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New Day
Trump Undercuts American Democracy as Pandemic Worsens; CDC Urges Americans Not to Travel this Thanksgiving; Georgia Confirms Biden Victory, Finds No Widespread Fraud. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired November 20, 2020 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: President Trump's assault on the outcome of the election taking on a new intensity.
[05:59:25]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Inviting Michigan Republican state lawmakers to the White House, hoping he can twist their arms into overturn the election.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: An incredibly damaging message is being sent to the rest of the world. He will go down in history as being one of the most irresponsible presidents.
NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Nearly 80,000 COVID patients nationwide.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As testing lines grow ahead of Thanksgiving, this stark new advisory.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The CDC is recommending against travel during the Thanksgiving period.
DR. ANNE RIMOIN, PROFESSOR OF EPIDEMIOLOGY, UCLA: It is much better to have a Zoom Thanksgiving than an ICU Christmas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: this is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Friday, November 20, 6 a.m. here in New York. Can we talk for a second?
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK.
BERMAN: So I've literally run out of superlatives this morning. I've just run out. There are two things I cannot believe. I cannot believe we're back at 2,000 deaths a day. I cannot believe that we, as a country, let ourselves get back to this point.
CAMEROTA: It's a crime. BERMAN: And then the other thing I can't believe, and it's happening,
is that we have a president of the United States before our eyes trying to overturn the results of an election.
CAMEROTA: Well, then your imagination is not as good as mine. Because he had been telegraphing this all along. And here we are.
BERMAN: I suppose what I'm saying is I can't believe, if you had stepped back and told me at any point in my 48 years, that in my lifetime, I would see a president doing it, I would have said, Come on, that can't happening in a country like ours. It's happening.
So it's difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American president. That's what Republican Senator Mitt Romney says this morning. And he's mostly right. Of course, the only thing worse would be try to overturn an election while 2,000 people a day are dying, which is happening.
CNN has new reporting the president is doing this for some kind of revenge on the Democrats. That's why he invited Republicans from Michigan to the White House today, trying to convince them to overturn Joe Biden's pretty big victory in Michigan and appoint pro-Trump electors. Revenge.
Of course, it's kind of a cowardly revenge. The president doesn't have the courage or strength or stamina to appear in public to push the mission himself. He's hiding behind Twitter, hiding behind Rudy Giuliani.
Now, there's been a lot of focus on the meltdown on his face, but that's trivial, honestly, compared to the apparent meltdown in his morality and raises questions about what was ever there to begin with. I think he's showing us who he is. We are seeing lie after lie after lie after lie.
President-elect Joe Biden's message as this chaos plays out?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNTIED STATES: Hang on. I'm on my way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Well, later this morning, the secretary of state in Georgia is expected to certify Joe Biden's win.
As John mentioned, the coronavirus does not care who is president. It just needs someone to take leadership and try to reign this in.
Yesterday, the most new cases were reported since the start of the pandemic. More than 80,000 people are hospitalized this morning. And Johns Hopkins reports more than 215 [SIC] Americans lost their lives just yesterday. That's the most in a single day since May.
The CDC warning Americans not to travel this Thanksgiving, much as we may want to, this month is not the month to do that.
Later this morning, we have an exclusive interview that Dr. Sanjay Gupta just did with Dr. Deborah Birx. What does she want to tell us this morning?
But we begin with CNN's Jessica Dean. She is live in Wilmington, Delaware, covering the Biden transition. What is the latest on the ground there, Jessica?
JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, we are hearing the strongest words yet from President-elect Biden on this delayed transition. He's calling President Trump's behavior incredibly damaging.
All of this happening as he and his team are trying to get the coronavirus pandemic under control, trying to plan for that without the data or the information they need.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DEAN (voice-over): President-elect Joe Biden calling President Trump's failure to concede, quote, "totally irresponsible."
BIDEN: I think they're witnessing incredible irresponsibility. Incredibly damaging messages being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy functions.
DEAN: Biden's team saying the delay is growing more concerning by the day, as they work to form a plan to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
RON KLAIN, INCOMING WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: We don't have access to the agencies. We can't have meetings with experts on how to do this vaccine distribution. We can't learn about all the plans that are there. We can't help to work together to make that a seamless transition.
DEAN: Even without full access, the president-elect holding a virtual meeting with a bipartisan group of governors, in anticipation of entering office in the middle of the crisis.
Trump limiting his public pandemic comments to praise for vaccines, as he attempts to hang onto his presidency.
But behind the closed doors of the White House, he's admitted his loss to an ally, according to a source familiar with Trump's thinking, adding he's delaying the transition as payback, revenge for the Democrats questioning the legitimacy of his victory in 2016, and for the investigation into Russia's election interference.
Meantime, while the Trump campaign pushes bizarre and baseless claims about voter fraud and urges legal challenges on the president's behalf.
RUDY GIULIANI, LAWYER FOR DONALD TRUMP: I know crimes. I can smell them. You don't have to smell this one. I can prove it to you 18 different ways. [06:05:02]
DEAN: Georgia confirming Biden defeated Trump after finishing a week- long hand recount Thursday night, with certification expected this morning.
GABRIEL STERLING, GEORGIA VOTING SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION MANAGER: One of the big complaints is, these machines somehow flipped votes or changed votes or did stuff. They didn't.
DEAN: And in Michigan, where Biden defeated Trump by over 150,000 votes, a source telling CNN Trump personally invited the state's Republican lawmakers to the White House today.
GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER (D-MI): The president can say all he wants. He can summon people to the White House all he wants. But the fact of the matter is, Joe Biden won this state.
DEAN: Two Senate Republicans distressed by the Trump team's actions. Senator Mitt Romney writing in a statement, quote, "It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American president."
And Senator Ben Sasse writing, quote, "We are a nation of laws, not tweets."
President-elect Biden taking it a step further, condemning Trump's refusal to accept his loss.
BIDEN: It's going to be another incident where he will go down in history as being one of the most irresponsible presidents in American history.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DEAN: Here in Wilmington, we are expecting President-elect Biden and Vice president-elect Harris to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer later this afternoon.
Back in Washington, we're expecting to see President Trump on camera for the first time this week, Alisyn, reportedly to give remarks about lowering prescription drug costs -- Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: OK. Thank you very much for the preview of all of that, Jessica.
So this morning the human toll of the coronavirus pandemic continues to get more tragic; 2,015 Americans died yesterday. That's the most deaths since May.
This morning, almost the entire country is seeing a rise in cases, and those states that are on the map that are holding steady are holding steady at a high plateau.
The CDC is urging Americans not to travel this Thanksgiving.
CNN's Adrienne Broaddus is for us from Chicago with more -- Adrienne.
ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Alisyn.
Here in Illinois, the governor says the virus is the third leading cause of death, just behind heart disease and cancer. Today, Illinois rolls out tighter restrictions. It's one of many states with new restrictions in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROADDUS (voice-over): An onslaught of coronavirus cases spiraling out of control across the United States. The U.S. reported more than 187,000 new cases Thursday, a new daily high for the country. And more than 2,000 Americans reported dead from the virus.
The influential model from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation now predicts about 471,000 Americans will die from the virus by next March, if behaviors don't change. The modeling group warning that, quote, "The pace of the increase is faster than we expected."
BILL GATES, CO-CHAIR, BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION: We'll look back and say, Why couldn't we convince people to just stay the course until we got up to that very high vaccination level?
BROADDUS: More than 80,000 patients are in the hospital with the virus. And on Thursday, the CDC urging Americans in new guidance: Don't travel next week for Thanksgiving.
DR. HENRY WALKE, CDC COVID-19 INCIDENT MANAGER (via phone): What's at stake is basically the increased chance of one of your loved ones becoming sick and then being hospitalized and dying.
BROADDUS: White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx issuing this plea to all Americans.
DR. DEBORAH BIRX, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE: This is really a call to action for every American to increase their vigilance. But this is more cases, more rapidly than what we had seen before.
BROADDUS: It comes as states race to implement new regulations to try to stem the spread, including California. It issued a 10 p.m. curfew for about 94 percent of its population for the next month. In Illinois, the entire state is now entering a new phase of restrictions.
GOV. J.B. PRITZKER (R-IL): Outside of things you have to leave home for, like school, work, and groceries, we're asking everyone to stay home as much as you can.
BROADDUS: On the vaccine front, AstraZeneca released encouraging news on its vaccine, announcing it showed a strong immune response in older individuals as well as younger. Dr. Anthony Fauci is confident in the preliminary data of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, as well.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Help is on the way. If you're fighting a battle and the cavalry is on the way, you don't stop shooting. You keep going until the cavalry gets here, and then you might even want to continue fighting.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROADDUS: And the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is expected to file with the FDA today for emergency use authorization. This is one of many steps along the journey to get an approved vaccine. A vaccine doctors hope will keep people safe and out of hospitals like the one behind me -- Alisyn.
[06:10:18]
CAMEROTA: That is an important step to mark today. Adrienne, thank you very much.
So President Trump continues trying to undermine America's free and fair election. Is there anyone in the White House, anyone in Republican leadership in Congress who will step in to stop him?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: Let me choose my words. I think they're witnessing incredible irresponsibility, incredibly damaging messages being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy functions. And I think it is -- well, I don't know his motive, but I just think it's totally irresponsible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[06:15:12]
BERMAN: That's President-elect Joe Biden, slamming the defeated president, President Trump's overt, very blatant efforts now to overturn the results of an election.
By the way, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president exactly two months from today.
Joining us now, Julie Pace. She's the Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press. And CNN political analyst Toluse Olorunnipa. He's a White House reporter for "The Washington Post."
Julie, I want to start with the President-elect Joe Biden, how he has now chosen to address this overt, blatant effort from President Trump to overthrow the will of the people. What does it tell you, what Joe Biden is now saying?
JULIE PACE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Well, I think we've seen over the last several days that the way that Biden is addressing this is getting more and more urgent. And that's because he is starting to feel the impact of this transition not going forward.
He is not getting information that he needs about crucial things. National security, the rollout of a vaccine for COVID-19 that will largely happen under his watch.
And so he's trying to send the message that this is not political, that every American who wants that vaccine rollout to go smoothly into next year should want him to have access to the transition, which means President Trump needs to concede this election, or at least, if he won't do that verbally, at least allow this formal transition process to move forward.
CAMEROTA: Man, Toluse, President-elect Biden has the patience of Job, does he not? I mean, he is, you know, keeping this measured tone. He's being very thoughtful, as every day, crazier and crazier things happen.
Rudy Giuliani had a gonzo press conference -- I mean, I don't even know what to call it -- yesterday. Chris Krebs, who you know, the president fired for, for successfully making this election the most secure in history, tweeted, "That press conference was the most dangerous 1 hour and 45 minutes of television in American history, and possibly" -- oh, sorry -- "most dangerous and possibly the craziest. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're lucky."
And now, today, Toluse, the leaders of the Michigan state legislature have been invited to the White House, so that President Trump can try to persuade them to subvert the win of Joe Biden.
TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, the contrast between the Biden side and the Trump side couldn't be more clear than it is at this point, with President Trump and his allies sort of flailing around, trying to find some kind of legal strategy, trying to push out all of these conspiracy theories that the election was stolen through some broad nationally-coordinated conspiracy that no one knew about, even in the Trump administration's intelligence community, until after the election.
And then the Biden team essentially, you know, as Julie said, trying to turn up the heat, but also doing it in a calm way, saying that everything is going to be fine in the end. That, you know, Trump's efforts are sort of legally suspect and have no legal standing in terms of the actual effect of potentially overturning the results of the election.
But it is clear that President Trump is looking at any option that he can at this point, as his lawsuits are being thrown out of court, as judges are sort of dismissing the idea that there was broad fraud. And he's looking at different and increasingly desperate ways to try to overturn the results of the election, including inviting Michigan Republican legislators to the White House to try to sway them to overrule the will of their own voters.
It's -- as Mitt Romney said in his statement, it's, you know, a threat to democracy. It's not something that we have seen a president do in the past. And it's a clear sign that President Trump is willing to go to any length to try to overrule the results of the election, which is pretty clear, with the popular vote margin, with the 306 electoral votes, this was not a particularly close election. But the president is trying to overturn it, and he's resorting to all kinds of allegations, which are specious and have no standing in fact.
BERMAN: Look, Mitt Romney says, "It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American president." That's what Mitt Romney says. And forgive me, maybe because it's I've had four espressos --
CAMEROTA: Uh-oh.
BERMAN: -- but I think we need to raise the alarm level here a little bit on what's happening. It's not going to work. What the president is doing is not going to work.
CAMEROTA: How do you know that?
BERMAN: Because there are several levels along the way that will stop it. Courts will stop it. It's just almost -- even if he wins in Michigan, there aren't enough electoral votes there to get him the presidency.
CAMEROTA: I hope you're right, but -- at everything that chips away, maybe it sets a new -- yet a new finish line or a new boundary that is broken.
I mean, look, today is a big test. Today is a big test, what the state legislature -- legislators in Michigan will do after they meet with him.
[06:20:05]
BERMAN: I guess here's my point. I think you and I disagree on what will work eventually, but I think we can all agree that the fact that there is a president trying to do this in public, that in and of itself, Julie, in and of itself is precedent setting. It damages the democracy. It's just bad, bad stuff.
And to have Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse, who's got a statement, although strong, but not as strong as Mitt Romney's, be the only two Republicans on Capitol Hill who give a hoot about this. Adam Kinzinger came on our show and did it, too.
Let's talk about the Senate. Where are these senators? These senators are going to wave around the Constitution in a month if there's a transportation bill they don't like. Where the hell are they today?
PACE: They're nowhere. They're silent. And look, I think your point is exactly right. This effort by the president that is happening out in public is not going to work in the sense that Joe Biden will be sworn in on January 20 as president of the United States, but he will do so with millions of Americans believing that he is an illegitimate president and believing that this election was fraudulent.
And that is incredibly dangerous. Not just for Joe Biden but for the country.
And Republicans are silent on this. You know, there are a couple of theories about why. One, they're trying to keep Trump's base motivated for those Georgia runoffs. Two, they're just trying to wait Trump out and get him out of office, but this is all pretty short-term thinking. There's no long-term thinking happening.
I do think that today, if this meeting with these Michigan state -- state lawmakers goes forward, this is a big test for Republican senators, in particular. What is the rationale of staying silent when the president is openly meeting with state officials to try to get them to overturn the will of the voters, which is exactly what he's trying to do? Overturn the will of legal -- legally cast votes, democratic -- a democratic election. It's really extraordinary.
CAMEROTA: In terms of on the side of progress for Joe Biden, Toluse, today Georgia is expected, maybe even while we are on the air this morning, to certify the win officially for Joe Biden.
And, you know, they did that hand recount. I mean, arduous, painstaking, by hand. And here's what they found. Most hand tallies have a 1 percent to 1.5 percent deviation. But in Georgia, we saw a 0.1 percent variation on the total vote count and a 0.0099 variation on the overall margin.
So it was verified, what we saw on election night, which was that former Vice President Biden has the most votes at this point. I mean, it was -- that hand count was beyond pointless.
OLORUNNIPA: Yes, what we saw in Georgia was a free and fair election. It happened out in the open. We saw people counting ballots in front of cameras out in the open. Sometimes after election day, but that's what happens when you have a lot of mail-in ballots because of a pandemic. It takes a little bit longer. But it was a free and fair election, and the hand recount has confirmed that.
So it's pretty clear that all of the allegations from the Trump campaign, from the president himself about fraud in a Republican-run state, in a state where the secretary of state is a Republican. He has publicly said that he wanted Trump to win. The governor is a Republican who was specifically endorsed by Trump in 2018, a hand- picked Republican governor.
So this idea that there's some broad national conspiracy, it would have to involve Republicans that are part of the president's own support group joining with Democrats and joining with city officials to try to overturn the will of the people without anyone being able to find any evidence of it. It's completely outlandish.
And the hand recount in Georgia clearly confirms that this was a fair election, that Joe Biden won in the state of Georgia, and now Democrats are trying to do a repeat in -- on January 5.
And it's going to be difficult, if President Trump says that fraud is what causes him to lose in Georgia, to motivate his voters to come back out, if they think that there's no point, that the election is just going to be stolen. So there's a political strategy here that also is questionable. Not only the legal strategy is highly questionable. And the hand recount confirmed that, and Joe Biden has secured that state's electoral votes. BERMAN: And then there's a moral strategy, the question of morality
here and whether it's just purely wrong, what's going on.
Toluse, Julie, thank you both for being with us this morning. Appreciate your time.
I just want to say one more thing to you.
CAMEROTA: Uh-oh.
BERMAN: No. There's also something cowardly about what the president is doing here. You know, he's trying to overturn an election in Michigan, but he doesn't have the courage -- I'm going to stay with courage -- to do it in public. He's doing it on Twitter, and he's hiding behind Rudy Giuliani.
You know, guts up, Mr. President. If you really think this is happening, which it didn't, then come out in public and make your case. Why aren't you -- where's the courage? Come out and say it out loud.
CAMEROTA: When you send Rudy Giuliani out to be your spokesperson, it's an interesting strategy.
BERMAN: Anyway, the United States this morning, more than 2,000 new deaths reported in the coronavirus pandemic. We're back up over 2,000. That's shocking.
[06:25:04]
And now the CDC is warning that you should not travel for Thanksgiving. Stay inside with your insular family. This is a remarkable new warning from the government, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAMEROTA: This morning, the United States again grappling with a tragic coronavirus death toll; 2,015 Americans lost their lives yesterday. That's the most deaths since May.
This morning, here is what the trend map looks like in the country. Almost the entire country, as you can see, is in the orange and red. That means a rise in cases. That is the dangerous wrong direction to be going in.
And those -- that cluster that you see there in beige, those are the states that are holding steady, but they're holding steady at a high plateau.
BERMAN: They're, like, plateauing at 50 percent positivity rates. It's bonkers.
CAMEROTA: Joining us now is Dr. Paul Offit.
