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New Day

President-Elect Biden to Lay Out His Plan to Control Pandemic; Republicans Back Trump Legal Challenges to Election; Several Key Battleground States Still Continue to Count Votes. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired November 09, 2020 - 05:00   ET

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


[05:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CO-ANCHOR, NEW DAY: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world, this is NEW DAY, it is Monday, John, it's Monday, we have gotten through the weekend and everything else that has happened --

JOHN BERMAN, CO-ANCHOR, NEW DAY: It's one long day, but that long day at least has come to a conclusion, shall we say.

CAMEROTA: So, it is November 9th, 5 O'clock here in New York for a special edition of NEW DAY. President-elect Joe Biden is moving quickly to create his administration as President Trump still refuses to concede. Biden's focus today is the coronavirus pandemic, which is at record levels. The president-elect will lay out his plan to tackle the virus, and announce the names of a dozen experts who will serve on his coronavirus advisory board. This morning, we have new details about that pandemic plan and what else Biden will focus on in his first days in office. Overnight, nearly 106,000 new coronavirus cases were reported in the U.S. That's the fifth highest day since the pandemic began. This past week has broken lots of records, 19 states are reporting record hospitalizations.

BERMAN: So, as of this morning, the outgoing president has yet to concede, and not just because he couldn't find the time in-between all the golfing and not dealing with coronavirus. Sources tell CNN that Trump advisors are discussing holding rallies so the president can make his baseless claims of voter fraud. His team has already launched a number of lawsuits and has not provided any evidence. This morning, we have new details about who in the president's orbit is now influencing his thinking and decision-making in so far as it exists. We begin now with the Biden transition. CNN's Jessica Dean live in Wilmington, Delaware, Jessica, the president-elect has a busy day today.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Yes, he does, John. Of course, the coronavirus pandemic was always central to Biden's campaign, and now we're really getting a look, especially today with this new announcement of the advisory board of what it's going to look like in a Biden presidency.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DEAN (voice-over): After winning the election, President-elect Joe

Biden now faces the challenge of tackling the coronavirus pandemic as new confirmed cases reach record levels across the United States.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our work begins with getting COVID under control.

DEAN: And he plans to start that work right away, promising to take the crisis more seriously than President Trump. The Biden-Harris transition website already laying out a 7-point plan responding to the virus, including free and reliable testing for all Americans, and working with mayors and governors to implement mask mandates. The president-elect announcing a new coronavirus taskforce this morning, leading the effort. Three co-chairs, former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, former FDA Commissioner David Kessler and Yale University's Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith.

BIDEN: That plan will be built on bedrock science. It will be constructed out of compassion, empathy and concern.

DEAN: Health experts say the Biden administration will enter the White House at an extremely difficult point in the crisis.

MEGAN RANNEY, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN, BROWN UNIVERSITY: By the time that the Biden-Harris administration takes over, this virus is going to have already run rampant through communities across the United States.

DEAN: As Biden aims to fight the coronavirus, President Trump is focusing on fighting the election results, still insisting without evidence there's widespread voter fraud working against him. Despite no proof to support allegations of widespread fraud or illegal voting in the United States, some of his top Republican allies backing the president's refusal to concede.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): At this point, we do not know who has prevailed in the election. The media is desperately trying to get everyone to coronate Joe Biden as the next president. But that's not how it works.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Trump has not lost. Do not concede Mr. President. Fight hard.

DEAN: Biden's team says it's avoiding the distractions and will continue moving forward. And the president-elect is looking to use executive action to reverse some of the Trump administration's policies on his first day in office.

SYMONE SANDERS, SENIOR ADVISER, BIDEN CAMPAIGN: I think the White House has made clear what their strategy is here. And that they are going to continue to participate and push forward these flailing and in many respects baseless legal strategies. But the people are the folks that decide elections in this country, and the people have spoken.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DEAN: And the Biden-Harris transition team has released the full list of its advisory board this morning for the coronavirus pandemic advisory board. And on that list, Rick Bright, he is the whistleblower and who resigned his post at the National Institutes of Health after he said his early warnings about coronavirus were not heeded, not listened to, he's now going to sit on this advisory board.

[05:05:00]

Alisyn, quite a message this morning from the Biden-Harris transition team and their plans for the coronavirus pandemic, they have pledged to listen to the scientists and the experts in this endeavor.

CAMEROTA: Jessica, thank you very much for all of that breaking news. Joining us now, we have CNN political analyst, Alex Burns; he's a national political correspondent for "The New York Times", also with us, CNN political analyst, Margaret Talev; she is the politics and White House editor at "Axios". So, we just got this news, I mean, moments ago, in terms of who will be on the Biden taskforce. And Jessica was telling us, there's a lot of names that our viewers will recognize, there are a lot of people that we have called upon for the past however many months we've been mired in all of this. So Dr. Rick Bright, as she said, also Dr. Zeke Emanuel whom we all know, Dr. Celine Gounder who we have talked to many times, Dr. Michael Osterholm and there's many more. Margaret, what does this all mean?

MARGARET TALEV, POLITICS & WHITE HOUSE EDITOR, AXIOS: Well, good morning, Alisyn. Look, this is the now transition team's effort for President-elect Joe Biden to immediately move to establish credibility and not just to be having the discussions to begin this process, Biden, as you know, has been briefed like on regular basis, daily basis for several months now during the campaign, and has had kind of his begun-standing-up de facto, what is now becoming more formally this taskforce. But this is that, but it is also an effort to message to the American people and to the scientific community some of the names and faces with established expertise, who can help him to begin to stand up, an effort to combat what we know are numbers that could double in terms of casualties by the time Biden actually is sworn in.

BERMAN: I am struck by what they've done, which is release this, and how they did it, which is put out this release minutes ago. So, this is breaking news of who's on this advisory panel, Alex, and this is the Biden transition, this is the president-elect and his team to me announcing this morning that they're in charge or at least that they are working, that this is happening now. It is full on now, Alex. What do you see?

ALEX BURNS, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, that's exactly what I see, John. The notion that there's any doubt about the outcome of the election or that Joe Biden somehow needs to wait for President Trump to accept reality in order to start going about the business of becoming the president. That is exactly what this kind of announcement is intended to counter. It's a signal, I think, politically, that he wants to sort of go to work on behalf of the American people, and that he doesn't want to put himself on the level of these really baseless, just totally fictitious complaints by the president about election fraud, election rigging, rather than doing a kind of tit-for-tat with President Trump about the legitimacy of the election.

It is treating the election as of course, just as a matter of fact as a legitimate and clear outcome and moving on from there. I think it's sort of an open question whether that will be sufficient to get past this moment of friction with President Trump. But it's certainly the body language from the Biden campaign, from the Biden transition.

CAMEROTA: One other thing that the Biden-Harris administration is planning is to have televised updates and briefings about this. What the Trump administration has done but perhaps in a much different style --

BERMAN: Well, except hasn't done for four months.

CAMEROTA: Right --

BERMAN: I mean, that's the thing, that's the difference, is they're stepping in now and saying we're on the pandemic. We're here, we're the transition. We're working on the pandemic now.

CAMEROTA: And I thought it was also very interesting on that note that current Vice President Pence is going to be meeting with the -- or leading the coronavirus taskforce for the first time since October 20th. So it's been a few weeks, and I don't know, maybe the Biden- Harris team is pushing the Trump team to get more action or more on board. And so Margaret, in addition to that, what else do we know about what the Biden team's priorities are and what they're going to start working on?

TALEV: Well, coronavirus is front and center, but we know also that in the next couple of weeks, we're going to begin to see top in-house staff at the future White House to be announced and established, and then there's cabinet appointees to begin being nominated or named in terms of their intention to nominate them. So, we will have a pretty good sense by the end of this month or early December about who President-elect Joe Biden intends to put up for the Defense Department, the Secretary of State, the Treasury and so on and so forth, all the way across government, housing, education, health and human services will be another really important one.

[05:10:00]

And I think, you know, there's not a lot of mystery here. Biden and his team have been broadcasting for months, like what would he do if he were elected, what are the first things he would do if he took office. He said repeatedly, coronavirus is the top priority, that on day one, he would rejoin the Paris Climate Accords, that he wants to rejoin the World Health Organization, that he would reinstate DACA to give some certainty to people who were -- came to the United States as children, that there would be some degree of repeal or amending of the travel ban involving predominantly Muslim nations.

So, he has a lot of work cut out for him. But it's going to be a matter of connecting the dots from what the campaign has promised to what he wants to be in position to initiate on day one of the administration. I'll say one more thing, when it comes to the coronavirus, I do think the political messaging is really important. He is trying to signal that they are beginning the work of a transition team and a president-elect, but I think they're trying to get the health implications under control is also actually really important. Again, if the White House, if this outgoing White House is not going to message to the American public, they do feel that there can be a public health service and help them to control what they're going to be inheriting if they can begin messaging consistently to the American public the dangers and what needs to happen weeks now to come.

BERMAN: Yes, look, saving lives doesn't have to wait -- doesn't have to wait until January 20th. He can begin right now. First of all, both of you have been doing terrific reporting over the last few days. I want to thank you both for the work you're doing. And Alex, if I read your reporting correctly and I do with a fine-toothed comb, not only are we going to hear about coronavirus in detail today, but suspect as we did Saturday night, we will continue to hear from the president- elect a message of unity. This aggressive, almost weaponized unity. What do you think is going to happen?

BURNS: Well, John, the reporting that we've done about sort of the origins and arc of the Biden campaign over the last couple of days, the victory narrative that is coming out of this election, I think has really reinforced Joe Biden's basic instincts to go in that direction in the first place, the idea that from the very beginning he saw his campaign as a quest for national unity and national healing, and that he ultimately won the election because at least based on the counts that we have now, he not only reclaimed those states up north in the blue wall that Hillary Clinton lost four years ago, but actually made incursions into red states like Georgia and Arizona with that inclusive message, and that is what I would expect to continue to hear from him. They think it's a really powerful theme.

CAMEROTA: Alex, Margaret, thank you both very much. So, President Trump refusing to concede even as President-elect Biden moves on. Coming up, new details about the division within President Trump's inner circle about what to do now.

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[05:15:00]

BERMAN: All right, this morning, Joe Biden, CNN projects is the president-elect of the United States, but they are still counting votes in these four states you see behind me that were very close leading into Saturday. Joe Biden has expanded his lead in three of them, getting tighter in Arizona, though not much vote left to count there. CNN's John Avlon and the magic wall with an update. John?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right, look, here in Arizona, this thing is still tight. Take a look at Maricopa County because Biden is still up in the state, but the race has tightened. In Maricopa, however, he has gained to 77 -- there have been 77,000 ballots left in the state, Maricopa, his increase is slated to 47,000. This is the key district in the state. This is where Phoenix is. So while the gap has shrunk in Arizona, Maricopa is where the action is at. Now, let's take also a look at Georgia because this is where -- this is where Biden's hoping to shock the world, and take a look at Fulton County, because right now in the statewide, Biden is up almost 10,000 votes. But they've been having some problems.

They had to recount some votes because of a snag in software issues in Fulton County. Those have been resolved. Biden is still up around 10,000 votes in Georgia. But there's no automatic recount. They've got to certify the votes and then if someone is within 0.5 percent, they can request a recount. That is expected. All right, Pennsylvania, this is the one that brought it home for Joe Biden, but there's still some outstanding votes. Right now, Biden's lead has increased to 43,000 in the state, but there are still outstanding votes and particular here in Allegheny, and even in Philadelphia in this crucial area.

So, there are still votes coming in. This thing has been declared by CNN. Joe Biden's president-elect, but these crucial states, particularly Arizona and Georgia, the vote count today and over the next few days could be determinative, who brings into their column.

BERMAN: Right, well, Pennsylvania is in the Biden column, and the lead is expanding there --

AVLON: Right --

BERMAN: I can see these votes come in, it is only expected to grow, the same is true with Nevada, Georgia, 10,000, that is almost pre- cooked completely, most people think there aren't enough votes left yet in Arizona to give this to Donald Trump, but we are counting and very much waiting to see. John Avlon, thank you very much. Margaret Talev back with us, also joining us, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig; he's a former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. And I want to start with what the Trump team is doing, Elie. First the lawsuits, Alisyn, I think we'll get to in a second the behind the scenes working in the political in-fighting there.

But bottom line, the Trump folks have tried to follow -- file lawsuits in some places, tried to raise complaints in some places and be completely unsuccessful so far in many of these filings. What do you see as their legal strategy? What do you see as the merits of what they're trying to do?

ELIE HONIG, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Yes, John, I think we may be giving too much credit with even calling this a legal strategy. You know the expression, it's all over by the shouting, I think this is the shouting phase of the proceedings.

[05:20:00]

The track record so far has been miserable. They filed lawsuits really in all of the key states across the country. Those lawsuits are getting dismissed almost as quickly as they're filed. We've seen dismissals in Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, and I'll tell you, it's rare to see courts throw out cases this quickly in 24 hours, 48 hours. The problem -- the fundamental problem is they just don't have proof. If they come up with proof of massive voter fraud, God bless them, but they've been trying ever since the day President Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

So what they're doing now is I think a combination of stalling for time and putting out a narrative that this was wrong, this was unfair. But there's until they show us some substance, some evidence, and by the way, yelling at a rally and tweets are not evidence, then they've got nothing.

CAMEROTA: Except, Elie, correct me if I'm wrong. You think that the one that may have some merit is the one about Pennsylvania. So all of the ballots that were post-marked by election day, but arrived maybe in the three days afterwards, you think that, that one could head to the Supreme Court, and that the Supreme Court could even rule in President Trump's favor and then what?

HONIG: Yes, that's the one, Alisyn, that I think may have some constitutional merit. I think it's unfair if those votes get excluded, but the justices have already signaled they may throw out those ballots that arrived in Pennsylvania, those mail-in ballots between November 3rd and November 6th. But here's the thing, the margins matter. I mean, the reason we're still watching, we just heard John give a recount of the counts in Arizona and Georgia and Nevada is because it looks like Joe Biden will have a margin of victory bigger than Pennsylvania, in other words, even if Pennsylvania somehow miraculously flips, he still, Joe Biden still will have over 270, and the margin of votes in Pennsylvania, I think John said is over 40,000.

The number of ballots at issue in that Supreme Court case looks to be way less than that. So as a practical matter, this is not Bush versus Gore territory.

BERMAN: Yes, just to be clear. Those votes haven't been counted yet. We already called the race in Pennsylvania for Joe Biden. His lead is expanding. Those are moot in terms of being determinative of the outcome yet. So, whatever happens at the Supreme Court, that decision, given where things stand now would not have any impact on the outcome, whatsoever. So Margaret, the GSA, the way the transition works is that the Biden team is actually already had access to government space in some transition apparatus for months, however, to get all of it, the head of the GSA, Emily Murphy, the General Services Administration would have to sign off and say it's time. She has not done that yet. And by all accounts, won't do it at least until she thinks things are more certain or Donald Trump backs off. What's the impact of that? What's going on here, Margaret?

TALEV: Well, and this is, John, a Trump appointee, but I think before we get ahead of ourselves in terms of how extreme the impact is going to be, like, this is still early days, and we have some road map for this from Bush v. Gore. This can wait a few weeks without devastating an incoming administration's ability to do its job. And I think the Biden team anticipated that Trump could potentially throw a bunch of road blocks or procedural hurdles into the transition. You would have to assume that, if you were the campaign and you've been paying any attention for the last four years.

And so, I think, you know, if it's January and we're still talking about this, there could be some implications, but this is work right now that the Biden team can continue putting together its top White House officials, its top cabinet officials, before it gets to a point where it's deeply impacted by this. And then at the same time, like you can see they're looking at other things, they're still facing legal challenges. There's a certification process. President Trump could still try to pull in governors or legislators to slow the process.

So, it's not just the work of a transition that's actually getting the votes certified. These are issues they're going to have to contend with in the coming days.

BERMAN: Yes, well, the one thing, practical thing it does slow down is the ability for the Biden team to put landing teams interact directly and openly with current civil service employees. But barring that, the Biden team can still get a lot done over the next few weeks as you said. This is still going on in three, four weeks, then it's a giant deal. Margaret Talev, Elie Honig, thank you very much for being with us.

HONIG: Thanks, guys.

BERMAN: So, more than a 100,000 new cases of coronavirus reported overnight. Average death tolls rising. We'll give you the very latest next.

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