it's a backlog of different things happening all at once. you are right. have a plan. if you request your ballot now it will be there in plenty of time to return it by mail or in person if you need and the voters voting right at the very end where you need to think hard about if -- how you vote if you want to participate in the election. >> michael mcdonald, we'll continue the conversation over the next eight weeks. thank you. hello, everybody. top of the hour. i'm john king in washington. today fallout from the devastating add mugss in the president's own voice first heard 24 hours ago. the president misleading you in the response to the coronavirus. acknowledging to the journalist bob woodward he understood the devastating nature of the threat yet playing it down deliberately. his words. telling you it was no big deal. public health experts calling this a dereliction of duty

noting the president didn't just men mize t minimize the threat in words but the actions. it is impossible to play down the numbers. nearly 6.4 million infections, more than 190,000 american coronavirus deaths. team trump bristles at the criticism it should have, could have done more. admiral brett giroir asked by cnn's dr. gupta could you have done more early on? he said, no. >> are you preparing yet for your upcoming debates? >> march 12th, very important for people particularly in the audience to understand -- >> sending unsolicited ballots, it is really a corrupt system and you watch. >> i came here march 12th. i think it's very important for people particularly in this

audience to understand that diagnostics were not emphasized at all. the national stockpile, not a trump administration, it is not an obama administration. it is a longstanding practice that diagnostics were really not emphasized and see the importance of them now. i have never been told to slow down testing. or to reduce our efforts. in fact, we have built on testing every single month. >> clearly had a glitch in the computer server there. my apologies to the president and the admiral and to you. another reminder today though the coronavirus disruption is everywhere. 884,000 people filing for first-time unemployment last week, in all more than 55 million americans lost jobs over the past 6 months. 24 hours ago the white house caught completely off guard. now a scramble to minimize the damage. kaitlan come liste kaitlan collins is with us.

look. we know that the president is his own communications director and the president did the 18 interviews with bob woodward and gave him a cell phone number so the aides don't know much about them. the challenge today is to deal with this. is to deal with this. this is the arizona journal -- wisconsin journal sentiment, on the front page here. another battleground state, tampa. florida. another battleground state here. this is arizona. in the middle of this campaign, kaitlan, the president and the aides trying to convince the american people it is okay that he didn't tell you the truth for weeks. >> reporter: so far they have been trying to turn the conversation entirely away from coronavirus because they knew even before this book came out and before you could hear the president say this voters did not like the way the president handled the pandemic so far and already a challenge for them. it was a challenge to message

it. they saw the same polls that we are seeing nationally and in those states of the headlines you held up where voters do not like the way the president handled it and now front and center and joe biden using it in ads to criticize president trump, using his own words saying that to bob woodward he did it on purpose, intentionally down played it and a new challenge for them with two months to go before the election and the only thing i heard from some people in the last, you know, 24 hours since this came out is voters made up their minds on whether or not the president handled the pandemic well. i think that's something that's really still to be determined on how voters react to this and think of the president's comments to bob woodward. >> viv i can't ian, the presidee did not want to cause a panic. this is deeper than the president. a line from reporting that this is from your reporting back in may. this is robert o'brien, the

national security adviser, initially no one understood the magnitude of this crisis. that's the national security adviser. initially, no one understood the magnitude of this crisis. to you in may. in may. now listen right here. this is bob woodward talking to the president about his reporting and what he learned about that same robert o'brien. >> so now -- >> because it was too early. >> your new national adviser o'brien said january 28th, mr. president, this is going -- this virus is going to be the biggest national security threat to your presidency. do you remember that? >> no. no. >> you don't? >> no, i don't. no, i don't. i'm sure if he said -- i'm sure he said it. nice guy. >> there's a bigger question about if someone told that to the president how could he say he didn't remember but robert

o'brien, january 28th, this is going to be the biggest national security threat to your presidency. may 2 nnd to you, initially no e understood the magnitude of this crisis. >> there's a discrepancy. versus what he allegedly told the president in that initial briefing in january. and one of the things that we really pressed o'brien on in our interview at the time was why did they -- why the inaction? why did it take so long to address the problems when there was clearly a sign that the u.s. was extremely vulnerable? keep in mind that briefing was on january 28th, the first case we found in the u.s. confirmed about a week earlier and the cases were just building at that point. so robert o'brien clearly see through the advice of several national security council officials saying this is going

to blow out of proportion but the administration actually defends its actions at the time but look at it as an international response, that they cut travel to china and then gradually to all of china for a while, limited travel to europe and elsewhere. they saw that as taking swift action but the bigger question, the one that woodward addresses in his book and the one that many of us asking for several months is what was being done domestically? we had cases here and the president apparently knew and heard it in his own voice that this was extremely contagious and airborne and people susceptible to it. we know, of course, from our reporting that the economic dynamic of shutting down the country particularly in the election year was something that the president was highly reluctant to do, advisers pushed against it so you had this continued issue of public health and the economy and having

strong economic numbers going into the election and here the president himself admits he knew the problem and proceeded the way he has publicly. >> kaitlan, there's stunning stuff when you read the book and listen to the audio conversations. the president telling one thing to bob woodward and then the opposite to the american people of what he knew about the threat being quite sere youious and to american people we'll be good and brazenly discusses what if true would be a top secret national security issue with bob woodward. the president is charged with protecting us. listen to this piece of a conversation about an alleged secret nuclear weapons program. >> but i have built a -- i have built a weapon system, weapons system that nobody's ever had in this country before. we have stuff that you haven't even seen or heard about. we have the you have that putin and xi have never heard about before. there's nobody -- what we have is incredible.

>> if that's true, kaitlan collins, putin and xi know about it now. >> they do and so do you and i and everybody else watching and reading and listening to this book and so notable of the excerpt and woodward went around to defense officials asking them and they expressed surprise that the president revealed to a reporter who was writing a book on him on the record that there is a new nuclear system they have built that we do not know about and now of course the president was not just saying toiit to an adviser or melania trump but a reporter he knew was writing a book on him and the president revealed this to him seemingly there without hesitation and so i think that's so notable so much in the book on coronavirus that this is buried in it but it is significant that the president revealed something this sensitive that even these

defense officials surprised he revealed it to a reporter and that goes to show you just how much aides had no idea what the president told woodward. you heard the vice president say this morning he saw bob woodward at the white house once and no idea that the president spoken to him 18 times because a lot of it was during phenomenon calls not in the oval office with communication aides around him and goes to show that the president was just dialing bob woodward up telling him this information and now trying to see the president saying i gave him some quotes but a lot of quotes. >> quite a bit. kaitlan, vivian, appreciate it very much. the latest on the coronavirus trends here and admiral giroir tries to clear up the confusion of whether you should get tested if you're asymptomatic. ♪ come on in, we're open. ♪

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conversations about what the president knew and when in the early days of the coronavirus but take a look at where we are in the here and now. this is our 50 state trend map. eight states, the orange, no red today is good, eight states trending up. more new cases now than a week ago so eight states in the wrong direction. 18 states, the beige, holding steady, arizona there, a big driver of the summer surge. 24 states trending down including florida, texas and california. with arizona those four the big drivers of the summer surge in cases. you just go back and remember, we climbed in march, came down by memorial day and then the giant summer surge and starting to dip back down. how much are we coming down? sometimes the data out of a holiday weekend tends to lag a little bit. we got a drop and then back up to 34,000 new infections.

we have to watch this play out for the week and the next. are we down below 40,000? we'll watch the baseline as it goes. also a troubling day yesterday coming the new deaths reported in the united states. 1,200 yesterday, is that a blip? let's hope so, let's hope that's a one-day blip. the trend line was coming down for the long stretch july and august averaging 1,000 new coronavirus deaths a day in the united states and had started to drop down and hope it stays down. we'll watch it. look at the time line here of the climb to 6 million infections in the united states and then to go back and back in the early days, january 28th, you don't see gold yet. the national security adviser said this is the biggest national security threat in our history, that's in the woodward book. thes deadly stuff. the president knows this is

deadly stuff. no ramping up of ppe, no other steps like that. the president says i don't want to create a panic saying he played it down deliberately to the american people. this is what happened in the weeks and months after that. look at where we are now. the five states with the highest positivity rate, the dakotas, north and south, iowa, kansas, alabama. double digits. you want the positivity rate on the rest to 5% or below to push it down. what states are doing the best? up here. dealt with it early on, new england and new york, the northeast part of the state, remember how horrible it was there in march and april? they have the lowest positivity rate up there. here's a reason some public health officials are worried. the reports of new coronavirus infections, some worry we're missing some because testing is down. we were up around 800,000 a day. down here and yet listen to the administration's testing czar

admiral giroir in a conversation earlier today with cnn's sanjay gupta saying if you're asymptomatic, we want you to get tested and he insists the testing regimen in the united states right now is getting better. >> we do need to test asymptomatic people. there is no doubt about that. full stop. we create the future utopia and what i want to do is create as many tests as possible. there will be a day where there will be at-home tests available that are cheap that we can test as frequently as we want. we are not there right now. right? so we have to use the test that we have in a strategic manner. >> joining us now is dr. wolenski at massachusetts general hospital, also a cnn medical analyst. doctor, good to see you. when you listen to admiral giroir, let's focus on the first part first, the cdc guidelines,

they still essentially diss courage, my words, not a medical word, asymptomatic people. the admiral says, yes, we want asymptomatic people to be tested. why can't they get it together? >> good afternoon. great question. yes, i suggest that people asymptomatic, certainly contacts get tested. and in fact, i think part of the challenge has been the miscommunication we are getting from leadership and the cdc. we are hearing if we look at the cdc website it does not strongly encourage asymptomatic contacts to be tested. i believe those people need to be tested and tested at the right time four to five days after contact. they also don't suggest that people arriving at colleges be tested. so we're incorporating people into congregate settings, people into residential settings in colleges where they have the opportunity to spread disease.

we have seen it all over the country and the cdc guidelines haven't changed on that since june 30th. >> below 600,000 tests yesterday. we thought we had 800,000. we got there. people said that wasn't enough. now coming back don. should we worry about that? are we testing enough? >> we are absolutely not testing enough. i would say we need diagnostic tests. these are tests for people who have symptoms arriving in the hospitals who are feeling unwell. and then we need a category of other tests, surveillance tests like the nba is using them, we need to be using them as the admiral said, frequently, point of care at home easily and this is going to be one of the major tools i think that will help us get through and out of this pandemic. >> so through the seven months of this, people turn to people they trust, experts like this.

in the context of a new kaiser poll, how worried you the fda will rush to approve a vaccine? one third of americans are worried. 29 pistons said somewhat worried. 16 pisto 16% not too worried. 20% say not at all worried. should they be? >> i don't think the fda, the cdc and leadership here has done us a service by rushing things like convalescent plasma, changing guidelines on testing to empower us to have trust in them. i have trust in the science, the data safety monitoring boards, the national institutes of health, the experts that tell us through the science and through those data whether we are ready to see a vaccine come forward. so i will be looking at the scientists, at the data and then i will secondarily be looking at what the fda says after

interrupting that science and data. >> doctor, grateful for your time. >> thank you for having me. the president said he deliberately played down the pandemic because he did not want to cause a panic. is that the right choice for a leader when the pandemic is deadly? don't forget your lunch!

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good and proper. that today is the president's take on the answers to bob woodward n. a democracy everyone gets a vote so you can decide if it's good and proper for the president to tell you deliberately that the coronavirus is just like the flu and for weeks after he has been told it is far more deadly and more devastating than any flu. we have wrestled with the trump and the truth questions. it is sad fact but fact nonetheless that he speaks mistruths constantly. in this case, in deliberately not telling the truth about the risk of covid-19, the president insists he was doing us all a favor. >> i want to show a calmness. i'm the leader of the country. i can't be jumping up and down and scaring people. i don't want to scare people. >> joining me now is the former new jersey governor and former epa administrator christine

whitman and let's listen to part of his explanation to bob woodward where he says, yes, he plays it down and he plays it down repeatedly as a strategy. >> now it's turning out it is not just old people, bob, just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out, it is not just older -- >> exactly. >> plenty of young people. to be honest with you -- >> sure. i want you to be. >> i wanted to always play it down. i still like playing it down. >> yes. >> because i don't want to create a panic. >> governor whitman, it is admirable to not create a panic among citizens, however, you have to be honest with them, don't you not? don't you create coronavirus infections and perhaps deaths if you don't tell the truth about what's coming? >> absolutely. he is responsible for many of these deaths. he is responsible for the fact that our economy is tanking.

he is responsible for the dislocation in schools and the fear of children and all the empty spaces at around dining room tables and the loss we have come through because you don't as a leader if you tell the american people the truth, what you know, why it's important to take these steps that we know to be the important ones, to help deal with this, they won't panic. you don't have to jump and down. thaesz not how you deliver this message. you do it in a reasoned way that says what we know, what we don't know, what are the absolute basic things that need to be done and you don't down play it. that was irresponsible in the extreme. frankly, he's not a leader. he's not a leader. that's what we needed in this time and of course there's more in the book than just the coronavirus that should make us very worried. >> that's why i warranted you both here because there's a broader dishonesty in governance that's a trademark sadly of the

trump presidency but listen here in that the conversation early on is the president doesn't understand the science, the president isn't listening to the scientists but now if you listen to the tapes. he was listening but not telling us. listen to this exchange. >> it goes through air, bob. that's tougher than the touch. but the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. and so that's a very tricky one. a very delicate one. it's also more deadly than your -- you know, even than your strenuous flus. people don't realize we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a here. withhold ever think this? this is more deadly, five per -- this is 5% versus 1%. you know? this is deadly stuff. >> that's the president in his own words, doug brinkley, not that he didn't know how bad it was and didn't do anything about it. he did know how bad it was and

not only ramp up early on in lost february as we call it but telling the american people after he said that it's more deadly than a strenuous flu, for weeks after that he said it's just like the flu. don't worry about it. >> yeah. this may be the greatest presidential crime of all time. crime in the sense that he had knowledge that lives could be saved of our fellow citizens that we were going to have to act as a country in a proactive way to fight covid-19 and instead he put his own political puppeteering ahead of the current. this demanded an old-fashion address to the nation in february about a looming threat that was coming. this demanded a channel of clear communication to the american people. instead donald trump went into spin mode, he had just barely got out of the whole impeachment

problem and he knew 2020 was an election year and his gold jewel was the stock market and it all cost the selling that he was the great economic recovery president and this looked like it could cause problems for him and underplayed a genuine gigantic human health crisis to serve his own political ambitions. this is going to be i think the worst mark of the first term or only term of the trump presidency is misleading the american people in covid and imagine you lost someone or sick from covid, the anger and the sadness and the sickness that our country had this kind of leadership void in early 2020. >> here's the part on this that i don't get. people describe him as narcissist, everybody n if you that, the national security

adviser says this is the biggest crisis of your presidency and barely mention the coronavirus. he is a politician, in an election year. would you not think he wants to get out in front of this? what in his mind made him think if i don't tell the truth people won't notice and i'll get re-elected? >> that's the way he approached everything. it is all about him. if he blustered through and like yesterday and again today saying, urge, i answered perfectly, those that believe it but i hope that people understand he is not a leader. this is where you define yourself in leadership when you face a crisis. absolutely right. he should have gotten out ahead of it. he could have been ramping up the ppes, getting more ventilators. if we hit another wave and another month or so with the flu as well, i have talked to doctors, they don't have everything they need to deal

with that their offices much less the hospital. this is criminal. it is a major, major thing. it should be a big thing for his administration and when you think of the other ways he misled the public it's hard to pick out one. what he was saying about the military and he is commander in chief. they keep piling on one another but i agree. for those who have lost a loved one, those sick from this ought to be out janraged and we all o to be. >> we'll continue the conversation. back to the campaign now and the vice president making what you might call an interesting choice today for a fund raiser hosted by qanon supporters. the movement has violent underpinnings and the followers believe in a deep state in the government that's controlled by satan worshipping pedophiles.

donie o'sullivan joins me now. it is a controversial choice to attend a fund-raiser by people with crackpot views. >> this qanon which is labeled by the way a potential domestic terrorist threat by the fbi was confined to the dark corners of the internet but now it is increasingly becoming a part of mainstream republican politics with republicans running for congress showing support for qanon and i want to show you what vice president mike pence told our john berman when he was asked about qanon. >> do you believe they love america? >> i don't know anything about that conspiracy theory, john. >> how can you not know about it given how much it's been in the news? >> well, honestly, john, i just -- i don't know anything about that. i have heard about it. we dismiss conspiracy theories around here. >> will you dismiss it?

>> i just did, john. >> no, you didn't. >> we dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand. >> reporter: but now cnn is learning that pence is due to ater attend a fund-raiser next week by a couple showing support of qanon and they have a profile picture of a giant "q" and, john, this doesn't go unnoticed by people who follow qanon. despite pence there claiming that he disavows this movement he is obviously saying that he's going to go to the fund-raiser. trump said that the people who followed this and believe this conspiracy theory are good americans. i think it just really all sort of sums up where we are a few weeks out from the election. there's a toxic online ecosystem of misinformation and disinformation and social media platforms like facebook and

twitter behind the curve on. both companies in the past few weeks starting to take action against qanon. that is conspiracy theory going around for three years and it is seeping into the mainstream and going all the way right to the white house. john? >> yeah. you match up the vice president's words with the actions and see something quite different. grateful for the reporting there. still ahead for us, startling comments weeks before the election. will it matter this time? rved and it's made for her she's serving now we also made usaa for military spouses and their kids become a member. get an insurance quote today.

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rage is the title of bob woodward's new book tan central

character gave him 18 interviews but he doubts he will read it. >> i don't know if the book is good or bad. i have no idea. probably almost definitely i won't read it because i don't have time to read it. >> now giant controversy in the foonl weeks of the campaign and heard tape of the president's voice in the final days of a campaign before. joining me now is correspondent amali ball. the woodward interviews now. the "access hollywood" tape and the president saying things if are true would be felony sexual assault and elected. part of the mindset to say and do anything and keep the base and this is about knowing how bad the coronavirus was and match it up against the record. is there a difference? >> as you said, you can match it up against a record.

and that is the salient point here is that he is the president of the united states as he was not then. so you know, as many have said, this book is essentially a sequel not only to the previous woodward book but the giant pile of other books about trump that have virtually all pointed to the same conclusion in terms of the way this president operates and what he cares about and how he functions. this is on tape that gives it everyone more obvious credibility but most americans and this is why we've seen such an incredibly stable presidential race, most americans have had plenty of information to make up their minds about donald trump one way or another for quite sometime now. does this shift the narrative wack to covid? we have seen the fluctuations in the approval rating and people focus mainly on covid and then he seems to rebound a little

when people focus on urban unrest, but we see a pretty stable race here because a majority of americans turned their backs on donald trump relatively early on and have not seen reason to reconsider. >> we see stunningly numbing numbers a lot of the days and on the cover of the magazine this week. i think we can show a full screen graphic that makes it even more. it's sad. it is sad. i sit here every day and 10,000, 50,000, now 200,000. that is a number you could take donald trump's name out of it. no matter who is president of the united states that's a troubling number and then analyze the record and conclude whether it should be that high. most public health experts say it should not and it will continue to grow. >> that's right. it is sad but it is also numbing and i think that that is

something that we've seen as part of trump's m.o. from the beginning is just the incredible onslaught of news, noise and now tragically of death makes it harder for people to comprehend, harder to be shocked. but look. one thing that we have seen from a lot of the more detailed polling that i have been following about how the public has reacted to covid is that people don't blame trump for the virus itself. they don't blame him for the pandemic existing or even getting out of hand as a phenomenon in the united states but they do blame him for the early down playing, the early attempts to minimize and so that's what's potentially significant here is it reminds people that most people do believe that the early stages of this response were botched, that the president downplaying the virus was a major mistake in the u.s. handling of this pandemic, that led to it to be so terrible

in this country. >> an excellent point. grateful for your reporting and insights thank you so much. the president of course not the only republican on the ballot, not the only republican in a tough race this year. 23 republican senate seats up for grabs compared to 12 by democrats and the majority leader mitch mcconnell on more than defense. manu raju with more. the biggest issue for the majority leader is the trump factor. >> reporter: yeah. and that's a significant one and what mcconnell has done is tried to use trump to his advantage, even though the president put them in a jam time and again, mcconnell worked behind the scenes to try to get trump to help the senators in the most vulnerable positions and including gardiner and danes. this year mitch mcconnell took them up to the white house and he urged the president to get

behind a public lands bill that became law and pushed it through the senate, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic and also urged the president to convince an outside group, the club for growth, to suspend an ad campaign attacking mitch mcconnell's preferred candidate in the kansas senate race, that candidate roger marshall, and then trump put the head of the club for growth told him to stop carving up roger marshall and what did the group do? stopped carving up roger marshall and an open question of the impact of the president down ticket. i asked will the president have a net positive impact on the candidates? he said we'll find out and will only know the day after the elections so not necessarily saying whether the president will help because in some of those states like in maine where

the president's not popular, susan collins up for re-election, it could be negative including in colorado and in north carolina the president if he wins will have a positive impact on the down ticket republican candidate there, senator tom tillis. mcconnell working behind the scenes doing everything he can to hold on to a narrow majority. >> he's right. we'll know more the wednesday after the election than in these weeks and days before. appreciate the great reporting there. coming up for us, kickoff night tonight for the nfl in the middle of a pandemic. ary materis and responds to your body- -so you get deep, uninterrupted sleep. take advantage of our best offer of the year, with savings up to $500.

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the nfl season kicks off tonight with the super bowl champion kansas city chiefs talking taking on the houston texans. this will be a season like no other not because tom brady is not with the patriots but covid-19 changed the game, the season even before this first kickoff. andy shoals live in kansas city. andy? >> reporter: yeah, john. no question. it is going to be a season unlike any other. we have seen offseason training activities canceled. the chiefs and texans for this nfl season tonight and it's not just for the fans on tv but fans

tonight inside the stadium. the chiefs one of two, only two, nfl teams in the opening week with the jaguars allowing fans inside the stadium, about 17,000 will be allowed in tonight. the stadium normally has a capacity of 76,000 fans and now those fans that do enter required to wear a mask unless they're eating or drinking and mostly in groups of four to six so the stadium certainly will look different tonight but the chiefs and texans players say they're so excited to get the season started. >> definitely weird that we didn't know a month ago what the season was going to look like and we are kicking it off so we're the head honchos for the nfl and the chiefs to show and see what the 2020 season will be like. >> i'm going to embrace the moment. we are in it this moment to play and we are going to go out with the brothers and play the sport that we love because you didn't

know if it would happen and excited for the opportunity to get out there, to be on the field and play the game that i love. >> the nfl is planning many social justice initiatives for this season, like the nba where the players wearing messages on the jersey, the nfl players will have decals on the helmets and names of police brutality and messages of end racism and it takes all of us and on the field as well. what are they going to do before the game during the national anthem and before? they have not given us an answer but a show of unity. >> suspense is good. we appreciate it. thanks for joining us. brianna keilar picks up our coverage after a quick break. have a good day.

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