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Coronavirus Cases, Hospitalizations, and Deaths Continue Rising in States Across U.S.; President Trump to Attend Event with Rudy Giuliani in Pennsylvania Concerning Allegations of Voter Irregularities in Presidential Election; Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) is Interviewed About Biden Outlining Urgency of Acting on Pandemic, Aid Package. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired November 25, 2020 - 08:00   ET

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


[08:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Guidance to stay home in the throes of a raging pandemic. Overnight, the United States reported its deadliest day in more than six months, 2,146 deaths just yesterday. Look at this map. Nearly a third of all states are seeing deaths rise by more than 50 percent. The U.S. also broke its hospitalization record again for the 15th consecutive day.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: President-elect Joe Biden will address the nation today with a Thanksgiving message. We're told it will discuss a path forward in the pandemic. Coordination is currently under way for the president-elect's first official national security briefing. It could happen as soon as today.

Meanwhile, CNN has learned that the outgoing president, Donald Trump, plans on making his first public appearance since the election outside the Washington area today. What is he choosing to do the day before Thanksgiving? He's attending what is being billed as a hearing, really in quotation marks, it's more of a political event on the election results in Pennsylvania, an election he lost, an election that has been certified that he lost by more than 80,000 votes. And in a sign of what it might look like, Rudy Giuliani will be there, too.

CAMEROTA: We will get to that in a moment. But we begin with the pandemic. And joining us now, CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner. He's a professor of medicine at George Washington University. Also with us, Dr. Ali Khan. He's the dean of the University of Nebraska's Medical Center's College of Public Health.

Gentlemen, happy Thanksgiving eve. Obviously, this is a dark day in terms of the numbers continuing to get worse. Dr. Reiner, I don't know what to say at this point. It seems like we're just bracing ourselves for the next two weeks. I know we feel helpless. We're not. But it feels that way this morning.

DR. JONATHAN REINER, PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: Well, we're not helpless. That's the frustrating part of this, Alisyn. We have the ability to flatten this curve. And the way to do -- the way to do that is to stay home this holiday and wear a mask when you go out. That's not asking -- that's not asking too much.

So we had over 2,000 deaths yesterday, but that's based on cases that occurred two to three weeks ago when we were having about 100,000 cases a day. So we're about 60 percent higher than that now, 60 percent to 70 percent higher than that now, which means two to three weeks right from now the mortality that we see every single day will be 60 percent to 70 percent higher than it is now. So you do the math, and that's 3,000 to 4,000 deaths per day. It doesn't have to be that bad.

BERMAN: I just want to give people one more way to look at that. If you look at the hospitalizations, which were the 15th straight day have hit a new record, we can look at that graph. Look at that line going up. Look how much higher it is now than at the worst of things back in March or in the summer. You're seeing nearly double the number of hospitalizations, Dr. Khan. And yes, new cases can be a predictor ultimately of new deaths much later on, but hospitalizations sure can. And if we're seeing hospitalizations continue to rise, deaths certainly will go up in the next few weeks.

DR. ALI KHAN, DEAN, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA MEDICAL CENTER'S COLLEGE OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Absolutely. Deaths not just from COVID, but deaths from people who can't get into the hospital for their routine conditions. So we did not cancel our heart attacks, our strokes, and our cancers because of the COVID. So it's a double whammy on the health care system that has been at capacity since March or so, people working 60 to 80-hour days.

And this is all preventable. I always like to remind people, as you know, Alisyn and John, that there's 1.5 billion people worldwide who go about their day every day with nearly zero cases and zero deaths. So this is a choice of having 2,000 deaths a day in the United States, a tragic choice.

CAMEROTA: One of the things that people think they're doing right is getting a test before they travel to see their loved ones, and they think that if they're negative it gives them a free pass to travel and not put their relatives at risk. So Admiral Giroir yesterday talked about how that is a misconception, and to forego the test itself. So listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADM. BRETT GIROIR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES ASSISTANT SECRETARY: The safest thing to do this Thanksgiving is not travel. It is certainly not wrong to get a test before you travel because if you are positive you need to stay home, no questions asked. But if you do get a negative test, it doesn't give you a free pass.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So Dr. Reiner, where does that leave us? When should we be testing? Obviously, it would be great if we all had home tests and they were cheap and we could test a couple times a week, but we're not there. REINER: Exactly. So the best time to test if you're planning to go

home is the day you leave for home. But the problem with that, in order for that test to be as valid as possible, you should have been quarantining for the last seven to 10 days.

[08:05:06]

So if you've done that, if you've been quarantined at home for the last at least week, and you want to go home tomorrow, and you get tested today, well, that's pretty good. Now you have to think about how are you getting home. If you're using some form of public conveyance, you are going to expose yourself to infection along your trip. But if you are going to lock yourself in your car, not stop really anywhere of consequence, and get home, well, that's not bad. Most people haven't done that, though.

I actually don't discourage people from getting tested because I think we'll pick up quite a few asymptomatic folks who will stay home. But it's not a passport to safety. So best recommendation now is just simply to stay home. I'd rather Zoom than have a permanently empty seat at our table next year.

BERMAN: So, Dr. Khan, the White House coronavirus task force put out guidance, or a report, on November 22nd, so just a few days ago talking about the aggressive rise of coronavirus around the country, which you're seeing, we're all seeing, it's just evident everywhere. And they said what needs to happen is, quote, a significant behavior change of all Americans. OK. Why the laugh?

KHAN: Because we've gone from a flailing government response that gave us herd immunity and 250,000 deaths total, over 250,000 deaths and 2,000 deaths a day, to now a farcical response. So yes, personal responsibility, but do we really think pandemics are due to the lack of personal responsibility? Are they due to a lack of government response?

So in addition to telling us to be personally responsible, how about telling us how is the response going in terms of isolation and quarantining? Do we have enough contact tracers? Do we have enough testing? Have we worked with the governors on mask mandates? Do we have a national electronic app for contact tracing? Do we have a stipend to give people in case they need to be quarantined and isolated, a cash stipend?

There are all sorts of government measures we could do that are evidence-based and work. Otherwise, if you take this analogy, we should not have any laws to tell people not to pollute their air and water. We should just put out a nice marketing campaign saying do the right thing.

CAMEROTA: Yes. That's a great point. We have laws against drunk driving. Sometimes people make the wrong decision, that's why we have laws against drunk driving.

Dr. Reiner, I noticed the number of days that you just used for quarantining was a little bit shorter than what we had thought in the past. You were saying something like seven to 10 days. And it sounds like Admiral Giroir of the coronavirus task force may be coming around to that way of thinking. Is it your thought that 14 days is no longer necessary?

REINER: That's probably true. If you look at sort of the average number of days after a person is infected before they become symptomatic, it's about five days. About 90 percent of people will be symptomatic or test positive within about 10 days. So the original recommendation to quarantine for 14 days will sort of maximize the number of people who are asymptomatic and infected, but it probably discourages folks from getting tested. So I think that for most folks, if you've been exposed and you're trying to quarantine and you're tested between a week and 10 days after your exposure and you're negative, you're good to go. So I think that recommendation is reasonable.

CAMEROTA: Good to know. Thank you, gentlemen. Great to talk to you. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

ALI: Thank you, and remember, masks on, everybody.

BERMAN: Sources tell CNN that President Trump is expected to join Rudy Giuliani at a Republican voter fraud hearing, and hearing is in air quotes here, in Pennsylvania today. This is a political event at a hotel. We're also learning the president is considering pardons in the remaining days of his administration. CNN's Jeremy Diamond live at the White House. Jeremy, you broke the story of the president's trip to Pennsylvania today for this Rudy Giuliani endorsed event. What's going on here?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, John, this is a part of the president's continued attempts to try to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 election despite the fact that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. But that is what the president is going to continue to claim. Even as he allows this transition to proceed, as he did just a couple days ago, the president continuing to try to shine a spotlight on what he sees as irregularities in the 2020 election. And so two sources familiar with the plans tell me that the president is expected to join Mayor Giuliani at this event hosted by Pennsylvania state Republican lawmakers happening at a hotel in Gettysburg.

[08:10:04]

They're calling it a hearing. It's certainly not official state Senate business. But, again, part of this attempt to delegitimize or attempt to delegitimize the presidency of president-elect Joe Biden. Now, they are also expected to have witnesses at this event who have signed affidavits alleging voter irregularities. What we know based on all the lawsuits that have happened so far, a lot of these affidavits are actually hearsay and have been tossed out of the courts. So there's very little evidence to back up what they're doing, but the president expected to try and cast a spotlight on this.

Meanwhile, as the president does that, he is also starting to think about the pardons that he may do in his final days in office. And one of the names under serious discussion at the White House is Michael Flynn, the president's former national security adviser, who pled guilty to lying to the FBI back in 2017. This was about his contacts with the Russians. Flynn served for only a few weeks as national security adviser before he was fired, essentially, for being caught in this lie about his contacts with the Russians. He later pled guilty to the FBI for lying to them about his contacts with the Russians during the transition.

And since then, though, Flynn has not only tried to withdraw his plea, but he has also gotten some help from the Justice Department. The Justice Department actually pulled back from the case in a wildly unexpected and irregular move, and now Flynn is trying to get the full pardon from the president of the United States, and our sources are telling us that that is something that is under serious consideration, among others, especially because this was a result of the Mueller investigation, or resulted from that, so that certainly would be a parting shot from the president at a man he does not like very much. John?

BERMAN: Stand by for news on that. Jeremy Diamond, thanks so much for being with us. Great reporting overnight.

So President-elect Joe Biden will address the nation today about the pandemic, a Thanksgiving message. More on what he plans to say next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:15:38]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT: This is more than just a financial crisis. It's a crisis that is causing real mental stress for millions of people, millions of people. And it's within our power to solve it and to grow the economy at the same time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: In his first interview since the election, President-elect Joe Biden is pushing for new federal coronavirus aid. Millions of Americans are suffering and what is Congress doing?

Joining us now is Democratic Senator Chris Coons.

Good morning, Senator.

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Good morning, Alisyn. Great to be on with you again.

CAMEROTA: Great to have you.

I mean, you have said that there is a huge divide between what's happening in the stock market that's being bonkers and what's happening in the supermarket where people are waiting for hours in food lines to just get food for the week. And what is Congress doing?

COONS: Alisyn, in the Senate we're not doing what we should be doing, which is passing a bipartisan COVID relief bill. We've got already appropriated $130 billion for small business relief. That never should have been allowed to expire.

We've got 6 million or more Americans who are so behind on their rent or their mortgage that they face almost immediate eviction when the current restrictions expire. We've got states and counties and cities that are laying off public servants.

Months and months ago now, the House passed their COVID relief bill. The Senate has not taken up and passed anything comparable. When President-elect Biden met with Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Schumer here in Wilmington, Delaware, a number of days ago, they agreed that we need a broad and robust relief package.

CAMEROTA: Yeah, but if the Republicans in Georgia keep those Georgia Senate seats in January, during those runoff races, what's going to change under a Biden presidency?

COONS: Well, that's our core challenge is that Majority Leader McConnell has steadfastly refused to support a relief package more than a few hundred billions, and there is a big gap between the number that he and his caucus will support and the number that the speaker supports and the president-elect supports, and figuring out that difference is the hard work of legislating.

There's a group of us exploring, doing outreach, trying to find Republicans in the Senate who are willing to increase their commitment above what their majority leader has said so far, but it's not been -- we haven't made great progress to date.

CAMEROTA: On October 13th, President Trump told Congress to go big or go home with a stimulus bill.

COONS: Right.

CAMEROTA: And I guess that the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opted to go home.

COONS: Correct.

CAMEROTA: Do you have any idea -- isn't it politically advantageous at this point, his people are struggling, Kentuckians are struggling, Americans are struggling, why the fight here? Why not the -- why not engaging?

COONS: Alisyn, that's a great question. Majority Leader McConnell has been not actively and personally engaged in negotiations. He and Senator Schumer are not meeting. Their staff are not meeting in person regularly or by Zoom safely distanced to negotiate the details of a package.

The majority leader knows full well how to get something like this done. I'll remind you, just to be encouraging for a moment, that months and months ago when the Senate passed the CARES Act, a $2.3 trillion relief package, it was unanimous in the Senate. And that's because the majority leader was actively engaged and supported the package.

As long as he's telling his caucus and his supporters who are the Republicans in the Senate that they're not going to move forward on a big package, we're really having a hard time getting Republicans to agree to move forward.

Demonstrably, we need this. The chairman of the Fed, chosen by President Trump, has said that the economy badly needs another round of stimulus. It's what I hear in Delaware from small business owners, from individuals, families, hospitals struggling with this latest surge in the pandemic.

[08:20:04]

We are far from through this pandemic. Although there's encouraging news about vaccines that will be available to the general public in months, nothing could help our country and our economy and our people more than another round of robust relief.

CAMEROTA: But as of this morning as you sit here, you don't think that that will happen it sounds like before -- certainly not before January 20th.

COONS: I think at the end of this year, fiscal year -- excuse me, December 11th, the current funding for the government runs out. We are working on the appropriations committee to come up with what's called an omnibus funding bill so that we can keep the federal government open. I think we may add some relief to that.

But so far, we haven't seen movement by the Republican majority on agreeing to the higher bolder sort of number that President Trump was calling for right before the election.

CAMEROTA: OK. Let's move on to talk about what President-elect Biden has announced about his cabinet and how it's coming together.

Number one, how bummed are you that Tony Blinken was chosen as secretary of state?

(LAUGHTER)

COONS: Thanks for putting it that way, Alisyn.

Tony is someone I've known for years. He is incredibly talented.

One of the things about the folks the president-elect has chosen, notice he didn't choose any senators, any governors. He's chosen people with deep experience and who will work well together and who have a lot of time working as a team.

Tony Blinken has been at Joe Biden's side for 18 years, back to when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He's been deputy national security adviser, deputy secretary of state.

We had a wonderful, constructive hour-long conversation just a few days ago about how we will work together and I look forward to enthusiastically supporting his nomination.

CAMEROTA: All right. Well, you're taking it better than columnist George Will.

Let's also talk about who else President-elect Biden might add. Last night he gave a hearty yes answer when Lester Holt asked him would a Republican or Republicans be part of his administration?

So who might those be? Who are the Republicans that President-elect Biden thinks he could add and work with?

COONS: Well, Alisyn, I, of course, can't speak to that on the news.

But one of the things that was most striking about President-elect Biden's successful electoral coalition was he had enthusiastic support from all across the Democratic Party, from Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, to more moderate elements of our party. But he was also publicly endorsed by Senator Jeff Flake, by Cindy McCain, by former governor and presidential candidate John Kasich, and former homeland security secretary and governor, Tom Ridge.

So, he had enthusiastic support from seasoned Republican leadership. That's part of why he was so successful, why he's gotten 80 million votes, 10 million more than the president he served, President Obama, a record number. And that's because Americans want to turn the page, want to move forward.

We're seeing announcements so far of his nominees for the cabinet that are breaking new ground, first woman to lead the intelligence community, first woman treasury secretary, an immigrant, Hispanic, very skilled experienced nominee for homeland security, and someone I know well who will be the U.N. ambassador with 35 years experience as a member of the foreign service.

This is a really capable team that is confirmable and will give them a lot of forward momentum, particularly in an era when bipartisanship is going to be so important, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK. Senator Chris Coons, great to talk to you. Thank you very much and have a great Thanksgiving.

COONS: Thank you. Thanks, Alisyn, you as well.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: He doesn't get the part where it's on the TV with us. They're supposed to leak the stuff.

CAMEROTA: Well, he did mention some names but he didn't say that that's exactly who President-elect Biden was considering, but maybe I'm making that connection out of nothing.

Meanwhile, we will talk about what we're seeing already about the contrast between President-elect Biden and President Trump and their styles and their priorities. John is going to handle all of that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:29]

BERMAN: Just hours from now, President-elect Joe Biden will deliver a Thanksgiving address to the American people. His transition team says he will talk about getting through the pandemic together.

Here is what else he says he could do to try to bring people together.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LESTER HOLT, NBC NEWS ANCHOR: Have you considered for the sake of national unity selecting or nominating a Republican, someone who voted for President Trump?

BIDEN: Yes. And we still have a lot more appointments to make. I want this country to be united. The purpose of our administration is once again, reuniting. We can't keep this virulent political dialogue going, it has to end.

HOLT: Should we expect an announcement?

BIDEN: No.

HOLT: Not ever or not soon?

BIDEN: No, not soon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: I want to bring in CNN political commentator Bakari Sellers. He's the author of the book "My Vanishing Country."

Also with us, CNN senior political commentator and former Republican senator, Rick Santorum.

So, Senator, first to you, if asked, are you prepared to serve in the Biden administration?

(LAUGHTER)

RICK SANTORUM, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: No, I'm not, but thank you for suggesting me. No, I wasn't prepared to serve in the last administration and I'm not prepared to serve on this one. You know, I just enjoy being on CNN too much.

BERMAN: Wow. A definitive no, making news here this morning.

Bakari, there is a transition that skipped a generation with the Trump presidency. Norm Mineta, a Democratic congressman who served under George W. Bush, you had Republican Congressman Ray LaHood, and then Chuck Hagel serving in the Obama administration.

Is this something that Democrats want to see? Do they want to see a Republican inside the Biden White House, or the cabinet?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, first, thank you for asking me if I was going to join the Biden administration cabinet. I've given it a lot of consideration.