Trump Defends Protestors Demanding States Reopen; Supreme Court Deciding Fate of DACA Doctors
VAUSE: Since the very start of the pandemic, Donald Trump has tried to take a hands off approach, casting blame on China, the Democrats, state governors and his predecessor, Barack Obama, the World Health Organization. If we missed anyone, let me know. CNN's Jim Acosta reports on Trump's latest distraction.</s>JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Trump's own estimates for the number of Americans killed by the coronavirus are running into a new reality.</s>DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: But we're going towards 50 or 60,000 people. That's at the lower -- as you know, the low number was supposed to be 100,000 people. We -- we could end up at 50 to 60. OK. It's horrible.</s>JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Those expectations of 50 to 60,000 dead based on modeling estimates embraced by the White House could be jeopardized by states that are racing ahead, like Georgia, where Republican Governor Brian Kemp is ready to reopen.</s>GOV. BRIAN KEMP (R-GA): This measure will apply statewide and will be the operational standard in all jurisdictions. This means local action cannot be taken that is more or less restrictive.</s>ACOSTA: A source close to the coronavirus task force warns those kinds of announcements could backfire, telling CNN, "If some states jump prematurely into opening, we certainly could surpass 60,000 deaths." But Attorney General William Barr is accusing some states of going overboard in their social distancing measures, arguing some governors may be violating the constitutional rights of their constituents.</s>WILLIAM BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL (via phone): When a governor acts, especially when a governor does something that intrudes upon or infringes on a fundamental right or a constitutional right, they're bounded by that.</s>ACOSTA: The president has yet to come down hard on states favoring speedy reopenings, despite his warning last week that he would go after governors who don't follow his administration's guidelines that recommend steady declines in coronavirus cases.</s>TRUMP: And we're recommending, as you see in the charts, we're recommending certain things. They'll be in place, dependent on what the governor wants to do. If we see something wrong, we will be expressing ourselves very strongly.</s>ACOSTA: With new polling finding most Americans are unhappy with the president's handling of the pandemic, while pleased with their own state governors, Mr. Trump is turning to his pet issue, immigration, tweeting, "In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens, I will be signing an executive order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!" But the president has already boasted that he's taken tough action on the borders in response to the virus at a rally last month.</s>TRUMP: We have strong borders and really are tough. And early actions have really been proven to be 100 percent right. We went out. We're doing everything in our power to keep the sick and infected people from coming into our country. We're working on that very hard. We closed our borders very early.</s>ACOSTA: The president could be facing another setback in the battle against the virus as a new study found that hundreds of patients at veterans' care facilities saw no health benefits after taking the drug hydroxychloroquine. The study even revealed patients who took the drug had a higher death rate. The president had touted the drug as a game- changer.</s>TRUMP: I feel good about it. That's all it is, it's just a feeling. You know, I'm a smart guy. I feel good about it, and we're going to see. You're going to see soon enough.</s>JOHN VAUSE, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Michael Genovese is president of the Global Policy Institute at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is with us this hour, and it is good to see you. It's been a while. Michael, I want to start off with those protests, because the states which are not opening up early, there have been these protests in front of state houses, demanding that an end to these lockdowns or these stay-at-home orders. So I want you to listen to sort of a snapshot of some of the views of those protesters who are on the streets. Here it is.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's a struggle with the virus, but there's a struggle to survive on both ends of it.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not a pandemic. It's a panic-demic.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Freedom and liberty! We're losing it!</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do I think every business should be open? No. But there are some small businesses that they are going to fail if we don't -- we don't open things back up. It's not right.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People need to be infected. I know that sounds terrible, but people get the flu every year, and we don't have this kind of massive shutdown.</s>VAUSE: You know, it's important -- There's a real mix of views here. There are those who are sort of understandably concerned, maybe misguided, about their jobs in the economy and earning a living. And then there's the sort of the don't-tread-on-me crowd, the ones who chafe at regulation. You know, the ones who are basically ill informed because of what the president has been saying and what right-wing media has been reporting.</s>MICHAEL GENOVESE: PRESIDENT, GLOBAL POLICY INSTITUTE: It's a conglomeration of the Donald Trump base. I mean, there are several elements of that base, and you see and you hear them coming out very vocally right now. Now, the president's words have meaning, even when he's ill-informed and ignorant of -- of issues. People take it seriously. They rely on him. They trust him. And there are some times when the president's words really do matter, and this is, I think, one of the cases, because Donald Trump initially repeatedly downplayed the danger of the virus. And I think a lot of his base really took that seriously. They believed him. They trusted him. And now they've internalized that. You see that in this -- in the protests today and in the last few days. Open up the process. Let's get America moving again, against the advice of almost all the doctors. And so, there's -- there's kind of a delicious irony here, however, and that is that Donald Trump's message was, everything is going to be fine. People believed that, and then they started acting on it. Now, they're protesting against Donald Trump's own guidelines. And so the irony here is that they're believing Trump and protesting against him, all at the same time.</s>VAUSE: And with that in mind, this is the president's reaction to these protests. Essentially, I should say, protesting against the guidelines issued in his name. Here he is.</s>TRUMP: Look, people, they want to get back to work. They've got to make a living. They have to take care of their family. They don't want to do this. It's, you know, unfortunate. Maybe one way or the other. Both are unfortunate. Both are unfortunate. But you have a lot of people out there that are anxious to get back.</s>VAUSE: You know, there's a very big difference between understanding and justifying. And it sounds like he's justifying. Well, the president is consumed with, and even obsessed with thinking about himself. And so it's always a question of how does this make me look? If it makes me look bad, I'm going to find a way to get out of it. If it makes me look good, I'm going to advertise it up. I'll run up a flagpole and advertise it. And so the president's real concern, and in a crisis that should be about the nation, it's about his image. It's about how people see him. It's about how people treat him. And so Donald Trump is ill-suited, temperamentally, to deal with the crisis. He should be bringing the country together and unifying us, but he's still dividing us. It's still -- he's still making it into a partisan issue.</s>VAUSE: And while some of these demonstrations, they may be homegrown, "Newsweek" had this reporting on a group in Michigan. With regard to the protest, Governor Gretchen Whitmer said Monday that the organizers are "funded in large part by the DeVos family." She added, "And I think it's really inappropriate for a sitting member of the United States president's cabinet to be waging political attacks on any governor," in reference to Betsy DeVos, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education. A spokesman for the DeVos family denied involvement, but it does raise this question of just how involved these conservative groups have been in pushing these protests in these various state capitals.</s>GENOVESE: Well, a lot of these Republican and conservative groups see Donald Trump as a useful tool to get their message across, get their influence up. And so Trump himself, who's always looking in the mirror to see how he looks, how he's playing politically, you've got in the background a lot of people who are very serious, hardened conservatives who have an agenda. And it's an agenda that they take very seriously, and they believe that Donald Trump is the vehicle for achieving that. They did it with the courts, and they're doing it in a lot of other areas. And so there's almost a divorce between what Donald Trump is doing on the one hand and what the people in his administration and his cabinet are doing on the other hand.</s>VAUSE: Let's finish up with the president's miracle drug. You may remember. This is chloroquine. This was the anti-malaria drug that Trump has been doing the hard sell on for weeks. Here he is on April 5.</s>TRUMP: If it works, it would be great. If it doesn't work -- we know for many years malaria, it's incredible what it's done for malaria. It's incredible what it's done for lupus, but it doesn't kill people.</s>VAUSE: Well, yes, it does. That's been proven in multiple studies, one with the V.A.; others in Brazil. Now here's the president on Monday.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President --</s>TRUMP: Do you have a question?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think you wanted to follow up on the hydroxychloroquine.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The hydroxychloroquine, I'm wondering if you're concerned, this V.A. study showed that, actually, more people died that used the drug than didn't, and I'm wondering if -- if Governor Cuomo brought you back any results?</s>TRUMP: No, we didn't discuss it. And I don't know of the report. Obviously, there have been some very good reports, and perhaps this one is not a good report, but we'll be looking at it.</s>VAUSE: He just pulled the equivalent of, Chloroquine, I've never met the guy. Who is he again? He's sort of wiping his hands of any responsibility.</s>GENOVESE: You know, John, ignorance is not bliss. It can be dangerous. And this is a case in point. My wife has, for 12 years, been taking Plaquenil because of an autoimmune disease. She cannot get her drugs, because Donald Trump has, you know, made it a miracle drug. He said take it. It's not going to kill you, which it did for some people. What have you got to lose? Well, your life, perhaps. My wife had to go through Mexico to get the drug that she needs because Donald Trump, his words made a run on the drug. People who really desperately need it, who have been taking for years and years, can't get it. He is oblivious to this. He should be looking out for people. Instead, he's looking out for himself, and that's the tragedy. In a crisis, you're supposed to be looking to the nation. He's looking inwardly to himself.</s>VAUSE: Michael, I had no idea about your wife, so I hope everything is well and you stay safe.</s>GENOVESE: We got the drug from Mexico!</s>VAUSE: Good. That's good news to hear. But it should never have happened that way in the first place. But Michael, thanks for being with us.</s>GENOVESE: Thank you, John.</s>VAUSE: Well, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided the fate of DACA, the Obama-era program that protects hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. And that includes one young woman. She's in her first year of residency in emergency medicine. This is what she wrote in "The Washington Post." "Each day, after she takes off her protective gear and attempts to wash off both 'the virus and the fear,' she goes home and worries about whether she will be allowed to complete her residency. Losing DACA would mean losing her ability to replay her loan, treat desperate patients, even stay in the only country she has ever known. She's been here since the age of two." And she spoke to Catherine Rampell, who spoke to this woman. She's an E.R. doctor. And Catherine shared her experience with me.</s>CATHERINE RAMPELL, REPORTER, CNN ECONOMICS COMMENTATOR: There has been tremendous courage, great personal risk taken on by healthcare workers of all sorts of nationalities and immigrant backgrounds or, you know, native-born backgrounds, for that matter. But I think that the flight facing those who do not have security in their immigration status is particularly moving right now. They're taking on great personal risk to save the lives of Americans and, you know, they're being cheered. They're being applauded in the streets here in New York City, where this doctor worked. And, yet at the very same time, they're being told that, pending a Supreme Court decision, they might be banned from continuing to work, period, permanently, going forward. That's the case for this doctor. That's the case for many other healthcare professionals who have DACA protections currently, because the Trump administration has been trying to end those protections. And it's not just those with DACA status, of course, who are at risk. There are other categories of immigrants who have had special kinds of protections, something called temporary protected status. They're from other countries that, you know, they got there through different means, basically. And the Trump administration has been trying to end their ability to stay here and work legally, as well. So there are a number of ways that this administration, even before the pandemic began, was trying to make it difficult for immigrants to continue working in this country, even if they're doing vital, literally life-saving work. And I think that the consequences of those kinds of measures are just all the more salient, of course, during a pandemic when, literally, American lives are dependent on these people continuing to be able to show up and -- and put their own, again, personal safety at risk to save American lives.</s>VAUSE: And you can see the -- and you can see the full interview, about two hours from now, right here on CNN. Well, three months ago, Wuhan went on lockdown as the coronavirus gripped the Chinese city. CNN correspondent David Culver left Wuhan just before the shutdown, and now he's gone back and he's telling us what he's seeing their. Also ahead, once praised as a model for its coronavirus response, cases in Singapore are now spiking and one particular group is being hit hard.