ut a tax penalty. nineteen will help rebuild lives. vote 'yes' on 19. >> hello, everybody top of the hour, i'm john king in washington. thank you for sharing your day with us. president trump's supreme court nominee hits the circuit this week ahead of what promises to be a bruising confirmation battle. the coronavirus numbers are quite discouraging this morning. the average daily case count is up. dr. fauci is warning states that continue to drop restrictions that they're asking for trouble. we're on the eve of the first debate. they include the court, coronavirus, response, election integrity and president trump and joe biden's respective records.

taxes and spending always a presidential debate issue. new and incredibly detailed reporting from the new york times gleaned from 18 years paints a picture of the president as a money manager mapping millions of dollars of losses, a crippling debt load and year after year of avoiding federal taxes. the president last hour on twitter calling the story nonsense. he says it ignores the value of his assets and denies one -- he denies one of the times core findings. the president the documents show paid nothing, nothing in federal income taxes for 11 of the 18 years the time was examined and he paid $750 -- $750 in federal income tax the year he won the white house and his first year in office.

the documents also show a history of massive write offs. an on going battle over a $73 million tax refund and a foreign money boom thanks to mr. trump holding the presidency. importantly, the president faces a money crunch. he is personally on the hook for $421 million of debt and loans. most of that debt coming due within the next four years. rare is the day that you see this. a six column headline in the new york times. the details in these stories are many and they blow to pieces the president's tall tails about his midas touch as a business man. fake billionaire. what these tax documents unearth about the president's finances. >> john, a scathing line from the new york times report, quote, mr. trump has been more successful playing a business

mogul than being one in real life. the times pulls back the curtain to tell a story at odds with the public persona he worked so hard to create. instead, the reality is a tax avoider that presided over hundreds of millions of dollars of business losses and is crushed by a mountain of debt. this according to the paper. the system rewaurds rich people that lose a lot of money. they can write off the losses and the average citizen has paid more to support america's military and roads and schools and democracy than the president has. now nearly half of americans pay no income taxes. that's mainly because of how low the income is. the irs shows the average filer paid $12,200 in 2017. that's 16 times more than what president trump paid the same year but he sold americans on

being a successful business man but according to the times, tax records showed he just played one on tv and found multiple ways to write off the cost of creating that image. trump took huge deductions including $70,000 to take care of his hair during the apprentice and appeared to write off hundreds of thousands of dollars paying his daughter ivanka as a consultant to the trump organization. >> appreciate the break down on the numbers. the president calls the times report fake news but they are real. successful business man and deal maker. the truth is the jump empire, look at the documents, it's wobbly and a giant ball of debt is due around the corner. one question is how this plays with trump supporters that now know, pick it up, read the newspaper, you pay a lot more in taxes than your president.

the president says nonsense but the reporting is incredibly detailed. it is quite real. >> it's very detailed and we saw a classic trump response last night when he came into the briefing room. he avoided specific responses and he deflected and simply tried to wipe the whole thing away as a fabrication. take a listen. it's going to come out. >> he tweeted out this morning complaining that the information was illegally contained.

the times said it was obtained for people that had it legally so they had bad intents and he paid many millions in taxes but he also said i was entitled to depreciation and tax credits just like everyone else. so think about that line. depreciation and tax credits just like anyone else considering that the amount he paid in taxes is less than the average taxpayer making $25,000 a year paying in 2017. the president is going to have to answer for that tomorrow night. >> i appreciate the live reporting from the white house. let's continue the conversation. joining me is the former state prosecutor. thank you for your time today. just as a prosecutor with experience at the federal and the state level, when you pick up the new york times story and go through it, i saw your

tweets. you say there's predicate to an investigation. but what jumped out at you is if you were either at the federal level or the state level is something that you would say i want to look at that now. and a prosecutor and the real estate industry is notoriously difficult to investigate because of them some have losses and some have gains. in a sense trump is right. if there's legitimate losses he's entitled to claim them. there's a difference between tax avoidance and evasion but what

jumps out to a prosecutor is the last two things that the times talked about. first is the consulting fees apparently on the foreign deals about a third of the times says income -- i don't know if it's income or revenue but a third of what's coming in is going out as consulting fees and we believe we know that at least in one of the deals it went to his daughter. that's a big red flag. in foreign deals when you have huge amounts of consulting fees it raises lots of questions. who is the money going to? now here it may not be the usual red flag is are they paying off people in those countries. here it may be that he's just figuring out a different way to pay his daughter who is otherwise an executive of the trump organization without payroll taxes. we are a little bit speculating but that's a very interesting piece. the other interesting piece is the business expenses. you need to ask under the tax law, are they legitimate because

people do go to jail all the time for falsely claiming personal expenses as business but there's also a legitimate way to do that. so that's a predicate for an investigation as you said. >> so let's look at some of that. just the deductions that raise some questions. maybe they can be explained but if you're a prosecutor that's what you do. 70,000 on hair styling. 2.2 million in property taxes. writing that off as a business expense. here's something that eric trump said about that compound. this is really our compound. he said in 2017 it was a personal property. so we don't know the answer. but it raises the flag, right? it has been gone over with a lot

more information than we have here. but there's something claimed to be an investment property that is in fact a personal mansion, you shouldn't be deducting the property taxes from that. but are they doing it in a way that looks like they're cheating? like for example a series of companies or false records like in the trump organization. and that starts to look more criminal. just because they should have paid taxes and they didn't, that's not necessarily a grounds for a criminal matter.

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plus you could be one of thousands to win an all-new amazon halo band! >> dr. robert redfield was overheard saying that the advice from dr. scott atlas is not helpful. the latest dust up comes as the numbers take a turn for the worst. we'll get to that reporting in a minute. let's look at the numbers first. 21 states, that's the orange and the red trending in the wrong direction. we mean more coronavirus, new infections this week compared to a week ago. 21 states trending in the wrong

direction. that's the beige, holding steady. ten states reporting fewer new infections now compared to a week ago. ten states trending down but 21 states trending up. if you go back one month ago we had 16 states trending up. just notice. i'll show you the two maps. just notice how this moves around. it's different states dealing with the problem. now you see the map today. a lot of red on the northern swath of the country and out here in the west. that's where the problem is right now. you are looking for cases where they're going to continue to rise. you look for high positivity rates and you have high numbers. the deeper the blue, the higher the positivity rate. 21% in idaho and 16% in iowa and 16% in wisconsin. you can see double digits across that part of the country.

we came down the hill and below 40,000 new infections we're now back above the new average of 40,000 new infections every day in the united states of america as we turn and close in on october heading up in the wrong direction. the trend at the moment is down. it came down and went back up and started to trend down a little bit and flat lined right here. yesterday, sunday, thankfully, 266, every death is horrible but a lower number than normal. sometimes in the weekends they go down and we'll watch that as the work week unfolds. that trend is down a little bit. the hospitalization trend down but notice, down but now we're having cases again. cases are going back up. hospitalizations coming down and then it plateaus. it has plateaued right here. something else we need to watch as we go into the week and then into october. so dr. anthony fauci puts it bluntly. he says with more new infections at the moment we're seeing the death numbers down but if you

keep the case count rising, guess what will follow? more deaths. >> certainly parts of the country that are doing well, but as you mentioned correctly, there are states that are starting to show uptick in cases and even some increase in hospitalizations in some states. and i hope not, but we very well might start seeing increases in deaths. >> in the hope not part he stresses wearing a mask and social distancing as does the cdc director. but dr. atlas keeps telling the president that the data on masks isn't conclusive and the president keeps repeating that advice even though the rest of the team says it's dead wrong. he shared his frustration with a colleague and is overheard complaining about dr. atlas and his influence on the president. we have seen some of this play out in public. the cdc director overheard saying my colleague is giving

the president bad advice. >> it's a great characterization of this, john. he was on a flight on friday from atlanta to washington d.c. a commercial airline in which he was overheard by an nbc reporter talking on the telephone to a colleague in which he said, everything he says is false referring to dr. scott atlas. now this is important because it's the first time that he is publicly acknowledging that he was at odds with dr. scott atlas who at this point appears to be the closest adviser to the president surrounding the pandemic. he has the president's ear and that much is clear. that's worrisome to public health experts that i spoke to at the cdc that say dr. scott atlas is providing the president with misleading information. that's what dr. robert redfield is saying here and the cdc is responding, not denying that he said this. here's what they had to say in a short statement to us. nbc news is reporting one side of a private phone conversation by the cdc director overheard on

a plane from atlanta-hartsfield airport. he was having a private discussion regarding a number of points he made publicly about covid-19. >> earlier this year, dr. scott atlas reportedly promoted a strategy of herd immunity as a strategy for the pandemic. now in september, he has since denied using that strategy or promoting that strategy while part of the task force but there's other concerns including his comments about the efficacy of masks and also more recently, who is still vulnerable to the coronavirus, dr. scott atlas minimizing the amount of americans that are still vulnerable to this. putting the figure at around 90% so a lot of concerns here. a federal health official i spoke to earlier confirmed the spirit of nbc's story saying redfield is concerned about the stuff that dr. scott atlas is saying. again, john, dr. scott atlas is a neuroradiologist. he's not an epidemiologist so

that should be concerning to the community at large. >> we know other members of the task force have grumbled privately as well. let's continue the conversation with our cnn medical analysts. it's a question i hate to ask but let's go. you have the cdc director criticizing the doctor we know. he's the doctor the president invites up on the podium. the other doctors aren't invited anymore. they don't have the daily task force meetings anymore. to have the cdc director overheard publicly saying the president is giving horrible advice from the doctor the president has picked to be at his side at a very precarious moment heading back up in terms of the new infection count back above 40,000 new infections a day. >> john, this is really confounding. clearly the president is trying

to surround himself by yes men and not by true experts in the field. people that are infectious disease spercialists, epidemiologists that worked in public health departments. i have done all of those things. you don't need a neuroradiologist from a coronavirus task force unless you're planning to read a whole bunch of mris of the brain. that's not in his wheel house to be advising on this policy. >> i want you to listen here. one of the country's premiere experts on cnn this morning saying that at this moment you see this case count going up and i just showed the states where you have positivity in high double digits. so they are obviously the source of the major problem right now but the doctor makes a very good point. it's everywhere again. >> it's even in places like new york, massachusetts, that seems to have controlled the epidemic. it's also very solidly all throughout the midwest and rural communities that hoped never to see this problem. this is a second wave not caused

by the weather but caused by behavior. people loosen up their restrictions. >> the second wave in the doctor's view caused not by the weather or at least not predominantly in his view. more by behavior. when you're at a baseline of 40,000 plus new infections and you're starting to go back up, how dangerous is that? >> well even here in new york we're starting to see cases tick back up. some of that is related to behavior. people here that have done a very good job during the last several months, even here they're getting tired of the social distancing, the mask wearing and there's no question that we have seen an increase in cases related to labor day, the timing fits that scenario perfectly. then also the reopening of colleges and universities and schools more broadly that are probably contributing to some of this as well. >> we talked about this for sometime. help me put the context on the

table in the sense that the whole idea was if you social distance and if you use masks, if you try to flatten the curve that you don't eliminate the virus, you spread out the toll of the virus. so some people would say, we knew this was going to happen. other people, you said it yourself, behavior makes it worse. it doesn't have to get as bad as it's going to get. listen to him saying here is his worry. the count of new infections is going up at a time, only 10 to 15% of americans have been exposed meaning there's a whole lot of people still at risk. >> 10% of americans have been exposed to this virus. the best modeling that i have seen that suggests there could be a higher rate of exposure suggests it may get as high as 15% but most of the models project around 10%. so a lot of the country is still very susceptible to this virus. there's a lot of room for it to run. >> it's just horrible to hear that. there's a lot of room for it to run. explain to people watching what that means. >> well, if you still have 90% of the population that is susceptible to this, a big

proportion of them will likely be exposed and infected if we don't take the appropriate measures over the course of the winter and even if you're talking about a case fatality rate of let's say 1%, 300 million people, 1% of that is still far too many people that you're talking about getting sick and dying from this. and that's going to be overwhelming hospitals apart from covid. >> it would be nice if the president's team were on the same page. grateful as always. thank you very much. >> up next, what the president's supreme court date could mean for your health care. tonight... i'll be eating four cheese tortellini with extra tomatoes. [full emphasis on the soft a] so its come to this? [doorbell chimes]

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the defining issue is they oppose to president's nomination of judge amy coney barrett to the supreme court. democrats do not appear to block a nomination. instead they hope to energize election day turn out by warning about the supreme court schedule

for one week after the election. the high court then scheduled to hear a case that could lead to the affordable care act, obamacare, being declared unconu unconstitutional. judge barrett is already on record criticizing decisions that protected the aca. >> what i am concerned about is anyone that president trump would have appointed was there to undue the affordable care act. that's why he was in such a hurry so that he could have someone in place for the oral arguments that begin november 10th. >> you might say that the president justified that very fear with this tweet. obamacare will be replaced with a much better and far cheaper alternative if it is terminated in the supreme court. now the president has made that promise, a better, cheaper health care plan for 3 plus years now but republicans don't have a plan and recent executive actions taken by the president are modest at best. they argue that it would be

cruel anyway. so it's a democratic battle line. part of that battle line is an acknowledgment that they don't have the votes to stop this. >> no question about it. they believe that they can make an argument against this nominee, put republicans on the defensive. we have seen republicans defending their health care record under democratic attacks in key senator races across the country. she would be sitting on the supreme court to hear the arguments to dismantle the law and spotlight her 2012 comment and expect that to be her focus and that to be part of the focus and democrats also plan to press her to commit to recusing

herself from any election dispute that could merge after the elections. of course the president said he needs nine supreme court justices because he believes that any close contested election is going to end up before the supreme court. democrats are telling me that they plan to make it a big part of the hearings to get her to commit to recuse herself. the white house says there's no need to do that but both sides scrambling to get ready for this hearing. this is happening at a lightning fast pace. typically for the last two nominees. it took 48 days and 57 days respectively to begin the hearings. it's taking 16 days from the time of the nomination to b gra and judiciary committee chairman wants to have the nomination approved out of his committee by october 22nd setting up a confirmation vote and one month time in a process that typically

takes 2 to 3 months but a lot riding on this. so mylan to make the case that health care is on the line as well. >> it's remarkable. we're going to deal with another hugely convention ssequential i. up next, tomorrow is five weeks to election day and guess what, it's debate night.

all the disagreements guarantees a feisty debate night. >> what do you feel like you have to accomplish to be successful?

>> just tell the truth. >> it's not a lot. >> i don't, you know, i don't have the luxury. >> joining us now, jonathan martin, national political correspondent for the times. good to see you on the day before the debate. it interesting when you go through the issues, it is trump versus biden but in many ways it's trump versus majority opinion in the country. >> they don't vote based on their policy preferences. we have years and years of elections to capture the contradictions of the american electorate so obviously that's not always determine inanitive s country. there's a history of incumbent presidents not doing well in

their first debates. jimmy carter, ronald reagan, barrack obama so you heard the sound bite, the president is taking a risk here i think in not doing more to get ready for this debate. >> well, as we have seen on everything he doesn't attend coronavirus task force meetings. he believes that he can do it. he believes he can do it on his own. >> the interesting question for me is in the politics that we live in priority one is to motivate the support that you already have. make sure that they vote. make sure that they have a plan if you're going to vote early or by mail. but then you do have the idea can you change minds and if battleground states are close, tiny percentages can matter. this is the abc polling

director. that makes a net total of 5% of likely voters that could be considered movable. that is what makes it interesting. priority one has to be mobilize what you got. but especially if you're the president. if you're the president and you're losing in all the battleground states you have to find some way to peel off some from the other guy. >> but that's what is so striking about the president's strategy is it seems to be focused entirely on mobilization turning out his base rather than persuasion trying to find that 5% of undecided. sort of bringing them to your column. all of his actions seem to be oriented toward his conservative, rural base instead of trying to win over independents, women, that he needs to be more competitive. and that is what is so striking in this race.

he has focused on vice president biden's mental acutity saying h can't complete a sentence. it's made an impact on voters. i talked to dozens of voters that invariably bring up joe biden's mental fitness. if his standard tomorrow night is able to convey his message, in a way that even kind of b to b plus, that i think is going to be a challenge for president trump because of just how far the president has gone to suggest that he is not all there. if he does show that he's all there, even mostly there, john, i think it's going to be upsetting to president trump and his supporters because they set the expectation so low for biden. one of the states that you have been in is north carolina. i would say six states are going to decide who is the next president and i'd tell anybody

watching if you want to pick 1 or 2, pennsylvania and north carolina. let's focus on north carolina. almost impossible to get the president to 270 electoral votes without north carolina and the added wrinkle is the state could decide the presidency and could also decide control of the united states senate. >> yeah. i mean, that is sort of ground zero for american politics for a couple of reasons. first, it's just a split state. it's 50/50. it's got the same kind of urban and rural divides that the country at yards has between conservatives and liberal voters. and control the state lead. there's lots happening there and i think on election night a lot of people are going to be watching that state.

we'll have some clarity of what's happening. >> the debate is tomorrow night. appreciate your insights to continue this conversation. coming up for us, what one state is doing importantly to reduce the coronavirus impact on people of color. when we started carvana, they told us

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this morning a new snapshot of the toll that the coronavirus is taking on african-americans and perhaps a little glimmer of progress. in michigan, black people mack up 15% of the population but nearly 30% of coronavirus cases and over 40% of the deaths from

african-americans. black residents now mack up roughly 8% of cases and roughly 10% of cases. let's discuss this now with the lieutenant governor. good to see you again and thank you for coming back because we have talked about this from the very beginning. i want to putt up the charts because rare is the day that i put up a chart of coronavirus that shows good news. the blue line on the top left of the screen is how disproportionate the toll was on black residents of michigan. look at march, april. into may. lieutenant governor gilchrist, when you move to september, every coronavirus case is horrible but the rate of coronavirus among african americans is about the same. the lower chart, the purple is his panning or latinos and april and may and into june well above

and then september and it is still above but it is coming closer. coming closer to the average with everybody else. how? how did you get these numbers down? >> john, thank you for having me back on to discuss this and i appreciate your attention on this issue. we start with focus and prioritization. since before we had a confirmed case of covid-19, thanks to the work of the task force, 26 people and the people of the state of michigan, especially people of color who have taken this seriously the whole time and put in place interventions, testing protocol expansion, workplace protocol recommendations for people to be safe at work, masks and conferring to the mask man date in the state, connecting people with doctors and testing people quickly with pop-up and drive through testing to get ahead of this with that focus as a state and we think that every state

and the entire country should be focusing on this because when you solve for racial disparities, you actually improve the overall response to keep everyone safer and made it a priority here in michigan. >> some of the steps, distributing masks in large quantities, collaborating with regional task forces, increasing access to testing. of those pieces of your puzzle, pieces of the solution hire, is there any one that you believe is most important or is it the combination and the coordination that have led you to this progress, success? >> it's the combination. it is the sum total of the action and starts with the choice to focus on this and that starts with representation. we have the most diverse leadership team in the country and so we focus on these as a priority. the truth is that old management axiom applies. what is measured is managed.

that's why we have been able to show the progress and we need it to hold so people need to continue to remain vigilant and we'll continue to strengthen the overall response and have the vulnerable communities be less vulnerable. >> look at the data coming to deaths in michigan, the coronavirus. again you see if you look at the top of the two charts here, deaths among african-americans, black residents of michigan, well higher than the rest of the population now down. the lower chart is hispanics and latinos, a more erratic pattern there. is there something particular about that that the task force is continuing to look at? you don't get a pattern to that? why is that? >> we have been tracking this number closely, as well, we're making sure that for all the places where latino population

is present in the state of michigan, make sure we have testing and isolation in place there. you have been able to see the overall trend decrease and it is a priority for the task force and for the state and again i am confident that the state of michigan when we focus on a problem we can make progress on it and we need the federal government to do the same. we called for the trump administration to focus on, release data on race and ethnicity but they fail to do so. >> lieutenant governor of michigan, appreciate you coming back with us and will continue this conversation, salute your progress and i also know there's week ahead and we'll circle back. thank you, sir. >> thank you. appreciate you. up next, a judge steps in telling the postal service protect election mail. ♪ limu emu & doug

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president trump's former campaign manager taken to a hospital last night following reports of a suicide scare at his florida home. police say his wife said her husband was threatening to harm himself and access to multiple firearms. police say they convinced him to come out and he was taken to a local hospital. he was demoted from the position of campaign manager this summer after the president's controversial and poorly attended rally in oklahoma. he has rarely been seen at

campaign headquarters in recent days and weeks. nebraska today the latest state to send out absentee ballots joining more than two dozen others with ballots in the mail including from fl, michigan and north carolina. another judge stepping in to block changes at the postal service. judge sullivan of the d.c. district court saying the changes put the timely delivery of election-related mail at risk. top of the hour now. hello to the viewers in the united states and around the world. thank you so much for sharing a very busy, very important news day with us. judge amy coney barrett plans to visit capitol. coronavirus new infections here in the united states heading up. dr. fauci warns states that continue to drop restrictions are, quote, asking for trouble. and a truly eye opening report on the president's finances reshapes the first presidential debate and reveals a president