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Biden Announces COVID-19 Team; Trump Refusing to Concede; Several Kay Battleground States Still Counting Votes. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired November 09, 2020 - 06:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: NEW DAY continues right now.

[05:58:49]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In the very first days of President-elect Joe Biden's team, he is going to hone in on the coronavirus pandemic.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: His work starts right away. He's going to launch the coronavirus task force.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The White House apparently planning this messaging blitz.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stop the steal!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stop the steal!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stop the steal!

SANCHEZ: This argument from President Trump that the election was stolen from him, a claim that, up to this point, is unsupported by any evidence whatsoever.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We should give President Trump his day in court, let the process unfold.

SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R), UTAH: It's destructive to the cause of democracy to suggest widespread fraud or corruption.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature. See each other again, listen to each other again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

BERMAN: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Monday, November 9, 6 a.m. here in New York. Our special coverage of this remarkable moment in history continues.

And we do have breaking news from the presidential transition. Just a few minutes ago, President-elect Joe Biden appointed the members of his coronavirus advisory board. The chairs are former surgeon general Vivek Murthy, former FDA commissioner David Kessler, Yale Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith. Other interesting names on the list include Zeke Emanuel, Dr. Celine Gounder, Michael Osterholm, all of whom you've seen a great deal here on CNN, and Dr. Rick Bright, the whistle-blower who sounded the alarm about the Trump administration pandemic response.

A lot going on with this announcement, both policy-wise and politically. The move intended to show that the transition team is focused on the pandemic and is ready to take charge.

Overnight, nearly 106,000 new coronavirus cases were reported in the United States. That's the fourth highest day since the pandemic began. Nineteen states reporting record hospitalizations.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump still refusing to concede. Sources tell CNN that Trump advisers are discussing holding rallies so the president can continue to gin up his supporters with baseless claims of voter fraud.

The Trump team has already lost a number of lawsuits on that front. And we have new details about what the president's inner circle is telling him to do.

We begin with the Biden transition. CNN's Jessica Dean is live in Wilmington, Delaware.

What do we know, Jessica?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning to you, Alisyn.

Listen, Joe Biden always said that the coronavirus pandemic would be one of his very top priorities if he were elected. And now he is President-elect Joe Biden, and we see the announcement of this advisory board, and we're getting an idea of what it might look, what he might do, once he assumes office in January.

(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.

BIDEN: 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 seven-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 task force 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.

DR. MEGAN RANNEY, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN, BROWN: 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 is widespread voter fraud working against him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four more years! Four more years!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four more years! Four more years!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four more years! Four more years!

DEAN: 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 -- 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, BIDEN CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISOR: 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 -- 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: Now, the inclusion of Rick Bright on that coronavirus advisory board is very interesting. Of course, he was the whistle-blower who says that his early warnings about the pandemic were not listened to by the Trump administration and ultimately led to his removal.

So already, quite the contrast that the Biden/Harris transition is drawing here between the way the Trump administration handled the pandemic and the way they planned to handle the pandemic.

John, they promise from the beginning to let science and experts lead the way on this. They will get a briefing today. We also do expect to hear from President-elect Biden later today. BERMAN: All right. Jessica Dean in Wilmington. Keep us posted as to

what you see and hear from the presidential transition, because every little move is so interesting.

Joining us now, CNN political analyst Alex Burns. He's a national political correspondent correspondent for "The New York Times." And CNN political analyst April Ryan. She's a White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Network.

And Alex, I find presidential transitions fascinating. The choreography is such a unique thing. Every little thing is chosen for a purpose and a meaning. And when the Biden transition this morning, when the president-elect, about an hour ago, released the names of the people on this coronavirus advisory board, I was struck by the names. A lot of household names there that people see, including Rick Bright,

who was a whistle-blower in the Trump administration.

[06:05:20]

But also the fact, the fact of it happening. That this is what the Biden transition, this is what the president-elect wants us to see him doing today. Why?

ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, John, I think the message is clearly the adults are back in charge and the experts are back in charge. And that throughout the campaign, one of the things that we heard most consistently from voters and consistently from lawmakers in both parties, actually, Democrats, some of them more publicly than Republicans, was a sense of real distress that the administration didn't seem to have a strategy for the coronavirus and that there wasn't even a particularly plausible path for getting it under control, the way President Trump was approaching it.

And clearly, the Biden transition is trying to send the message that that changes now.

I do think it's also, John, a pretty clear acknowledgement of the political and governing reality that, unless they can master the coronavirus crisis, there's not a whole lot else on their agenda that they're going to get to. That this is item one, two, three, four, five, and we can keep going with that count. That the pandemic is the obstacle they must overcome in order to do literally anything else important in government.

CAMEROTA: And so April, at the same time that that's happening, that the Biden/Harris team is trying to move forward, the Trump team is putting up impediments, such as the general services administrator not signing the paperwork that needs to happen in order for millions of dollars to start to be released and equipment and office space, et cetera.

And so from your reporting in and around the White House, what is the Trump plan, just never concede? I mean, what happens next?

APRIL RYAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: First of all, Alisyn, we have seen this president do things like this before. This is just a continuation of who he has been, just a different day. A temper tantrum. He does not want to accept what is fact. Even though this transition is happening, this attempt on the Biden incoming administration, to have a peaceful transition of power, this president has not accepted it. He's telling people around the White House to listen to him. He's even trying to have these rallies. He wants to stop it in every way.

But at the end of the day, you have to remember, Alisyn, many of these people who are working with the president-elect and the vice president-elect have been in Washington and been in administrations before, presidential administrations, and they've been part of transitions.

So they go into this understanding what can be done, what needs to be done, and they don't necessarily have to have the venue of the GSA's building offices to complete this task.

And nonetheless, even if the president doesn't want to work with this new incoming administration, there will still be a peaceful transition of power, no matter if Donald Trump stays in the White House or if he decides to leave. The codes, the nuclear codes and every code will be delivered to Joe Biden on January 20, 2021, at 12 noon.

BERMAN: Alex, how do you see -- given what you have written. You have a terrific bit of reporting over the weekend about how Joe Biden got to this point where he is the president-elect this morning. Given what he chose and how he chose to run his campaign, how he's chosen to live his life, how do you see him responding to this type of thing today and in the coming days?

BURNS: You know, I think we're going to see him try to respond as little as possible to sort of the direct provocations from President Trump. That you haven't seen Joe Biden try to rebut sort of tweet by tweet the false claims that the president is making about the election.

But I do think that there -- that there is something of a reality check and a moment of truth coming, both for the president-elect and for the opposition party, that Joe Biden ran a campaign premised on the idea that he was going to be able to elicit cooperation from at least some Republicans on the biggest issues of our time, and there's no bigger issue right now than the coronavirus pandemic.

In a world where two to three weeks from now the president is still refusing to concede, and we don't know that that's what will happen, but if it is what happens, and his party is not moving to sort of gently show him the door, I think that does raise real questions about some of the fundamental assumptions that Biden has made throughout this campaign.

And he will potentially have to think about other strategies for getting Republicans to essentially, you know, kind of man up and stand up to this president, if he doesn't cooperate with the peaceful transition of power.

CAMEROTA: Well, one more point on that, Alex. Because at the moment, that's not happening. I mean, yes, Mitt Romney, Senator Mitt Romney. Yes, former President George W. Bush, they are acknowledging Biden's win and reality.

But you hear all of these senators, the ones who have President Trump's ear -- Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, obviously, FOX TV -- saying things like, Oh, no, this is not over. Oh, no, the president -- President Trump has won. I mean, all sorts of bizarro world, upside- down stuff.

And so do you have a sense that other Republicans behind the scenes are rooted in reality?

BURNS: Well, Alisyn, I have a sense that even some of the Republicans who are saying in public that Donald Trump has not lost this election yet are privately more rooted in reality. It's just that they are following the blueprint that they've followed for years of not standing up to this president if there's any other option conceivably available.

I think they're hoping the courts will do the work for him and that they can allow the president to litigate and litigate until he has no more options, and then just say, Well, that's the end of the road, sir. And that may be exactly what happens.

I do think it's telling, Alisyn, that even as Lindsey Graham is out there in public saying, Fight this hard, Mr. President, he has also said publicly that, if Joe Biden is elected president, he will work with him where he can.

So I don't know that we're getting the message of sort of relentless total obstruction from Capitol Hill that the president would like to be getting, but neither are we getting a sort of strong endorsement that, you know, it really is time to pass the torch.

BERMAN: They're treating him like a petulant child, that hopes -- they hope he wears himself out, basically. He'll get awful tired if he keeps on running around like that outside, if he keeps on screaming and crying. It will tire him out, and eventually, he'll fall back asleep. It seems to be that that's what they're doing right now. I speak with experience as a father of two boys who were much better behaved, frankly.

April, who in the White House -- and you've covered this White House for a long time -- who's going to tell the president? Right? We have -- initially, Jared Kushner, we had reported, had told him, This isn't going to turn out the way you want it to. Now he appears to be backing off saying, You should go hold rallies. What's going on behind the scenes this morning?

RYAN: At the end of the day, this president has his own way. He's the one who's going to tell himself. Jared Kushner and his daughter, Ivanka, his most trusted advisers, if they can't make a difference, this president is going to have to tire himself out, like you say for a petulant child.

But at the end of the day, this president with these lawsuits, it's costing the Republican National Committee money. It's costing time that could be unifying the nation. And if he is going out, trying to drum up support from the basement of

his base, he's once again creating super-spreader events just to appease his ego, when it's about the people, the "we, the people" that he's supposed to be protecting and serving.

So at the end of the day, this president can have his rallies, and he may even try to have a lawsuit or two, but Joe Biden has over 600 attorneys across the nation working on this. And they were anticipating this, as well.

And I remember one thing that Hillary Clinton said to me a few weeks ago. She told Joe Biden never to concede. And he's taken that and other statements, and he's moving forward as the president-elect looking to be inaugurated on January 20, 2021 at noon.

BERMAN: All right. April, thank you very much.

Alex, stand by.

We're going to talk about the legal reality behind these actually very small court cases. None of which would affect nearly the number of votes that the president would need to overturn the election results in these states. That's next.

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[06:17:28]

CAMEROTA: This morning, the votes are still being counted in a number of key battleground states. President-elect Joe Biden is expanding his lead in Pennsylvania and Georgia, while the race tightens in Arizona.

CNN's John Avlon is at the Magic Wall with the latest numbers -- John.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hey, Aly. Take a look at how tight Arizona is right now. We're talking 0.6 percent. That is 17,000 votes, and Biden's lead has been shrinking with recent tallies. That's very important. We've got 98 percent with 77,000 ballots still to count.

But take a look at crucial Maricopa Cunty. This is the big population center. And in this key district, which Democrats are hoping to swing for the first time in a long time, we've got Biden increasing his lead by 46,000 votes. And we've got 18,000 left. So all eyes on Maricopa and Arizona, expecting more votes this afternoon.

Now, let's kick over to Georgia. Biden also hoping to become the first Democrat to pick up Georgia since Bill Clinton. Now, in the key population center of Atlanta, particularly Fulton, they've been taking a look at -- they had some software issues. Those have been resolved.

Biden is up by 10,000 votes in the state, with 99 percent reporting. That's 0.2 percent. That is well within the number where a Trump campaign could request a recount. They've got 95 percent reporting in this crucial area population center around Atlanta, where Biden has been doing very well. But this thing is tight and not over.

Finally, take a look at Pennsylvania. OK. This is extraordinary, because right now, Biden's lead is around 44,000 votes. Why does that matter number? That's the number that Donald Trump won it by four years ago.

But Biden has been surging particularly in these populated counties -- Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Philadelphia, and the surrounding suburbs. This is about a half a percent. There are still 54,000 votes to count. We expect more votes tonight. But this is what to watch. These crucial Allegheny and Philadelphia counties. This thing, though, is tight. We've called Pennsylvania, of course, but Arizona and Georgia, that's where the action still is, the counting still goes on. Ali and John?

Thank you very much for breaking that down for us.

Now let's bring in Alex Burns, also back with us. He's back with us. And joining us is CNN analyst, Jessica Huseman. She's a reporter at ProPublica. Great to see you.

OK, Jessica, we have talked for many days now about how the legal challenges that the Trump team is launching have been meaningless, judges have virtually laughed them out of court. And I mean, I'm not exaggerating. Some judges have dismissed them so out of hand.

[06:20:08]

However, can they slow down the process? How long will this exercise go on?

JESSICA HUSEMAN, CNN ANALYST: You know, I think that, if they continue at the pace that they're continuing, they won't slow it down very much. They have a literal zero percent win record right now. And I can't imagine that that won't continue.

They may get a little bit here or a little bit there, but certainly, not enough to overturn much of anything. And certainly, not enough to overturn the margins that Biden is currently winning at.

So you know, I just don't expect this to be much of an issue in the next few days.

BERMAN: Relatively speaking, there's a lot about this election that's not close. People need to know that. They see close margins in a few stays, but popular vote, it's not close. Electoral College, there have been campaigns that are a lot closer than this. Percentage wise, it's not close.

And recounts, one thing we know from recounts, is recounts, which there will be in Georgia -- and they may try to get some recounts in precincts in Pennsylvania -- is that they can overturn dozens of votes, maybe hundreds at the top, but thousands, it just doesn't happen. I can't think of a campaign where thousands of votes have been overturned. And Alex, in Pennsylvania, the margin is going to end up being, in all

likelihood, 50,000 or 60,000. Democrats will tell you more. I don't know if that's going to happen. This is not, in all likelihood, going to end up being a real legal question. It's a political question.

So how much mileage can the White House or does it want to get out of this political question?

BURNS: Well, John, nobody should know better than Donald Trump how ineffectual a sort of symbolic recount can be at the end of a presidential race that you have lost, because in 2016, Democrats and the Green Party made a recount request in a number of states, including the narrow ones in the Midwest that the president flipped from blue to red. Those recounts proceeded, and they went absolutely nowhere. I think they switched 131 votes in Wisconsin.

And it is important when you're looking at those margins, the percentages are tight. They really are. Half a percentage point is a close election. Forty thousand votes is not a particularly close election when you're talking about are there errors or procedural issues that could affect the outcome?

And to Jessica's point about these Trump lawsuits, many of these have to do with sort of the fine points of election observing and voting procedure, but not with -- you know, I think the president is giving people the impression that, if only his lawsuits had some big breakthrough, suddenly, you would have suddenly had millions of votes thrown out for Joe Biden. That there's some chance that there's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of votes in a state like Nevada that will be ruled illegitimate. They have not even brought claims to that effect.

So right now, this just looks like, I think, maybe designed as a delaying tactic, maybe a face-saving exercise from a man who hates to acknowledge that he has lost. But there is a point at which this stops being face saving and becomes sort of an embarrassment of its own.

CAMEROTA: Jessica, I'm always interested in who pays the bill. Who's going to pay for these recounts? If -- if team Trump wants to launch more -- I mean, the Georgia one, it sounds like, happens automatically because it's within the margin. But if team Trump insists on it, do they pay for it?

HUSEMAN: It depends on the state, but generally, yes. There's -- there's usually a margin where the state will automatically do a recount or will do one for free if one was requested. But in most states, if it's beyond that margin, then the Trump team will have to pay for it.

And I think that one thing that folks really don't understand about donating to the efforts to raise money for these legal fights is that those dollars can also go to campaign debt. And if you read the fine print on the fund-raising that Donald Trump is already doing, a significant portion of those donations are going to do exactly that.

So campaigns do have an ulterior motive to fundraise for these efforts, and I think that that's really what we're seeing happen here.

BERMAN: So Alex, different subject here, but after the 2016 election, news agencies across the world spent bazillions of dollars focusing on diners in Michigan and Ohio. So what's going to happen now? Where should we focus in the suburbs of Georgia, for instance, suburbs of Atlanta, to understand what happened in this election? What's going to be that one thing that tells the story of 2020?

BURNS: You know, I think that there's a reason why a lot of us got sort of tired of dinerism over the years, because there wasn't just one story of 2016. I don't think there's just one story of 2020.

But I do think when you look at the electoral map and see where did Joe Biden manage to win or win by more than Hillary Clinton, or flip places that Hillary Clinton lost, it is places like the suburbs of Atlanta, the suburbs of Philadelphia, the suburbs of Phoenix, where, you know, you're talking about, to some extent, white women in the suburbs who have moved away from the Republican Party. But you're also talking about this sort of melding together of this highly diverse suburban coalition in places that really don't look like the suburbs as President Trump imagines them to be.

[06:25:04]

That when he's going into suburbs, talking about sort of, you know, public housing and those people from the city and Cory Booker coming after your peaceful lovely suburban community, these are not just all sort of suburbs of white gated communities where people are terrified of those folks from the big city, the way the president seems to evoke them.

So I do think zooming in on that is really important. And John, I do think that -- and the president-elect signaled as much in his victory speech on Saturday night, I do think the centrality of black voters, first to Joe Biden in the primary election and then in the general election, cannot be overstated. He feels the deepest debt of political gratitude to them. And he should.

CAMEROTA: Let's not forget that President Trump was also talking to June Cleaver, who he believe still lives in the suburbs, and he's going to put her hubby back to work very soon.

Alex, Jessica, thank you both very much. And one more thing: I will never tire of diners. OK? I know that Alex has said that he's tiring of it. Never. On that note.

President-elect Joe Biden announcing his new coronavirus advisory board as the pandemic breaks more records in the U.S. We give you the latest, next.

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