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New Day
Trump Stonewalls Transition; Humanitarian Disaster Created by Coronavirus; Obama Weighs in on Election Controversy; Storms in the Northeast. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired November 16, 2020 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:30:00]
NATASHA ALFORD, VP, DIGITAL CONTENT AND SENIOR CORRESPONDENT, THE GRIO: And it counts and we're not getting to the issues that matter.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Natasha, I totally agree and I totally love your analogy about the ex doesn't accept that we've broken up with him, or maybe I forgot to him, but either way that he's not moving out. That's the problem is that we're not just broken up, he's not moving out. And so there are impediments to that.
In addition, it also seems as though, Natasha, quickly, that the Trump administration has gone into overdrive on some of the policy things that they hadn't done yet. So some of the foreign policy things that they hadn't accomplished yet, they're now kicking into gear because some people around the president recognize that he has 65 days to do these things.
ALFORD: Absolutely. We don't want to discount or try to downplay the impact of having a delayed transition. Every single minute counts. There are unopened briefing books, there are meetings that are not taking place. And we know that President-elect Joe Biden, you know, he's not new to this. But at the same time, it's like he's playing a game of one hand behind his back. There's only so much he can do with that lack of information.
So, it is a problem and I think that it's part of -- I hate to give this much credit, but a strategy, right, to -- to delay and to create a culture that continues into future elections where people don't concede. We're seeing this with other members of the GOP, a couple of other candidates. And they challenge and undermine the Democratic process at every step.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I hate to brake the protocol here, Anna, but I would like to talk about the president-elect, Joe Biden, and what he is going to be doing. He is giving an economic speech today. How would you assess the pace of their public announcements and how they're handling the impediments in place and the message that they're portraying to the American people?
ANNA PALMER, SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, "POLITICO": They're clearly are trying to be a steady hand in terms of a real contrast to the president. This has been their strategy for most of Joe Biden's campaign.
I think the real question is going to be, what do they do in the next 65 days? Does this actually, you know, kind of this transition of power start to happy (ph)? You saw a lot of Senate Republican lawmakers even last week going much further than they had before, saying, yes, Joe Biden does need to have intel briefings. They do need to have some of these things. And so the question's going to be -- you saw Ron Klain really trying to force that hand on the Sunday show yesterday, trying to say, you know, now it's time for GSA to certify this. Let's move forward.
They do need to have that. I mean the good thing is, you have a lot of people who are in the Biden administration who are expected to go in who have done this before. This isn't their first rodeo. They know that they're going to be facing a lot of issues.
The real question is, could you see any kind of, you know, Trump administration, Joe Biden incoming administration work on something like COVID relief? Right now it clearly doesn't seem to be happening. But for the good and betterment of this country, we're in a pandemic and the numbers are rising. It's unfortunate that they kind of can't set aside the politics to actually get something done.
BERMAN: Congress is back, as you've noted in your notes. So, some of these members are going to have to face these uncomfortable questions, or just run away. Probably option B is what they'll do on Capitol Hill when reporters chase them down.
Anna, Natasha, thanks so much for being with us this morning.
ALFORD: Thank you for having us.
BERMAN: All right, developing overnight, major news from space.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Five, four, three, two, one, zero. Ignition. Liftoff.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: That's the launch of SpaceX carrying four astronauts into space. It marks the kickoff of what NASA hopes will be a years-long relationship with the company to help keep the International Space Station fully staffed. The astronauts are now in orbit, expected to dock with the space station around 11:00 p.m. Eastern. They'll spend about six months there doing scientific research. The spacecraft was named "Resilience" to symbolize what mankind can accomplish despite coronavirus this year. SpaceX founder and chief executive, Elon Musk, was forced to monitor the action from afar, which means he wasn't there last night watching. Why? Because he most likely has a moderate case of coronavirus.
CAMEROTA: That's too bad.
BERMAN: Oh, he's been a denier of sorts over time, so it's interesting --
CAMEROTA: The virus doesn't care if you believe in it or not, it turns out.
BERMAN: No, it doesn't.
CAMEROTA: But that's very exciting. And as you know, I saw "The Martian" recently, is that what it's called?
BERMAN: It's called -- yes, it is called that.
CAMEROTA: So I know all about space travel.
BERMAN: Yes, and very much like that. And how do they fertilize the potatoes?
CAMEROTA: I don't remember that part, John.
BERMAN: So you didn't see it. You didn't see it. You keep on claiming you saw it.
CAMEROTA: I might have nodded off.
BERMAN: There's one salient fact from "The Martian," it's about the potato fertilizer.
Dr. Fauci warned in June that the U.S. was likely to reach 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day. We're now at that, 13 days in a row. We're at nearly 200,000 cases. So how did we get here? What went so terribly wrong? Dr. Sanjay Gupta investigates, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:38:54]
CAMEROTA: This morning, the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating. Overnight, 15 states reporting record hospitalizations. The U.S. adding more than 100,000 new cases a day for almost two weeks now. Experts told us this disaster was coming, so why didn't we do something different?
CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): On November 3rd, a record number of votes were counted in the U.S. presidential election. On that same day, though, the country tore through another record, more than 123,000 new cases of COVID-19, reaching over the 100,000 mark for the first time. And make no mistake, it was all predicted months earlier.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We are now having 40 plus thousand new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around. GUPTA: At that time, it seemed nearly outrageous, but now if it feels
like the number of cases has suddenly exploded, it's because it has.
[06:40:01]
It's called "exponential growth." That means with this novel coronavirus, it's so contagious that one infected person typically passes the virus on to 2.5 other people. That's called the R0. And then those people also pass it on. Within 60 days, that single case can result in 406 infections. It's the sad reality of why the United States has reached over 11 million cases, the most in the world. It turns out, while the virus is the same everywhere, human behavior is not.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're not anti-masks. We're not for masks. We're for choice.
GUPTA: In the United States, we made masks political. We opened way too early. We didn't follow the guidelines.
FAUCI: And some going too quickly and skipping over some of the checkpoints.
GUPTA: And the whole time the virus continued to spread. If it's hard to wrap your head around the fact nearly 180,000 people are being infected in a single day, that there are tens of thousands of people in hospitals right now, alone, worried, struggling to breathe, then it must be especially hard to believe that they are still the lucky ones, the ones who can still find hospital beds.
DR. JOSEPH VARON, UNITED MEMORIAL MEDICAL CENTER: Sooner or later, within the next two weeks, we're going to be at full house.
GUPTA: Remember "flatten the curve"? That was back in the spring. Keep this curve flat so as not to overwhelm hospitals. Nowadays, that same curve looks like a rocket ship pointed at the stars.
VARON: My concern as a health care provider is that when they get sick, they don't all come to me at the same time. And that's what's going to kill patients, because we won't have enough resources.
GUPTA: In my nearly two decades as a journalist, I have traveled to the most devastated places on the planet, places already staggeringly poor when devastation then hit. True humanitarian disasters. The tsunami in south Asia, more than 227,000 died. The earthquake in Haiti, at least 220,000 died. The famine in Somalia, nearly 260,000 people died. They were the toughest stories I had ever covered. Hospitals becoming overwhelmed, staggering number of deaths, so many of them preventable. I never thought I would see the same level of suffering, the same level of loss right here in the United States.
VARON: I have been through earthquakes. I've been through bombings. I've been through, just name it, I've been through all of them. COVID, by far, is the worst I have ever seen.
GUPTA: The humanitarian disaster of its own making. The best we could do was to be the worst in the world.
It is true, a vaccine may arrive for many of us next year some time. Hope is on the horizon. But we can all save a life in the meantime. Wear a mask, keep your distance, be kind.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CAMEROTA: Our thanks to Sanjay for that.
So, up next, President Obama comparing President Trump to a comic book character and sharing his thoughts on the 2020 election.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: And if my daughters in any kind of competition pouted and then accused the other side of cheating when they lost, when there was no evidence of it, we'd scold them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:47:23]
BERMAN: This morning, former President Obama speaking out in a brand- new interview, insisting it's well past time for defeated President Trump to concede the election.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: A president is a public servant. They are temporary occupants of the office, by design. And when your time is up, then it is your job to put the country first and think beyond your own ego and your own interests and your own disappointments. My advice to President Trump is, if you want, at this late stage in the game, to be remembered as somebody who put country first, it's time for you to do the same thing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: Yes, not sure President Trump is listening to that advice.
CNN's Jeff Zeleny joins us now with much more on this interview.
President Obama has a book, a lot of pages of new information coming out and he's speaking in ways -- in some ways we haven't heard before, Jeff.
JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.
Seven hundred and sixty-eight pages, to be exact. That's just volume one. That is coming out tomorrow. And this really goes from his childhood to two weeks after the bin Laden capture and killing in 2011. But in this specifically, of course, he is talking a lot about this
current conduct he sees from the Trump administration. And I think you're right, he's certainly -- President Trump certainly is not going to be taking advice from his predecessor in office.
But we are hearing President Obama talk in ways we've not heard him talk before. And he also is trying to point out that civility in this country was not changed by President Trump, but he exasperated it. Listen to what he says comparing him to what his daughters' behavior would be like if they didn't do something inappropriate.
Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: We would never accept that out of our own kids behaving that way if they lost. I mean if my daughters, in any kind of competition, pouted and then accused the other side of cheating when they lost, when there was no evidence of it, we'd scold them.
You know, I think that there has been this sense over the last several years that literally anything goes and is justified in order to get power. And, you know, that's not unique to the United States. There are strongmen and dictators around the world who think that I can do anything to stay in power. I can kill people.
[06:50:00]
I can throw them in jail. I can run phony elections. I can suppress journalists. But that's not who we're supposed to be.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: So, Jeff, there's that "60 Minutes" interview. There's also a new interview out this morning in "The Atlantic" where President Obama talks about kind of quintessential American manhood and how President Trump has broken that mold.
What did he say?
ZELENY: Alisyn, this is pretty interesting. He's talking about, you know, the American heroes and men we've seen over the years, like John Wayne and folks like that. Of course he is trying to draw a contrast to the current president.
But, you know, these words certainly are striking when you hear them from Barack Obama, again, talking about a successor of his in the Oval Office. He says this. Let's take a look at these. He says, the -- there is a notion that the man is true to his word, that he takes responsibility, that he doesn't complain, that he isn't a bully. In fact, he defends the vulnerable against bullies. And so even if you are someone who's annoyed by wokeness and political correctness and wants men to be men again, and is tired about everyone complaining about the patriarchy, I thought that the model wouldn't be Richie Rich, the complaining, lying doesn't take responsibility for anything type of figure.
So, once again, former President Barack Obama going after his successor in ways we have not heard him before. Of course he was starting to ramp that up in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, when he was campaigning for Joe Biden. But certainly continuing to go after him now.
And we should say this is just so striking given that a lot of the book is also talking about his own transition to power. When President George W. Bush was clearly welcoming to all of the Obamas. So certainly a different moment here. But the headline first and foremost is he says that President Trump should have conceded last week and, of course, we still haven't heard that, at least directly, from President Trump.
John and Alisyn.
BERMAN: Ritchie Rich.
ZELENY: Richie Rich.
BERMAN: You know, interesting. Very -- I wonder who Reggie Rich is in this scenario and the entire Rich family?
Just, very quickly, Jeff, any sense that President Obama and Joe Biden, the president-elect, have been talking over the last several days since the election?
ZELENY: We do -- we do know that they have spoken at least once, last Saturday they spoke when he called to congratulate him. Since then, I don't believe they have because President Obama's been doing all these interviews. But there's no question that he's always available for his advice.
But also their relationship generally is that President Obama stands back and is sort of offers advice if needed. But he does not think that Joe Biden needs his advice. And in terms of any role he'll play, he says he does not plan to play a role, an official role, in the Biden administration. He says if he did, Michelle will kill him.
John.
BERMAN: All right, Jeff Zeleny, thanks so much for being there and being on this for us.
ZELENY: Sure.
BERMAN: Really appreciate it.
ZELENY: You got it.
BERMAN: So, in just a few moments, we're expecting some major news that could help change the course of the coronavirus pandemic. Please stay with us. We'll bring it to you right after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [06:57:35]
CAMEROTA: It was a dramatic night in the northeast weather-wise. In New York and New Jersey, heavy rain and high winds prompted tornado warnings.
Meteorologist Chad Myers is here with more.
Chad, it was intense how quickly the wind picked up in that area.
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It really was. And, you know, you would expect that maybe March, April, May, but not November. This is not when severe weather happens in the northeast, but it certainly did yesterday. And 295 reports of wind damage. And right now, at this minute, still 400,000 customers without power as that squall line rolled right through the northeast yesterday.
This weather is brought to you by O'Keefe's, guaranteed relief for extremely dry, cracked skin.
And the air is drying out across the northeast. It was a beautiful weekend, but all of a sudden this cold front has taken all of that warmth and all of that humidity and shoved it offshore. There's even going to be snow across parts of the Great Lakes today. Lake-effect snow coming down, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua Counties, all the way up to the Tug Hill Plateau. That's the typical places where -- I mean that is the snow belt in its sense. And there's more snow coming in even for tomorrow. Could even brush Detroit. Could brush Windsor, all the way back towards Syracuse, because this is the coldest air of the season so far without a doubt.
The high today, though, will still be mild. Lots of sunshine. New York City, you get to 51. Pleasant and 58 in D.C. Now, there will be wind behind this and so it may never feel really that warm because of almost a windchill in the air with that dry and cool air.
Something else that happened overnight that you may not be aware of, Hurricane Iota turned into 155-mile-per-hour storm. About to slam into the same place that Hurricane Eta slammed into just two weeks ago. And 155, that's a category 4. And 157 is category 5. So that's with we're talking about for these people here. Still, hundreds of thousands of people along the eastern coast of Nicaragua. People getting affected right now in the islands east of Nicaragua. And it is forecast to be 155 at landfall. This will not lose any intensity whatsoever. And this is going to be a catastrophic event for Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador. All the way here we're going see inches of rain. Some spots we will likely see 3 feet of rain in places that have already seen.
Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: Chad, thank you very much.
And we are getting major breaking medical news right now on the coronavirus.
NEW DAY continues right now. [07:00:03]
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
CAMEROTA: OK, we want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world.
