. hi there, i'm brianna keilar, i want to welcome you. six days to go and more than 73 americans have cast their ballots. that's more than half the ballots cast in 2016. for those who have not voted yet, president trump and vice president joe biden are in an all out sprint to win you over. biden in his home state of delaware keeping the focus on the pandemic and saying he'd do things differently.

as the deadly virus continues to define the election with a death toll sitting now above 226,000 and cases spiking in 40 states, the white house is claiming victory over the pandemic despite it being at its worst place ever. they are citing ending covid-19 pandemic as key accomplishment of the administration. they are touting their ongoing engagement with scientists and health professionals. not only does not not square with the white house's action and soaring numbers but runs counter to what dr. anthony fauci said just today. >> if we get a vaccination campaign and by the second or third quarter of 2021 we have vaccinated a substantial portion of the people, i think it will be easily by the end of 2021, and perhaps even into the next year before we start having some semblances of normality. >> cnn's jeremy diamond is in

bullhead city, arizona. this is where the president's rally will be taking place. jeremy, the president is trailing in arizona, so what are we expecting his closing message will be when he takes the stage? >> yeah. he's trailing here in arizona, also neighboring nevada. that's one of the interesting things about the venue we're on the border half hour away from las vegas. the president is hitting two birds with one stone for this rally here. it is notable the president is trailing in arizona. not only because this is a state the president won by four points back in 2016 but also because as much as we like to talk about the polls having been wrong in 2016, they were right here in the state of arizona. the president was leading by four to five points just before election day back in 2016, and now joe biden is up by that same margin in the polls here in this battleground state of arizona. now, of course, brianna what we have to talk about every time we cover one of these rallies is

what we're seeing behind me, several hundred people at this point, probably grow to the thousands by the time the president gets here in a couple of hours. very few masks being worn, no social distancing. that's especially notable because arizona is a state that does experience one of those big surges. cases ar lot lower now but they have begun to creep up. no question when you ask any health expert including white house task force that events like this one, these are the kinds of events that will lead to more cases, more deaths, hospitalizations. we already know, brianna, from several rallies the president has held, there have been cases linked back to those. brianna. >> jeremy diamond in aruba. thanks so much. now to the biden camp where the former vice president just outlined his plan again to defeat the pandemic and get americans back to work. cnn's mj lee is following this. what is the plan.

>> brianna, joe biden is hunkered down in delaware. a big focus is the pandemic. we just saw him wrap up a meeting with health officials. some of them told biden we are currently in the middle of another wave, that things are worsening as far as the virus is concerned almost all across the country. when biden spoke, he said all of this latest data is extremely concerning, and he said all of this has been made worse by the administration declaring surrender. he also said that the country simply cannot afford four more years of president trump. take a listen. >> we've lost nearly 230,000 lives to this virus already and the white house is giving up. on the weekend mark meadows went on television and admitted they have waved the white flag and declared surrender. he said, quote, we're not going to control the pandemic, end of quote. the american people deserve so

much better than this. >> interestingly, brianna, biden did say that even if he were to win next week, it is going to be very difficult for him to turn things around. he said it is not going to be like turning off a switch. you can't stress enough how different all of this is from the way president trump has been talking about the virus, as jeremy laid out. just to give you a look ahead at what biden is up to, he did say he is going to be headed to vote later today. s we'll see if he ends up taking questions from reporters when he does that. as far as the rest of the week is concerned, tomorrow we are going to see him return to florida. oppose friday head to iowa and wisconsin. on saturday in michigan. at some point over the weekend, we are told former president barack obama will be joining biden on the campaign trail. we don't know if that's going to be michigan or a different kind of battleground state. brianna. >> all right. we'll be looking for that, mj, in wilmington, delaware. thank you so much. the president has a clear

pandemic problem on the campaign trail, whether he'll admit it or not. now it's going from rounding the turn to already defeated. in a new release touting the administration's accomplishments, they listed one highlight as, quote, ending the covid-19 pandemic. then they go on from the outset of the covid-19 pandemic, the administration has taken decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry and to understand, defeat and treat the disease. remember, they haven't even defeated it in the white house. mike pence's exposure, five staff, including a body man tested positive. that declaration of triumph has been met with anger for those that know the real deal, members

of the white house task force who tells "the daily beast" they are personally offended by the president. one of the president's experts after raising concerns over the administration's pandemic response. thanks for being with us. the administration, you heard what they are doing here. they said they defeated the coronavirus. what's your response to that? >> brianna, thanks for having me on today. that could not be farther away from the truth of anything i've heard today. it's an example of another white house office completely politicized and making statements subservient to the president's narrative that this coronavirus is a hoax and it's under control. i'm a scientist, i'm not a politician, and i've spent my entire career studying pandemics, i can tell you the truth is we are entering a phase of this pandemic that is worse than any other phase we've seen

to date. we anticipate a lot more hospitalizations and we're seeing that. we're anticipating more deaths and we're starting to see that. starting to see hospitals overwhelmed, ambulances turned away, refrigerator trucks pulling up to the back of the hospitals. none of those are signs this pandemic has been ended or that it's under control. we're hearing the white house make proclamations from the white house chief of staff that the trump administration has determined this is too hard for them. they have thrown in the towel. they are surrendering and giving in. i can tell you that america and americans are not quitters. we need a leader who won't quit. we need to take matters into our own hands and make sure we're following public health guidelines. we need to wash our hands. we need to wear our mask, and we need to keep social distance, crowds. we can turn this around.

i have confidence in americans we can do this. >> it's clear at least, like you said, you're a scientist, not a politician, but i wonder how one affects the other. it is clear the politics of this for the president is so deny reality because it is so bad right now that if it is broadly accepted by people who support him or considering supporting him in this election, that's not going to work very well for him politically. i wonder what the effect is of lying about where we are in this fight, considering we're at the worst part. what's the effect on the health of people who support donald trump and then people who are just trying to make sense of where the country is in this pandemic? >> unfortunately the consequence of not being truthful and telling americans the truth and telling his followers the truth is you're seeing these rallies. you're seeing super spreader

events. you're seeing these in some ways what end up being death rallies because the followers are coming to the meetings and they are not following social public health guidelines. the president is not emphasizing public health guidelines from the podium. so his followers at the rallies are not wearing masks and not keeping a safe distance. in the wake of these super spreader events, we're seeing increased hospitalizations across rural parts of the country and wherever he's had rallies. the consequence of him not being truthful is we're going to see more deaths from this pandemic. it makes it very difficult and confusing for americans to understand what is true when you have the president of the united states in complete denial and telling people something that's not true. scientists, on the other hand, are trying to sound the alarm. people we trust, your doctors,

your nurses, listen to those experts on tv. ask yourself if they are concern. i can promise you they are going to all tell you they are concerned. they are exhausted and many are getting infected and dying. we're going to have a shortage of health care workers. that's the truth. >> it's devastating for them as they shoulder this burden disproportionately. dr. fauci said getting back to normal will take longer than most people anticipate. he said this could be the end of 2021. this might be 2022 before this happens. what is your assessment of when life will start to feel normal for most americans. >> it's actually going to take a little while as dr. fauci described. it doesn't have to be painful, overly restrictive. it will include minor

inconvenience we're becoming accustomed to, wearing your face mask when you go outside, keeping a distance from others and being conscious of those around you if you're out eating in a family gathering or large group. it does mean thinking about your environment, things you're doing, maybe washing your hands more frequently throughout that time. even after we see a safe and effective vaccine be available, it's going to take a while before we can vaccinate everyone. even then the vaccine may not be completely protective. it could save a lot of people from getting really sick. we're going to make sure people are fully protected by layering on a number of public health practices, and that is still wearing your mask, still keeping your distance, even after you've been vaccinated. >> i'm so sorry to interrupt you, rick. i want to go to delaware where joe biden has just voted.

>> what i say is there's no excuse whatsoever for the looting and the violence. none whatsoever. i think to be able to protest is totally legitimate, totally reasonable, but i think the looting is -- as the victim's father said, do not do this. this is not what my son -- you're not helping, you're hurting. you're not helping my son. there are certain things we have to do as we move along. i know local folks are thinking about it as well, and that is how we deal with, how you diminish the prospect of lethal shooting in circumstances like the one we saw. that's going to be part of the commission we set up to determine how we deal with these changes. but there's no excuse for the looting.

[ [ inaudible ] >> yes on both counts. yes, i have a bill ready, number one. number two, yes, i will work with republicans. yes, i do have a proposal that relates to how we can improve the affordable care act beyond what it was before, which is what barak and i wanted to do at the time, allow a public option. keep your insurance if that's what you want to do, making it more affordable to get a plan, in terms of a gold plan, all the different plans, make it more affordable, subsidize it more, and fundamentally changing the way the cost of medication is. we're going to lower it by a significant amount, and i believe we can get help from republicans as well. >> why? >> why, because i think they are seeing the reaction of the american people.

overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly the american people think drug prices are too high. even the president, he continues to lie about it, even the president acknowledged early on he thought medicare should negotiate drug prices, lower prices overall. he hasn't done it, didn't mean it but there's a lot of republicans that do mean it. i'm confident we can get it done. thank you very much. >> all right. joe biden just voting there in wilmington, delaware where he is today. i want to bring in dana bash to talk about what we just saw there. brief comments, brief questions he answered from reporters. one of the questions was about the violence we have seen in philadelphia where there's been looting. this has followed, of course, the shooting death at the hands of police of a black man who did have a knife in his possession. what did you think about what you heard from the former vice

president? >> listen, this is an issue on so many levels. first and foremost just on the notion of racial justice and the police in so many cases doing -- going way overboard in a dangerous and sometimes like in this potentially murderous way. that is why we saw all of the activism all summer long about this issue. it is one of the issues that president trump tried to turn around on joe biden and on the democrats. he doesn't look like he really succeeded for lots of reasons. primarily the fact the coronavirus is the omnipresent issue in this race. having said that, let's just get practical here for a second, bre. philadelphia is in lockdown or people feel they can't move around, it might be harder to vote. philadelphia is really critical to joe biden in pumping up his

vote share in one of the most, if not the most important battleground state this election year. >> we don't really know what it's going to look like, as we have all of this record early voting. we're in a pandemic. you see what's happening certainly in philadelphia. all of these change the calculus of turnout, when people are voting, how much they are voting, how do we make sense of this. we're seeing these records. it's important to remind people we may not have a winner on election night. how does that play out? >> boy, that's the 64,000 question how it plays out. we don't know the answer to that. what we know right now is that it is unprecedented the early voting we are seeing. right now it's north of 70 million people who have voted. that's about half of the total electorate in 2016 if you acknowledge about that. that's pretty remarkable.

now, i've been talking to republicans this morning who admit that traditionally when you see early voting and turnout in particular is higher, that's good, that's beneficial to the democrat. in this case joe biden and all the democratic down ballot candidates. republicans are banking on the fact that they can turn out the way they have historically on election day. they like to say, i'm sure you hear this, too, bre. republicans like to put on their sunday best and make it an event, which is understandable. the big question at this incident po', despite every closing argument we're hearing from the president and from his challenger joe biden is turnout. it's about as cliche as it comes in covering politics but it's cliche because it's true. we don't know if it's anything like 2018, it's great for joe biden. >> all right. we will be watching. here we are days away. dana bash, thank you so much.

as these records continue being smashed, we're going to take you to three battleground states. plus cnn obtains tapes of bob woodward's interview with the president's son-in-law. what jared kushner said about doctors and scientists in the early days of the pandemic. and why congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez says republicans don't believe democrats have the, quote, stones to play hardball. this is cnn's special live coverage. nd found sofi and applied for a personal loan. i paid off my credit cards and felt a weight come off my shoulders. thank you sofi for a great experience and for helping me get my money right. ♪ ♪ ride... ♪ relax... now you're cloud surfing (record scratch) ♪ ride... ♪ relax...

whether it's been by mail or in person, 73 million americans voted. compare that to 2016 when 137 million ballots were cast in total. cnn is tracking early voting across several battleground states and we begin in florida's capital with cnn investigative reporter drew griffin. drew. >> brianna, mail-in ballots are asked to be dropped off, not mailed, to make sure they are in by election night in florida. that is the rule. 6.9 floridians have cast votes. millions and millions. that's just about half of all registered voters. this is a state with 29 electoral votes. the polls are neck and neck, which is why you're going to see both donald trump and joe biden not only in florida tomorrow but in the same town of tampa viewing for votes. i guess some people have decided

not to vote yet. you can vote anywhere you want in florida. the lines you see behind me in the really that long. >> i'm miguel marques in detroit, officials in michigan expect around 5 million michiganders cast their vote. by election day two-thirds of the votes already in in the widespread mail-in ballots program they have here. they say if you want, like florida, your vote to count and make sure that it counts, you should not stick it in the mail right now. you should drop it off at a dropbox around the state or go to a clerk's office and drop it there. or you can always vote on election day. remember, donald trump won michigan by 10,704 votes in 2016. both sides fighting for this state. the president was here last night. he'll be here on friday. joe biden will be here on saturday. jill biden will be here, the vice president will be here.

both sides fighting for every vote in the state of michigan. >> i'm sarah murray in philadelphia. it is crunch time for pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes. ivanka trump is here today campaigning for her father. yesterday was the deadline if you wanted to apply for a mail-in ballot. more than 3 million have applied to do that, to vote by mail. the secretary is telling people do not wait, get i down now. they are warning it is going to be a long election night in pennsylvania. we are probably not going to know, unless there's some kind of wild blowout who won pennsylvania on election night. it could take until the next morning or a couple of days to count the ballots. she and other officials in the state are saying that is okay. they will keep counting until we know for certain who won this big battleground state. back to you, brianna. >> thank you. thank you to all of my colleagues for the tour of states around the country. the dow falling hard as

uncertainty and fear over coronavirus spoox investors. plus lawmakers grilling big tech ceos as they face heat for their role in politics and disinformation. i'll speak with the doctor on the front lines of utah as they consider rationing care because the covid situation has gotten so bad. ring. exactly. no problem. ...and done. and now, save $1,000 on the sleep number 360 special edition smart bed, now $1,799. only for a limited time.

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republican lawmakers are grilling ceos of twitter, facebook and google over whose content gets regulated and why. as democrats argue the channels have an obligation to manage misinformation. just this week twitter flagged a tweet from the president about mail-in voting dates, not the first time the social media company has had to label one of the president's tweets as false or misleading. twitter's jack dorsey bearing the brunt of these accusations. >> mr. dorsey, who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the american people are allowed to hear and why do you persist in behaving as a democratic super pac silences news to the

contrary of your political beliefs. >> we're not doing that. this is why i opened the hearing with calls important more transparency. we realize we noticed to earn trust more. we realize more accountability i guess needed to show intentions and the outcomes. so i hear the concerns and acknowledge them, but we want to fix it with more transparency. >> we have to call this hearing what it is, a sham. this is bullying, and it is for electoral purposes. do not let the united states senate bully you into carrying the water for those who want to advance misinformation. >> i want to bring in cnn tech reporter brian funk monitoring this very important hearing. the timing, these are outlets that play a huge role in the education of voters. tell us what's standing out to you as you watched this. >> as you saw, brianna, it's a

very partisan hearing so far with republicans mainly saying facebook, twitter and google should be held liable for content decisions and democrats saying this is essentially a smoke screen to force tech companies to go easy on misinformation, especially misinformation pushed by president trump. you had several lawmakers saying the whole reason this is a problem is because the tech companies are very secretive about their algorithms and how they work. the tech companies are denying they are at all engaged in any partisan bias but that's not stopping some lawmakers for going after them for the same claims. you had a number of senators saying the way that twitter treats content from iranian officials, it's very different from the way they treat content from president trump. let's have a listen at a little bit of an exchange twitter had with some lawmakers here. >> it's strange to me you flagged the tweets from the president but haven't hidden ayatollah's tweets on holocaust

denial or calls to wipe israel off the map. does twitter maintain a formal list of certain accounts you actively monitor for misinformation. >> no, we don't have a policy against misinformation. we have a policy against misinformation in three categories, manipulated media, public health, specifically covid, and civic integrity, election interference and voter suppression. >> now all of that just highlights how confusing some of these policies are, and it's not clear how these tech companies often enforce them, often creating very specialized situations in which they explain when a policy applies and when it doesn't. the tech companies say they want to be more transparent. whether or not that will happen before the election is anyone's guess. >> all right. brian fung, thank you for watching that and bringing us the latest. the president tells suburban women we're getting your husbands back to work. we're going to roll the tape on why that view is outdated.

cnn obtains another bob woodward tape, and this one involves his interview with jared kushner, the president's son-in-law, who says -- he talks about who are the most dangerous people around trump. and why the president was forgiven for nearly $300 million of debt after he failed to repay it. >> tech: every customer has their own safelite story. this couple was on a camping trip... ...when their windshield got a chip. they drove to safelite for a same-day repair. and with their insurance, it was no cost to them. >> woman: really? >> tech: that's service you can trust. >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪

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how he got $287 million in debt forgiven after failing to repay his lenders. in a tweet he says, quote, doesn't that make me a smart guy rather than a bad guy. this comes after new revelations from the "new york times" on trump's tax records. they report the vast majority of the loan was related to a skyscraper in chicago that was completed back in 2008. trump had hoped to turn the property into another one of his real estate marquis dwellings but he defaulted on his loans, sued his biggest lenders and largely avoided paying taxes on it. from irs attorney phillip hackney is here with us. how is it the banks could forgive a loan that size and then lend trump even more money?

>> it's a really strange thing. i think the interesting thing about this the first iteration of the story is trump managed to pay no tax for the last 10 years according to "new york times" reporting. a lot of folks figured out how he might do that. it looked like he lost a lot of money. this costa mesa that losing a lot of money. but how did he gets the banks to do something like this. when you do a large deal like this, unlike normal folks out there, your viewers out there, you borrow money, your banks are coming after you. you're probably going to have those dollars forgiven on your tax returns. trump managed to mostly avoid it. there are make various provisions of the tax code particularly made liberal around 2008, 2009 financial crisis that allowed him some space to exclude that money from income. effectively what happened bankers gave him $287 million, he didn't pay it back.

he was $287 million richer but didn't have to pay tax on the vast majority of that. it's an odd thing. it shows his business acumen isn't that great but he's pretty wiley once he gets into a fight with bankers and others. >> cnn actually tried to ask trump about his financial dealings back in 1990 so i want to play part of this interview. >> let's talk about what we talked about yesterday. those in the financial community i'm talking about, and we talked about this on the phone, who have said -- this is them saying it, not me -- >> this is them in what do you mean by them? one or two people? what about the positive people. >> five or six. but the ones who said negative things -- >> here we are back to the negative. >> you know what, do this interview with somebody else. >> we talked about this yesterday on the phone. this is exactly what we talked about. >> do the interview with somebody else, really, you don't need this.

do it with somebody else. >> it's nothing we didn't discuss on the phone, donald. >> are his maneuvers legal? he certainly doesn't want to talk about them, are they legal? >> when you negotiate with the bank and argue you didn't owe the money, there's nothing illegal in terms of trying toting your bank to take a haircut, as it's called in the business. in other words, they are going to forgive that debt. nothing illegal about that. it doesn't appear on the face of the reporting that there's anything illegal here. some of the things he had to do as a result of being forgiven and not taking that money into income was to include it in a sense in future income tax returns. so in some sense he had to pay the piper in the end. i think he's more touchy on these things because it shows he lost money. he entered into crowning achievement of building a

92-floor skyscraper to do the trump international hotel and it turned out to be quite a failure. i don't see anything explicitly illegal as far as we can tell. there were some things in the past that have been discussed about $50 million of that debt or make debt that seems to be associated with those towers he owns, folks think he might have been doing something there. i don't see anything in the reporting that tells us that is the case, there's something going on. from what i can tell from the story, i don't see anything illegal going on. aggressive, yes, but not illegal. >> maybe not the best business but not illegal. all right. phillip hackney, thank you so much. >> thank you. uncertainty over the pandemic and upcoming election are again being felt in the stock market. you can see the do you down 800 points. it dropped 700 at the opening bell this morning. investors are uncertain with what's going to happen with the so-called second wave of the

coronavirus. the very real second wave we're in the middle of. we're going to be keeping an eye on this for you. we have more breaking news. president trump's son-in-law and senior adviser jared kushner is on tape bragging that the president was getting the country back from the doctors amid the early days of the pandemic.

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more than half a million americans testing positive in the last week alone. 40 states are seeing a rise in cases. just take a look at all that

orange and red on this map right here. take a look at this. deaths are up. in 27 states, authorities are reporting 985 new deaths. the nagswide death toll is topping 226,000 americans lost to this virus. the end of 2021 is when we can expect a return to normal, according to dr. anthony fauci, despite an official white house document asserting the pandemic is ending. the numbers are telling a different story. the president is expected to speak in moments after joe biden blasts him for botching the response to covid. ♪ you can go your own way

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just in, the fbi agents association representing more than 14,000 active and retired special agents, urgen both candidates to let wray finish his ten-year term. this comes after reports of the president was thinking about firing wray if he winning reelection. i want to talk with this about our gloria borger. you can't miss the timing on this. they're asking clearly for a commitment from both candidates that they will both say, yes, he can finish his ten-year term.

who does this put in a trickier spot. i think i not the answer. >> look, i think that chris wray is very popular on both sides of the hill. people believe he's a consummate professional. it was very clear that the president is saying out loud to his staff i don't like him, i want him gone, and the question is whether he fires him before the election or after the election. it's unlikely he fires he before the election. after the election, win or lose, he could still fire him. that wouldn't prevent somebody like joe biden saying, i would like to re-hire him which of course could always happen. >> gloria, let's listen into president trump for just a moment. >> well, thank you very much. i appreciate it. so maybe you could say a few

words and we'll talk. >> thank you, mr. president. we're very blessed to represent an industry that touches every single sector of our economy. that was something that became apparent during this pandemic. this administration took unprecedented steps to ensure that not only did our truck drivers have proper ppe so they could be safe, but so that we could deliver all the things to our grocery store shelves, deliver medical testing equipment to our first responders. tax reform this president has implemented has been phenomenal for our industry. it's allowed us to invest in safer, cleaner trucks out there on the r50d. it's enabled us to increase the wages of our truck drivers. for our drivers new rules that have been passed by this administration have enhanced safety. we're going to come back out of this and bring it back to you

when the president starts speaking. gloria, let's talk about where the president is. he's in nevada, heading to arizona. why is this on his list of places he neither to hit, and how is it looking this year? >> well, it's looking like he's behind. it's looking like he needs them. that's why he is where he is. you know, we're hearing this from the president himself, astoni astonishingly, like last night in omaha. he says to voters i wouldn't be here unless i had to. you think i would come back here? i don't know if that's exactly what voters want to hear, but he's making it very clear that he's going to places, because he feels like he has to. there's almost a part of the

president's stump speech that sounds like he's absorbing that he's behind and he's trying to catch up, which is a position, of course, he hates to admit to himself and losing is something that, you know, he doesn't ever want to acknowledge, but i think that's what we're seeing right now, is a candidate who is trying to broaden a map that looks very narrow for him. so that's why he's in a state like arizona, in a state like nevada. we've had polls that have just come out in nevada that show him behind, so i do think this is something that is kind of sinking in with the president, as joe biden is expanding his map, the president has to go back to these places to be where he was four years ago. >> gloria, just stand by for me. i want to bring in jeremy diamond to this conversation. he is at this event in arizona,