Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Biden and Harris to Appear Together in Delaware; Fauci Says, I Seriously Doubt Russia's Vaccine is Safe and Effective; Big 10 and PAC-12 Conferences Postpone Fall Sports. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired August 12, 2020 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. Alisyn is off. Erica Hill here with me this morning, great to see you.

ERICA HILL, CNN NEW DAY: Good morning.

BERMAN: history about to unfold in Delaware. For the first time, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will appear together as running mates. Senator Harris is the first black woman and the first Asian-American at all to appear on a major party ticket. The daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, what does this choice say about the changing facing of America?

We're getting new information just into CNN about how Biden made this pick and just how many women he interviewed in the closing days. It's a big number.

Also, new information about the generous financial support provided to Harris in the past by White House staffer Ivanka Trump and her father.

HILL: Her father, the president.

BERMAN: Exactly.

HILL: Okay. We also have a series of developments related to the coronavirus pandemic this morning. ESPN reporting the Big 12 conference will move forward with the fall football season. Meantime, the Big 10 and PAC-12 conferences will not play this fall.

On the vaccine front, Russia's claim of a new coronavirus vaccine being met with widespread skepticism, Dr. Anthony Fauci expressing serious doubts about its safety and effectiveness.

Another sobering milestone in the United States, new single-day highs for coronavirus deaths reported in Florida and Georgia, and a national medical group just releasing new guidance on face masks, including which can be most effective and how you should be using them.

Let's begin our coverage with CNN's Arlette Saenz who's live in Wilmington, Delaware, where we're waiting on that moment that John mentioned when we will see Biden and Harris appearing together for the first time as that ticket today.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we sure will, Erica, a little bit later today with the Democratic ticket now officially set, as Joe Biden selected Kamala Harris as his running mate. And we're told this morning that Biden actually interviewed 11 women who were in contention for the job in the final nine days of the search process before making his final decision to select Kamala Harris. He actually informed Harris of his decision over a video yesterday from his Delaware home.

Now, Harris' pick is a historic one. She is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, the first woman of color to appear as the vice presidential nominee on a major party ticket. And Biden and Harris campaigned and faced off against each other during the Democratic primary. They had that heated moment over school busing at one of the debates, but Biden has insisted that he doesn't hold grudges and ultimately decided to go with someone who has that tested experience on the campaign trail, as his partner on the ticket.

And Harris also had a unique and special bond with Biden's late son, Beau Biden. Beau Biden and Kamala Harris both served together as state attorneys general in their home states and developed a relationship. And that's something that Biden cited in his announcement, saying that Beau's opinion was a big value and a big input with him, reflecting on the relationship that his late son had with Kamala Harris and that was a factor in his decision.

Now, during this process, we're told that President Obama acted as a sounding board to Biden as he talked about his possible running mates he was considering. And President Obama actually tweeted yesterday, congratulating and praising Harris as the pick, saying he's known her for a long time and that she is more than prepared for the job, adding that she's spent her career defending the Constitution and fighting for folks who need a fair shake.

Now, later today, Biden and Harris will appear here in Wilmington, Delaware, delivering remarks together for the first time as the Democratic ticket. They are also set to hold a grassroots virtual fundraiser, as they're trying to energize their supporters heading into fall election.

BERMAN: And the Biden campaign said they had their most lucrative hours of the campaign to date immediately after the selection of arrest was Harris was made public.

Arlette Saenz in Wilmington, please keep us posted if you see or hear any developments there. I appreciate it.

Joining us now, Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. He is a longtime friend of Joe Biden who has been working on behalf of the campaign, and every Biden campaign, I think, since you were a young man. Senator Coons, thanks for being with us this morning.

I know you spoke to the former vice president not long after the selection went public. So what did he tell you about why he chose Senator Harris and why he's excited about this pick? SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Well, John, Joe and Jill Biden were excited about Kamala Harris being Joe's running mate, being someone who's got experience, not just on the campaign trail but governing, someone who ran the largest law office in our country. As attorney general, she was elected statewide twice. She was responsible for 7,000 attorneys. In the Senate, she served with me on the Judiciary Committee.

[07:05:01]

She's also on the Intelligence, Homeland Security, and Budget Committees.

Joe feels that she's seasoned, she's got experience, she'll be not just a great running mate but a great partner in governing, and that she will help him fulfill his promise that the ticket, now the Biden/Harris ticket, will look like America, will represent the strength that immigrants bring to our country, the racial diversity that we need to make progress.

He knows what it means, John, to take over as vice president in the middle of an economic crisis. That's what happened when he and Barack Obama took office back in 2008. They had a lot to fix. He knows in Kamala Harris he'll have a great partner in making progress in addressing the mess that the Trump administration has made, bungling the pandemic response and the economic wreckage that's resulted.

BERMAN: You just ran down Senator Harris' resume. You have served in the Senate with her, including on the Judiciary Committee. Tell me about her. What don't we know about her that you do?

COONS: Well, one thing you know that I know, that she's a strong lawyer, she prepares well, she's tough on witnesses. She knows how to step up to a challenge and how to get tough questions answered. What you wouldn't know is that in a moment that mattered deeply to me, when my father passed away in the middle of the night and I had to come to the floor to cast one more vote first thing in the morning before I could leave and go be with my family, she came to me and was incredibly warm, comforting, encouraging. She gave me real solace in a tough moment.

And that was striking to me, because I was on the floor with dozens of my colleagues, some of them I've known for many years, and I had only known her for a couple. And hers was one of the most earnest, heartfelt, sincere moments of comfort and engagement.

I also will always remember when I first met her as a Senate candidate. She was compelling. She was engaging. She's funny and she's warm. She is capable of being both a very tough questioner in the Judiciary Committee, going after Attorney General Barr or Attorney General Sessions, and then she's equally capable of being warm and engaging and upbeat. She is someone who will be terrific to campaign with and to governor with.

BERMAN: You talked about those moments inside the Judiciary Committee, inside those hearings. I think William Barr will remember them, for sure. COONS: Yes, he will.

BERMAN: This was one of those moments. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA): Has the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone? Yes or no, please, sir?

WILLIAM BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: The president or anybody else?

HARRIS: Seems you would remember something like that and be able to tell us?

BARR: Yes, but I'm trying to grapple with the word, suggest. I mean, there have been discussions of matters out there that they have not asked me to open an investigation, but --

HARRIS: Perhaps they've suggested?

BARR: I don't know, I wouldn't say suggest.

HARRIS: Hinted?

BARR: I don't know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So how do you think that's going to translate on to the debate stage against Mike Pence?

COONS: Well, I think President Trump and Vice President Pence had a very bad day yesterday. And their flailing initial attacks on her suggest. They don't quite know how to take on Senator Harris. And I think the vice president, Mike Pence, will have his hands full on the debate stage this fall with Senator Harris. She prepares thoroughly and well. She delivers tough points, and I think she'll draw a very clear and sharp contrast with his leadership, his values, his priorities.

Frankly, what most Americans care about is how will their lives be better if President Biden is our next president of the United States and Kamala Harris is the next vice president. And one of the things I think she's focused on is how to make a difference for working families, who know everything they need to know about the Trump/Pence record, and they want to hear, how will things be better?

The first thing I think the Biden/Harris administration will do is stop the lawsuit in front of the Supreme Court that's trying to take away healthcare protections from 130 million Americans in the middle of a pandemic. Trying to strengthen healthcare, abandoning the court case that's trying to take it away would be one of the most important first-day actions that I know a Biden presidency would take.

BERMAN: You know, you come from, I think, admittedly, more of the center of the Democratic Party than perhaps some progressives who ran for president, who ran against Senator Harris and former Vice President Joe Biden in the primaries.

And there are people in the party this morning who may not be as enthusiastic as you are about the Harris pick, people who look at Senator Harris' record when she was attorney general and district attorney, who say she didn't do enough to fight police brutality.

This is one point from Dave Campo, the chairman of the San Francisco Democratic Party, who said, you have someone saying all the right things now, but when she had the opportunity to do something about police accountability, she was either not visible or when she was, she was on the wrong side.

[07:10:05]

So what's your message to that progressive wing this morning?

COONS: My message would be, in recent months, in the Senate, I saw Senator Harris fight harder than anyone else, right alongside Senator Cory Booker, to make sure that the Justice and Policing Act was not just the strongest and broadest policing reform bill ever introduced in the Senate but that that was the priority, that was the legislative agenda that moved forward. She has been a fierce advocate of policing reform in the Senate.

And so, frankly, I'm sure you can find folks who will be critical of anyone who Joe Biden could have chosen. He had a very talented, very capable group of a dozen candidates who he seriously considered. In the end, I trust Joe that he made the right choice. I know Senator Harris, I'm excited about this ticket and she has been a very strong and very capable advocate for civil rights, for civil liberties, for policing reform, for immigration reform, for combating gun violence, all on the committee where we've served together for years.

BERMAN: I do want to ask one question not about this selection, because I thought about you when this was said out loud. You, of course, went Yale Divinity School. I believe you're an ordained minister.

President Trump attacked Joe Biden on religion and said he would, quote, hurt God. I want to play this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: He's going to do things that nobody ever would think even possible, because he's following the radical left agenda, take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment, no religion, no anything, hurt the bible, hurt God. He's against God. He's against guns.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Hurt God, against the bible, against God. As a man of faith yourself, how do you react to that? COONS: Well, John, first, just to be clear, I'm not an ordained minister. I was an ordained elder. I'm a Presbyterian and that's a lay role within my church, just to be clear. That was a particularly -- of all the things President Trump has said that are so hard to accept or to hear, from a person who holds an office, which all of us were raised to respect, that was particularly unfounded and uncalled for and untrue.

I've been with Joe Biden in moments public and private, in moments of joy and accomplishment, in moments of deep sadness and loss. I've seen him turn in prayer to God for strength. I've witnessed the ways in which his faith is the foundation of, who he is and moves him to act.

So all I'm going to say in response is that I do my absolute best to never question or criticize the faith of others, to be humble myself in my practice. But I can say with confidence that over the 30 years I've known Joe Biden, he's a man whose faith is fundamental to who he is, and it's a large part of why he's been such a committed and engaged servant leader. He respects the faith of others.

Joe will be a president who respects Americans of all faiths and Americans of good conscience who practice no particular faith. And he's the sort of person who can heal us, bring us together and remind us of the very best in our nation, which is freedom of conscience and respect for those, like Joe Biden, whose faith is private, personal, deep and strong.

BERMAN: Senator Chris Coons, Presbyterian elder, thank you very much for that clarification. I do appreciate it. And thank you for telling us about how you know Senator Harris and what you make of this pick. Thanks very much.

COONS: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: This morning, how close the United States to a safe, effective coronavirus vaccine? Can all of these claims from Russia about its new vaccine be trusted? More on the race for a vaccine with Dr. Sanjay Gupta, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Having a vaccine, Deborah (ph), and approving that a vaccine is safe and effective are two different things. I hope that the Russians have actually, definitively proven that the vaccine is safe and effective. I seriously doubt that they've done that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Dr. Anthony Fauci casting doubt on Russia's claim that it's developed and approved the world's first coronavirus vaccine. Would it be even be safe and effective? So many questions, and, of course, among them, just how close is this country to a vaccine.

CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, spoke with one of the financial backers of Russia's vaccine last night and joins us now.

So, Sanjay, a financial backer, he's not one of the researchers. He's not involved in creating or testing this vaccine.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Not at all. And I mean, he had some basic knowledge of the science, but it was pretty clear he wasn't involved with any of the vaccine's sort of background, collecting any of the evidence, and basically said each time I asked and Anderson and I were talking with him about the data, he said it would be forthcoming.

So, frankly, there's no indication of anything here in terms of the data. There's nothing to look at. There's no objective, nothing to evaluate in any way. So it's really -- it was really hard to know what to make of this.

From what we could gather, they said, we have a vaccine candidate. It's similar to other platforms like the Oxford, AstraZeneca vaccine candidate. We are through phase one and phase two. This is all what he's saying. Again, we have no evidence, and that we're going to begin phase three.

But what phase three is, again, according to Mr. Dmitriev, is basically giving this vaccine candidate to high risk individuals, to healthcare workers and maybe a couple of thousands people, they said, not the tens of thousands necessarily in order to get the sort of phase three data we typically need.

[07:20:09]

So it was really hard to understand what to make of this.

BERMAN: Look, I think that this is one of these cases and what (ph) with the coronavirus is actually simple here. You said yesterday, Sanjay. You won't take it. Dr. Fauci says, I seriously doubt that Russia's vaccine is safe and effective. It's just a simple message coming from the pre-imminent (ph) voices from this country right now.

On that idea of simple, I'm struck, Sanjay, by a release this morning. It's out just now from the Association of American Medical Colleges, which is giving consensus guidance on face masks.

Now, I know people may look at this and go, yes, right, it's simple? But simple can save lives here. What are they saying?

GUPTA: Yes. Let's put this up because I think the idea of when to wear face masks, in what settings, I think, is really important. First of all, you've got to wear the masks correctly. And, hopefully, most people know this by now, it's got to go over your nose. It can't be sitting just on your chin. You want to have at least two layers, but preferably three layers when you're looking at this mask.

But here is when to wear it. If you're at home with your own household contacts, you don't need to wear a mask then. But if you're in any other indoor public setting, whatever that setting may be, you need to wear a mask. You're at work, you're at school, for some reason, inside somebody else's house, you do need to wear a mask. All businesses should require masks indoors.

Now, as far as outdoors go, you don't need to wear it if you're not going to be around others, but if you think you're going to be within six feet of other people, you should wear a mask then as well.

We need to become more of a mask-wearing country. I mean, you know, there haven't been strict national mandates, as we know. There have been some mask ordinances in various places. I can tell you, as you guys have been reporting this morning, even within certain school districts, where I live here in Georgia, there is still no mask mandate.

I think what they wanted to do was come out and say, let's be clear on this, because it still seems to be a source of confusion for people. When you're indoors, you could be in an environment where the virus can more easily circulate, that's when you need to be wearing masks, especially.

HILL: And the thing that was interesting, they said, specifically, the information was meant to provide a unified approach to correct often conflicting messages and misinformation.

There's also a new study that's looked at over a dozen different face coverings, because this is something we all talk about a lot, right? I remember in the beginning, Sanjay, you were showing us how to make our own masks out of a bandanna with a couple of hair ties.

Well, now, there are questions about -- we just learned about the two or three layers of fabric, but there are questions about other things, like bandanas or gators, which we see a lot. Where do we stand this morning on all of that?

GUPTA: Right. I think the general consensus has been for some time that, look, any kind of face covering is better than nothing, but there are some that are going to be the best. I think what this -- what these new studies -- this one came out of Duke, was sort of looking at something that people often use, you know, in addition to their typical mask coverings or surgical mask coverings, there were sort of two things.

On one side, the N95 mask, which I think we have some images, people sort of know this mask by now, are the ones that are going to be the most airtight. They're going to allow people to have the most protection, both in terms of not expelling the virus, but also in terms of protecting the user from actually, you know, inhaling the virus as well.

Keep in mind that most of these masks that we're talking about are really to decrease the amount of virus you're putting into the environment. The N95 mask can also protect the user a significant amount in terms of not letting them breathe and not letting them breathe in the virus. On the other side were these neck gators. People know the neck gators, you sort of pull them up over their nose and their mouth. There were a couple of concerns about this. One is that they often fall. They don't stay up very well, so they could fall. And people may not be getting the same benefit in terms of decreasing the amount of virus they're putting into the environment.

But also, you know, depending on the type of fabric, they are designed to be breathable, oftentimes, these neck gators, and as a result, not designed to actually entrap the virus, which is what you're trying to do.

Now, I will tell you, there're different materials for neck gators, so it does depend here a little bit. It's hard to paint with one brush all of these face coverings the same way, but neck gators on one end, N95 masks on the other end. And then keep in mind all the other details we just gave you, look for two layers, at least, but hopefully three layers, and make sure you're wearing this thing properly. That's key.

HILL: Bottom line, cover your nose and mouth and wear a mask. Sanjay, thank you.

More college sports conferences are postponing fall football seasons. Others, though, moving ahead. We'll take a look at the challenges to safely get back on the field, next.

[07:25:01]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Two of the country's power five college sports conferences have announced they're going to postpone their fall seasons over coronavirus concerns, while ESPN this morning reports that the Big 12 conference will move forward with the fall football season.

Joining me now, CNN Sports Analyst and USA Today Columnist Christine Brennan and Dr. Colleen Kraft, she's the Associate Chief Medical Officer are Emory University Hospital and on the NCAA's Coronavirus Advisory Committee.

Christine, first, to you. The sports of this -- so you have two major conferences putting it off. You have the Big 12 now saying they're going to go forward. The SEC and the AAC are sort of like, we're not sure yet, we're waiting and seeing. But what kind of mixed message does this send? What does this all mean?

CHRISTINE BRENNAN, CNN SPORTS ANALYST: Well, science and sanity won in the Big 10 and the PAC-12. There's no doubt about that. These conferences are the behemoths of our country. They want to play football. They want to volleyball, field hockey, and they realize they just couldn't because they listened to the science, they listened to the doctors, they listened to the medicine. That is the fact.

[07:30:00] And for other conferences, the other big three, as you mentioned, that are still out there, the Big 12, the ACC and SEC, the big question for me today is who are their doctors?

END