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New Test to Detect Past Infections; Trump Denies Election Defeat; El Paso Sees High COVID Numbers; New Election Projections in Alaska; Trump Throws Transition into Chaos. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired November 11, 2020 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:31:41]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Well, a promising new study shows that a new test might be more effective at detecting previous COVID-19 infections. Researchers are now working to try to see if a t-cell test may be more reliable than those antibody tests.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, CNN's senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen for more on this reporting.

So, Elizabeth, how could this help prevent infections to better detect past infections?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. If we can detect who's been infected in the past, we can sort of learn more about what different people need to do in order to protect themselves. And a lot of people have been very interested in this. They say, oh, I was -- I was sick back in March but I never got tested for COVID. I want to know if I had it. And they go and get antibody tests.

Well, our immune systems, Jim and Poppy, are amazing. We make antibodies. We make b cells. We make something called natural killer cells. I think they got the best name. And we make something called t- cells. And you can measure different things to check for past infection.

So let's take a look at this test.

So what's going on here is that this test, the new one, or the one that's being studied, it detects t-cells instead of antibodies. There is an unpublished study that shows -- a new study that shows that the t-cell test is more effective than the antibody test. It was better at picking up who had been infected in the past and who hadn't. And the test could possibly be commercially available after Thanksgiving.

Now, the big question here is if you test positive for t-cells for COVID-19, does that mean that you can't get it again? And that is what we don't know. That is the important question we just don't know the answer. Only time will tell. But this is a step in the right direction.

Jim. Poppy.

HARLOW: For sure. I definitely want to get that --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Because I swore with how sick I was in February I had it, but then the antibody test was negative. So I'm going to try to get that when it comes out.

Before you go, good news this week, of course, about vaccines.

Listen to this from Dr. Fauci, what he said last night about when it might actually be available to most people.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I think you're going to get vaccinated within the first four months. I would say by April you'll be able to be vaccinated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Is that everyone?

COHEN: So when he said you actually specifically he meant Jake Tapper, because Jake asked the question. He said, Dr. Fauci, I'm not a doctor or a nurse --

HARLOW: Right.

COHEN: I'm not over 65. I don't have any underlying conditions. When can I get the test? And Dr. Fauci said April. So really what he means is, what Dr. Fauci means, is we're going to start, possibly as soon as next month, vaccinating health care workers, those who take care of patients with COVID. And then the next step would be people in nursing homes, people with underlying conditions that make them vulnerable to COVID complications. And then eventually will get to other people, other groups in April, people who are not over 65, and people who not do not have underlying conditions. That's what he's thinking at this time.

HARLOW: OK.

SCIUTTO: You know, it's remarkable, for all the flak Dr. Fauci has taken from some corners, he has consistently said for months an approved vaccine by the end of the year, as soon as possibly November, and availability into the spring. He's been consistent.

So --

COHEN: He did.

SCIUTTO: He deserves credit for that.

Elizabeth Cohen, thanks very much. [09:35:00]

Well, President Trump and his allies are undermining faith in our election. That's what they're doing, every day, pushing false allegations and straight up disinformation. That means deliberate misinformation. I'm going to fact check those claims, next.

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SCIUTTO: The president and his allies have unleashed a flood of false allegations and disinformation in the days after the election in a blatant attempt to undermine the results. So here are the facts.

Let's begin with a postal worker in Pennsylvania who claimed he was told by his supervisor to backdate mail-in ballots. "The Washington Post" now reports that the postal worker has now recanted that allegation telling federal investigators the claims were not true and signing an affidavit admitting that.

[09:40:08]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JACOB BOGAGE, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Speaking with sources today, you know, the kind of words they use to describe that conversation was "overly embellished" or "totally made up" these allegations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Totally made up. We should note that since then this postal worker has put out a video with the right wing group Project Veritas in which he denies denying the allegations. However, we should also note, it is a crime to lie to federal investigators and his statement recanting his claim was under oath.

All right, another false claim, that observers in Philadelphia were not granted access to witness the opening and sorting of ballots. This is not true. In fact, a judge in Philadelphia decided the city's board of elections complied with the law in how it allowed both campaigns proper access to the canvassing process.

Next example, the president's supporters are circulating a list which claims to show cases of ballots in the state of Michigan being cast in the names of dead people. The origins of this list are unknown, but our colleagues at CNN they looked into 50 of the names on that list. Here's what they found, 37 of the people listed are indeed dead, but they did not vote. Five of them are alive and voted legally according to public records. And eight are alive and did not vote.

More broadly note this, the Department of Homeland Security run, we should note, by Trump appointees, yesterday debunked rumors of dead people casting ballots in this election, saying that there are a number of voting integrity measures already in place to protect against that very type of ballot fraud. Finally, President Trump has made unfounded allegations of so-called

secret ballots that he claims suddenly appeared on election night, all of them voting for President-elect Biden. This, too, is false. Different states counted ballots at different speeds, but there is no reason to claim any results were withheld or secret. In many cases, mail-in ballots skewed heavily towards the Democratic ticket and, the fact is, those ballots were often counted later in the process. There were no secret ballots and no suspicious late vote counts.

We are keeping an eye on all of this for you and keeping to the facts.

Well, joining me now to discuss a CNN legal analyst Elie Honig. He's a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Good morning, Elie. Always good to have you on.

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Hey, Jim. Thanks.

SCIUTTO: All right, so let's beginning with the remaining legal challenges. Do they, in your view, have any legal legitimacy?

HONIG: Jim, remember just this past weekend, three or four days ago, when the president issued an official statement that starting Monday he would be prosecuting, his word, misuse of the word --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HONIG: But prosecuting his case to show that this election was a fraud.

Here we are. It's Wednesday. They've got nothing.

And, Jim, I've been reading these complaints that the Trump campaign and their surrogates are filing. There are two recurrent faults in these complaints.

One, the numbers of ballots that they're talking about, if they're even talking about specific ballots at all, are minuscule, 53 votes here, a couple hundred votes there.

Number two, they just don't have the proof. You just laid it out perfectly. They're claiming voter fraud. They haven't won a single case.

Look, the record speaks for itself. They've filed cases all across this country. They haven't won a single piece of litigation yet. They are winless. They're like the New York Jets of constitutional litigation. The record speaks for itself. They're not turning around anytime soon.

SCIUTTO: Don't insult my New York Jets, but point taken.

HONIG: Sorry.

SCIUTTO: So how quickly -- because, frankly, this is -- this is partly our largely a PR charade by the president to raise doubts here. How quickly do you expect courts to dismiss these cases then?

HONIG: Courts are dismissing these cases with alarming speed if you're the Trump campaign. Some of these cases are getting dismissed within 48, 72 hours of being filed. And, by the way, that is really rare to see.

And, beyond that, Jim, we're starting to see the Trump campaign and its surrogates dismiss their own lawsuits. We've now seen one lawsuit withdrawn. We saw another appeal withdrawn just the other day. That, I think, is a warning sign. You don't see that very often. When the Trump campaign is pulling back its own lawsuits, I think that's a flashing red light that they're in trouble.

SCIUTTO: OK, I want to talk about the attorney general's role because he told federal prosecutors that they should examine what he called voting irregularities. And this is before -- and this is the change, before states moved to certify the results, violating or overturning long-standing DOJ policy.

The quote from his memo is as follows, I authorize you to pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certification of elections in your jurisdictions in certain cases, as I've already done in specific instances.

Tell me what the standard is now for opening investigations. You're a former prosecutor. What guidance do they take from this?

HONIG: Yes, Jim, so there's bad news and there's good news.

[09:45:00]

The bad news is, William Barr has now changed the rules at this very late date. The rule used to be you don't do anything public, anything overt on an election-related case until that election is certified, finalized, done and over. Bill Barr has now, after the election's over, after Donald Trump has lost, as Donald Trump casts about for any reed to cling to, now Bill Barr says, actually, we're going to change that long-standing rule and we're going to let you do public things now if necessary. It's a continuation of Bill Barr's politicization and abuse of DOJ's power.

The good news is, it's not going to make any difference. The facts just are not there. Bill Barr can change the rules all he wants, he can't generate facts out of nothing. The margins are too big. They would have to flip more than one state. It's just not going to happen.

So, look, Bill Barr's trying to let DOJ and to use DOJ to sort of support this narrative, but there's just no substance there.

SCIUTTO: Elie Honig, thanks for walking us all through it.

HONIG: Yes. Thanks, Jim.

HARLOW: OK.

And we're going to post that fact check from Jim on all of those lies regarding the election and the actual facts online so you can see it.

Meantime, we're going to take you next to Texas, to El Paso, where strained hospitals are now storing bodies in cold trailers as COVID cases spike and local morgues fill to capacity. We're going to speak with a doctor battling it on the ground, next.

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[09:50:49]

HARLOW: Well, Texas is now the first state in the nation to reach 1 million COVID cases and 8 percent of El Paso's population -- 8 percent of that city's population is now infected with COVID-19. There are now 10 mobile morgues on the ground in El Paso alone as deaths are also spiking there. And now a county judge is strongly considering extending a two-week shutdown that is set to expire today.

With me now is Dr. Ogechika Alozie, an infectious disease expert and a member of Texas' Medical Association's COVID Task Force.

It's good to have you. I'm sorry it's on such dire news, but thank you for being here.

DR. OGECHIKA ALOZIE, TEXAS MEDICAL ASSOCIATION CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE: Thank you.

HARLOW: You have said, look, you've got these 26,000 active cases, over 1,000 people in the hospital in El Paso. You call these dark times.

Is there any choice in your mind but to extend the stay-at-home order, the lockdown, for more weeks?

ALOZIE: Yes, I think so. First of all, thanks for having me.

And these are dark times, but I do want to also relay a message of hope, that as the community sort of focuses, reduces their mobility (ph) and we get ahold of this crisis, I mean we have the resources amongst our health care system here, I think that's what gets us through the winter and into next year where we can start to talk about the vaccines and the therapeutics, the antibodies. And so hopefully the community will rally around, like we did after August 3rd last year, and really form the nexus of what should be El Paso strong.

HARLOW: You know what it's like for the health care providers on the ground because you're there and you're working in these hospitals every single day. And you've talked about physicians and nurses literally coming up to you crying. What are they going through?

ALOZIE: I think the biggest word is just fatigue. And there's some frustration. I mean the fact that we are here isn't where anybody wanted to be when we went through our initial surge back in July and August and that sort of constant wear and tear of seeing people come in sick and intubated. But, again, in as much as we have those messages of the patient that took his last sip of Sprite battling this disease, there are also those messages of family members that have survived, that have come through and been able to go home with their families. And I really want people to focus on that to give us our north star going forward to get through this.

HARLOW: A nurse from El Paso, where you are, was dispatched to New York in the spring when we were going through and we were the hot spot and we were experiencing the worst of this. And he came back and he told our affiliate that what El Paso was going through now, in his mind, is, quote, rougher than the time he spent in New York in the spring.

Is it -- is it that dire at this point in time? Obviously you have better therapeutics, so more people are living instead of dying as they were in the spring. But, still, is that an apt comparison?

ALOZIE: So I wasn't in New York, but I think one of the things that people don't realize when you think about El Paso is that for a city of almost a million on the border, we probably have less health care resources than a lot of large resources, right? New York is the mecca of health care in the United States. And so we have struggled with physician shortages, nursing shortages, but through the governor's help, through FEMA, DOD, we're getting those resources to really get our hands around what's going on right now.

And, again, that's where I speak to our community to say, these resources are here right now. As our country continues to go up 45 (INAUDIBLE) 50 states increasing in their infectivity rate, they won't be here forever. And so we really need to focus in and get this done for our community.

HARLOW: Well, Dr. Ogechika Alozie, thank you very, very much for what you're doing on the ground and for projecting that hope as well. We need that right now.

ALOZIE: Thank you, Poppy.

HARLOW: All right.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: This just in to CNN. CNN can now project that President Trump will win the state of Alaska.

David Chalian is standing by.

David, this was expected. What does this tell you?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes, it sure was expected. Three electoral votes now added to President Trump's column here.

[09:55:03]

That brings him up to 217 electoral votes. You see the vote board there with 71 percent of the vote now in, in Alaska, you see that Donald Trump has a healthy 46,000-vote lead, 56.9 percent to 39.1 percent. We also projected that Senator Dan Sullivan, the incumbent senator there, will hang on to that seat in Alaska as well. This all came in, Jim, because we got about 70,000 additional votes in -- in the last little bit from Alaska and it was able to make -- allow us to make these projections there.

SCIUTTO: All right, David Chalian, we'll stay on top of the news.

CNN just learning that the president met with his team on legal strategy just yesterday. We're going to have the latest just ahead.

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SCIUTTO: Well, a very good Wednesday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

HARLOW: And I'm Poppy Harlow.

Moments from now we do expect to see the president. He will make his first public appearance in almost a week. He and the first lady are heading to Arlington National Cemetery for a wreath-laying ceremony, obviously to honor our nation's veterans on this Veterans Day. We'll bring that to you live.

Meantime, President-elect Joe Biden is pushing forward with his transition plan. He's meeting with his transition team a little bit later today.

SCIUTTO: He is the president-elect.

As for the outgoing President Trump, he's still digging in, pushing unproven, false claims of massive voter fraud. We just debunked several of them on this program.

CNN has learned that the president met with his team yesterday on a legal plan, offered no plans to concede. A transition in flux combined with a stunning shake-up of leadership within the Defense Department, really unprecedented during a transition, now prompting growing concerns over the nation's security.

We've got you covered.

Let's begin, though, with CNN's John Harwood.

John, what more do we know about this meeting yesterday, what the plans are going forward?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, let me start by saying there are a couple of new things this morning. The first is, the president is finally going to get out of the White House. He's been hunkered down watching television, stewing over the embarrassment of his defeat, tweeting. He's going to get out and participate in that Veterans Day ceremony and he's going to do it while he's got a modest amount of good news today. CNN has just called the political -- the presidential race in Alaska.

[10:00:03]

He will win those three electoral votes. That's entirely expected.

Better news for Republicans.