CNN "The Lead with Jake Tapper" - Transcript: Interview With Gov. Gavin Newsom

Interview

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TAPPER: Let's talk about that aggressive mitigation with the Democratic governor of one of those states, California, Gavin Newsom.

Thank you so much for joining us, Governor. I appreciate it. I know your time is valuable.

You have over 8,000 confirmed cases in your state, at least 171 deaths. You said there are 747 people in ICU beds in your state, that's 16 percent increase from yesterday. The virus peak in California is expected to come in the middle of May.

So, what are you doing to make sure that California does not become the next Italy, the next New York?

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): Jake, and those 774 people represent a quadrupling just in the last six days of the number of people on ICU. So, we're not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination.

But I am very proud of this state, the largest state in our Union. We're the first stay-at-home order where we're practicing physical distancing at a scale that's really done justice to helping us buy time and begin to bend that curve so we can prepare for a surge as you suggest, may come in the early part of May, maybe mid to late May.

TAPPER: There's still more than a dozen states that do not have stay- at-home orders. You were one of the first states hit. Based on what we've seen from your state, based on your experience being on the tip of the spear of all this, do you have a message for the other governors who have not taken these strong measures, these extreme measures? Should everyone be issuing these stay-at-home orders?

NEWSOM: My message is this: what are you waiting for? What more evidence do you need? If you think it's not going to happen to you, there are proof points all across this country, for that matter, around the rest of the world.

Don't dream of regretting, lean into the moment, take responsibility and meet it head on. You'll never regret overcompensating at the moment so that you're preparing people for meeting this moment in a responsible way.

And there's no greater intervention, period, full stop, none, than physical distancing. We talk about social distancing, but it's really physical distancing. You can stay socially connected, but you need to be physically apart. And that foundationally and fundamentally we know can bend the curve, can save lives and ultimately can get people back to work and get society back to some semblance of normalcy faster than anything else we can do.

TAPPER: Is your curve bending in California? Is it -- is it going in a better trajectory, because the United States in general, it's just going up? But I know it's different state by state.

NEWSOM: Yes, look, I mean, we're at this a little bit longer than anybody else. We started to take those repatriation flights from overseas, six of 'em, in late January, working with the federal government, with our Navy, to provide the resources and resourceful mindset of support for those flights.

We then had the Grand Princess. We have over 3,500 people we had to accommodate and that was a joint mission with the federal government, CDC and the state of California that really socialized a consciousness in the state around the significance and severity of the moment.

We were the first to go out with 65 and over and stay away -- stay at home orders. And then we had counties, including my old San Francisco, that really led on a regional basis and then ultimately at a state basis. And none of that could have happened soon enough and all of that has bought us time and has helped us bend the curve in this respect, that while we see things increasing, we don't see them increasing as fast as other parts of the country.

TAPPER: You say California needs 10,000 ventilators to be prepared. So far, your state has received I believe 4,200. But nearly 1,000 of them need to be refurbished.

[16:20:00]

Is the federal government assisting you in the refurnishing or in the supplying of ventilators?

NEWSOM: Well, we received 170 ventilators. L.A. County specifically received 170 ventilators from the national stockpile. Unfortunately, they weren't working. But I didn't call a press conference and run on your show to discuss that.

We actually delivered overnight those ventilators when we found out they weren't working, and we brought them into Silicon Valley, a company that's in the green tech space, Bloom Energy (ph), and they completely refurbished them, sent them back to Los Angeles County.

We don't expect that we're going to receive the requisite amount of ventilators from the national stockpile and that's why we have already found some 4,252 from across the globe and from entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. I was talking to Richard Branson this morning and their Virgin Orbit, where they're usually doing launching systems and rocket engines. They're coming up with these bridge ventilators that may help us buy a little bit time.

So we're being as resourceful as we possibly can. Not finger-pointing, not nail-biting, just taking responsibility to try to meet this moment.

TAPPER: I want you to take a listen to something that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said yesterday about acquiring medical supplies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK: It's like being on eBay with 50 other states bidding on a ventilator. And then FEMA gets involved and FEMA starts bidding. And now, FEMA is bidding on top of the 50. What sense does this make?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: We've heard from Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti that he had a check cut and he was about to get 100,000 -- I think it was N95 masks, and then all of a sudden, FEMA came in and took it out. We heard from Governor Pritzker that the lord of the flies like atmosphere of states just bidding against each other has just been madness.

What's been your experience with this bidding process?

NEWSOM: Yes, I mean, there's -- it's the Wild, Wild West, there's no question about it.

Look, we're blessed here in California with purchasing power that's second only to the federal government. We've ordered 101 million N95 masks. I've been able to distribute 35.4 million N95 masks.

I'll put in perspective, it's not a critique, it's just an observation -- all of the deliveries from the stockpile, and there have been three, total 1,089,000 N95 masks. We've distributed 35-plus million.

So, it gives you a sense that states are getting a little bit of support, but we're going to have to be resourceful. I reached out to Governor Pritzker. I reached out to Jay Inslee, some of the other governors to see if we can get out purchasing folks to work more collaboratively together at a state by state level. And we've got a really good relationship with our regional FEMA director. And so, we're making sure that we're not competing head-on, at least regionally in some of those purchases.

This is a huge issue, but again, I'm not going to complain about it. We're going to own it and we're going to work our way around it and we're going to try to help other states using the purchasing power of a state as large as California to help advance an effort to avoid price gouging and to ultimately get these deliveries in a timely manner.

TAPPER: Governor, the CDC says that your state California has a testing backlog of nearly 60,000 tests. What's being done about that?

NEWSOM: Yes, these are the tests that have already been conducted and we're just waiting for the results. It's incredibly frustrating. You're having results that take six, 10, 12 days in some cases. The commercial labs like Quest and Lab Corps overwhelmed.

All these private labs and all these things you're hearing about on the nightly news and press conference. Let me give you an example of that. Abbott, we have the capacity -- Abbott just shipped from the centralized procurement and distribution about 1,500 kits that we can do a quick turnaround. That's nothing. It's a drop in the bucket.

So I just caution people when they hear about the latest this or latest that, the latest protocol, that we're not at the scale we need to be, and one of the challenges is not just getting the diagnostics back on positive and negative, it's also getting the supplies on the front end in terms of the specimen collection and that's swabs and media for the swab.

I will say this, though -- proud to be in California. Stanford University and others working to 3D print now a lot of those swabs so we can help, even with the collection process. That's the PCR test. We're moving to these other tests, the blood-based tests, but it can't again happen soon enough.

TAPPER: I've talked to officials throughout the country who have said that they have to temper their remarks in what they say about the federal government response for fear that President Trump will punish the citizens of their state if he considers them to be a complainer. You and President Trump seem to have been working collaboratively. He praised you yesterday.

Do you find yourself by necessity tempering what you say in terms of any issues that you might have with the federal response?

[16:25:07]

NEWSOM: I've been consistent -- and, Jake, and you know this, we've been dealing with historic wildfires and droughts out in the west here in California, and I've always said, I've said it back a year ago, this is not time to bicker. I don't care who's up and down, whose polls are looking better than someone else's or who wants to run for president or who doesn't. When it comes to times of crisis, we need to raise above the bipartisanship and I've extended always an open hand, not a closed fist in those circumstances. And this is no different. But let me just be candid with you. I'd be lying to you to say that he hasn't been responsive to our needs. He has. And so, as a question -- as sort of an offer -- offer of objectivity, I have to acknowledge that publicly.

And the fact is every time I've called the president, he's quickly gotten on the line. When we ask to get support for that Mercy ship in southern California, he was able to direct that in real time. We got 2,000 of these field medical sites that are up almost all operational now in the state because of his support. Those are the facts.

We always want more. I could criticize this or that. At the end of the day, we're just trying to focus on developing a relationship of trust as a matter of course, because there's just too many Americans, 40 million, that live in this state that deserve us to get together and get along.

TAPPER: And, obviously, the coronavirus is taking a huge economic toll worldwide, but certainly in California. Already 1.6 million Californians have filed for unemployment in your state. That's -- of course, your state as the world's fifth largest economy.

What are you doing to try to take care of those who are without work, might be struggling for basic necessities to keep food in the refrigerator, to have a roof over their -- over their heads?

NEWSOM: That's the right question. And when I think -- we think in terms of the federal stimulus, $2.2 trillion, we don't look it through industry and buckets, we look at it through the lens of real people, real lives, trying to keep people in their homes and not get evicted, try to keep businesses operational even at a time when they can't open the doors to make sure that they can meet payroll.

And so, we're doing everything in our power. Look, we provide unemployment checks as much as $450 a week. We have the additional layer of now $600 a week. That will help, over $1,000 a week in some circumstances.

But as you say, we're being overwhelmed. It takes about 21 days in good times to get those unemployment checks out. We still want to maintain that status in this difficult times, but it's 109,000 on a seven day trailing average of unemployment insurance claims in the state. We average 2,500 before this crisis.

So you're correct to identify this as an overwhelming challenge and know this, we're doing two things at once -- situationally trying to meet this crisis head on and sustainably thinking about when we turn the corner, when we turn into a position or rather we bend the curve where we can turn on our economic engine, how we can do it as quickly and efficiently as possible and getting small businesses up, businesses, one, two people, not just 200 or 300, and how we can get them online front and center.

That's our top priority, and know we have economic teams working on that overtime, and we're looking forward to getting to that point where we're in a recovery mode, not just in an emergency response mode.

TAPPER: All right. California Governor Gavin Newsom, I have a lot of relatives including my baby brother out there. Keep up the good fight. Thank you so much for your time.

Let us know if there's anything that we can do to shine a light on any need you have that you're not getting.

NEWSOM: Wonderful of you. Thank you, Jake.

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