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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Coronavirus Hospitalizations Reach New Record Highs in the U.S.; Biden Fractures His Foot with a Little Less Than 2 Months to Inauguration; Trump Vows to Continue Pushing Election Rigging Claims. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired November 30, 2020 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:00:00]
LAURA JARRETT, CO-ANCHOR, EARLY START: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is EARLY START, I'm Laura Jarrett, and Christine is back.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CO-ANCHOR, EARLY START: I'm back after Thanksgiving week. What a restful week, but a lot of news today. Nice to see you, Laura, I'm Christine Romans --
JARRETT: Nice to see you --
ROMANS: It's Monday, November 30th, it's 5:00 a.m. in New York, and right now in the U.S., more people than ever before are sick enough with coronavirus to be in the hospital. More than 93,000 hospitalizations as of Sunday, and America's top health officials fear the worst is yet to come.
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JEROME ADAMS, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: I want to be straight with the American people. It's going to get worse over the next several weeks.
ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY & INFECTIOUS DISEASES: As we go for the next couple of weeks into December, that we might see a surge super imposed upon that surge that we're already in.
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ROMANS: Officials worry that a surge of new infections related to Thanksgiving travel could overwhelm hospitals already stretched to breaking.
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DEBORAH BIRX, COORDINATOR, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS TASKFORCE: So, if you're young and you gathered, you need to be tested about five to ten days later, but you need to assume that you're infected and not go near your grandparents and aunts and others without a mask. And if you're over 65 and you have comorbidities and you gathered at Thanksgiving, if you develop any symptoms, you need to be tested immediately.
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ROMANS: Assume you're infected if you traveled or gathered for Thanksgiving. CNN's Natasha Chen spoke to passengers returning home from the holiday.
NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I talked to some people arriving home to Atlanta after traveling for the holidays, and their experiences varied depending on which airports they came from around the country. Now, Sunday was the busiest travel day of the entire Thanksgiving week at the Atlanta Airport that officials here estimated 190,000 people coming through on Sunday. That's still about a third of the travelers they saw this time last year. I talked to someone who was traveling for the very first time since the pandemic began.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was a little nervous because was literally the first time going out and out of the state. But Charleston was really like empty this morning, the airport, and Atlanta is always busy. So, you know, it was just very different for us to just have this -- and the mall was very crowded. But the airport itself, everything is really nice and safe, and everybody is keeping their distances. I feel like it's safe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHEN: People did describe how tough it was to make the decision with their family on whether to travel for the holidays. Those who did travel tell me that they do plan on getting tested after they get home. In one case, someone said they would self-quarantine for 14 days. The TSA says they screened more than a million passengers on at least three separate days during the Thanksgiving week, starting from the Friday before the holiday. And that's a sharp increase in passenger traffic because that record was only hit one other time since the pandemic began. Back to you.
JARRETT: Natasha, thank you so much for that. Well, President-elect Joe Biden and VP-elect Kamala Harris will finally receive their first daily intelligence briefings later today, that after the president held up the transition for weeks. Also today, Biden will announce key members of his economic team. The president-elect spent the holiday weekend with his family, he's now recovering after twisting his ankle. He slipped while playing with one of his dogs, and Biden's doctor says he has hairline fractures in his foot. CNN's MJ Lee has the latest on the Biden transition from Delaware.
MJ LEE, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, Christine and Laura. President-elect Joe Biden paying a visit to the doctor on Sunday. His transition office telling reporters that on Saturday, he had a little bit of an incident where he was playing with his dog Major, slipped and twisted his ankle, so upon returning to Wilmington from Rehoboth Beach where he was spending Thanksgiving weekend, he visited an orthopedist, had an x-ray done, and according to his doctor, he did have a sprain in his right foot, it was a busy day for the Biden transition team on Sunday, with them announcing some key members of his White House communications team, some key names from the list of folks that were announced on Sunday include Kate Bedingfield who is going to be named White House Communications director.
We also have Jen Psaki who will be serving as Press Secretary at the White House. Simone Sanders who will be the chief spokesperson for the vice president-elect and also Karine Jean-Pierre who will be the deputy Press Secretary at the White House as well. Now, looking forward to what we can expect on Monday here in Wilmington, we do expect an announcement on members of Joe Biden's economic team. We expect that Janet Yellen will be named his Treasury Secretary pick.
[05:05:00]
She is of course the first woman who would serve in that role if she is confirmed. Two other names I want to note. Neera Tanden who is currently the head of the Center for American Progress will be chosen as the head of the Office of Management and Budget under Biden's administration. And also Cecilia Rouse; she is a Princeton economist who is being named the head of the Council of Economic Advisors. So what we expect is a formal announcement on Monday to be followed by an event on Tuesday to introduce some of these folks. Obviously, as you all know, this is a team that is going to have its work cut out for them as they navigate the economic recovery in the middle of a pandemic. Christine and Laura, back to you.
ROMANS: All right, MJ, what that Biden economic team inherits is a pandemic jobs crisis, and critical aid for families and small business that was delivered early in the crisis has now dried up, which makes the pick of Janet Yellen to lead Treasury that much more important. She would be the first woman in the role if she is confirmed, charged with rescuing the economy from the pandemic and closing a staggering wealth gap. The choice of Yellen sends a powerful message also to Wall Street.
In her last move as Fed chief in 2018, the Fed imposed unprecedented restrictions on Wells Fargo after the bank created millions of fake bank and credit card accounts. Tough penalties the bank has never recovered from. Yellen's tough stance on Wells Fargo shows she's not afraid on taking on those big banks. But investors seem fine with the former Fed chair as Treasury Secretary. Stocks rallied last week on report of her nomination, with one analyst telling clients Biden is leaning toward establishment types and mostly avoiding progressives who might spook financial markets.
JARRETT: Well, some of President Trump's more baseless claims about election fraud now further debunked by the man who was in charge of protecting the vote. What he's offering as proof, next.
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JARRETT: The top cyber security officials fired by the president for telling the truth about the election, well, he now says the American people should have a 100 percent confidence in their vote. In a new interview with "60 Minutes", last night, Chris Krebs addressed some of the more wild accusations put out by the president and his lawyers.
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SCOTT PELLEY, CBS NEWS: Let me ask for your reaction to some of the vote fraud that the president and his team have been alleging. Votes tabulated in foreign countries.
CHRIS KREBS, FORMER UNITED STATES DIRECTOR OF CYBERSECURITY & INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY: So all votes in the United States of America are counted in the United States of America. I don't -- I don't understand this claim. All votes in the United States of America are counted in the United States of America, period.
PELLEY: Communist money from China and Cuba used to influence the election.
KREBS: Look, I think these -- we can go on and on with all of the farcical claims that alleging interference in the 2020 election. But the proof is in the ballots. The recounts are consistent with the initial count, and to me, that's further evidence, that's confirmation that the systems used in the 2020 election performed as expected, and the American people should have 100 percent confidence in their vote.
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JARRETT: So, how can Krebs be so confident that all of the president's claims are nonsense? Well, there's a paper trail.
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PELLEY: So, back in 2017 as you're looking ahead to the election in 2018, and then ultimately the election in 2020. You have a to-do list, and the to-do list includes what?
KREBS: Paper ballots. Paper ballots give you the ability to audit, to go back and check the tape and make sure that you got the count right. And that's really one of the keys to success for a secure 2020 election, 95 percent of the ballots cast in the 2020 election had a paper record associated with it.
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ROMANS: All right, there was a recount in Wisconsin of course, and we can tell you now Wisconsin's recount of its presidential results confirm President-elect Joe Biden's victory over President Trump. The recount in Dane and Milwaukee Counties which was requested by the Trump campaign show Biden won by more than 181,000 votes. The recount cost the Trump campaign about $3 million and only narrowed Joe Biden's lead by 45 votes.
JARRETT: Well, despite all of these recounts and these lost lawsuits, the facts have not stopped the president from trying to undermine public confidence about the outcome of the election. His baseless accusations of election fraud enabled by "Fox News" still reaching new lows by the day.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This is total fraud, and how the FBI and Department of Justice -- I don't know, maybe they're involved. But how people are allowed to get away from this stuff -- with this stuff is unbelievable. This election was rigged. This is the essence of our country, this is the whole ball game, and they cheated. Joe Biden did not get 80 million votes.
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JARRETT: So, a lot of possible responses to that, but Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger responded this way on Twitter, quote, "the FBI did not rig the election. If you find yourself believing they did, please stop and say it out loud and you will realize how silly it sounds. Donald Trump is simply flooding the zone with baseless conspiracies again." CNN's Jeremy Diamond has more from the White House now.
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning Christine and Laura. It was a stunning 45 minutes of lies, delusion and misinformation from the president of the United States as he appeared on this "Fox News" program on Sunday morning with zero push-back from the host Maria Bartiromo. The president continued to make these baseless claims about the election nearly four weeks after that election took place, still trying to claim that election observers weren't allowed in the room, trying to claim that ballots were switched.
[05:15:00]
All of these claims have been debunked in the 30-plus lawsuits brought forward by the president's campaign and their allies. Those lawsuits dismiss or are withdrawn by those legal teams. And one of the latest rebukes came from a Trump-appointed judge, a federal judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in the state of Pennsylvania writing this. "Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here. The campaign's claims have no merit."
The president even trying to claim at one point that the FBI and the Justice Department may have been involved in rigging the 2020 election, even though he provided no evidence to that effect. And he also reverted once again to this conspiracy theory about voting machines, addressing again without evidence that votes were switched from President Trump to Joe Biden. No evidence whatsoever, and even the Chairwoman of the Republican Party, Ronna McDaniel, even she who has indulged in some of the president's conspiracy theories and baseless allegations of voting fraud, she wasn't willing to go there this weekend. Listen.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Machines are switching the votes, and we got there in crazy numbers, and they should have won, but then there's still -- RONNA MCDANIEL, CHAIRWOMAN, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE: Yes, we
have to -- we didn't see that in the audit. So we've got to just -- that evidence I haven't seen. So --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right --
MCDANIEL: We'll wait and see on that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DIAMOND: One thing that the president didn't make clear on Sunday is that he intends to continue to contest this election, and to try and convince tens of millions of his supporters to believe that Joe Biden illegitimately won this election, even as the president said a few days ago, that he would leave the White House come January 20th if the electoral college certifies the results of Joe Biden's victory. The president saying that he's going to spend 125 percent of his energy on continuing to contest the election. And he also said that even six months from now, he will continue to believe and to state that he believes this election was rigged. Christine, Laura?
ROMANS: All right, Jeremy, thank you so much for that from the White House this morning. All right, coronavirus taking a big toll on some NFL teams, leaving one with no quarterbacks for Sunday's game. The "BLEACHER REPORT" next.
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[05:20:00]
ROMANS: All right, welcome back, 21 minutes past the hour this Monday morning. The NFL hit hard by coronavirus virus over the weekend. The Denver Broncos having to play without a quarterback. Andy Scholes has this morning's "BLEACHER REPORT". Hi, Andy.
ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS REPORTER: Yes, good morning, Christine. So, the NFL closing all league facilities today and tomorrow as a precaution after the holiday. And this comes as 40 players or actually more than 40 players right now on the NFL's reserve COVID-19 list. And that includes all four of the Denver Broncos quarterbacks, but despite not having any quarterbacks, the Broncos still having to play against the Saints yesterday. Kendall Hinton, a wide receiver on their practice squad who hadn't played quarterback since college got the start. He wasn't even in the league, a month ago, working sales, and as you could imagine, this didn't go very well.
Hinton completed just one pass, threw two interceptions in the game as the Saints crushed the Broncos, 31-3. All right, there's good news and bad news for the San Francisco 49ers. Good news is they beat the Rams yesterday, 23-20, bad news is they don't have a home anymore. Santa Clara County has banned all professional collegiate and high school contact sports for the next three weeks. The 49ers currently scheduled to play two games within that time frame. So, the whole team now going to have to go elsewhere to play and practice during the holiday season. All right, Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes have won three in the past
four Super Bowls, this possibly their final show down yesterday. Mahomes coming out hot hitting Tyreek Hill for a 75-yard score to open the game. These two hooked up for 269 yards and three touchdowns in this game. Brady trying to bring the Bucs back late, hit Mike Evans for two touchdowns in fourth quarter, but eventually ran out of time. Mahomes and the Chiefs win that one, 27-24.
All right, for the first time this season, the Packers played in front of fans at Lambeau Field, the few hundred team employees, family members watched Aaron Rodgers throw four touchdown passes to blow out the Bears 41-25 last night. It's the 100th time Green Bay has beaten their long-time rival, no two teams have played more games against each other in NFL history. And what a weekend it was for women in football. Callie Brownson became the first woman to be a position coach in an NFL regular season game yesterday. The Brown's chief of staff filling in for tight-end coach Drew Petzing as he went to be with his wife who gave birth to their first child on Saturday.
And that came a day after Sarah Fuller became the first woman to play in a power 5 college football game when she kicked for Vanderbilt against Missouri, and the women's soccer goalie filling in for the kickers who had to sit out due to COVID-19 concerns. All right, finally, I want to show you this, a terrifying moment in formula 1 yesterday. Romain Grosjean nearly escaped a fiery crash and ripped his car in half, he veered off the track in the first lap after coming in contact with another driver. You see him plow into those barriers, his car exploded on impact.
But look at him, climbing over the barrier there, and miraculously, the French driver able to walk away from that crash -- and he posted a video from his hospital bed where he is recovering from burns to his hands and his ankles, but man, Laura, you see that crash, and to see him eventually climb over that barrier, what a sigh of relief for everyone watching that race.
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JARRETT: How can you walk away from something like that. That's just incredible.
SCHOLES: Incredible.
JARRETT: So glad he's OK, though, obviously. All right, Andy, thanks so much, appreciate it.
SCHOLES: All right.
JARRETT: President Trump clearly has no plans of dropping all of his talk of a rigged election. But what does that mean for the upcoming Senate elections come January. More on that, next.
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ROMANS: Good Monday morning, this is EARLY START, I'm Christine Romans. JARRETT: Great to have you back, Christine --
ROMANS: Thanks, Laura --
JARRETT: I'm Laura Jarrett, it's about 30 minutes past the hour here in New York and we begin this half hour with the number of people hospitalized.
