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President-Elect Biden to Nominate Tony Blinken as Secretary of State; AstraZeneca Says, Coronavirus Vaccine is 70 Percent Effective on Average; Trump Campaign Asks for Another Recount in Georgia. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired November 23, 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]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: Also this morning, breaking news, a major vaccine development, another pharmaceutical, AstraZeneca, reports trials showing its vaccine has an average of 70 percent effectiveness all the way up to 90 percent, depending on the dosage. They become the third drug maker to report positive results. We'll have much more on that news in a moment.

But let's begin with CNN's Arlette Saenz, she's live in Wilmington, Delaware, where Biden's cabinet is starting to take shape. What do we know?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, President- elect Joe Biden is making it clear he is turning to seasoned hands in both the diplomatic and national security world, as he's expected to announce his first cabinet picks tomorrow. Now, one of those picks that's expected to come is his choice for secretary of state.

And Biden is expected to announce and nominate a longtime adviser, Tony Blinken, someone who served as a deputy secretary of state under President Obama, and also has worked with Biden for quite some time, dating back to his time as a senator, and then also, serving as his national security adviser when Biden was first vice president.

And there are also other key positions that are expected to be announced tomorrow, and that is national security adviser, which is not a cabinet-confirmed position, and the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Now, the leading contenders for those roles are Jake Sullivan for national security adviser. He is someone who served in that role for Biden when he was vice president, and also worked closely with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her time leading the state department.

And then, for the role of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the leading contender is Linda Thomas-Greenfield. This is someone who has decades of experience in the foreign service, served as an assistant secretary of state during the Obama years. She also was first appointed as an ambassador to Liberia by George W. Bush. And Thomas- Greenfield is also a woman of color. So should Biden nominate her, this lends some more diversity to its top appointments as he is trying to build out his administration. But bottom line here is Biden is plowing ahead with these nominations to make clear that he is undeterred by President Trump's refusal to concede and also the GSA administrator's refusal to ascertain the election, and rolling out picks like these show that Biden is plowing ahead, full steam ahead as he is put together his administration.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Yes. Our friend, Jeff Zeleny, reporting, Arlette, that perhaps the timetable moved up a little bit by the Biden team to show that they're going forward no matter what these ridiculous obstacles are that they continue to face. Arlette Saenz, thanks so much.

Joining us now, CNN Political Commentator, former Republican Congressman Charlie Dent, also with us, CNN Political Analyst Toluse Olorunnipa, he's a White House Reporter for The Washington Post.

And, Toluse, really with these selections, the Biden team seems to be sending two messages. They sent from the beginning consistently, which is what they're looking for is experience, unquestioned experience. By that, I mean, you can't dispute that Tony Blinken was deputy secretary of state. He's all but held the same job he's being picked for. So experience and diversity, these are the two messages they continue to try to send, Toluse.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST (voice over): Yes, that's exactly right. Biden and his team are sending messages not only to the Senate but also to the world, the global community, about the kind of president that Joe Biden will be, that he will bring and restore some sense of normalcy to the State Department, to his national security team, that world leaders can trust that the Biden foreign policy agenda will not be as chaotic and, you know, hard to follow as the Trump agenda has been, that someone like Tony Blinken is someone who is well known, well known in the Senate, when he was confirmed six years ago. It was a mostly party line vote, but he did receive votes from a couple of Republicans.

And he is well known and he has experience. He served as deputy secretary of state and a close friend of Joe Biden, someone that has the president-elect's ear. So, world leaders, when they see him, when they hear him, they'll know that he is speaking on behalf of the presidency, sometimes during this administration, that's been unclear with Rex Tillerson and other previous officials, whether or not they were speaking for the president. Sometimes the president undermined them.

So I think Joe Biden is trying to show the world that he is going to be in lockstep with his fop officials and he's going to bring professionals on to the team and that the American foreign policy will be much more predictable, much more in line with Joe Biden's world view and less in line with what President Trump has done for the past four years.

CAMEROTA: Charlie, let's talk about the Republican reaction, that it's been almost three weeks since the election. And just now, I mean, it's taken this long for high-profile Republicans to start admitting, yes, it kind of looks like Joe Biden won, and this is really going to happen. Here are some of them over the weekend. Here is a montage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FMR. GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ): His legal team has been a national embarrassment.

[07:05:01]

REP. FRED UPTON (R-MI): The voters have spoken. Here in Michigan, 154,000-vote margin by President-elect Biden, and no one has come up with any evidence of fraud or abuse. It's over.

GOV. LARRY HOGAN (R-MD): Now, we're beginning to look like we're a banana republic. It's time for them to stop the nonsense. It just gets more bizarre every single day. And, frankly, I'm embarrassed that more people in the party aren't speaking up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: And, Charlie, just one more that I want to read to you because you're in Pennsylvania and know Pat Toomey well, Senator Toomey, President Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race in Pennsylvania. These developments together with the outcomes in the rest of the nation confirm that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and will become the 46th president of the United States. I congratulate President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their victory.

So does this now -- do others chime in? Does this move forward? Does President Trump do something different now that people are speaking out loud about this?

CHARLIE DENT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Who knows what President Trump will do, Alisyn. Of course, every Republican member of Congress knows this election is over. Frankly, most of them know it's been over since Saturday, November 7th when all the media outlets called Pennsylvania. The outcome is irreversible. They know it.

So, I mean, this is -- I think this is just Donald Trump trying to monetize defeat. He's raising money for his leadership PAC, he's going to try to monetize defeat with a Trump T.V. or a Trump digital platform.

CAMEROTA: Hold on, Charlie, just so I understand that, he is fundraising right now for legal challenges. Are you saying that that's a portable slush fund that he can take for whatever his next project is?

DENT: Well, I just heard that Ben Ginsberg say that this was going to a leadership PAC. And people who have leadership PACs are going to use it for very political purposes. So that's what it sounds like to me, because nothing else makes any sense. He's simply trying to delegitimize Joe Biden's victory. This is a matter of spite and vindictiveness. He feels that the Democrats tried to delegitimize his victory in 2016. He is just returning the favor. The country be damned. I mean, that's his view of this. That's what I see happening. BERMAN: You Know, Pat Toomey, Toluse, is retiring in two years. Lisa Murkowski who put out a statement overnight, she is running for re- election, but she has split with the president before. Where are the wonder twins, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio? Where are some of these other Republicans who, as Charlie says, they know, they know what's happening. They're smart enough to know that this is fully cooked at this point. Will we see at long last some of them come out and acknowledge reality this week?

OLORUNNIPA: Well, John, I think, first, we need to send a search party out to find some of these Republicans, because they are in hiding. They do not want to speak. They do not want to get crosswise with this president, who is vindictive and who has tweeted against anyone who speaks out. Even though they know the obvious, they know the president has lost, it's absurd at this point to suggest anything different. Instead, they are sort of hiding, they're trying not to, you know, upset the president.

Mitch McConnell is not speaking out. He is sort of following his keep your powder dry statement, which is essentially, don't say anything that will lock you into a position at this point. Try to maintain as many options as you have. Try to protect the two Senate seats in Georgia by not making the president angry and making him potentially telling his voters to stay home.

So, it does seem like there's a lack of political courage among the Republicans, especially in the Senate. A few are starting to speak out. I do expect you might hear from a few others who may be too ashamed to stay silent much longer just because it's so obvious and it's so damaging to democracy to have this presidential race in limbo for so long.

But for the vast majority of them, until the president is walking sort of out the door or at least folding up his legal claims and saying, I essentially concede that, you know, this is not going to go my way, I don't expect any of them to get out ahead of the president. I don't expect many of them to sort of stand up courageously and say that this is absurd for the president to continue to attack our democratic systems. It just seems that over the past four years, they have learned how to be silent when they need to learn how to keep their heads in the sand and it seems like that's going to continue for the foreseeable future.

CAMEROTA: And yet, Charlie, the Trump legal team presses on. They are appealing different decisions. Whatever -- it's so -- when you read the transcript of what the judges say to them in court, it's things like, so, in order, you have no evidence? I mean, it's truly like that blatant that the judge has to talk to the lawyers in those kinds of terms. But they're pressing on and somehow they will press on without Sidney Powell.

How crazy does it have to have gotten that the Trump legal team, which Rudy Giuliani is heading, has had to distance itself from one of its members, Sidney Powell?

[07:10:00] DENT: Well, first, Judge Brann up in -- I think it was up in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, just eviscerated the Trump challenge in Pennsylvania, totally blew it away, meritless, no evidence. And then Sidney Powell, I mean, we're supposed to believe conspiracy theories that Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's former president, dead for, I think, about seven years, somehow intervened in our elections. This is a grand conspiracy theory. And for those of us who stand up and say, this is nuts, this is crazy, we get accused of being traitors. I mean, this is a -- we're in the twilight zone here.

So I don't -- I mean, Sidney Powell, even the Trump legal team had to distance themselves from her. I mean, that should tell you something, how outlandish this whole thing is.

BERMAN: But there's no space between Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani. There's no space between Sidney Powell and President Trump. They're saying it now because she spoke out loud what they've all been saying behind the scenes. I mean, she happened to attack Republicans who were running for office, who were involved in elections in Georgia.

CAMEROTA: That was the cardinal sin.

BERMAN: That was the cardinal sin. But, seriously, we can put the picture up on the screen if we have it. When I talk about no space between Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, I literally mean no space. They're standing next to each other. There are releases that went out and said, they're part of the same legal team. There they are. There they are. And now Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, who is the other person there, put out in a release saying, oh, no, no, no, she's not part of our legal team. You know what this looks like? It looks like a legal team right here.

CAMEROTA: A sweaty legal team.

BERMAN: Well, yes. But she's not the one who's having the issues, glandular issues, right?

Anyway, I mean, Charlie, honestly, at this point, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, they want to be president. I mean, what Donald Trump is doing doesn't help them. It really doesn't help them if he's collecting money so that he can stay in the political game be a kingmaker and/or run again in 2024, they've got to figure out a way to position themselves in opposition to this, don't they?

DENT: I think they do. And I don't see -- I don't see that there's any advantage for them to deny reality. I mean, why is stating the obvious so difficult? When they state it, it will be a revelation, apparently. But there is no reason for them to hide, other than that they're worried about Trump unleashing his base on them and say terrible things about them. But we all know how this story is going to end. So they might as well get out there and just do it, get it over with.

And, by the way, with respect to that, Sidney Powell, I mean, look, she is part of their team, but I agree with you. But, apparently, they benched her, I mean, during that meltdown conference. I still have never seen anything like this and we'll never see anything like it again and the country needs to get on with business. Everybody knows it, time to move.

CAMEROTA: Meltdown.

BERMAN: Right, I mean, it is.

CAMEROTA: Aptly put.

BERMAN: All right. Charlie Dent, Toluse Olorunnipa, thanks so much for being with us this morning.

We do have major vaccine news. A third company coming out this morning talking about the efficacy of its vaccine. What does this mean? How soon will Americans get vaccinated? That's next.

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BERMAN: All right, break overnight, a big vaccine development. The British pharmaceutical giant, AstraZeneca, reports its vaccine has an average efficacy of 70 percent against coronavirus, up to 90 percent depending on the dosage. This is now the third drug maker to report positive results.

The news comes as the United States added more than 3 million new coronavirus cases in November alone. By that measurement, it's clearly the worst month yet.

Joining us now, CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen, she's the former Baltimore City health commissioner. Also with us, CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner, he is the Professor of Medicine at George Washington University.

Dr. Wen, I want to start with you. This vaccine news from AstraZeneca, and then there were three. Every time we add a new company, a new vaccine to the list, I imagine it means there might be more available. What specifically here should we be taking away from this?

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Well, that's exactly right, John. I think it's wonderful that we have another candidate that's looking very promising. We always knew that when there were many shots on goal with all of these different vaccine trials going underway that it increases the likelihood that we'll have at least one vaccine that will get approved. The more that end up getting approved, the more that are found to be safe and effective, the sooner we can vaccinate all Americans and also the entire world, which is going to be a huge challenge when it comes to manufacturing, distributing that many doses of vaccine to everyone.

So I think this is very promising news and I just hope that everyone really hangs in there, because we do now have light at the end of the tunnel, but we're facing this extremely difficult winter ahead. So know that help is on the way, but in the meantime, we all have to hunker down and ideally cancel our in-person, seeing one another indoors over the holidays.

CAMEROTA: Dr. Reiner, there's another aspect to the AstraZeneca vaccine that makes it promising. I'll read you from their press release. The vaccine can be stored, transported and handled at normal refrigerated conditions, 2 to 8 degrees Celsius, for at least six months. So, I mean, doesn't that change the game since the other once have to be these sub-zero specially equipped freezers?

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: It absolutely does. The Pfizer vaccine requires ultra-cold, Antarctica, during the winter-like temperatures, at minus 94 degrees. The Moderna vaccine a little bit less, but still very cold, minus 4 degrees. None of the vaccination sites anywhere are really accustomed to doing this. They will get up to speed.

The AstraZeneca vaccine is more of a -- sort of a routine vaccine that's distributed around the world every single day. And while large parts of the United States can accommodate these new ultra-cold storage vaccines, large parts of the world cannot.

[07:20:00]

And we're not just talking about vaccinating the United States. We're also talking about vaccinating the world. So we're going to need all kinds of vaccines that are really tailored to the specific environment. But in large parts of the United States, there will be a role for a vaccine like the AstraZeneca vaccine, and there are more coming. A vaccine like the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a single inoculation. All three of the vaccines that we now have data for require two shots. The J&J vaccine will be a single shot. So, we're going to see a variety of options.

And I have to just emphasize how breathtaking this achievement has been. To develop so many vaccines that are so effective in, you know, ten months is earth shattering and a testament to so many brilliant people working tirelessly for the last year to do this.

BERMAN: It's such a triumph of science. It is such a triumph of science, what you can do when you put your mind to things. You know, and if the scientists can do this behind closed doors, we can do our part, too. I mean, we can pitch in and make it easier for all of them to get this done, which is why Dr. Wen, you see the pictures at the airports this weekend, these packed airports with people traveling, and when you put up some of the statistics of the number of travelers out there, yes, it's historically low for Thanksgiving week, but it's still up from where we've been the last several weeks and months.

People are on the road this weekend, and you get the sense that they're just not listening to the warnings coming from the CDC.

WEN: Yes, and I'm so worried about what's coming our way, because we are already seeing this unprecedented surge. I mean, COVID-19 is everywhere. It's out of control. It's running rampant in communities around the country. We've also seen that with every major holiday, Memorial Day, 4th of July, even Halloween, that we had a major surge right after the holiday. So now we're having unprecedented travel, people are going to be getting together indoors, our hospitals are already overwhelmed. I mean, there are ICUs that are so full that children's hospitals are now being converted to treat adults. That's the situation we're already in. What's going to happen after Thanksgiving?

And so I hope that people, if they have not traveled yet, really heed our warning, do not have non-essential travel at this point. Cancel your trip, just given how much virus is out there. If you have to go somewhere, protect yourself while you're traveling, but then really protect yourself after you travel. So don't get together indoors, even with your loved ones.

The CDC guidance is that 60 percent, almost 60 percent of the spread is by people who are asymptomatic. And that could well be your loved ones. So don't let this Thanksgiving be your last one.

CAMEROTA: Yes. I mean, Dr. Reiner, I -- we've been saying this and I know that it is tough medicine for people to hear, because I think that as human beings, we are programmed in some way for togetherness and for a communal experience, you know? I mean, we like tradition, obviously. Thanksgiving is just the perfect storm of all of those things. We like family, we need, I think, togetherness as human beings, and trying to keep up some normalcy and all of that stuff.

And so I understand the temptation to want to be with loved ones. And it's just so horribly ironic that that need, our human need for togetherness might kill us this week. And it's just such a horrible paradox.

REINER: Right. Every Thanksgiving, you know, we spend this holiday, which is, I think, everyone's favorite holiday in this country, with a couple of other families, multi-generational, grandparents. We're not doing that this year. It's just my family hunkered down, because the stakes are simply too high. We can have other holidays. We'll do this again. We'll make up our own new holiday, you know? But we cannot replace these people that are so dear to us.

So I would rather protect them, we'll Zoom with them, and then we'll do it again next year.

CAMEROTA: I feel like you were going to say festivus, Dr. Reiner.

REINER: I was going to say festivus, how did you know?

BERMAN: Feats of strength are his thing. Feats of strength are his thing. Areas of grievances, my thing. But he's pig on feats of strength.

CAMEROTA: Thank you both very much, great to talk to you, as always.

The Trump campaign is asking for a recount in Georgia despite losing the state by more than 12,000 votes and despite having just had a hand recount there. We're going to speak with an election official who is receiving threats for just doing his job.

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CAMEROTA: The presidential race is heading for another recount in Georgia, following a statewide audit, a hand recount that confirmed that Joe Biden won that state by more than 12,000 votes. Our next guest says he is facing threats and harassment for just doing his job.

Joining us now is Georgia's election implementation manager, Gabriel Sterling. Mr. Sterling, great to see you again.

So, help us -- those outside of Georgia, help us understand why this is necessary. You already did an audit. Well, first, you had the election. So Joe Biden won. Then you did an audit with a hand recount. Joe Biden won. Why do we need a second recount?

GABRIEL STERLING, GEORGIA ELECTION IMPLEMENTATION MANAGER: Well, it's not a question to have need, necessarily, Alisyn. This is following our law and following our process. And as we've said over and over again, we'll continue to follow the law and follow the process. The president, as you said, we certify the election on Friday. The governor sent the elector's list up to D.C. and the president came up short. Under state law, within two business days of that certification, he has the right to request a recount, because he's within a half a percent of the winner.

CAMEROTA: And is that at taxpayer expense?

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STERLING: Yes.

CAMEROTA: And the -- so you just finished this hand recount. Now, this time, with this recount.