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New Day
Possible Pfizer Vaccine; Protests over Election; Republican Party after Trump. Aired 8:30-9a ET
Aired November 09, 2020 - 08:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[08:30:00]
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, we know if somebody gets infected, they may have immunity for several months. But, still, it's a little bit of a question mark.
How about with the vaccine? Is this going to be like a yearly thing of two shots? Again, he doesn't know. He says they're going to follow these patients for a couple of years.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Again, 90 percent effective, though, changes the equation. It's not like a flu vaccine, which is 30 percent to 50 percent.
GUPTA: Right.
BERMAN: This is -- this is closer to measles where you really start to push the virus away completely, potentially. We'll wait and see.
Sanjay, I want to throw to another bite here of your interview with him, and this was fascinating. And this has to do with the when of it all. When will the supply ramp up to the point where more Americans can get it. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALBERT BOURLA, CEO, PFIZER: We believe that we are in good situation to have up to 50 million doses this year globally. And I believe we are in a very, very good situation to have 1.3 billion doses globally.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Sanjay, what do those numbers mean?
GUPTA: Yes. SO these are, again, much higher numbers than I'd had been hearing. We've been tracking this for some time. We thought that in the United States perhaps hundreds of thousands of doses had been manufactured sort of at risk at this point. Mr. Bourla said it's more in the millions. And that in the United States alone, he said, there will be tens of millions of doses available.
In the United States there's these -- there's at least three of these manufacturing sites and distribution sites and they're quite extraordinary. At Kalamazoo, Michigan, for example, a football field worth of refrigerators now where they're starting to basically store this vaccine and they're going to start to distribute it. But also they have another facility, I believe he said it was in Germany or in Belgium, I can't remember, where they're going to actually be distributing in earnest over there for essentially the rest of the world. I mean, you know, ultimately, he thinks 1.3 billion doses in 2021, which would mean 650 million people. Again, this is a two -- two -- two-shot vaccine.
So it's -- there's been a lot going on I guess is what that means in terms of manufacturing this vaccine, even before there's any kind of Emergency Use Authorization, let alone an approval. So that's good news in the sense that it will be more quickly available.
I think still for people in this country who think about this, we're still talking about springtime before this vaccine would be available. We're also hearing it would be free. I asked him specifically, somebody who's watching, I said, they want this vaccine, how much is it going to cost them? He says this vaccine -- they're planning on making it available for free because the government has been buying this and planning on accessing as much of the vaccine as possible over the next several months.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: That would be such good news. That is such good news for obviously everyone around the globe.
Sanjay, in terms of the timing of this announcement, obviously this is against the backdrop of this hotly contested presidential race.
GUPTA: Right.
CAMEROTA: And we can see that some people in the White House will make some suggestion that perhaps this was held so that it can be an President-elect Biden's watch instead of President Trump's. Do they release it as soon as they have it or how does the timing of these announcements work?
GUPTA: Yes. You know, I asked -- I asked him that exact thing. I said, what should we read into the fact that a week after the election this remarkable news comes out and he said what you should read into it is that's when the science told us this data, you know, was available. They knew that there was these -- they had these what are called interim looks at the data. They were supposed to have done an interim look back, you know, I think it was middle of October. At that point there simply weren't enough infections, Mr. Bourla was told, to basically make sense of the data so they waited to get, you know, more infections, which is a strange thing about this, you have to wait for people to get infected to have meaningful data and they said it was this past Sunday when the -- when they expected to have it. And that -- that date was known for some time.
So he really, you know, he threw cold water on the idea that there was any political motivation behind this. It is, you know, and did happen a week after the election and there are still a lot of unanswered questions, but, you know, it's good data and it was available now.
Sanjay, so helpful.
BERMAN: Yes.
CAMEROTA: So helpful to have you here to help us understand this breaking news and to talk to the Pfizer staff.
BERMAN: Yes, how about having Sanjay to gets this Pfizer CEO --
CAMEROTA: I know.
GUPTA: Yes.
BERMAN: So we can basically get this all in real time.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
BERMAN: Thanks, Sanjay.
GUPTA: Yes. You got it, guys. Thank you.
CAMEROTA: Sanjay's rolodex is just really awesome.
BERMAN: Yes, he's (INAUDIBLE) rolodex.
CAMEROTA: All right, an online movement has some Trump supporters convinced that the election was somehow stolen from him. So you'll hear that logic, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:38:30]
BERMAN: Misinformed through social media, grossly misled by the president of the United States, some Trump supporters have staged what they call stop the steal protests.
CNN's Donie O'Sullivan asked some demonstrators in Pennsylvania why they think incorrectly the election was stolen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CROWD: Stop the steal. Stop the steal. Stop the steal.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trump is still your president!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's legal for them to count votes in Pennsylvania two days after the election on November 3rd?
DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN REPORTER: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're wrong. Go. I don't even want to talk to you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I believe that Donald Trump won the election. I believe that they tried to steal the election.
O'SULLIVAN (voice over): Stop the steal, a movement of Trump supporters that gained hundreds of thousands of followers online in the hours after the election has inspired protests across the country.
O'SULLIVAN (on camera): The ballots that you said you saw are lying around the place, or in trash cans or whatever, where are you hearing that from?
ANDREW WALKER, TRUMP SUPPORTER: I mean it's -- their -- the videos are going viral everywhere. I've seen them on TikTok. I've seen them on FaceBook. I've seen them on Fox News. I've seen them on the local news around my area.
MELISSA, TRUMP SUPPORTER: I've seen too much pieces of different evidence so far that shows that, at this point, I would be OK with a revote.
O'SULLIVAN: Really?
MELISSA: Yes. Absolutely. When you have video footage of people taking bags of ballots and showing that they are for Donald Trump and lighting them on fire --
[08:40:05]
O'SULLIVAN: I helped write a fact check on CNN on -- on that particular video.
The election officials said that video has been going around for a few days. They are print-out ballots. They're not real ballots.
MELISSA: You -- so you use the information of the election officials.
O'SULLIVAN: Somebody like me comes along, tries to research it, tries to fact check it, and then I fact check it, you'll come back and say, well, the election officials would say that.
MELISSA: But wouldn't they, though? That's the thing, though, question everything, right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are not going to steal this election from us.
O'SULLIVAN (voice over): The video actually showed sample ballots, not real ballots. The video's assertion is false but even the president's son tweeted it to his millions of followers. Election officials in Virginia, where the sample ballots were from, told CNN they had spent days trying to correct the online misinformation.
CROWD: USA. USA. USA. USA. USA. USA.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We love you Donald Trump.
WALKER: When we went to bed on election night, when they told us they stopped counting, we woke up and there was a vertical spike right for Biden, 130,000 votes approximately. That's when I knew there was a problem.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now as my buddy, Steve Bannon says, if you're going to lie, be believable about it, because you do not have 138,000 votes come in and 135,000 of them come in for Biden.
O'SULLIVAN (on camera): This is what I think you guys might have been talking about on election night, Michigan, 138,000. This was from a website called Decision Desk HQ. They came out and they said, we messed up. There was an error in how votes came back and reported and that's why there was this spike in the map.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
O'SULLIVAN: But, you know, the election officials in Michigan then all confirmed to say, yes, there was this error, they are not real ballots, those ballots never existed.
O'SULLIVAN (voice over): President Trump himself even shared a post about the Michigan error. Twitter labeled his post as misinformation.
O'SULLIVAN (on camera): Are you concerned that just as how people on the left can fall for misinformation that maybe sometimes you --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, I'm sure, yes -- they're -- no, I'm -- me, I'm very thorough with the information I look at. I have my opinions, obviously, but I'm not just going to go around retweeting blatantly false information or things that I believe that are just -- it's just -- I look at things that are suspicious.
O'SULLIVAN (voice over): Some people at the protest told us the delays in news outlets projecting a winner contributed to their belief that Biden stole the election.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Put America first or else it's going to be America last.
O'SULLIVAN (on camera): You don't think there's any way Trump could have lost?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
O'SULLIVAN: Really?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. How do you go from almost losing 200,000 and five hours you're down to 30,000 votes away from winning?
O'SULLIVAN: A lot of Democrats voted in the mail, they voted absentee, they voted before Election Day. And in a lot of states, those Election Day votes got counted first, that's why Trump had that early lead, and then once those other votes started getting counted, that is how Biden caught up and --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So where are all the Trump ballots that were mailed in?
O'SULLIVAN: Well --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why are we finding them laying around in different places?
O'SULLIVAN: But Trump was telling everybody not to mail it in, right? That's why there's so much more mail-in Democratic votes, no?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's -- no.
O'SULLIVAN (voice over): Many of the false claims alleging voter fraud spread on social media. FaceBook and Twitter labeled some as misinformation.
MELISSA: I think that's wrong. I think -- that's not their place.
We're like one big science experiment for social media. If I'm seeking a certain viewpoint and I seem to -- and they seem to see that I favor that viewpoint more, that's the viewpoint that they're going to feed me. And then the other side is going to get a different viewpoint.
O'SULLIVAN (on camera): Does that concern you as a FaceBook user?
MELISSA: I mean it concerns me, yes, because of the fact that, unfortunately, people fail to think for themselves. They feed into everything that they're seeing without questioning it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CAMEROTA: It's important to consider the news source of where you get your information. That's what I've learned.
BERMAN: Yes. Look, it's a big deal what the president is lying about now and the misinformation he's spreading and it has an impact on the country and the ability of the country to move forward over the coming weeks and months. There's just no question about that.
CAMEROTA: It does. There are consequences to all of this misinformation.
BERMAN: Yes.
CAMEROTA: All right, meanwhile, on a sad note, the world is mourning the loss of legendary "Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek. He has hosted the hit game show since its first episode in 1984. Trebek worked right up to the end, taping his final episodes less than two weeks ago. Trebek announced early last year that he was battling pancreatic cancer. He talked to ABC News recently about working through the pain of his illness.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALEX TREBEK, HOST, "JEOPARDY": Tough moments. And I don't know what it is, but when it's time to go, it's time to go.
[08:45:07]
Let's do it. Get out there. Suck it up. Make it happen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Trebek's final episodes hosting "Jeopardy!" will air through Christmas week. No word yet on any successor. Alex Trebek was 80 years old.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BERMAN: To count the number of big named Republicans who have congratulated President-elect Joe Biden on one hand. There's Senator Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, former President George W. Bush actually called the president-elect.
Joining us now is Tim Alberta, chief political correspondent at "Politico."
Tim, it's always great to have you here. You have your finger on the pulse of the Republican world. And you write, look, it was never an open question about how President Trump would react to defeat.
[08:50:02]
He would be petulant and we're seeing that.
You say the open question was how Republicans would respond and how they would respond to the president's behavior after an election like this. How would you assess that response so far?
TIM ALBERTA, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "POLITICO": Well, to the point you just made, John, we've only got a handful, a small handful, of, you know, prominent Republican officials and leaders who have actually come out and acknowledged the election result, and have even used the phrase, you know, President-elect Joe Biden, and that speaks volumes in and of itself.
You know, what's interesting is that the Republican Party, for, you know, the past decade has been the party of hard truths and has been sort of propped up on this mantle of saying that they are the ones willing to have the hard conversations with the American people about the debt and the deficit and the spending and all these things, and yet this is a pretty good example of how fundamentally afraid Republican elected officials are of their own supporters back home. And you can see that with their unwillingness to acknowledge the reality of this situation, which is that the president has lost, that Joe Biden has won, that he is the vice president-elect -- excuse me, that he's the president-elect and that Kamala Karris is the vice president-elect. That is a simple observation that could be made by anyone who has spent ten minutes in electoral politics, much less if you are a United States senator or United States congressman. And yet they are unwilling to observe it. And I don't think it's because they're afraid of Trump. I think it's because they're afraid of his supporters.
If you've watched over the last couple of days, even, you know, conservative radio hosts who have come out and acknowledged that the president is not likely to surmount these numbers, they're losing, you know, listeners. They're getting killed on social media. So it's just a risk that most of these Republicans feel like they can't take with their own supporters back home.
CAMEROTA: Tim, that's really interesting. I mean just follow the money, right? So it's just about the fundraising because, you know, from outside of that bubble, when you look at Senator Lindsey Graham saying do not concede, Mr. President, and you look at Senator Ted Cruz saying Trump still has a path to victory, you think, what -- are they just in such a different news bubble or information bubble than the rest of us that they don't know. But you're saying, you know, they're going along with this charade because they're also just catering to their donors?
ALBERTA: They know. Ted Cruz has argued cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Ted Cruz has multiple degrees from Ivy League universities. Ted Cruz is a very smart guy. Ted Cruz understands full well that Donald Trump has lost this election but Ted Cruz is willing to go on Fox News with Sean Hannity and not only deny that reality, but also lie, tell clear, bold-faced lies about Trump's election observers being thrown out of precincts in Philadelphia, when, in fact, that's not true. Reporters for Fox News, who were on the scene have said that's not true. The Trump campaign's own lawyers have said that that's not true. But Ted Cruz is willing to go on Fox News and spin that lie and then send out an email fundraising off of it. Why? I think we know why.
I mean, to your point, Alisyn, sure, follow the money, but also follow the base, right? Keep yourself on the right side of a Republican base, which right now does not believe that Donald Trump did lose this election, and at the very least they don't believe that he lost this election fair and square. And if you want to have a future in this Republican Party, you'd better be on the right side of this very essential divide right now, on this question of whether or not Trump lost, and even if he lost, whether it was above board.
BERMAN: This is weakness. What you're describing, I think, Tim, is weakness and lack of courage, and a certain cravenness and, you know, craven behavior by these leaders.
What's the impact? How does this affect America, do you think?
ALBERTA: Well, look, when you have the president of the United States come out in front of the nation and say that essentially we're living in a banana republic, that this election has been stolen from him, that you can't trust the integrity of the ballot box, that the most fundamental institution in America cannot be trusted. I certainly think that that has long-term implications and I think that once that genie is out of the bottle, it's very difficult to put it back in.
I spent the last year on the ground talking with voters about this and I wrote a big magazine piece last week, two weeks ago, sort of dumping out my notebook in all of these conversations with voters, and with party officials, Republican Party officials around the country, who believe that this really is a rigged election, that the deep state is working against the president to deny him a second term.
[08:55:05]
And what that does to the psyche of the American voter over the long- term I think is something that we've never really had to wrestle with as a country because we've never really been in this situation and, obviously, there was an opportunity here for a, you know, you were never going to have the entirety of the Republican elected class come out and correct the president and dismiss his claims.
But there was certainly an opportunity for a healthy number of them, for respected figure on the right to come out and say, you know what, this is -- this election was not stolen. As a matter of fact, we won a lot of races down the ballot, all over the country. We, you know, we held on to state legislature from coast to coast. We flipped some congressional seats. We ran a really competitive election as a party. We should not allow the president, because of his sour grapes, to delegitimize this entire thing, but they're -- they're not willing to do that.
BERMAN: It's a small moment for a -- for a great political party.
Tim Alberta, thank you very much for being with us this morning, as always. We appreciate your insight.
ALBERTA: Sure.
CAMEROTA: OK, Wall Street is getting ready for a huge open.
BERMAN: Wow.
CAMEROTA: This is after Pfizer, what is that number, 16 -- more than 1,600? After Pfizer announced its coronavirus vaccine is more than 90 percent effective.
CNN's breaking news coverage continues next.
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[09:00:00]
