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Coronavirus Hospitalizations Reach All-Time; CNN Reports, Trump Expected to Order Troop Cuts in Iraq, Afghanistan; Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) Backtracks after Saying He'd Step In if Biden Not Briefed. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired November 17, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day.

And this morning, the coronavirus pandemic in the United States is just worse than it has ever been. More than 73,000 Americans are hospitalized with coronavirus this morning. That is the highest total ever. And we will tell you why it's such a dangerous level and such a rate of growth.

There's never been a greater need for leadership in this country and a greater abdication of responsibility than we are seeing right now. The president of the United States is refusing to coordinate or even discuss the response with the man who won the election. And now, President-elect Joe Biden says it will cost lives.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: Well, more people will die if we don't coordinate.

They say they have this warp speed program that they'd not only dealt with getting vaccines but also how to distribute this. If we have to wait until January 20th to start that planning, it puts us behind over a month, month-and-a-half.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN (voice over): There's just no reason to wait. More than 166,000 new cases reported overnight. That's the most ever reported on a Monday.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: And this morning, we're also learning more about the Republican Party's effort to try to invalidate President-elect Biden's victory. Georgia's Republican secretary of state says he has been pressured by fellow Republicans to reverse Trump's loss in that state by throwing out some legitimate votes. We will speak with the reporter who broke this story later this hour.

But joining us now to discuss the pandemic and the challenges ahead, we have CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Dr. Carlos del Rio, he is the executive associate dean of Emory's University School of Medicine and a contributor to the Moderna vaccine trials. So, Dr. del Rio, we do want to talk to you about in a moment. But, first, let's just see where we are this morning.

In terms of hospitalizations, just so people understand how we're ticking up every single day, we are at the highest number of hospitalizations, 73,000, and we have gone up basically by a thousand every single day. How do you assess where we are right now?

DR. CARLOS DEL RIO, EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE DEAN, EMORY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: Well, Alisyn, this is just simply terrible and it's very scary for most of us. Hospitals don't have a lot of surge capacity. They usually are operating at 90, 95 percent capacity, so there's not a lot of empty space.

And when you start having more and more patients with COVID come in, it not only strains the system but it also makes it hard to take care of people with other diseases. So, if you show up with a heart attack or if you show up with a stroke or you need an elective surgery for cancer, you may not get it because the beds are taken over by patients with COVID.

So impacts not only because it increases COVID mortality, it increases mortality from other diseases and, therefore, we see an excess of mortality in our country.

The other issue, quite frankly, that the hospital staff is tired and you don't have enough staff. Hospital surge capacity is about, you know, space, stuff and staff. You can make space, you can make more ICU beds, you can buy stuff, but you cannot find staff. Qualified nurses and qualified physicians are simply impossible to get. And we're having a problem in many parts of the country because of that.

BERMAN: Look, this is not a distraction, this is not the future we're talking about. This is happening now, Sanjay. We're going to speak with doctors in North and South Dakota who have zero ICU beds available this morning where they are, zero. We're speaking to officials in Missouri who were saying the same thing. We're seeing it in El Paso. It's full on at this point. And we're seeing the hospitalization rate nationally rise at 2,000, 3,000 a day. It's just unsustainable, particularly so in some of these more rural areas.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, I think that that may surprise people a bit. I think that there was this idea that, look, this pandemic was happening in these progressive waves around the country and the northeast and the west and the southeast that rural America, because of lower population density, whatever the reason may be, it would be less effective.

But we can see now, we talk about the Dakotas, talk overall about these areas, we saw the case rates have gone up in these areas but now the death rates, as Dr. del Rio has been mentioning, have also gone up.

[07:05:00] I think if you look at the graphs, rural America, sort of the highest overall per hundred thousand death rates in America. So they did not escape this.

They also have fewer resources. North Dakota has I think 20 to 25 ICU beds total for the state. So they've already been talking about sending patients out of state, to different parts of the region. And that's what's happening now in middle of November. And we've still got two to three months of this particularly tough time.

CAMEROTA: Yes. And whether or not, Dr. del Rio, it's rural or a more populated place like New Jersey, we are now seeing governors having to take matters into their own hands. As we all know, there's no guidance coming out of the White House other than strange guidance from Scott Atlas, who has the president's here.

And so the states this morning, California, Iowa, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Washington State, Oklahoma, Michigan, I mean, just a patchwork across the country of states having to do stricter regulations. You know, let me just play for you what the West Virginia governor is now telling the people of that state. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. JIM JUSTICE (R-WV): How do I feel about the mask? Well, I don't like them. I don't want to wear them. I am Donald Trump's best friend. I absolutely stand with guns and for life, for no new taxes, for balanced budgets, but more than anything, I want us to get more control, more control over this terrible virus that's just eating us alive. I want us to absolutely wear a mask.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: However he twists himself into a pretzel, he gets there. He gets there by the end of saying that now it's time for everybody to wear a mask. Obviously, this is very delayed but he gets there.

And at the same time, one more thing, Dr. del Rio, Stanford University is distancing itself from Dr. Scott Atlas, because you've never heard that from Dr. Scott Atlas' mouth. He has talked about all sorts of other things but not exactly how to keep people safe right now.

DEL RIO: Well, Alisyn, Dr. Atlas is a neuroradiologist, he's not an epidemiologist, he's not an infectious disease expert. And he has been advocating for letting the virus run loose. And he was convinced that very few people would get sick, very few people would die and we protect the elderly. He's proven to be wrong, right? I mean, by letting the virus run loose, we're seeing overwhelmed hospitals, we're seeing an increased mortality.

But furthermore, not only is he doing that, instead of saying, I was wrong, he's now telling people in Michigan to rise up against the governor, who is instituting sensible measures. So he is actually asking for exactly the opposite of what we need in public health.

I would congratulate the governor of West Virginia and I would say, I would call on the absence of better leadership, in the vacuum of leadership, I would call for all our governors, Republican or Democrat, to come together and create a national strategy. We need a national mask mandate. We need every single state in this country to have a mask mandate. We need sensible policies and we need national policies. We cannot continue to have this hodgepodge or recommendations. We cannot continue having different places do different things. That's not how you fight a pandemic.

BERMAN: Just to be clear, what Stanford said here, because it is remarkable seeing the distance that Stanford is putting between itself and Dr. Atlas, it says, Dr. Atlas' statements reflect his personal views, not those of the Hoover Institution or the University. So, Stanford wanted to create that distance.

Sanjay, Dr. del Rio is being modest here. He is part of the Moderna vaccine trial, which has shown very high levels of success right now, but it will be some time before people start getting that vaccine or the Pfizer vaccine. The end of this year for maybe a few people, middle of next year for the masses.

So the question that we all need to be asking is how do we get through the next two, three, four, five, six months? How do we get to the point where we can get the vaccine? We're starting to see governors step into that void and take these new actions.

Now, it's in the face of these extraordinarily, dreary new statistics and devastating new numbers but there are new actions being taken in California, in Michigan. We saw the mask mandate in West Virginia, even in Iowa, where the governor had been defying mask mandates. We're now seeing some of these governors take action.

What do you think the actions are that people should be considering? What are some of these measures that we should be looking for?

GUPTA: Well, the first thing, I think, you have to remember is that there are actions that can have significant benefits to this entire trajectory of the pandemic. I think sometimes the sentiment is it's a contagious, we're powerless, it's just going to happen, not the case. I think it's just a question of when do you take the actions.

[07:10:00]

What we've seen primarily in this country is that these communities start to red line and then they get into a really bad place. We've been up where you were obviously in the northeast. But Arizona is an example I like to give, communities in Arizona, you may remember, after sort of the pause sort of time period, they opened up early and they had a significant, significant increase, 151 percent increase in overall coronavirus cases within a short time, within a few weeks.

And they did three things at that point. They basically had a mask mandate, as Carlos was just talking about, they also stopped public gatherings, large public gatherings and they reduced or greatly limited occupancy in some institutions like bars. In some of these cases, what you'll find is you don't need to shut down, you just need to reduce maximum occupancy, because that's when we find now, looking at the viral dynamics, the virus is most likely to spread. So it's five places like that, restaurants, hotels, bars, places like that where people sometimes cluster indoors. If you can stop that clustering, it makes a huge difference. That needs to happen.

Also, I'll put on the list testing. I mean, I still cannot believe where we are with testing in this country, that we haven't created more tests. And I'll just show to you, because Carlos and I were colleagues at Emory as well. I was in the operating room all day yesterday. And at some point, I texted Carlos because he is sort of the coronavirus guy, and I said, look, we're about to operate on somebody and this is a situation that's been happening since the beginning.

Got a CAT scan on somebody, can get coagulation studies on somebody, I'm about to do a craniotomy to do brain surgery on them. We cannot get a COVID test, which means the entire team have to go back into personal protective equipment. It's hard to get these masks. I had to check out these masks still. It's the middle of November, check out these masks at the hospital.

And then, frankly, I'd come home at the end of the day, yesterday, I'm a little worried, did I potentially bring this home? I don't think I did. I was very careful. But middle of November, we're still having this. And I'm letting my frustration come out a little bit. This is Emory talk because Carlos and I both work there. But that's still happening at our hospital and hospitals around the country.

CAMEROTA: Sanjay, that's an incredible anecdote. That is incredible, to know that you, as you're going into brain surgery on the frontlines in the hospital, you can't get the test. I mean, all of us have been frustrated with the delays, but the idea that you're not getting it right there at the exact moment that is most critical, it's just astonishing that we're still here.

And so, I mean, to end on a good note, Dr. del Rio, as we've been talking about, you have been involved in the Moderna vaccine research and study. And so there was all sorts of excitement when the news broke yesterday that it was 94.5 percent effective. What now? What's next?

DEL RIO: Well, what's next is we now have a potentially two effective vaccines but vaccines don't work, vaccination does. Now, we have to get it to people. And getting it to people is not going to be an easy task. You're going to vaccinate in the next six to eight months. You need to vaccinate at least 60 percent of the U.S. population. You're talking about 250 million people that need to get vaccinated. And that's going to require a national strategy. That is going to require a major effort. That's going to require resources. That's going to require getting the states to work very closely to make this happen.

There is a report from the National Academy of Medicine suggesting how this vaccine should be allocated through phases, and starting with first responders, starting with the elderly living in institutional settings, starting with those with major morbid conditions, and then moving on until you get to general population, which is called a phase four. That will probably not happen until some time in the summer, early summer.

So, the reality is, Alisyn, we simply cannot wait for the vaccine to be rolled out. In the best of circumstances, the first vaccination will start four to six week from today probably. For thousands people dying every day, for thousands of people are more dying every day, we cannot wait for a vaccine. And Sanjay said, the simple public health measures of a national mask mandate of limiting crowding places, like bars, restaurants, hotels, places of worship and creating sensible policies will decrease the mortality until we have a vaccine. We want people to be alive and healthy so they can get the vaccine.

BERMAN: Dr. del Rio, thank you very much for the work you're doing. Sanjay, thank you, as always.

So this morning, Mitch McConnell breaks with the president. Oh my. No, not over the election that happened two weeks ago. Still no stand there from Mitch McConnell. We'll tell you on what key issue he is now creating this space and the implications. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

BERMAN: So new this morning, The New York Times reports that President Donald Trump asked senior aides about his options for an offensive strike on Iran's main nuclear site. It comes as sources tell CNN that the U.S. military commanders -- that U.S. military commanders are anticipating the president will order a further withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq before he leaves office.

CNN's Barbara Starr live at the Pentagon with the latest on this. Let's start with the troop drawdown, Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, John. Just a short time ago, the secretary-general NATO weighed in on all of this and warned the price could be very high, in his words, if troops leave Afghanistan too soon. But U.S. commanders already have been told by the White House to start planning for this troop drawdown, both from Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving just 2,500 troops in each country.

Look at what is at stake here. In Iraq, there're about 3,000 troops, bringing that down to 2,500. But in Afghanistan, perhaps even more critical for that fragile government, there are about 4,500 U.S. troops and the president wants to bring that down to 2,500.

And, of course, the key question in Afghanistan is if this is carried out by January 15th, five days before the president leaves office, according to his plan, what leverage will be left against the Taliban, which, so far, have not lived up to the agreement they signed to reduce violence and what doors are closed to President-elect Joe Biden.

[07:20:13]

BERMAN: So, Barbara, we had David Sanger from The New York Times on. And with his reporting that the president was asking military and national security leaders about options of a military strike on Iran's major nuclear facility. David reported that the military and the advisers there not too hot on this idea at all. Why?

STARR: Well, I think it's fair to say, the Pentagon is not looking to start another war to begin with. But let's look at the map and what's really at stake here. This is a place called Natanz. It is essentially inside Central Iran. They are building an underground centrifuge facility just at the beginning of it.

You look at the map. If you want to launch a military strike into Natanz, that means U.S. missiles, not heavy enough, not strong enough to really destroy this underground facility.

So, you are talking about manned bombers, pilots in the air flying deep into Iranian airspace, repeated bombing strikes, and that will be as a starting point very, very tough to get into that heavily defended air space.

But the bigger question even still, our sources are telling us, is how Iran might retaliate. Right now, the estimate, the U.S. estimate, is Iran has about 3,000 ballistic missile that they could fire in retaliation all over the Middle East and really put U.S. troops in the region at risk. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Okay. Barbara, thank you very much for that reporting. Obviously, come back to us with anything else.

Meanwhile, the reporting about Trump's expected troop withdrawal prompting a rare break with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who tweeted, the Trump administration has made huge strides in the Middle East. A premature retreat would put this record at risk. Will President Trump listen to that?

Joining us now, CNN Political Correspondent Abby Phillip.

So, Abby, that's rare. I mean, it's just notable because you don't often hear Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell breaking from something that President Trump wants to do. Does his opinion hold sway with President Trump?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: On these matters, I'm not so sure. Although I do think Republicans on Capitol Hill, particularly in the Senate, have been more willing to push back on President Trump when it comes to specific national security issues, bucking him when he makes some of these more impulsive moves, so I think this is more in that vein.

And I suspect that it's because Republicans believe that they have more standing with the Republican base to push back on the president on those issues compared to, say, the election and, you know, the sort of legitimacy of the United States election, which I think tells you a lot. But I don't know that it's much of a profile in courage for Mitch McConnell or really anyone else on the Republican side in the Senate.

BERMAN: Yes, it's hard to put those words in the same sentence at this point, not when Republicans are refusing to acknowledge the outcome of the election in any real way.

Abby, I'm going to break from tradition here and try to cover the presidential transition. President-elect Joe Biden is going to make personnel announcements or the campaign is making clear some of the people they're bringing in to the key inner circle in the White House staff. Congressman Cedric Richmond of Louisiana will take on a senior role. Jen O'Malley Dillon, who is the campaign manager for Biden, will take on a new senior role, probably deputy chief of staff. Other outlets are reporting Steve Ricchetti, a political adviser, will also come into the White House. What does all this tell you? What does it mean?

PHILLIP: Well, Biden is surrounding himself with his closest allies. I think it makes a lot of sense that he would bring his winning campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon into the White House. She's obviously proven her ability to manage a massive campaign on a logistical level.

But I also think that her ability to help Biden navigate the kind of minefield of how he needed to position himself as a sort of center left Democrat in both the -- particularly in the general election with something that I think is going to benefit him going into the White House.

Biden is going to face a really tough task of managing the Democratic base and trying to figure out how and if he can even work with Republicans. And I do think you're seeing him trying to bring in people who have Washington experience, who have proven that they're able to make those tough decisions about where he's going to position himself in terms of policy as a president.

And I think that that's in keeping with Joe Biden. He likes to surround himself with people who are very seasoned. It's a really stark contrast to President Trump, obviously, who has repeatedly surrounded himself with people who don't really know a whole lot about Washington or a whole lot about managing big and complex organizations like the White House.

[07:25:04]

CAMEROTA: Abby, we really need your help figuring out where Senator James Lankford is this morning on whether or not President-elect Joe Biden should be getting national security briefings. He's taken more than two sides, which is not easy. He's taken multiple sides.

So here is what he said last week about how he would step in, it was that important that Joe Biden get these briefings. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JAMES LANKFORD (R-OK): There's nothing wrong with Vice President Biden getting the briefings to be able to prepare himself and so that he can be ready.

There is no loss from him getting the briefings and to be able to do that. And if that's not occurring by Friday, I will step in as well to be able to push and to say this needs to occur so that regardless of the outcome of the election, whichever way that it goes, people can be ready for that actual task.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Okay. He said if that's not occurring by Friday, last Friday, I will step in and push. Then I guess he changed his mind, and over the weekend, here is what he told Newsmax.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LANKFORD: I'm not in a hurry to certainly get Joe Biden these briefings. It's been interesting how the media, the national media, not this network, but others have twisted this term, step in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: He said it.

CAMEROTA: I will step in to push or this needs to occur.

PHILLIP: I mean, the other is like it's not the step in part, it's the Friday part. He was the one who gave a deadline for that. He said, if it's not done by Friday, then I will step in. So this does not make any sense. But I think we should just be really clear here. Senator Lankford is responding to the fact that he made a mistake by saying what he really felt and crossing President Trump.

And his walk back is just a reflection of the fact that Republicans know that they can't give voice to this idea that the transition should start immediately, that Joe Biden is the president-elect, even though all of the facts indicate that that is the case. And he's walking back because he is afraid of the blowback that I'm sure he received in the days between Wednesday and when he walked those comments back just a couple of days later.

But, yes, I mean, I didn't say that Joe Biden needed to have briefings by Friday. James Lankford said that. And the media didn't say that he would step in, Senator Lankford said that. So it's obvious that this is just clearly a sign of how much sway President Trump has over his party at this -- and it's only getting worse. You're seeing more and more senators realizing that they can't speak up for the truth in this particular situation.

CAMEROTA: Well, I promised more than two sides, and so I want to deliver, because, yesterday, he took yet another position. So, very quickly, now, Senator Lankford says, I did step in, I did talk to them on Friday. My staff has been involved, I have been involved. We talked through the process where they are coming from. I talked through what I see is a good process. He says, I'm not going to explain the process, he went on to say, but there's no way they can ascertain GSA is not the electors. So, okay, there's yet another side.

PHILLIP: And just a quick point about where he said all this. The comments that he made walking it back were on a news network called Newsmax, which the president has been pushing. And I think Republicans see it as sort of a direct conduit to President Trump. So it didn't surprise me that he tried to downplay his own comments on that program because he knew by saying it on in Newsmax, he was sending a very clear signal to President Trump, who has been pushing that channel as an alternative to his former favorite channel, Fox News.

CAMEROTA: I think News Network is also generous, by the way.

BERMAN: I love the idea that he's saying somebody is twisting his words here. This wasn't exactly intrepid reporting. Someone pressed play on a tape recorder. That's what the reporting involved here.

Anyway, Abby, thank you very much.

CAMEROTA: The recount by hand continues in Georgia but the secretary of state there says he is being pressured by fellow Republicans to find ways to try to get rid of some vote for President-elect Biden. The reporter who broke that story joins us next.

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