President Trump Scraps Stimulus Talks Until After Election; Pence, Harris Face Off In Vice Presidential Debate Tonight
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: The president kills stimulus talks with the livelihoods of millions of struggling Americans hanging in the balance.</s>LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: And tonight's vice presidential debate takes on new urgency with President Trump's health still in question. Good morning, this is EARLY START. I'm Laura Jarrett.</s>ROMANS: And I'm Christine Romans. It is 32 minutes past the hour this Wednesday morning. And the art of no deal. President Trump kills stimulus talks, saying relief for millions of struggling Americans will wait until after the election. In a series of tweets, he said this. "After I win, we will pass a major stimulus bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and small business." Now, the move stunned lawmakers, especially since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Sec. Steven Mnuchin had been talking over the last few days in a last-ditch effort to reach a deal. Now, investors hoping for any sort of agreement reacting quickly. The Dow swung more than 600 points before closing down 376 points. If we take a look at futures right now, a little bit more stability here -- I think coming to the conclusion that yes, there won't be new stimulus until next year. To be clear though, canceling talks means no money in enhanced unemployment benefits for jobless Americans, no new funds for struggling small business. Any new relief that would have allowed airlines to bring workers they furloughed back on the job, gone. The world's largest retail group coming out strongly against the president's move, saying the pandemic isn't over and neither is the economic crisis it has created. Now, the president's move came just hours after the Fed chief Jerome Powell said this.</s>JEROME POWELL, CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL RESERVE: Too little support would lead to a weak recovery creating unnecessary hardship for households and businesses. Over time, household insolvencies and business bankruptcies would rise, harming the productive capacity of the economy and holding back wage growth. By contrast, the risks of overdoing it seem, for now, to be smaller.</s>ROMANS: Translation: the economy needs more help from Congress right now. Now, perhaps realizing the bad optics of denying millions of Americans relief, the president, late last night, then dangled this on Twitter. Quote, "If I am sent a standalone bill for stimulus checks ($1,200), they will go out to our great people immediately. I am ready to sign now. Are you listening, Nancy?"</s>JARRETT: It's noteworthy that he said unnecessary hardship, Christine. In other words, people can do something about this in Washington right now.</s>ROMANS: The president also going at length about how great the economy is right now. How the unemployment rate is coming back so quickly and how well we're doing. I wonder if that's going to resonate with millions of people who -- we know that half of American families with kids under the age of 18 say that they've lost either a job --</s>JARRETT: Yes.</s>ROMANS: -- or lost income this year. It's a problem.</s>JARRETT: It's a real problem. All right. The other big story this morning, the outbreak at the White House is spreading as top Trump aide Stephen Miller tests positive for coronavirus. Miller's diagnosis Tuesday adds to at least 10 others in the White House who have tested positive for the virus. Miller is also a member of the team that prepped the president for his last debate last week. Of that group, six people, including the president, have now tested positive. There's also Kellyanne Conway and Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien. Miller is best known for promoting his anti-immigration policies but he's also championed the president's message that the pandemic doesn't pose an outsized threat to the U.S. White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins has more.</s>KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Christine and Laura, add Stephen Miller to this growing list of officials inside the West Wing who have now tested positive for coronavirus. He released a statement last night, along with this disclosure, saying that he'd actually been at home for the last several days. Of course, he was in close contact with a lot of people who have already tested positive and he said he'd stayed home out of caution and tested negative every single day. But we're told that when he went to go to work today, he got tested and it was a positive result. And, of course, now he's at home again. And viewers might remember it was actually just a few months ago when Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller, who is a top aide to the vice president, also tested positive for coronavirus. So this case is going to raise questions about whether or not living with someone in close quarters -- if he did not contract it then, what may happen now -- all of those questions about how this transmission spreads because, of course, now we are seeing just how prevalent it is in the White House. And an e-mail went out to staffers overnight saying that all contact tracing for the positive cases they knew about so far had been done and to reach out if they had not been contacted when they believed they should have been. But we are told by one official they actually did just that. They reached out because they believed they came into contact with someone who tested positive --they were not notified. And now, CNN is told that person was not told any instructions on how to proceed, what to do. So you do see how maybe they've done contact tracing but it has clearly been incomplete in some situations. And, of course, add Stephen Miller onto the four press aides who have now tested positive, making that list of those cases inside the West Wing just continue to skyrocket in recent days, Christine and Laura.</s>ROMANS: All right, Kaitlan. Thank you so much for that. Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris square off later tonight in Salt Lake City at the only vice presidential debate. Vice presidential debates, of course, aren't typically expected to move the needle for voters. However, President Trump's coronavirus diagnosis puts tonight's debate in sharper focus. Voters will get a closer look at the person they're electing to be second in line should something happen to the commander in chief. Let's bring in CNN senior political analyst John Avlon for three questions in three minutes with Laura and I. You know, look, nice to see you this morning.</s>JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning.</s>ROMANS: That debate really has been shaped by the pandemic. What should voters watch for tonight?</s>AVLON: Look, this is going to be the most consequential vice presidential debate perhaps in history because, as you said, the president is suffering from coronavirus and isolated in the White House. It elevates the entire attention people should be giving to the second person on the ticket. Also, Kamala Harris is an enormous jolt of energy into the Biden campaign and a lot of folks are going to be looking for her to really play that traditional attack dog role. Now, her team is trying to lower expectations because she does have a good reputation for being a debater. Pence, calm, cool, collected compared to Donald Trump, but he's going to be in a difficult position in terms of trying to defend some policies and actions which are difficult to defend. So this is going to be a big one -- watch it.</s>JARRETT: John, one thing that may come up tonight is the president's blowing up stimulus talks for all intents and purposes. Then he tries to backtrack just dangling something on Twitter after 10:00 p.m. How is all of this supposed to sit with voters who are actually desperate for relief -- desperate for any help? Is this a -- is this a strategy at all just a month before the election?</s>AVLON: No, this is somewhere between a cry for help and a kamikaze mission. Look, this makes absolutely no sense from a political standpoint and Trump aides were face-palming after they saw the news. I mean, this comes minutes after Jerome Powell says we need another round of stimulus. Days and weeks of negotiation between Nancy Pelosi and Steve Mnuchin blown up, apparently impulsively, by the president who is, in his recovery, on some kind of cocktail drugs that might be increasing his instinct towards erratic behavior. A tweet does not compensate for a totally scuttled negotiation until after the election. So this is real, potential pain for the economy and people suffering right now. This does not make any rational sense less than three weeks before the election.</s>ROMANS: Yes. I don't even know what the political advantage of doing that was. I mean --</s>AVLON: It's done (ph).</s>ROMANS: -- the strategy just -- I just don't -- I don't even get it. Meantime, yesterday --</s>ROMANS: -- in Gettysburg, Biden gave an address that you say was one of the best -- the best speech of his campaign. Let's listen to a little bit of that.</s>JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Too many Americans see our public life not as an arena for mediation of our differences but rather, they see it as an occasion for total unrelenting partisan warfare. Instead of treating each other's party as the opposition, we treat them as the enemy. This must end.</s>AVLON: Yes.</s>ROMANS: Unity -- he's talking about unity. We haven't had that in a while.</s>AVLON: I know, it's like an undiscovered country. Look, I was deeply impressed by this speech. This was his big unifying speech. This was a vision speech, it was not a policy speech. And yes, I am guilty of being a Lincoln nerd. But I was so inspired I wrote a column about it for CNN because this was a presidential speech about how we can unite as a nation. That we've been through divided times before but we need to remember that a house divided cannot stand. And I thought it was eloquent and it came from a place and at a time when people have forgotten what a unifying president sounds like.</s>ROMANS: You say Lincoln nerd like that's a bad thing.</s>AVLON: Oh, no -- it's a good thing.</s>ROMANS: That's a good thing.</s>AVLON: One hundred percent.</s>JARRETT: We're big nerds on this show.</s>AVLON: Absolutely.</s>JARRETT: All right --</s>ROMANS: John Avlon --</s>JARRETT: -- John. Thanks for getting up with us. Appreciate it.</s>AVLON: Take care, guys.</s>JARRETT: All right. Tonight is the night -- the only vice presidential debate of 2020. CNN's special coverage starts tonight at 7:00 p.m. eastern.</s>ROMANS: All right. Up next, Hurricane Delta barreling toward Cancun right now on its way to the U.S. Gulf Coast. More on its path and the timing, next.