maybe one of the most crept ral points of this entire pandemic. and the fact that the admiral is saying we don't need to be testing that much i think is completely the wrong headed strategy from a public health perspective and based on what the science shows. >> it's pretty clear.

if you could have tests every day before you went to school or went to work, people could go to school or go to work whereas now you're keeping them out because we don't know who has it or who could infect the vulnerable. it defies common sense. he did say something today though about cases. he said that the decrease we've seen is real, and on this front cases are down 6% compared to this time last week. i know that experts like yourself, sanjay, like to look at the seven day rolling average. he also noted that hospitalizations are down. dr. fauci though today was very clear saying that, you know, he was saying we're not anywhere near out of the woods. here's how he put it. >> when you look at other parts of the country, this is the thing that's disturbing to me, is that we're starting to see the inkling of the upticks in the percent of the tests that are positive, which we know now from sad past experience that that's a predictor that you're going to have more surges. >> so, yeah, cases are down,

but, you know, cases went down after the surge in new york. and then they went up higher than we had ever seen when you had florida and tex. now down a little bit. should we be focusing on that like the admiral says or looking at the fact it's about to surge in other places like fauci's saying? >> clearly, we have real time historic data now within our own country. when you have positivity rates going up, we're not doing enough testing still. is, we're not even -- i guess the real question is this. how much virus is out in our country right now. how many people are infected? admiral gerard says numbers are going down. what i'm saying based on the positivity rates going up is we have no idea. all we can say for sure is we're missing lots and lots of people out there who right now are watching your program who have the virus and don't know it. that's the fundamental problem. and they can still spread the virus. >> right to people who of course can get very sick and people who could die.

thank you very much, dr. sanjay gupta. next what the 1918 pandemic tells us about today. a new study out with sobering details about the number of deaths as dr. redfield of the cdc says this could be the worst fall in american history from the pandemic. and the people who shape the views and values kamala harris carries with her now. who was she? ta-da! did you know liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need? i should get a quote. do it. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ ior anything i want to buy isk going to be on rakuten. rakuten is easy to use, free to sign up and it's in over 3,000 stores. i buy a lot of makeup. shampoo, conditioner.

books, food. travel. shoes. stuff for my backyard. anything from clothes to electronics. workout gear. i even recently got cash back on domain hosting. you can buy tires. to me, rakuten is a great way to get cash back on anything you buy. rack it up with rakuten, sign up today to get cash back on everything you buy. to give you the protein you need with less of the sugar you don't. [grunting noise] i'll take that. woohoo! 30 grams of protein and 1 gram of sugar.

ensure max protein. with nutrients to support immune health.

tonight, kanz kanz city missouri already extending its state of emergency and mask mandate into next year, one of the first cities to take this drastic step. comes after the u.s. reports its highest number of deaths in a single day since may. martin savidge is "outfront." >> reporter: in the past week the average daily number of new coronavirus cases dropped slightly, but americans are still dying at a rate of more than 1,000 people a day. wednesday the deadliest day of the summer so far with close to 1,500 deaths, a number not seen since may. it's not the only worrisome news. a new study finds the number of deaths in new york city in the early phase of the covid-19 pandemic comparable to the

deaths in the city during the 1918 pandemic when it was at its worst. the 1918 pandemic is believed to have killed 50 million people worldwide. the comparison demonstrates how serious the coronavirus pandemic really is. >> for goodness sakes, we are living, all of us, in a historic pandemic. we've never had anything like this for the last 102 years, since the pandemic of 1918. >> but not everyone sees it that way. tuesday, marion county flarks fla, saw its deadliest day of the pandemic so far. that same day, the local sheriff issued a mandate banning masks, also banning his deputies. >> my thoughts on that is that it's totally moronic. >> also in florida, one day after the barton county school district reopened for in person learning, an entire elementary school was placed in quarantine

after symptoms. that same day president trump gave florida's commissioner a shout out of praise. nationally more than 2,000 teachers, students and staff across have five states have been quarantined after 230 positive coronavirus cases have been reported. schools aren't the only thing reopening. so are movie theaters. anc, the world's largest movie theater chain saying it's reopening more than 100 u.s. theaters august 20th. the company says an opening day ticket will cost you 15 cents. they will require masks and reduce seating. many businesses have been relying on temperature checks as a safety precaution. but dr. anthony fauci today discounted their effectiveness. >> we have found at the nih that it is much, much better to just question people. >> even as he continues to speak out about the seriousness of this pandemic, dr. anthony fauci today also said that people do

have to sort of establish some kind of normalcy in their life. by that he doesn't mean go back to pre-covid living. he means that you have to accept all the safety precautions and medical advice. but to get out there, he encourages people spend more time outdoors. if you can't do that, open a window whether it's in your room or in your car because he says airflow is also an important way to combat the coronavirus. erin. >> all right, martin. thank you. as you heard in martin's piece, there is a new study out today which finds the coronavirus death toll could be as great as the 1918 flu pandemic. that pandemic, of course, the deadliest in recent history. a third of the world's population was infected and they estimate 50 million people were killed over two years. "outfront" now, dr. jeremy faust, leading researcher on that study. so, dr. faust, this is a really sobering conclusion because we've tended to look at 1918 as a percentage of population and

say well, this won't be anywhere close to that. but you've looked at the numbers and the first two months here in new york city. you found the relative increase in deaths was so tell me, you know, what you saw and how you get to this very sobering possible conclusion? >> thank you for having me. the point of this research that we did is to really try to context yu contextualize what it is we're living through. and the early outbreak in new york, covid-19 appears to have been killing at a rate of 70% as bad as 1918 h1n1. and we have leapfrogged. it was more dangerous to live in april in new york in 2020 than to live in 1915, just a hundred years ago. so it's amazing that we are living with the death count that

rivals what was common 100 years ago. i think people don't realize that. >> so why is that? you look at this and say 1918 was an h1n1 flu, that could never happen now because of the things we can do now that we couldn't do then. i mean, how is this possible? >> it's really humbling. we humans live in a diverse world. there are viruss that are very strong. and this one is proving to be a formidable foe. and we need to acknowledge that immediately. because even as you say with our technology, we're having a lot of trouble keeping up with it. if we didn't have all the things you said, the numbers of the dead would be higher. so all we know is that even with our technology, we're -- new york experienced something 70% as bad and it's more of a shock to our system because we're used to less death at baseline.

>> because of all the technology and the preventative care and everything. the university of washington model, that influential model that gets used a lot, they're projecting the death toll would reach 300,000 americans by december 1. when you look at the 1918 flu pandemic, it came in three different waves over two years. everyone now is counting on this vaccine to do some magical stoppage of this thing. putting that aside, what do you expect this pandemic will look like in terms of waves and death? have you been able to come to any conclusions there? >> well, what i can say is that covid-19 belongs in the conversation, in the ballpark of 1918. and what i can say is we don't know where we are. we're six months in, but some places just started. they could be just one month in. we may not get to 1918 numbers or we surpass them. what we find in this study is we have to ask that question and our policies need to reflect that immediately. congress has to act to support

health care and keep everyone safe. >> dr. foust, i appreciate your time. thank you. >> thanks for covering it. next, the one person that kamala harris credits above all others with her success. wayfair has everything outdoor from grills to play sets and more one of a kind finds. it all ships free. and with new deals every day

you can explore endless options at every price point. get your outdoor oasis delivered fast so you can get the good times going. ♪ wayfair. you've got just what i need. ♪ and ask your doctor about biktarvy. biktarvy is a complete, one-pill, once-a-day treatment used for h-i-v in certain adults. it's not a cure, but with one small pill, biktarvy fights h-i-v to help you get to and stay undetectable. that's when the amount of virus is so low it cannot be measured by a lab test. research shows people who take h-i-v treatment every day and get to and stay undetectable can no longer transmit h-i-v through sex. serious side effects can occur, including kidney problems and kidney failure. rare, life-threatening side effects include a buildup of lactic acid and liver problems. do not take biktarvy if you take dofetilide or rifampin. tell your doctor about all the medicines and supplements you take, if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or if you have kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis.

if you have hepatitis b, do not stop taking biktarvy without talking to your doctor. common side effects were diarrhea, nausea, and headache. if you're living with hiv, keep loving who you are. and ask your doctor if biktarvy is right for you. don't just think about where you're headed this summer. think about how you'll get there. and now that you can lease or buy a new lincoln remotely or in person... discovering that feeling has never been more effortless. the lincoln summer invitation sales event is here.

simon pagenaud takes the lead at the indy 500! coming to the green flag, racing at daytona. they're off... in the kentucky derby. rory mcllroy is a two time champion at east lake.

he scores! stanley cup champions! touchdown! only mahomes. the big events are back and xfinity is your home for the return of live sports. tonight, kamala harris tweeting out this photo with her mother, who passed away in 2009 writing, i dearly wish you were here with us this week. nic robertson is outfront. >> reporter: kamala harris speaks passionately of her heritage. >> you know, my mother and father, they came from opposite sides of the world to arrive in america. one from india, and the other from jamaica. >> reporter: a daughter shaped by the world. >> my grand parents were phenomenal. >> reporter: her grandfather, an

accomplished diplomat. a young kamala harris would walk the beach with him and his buddies. >> they would talk about the importance of fighting for democracy, and the importance of fighting for civil rights and that people would be treated equally regardless of where they were borp n. >> reporter: values kamala's mother embraced and her parents indulged. her brother, harris' uncle, awed by her drive. >> can you imagine 1959, a 19-year-old girl was in college. going to a program in biokem try at berkeley. >> reporter: she met kamala's father, donald harris, becoming civil rights activists. and marrying. they had two girls, kamala, then maya. divorcing when kamala was 7.

those early years, spending time with her arjamaicaen grand part too. >> professor harris is a very thoughtful, calm person. >> reporter: although the ambassador never met his friend's daughters, he's sure they benefitted from his country's qualities. >> it is this quality of self-confidence. and i'm sure that she got some of that from jamaica. >> reporter: but it was her mother who would raise her and influence her the most. >> she was a brown woman. she was a woman with a heavy accent. she was a woman who many times people would overlook her or not take her seriously. or because of her accent assume things about her intelligence.

at every turn my mother proved them wrong. >> reporter: like mother, like daughter, a trailblazer. and maybe all the way to the white house. nic robertson, cnn, london. >> thanks for joining us. anderson starts now. good evening. it was clear when kamala harris was named as the democrat's vice presidential nominee that fringe elements would attack her based on her gender and race. what is clear at this hour is that it's not going to be just fringe elements doing so. and perhaps that should not be a surprise. today, president trump, who pushed a baseless conspiracy about the nation's first black president, barack obama, is now proving a racist conspiracy theory about the nation's first female black vice presidential candidate, suggesting she nigmi not be a citizen