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New Day
CNN Projects Biden Wins Arizona; Senator Loeffler Unleashes Onslaught Against Warnock in Georgia Senate Race; U.S. Sets New Records for New COVID Cases and Hospitalizations. Aired 7:30-8a ET
Aired November 13, 2020 - 07:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[07:30:00]
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, developing this morning, CNN projects that Joe Biden, the president-elect already, has won the state of Arizona. Biden flipped the long-time Republican stronghold.
He leads by a margin of 11,000 votes there, so he will get Arizona's 11 electoral votes. And importantly, as close as this margin is, it's well outside the range of the recount law in Arizona, so there will not be a recount there. This is it. Joe Biden has won Arizona. Two races not yet called, a hand recount begins today in Georgia where Biden maintains a 14,000-vote advantage.
The Secretary of State there says he doesn't expect the hand recount to change the results. In North Carolina, President Trump is ahead by about 71,000 votes, both campaigns think that North Carolina is going in Trump's column.
Regardless of the outcomes in Georgia and North Carolina, they will not change the result of the election. Joe Biden is currently at 290 electoral votes. That's above -- well above the 270 needed to win the White House. President Trump has 217 electoral votes. And we should note that Biden has extended his lead in the popular vote, he now leads by more than 5.3 million votes, Alisyn.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, John. Both U.S. Senate races in Georgia heading to runoffs in January with control of the U.S. Senate on the line. One of the Republican incumbents, Senator Kelly Loeffler is out with a million dollar ad campaign attacking her challenger.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Raphael Warnock called police thugs, gangsters, hosted a rally for communist dictator Fidel Castro and praised Marxism in speeches and writings. Raphael Warnock will give the radicals total control.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: All right, joining us now is that Democratic Senate candidate, Reverend Raphael Warnock, great to see you this morning. RAPHAEL WARNOCK, DEMOCRATIC U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE FOR GEORGIA: It's
so nice to be here with you, Alisyn. Good morning!
CAMEROTA: What's your response to that new ad from your challenger?
WARNOCK: Listen, I cannot allow myself to be distracted by Kelly Loeffler. I'm the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of Martin Luther King Jr. I have spent my whole career and ministry pushing hard against racism and bigotry and xenophobia in all of its forms.
And I have built multi-racial, multi-faith coalitions to solve some of our biggest problems. Kelly Loeffler, on the other hand, welcomes the support of bigots. She sat down with a known white supremacist for an interview. She has welcomed the endorsement of a candidate who traffics in the QAnon conspiracy theory with all of its racist overtones.
I've spent my life trying to pull people together, and in a moment like this in which we're dealing with this once-in-a-century pandemic that has created an economic turndown that is devastating Georgia families. I'm focused on those families.
CAMEROTA: It sounds like you've changed your tact, in terms of trying to combat these kinds of negative ads. Last week, you released a light-hearted response to it. I'll just play a portion of your campaign ad from last week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Raphael Warnock eats pizza with a fork and knife. Raphael Warnock once stepped on a crack in the sidewalk. Raphael Warnock even hates puppies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: That was funny. That was from last week, but it sounds like you are kicking it into a different gear now.
WARNOCK: Well, no, I said a week ago, and coming into this that as we moved into this phase of the campaign, that they were going to come out with these negative ads. That they were going to engage in the politics of division and distraction.
I will show the difference between my record and my opponent's record. She has spent her third time engaged in the politics of division. She knows that she is misrepresenting who I am and what I represent. And so I'm going to stay focused on Georgia families because here's the deal.
She can't explain why she thinks it's a good idea to get rid of healthcare in the middle of a pandemic. I was down in -- Georgia a couple of weeks ago, and those folks are really concerned, because their hospital has closed. And it's devastating rural health care. It's devastating to their -- to the economy in that part of the state. And I'm going to be focused on doing the work that I've done my entire career. I think one way of telling what a person will do in office is to look at what they were doing before they even ran.
[07:35:00]
And I've been standing up time and time again, saying that health care is a human right. And it is certainly something that the richest nation on the planet can and ought to provide to all of its citizens.
CAMEROTA: And Reverend, help us with the math that you're seeing and that your campaign is seeing. So, you got the most votes. If I put up the vote tallies from the most recent election, you got 32.9 percent of the vote to Kelly Loeffler's 25.9. But if you consolidate the red there, the Republican vote, it goes up to 45.8 percent. And so, what is your plan to close that gap?
WARNOCK: Well, my plan is not to make the politics and the campaign about me. That's the problem with our politics and it's the reason why people turn off, quite frankly. The politics too often is about the politicians rather than the people.
I got into this campaign, I'm a first-time candidate, I'm running against the wealthiest member of Congress whose family owns a company that owns the New York Stock Exchange. Most of the folks in my neighborhood and the communities that I serve, they're just trying to have a few dollars on the exchange so they can retire with dignity. There were ten Democrats in the race, five Republicans.
And I finished first in a very strong position. And I believe that as I continue to talk about my own record, here I am, someone who was born in poverty, grew up in public housing, I'm one of 12 children in my family, I'm number 11, and the first college graduate. I got there through hard work and Pell Grants and low-interest student loans. I'm used to starting at the bottom and working my way to the top. And so I'm going to continue to center the concerns of ordinary people.
CAMEROTA: Now, that --
WARNOCK: That's how we win.
CAMEROTA: Now that there's so much riding on this race, do you expect high-profile Democrats to come and come campaign for you? And are you asking for former President Barack Obama to come down or President- elect Biden?
WARNOCK: Oh, this is a Georgia campaign. And it is a campaign about the people of Georgia. There's no question that Georgia is on everybody's mind these days. But you've got to understand how this campaign emerged in the first place. I have spent my entire ministry and career working in the grassroots, registering voters all across this state, some 400,000 voters I and my partners registered through the New Georgia Project. I've stood up time and time again for the dignity of work and the dignity of workers.
I think it is shameful that the people we are calling right now essential workers, we don't pay them an essential wage. We won't provide for them essential benefits, including health care. America is better than this. And I'm a testament to that. My story is a manifestation of the American dream. I'm running because that dream is very much alive, but it's slipping away from far too many people.
CAMEROTA: And so, Reverend --
WARNOCK: They're the ones I'm focused on.
CAMEROTA: But yes or no, you do want the help of Biden and/or Obama?
WARNOCK: Oh, I mean, listen, I am deeply honored to have received the endorsements of President Biden and President Obama. But it's the people of Georgia who will be voting at the polls. And I'd be deeply honored to have their endorsement and their vote.
CAMEROTA: Reverend Raphael Warnock, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us this morning, great to talk to you. And we should note that we did invite Senator Kelly Loeffler on as well, and she declined to appear. Thanks so much.
WARNOCK: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: All right, some states are already at capacity in their hospitals as the pandemic ravages America. Up next, a Wisconsin ER doctor tells us how his staff is coping with these record-setting infections.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:40:00]
BERMAN: Overnight, more than 150,000 new coronavirus cases in the United States. That is a record. This morning, hospitals in 18 states in Puerto Rico are reporting a record number of patients.
The White House coronavirus taskforce, which is still meeting, even if the president has no involvement whatsoever with it, is warning that the crisis in Wisconsin is unrelenting and worsening dramatically. Joining me now was someone we've had a chance to speak to over the last few weeks and months, Dr. Paul Casey; he is the medical director of the Emergency Department of Bellin Hospital in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Dr. Casey, thanks so much for being with us again. We keep speaking with you, and I keep hoping we're going to come to you and things will be improving, and that's just not the case. Give us a status report of what you're seeing.
PAUL CASEY, MEDICAL DIRECTOR, EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT AT BELLIN HOSPITAL: That's exactly right, John. We are not in any way turning the corner in Wisconsin. In fact, we're in a state of crisis in Wisconsin.
Our governor went on the air two nights ago to talk about the level of our crisis and plead with people to voluntarily comply with public health measures, because every logical public health measure he has come out with has been challenged in court and overturned. This week, we had our highest level of new cases. I believe, yesterday, we had 7,500, which is twice the number we had two weeks ago. And what this is doing to our hospitals is, we're all either full or
very close to being full. So, every clinical shift I go in, I am -- depending on which hospital I work at, I am struggling to find beds to send all, not only COVID patients, but all patients. I had a case the other day where I had a patient who had open heart surgery, a couple of weeks before, had a complication. The hospital system that he belonged to, both of their hospitals in Green Bay were full.
[07:45:00]
So, I had to find a different place to send the patients, different doctors, that's what this is doing to us.
BERMAN: People need to know that. That's an important message you're sending. Sooner or later, someone's going to go to the hospital with a burst appendix and there won't be a bed for him, because it's going to be filled --
CASEY: That's right --
BERMAN: With COVID patients.
CASEY: That's correct.
BERMAN: The system is just being --
CASEY: That's correct --
BERMAN: Tasked. What's gone wrong in Wisconsin?
CASEY: Well, it's not only Wisconsin, John, it's the entire country. Unfortunately, this global pandemic that we haven't seen in over a 100 years, anything like this, it's become highly politicized to the point that a significant portion of our population still believes this is a hoax or if it's not a hoax, they're going to cure it by getting everyone infected and obtaining herd immunity.
So people are refusing to adhere to common sense, proven things that we can do to stop this virus -- masking, social distancing, non- gathering in gatherings. And we're actually seeing this in our own clinics. People come in and some of them refuse to wear masks, they create quite a scene at the registration desk to the point that we've had to call the police. That's how serious this is.
BERMAN: This is in medical clinics. They're coming into your clinics without masks, causing a scene and they need to be removed by police?
CASEY: That's correct.
BERMAN: That's unbelievable. What kind of stress is this putting on you and the medical professionals, the doctors and nurses that are trying to save lives?
CASEY: Well, we're all fatigued, we're all tired. Probably they're the hardest hitters, the ICU nurses and those working on the COVID units, because once patients need to be in the ICU, the chance of them surviving is not very good.
But they fight and they can't have family members with them. The COVID ICU nurses have to nurture these people through probably the hardest thing they've ever had to deal with as a human being, this COVID illness, which is absolutely miserable. And it's taking a toll. And not only the people who are at work, but we're having a problem with people being on quarantine.
Yesterday, we had 198 staff members on quarantine, either infected themselves or exposed, so they're out of work. So that is placing a huge strain. Even if we have a bed, we may not have the adequate staffing to take care of it.
BERMAN: What if -- what if cases go up? What if cases keep going up? Where will you be in two weeks?
CASEY: So as I mentioned before, we're trying as hard as we can to what we call co-exist with COVID, treating everything else, not shutting down non-emergency surgery, but if worst case comes to worst case, we're going to have to start shutting down non-emergency surgeries. I heard yesterday that the Mayo Clinic, world-renowned Mayo Clinic had to terminate elective surgery yesterday.
BERMAN: Dr. Casey, please let us know what we can do. If it takes you coming on and sounding the alarm, we have to do it. We just have to try to keep sending the message to people that they've got to do what they can to turn things around. Thank you so much for the efforts that you're making to you and all the medical professionals there, thanks for being with us this morning.
CASEY: Thank you for allowing us to share the message.
BERMAN: Look, in the midst of all of this, we haven't heard from the president in eight days. Not a single word spoken out loud. He's had nothing to say, 7,000 people have died since the last time he's spoken. But some of the messages we are getting from inside the White House, well, they're a little bit of a problem themselves. The reality check, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:50:00]
CAMEROTA: Time for CNN Business now. Americans are suffering as lawmakers still cannot reach a deal for more stimulus. Chief business correspondent Christine Romans joins us now with more. What's the status, Christine?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: You know, the status is we've got a health crisis and a jobs crisis, but negotiations on stimulus, Alisyn, are just stuck. Remember, the economy is still down 10 million jobs since February.
Now, on Thursday, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell once again rejected Democrats' call for a big stimulus package, instead push for a bill, a much smaller bill, he says addresses, quote, "the residual problems". Earlier, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer signaled they're not willing to soften their position, they argued the election outcome backs them up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): This election was more -- maybe more a referendum on who can handle COVID well than anything else. The Donald Trump approach was repudiated, the Joe Biden approach was embraced, and that's why we think there is a better chance to get a bill in the lame duck if only the Republicans would stop embracing the ridiculous shenanigans that Trump is forcing them to do, that this -- you know, in the election and focus on what people need.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Now, the surging coronavirus pandemic just amplifies the need for more aid with the cases raging, people are suffering lost wages and job loss, and they're sick, they're quarantined, they're dropping out of the jobs market to take care of kids and family.
[07:55:00]
Without a life line, the economy risks lasting economic damage. Now, Schumer's office said President-elect Joe Biden has spoken with Pelosi and Schumer about the need for more economic relief during this pandemic.
Meanwhile, the IRS is now reaching out to millions of Americans who still have not received stimulus checks. Now, most Americans received a $1,200 payment automatically, but about 12 million Americans did not. These are very low income people who don't normally file tax returns. They have to register online by November 21st so the IRS can find them. Now, it's unclear how many of those people still haven't received their money yet, John.
BERMAN: Hopefully, if you are watching, it's worth checking out. It really is --
ROMANS: Yes, reach out to people you know. Make sure -- if you know somebody, reach out, make sure people know they need to get that check for themselves.
BERMAN: And money can make a big difference. Christine Romans, thanks so much. So the president hasn't spoken a word out loud in public for eight days, and that's something. But many of the messages that are coming from inside the White House via smoke signal or otherwise leave something to be desired, like honesty. And that's a problem. John Avlon here with the reality check.
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Welcome to Friday the 13th, 2020. It seems like the right time to talk about how disinformation can turn deadly because we're seeing evidence of that right now in the two biggest stories of the year, the COVID crisis and the presidential election have both been disfigured by Donald Trump's disinformation.
Look, pandemics don't care about partisan politics, but President Trump's denialism and downplaying the virus, his promotion of quack cures and attacking public health experts made him, quote, "the single largest driver of misinformation around COVID".
That's according to a Cornell University study that found Trump was mentioned in nearly 38 percent of the overall misinformation conversation, what they call an infodemic. Even after he got the virus and his White House turned into a hot zone, linked to more than 30 cases to date, Trump was telling campaign crowds that we were turning the corner.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And we're really rounding the turn.
The turn.
The corner.
The turn.
The turn.
The turn.
The corner.
We're rounding the turn.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AVLON: Unfortunately, that's not remotely true, but a lot of folks believe it. Get this, according to exit polls, 51 percent of voters thought that U.S. efforts to contain the coronavirus are going well. In fact, it's worse than ever. Yesterday, America saw a record, 153,000 new COVID cases.
Over the past two weeks, a 46 percent increase in hospitalizations, and nine of the top ten states with the highest case rates are in the president's base. And one model estimating that America will see nearly 200,000 more deaths by March 1st, even as there's hopeful news about a vaccine.
And while the COVID crisis escalates, President Trump has been MIA on the pandemic, instead he's been rage-tweeting about "Fox News" and phantom election fraud. And in this, the killer cost of disinformation can be seen in the degradation of our democracy, aiding our enemies by making our elections look like a rigged system.
Russian trolls have had an easier time than they did four years ago. This time around, they just had to echo the president, and it's a pattern they reportedly continued after the election, pumping up bogus claims about massive ballot tampering while Russian state-run media amplifies team Trump, and all of this of course has an impact.
Well, nearly 80 percent of Americans agree that Joe Biden won the election according to a "Reuters"-Ipsos poll, some 40 percent of Republicans seem unwilling to recognize that reality.
No doubt they've seen partisan TV and social media feeds serve up false alternative facts about voter fraud and other assorted scandals. But it's gotten so bad that members of Trump's own DHS cyber security agency felt compelled to state that there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.
And if that's not enough to convince you, get this, the Trump campaign's own lawyer flat-out contradicted the president in court yesterday, stating this is not a fraud case. We're not alleging fraud. We're not saying anyone is trying to steal the election.
Who are you going to believe? The lawyer under oath or the president who has lied and misled more than 22,000 times in office. Look, we all know that Donald Trump is a long way from honesty. But make no mistake, disinformation is dangerous, it destroys trust between fellow citizens. It degrades our democracy. In the case of COVID, it can be deadly, and that's your reality check.
BERMAN: All right, John, thank you very much --
AVLON: Thanks --
BERMAN: It's sobering to say the least. I don't know what to say, I mean, it's just all out there, we know what the truth is at this point, it is not in question. NEW DAY continues right now.
CAMEROTA: Good morning everyone, welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. President-elect Joe Biden adding another state to his election victory. CNN projecting last night that Biden will win Arizona, flipping a long-time Republican stronghold, he is only the second Democrat in 70 years to carry that state.
