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New Day

U.S Surpasses a Quarter of a Million Coronavirus Deaths; Trump Campaign Seeks Partial Recount in Wisconsin. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired November 19, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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

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NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (Voice over): Was killed at the scene.

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Since this incident, CNN has contacted over 100 protesters and family members.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They pointed their guns at us and they started shooting.

ELBAGIR: We asked what they had --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We heard gunshots from behind the tollbooth.

ELBAGIR: -- and felt.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This guy was shot and he (INAUDIBLE) back.

ELBAGIR: Many are in hiding. Some have fled the country.

CNN trying to share these findings with the Nigerian army but received no response. Lagos State authorities would not comment on our reporting until they said, a judicial panel of inquiry presents its findings. All these is incredibly worrying to the United States. The Nigerian army is a key counter-terror partner. But U.S. lawmakers warn continuing abuses could damage that partnership. They're calling for answers. But weeks later, still, none have been given.

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ELBAGIR (on camera): Well, Alisyn, after disregarding our repeated attempts to getting comment from them, Nigerian authorities this morning held a press conference to denounce our findings, accusing us of disinformation and announcing a social media clampdown.

They also, ahead of the findings of their judicial panel, said that they are satisfied with the conduct of the military and the police on the night of October 20th. In the meantime, Alisyn, families, eyewitnesses, people continue to reach out to us, begging for information as to the whereabouts of their missing loved one. Alisyn?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: Nima, we would not know about this without your reporting. Thank you very much for being on the ground there and showing the world what's happening.

And New Day continues right now.

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

Overnight, 1,848 new deaths reported from coronavirus. That's the highest number since May. More than a quarter million deaths now overall. That's just staggering. More than 79,000 people are in the hospital this morning with coronavirus, 10,000 admitted in the past week alone. We just saw the second highest number of new cases reported since the pandemic began. And you can see the effect it's having around the country. We see video of the lines of people waiting to get tested.

CAMEROTA: So, what does President Trump have to say about the pandemic today? Nothing. Today is the 12th of the past 16 days that President Trump has had nothing on his public schedule. This is the schedule put out by the White House. This is the guidance on your screen put out by the White House. Clearly, he is interested, however, in fighting over the election that he lost. What's more, the Trump administration is now prohibiting health officials, their health officials, from communicating with the incoming Biden transition team, which Biden warns could delay the distribution of a vaccine for all of us.

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JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: There's a whole lot of things that are just -- we just don't have available to us. And so unless it's made available soon, we're going to be behind by weeks or months.

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BERMAN: All right. Joining us now, CNN Political Correspondent Abby Phillip, as well as CNN Contributor and Republican election lawyer, Ben Ginsberg.

Abby, it will be one thing, with the country suffering so much, if the president wasn't cooperating with Joe Biden, because he was so damn busy fighting this pandemic, so busy making public statements about what he's doing to make things better, but he's not doing anything. I mean, we threw up that graphic of the president's public schedule, 12 out of the last 16 days, no public events.

You've covered the White House. I've never seen anything like this. I mean, this doesn't happen with presidents ever, let alone when there's something major going on, as I said last hour. The president likes to say he's a wartime president. He's a tee-time president. He's spending more time than publicly fighting the pandemic. I mean, how can you justify that?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's really odd because this president actually really likes to personally be the one out there shaping the narrative. He's not even showing up on his favorite television shows to defend his false claims about this election.

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So his silence is notable for a number of reasons, not only because he's not actually doing the work of the government, but also because it seems like not even the president himself is willing to go out in front of the American public and submit himself even to softball questions from his favorite morning show hosts.

So I think this is a sign that this is a president, as White House sources have termed, is in a bunker mentality. He wants to stay in the residence, in the Oval Office and tweet about his grievances and lie about this election, but I think the more important thing is that the work of the government seems to not be being done. I mean, there's a huge crisis going on with COVID and the president is MIA on that.

CAMEROTA: Ben, as we do know, the president -- I mean, from his Twitter feed, which is how he communicates, is very interested in trying to find something, anything to be able to show that he didn't lose the election. And so now, the Trump campaign is demanding a recount in two Wisconsin counties. So, Wisconsin, Biden leads Trump by 20,000, more than 20,000 votes. And the two counties that they're looking at, Biden won by big, huge margins in the two counties that they want to recount. And you say that it's an ill-conceived strategy, because what is likely to be shown in these two counties?

BEN GINSBERG, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: The rule of thumb amongst recount lawyers is good areas get better and bad areas get worse during a recount. So, going into the two counties that were Joe Biden's best counties in the state, provided his greatest margin of victory, to recount the ballots under the system that those two counties use is unlikely to yield many votes at all for the president, more likely to favor Joe Biden. Those are the fill in the oval machines, where you just put them through the machine and the scanner reads them. There's very little subjectivity involved. And it doesn't make sense as a strategy to try and overturn the results. It might as a strategy to slow things down.

BERMAN: Well, that's the part, isn't it? I mean, that's what's really going on here. It's not a strategy to overturn votes at this point. It's a strategy to sow doubt in the election and to hobble the Biden presidency, which will begin on January 20th. How do we know this? Because Kevin McCarthy, the lead Republican of the House, basically told us overnight that that's what's happening. And that's actually the goal.

He did an interview with Jonathan Martin of The New York Times. And J. Mart asked him, doesn't Biden cool the country's political temperatures at least at first? and Kevin McCarthy responds, it depends how it turns out. If you have 70 percent of Republicans who thought he cheated, he's still going to have a hard time. And McCarthy says that as if it just so happens, maybe, somehow, out of nowhere, 70 percent of Republicans are doubting the veracity of this election. It's because of Kevin McCarthy. It's because of what the president is doing. The polls, by the way, say McCarty is right. 70 percent of Republicans don't believe that Biden won fairly because of the efforts they're making here. And this seems to be McCarthy's and the president's goal at this point.

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, if you want to know why the president is doing what he's doing and why Republicans are backing him up on it, the answer is that a weakened Joe Biden is to the advantage of both President Trump and in the short-term and perhaps in the long-term, if he decides to run again, and also to the advantage of congressional Republicans who want to have more leverage in Washington in a Washington where they don't have the presidency anymore and they're not going to have the House of Representatives. The Senate is still up in the air.

The objective all along here is to create a world in which most Republicans want the Republican establishment in Washington to push back on Joe Biden in a way that precludes the kind of unity that Biden is talking about. That is going to be the biggest, the single-most significant governing challenge for Joe Biden going into January.

I think the era of the kind of bipartisanship or collegiality in Washington is over, not just because time has passed and we're in a different era, but because Donald Trump is creating a world in which it's not acceptable for Republicans to do those kinds of things. And undermining the election results isn't about trying to win. The president knows he hasn't won. It's about weakening Joe Biden, undermining the legitimacy of his presidency and making bipartisanship very, very difficult in Washington come January 20th.

CAMEROTA: Ben, there is an interesting data point this morning of how President Trump could have won had he chosen to do this. In Georgia, it turns out that 24,000 fewer Republicans voted by mail in the presidential race than in the primary.

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I guess they -- I mean, they listened to him. In other words, his words mattered when he said that, you know, you have to -- that mail- in ballots were, you know, fraudulent, it turns out they listened.

GINSBERG: Yes, talk about a bad strategy. By telling Republicans they shouldn't vote absentee, he managed to depress the Republican absentee count in the general election, fell off by 24,000 from the primary. Those are all votes that could have made the difference in Georgia. So, when the retrospectives on this campaign are written, there should be a lot of time spent on that.

BERMAN: Counselor, I want your take on the saga in Michigan, which apparently isn't over, because these two members of the Wayne County, that's Detroit canvassing board, have -- are trying to rescind their certification of the votes in Detroit. I want to make clear what the Trump campaign's overall strategy seems to be here. And I say this, because Jenna Ellis, who is a lawyer for the Trump campaign, basically told us the other night, she says, if Wayne County refuses to certify and the state board follows suit, the Republican state legislator will select electors, huge win for Donald Trump. They're trying to have Republican legislators overthrow the popular vote in at least Michigan, if not, other states as well.

We can talk about the intricacies of this case specifically, but overall, Ben, what's your view of this strategy to throw the election to Republican politicians?

GINSBERG: You know, it's a long shot scorched earth strategy, and it's not going to work for any number of reasons. In Michigan, if it goes now to a state board, irrespective of what the two Wayne County people have said overnight, and that state board has a legal obligation to certify the results. They deadlocked 2-2, the matter goes to the courts. So they're not the final word. And this is going to get resolved under the process.

What's most interesting about this is that the Trump forces actually seem to think this is going to work. And Republican legislators, who see their own political futures, are not going to overturn the will of an entire state, for this particular long shot, non-outcome determinative effort. And it looks like what the Trump campaign is trying to do is to get him a win, any sort of a win. Bullocks up one state so it can't certify, so then he can say, see, there was a problem in this election. Because right now, all he has is a string of loss, loss, loss, loss, loss. And the great brander is a to get labeled as being a loser in all of these efforts.

CAMEROTA: Abby, we are hearing from those two Republicans that put out press releases and I think affidavits. But, basically, what they're saying is that there were -- I mean, it sounds like a handful of irregularities that they wanted clarified before they were able to certify. And as has been pointed out by our reporters, fewer irregularities than in 2016, when they were okay with certifying. So Michigan has cleaned up its act.

Wayne County, it's worked well. But, basically, one of the Republicans is saying that she's very hurt by the suggestion that it's about racism and that she's racist and she's saying she didn't know if those irregularities were from which voters. She doesn't if they're Democrat or Republican, white or black, and it had nothing to do that.

PHILLIP: Well, I mean, the votes that the Trump campaign is trying to invalidate come from two counties, the two most populous counties in, I'm sorry, in Wisconsin and in Michigan and in Pennsylvania. All of the places where they want to invalidate votes are from populous counties where a majority of the people are black. That's just a fact.

And so, you know, let's take their word for it, that this is about trying to root out fraud and trying to root out, you know, irregularities in the state. Why would they only care about those irregularities in some places but not in others? Why not in rural Michigan, but just in Detroit? It doesn't make any sense. And the reason for it is because, you know, the argument that the president and his allies, like Rudy Giuliani, have been making is that urban centers are corrupt by nature and that that corruption leads to voter fraud. Well, that allegation is very much about the fact that these urban centers tend to be places where there are a lot of minority -- there's a large minority population, it's run by Democrats, many of whom are themselves not white.

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And I think that it's just -- you know, if they don't like that implication, they should apply this kind of ridiculous standard of throwing out votes to the entire state, not just to the places where black people and brown people live. I think that that is pretty much clear.

I mean, I also wonder, why is the Trump administration not worried about what's going on in North Carolina or in Texas, states that they won, but they are worried about what's going on in the states that they lost, where in all of those places, there was absentee voting in all of those places. It's just that, you know, there seems to be much more of a willingness by this campaign to try to imply that there is fraud or malfeasance going on in places where the voters who are coming out to vote are not white. And I think that they're the ones who have to sort of explain what the logic is of that, because I don't see it.

BERMAN: Abby Phillip, Ben Ginsberg, thanks so much for being with us this morning.

GINSBERG: Thank you.

BERMAN: Now, more than 250,000 American lives lost to coronavirus and the nation's largest school system shutting down. No in-person classes anymore, next.

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CAMEROTA: This morning, more than 250,000 Americans have died from coronavirus, by far the highest death toll in the world. Let's take a look at how we got here and how it's accelerating. 50,000 Americans have died by April, 100,000 by May, 150,000 by July, 200,000 by September, we are now at 250,548 Americans.

Joining us now, CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Rochelle Walensky. She is the chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital.

I know, it's such shocking news. I mean, obviously, doctor, we do -- have become steeled to these daily death counts, but they're getting worse.

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Good morning, Alisyn. Yes, I think we should all just pause at that extraordinary number. We need to grieve, we need to mourn, we need to remember and then we need to double down and make sure that all of those lives were not lost in vain. The IMHE, the group that does all the modeling projections out of the University of Washington has now projected 435,000 deaths by March 1st. And I think we need to really do everything that we can to make sure that those deaths are not continued to be realized.

The thing that concerns me a lot is that we're seeing these soaring numbers, these soaring numbers of infections of deaths before the holidays, before Thanksgiving. We had really hoped that things would be in pretty good control before people start to gather for the holidays. I am extraordinarily worried about what happens after Thanksgiving. I hear a lot of people saying, well, I'm quarantining, except. I'm quarantining except my kid is in school. I'm quarantining except I'm going to work or going to the grocery store.

So I just want to reemphasize that quarantine and except don't belong in the same sentence. If you are quarantining, you can safely be with other family members. But if you are not, then please, please keep your holidays close.

BERMAN: Dr. Walensky, New York City just announced it is ending in- person schooling in the public school system today, today, no more in- person school. I know in Boston, they did that a while ago. Newton, where I know my niece goes to school, they have never had in-person schooling there. But it's tough here in New York.

I mean, this is the biggest school system in the country. They were proud that they had some in-person schooling and there are now questions about consistency and just logical explanations for things. So, kids aren't going to be able to go to school in person, but people can still eat in restaurants. That's a tough pill to swallow for parents of kids this morning.

WALENSKY: Right. So, first, let me say, I have a high schooler who's been home since March, so I very much understand the challenges here. I think we need to understand why it's happening. I mean, 5,000 new cases of coronavirus in New York yesterday, 2,000 new -- 2,000 people hospitalized.

In my mind, when your hospital system is starting to increase, having challenges with their capacity, you can't take care of people with coronavirus. You can't take care of people with other diseases. And, really, you put at risk the health of your entire population. So, at that point, I think drastic measures need to be taken.

I think we can have a discussion about whether those drastic measures start in schools, in restaurants, in other parts of the economy. And I think it would be a much easier discussion if all we really had to worry about was dampening down the coronavirus cases.

But I do think it's important to recognize that there are other health metrics here. If people can't be stably housed, if they can't be secure in their food, if they can't be secure in their health insurance, then we have a whole layer of more health problems. And so I think we really have to see the big picture and not just how are we going to dampen down coronavirus cases. CAMEROTA: But, Dr. Walensky, what's the answer? Because isn't it -- is it true that it is science-based that elementary schools have not been super-spreader events in the way that the data suggests that restaurants have been?

WALENSKY: Yes. I think, really, these are going to come down to local decisions to understand, you know, there's not restaurants open and closed, it's a dial, not a switch. It's capacities, it's times of day. And so I think it's very hard to sort of make general comments about, you know, restaurants versus elementary schools, because I think they're very, very locally based.

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BERMAN: There was a moment yesterday where President-elect Joe Biden was meeting with health care professionals and was having a conversation with -- I believe it was a nurse from Minnesota, describing the situation. And Minnesota is part of the country right now -- first of all, there are tons of parts of the country right now that are dealing with just surges in cases and overwhelming hospitals and medical centers and I want to play that moment, because it got emotional.

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MARY TURNER, HEAD OF THE MINNESOTA NURSES ASSOCIATION: I, myself, have held the hand of dying patients who are crying out for their families that they can't see. I've taken care of co-workers as they fight for their lives on a ventilator and knowing that they got sick because of the hospital or their government hasn't protected them.

I'm sorry I'm so emotional. It's just --

BIDEN: No, you got me emotional.

I observe the incredible mental strain on nurses and ICU units.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Look, this is the strain that's being put on health care workers across the country. One of the bright lights we have is the vaccine coming, eventually, if it's distributed in a responsible way, but what did Rick Bright tell us yesterday about the challenges?

CAMEROTA: Rick Bright basically said, as you know, Doctor, that he's not able to -- the incoming Biden team can't sit down with the Trump team, and so they don't know how much money has been allotted for distribution. They don't know what the plan is. They don't know if there's a plan. They need to start seeing the infrastructure of how this is going to happen.

WALENSKY: Absolutely. First, back to that nurse, because all of us in hospitals have nurses who have been experiencing that, all of us who have been taking care of patients have been experiencing that, so I just want to acknowledge, we feel that very deeply and very closely. When you think about the vaccine, I want to say, it's truly extraordinary that it is likely that we will have two extraordinary -- extraordinarily effective vaccines in an 11-month period. But that's only one step of the process here.

And what we really need is we need an effective vaccine, we need it distributed far and wide to every corner of this country. And then once it gets there, we need to make sure that people want to take it. And all of that is in the backdrop of how severe is the epidemic to start. We will get out of this a lot faster if we don't give the vaccine so much work to do.

So I think we have made extraordinary strides in the first step of this. And we have still a lot of work ahead of us, and we'd be foolish to think if that other work will be easy.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Dr. Walensky, thank you very much for all you're doing and for all the information.

WALENSKY: Thank you so much.

CAMEROTA: So, the General Services Administration is refusing to begin the transition process as President Trump refuses to admit defeat. What is the danger to delaying this process specifically, especially at the height of a pandemic? We're going to speak with the former administrator of the GSA about what the current administrator is doing and have they had any conversations.

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