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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Record 144,000 New Cases in One Day in U.S.; Karl Rove: Trump Lawsuits Won't Change Election Outcome. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired November 12, 2020 - 16:30   ET

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

[16:30:02]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: And as CNN's Nick Watt reports for us now, despite increasing optimism for a vaccine, Dr. Fauci is now warning this deadly virus will likely never fully go away.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: We know that these informal gatherings of family and friends are actually what's contributing to this latest surge. I don't know how much more we can sound the alarm about what's going here.

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Well, here it goes -- more than 144,000 new COVID-19 infections yesterday, in a single day. Yet another record.

Since November 1st, more than 1 million Americans have been infected, hospitalizations now at an all-time high.

DR. MEGAN RANNEY, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN, BROWN UNIVERSITY: I admitted more patients with COVID-19 on my last shift than I ever have.

WATT: And the death toll is climbing.

KEENE MENDENHALL, LOST BOTH PARENTS TO COVID-19: He looked at us, he smiled and he gave us the thumbs up and that was the last memory that I have of dad.

WATT: This wave dwarfs the spring and summer surges.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I doubt we're going to eradicate this. I think we need to plan that this is something may be something we need to maintain control over chronically. Certainly, it's not going to be pandemic for a lot longer because I believe the vaccines are going to turn that around.

WATT: And in the meantime, a national lockdown? But less than half of Americans are very likely to comply to stay home a month, according to a new Gallup poll, down from 67 percent in the spring.

FAUCI: There's no appetite for locking down on the American public, but I believe that we can do it without a lockdown.

WATT: We used to talk a lot about hot spots. Now, almost the entire country is hot. Average case counts rising in 44 states.

GOV. MIKE DEWINE (R-OH): We're seeing huge spreads from funerals, weddings, just people getting together to watch football.

WATT: All these colleges were supposed to play Saturday. Now they're not, because some lineups are just so depleted by COVID-19.

There's also a surge up in Canada, sparked in part by their thanksgiving held in early October. The CDC now says the best way for Americans to give thanks this year is online.

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: The good news is that next thanksgiving is going to be fabulous. It's going to be the best ever. This Thanksgiving is going to suck a bit.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATT: So probably no national lockdowns but Chicago just issued a stay-at-home advisory. In Ohio, where they've had a mask mandate since the summer, the governor says they are now going to start actually sending agents out to enforce it. And in New York, the mayor says that he's preparing to close schools down again if necessary, if the positivity rate in that city keeps on climbing -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Nick Watt, thank you so much.

CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now.

Sanjay, you call the surge a humanitarian disaster today. How dire is what we're face -- is what we're about to go through?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, it's already so dire, Jake, you see the numbers. We've been talking about these numbers for a long time. And we have projections on how much worse things are going to get. You know, I've been here for, you know, 19 years, 20 years, and have covered a lot of humanitarian disasters. You know, the tsunami in South Asia, the Haiti earthquake, the famine in Somalia.

This is the worst in terms of overall preventable deaths. It's obviously been spanned out over a year. But, you know, you just look at what we have seen in terms of humanitarian disasters around the world and understand what is still likely to happen in this country.

I'm talking about the United States specifically with regard to our -- the overall impact of this pandemic here. It's on par for some of the worst humanitarian disasters we've seen over the last quarter century.

TAPPER: It's so depressing, because not only is this all so predictable -- it was predicted. We've been talking about this since February and the insufficient ways that the Trump administration has dealt with this crisis, whether testing, or contact tracing.

Anyway, I want you to take a listen to Dr. Anthony Fauci earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAUCI: I doubt we're going to eradicate this. I think we need to plan that this is something we may need to maintain control over chronically. Certainly, it's not going to be pandemic for a lot longer, because I believe the vaccines are going to turn that around.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So explain what that means. We're not going to eradicate it but it won't be a pandemic much longer.

GUPTA: Right.

TAPPER: What does that mean for the average American watching this, wondering when life will go back to some semblance of order?

GUPTA: Well, I think what he's saying and what we, you know, sort of realize about this virus, it's so contagious, it's become endemic. It's going to be around us, you know, in perpetuity perhaps. And event, you know, the H1N1 flu virus which comes in the flu season, is a derivate of some way progeny of the 1918 flu.

[16:35:03]

So, this virus will stick around. They're so contagious, they don't go away completely. But we do gain control of them, meaning it becomes much harder for them to jump from person to person to person. So, still there, but it's not spreading robustly in communities anymore. That's what he means by, you know, no longer a pandemic.

But the virus is, you know, it's a contagious virus. It's going to be a part of our lives now I think, you know, going forward. We can get control of it with all the public health measures we've talked about, and the vaccine will be another important tool. But, you know, as we've talked about, Jake, that's, you know, sort of second quarter of next year probably.

TAPPER: So, more than 65,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with coronavirus right now. We've seen increased hospitalizations in COVID hot spots, but never this bad nationally, never this many people. What would happen if hospitals across the country, as a lot of people are afraid are going to happen in their neighborhood hospitals, if they become overrun?

GUPTA: That is a situation that either hospitals -- some hospitals are already dealing with or are planning to deal with because it looks imminent. What happens is a crisis sort of scenario, Jake. You have a situation where you -- field hospitals in Texas and Wisconsin. People are looking at large public buildings to see if they can serve as triage centers.

Some of the same things we saw in April, you know, in New York and other places around the country are likely to happen in more places now around the country. North Dakota has 20 to 25 ICU beds total, Jake. Those Midwestern states are some of the hardest hit in the country right now. They send patients out of the state first, out of the region second but they have to try to build capacity right now, Jake. So, that's the plan. It's unfortunate because, as you point out, it didn't need to happen.

TAPPER: And it was just a few days ago that we had 10 million cases. Now we're up to 10,441,000. I mean, it's spreading. Everything is going in the wrong direction, 242,000 deaths.

And yet President Trump nowhere to be found. He has made no public comments on COVID since he lost the election. Even though his COVID task force met on Monday, they've not briefed the public in weeks.

How bad of a position will we be in by the time President-elect Biden takes over in January, on January 20th?

GUPTA: Yeah. I mean, I spent the weekend looking at a lot of these models, Jake, seeing what the similarities were, what could reasonably be expected by throwing a lot of public health interventions, non- pharmaceutical conventions as they're called at the situation now. You can conclude by the end of this year -- this is according to the IHME model, by the end of this year, I mean, on December 31st, we would be at over 300,000 newly infected COVID patients a day, 300,000, OK?

As you know, a few weeks after that is when you start to see the highest hospitalizations. We think we can be at double the hospitalizations than we are right now by the end of January. And sort of by mid-February, as you note, Jake, more than 400,000 people, they think, would die from this, would have died from this.

So, you know, it's hard to even say that out loud. That would make it the worst humanitarian disaster. I showed you those numbers earlier. It would make it the worst that we've actually incurred.

TAPPER: I mean, how is it not a dereliction of duty? The president, this is going on right now. It's getting worse. It was all predicted. Everybody has been sounding the alarm.

President Trump has not announced any sort of revamping of testing, revamping of steps needed to be taken, contact tracing. What should he be doing right now?

GUPTA: Well, I mean, you know, I'll be honest. If it were me and I'm probably glad that nobody thinks it should be me but I would hand this over to the coronavirus task force and the CDC and say, get to work. Do daily briefings. Let the American people know what's happening. Create a national strategy.

You know, nobody likes to hear the term lockdown but there are some places spiraling out of control right now. Figure out if you can do circuit breaker sort of lockdowns, surge testing into those areas. You know, there's -- you see in Ohio, they start to red line and they talk about mask mandates. We saw the same thing in Arizona.

We saw Delaware, I don't know if we have this graphic but in Delaware, I get these hyper local examples because I think it makes the case. They were surging, metaphor for the country, 150 percent increase in overall cases.

They did three things. Not forever but for a few weeks. Mask mandate. They stopped large public gatherings and they had broad contact tracing.

What happened? They had 100 percent decrease in deaths, Jake. A hundred percent decrease. Decrease 88 percent in hospitalizations, 82 percent in cases.

It took about three to four weeks to see the manifestation of those interventions. It doesn't happen right way.

[16:40:02]

It's not like a painkiller, but it does work.

And so, we know it works. We need to apply it nationally. And we need to do it now, because these numbers are horrific.

I had to tweet that out today. This is a humanitarian crisis. The Doctors Without Borders, they look at a globe and say what are the hottest spots on earth? That's where we go to help. They're here in the United States right now.

TAPPER: President Trump, instead, is retweeting these deranged voting software conspiracy theories instead of doing the number one job for a president, to protect the lives of the American people.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much.

As goes Geraldo, so goes America said no one ever. But still, some of President Trump's biggest fans are now telling him it might be time to acknowledge what is obvious.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:45:15]

TAPPER: In our 2020 lead today, some of President Trump's most prominent allies are stating the obvious. The presidential race 2020, it's over.

Karl Rove acknowledged in "The Wall Street Journal", the results won't be overturned. Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt said Trump needs to move on. In fact, news personality Geraldo Rivera tweeted: Time is coming soon to say good-bye with grace and dignity.

Joining me now to discuss, "The Atlantic's" Ron Brownstein and "Politico's" Laura Barron-Lopez.

Ron, we've seen more Republicans starting to bail on Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the election, claim all sorts of insane things about fraud that didn't happen. But the point that a lot of these Republicans seem to be making is that lawsuits and false accusations of fraud won't work, not that there is anything morally wrong with it.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

TAPPER: But how do you see it?

BROWNSTEIN: Right. Well, I mean, it is a continuation of what we've seen throughout his presidency. You know, every time he breaks a window, Congressional Republicans immediately sweep up the glass. And more are coming to kind of -- in the vain of acknowledging that gravity exists, to acknowledge he lost the three key states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin by roughly triple the margin he won them in 2016 when the Democrats had conceded.

I would only add that, you know, all of this isn't just kind of indulging the president in a snowflake kind of way of not hurting his feelings. I mean, the fact that he is focusing on these conspiracy theories and his own grievances at a moment when the pandemic is at the height it has ever been and is almost abdicated the responsibility to protect the American people, and there's also, Jake, the long term damage that he's doing in the trust of the democratic system with these unfounded allegations.

TAPPER: Yeah. Laura, Georgia is going to recount its presidential ballots by hand. And then the state has until November 20th to get that done. One source tells CNN's Dana Bash that the president has no plans to admit defeat until at least that's done. That's another eight days from now. Trump is behind by 14,000 votes.

I covered a lot of recounts. That's pretty insurmountable as a lead, Laura.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah, it's highly unlikely that as Georgia goes through this recount that beyond maybe a few hundred votes here or there that we would see a dramatic change in what the vote count is at this point.

And so -- and the fact that President Trump, as Dana is reporting, may not be able to concede until after that, to Ron's point, adds to his supporters believing these unfounded and baseless claims about voter fraud. Some 70 percent of Republicans right now, according to a "Politico" and Morning Consult poll, don't believe that the election was fair and legitimate.

BROWNSTEIN: Wow!

BARRON-LOPEZ: And so that continues to stress among the electorate and what long-term damage that could potentially have, we don't fully know yet.

TAPPER: And, Ron, Republicans talked about how at this point in 2016, there were a lot of Democrats who were upset that Trump won. Hillary Clinton, we should note, conceded that night and Speaker Pelosi said that she was ready to work with President-elect Trump, et cetera, et cetera.

But take a listen to what Trump's allies said about Democrats who, for years ago, were not accepting his victory. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATT SCHLAPP, AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE UNION CHAIRMAN: Hillary is on her sore loser tour. And now we have her go through recounts. You know what she needs to do? She needs to get over it. She lost. Get out of the way and let Donald Trump be president.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: Do you think the Democrats are sore losers? Yeah, I do.

RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: The reality is they're a bunch of spoiled cry babies.

JASON MILLER, TRUMP TRANSITION COMMISSION DIRECTOR: News flash for many of the partisan Democrats and those in the mainstream media to continue to try to delegitimize President-elect Trump's massive and historic win last month. The election is over, Hillary Clinton lost.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: By the way, four years ago, we were calling him President- elect Trump that night. What do you make of this?

BROWNSTEIN: Look, I think one of the things about the Trump era is that the whisper becomes the shout. A lot of these Republicans are veering very close to suggesting since they believe their voters are the real America, by definition, any time they lose, it's illegitimate votes. And essentially, what the president is saying big cities with large numbers of African-Americans and other minorities are cheating, cheating his coalition. It's a very dangerous road to go down.

TAPPER: Yeah, we heard a Republican senators say, well, Trump might have won the popular vote if you don't count California, which I mean -- I don't even know what that means, if you don't count California. It's a state.

BROWNSTEIN: If you don't count Texas or Florida, on the other side.

TAPPER: Yeah, Laura, Republican Senator James Lankford said that he would step in if Biden doesn't have access to classified briefings by tomorrow. Many Republican senators said Biden should have access to classified briefings. If more Republican officials spoke up, do you think that would change anything for President Trump?

[16:50:02]

BARRON-LOPEZ: It's really hard to say because we've seen so many times where Trump has just, you know, been pushed into a corner and stayed there and he just does not relent and doesn't give up. It would be important for the American public for Republicans to say that it's -- not getting intelligence briefings, Biden's inability to get those hurts in the long term when he takes office. It hurts his ability to hit the ground running.

And there's been evidence from the 9/11 commission that when there are short transitions, that doesn't help with national security for the incoming president.

TAPPER: All right. Laura Barron-Lopez, Ron Brownstein, thanks to both of you.

Coming up, a warning from a top medical expert that this Thanksgiving is going to, quote, suck. Not just for Lions fans. Why you need to start preparing today if you plan to see anyone outside your home.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:55:32]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stay away from Thanksgiving gatherings with people that aren't in our household and we can slow the transmission of this virus.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We really should be thinking about canceling Thanksgiving and just keeping it to our household.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The good news is that next Thanksgiving is going to be fabulous. It's going to be the best ever. This Thanksgiving is going to suck a bit.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: If you're even thinking about getting together with anyone outside your immediate family circle during Thanksgiving, doctors are urging you to start a quarantine today, 14 days out.

Let's bring in Dr. William Schaffner. He's a professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Dr. Schaffner, good to see you again.

Should families be getting together for Thanksgiving?

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, PROFESSOR, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER: They should be very, very careful if they do that. Less is more this Thanksgiving. It is the COVID Thanksgiving. We don't want to give the virus while we're giving thanks.

We want to protect grandma and grandpa and we do that by keeping ourselves as separate as possible. As much as we would like to get together, this year, separation should be the norm.

Please, everybody. Be careful. We don't want Thanksgiving to be a spreader event.

TAPPER: If people do get together, why 14 days for a quarantine? And how strict should you make that quarantine? Can you go to the grocery store still? SCHAFFNER: Sure. Go to the grocery store. Wear your mask. Go early in

the morning when there's nobody there. It's 14 days because that's the incubation period of the virus.

Should you be infected today you'll become sick some time during that 14 days. If you last the 14 days and you're not sick, then you're pretty safe.

TAPPER: Although so many people have it and it's asymptomatic, right? So you need to get tested also, right? You might have it and not know and then grandma comes, even though you've been quarantining and then you give it to her.

SCHAFFNER: Well, 14 days tight quarantine is pretty good assurance. If you can get a test in there before Thanksgiving, even better. But remember, a test shows you what your status is on only that one day. Really, masking, social distancing, avoiding large groups, staying home is really better. But better yet, put off thanksgiving, all getting together. Do a lot of FaceTime or zooming.

TAPPER: Yeah. It's depressing. I miss my parents. I haven't seen them in person in -- since this began, but we're going to forego it this year.

Many college students will soon head home for the holidays and they might be carrying along more than just dirty laundry.

SCHAFFNER: Yes.

TAPPER: Any advice for families on how to reduce the risk of spread from an asymptomatic college student?

SCHAFFNER: Well, that's the same story. We would like the college student to remain rather separate from the family when they come home. Limit those hugs and kisses. And if the student was tested before they got home, all the better. But nonetheless, separation for a while, while that student gets home.

TAPPER: So, let's assume that somebody is taking all these precautions, the family is quarantining, other members of the family are quarantining and they're all planning on getting together.

Which is less risky for traveling, driving or flying?

SCHAFFNER: That's the easier. Traveling by car is much less risky, because you have total control of the environment. You can get takeout food, run into the restroom, do a lot of good hand hygiene, use a wipe on that gasoline pump and you can control that environment.

But if you're traveling by air or bus or train, you're subject to whatever everybody else around you is doing. They may not be masked. They're getting awfully close. So travel by car, if you must travel.

TAPPER: And, Professor, we know that get-togethers, even small ones, can spread the virus. In New Jersey alone, five coronavirus outbreaks were linked to Halloween parties. The new CDC guidelines for small gatherings include requiring everyone

to wear a mask even outdoors, avoiding direct contact, including handshakes and hugs, keeping music levels down to keep people singing or trying to shout over the noise. Avoid pot-luck-style gatherings. Have one person serve all the food, so most people are not handling the serving utensils.

Is there anything else you can think of add to the list?

SCHAFFNER: Stay apart if you can, wear that mask and enjoy Thanksgiving even though it's a COVID Thanksgiving, Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Dr. William Schaffner, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now. We'll see you tomorrow.