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New Day

Trump Fires Official Who Disputed His Baseless Election Fraud Claims; Michigan Republicans Backtrack After Blocking Vote Certification; Pfizer Says, Coronavirus Vaccine 95 Percent Effective, Will Be Submitted for FDA Approval Within Days. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired November 18, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY (Voice over): To hit the country ever.

[07:00:01]

At least six people there have been reported dead, nearly the entire region without power, making it difficult to even gauge the extent of the damage.

In Colombia, a survivor rescued says, the island there is destroyed. He said a single is left in good condition.

New Day continues right now.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day.

And we begin with outgoing President Trump exacting revenge for his loss. Last night, he fired the top election security official in the country because that official reported the truth, that there was no widespread voter fraud. And then Republicans in Wayne County, Michigan, tried to block certification of the votes in that state or county. The Trump campaign's lead attorney bragged that this would allow Michigan to appoint pro-Trump electors, essentially giving Trump Michigan, even though he lost that state by, John -- homemade graphic -- 148,000 votes. Thank you for that.

BERMAN: All right. And, again, this isn't about how far the president will go here. That's not the question anymore. That's not the question anymore. The answer is there's no limit as to how far it will go. The question is how far will Republicans let him go at this point.

And think about when this is happening, right? We just had the deadliest day of the coronavirus pandemic in six months. 1,700, 1,707 new deaths reported overnight. Nearly 77,000 Americans are waking up in the hospital this morning. The White House coronavirus task force warns that there is an aggressive, unrelenting and expanding spread of the virus across the country and that the current mitigation methods, not working.

CAMEROTA: joining us now, we have CNN Political Analyst David Gregory and CNN Contributor Miles Taylor. Miles served in the Department of Homeland Security under President Trump where he worked closely with Chris Krebs. He also recently revealed that he was the anonymous author of an op-ed and a book that was critical of the Trump administration. Good to see both of you this morning.

Miles, just because you see a train wreck coming doesn't make it any less shocking when it actually happens. And so though it was predicted that Chris Krebs was going to lose his job because he deigned to speak out and say that this was the most secure election in the history of America, he predicted that he was going to be fired and last night he was.

MILES TAYLOR, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, I think that's absolutely right. I mean, look, I would even go further than that, Alisyn, and say in a single tweet, the president has now put our country at vastly greater risk of a cyber incident. Because in addition to being the nation's top election security official, Christopher Krebs is the nation's top domestic cyber security official.

The way that Donald Trump is acting when it comes to this precarious presidential transition period is sort of like a drunk sumo wrestler in the dishware section of a Bed Bath and Beyond. He's knocking everything over and the damage is very, very consequential.

In the case of Chris, this is someone who we're counting on in this presidential transition period to monitor the threats from foreign adversaries like Russia and China who potentially want to exploit this period to do damage to the United States. Chris was on the frontlines of trying to prevent those threats. So it's a very dangerous time to remove an official like that.

And, look, Chris Krebs is not a hyper-partisan individual. I was there in the Oval Office with Chris two years ago when the president signed the law creating the domestic cyber security agency he runs and he has run it very ably.

But, Alisyn, there's also a political mistake here that the president has made. If the president continues to contest the results of this election until inauguration day, well, he's now made a new enemy, because Chris Krebs, I suspect, will take to the airwaves to talk consistently about how this actually was the most secure election and that there wasn't fraud in the vote.

So, again, the president has made a political mistake here, because now he has an enemy on the outside that once worked for him that can talk every single day about why the president is lying to the American people.

BERMAN: Well, he has been talking. He was fired for telling the truth. There's just no ambiguity here. He was fired for his statement -- the president told us as much overnight in his firing tweet.

[07:05:00]

Chris Krebs wrote last week, there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was, in any way, compromised, the November 3rd election was the most secure in history. He was fired for doing his job. And you were saying, you know, strike him down, he's only going to become more powerful. I'm using a Star Wars reference and metaphor here, because Chris Krebs himself did that overnight. Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker, for those who were born yesterday, tweeted and praised Chris Krebs overnight. And so, Chris Krebs, what did he do? He one-upped Luke Skywalker. He says, in defending democracy, do or do not, there is no try, this is the way. Protect 2020. So, quoting from both Empire and Mandalorian all at once.

CAMEROTA: And Yoda, right?

BERMAN: Well, Yoda is in Empire Strikes back.

CAMEROTA: But, I mean, that was direct Yoda quote. I'm just giving attribution.

BERMAN: Almost direct Yoda quote. He kind of mangled it a little bit and quoted for Mandalorian. But, I digress.

David Gregory, the point is he is taking on a guy who is standing up for democracy. That's it. I mean, that's what the president is doing here. He is fighting democracy.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: This is not what a leader in a democracy does, revenge firing because someone is standing up to your baseless conspiratorial, corrupt claims. But we've known this and there's so much that's wrong with it.

The success here is the fact that our elections came off during a pandemic thanks to tireless poll workers without any widespread irregularities or abuse and without outside interference. Those are things to be celebrated in 2020, for sure.

Donald Trump is not celebrating that. He's doing the opposite. And everything he's doing, I think people understand, is not on the level. It's not on the level. This is not a real contesting of the election. This is the same argument he's used before, anytime there's a setback, then something must be rigged against him. Nobody believes it.

Republicans have been notable in their silence and their fear. And we've talked about why. They're afraid of Trump and Trumpism and what he'll do out of office. They're afraid about the Georgia recount. But even that wall is shattering. Even Kevin McCarthy is talking about the fact that it's heading towards a Biden victory. And he's been sounding like something of a dead ender in the defense of Trump. So there's nothing there. The legal maneuvers are not going forward.

But what is so worrisome, and I know it's an obvious point, is the precedent that this sets, that you could have a president of the United States sack someone who disagrees with him when he's in the middle of making baseless claims, that that's hour power is supposed to be wielded and that somehow that's going to be put back in the bottle as we move forward.

CAMEROTA: When Joe Biden takes office, he's going to have to fix some of these loopholes that have been revealed by all of this and how precarious some of these democratic norms are. I just want to point out, when a Republican speaks out against something that President Trump does, it is notable, David, as you said.

So I just want to point out that Senator Burr last night did say this, Miles, about Chris Krebs. Quote, Chris Krebs is a dedicated public servant who has done a remarkable job during a challenging time. Chris and his team at CISA have worked diligently to strengthen our election infrastructure, help to shore up vulnerabilities and build trust between the state and federal governments. Their efforts were essential in protecting the 2020 U.S. presidential election against the threats of foreign interference. I'm grateful for all Chris has done. I wish him best in his next chapter.

So, I mean, is that notable or is the silence of other Republicans more notable to you, Miles?

TAYLOR: Well, I hope to hear from more folks, because I can tell you one thing about Chris. I know Chris Krebs. I worked very closely with Chris Krebs and he is widely respected on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill. So, I would urge members of Congress to get out there and actually talk about his record.

But the most important thing to remember here, Alisyn, especially in light of Senator Burr's comments is that Chris is really the nation's most trusted election security official. So people every day are getting disinformation from the president on Twitter.

And if right now there are any viewers doubting whether their votes were counted or counted correctly, you can rest assure that someone like Chris Krebs knows what he's talking about. He has traveled the country to look at these voting systems.

He has put in place extensive cyber security and infrastructure security protections to make sure that the vote was not corrupted and compromised. So when Chris says this was the safest vote in modern American history, you can trust that man's words. He knows what he's talking about.

Donald Trump has barely spent any time in his presidency focused on election security. And I remember it. We couldn't get the White House to pay attention to that issue but Chris did, and he spent four years of this administration focused on that question.

So voters should rest assured, there wasn't widespread fraud in our country.

[07:10:01]

This election tally is accurate. Joe Biden is the president-elect of the United States. And, unfortunately, Chris now will have to talk about that from the outside.

But that may be the silver lining and the bright side, because he can perhaps help advise the Biden transition team.

BERMAN: If Senator Burr really believes that Chris Krebs is so good at his job and so honest, Richard Burr should stand up and say that Joe Biden is the president-elect and that the GSA should ascertain that he won the election.

I'm sorry, it's too late to dam with faint praise from Richard Burr and these other Republicans who are praising him. It's time. It's over at this point and they're creating the space for the president to do these destructive things.

And, David, I just want to show you a picture, because I think you'll appreciate this as much as anybody. On the well of the Senate yesterday, Senator Kamala Harris, the vice president-elect was there, and she's getting fist bumps from Lindsey Graham, Lindsey Graham, who's trying to undermine the election in Georgia, to help out his pal, the president, is basically congratulating Kamala Harris on being the vice president-elect. It's just bogus. It's this farce. They're playing with this fire right now.

GREGORY: I totally agree. And, you know, if you're watching that scene in the Senate well, as if you couldn't become more cynical about politics, I mean, what is that? That we're not in on the joke, that this is all a game, that, oh, hey, sorry, Kamala, we have to do all of this crap for the president, but congratulations to you. And that is what's going on. In case the American people feel shut out, that's exactly the conversations that are happening.

And, Alisyn, I thought you brought up a good point about the whole idea of restoring democratic norms. The truth is you're never going to change the fact that a president has the ability to fire people at will. That's embedded in executive power. But there's a larger point. You know, there were Democrats who complained about voting irregularities in 2004 in Ohio, and that they thought these were widely ignored.

If we simply get into a system where there's no center in American politics, it's just a power grab. So, look what's happening with the way the Supreme Court is being treated. It's whoever has the power will make the rules. And if that just goes back and forth and back and forth, then that's where democracy really suffers. Because it's not just what Donald Trump is doing today, it's what he's ushering in is the only way to exercise power.

BERMAN: David Gregory and Miles Taylor, thank you both very much helping us appreciate this moment.

We talked about Chris Krebs, but there was another major assault on democracy overnight, and it took place in Michigan, where the Wayne County, that's Detroit, board of election certifiers refused to certify the election in Wayne County.

Republicans stood in the way for a time of certifying this election, effectively trying to throw out the entire election in Michigan and we're told by the Trump campaign the goal was to turn it over to Republican legislatures so they could award Michigan's electors to Donald Trump even though he lost that state by 148,000 vote.

Now, the Republicans on that county board relented overnight and ultimately did certify it, but I don't think it's over yet.

Joining us now is the secretary of state of Michigan, Jocelyn Benson. Madam Secretary, thank you so much for being with us. What the hell happened overnight?

JOCELYN BENSON (D), MICHIGAN SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, we saw the truth won out. Essentially, you saw two individuals on the Wayne County board of canvassers who have a ministerial responsibility to certify the election results, refusing to do so on baseless claims that were ultimately clerical errors that occur in nearly every election, in nearly every jurisdiction.

And, notably, the public spoke out and identified and amplified the truth, which was that these elections should be certified, there's no reason they shouldn't be, and, ultimately, they changed course after public comment, changed their votes, and ultimately, the board voted 4-0 to certify the Wayne County election results, moving us now to a position where the state will then look and certify those results as well.

BERMAN: I want to talk about the future in just a moment, but I want to talk about what you agreed to overnight. The secretary of state's office has agreed to look into, to audit, basically the election process in Wayne County. The specific gripe that they had was over discrepancies in the books and the actual vote. Explain that to me and put it in the appropriate, historical context.

BENSON: Well, what was identified were bookkeeping errors, simply incidents where voters may have shown up to a precinct, but may be have ultimately decided no t to vote and leave, or perhaps ballots placed in an envelope that then should go through a machine, just different things that occurred throughout the day when you have a very high turnout election that oftentimes aren't fully reflected in the bookkeeping.

And so what has to happen and what actually typically does happen is you go through the books and explain any type of discrepancies. What the board noted yesterday was that some of those discrepancies weren't explained really in part because the city didn't have time to get through a lot of the precincts.

[07:15:07]

It's the largest jurisdiction in the state and they have a limited window.

But, certainly, the state has a role to play, as well and we're committed to ensuring that our elections are not only secure but the public can have confidence that the results, indeed, are an accurate reflection of the will of the people.

BERMAN: And just to be clear, I heard you say overnight, there were actually discrepancies in more precincts in 2016, which the Republicans in Wayne County did vote to certify, than this time around. Is that correct? BENSON: Yes. Not only that, there were more discrepancies in August, the August primary than there were this time around. And there were several discrepancies in other jurisdictions as well and in other counties.

So, again, this is actually quite common. It doesn't indicate that there's any malfeasance, irregularities, certainly no widespread fraud, but it's more of a bookkeeping clerical issue that oftentimes does get cleaned up and certainly we'll moving forward look to make sure that no matter occurs, voters, again, can have confidence in the results of the election.

BERMAN: They chose to care about it in an election that Donald Trump lost rather than an election that Donald Trump, even though there were more examples of it potentially in the election that Donald Trump won.

And the Detroit Free Press reported that when you add up the number of discrepancies, I'm going to hold this up so people could see it, 367 votes. That was the discrepancy in Wayne County, 367 votes, Joe Biden at this point leading in Michigan by 148,000. So you can see the scale of the discrepancy there.

I want to talk about the future, because the Wayne County canvassing board did certify it and you're going to look into the numbers and make them right to the extent that you can, but I don't think it's over now. Because now it goes to the state certifying board and there are two Republicans and two Democrats on that. And if both Republicans vote no, what happens?

BENSON: Well, I mean, at first, I'll say that I'm confident that we won't get to that point, because the state board of canvassers have a ministerial role, an administrative role and the law very clearly says that they shall certify the elections once the counties do so. So they really don't have a lot of wiggle room to overturn decisions that were made at the county level.

At this point, almost every county, I believe every county has voted to certify the results. So they really have a formal role to play, but not a very substantive role to play. And, certainly, the courts would get very directly involved if they deviated from their otherwise administrative responsibility to simply just certify and finalize the results.

BERMAN: And the reason I ask though is because there's no ambiguity now about what the Trump campaign is trying to do. And I'm going to try to read this off the screen. I failed it last hour. But Jenna Ellis, who's an attorney for the Trump campaign, stated explicitly what they are trying to do here.

She says, breaking this evening, the county board of canvasser in Wayne County, Michigan, refused to certify the election results. If the state board follows suit, the Republican state legislator -- I think she means legislature, but I'm not going to give her too much credit for being able to spell -- she says, will select the electors. Huge win for Donald Trump. She's saying their goal is to have the Republican state legislature choose the electors, ignoring the will of the people of Michigan. That's their goal at this point. Your reaction to their effort?

BENSON: Yes. Three things of note there, really, one, to throw out hundreds of thousands of votes based on a few clerical errors and ultimately was determined to be a bad course of action and, you know, potentially not in compliance or allowed under the law. Certainly, for the state board of canvassers to, in any way, do the same would be a direct violation of state law and there would be, I assume, and certainly anticipate a court action that would swiftly follow that would require them to do their very clear job of certifying the results under the law.

And then the state legislature has already said, leaders in the state legislature have already confirmed publicly that they have no desire or intent to overturn the will of the people. So a lot of this is just really a strategy to erode public confidence in what was a very well- run, secure election. And we see this as a batte front not just in Michigan but, as you've mentioned, around the country.

And so it's also important that we call it out for what it is. I mean, these efforts are not going to be successful. The people have spoken. The election has occurred. Now, as we follow all of our protocols to certify the results, it's important that we move forward doing so and not allow noise to get in the way of blocking the citizens of Michigan, the citizens of the country and the votes that they have taken.

BERMAN: Well, I know you have your work cut out for you in the coming days and weeks, hopefully not more than that. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, thanks for being with us this morning, I appreciate it.

BENSON: My pleasure. Thank you.

BERMAN: All right. We do have breaking news from Pfizer this morning. The company just announced new details about the safety of the coronavirus vaccine and when it will be available to the public. This is honestly terrific news. You're going to want to hear all of this, next.

[07:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right, breaking news, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer just announced moments ago that its coronavirus vaccine is 95 percent effective, and that they will apply for FDA emergency use approval within days. It comes just as the U.S. recorded the deadliest day of the pandemic in six months.

CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now.

Sanjay, what Pfizer actually reported is a wide array of data about their vaccine, which really fills in some of the gaps here and gives us a much greater understanding and perhaps reason for optimism about the product. Tell us.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORESPONDENT: Yes, I think so, John. First of all, we are hearing this information, this news from Pfizer. We want to hear this ultimately from the FDA as well. But if this holds true, exactly as you point out, this is news that basically demonstrates the effectiveness of this vaccine.

Let me show you, I think most people have basically been able to follow these trials for some time, but basically tens of thousands of people received a placebo, tens of thousands of people received a vaccine, and they basically have been comparing them.

[07:25:02]

And what they found was that about 170 people developed COVID. The vast majority of those, 162, were in the placebo group, okay, versus eight in the vaccine group. And that's where these 95 percent-plus numbers come from in terms of effectiveness.

Also, you may be able to read that at the bottom, but people who got severely ill -- there were ten people who got severely ill, nine were in the placebo group, one in the vaccinated group.

So this is -- again, we're hearing this from the company, but if this holds up, that really does demonstrate the effectiveness and the numbers, frankly, are even better than what we heard a couple of weeks ago on November 9th, from the data. They said it was about 90 percent effective. Now, they're saying 95 percent effective.

Also, the big news is that they've now -- enough time has passed, two months have passed to look at safety data. And they're saying, again, this is the company saying this, but they're saying they have not had adverse safety problems, so they're going to go ahead and submit this for an emergency use authorization, which is something that we've been waiting for for some time. So that emergency use authorization, we'll see what happens. But this could all transpire, guys, over the next several days.

CAMEROTA: what does that mean, actually, Sanjay? What does that mean for the rest of us if they're granted the emergency use authorization?

GUPTA: Yes. So if the emergency use authorization -- first of all, they would apply for that. If it's granted, then it would go to this another -- there's two committees involved, one committee that helps the FDA actually issue that emergency use authorization, and there's another committee that says, okay, there is now an authorized vaccine out there, who gets it, where does it go, the distribution plan. And that is a committee in conjunction with the CDC that basically determines that and determines what's called the vaccine schedule to sort of determine who gets it, when do they get it and things like that.

Alisyn, if that all happens, then we're talking about basically for the first time in all of this, people outside the clinical trial would start receiving the coronavirus vaccine and that could happen before Christmas. BERMAN: That's great news. I mean, granted, that will be front line workers, maybe the most vulnerable groups. It could be months and months before the general public gets it, and that brings me to the next point, which is we have to get there.

I mean, it's all the more incentive to be safe now and do the things we need to do. And we're seeing, Sanjay, with the statistics, the daily statistics, just numbers that are horrifying. We've been talking about hospitalizations and new cases. But the deaths now are starting to rise at a rate that really, I think, should shock people. We had 1,700 -- 1,707, in fact, to be exact -- new deaths reported overnight. And every single one of them matters. I'm concerned now that as we're seeing the hospitalizations and cases rise that we're only going to see these deaths continue to rise at even higher levels over the next several weeks.

GUPTA: I know, I know. I mean, this is like one of those mornings, right? We're giving you such good news potentially about the vaccine but have to remind you of the stark reality of the next few months still. Yes, John, these -- nothing has changed. I mean, we've been reporting on this for months. We see the number of cases go up. A few weeks later, you see the number of hospitalizations go up. A few weeks after that, the number of deaths go up.

I hate saying it. I've been saying it too many times now for the last several months, but it's true. And the number of deaths, according to the models, per day, they think could start to approach 3,000 again, similar to the sorts of numbers that we saw at the very beginning of this, where we didn't know what was happening. We were all sort of shell shocked by this new pandemic. We could be right back in that same position.

There are places within the country that are the hardest hit. We're talking about the Midwest here. And I'm not the kind of guy to say, I told you so. But when you talk about mask mandates, physical distance guidelines, states that didn't impose those things are the ones that are being hardest hit now. I'm talking about South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Iowa, Nebraska. These are some of the hardest hit states now in the country, making up nearly 40 percent of new infections.

It is still possible to bring this under control, and I'm talking about even short of the vaccine, which you correctly point out will be more available for the general public late spring, early summer of next year, but there are things that we can do now. I mean, we know. We have plenty of evidence now that the masks work, that the physical distancing guidelines work, that a sort of really not having large public gatherings work, that closing down or at least limiting occupancy in indoor settings, where people are closely clustered together, works. I mean, it works. Masks, public gatherings, and stopping people getting together in large groups inside without masks on, that's a terrible idea.

If we do those things even short of the vaccine, we can start to bend the curve. Remember that flatten the curve thing, we used to say it all the time back in March and April, and we're right back in that same position again.

[07:30:02]

We've got to flatten the curve or we'll overwhelm people in hospitals around the country and then you can't take care of people no matter how good your care is.