overseas. because a vaccine is still in clinical trials some experts worry it could cause unknown side effects, but an official with china's national health commission says so far no serious adverse reactions have been reported. we can come out of this moment stronger than before. >> former president barack obama will hit the campaign trail in philadelphia. president trump is presenting a familiar closing argument. attacking his enemies and firing up the base. >> before the plague came in i had it made. we had this thing won. we were so far up we had the greatest economy ever. nationwide the virus is surging. >> we're facing a tough circumstance right now, we will see accelerating cases heading into the next four to six weeks. >> you will get scared, get depressed. this is a normal response to a very stressful situation. >> announcer: this is "new day" with alisyn camerota and john berman. welcome to our viewers in

the united states and all around the world. this is "new day." and the coronavirus situation in the united states is bad and it's about to get much, much worse. that is according to the former head of the fda. overnight more than 60,000 new coronavirus cases were reported. ten states reported record hospitalizations. the nation-wide hospitalization rate is now reaching levels we have not seen for two months. there's one thing we know is increased hospitalizations leads to increased deaths. not one state, not a single one, is trending in the right direction now. all the states in orange and red there are seeing a pretty steep rise in new cases. the first lady had to cancel a campaign appearance because of ongoing symptoms of coronavirus, yet despite all that, despite the evidence in his own house and the evidence around the nation, president trump continues to spread a demonstrably false statement that the united states has turned a corner in the pandemic.

>> the president's strategy in the final days of the 2020 campaign appears to be to attack -- well, lots of people, from dr. anthony fauci to lesley stahl to hillary clinton and many more. joe biden, mean while, has been off the campaign trail this week preparing for tomorrow's debate and attempting to portray a positive path forward for the country. overnight new financial filings show joe biden's campaign with a substantial cash advantage, nearly triple the amount of cash on hand that the trump campaign has. and president obama delivering a video message to young voters as he gets ready to hit the campaign trail today for biden. we are less than two weeks before election day and more than 33 million votes have already been cast. that is 72% of all of the early votes cast in 2016. so let's begin with cnn's john harwood, he is live at the white house for us. john, make sense of life for us,

would you? >> well, alisyn, look, we're getting a demonstration from both candidates of why joe biden is winning this race and president trump is losing it. joe biden who has got a 10-point lead if you look at the average of national polls, lead in the critical battleground states, is hunkering down, preparing for the debate, with i may be the last significant opportunity for the trajectory of the race to be changed. if donald trump were somehow able to pull off an effective response. he had a disastrous performance in the last debate which blew that chance, he's got one more. so joe biden is staying off the trail, preparing for that, as a disciplined candidate should. donald trump by contrast is showing a complete lack of discipline. it's hard to reach any other conclusion, guys, that he's not even trying to win votes anymore, what he is doing is trying to accommodate himself and his supporters with what's happening to him. explain it to lay the groundwork for why i'm losing the election.

he is saying that the media is against him, the debate commission is against him, tony fauci is against him, bill barr the attorney general is against him because he's not prosecuting joe biden. they had bizarre performance in erie last night where he said, you know, i had it made. i had a great economy. i wasn't going to come to erie, but then the virus happened to me and now i'm here asking for your vote. nothing to do with the needs of erie, pennsylvania. it was all a transaction where he said i wouldn't even have to be asking for you had i not been victimized by the coronavirus. that is not the performance of a candidate who understands what americans are concerned about and is trying to resolve their problems. >> i'm sure the fog behind you is a metaphor for something. i don't know what it is, but it's absolutely i'm willing to say a metaphor for something. john harwood, the president walked out of an interview with lesley stahl with "60 minutes," a preplanned interview and didn't even do part of the interview that was scheduled, a walk and talk with the vice president, mike pence, and

lesley stahl. why? cnn has reporting on what transpired here. >> well, the reason, john, is that as you said in the intro, the coronavirus situation is bad in this country, it's about to get worse, it's happening on donald trump's watch and he can't take the heat. so lesley stahl sat down with him to question him about coronavirus. he's been trying to pretend that the pandemic is essentially over, we rounded the corner, that of course is not true and everyone can see that it's not true from the case counts and so when lesley stahl was sustaining a line of questioning about that he couldn't take t he decided to get up. he's now casting it as kind of i'm doing a sting on "60 minutes," he released a photograph intended to show lesley stahl disregarding mask wearing requirements when as we have learned since that was just her talking to her producers after the interview happened. again, this is a president who

is struggling mightily under the pressure and does not appear to be making any political progress. >> john harwood in the fog of washington, d.c. thanks so much for being with us. joining us now cnn political commentator former republican senator from pennsylvania rick san forum, also with us bakari sellers, a former democratic state representative from south carolina. senator santorum i want to start with you, you have said and continue to say that the president's demeanor is what is keeping him from doing better in this campaign, maybe even leading in this campaign. what do you mean? >> well, i think you hear it all the time from voters that a lot of them like what the president's policies are and what he's been able to accomplish, but, you know, don't react very well to his focus as john just pointed out to his focus on himself. i mean, i think the last two weeks, you know, since the debate, the debacle, i will

agree it was a debacle because it was a debacle that sort of was a bit of a gripe session on himself, but since then i think he's actually been a lot more disciplined and focused on what he's going to do for the american public. that's why he won four years ago because he said i'm going to take on the swamp, do all these things, listed the wall and a whole host of other issues that he was going to take on and he hasn't done that effectively in this campaign. i think the last two weeks he's been better at it, but he's got to focus on what he's doing for america, not the grievances that are going on with him personally. people don't care that, you know, the were he is is mean to him. they don't care that there is all these sorts of things that people aren't -- you know, whether it's fauci or barr. it's all personal. he's got to get away from the personal and focus on what he's going to do to help the american public. >> and, rick, just to clarify that, i mean, yesterday he went after, as you said, dr. fauci, kristen welker the upcoming

moderator, lesley stahl from "60 minutes," the debate commission he's angry at, hillary clinton, bill barr. i mean, how is that more disciplined? >> the answer is you can do that, you can go after those things, but you have to turn it into why it matters to the american public. what does it mean? i mean, that he's fighting these people but he's not fighting for himself, he's fighting for them and it's not about him it's about you and the american public and, you know, what i'm trying to do is actually work for you. you know, effectively -- yeah, i think he can do that. i don't think you can get the president to not talk about himself, i think that's just impossible, but it's okay if he can talk about himself and put it in the context of how it helps the american public that he's fighting this battle. >> bakari, i think more than ever over the last 24 hours we have seen the biden campaign embracing that contrast, there have been people who criticized him for not being out on the trail, doing debate prep this delaware these last few days but i think we're seeing exactly why

he's doing that is correct because the biden campaign is perfectly willing to let donald trump go out there and stir chaos because of the contrast it presents and then we saw during the world series last night -- first of all, as alisyn was saying the biden campaign is just outraising team trump in ways that are astounding. they have three times the cash on hand and we saw them put it to use with an expensive commercial during the world series last night and i want to play just a little bit of it here. >> joe biden doesn't need everyone in this country to always agree, just to agree we all love this country and go from there. >> i'm joe biden and i approved this message. >> so it seems, bakari, to me at least they're jumping all over the contrast that president trump himself is providing. >> yeah, i mean, the contrast couldn't be clearer in this race and in this election but i don't think it's new, john.

joe biden when he came out of the gates was talking about how charlottesville -- and him getting involved in this race. so this contrast is extremely, extremely clear and they are just laying it out and it's not just the energy at the top of the ticket, you talk about the fundraising, but look at jaime harrison in south carolina. imagine if rick raised $57 million in one quarter or mj hager or the list goes on and on and on with the amount of money that's being raised by democrats up and down the ballot because the energy is there. now, i do want to say that there ain't no change in a 70-year-old man. a 70-year-old man don't change. so this president if we're expecting him to be anything different as we are beginning to finish this race, we should -- we will just be waiting until eternity because that's simply not going to happen. we are in the gotv phase this have campaign, get out to vote. whatever happens in this debate,

whatever happens on the stage in erie, pennsylvania, doesn't matter much. everyone right now are trying to make sure they get their voters to the polls. and the trump campaign seems to not be able to get out of its own way. it has no focus, it has no operations, it has no -- it does not have a central theme or central message. what you saw last night in that commercial was that joe biden at least has that central theme, has that operation, has that central message. >> rick, about that money obviously it's been pointed out it's an obscene amount, the astronomical figures of $177 million on the biden side and 3 $63 million on the trump side, obviously trump has less, but is that too paltry a sum for him to do everything he wants to and needs to for the next two weeks? >> well, as you know, i mean, donald trump commands the media and so he gets a lot -- he gets a lot of air time that he doesn't have to pay for. so i don't think you can necessarily match that up. and, look, the trump campaign has invested a lot on grassroots

activities, i would argue more than -- more effectively than the democrats in part because the democrats have been hampered by their decision not to go grassroots campaigning because of covid and republicans have sort of blown through that. if you look at the registrations in pennsylvania and florida, north carolina and other places, you know, republicans have made gains. their grassroots activity has been quite effective. we will wait and see how that turns out. look, i agree with bakari on biden's strategy, i mean, joe has not been a particularly effective campaigner, you can hear from your report earlier that there's very little enthusiasm for him out there and so his objective which i think is smart for the biden campaign which is to keep him out of the limelight, don't have him say anything and let donald trump be the issue. >> i covered rick santorum running for president almost winning the republican nomination on pocket change. when you see the fundraising figures out there now it blows your mind. >> it makes me sick, john. >> i knew it.

i could see it in your eyes that you looked at that money and were like, oh, my. >> i won the iowa caucuses in 2012 and i spent most of a million dollars to win the iowa caucus caucuses. just the idea of having this kind of money is just insane. >> let me tell you something, there is a story about where the trump money has gone. you can't spend that kind of money without there being a problem or mistake or potentially even worse there. bakari, that's for another time. this morning former president obama going out on the campaign trail for the first time in philadelphia which is interesting, it tells us where the biden team thinks it is most important right now. also the message. what do you think the message will be and what can the former president accomplish? >> i mean, look, the former president, barack obama, is the most popular elected official, former elected official, in the entire country bar none. democrat, republican, i mean, you know, you've got to let the big dog eat and barack obama is the big dog. whether or not he is in north carolina, which i'm pretty sure they will probably trot him down

to north carolina or in florida, i mean, starting in pennsylvania, he is somebody who can tell you about the presidency, can tell you about the pressures of the presidency and what type of man or woman you have to be in order to assume that office and do it well. i mean, he got over 330 electoral votes not once but twice. so contrary of the criticisms that anybody on the right may want to levy, this is somebody who has won the white house by a good margin and amongst people of color, i remind people, most mornings i come on the show i will remind you the most crucial number is not that people are voting for donald trump or joe biden, but there is a large group of people who elected to vote for the couch in 2016. there are 4.4 million people who voted for barack obama in 2012 who sat at home in 2016. if he can get a quarter of those people back out, i mean, the excitement for black folk and hispanic folk coming out to see barack obama is palpable and i think that that is going to be

something that the trump campaign doesn't have. he can't get nobody to campaign for him. who wants to campaign for donald trump? >> bakari, senator santorum, thank you very much for being with us this morning. we are out of time. thanks so much. so joe biden and donald trump face off tomorrow night in the final presidential debate. cnn's special live coverage starts at 7:00 p.m. eastern. there is a new coronavirus warning from a former top health official. what he says we need to be on the lookout for next week. some things are good to know. like where to find the cheapest gas in town and which supermarket gives you the most bang for your buck. something else that's good to know? if you have medicare and medicaid, you may be able to get more healthcare benefits through a humana medicare advantage plan. call the number on your screen now and speak to a licensed humana sales agent to see if you qualify. learn about plans that could give you more healthcare benefits than you have today.

depending on the plan you choose, you could have your doctor, hospital and prescription drug coverage in one convenient plan from humana, a company with nearly 60 years of experience in the healthcare industry. you'll have lots of doctors and specialists to choose from. and, if you have medicare and medicaid, a humana plan may give you other important benefits. depending on where you live, they could include dental, vision and hearing coverage. you may also get rides to plan-approved locations; home delivered meals after an in-patient hospital stay; a monthly allowance for purchasing healthy food and beverages, plus an allowance for health and wellness items. everything from over-the-counter medications and vitamins, to first-aid items and personal care products. best of all, if you have medicare and medicaid, you may qualify for multiple opportunities throughout the year to enroll. so if you want more from medicare, call the number on your screen now to

speak with a licensed humana sales agent. learn about humana plans that could give you more healthcare benefits; including coverage for prescription drugs, dental care, eye exams and glasses, hearing aids and more. a licensed humana sales agent will walk you through your options, answer any questions you have and, if you're eligible, help you enroll over the phone. call today and we'll also send this free guide. humana, a more human way to healthcare.

a former fda commissioner has a dire warning about what the pandemic could look like next week here in the u.s. >> we're about a week away from starting to enter a period where we're going to see a rapid acceleration in cases, i think november and december will be tough months. we're seeing hospitalizations go up in 42 states right now, case right side going up in 45 states and there really is no backstop. >> joining us now cnn chief medical correspondent dr. sanjay gupta. great to see you again. last hour we talked about this but i do think it bears repeating. if we are at 60,000 new cases a day right now today, what is next week going to look like? >> well, you know, we're starting to go into that sort of exponential growth here i think is the concern, that's what dr. gottlieb is talking b the reason he is putting a sort of a week

or two-week marker on it is we are tracking along the european union. we can show this graphic comparing the eu to the united states and we can see what happened at the beginning of this pandemic, sort of in the middle the eu was able to bring the numbers way down, the eu is in green on that chart, but then it's this period on the far right of the graph, that's the concern. they have a straight up sort of trajectory that's the exponential growth we are talking b no longer linear growth. we are starting at a higher level and starting to actually have that exponential growth as well. what are we talking about? it's tough to say. i remember in july, middle of july, at some point around there dr. fauci said we could potentially hit 100,000 people becoming infected daily at some point this year. i think that time may be now. you know, i hope it doesn't get that way, but that's the real concern. >> i'd like to see us at 10,000

cases hitting the fall, we are at 60,000 cases. it begs the question what can we do about it? the deal is mitigation, we have to figure out away to mitigate this and you find some lessons from arizona. >> yeah, i think this is really important because everyone is focused on the vaccine, which is understandable, but that's sort of the nature of our society, you know, let's wait for the quick fix and not do the hard work that's necessary. but it can work. let me show you arizona, i wanted to get hyper local with some of these data. if we look at what happened in arizona we see that after they lifted their stay at home sort of orders and i'm talking the beginning of june now what happened? 151% increase in people becoming newly infected. okay. that's the bad news. but take a look at the second line there and this is really important. they were able to decrease new infections by 75% over about a three-week period between july 13th and august 7th.

no stay-at-home orders in place, mask requirements, limiting large public events and certain businesses which were primarily bars that were closed at that point. they were able to bend the curve for that period of time. you know, we've been saying this for months, right, going back to february now, march. it works. and i will keep giving examples of how this might work. i think it's really important. people still question the efficacy of masks, they still question the efficacy of limiting these large outdoor or indoor even gatherings. they work. that's one example, but you can see examples of that all over the world. >> the surgeon general is tweeting something. >> yes. >> can you do a dramatic reading about herd immunity. >> this is jerome adams talking about herd immunity. he says it is a bad idea. he says it could overwhelm health care systems and lead to many complications or deaths. >> he won't be around long, sanjay. >> welcome to the show, dr.

adams. i mean, look, i don't mean to be facetious. we've been saying this for months, okay? dr. adams is part of the coronavirus task force. unfortunately dr. scott atlas who is also a member of that task force has essentially been advocating for this for months. it's a terrible idea, it's always been a terrible idea, unfortunately that is sort of the policy right now in this country, whether it's implicit or not, i mean, this idea that, you know, don't even wear a mask, you know, having these large gatherings of people. i mean, the virus is spreading. this is essentially a herd immunity mentality. the reason it's a terrible idea is many more people -- many exponentially more people will die than is necessary, hospitals will become overwhelmed. dr. adams is right. but that's been the case for a long time. why are we just saying this now? i mean, this has been a strategy that we have essentially been using in this country and it's a terrible strategy and we have the numbers on the right side of

why you are screen to show for that. >> there's also a mess in communications. we have the surgeon general disagreeing with the coronavirus task force adviser, disagreeing with anthony fauci, degree agreeing with deborah duburke. we have more news for you. a woman who spent 18 years working for donald trump has a new tell-all book. what she says about the president's alleged racist comments next. when the pandemic shook our city,

scott wiener immediately went to work, making sure families could put food on their tables, defending renters facing eviction, securing unemployment benefits, helping neighborhood businesses survive. scott wiener will never stop working until california emerges from this crisis.

the bay area needs scott's continued leadership in sacramento. because we know scott is fighting for all of us. re-elect scott wiener for state senate. former long time executive and donald trump's real estate company says she witnessed racist, sexist and all around boorish behavior from donald trump for years. she writes in her new book, quote, if you didn't know the actual fact he could slip something past you. joining us now is barbara rez, her new book is about her 18 years working for trump, it's called "tower of lies" and it is on book shelves now. barbara, great to see you. >> good morning. it's nice to see you again. >> so let's talk about everything that you witnessed. i mean, you have this front-row

seelt for 18 years. let's just start with the racist behavior that you say you witnessed. you write in your book that he didn't want any black workers on his construction sites and here is what you write, get him off there right now, donald said, and don't ever let that happen again. i don't want people to think that trump tower is being built by black people. you go on to say he also didn't want any black job applicant, a young man, sitting in the lobby of trump tower. why? why didn't he want any blacks visible? >> okay. well, it's the first item where there was a black man grinding the concrete on the second floor of the building when it was wide open and you could see -- you could see it from the street and that's -- and he saw it from his office or the building lobby and that's what upset him and he called me and another person and he said i don't want that to happen again. we don't want people thinking

that this is being built by black people. later i was interviewing architectural students for a plant clerk job and i had a young man waiting for me in the lobby, i was across the building and after i interviewed him i saw donald, he grabbed someone, told me he needs to see you. he said don't ever let that happen again, i don't want black kids sitting in my lobby where millionaires are coming in to buy apartments. don't let that happen. that really took me aback, i have to be honest with you. i think to this day and i'm not sure, i didn't choose this man because i had a better candidate that i liked that was more interesting in following up on construction, but would i have hired him, you know, i probably would have. >> so when donald trump at the time said things like that, i mean, i know it was at '80s, did anybody ever call him on that and say, how dare you speak like that? >> well, i did. i did. i said you're being ridiculous. you know, see, you had to pick

your spots with donald and i tried to, you know, be honest but it but not enrage him because what was the point of that? i wasn't happy about it to be honest with you, but it's also it's a long time ago, it was a very different time and people say, well, why did you still work for him? there weren't a lot of choices at the time, especially for a girl engineer. so i figured being there i could do more than letting him hire another racist like himself to do my job. >> you also say he cannot stand the working class people who make up his base. you write his world is personal drivers, exclusive clubs, private planes and parties, but without the maga hat wearing white male he has no political career. so he created this charade, friend to the common man. >> absolutely. >> give me a break. trump can't stand the common plan. how do you know that? >> well, there is a story in my book which is very telling. after a project structure is completed, the concrete or steel you have a big party celebrating

that and thanking the men for the work and it's always men. we were planning a party and i went to see donald with the project manager from the contractor and we talked about donald was all excited about t he said this is great, i'm going to have this, i'm going to do this, i'm going to have this politician. blah, blah, blah. we were talking about the logistics and how there wereso many men working on the job it's going to be not easy to put together. he said what? what men? you are not going to have the workers here we said, donnell, it's for the workers. okay. how about just the foremen. i'm going to have champagne here. this is not for workers, not for the construction workers. that to me was indicative of the fact that here were these, i don't know, a couple hundred, maybe more people that are working very hard for him to build him a building and he had absolutely no feeling for them. he totally disregarded them, he had no respect for them. >> so, barbara, you worked for him for 18 years. so the donald trump that you see today on your tv screen the same

as the man that you worked for? is there something that is surprising you now today? >> that's sort of the essence of my book, i go back and talk about the seeds of what we see today being there when i was working for him way back when and because i had this very unusual relationship with him and so much access there really is no one that can speak to the donald of that time probably better than i. yes, he has changed, but, again, like i said, you could always see it coming. there were some things about him that did surprise me and maybe because he's sort of protected me from this side of him, but like that remark that billy bush remark way back when in 2016 about women, you know, that shocked me. i didn't think that, you know, he would go on tv and admit to assaulting women. there are things that do surprise me but things that don't surprise me, you know, they are all in the pattern,

this he follow the patterns that he set. >> quickly, what about all of the revelations about his taxes, that he hasn't paid taxes for many years, that he recently paid $750 taxes while he was in office. you say thaeks that laws and things like that are for stupid people. meaning what? >> yes, i absolutely agree with that. you know, he thinks that every law can be skirted one way or another and he has been doing that and he's sort of gotten away with it. the taxes didn't surprise me at all. i would have expected just that. what surprised me was a year ago, over a year ago the "times" did an article about how his family set up this scam corporation to do all the repairs and stuff at the trump buildings and they were able to take all this money out of the company and not pay, you know, estate taxes on it and stuff like that. i was shocked to see that there were people, mary ann and elizabeth, his two sisters that i knew pretty well, i was so

disappointed in seeing that, that they were involved in something like that. >> i just want to read from the trump side, his communications director for the trump campaign says about your book this is, quote, this is transparently a disgruntled former employee packaging a bunch of lies in a book to make money. we only have a few seconds, barbara, your response. >> my response, we left on very good terms, i got a couple letters of recommendations, wonderful letters of recommendation from donald. i didn't know what this was going to be like and i feel that, you know, everyone here has to do what they can to stop had i'm from getting reelected and what i can do is write a book and that's what i did. >> the book again is called "tower of lies" it is out now, barbara res, thank you very much for being on "new day." >> thank you. it was a pleasure. a woman whose husband died of coronavirus says she has just one plea to make as americans get ready to vote and you will hear from her next. i'm voting 'yes' o

n prop 19. nineteen limits taxes on seniors. it limits property tax on people like me. nineteen limits taxes on wildfire victims. it says so right here. if 19 passes, seniors can move closer to family

or medical care. i looked at moving but i can't afford the taxes. will you help california's most vulnerable? vote 'yes' on prop 19. traffic and air pollution will be even worse after the pandemic. that's why we support measure rr to keep caltrain running. which is at risk of shutdown because of the crisis. to keep millions of cars off our roads, to reduce air pollution and fight climate change. and measure rr helps essential workers like me get to work and keep our communities healthy. relieve traffic. reduce pollution. rescue caltrain. [all] yes on measure rr.

this morning the wife of a new jersey police officer who died of coronavirus in may is speaking out. police officer charles roberts known as rob by friends and family served on the force for 20 years. he passed away at the age of 45, leaving behind his wife alice and three children, shay, natalie and gavin. alice published an op-ed titled "my husband died of covid-19 and i have just one plea to make of you." alice roberts joins us now.

alice, your piece is incredibly moving and frankly heart-breaking. it's about loss and it's also will love. if we can i want to start with the love. you met rob 20 years ago at a charity basketball game, cops, which he was, versus teachers which you were. just tell me about him. >> i mean, i guess the message out of that is you can meet someone you least expect to. so i teach in the town where i grew up and it was just a charity basketball game and we had had some practices before the big night in the high school gym and apparently on the night of the game he told his mom, that's the woman i'm going to marry. i guess that's what happened. >> he got exactly what he wanted and i'm so glad that he did and the family you were able to build together. you wrote this piece in some ways as a message to voters and also as a message to president trump and you say in your mind the onennly thing he understands

winners and losers. so tell us, if you can, what you personally have lost. >> i mean, i think that's hard to put into words or even conceptualize it. i still think i'm learning every day it hits me differently as to what i've lost. i don't think that's really measurable. i don't think it's just what i've lost, either, i think it's what this world has lost. this world has lost a really excellent police officer, especially during a time when that's sort of important to have. i have lost a partner, i've lost a cook, i've lost the guy who made me laugh all the time, you know, we were always joking. you know, you go into the supermarket and i saw halloween chips and it made me laugh just because there were just so many good memories that we spent together just on ordinary things

and on trips and just every day life. you know, it went by too fast. everyone always says that, but it really did. >> and obviously your children have lost a father and that loss is immeasurable, but it's like so many others in this country now their lives have been upended. how? >> right, i think part of my article is i don't feel that trump has lost anything. he says how vic we are of the virus, yeah, we are all really sick of the virus, i can't say anyone is more sick of it than people who have lost loved ones. so, you know, we've lost an incredible amount and i think we just stand to lose so much more in the next four years if he is reelected. i don't think most people can say their lives have been made better during these past four years, especially not during this past year. i certainly can say my life has

turned at least 90 degrees, but it's hard to tell how much more -- i hate to question that because that's a scary question, how much more can we really take? >> you tell your story when your husband got sick and ended up in the hospital, you were only able to see him twice. just twice once he was in the hospital which i know has got to be incredibly painful and you say you've only made a few pleas in your life. up until this point what have some of those pleas been? >> i mean, i think for the most part we had a really great life together, we were both in jobs that we enjoyed and they were socially rewarding. we got a lot of positive feedback living and working in the town. you know, i don't hope for a lot in life, you know, we prayed and hoped he would get better and that didn't happen, but, do you know what, now i pray and hope

that his death can have some meaning and greater purpose. we had hoped to donate his organs, he had signed up for the organ registry and we weren't able to because of the virus. so now i just hope that his death can bring about some positive change in this country and i want people to know we are a real family and we are really grieving and this isn't fake news and it's not exaggerated. so i -- to vote and to street their conscious. >> you say this year the one plea you made was pleading for his life and now you're pleading for people to vote against president trump. what was it like for you to watch the president's battle with coronavirus when he got sick? >> that's hard to say. i mean, i know a lot of people feel that he speaks for them and that he's just one of them, but he's not one of us. you know, he got top notch

medical care, not everyone who gets sick is going to get that. he was able to get tested multiple times in a week. my husband's tests were mixed up and they took weeks to return. i'm sorry, can you repeat the question? >> i was just going to ask you how it felt to watch the president go through his battle with coronavirus. >> yeah, so then he miraculously recovered and i thought then at that point, wow, he could really show a human side. well, i didn't really think that. i would be silly to think that. but then when he went up those steps and unveiled his mask and then since then has had, you know, super spreader rallies, it's really like he's -- he's really spitting on all these loved ones' graves. i had a fellow high school classmate whose father also died of covid and she said -- she

spoke for cnn and wrote some articles saying trump is spitting on my father's grave and that's exactly how i feel. he had a choice to be more human and to show empathy, but i don't think he's possible -- he's not possible -- it's not possible for him to show empathy because i don't think he can feel that emotion. i think he thinks of one person and that's himself and he likes to grandstand. you know, he hasn't called me to wish me his sympathies, you know, i've heard from the governor of new jersey, i've heard from joe biden last night. they show empathy and caring and kindness and that's really lacking in the president. >> i'm sorry, i didn't realize you heard from joe biden last night. what did the former vice president say to you? >> it was just -- i mean, it was incredible. he called me and he told me about his tragedies in his life,

which i had already known about, and basically that no words that he could say would make a difference, he understood that. it was honestly just like talking to a friend and, you know, it was late, it was like 1 11:30 and we just chatted for probably 20 minutes. there is not a lot of highlights in my days recently but that was definitely a highlight. he is the kind, caring guy and that to me is a huge piece of what we need right now in the white house. >> if the president did call you, what would you say to him? >> i think i would hang up. i'm sorry. i don't think i could say the words i would want to say to him. but i know his words wouldn't really be genuine so they wouldn't -- they wouldn't really mean anything at all. i don't want to hear from him. he has spoken in his actions and, you know, as they say, actions speak louder than words.

>> alice roberts, we appreciate you being with us. we really do. we are so sorry for your loss and we wish the best to you and your family going forward. >> thanks for having me. thank you. >> thank you for being with us. >> what a woman, john. what a strong woman who obviously represents her husband, a police officer's memory so well, and just as plain spoken as they get, but still the powerful message of they're real, they are a real family, and she is allowing her family to serve as, you know, a warning to so many others. >> yeah, the piece which everyone should go read, she just talks about the loss. obviously the loss of her soulmate is just huge and it was a hole that will never be filled but she also talks about the loss that her family has suffered over the last few months. she hasn't been able to work because she's been taking care of her family full-time, her kids, two are doing remote learning completely, one of her sons desperately wanted to go back to the classroom. she has him back in the classroom but she's terrified of that like so many parents are,

too. it's a struggle for her family like it is -- well, worse than so many others. we are so sorry for her pain and loss. i also didn't know that the former vice president called last night and to hear that he called at 11:30 at night is interesting as well. >> it is. okay. we are 13 days away from election day, it's crunch time for our cnn fact checker daniel dale but it's always crunch time i think for daniel dale. he just tweeted this week i fact checked trump for more than four years. he has rarely before if ever had a period as comprehensively dishonest as it period right now. daniel dale joins us now. daniel, i don't know when you sleep, either, to be honest. so you have seen it get worse? you have seen the amount of misleading or down right false things increase? >> yeah, the quantity has increased and the breadth of the false claims has increased. what was notable to me about this friday to sunday period was

that he made 66 separate false claims. so that's not even counting the repeats of these same false claims, like sometimes he would say the same thing at five different rallies, it was 66 entirely different false things at minimum that's the minimum count and the other striking thing to me was that a lot of these false claims were written into his texts. so through the course of trump's presidency most of his lying has been ad-libbed, just kind of trump being trump, but in campaign season what i find is that his staff, his team, puts a lot of the dishonesty in his prepared text, it's dishonesty as a part of a deliberate strategy. >> only daniel dale would have an excel spreadsheet of the types of lies that you get from the president and the breakdown there. on the pandemic the president said last night as he has tended to say that we're turning the corner. listen. or not. >> we're rounding the turn on

the pandemic. safe vaccines that quickly end the pandemic. it's ending. normal life, that's all we want. do you know what we want? normal life. >> rounding the corner fact checks itself, daniel. >> it does. i mean, it's a vague phrase but it's just the opposite of reality. cases are spiking, we now have a seven day average above 58,000 new confirmed cases per day, the highest since early august and it's not only mild cases being caught by testing like trump keeps suggesting, hospitalizations are also spiking, 14 states set hospitalization records in the past week as of monday. this is just getting worse around the country. it's not ending. i did an analysis we published yesterday on cnn.com. i found that trump had said at least 38 times since february that this pandemic was disappearing or would disappear. he said it again at that rally and it's just wrong. >> he also seems to make things

up out of cloth and these are incredible fabrications that should be easy -- i would think -- easy to fact check. here is one about mail-in ballots, tens of thousands of them being found in a river. >> did you see they found 50,000 ballots in like a river? they found ballots at an ash can, they happened to have the word trump on them. >> is that one easy for you to fact check or hard for you to fact check? how do you get to the bottom of that? >> it was actually a challenge at first because when he seems to make something up it's hard to prove a negative, proving that something didn't happen. anyway, this one did not happen. what's notable to me is this is an example of what i think of as tramp-flation. at first he was telling a story about some ballots being found in a river, couldn't name the ballots. now it's gone to 50,000 ballots in a river. as usual this story keeps getting more and more dramatic

even though it's completely invented. >> these stories like this are so trite that you lie about the small things but then you also lie about the big things like the policies that matter most to americans and that includes health care. so listen to this. >> biden plan would destroy social security and destroy protections for preexisting conditions. >> we will probably protect medicare and social security and we will always protect patients with preexisting conditions. >> the facts, daniel dale. >> this is, again, the opposite of reality. so these protections for people with preexisting conditions were created by obama when joe biden was vice president. biden is running on pre everything sand strengthening obamacare. trump was repeatedly tried to get republican bills passed that would have significantly weakened the protections and he is now in court right now at president -- at present

supporting a republican lawsuit that would get obamacare killed in its entirety including those protections if the courts agreed. again, up is down, just complete inversion of what's true. >> and he says that one with a straight face. that one is really remarkable. then there's the one about fracking. here it is. >> if biden is elected he will wipe out your energy industry. >> only by voting for me can you shave your fracking. >> what's the fracking truth? >> so the fracking truth is that biden is running on a proposal to end new leases for oil and gas on public lands. so it is not a complete ban, it's only on public lands and waters, and it's a ban on new permits so not existing fracking or other drilling. now, i do give trump a little bit of the benefit of the doubt on this one because during the democratic primary biden made a bunch of vague comments that did indeed suggest that he wanted to ban tracking so i think in this case there is at least something

for trump to point to and say, hey, he said t but that's not biden's actual proposal no matter how vague or imprecise he was during the primary. >> no fracking way. in closing, you say he is lying more now than he has almost ever. >> he is. the only other comparable period i think was the 2018 midterms and, again, that's when lies started being written into his speeches more often, he was lying about a variety of topics, but this is at least one of the most dishonest periods for this president. >> daniel dale, that was trump-tastic. thank you for that all of that reporting.

very good wednesday morning to you, i'm jim sciutto. >> and i'm poppy harlow. this morning the nation's top doctor is warning against herd immunity as any form of strategy to try to combat covid. this is even as other senior white house officials have embraced the idea. u.s. surgeon general dr. jerome adams says doing so would lead to overwhelmed health care systems and far too many american deaths. currently not a single state in the country is trending in the right direction and the former head of the fda is warning we're just about a week away from seeing a, quote, rapid acceleration in cases. hospitalizations across the nation are at the highest level we have seen in two months and now some states are going back to tougher