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Trump Attacks Republican Governors; Trump Lawyer Issues Threat; Trump's Raised $150 Million Plus Since Election Day; Germany Begins Preparing for Mass Vaccinations; Leaked Documents Reveal Mishandling of Virus; Ravens-Steelers Game Postponed Again. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired December 01, 2020 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: He's having to attack Republicans because they have to follow the law. This is a president who talked about law and order. There are Republican governors who have legal requirements to certify these results. They can't overturn the results of the election. And you have the president's own lawyer saying that, you know, the person who certified that this election was without fraud and was without interference should be shot. So, obviously, the law and order component of this presidency has kind of gone out the window.

But it's pretty clear that the president has realized that he has fewer Republican and supporters who are willing to go out on a limb to the dark corners of conspiracy land with him and that's causing him to lash out at the Republicans who are sort of coming back to the reality of saying that this election is over, President-elect Joe Biden will be president on January 20th and there's not very much that the current president can do about that.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: You know, many of these people spouting conspiracy theories are on the president's legal team. And, Margaret, I'm not a lawyer. I did apply to law school. But can Joseph DiGenova say that?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: But you didn't get in.

BERMAN: Actually, I did get in. I deferred to be a journalist instead.

CAMEROTA: Oh, OK.

BERMAN: But, Margaret, the point is, should Joseph DiGenova be disbarred? I mean can a lawyer just go out and say someone should be taken out and shot at dawn? Is that something that the bar looks kindly upon?

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, no, obviously, it -- it's not. And I don't think you're going to see Joe DiGenova be named solicitor general. But these are all -- you know, these are the president and his supporters are treating this as a side show or as political theater for the people who are at sort of -- in the crosshairs, I hope just proverbially of this. It's actually a real concern.

I think, John, I would also note that, as the president increasingly turns toward the conversation about the election and whether the election is legitimate, you hear him talking less and less about the coronavirus. And I think one reason why we're so interested in what will happen in this FDA meeting this morning at the White House with the chief of staff that we reported is because we have seen such a turning away from the president of his focus on the coronavirus. Scott Atlas's time was up, his 130 days were up. The president's not saying it's essential that you remain here for the next 50 some days, let me extend your appointment or reappoint you.

Like, the president's moving on. And where the president's moving is a political argument. He sees it as political and it's for his future. For the people who are being targeted with threats, even if they are just proverbial violence. It's deeply concerning. And for the people who are trying to manage a public health crisis, there's a mixture of confusion about why the president has turned away from the chief crisis facing Americans right now, but also, I think, to some extent, a sense of relief and a hopefulness that they can just get about doing their job now and beginning to make plans with the incoming administration (INAUDIBLE).

CAMEROTA: Toluse, Margaret raises a great point, the president is worried about his own future. And so when you wonder, why does he keep wanting to be embarrassed in court, where -- where frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit, judges are literally looking at it and being like, I'm sorry, where's your evidence? You're saying you have no evidence, right? Is that right? Get out.

And so why would he do that over and over? Follow the money. Follow the money. There are reports, as you know, in "The Washington Post" and "New York Times" this morning and CNN that the president has raised something on the order of $150 million to $170 million.

BERMAN: That's a lot of money.

CAMEROTA: A lot of money from supporters who think they're paying into his legal cases and -- but he can take that -- that piggy bank with him for whatever he wants to do in the future.

OLORUNNIPA: Yes, it's a classic bait and switch practice that you see often with -- sometimes with politicians, sometimes with business leaders trying to take advantage of people who don't know much better. These are people who are simply buying into the idea that President Trump could have a second term is he just has enough money to fight in court, even though the results and the record in court has been abysmal. He has lost dozens of cases and there is no avenue for him to use the money that he's been getting from his supporters to even overturn the election.

So that money's going to be used for other purposes. It's going to be used potentially for a leadership PAC. It's going to potentially be used for the president's own personal expenses in his post-presidency. That is something that I don't think many of his supporters who are giving $20 or $50 on the hope that they can have a second President Trump term know about, but that's all in the fine print. It's all, you know, right there written in the legal language of this -- of this defense PAC I guess you could call it and the president could really use this money for whatever he wants.

So this is one sense for why he's willing to keep fighting because he's lining his pockets with the money that his supporters of giving him, with the idea of him getting a second term, even though the reality of that is pretty much a slim to none proposition at this point.

BERMAN: I'm going with none. He can throw parties at Mar-a-Lago. He can travel around the country. There's very few limits as to what he can do with this $150 million that he has now raised from supporters.

[06:35:00]

Toluse, Margaret, thanks very much.

BERMAN: We do have a quick programing note. The new CNN film, "President in Waiting," takes a very personal look at the role of the vice president. You can watch it this Saturday at 9:00 p.m. right here on CNN.

All right, CNN takes you inside a mass vaccination center in Europe. This is a remarkable inside look. What type of equipment is needed to store the vaccine? How are they going to do it? It's all next.

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CAMEROTA: Developing this morning, Pfizer and its German partner have just applied for approval of its coronavirus vaccine in Europe. Pfizer, as you know, is also awaiting FDA approval of its vaccine here in the U.S.

This comes as officials around the world are working on plans to distribute these vaccines.

And CNN's Frederik Pleitgen is live in Germany. He's at the first mass vaccination center under construction.

It looks like one of those human mazes that you can go in, Fred.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Yes, you're absolutely right, it is sort of a human maze. But it's all about straight lines and one-way streets, Alisyn.

[06:40:00]

So essentially what the Germans have said is, especially the Pfizer vaccine, but some of the others as well, have to be stored at really cold temperatures. So why not build a big place where you have a lot of freezers and you can actually put thousands of people through here to get vaccinated here.

And it's all about one-way streets. They're building ten of these what they call vaccination streets that essentially go this way. And I just want to take you through really quick because it's quite interesting.

You have this first room right here where everybody who's going to get the vaccine sees a doctor and they ask them about any sort of prior conditions, any medical conditions they might have which could pose a danger to getting vaccinated.

Then you move over here to one of these four rooms here. And this is where you get the actual vaccination jab. And the reason why the Germans are putting four rooms in here is, for instance, you'll have one person who's taking off their shirt to get vaccinated, another person who's putting it back on, to make it more efficient and be able to bring more people through here.

And then if we move on -- and, by the way, all the guys who are constructing this are from the German Technical Relief Agency. They're all volunteers and they're doing all this constructing under pandemic conditions. That's why we're all wearing these FFP2 (ph) masks in here. Sorry, just went over some nails here.

And then, finally, people go to this final area out here, and this is the recovery area, or rest area, as they put it. After people get the vaccination, they stay here for about 15 minutes and they're, again, monitored by medical personnel to make sure they don't develop any massive side effects in the immediate aftermath of getting the vaccination.

So this is the way that they've thought through this process of how to get people through here, make sure a lot of people can get the vaccine without, obviously, getting the coronavirus when they come through here. And they say once this is finished, which is about the middle of December, they'll be able to vaccinate about a thousand people in this center every day. And, of course, Germany's constructing dozens of these around the country to solve some of those logistic challenges of those ultra-cold stored vaccines, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Fred, that show and tell is so helpful. I mean we really get it, how it's going to work there.

So, thank you for a little glimpse into possibly our future as well.

OK, up next, a CNN investigation. Documents obtained exclusively by CNN reveal what China really knew about its first cases of coronavirus. We bring that to you next.

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[06:46:08]

BERMAN: This morning we have a CNN exclusive. CNN has obtained leaked documents from inside China that reveal the missteps and chose of its early response to the pandemic. The documents from the Hubei province, home of the city of Wuhan, where the pandemic is thought to have begun, they show authorities released misleading public data on the number of deaths and cases and they took an average of three weeks to diagnose a new case and much more.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh joins us now with this really remarkable report.

Nick.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: John, what's key about this is it's information that China had, in real time, as it was seeing the pandemic begin in Hubei and Wuhan and didn't really share transparently with the world, things that many other countries faced as well. They could possibly have had a head start on had China been more transparent.

Here's what we saw in the documents.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALSH (voice over): An unprecedented leak of internal Chinese documents to CNN revealed for the first time what China knew in the opening weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic but did not tell the world. A whistleblower who said they worked inside the Chinese health care system shared the documents with CNN online, which show a chaotic local response from the start.

YANZHONG HUANG, SENIOR FELLOW FOR GLOBAL HEALTH, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: This lack of transparency sort of also contributed to the crises.

WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, PROFESSOR, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER: Seeing information in black and white was very revealing and instructive.

WALSH: CNN has verified them with half a dozen experts, a European security official and used complex digital forensic analysis looking at their source code.

WALSH (on camera): The documents provide a number of key revelations about the province of Hubei, home to the epicenter city of Wuhan. Firstly, some of the death tolls were off of the worst day in these reports is February the 17th, where they say 196 people who were confirmed cases died, but that day they only announced 93.

WALSH (voice over): China was also circulating internally bigger, more detailed totals for new cases in Hubei. For one day in February, recording internally nearly 6,000 new cases. Some diagnosed by tests, others clinically by doctors and some suspected because of symptoms and contacts, but all pretty serious. Yet, publically, that day, China reported nationwide about 2,500 new confirmed cases. The rest were downplayed and an ongoing tally of suspected cases. That meant patients that doctors had diagnosed as being seriously ill sounded like they were in doubt, that it later improved the criteria.

DALI YANG, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: If China had been more transparent, and also more aggressive in responding, clearly they would have had an impact on how much the virus spread in Wuhan, in Hubei in China and perhaps to the rest of the world as well.

WALSH: Strikingly, the documents reveal one possible reason behind the discrepancy in the numbers. A report from early March says it took a staggering 23 days on average from when someone showed COVID-19 symptoms to when they got a confirmed diagnosis. That's three weeks to officially catch each case.

HUANG: As information seems to be very surprising to me because normally it would take a, you know, just a couple of days.

SCHAFFNER: You're making policy today based on information that already is three weeks old.

WALSH: Perhaps the most remarkable revelations concerns early December, the moments when COVID-19 first emerged in China.

WALSH (on camera): Startlingly, these documents reveal there was an enormous spike in influenza cases in Hubei, right when studies have shown the very first known patients were infected with COVID-19, 20 times the number of flu cases compared to the same week the year before.

WALSH (voice over): Experts said it could have flooded the hospital system with patients sick from flu-like symptoms, making it harder to spot the first cases of COVID-19.

[06:50:07]

The documents don't link the outbreak to coronavirus' origins directly, but they show flu patients were regularly screened and many did not have a known flu virus strain, leaving open the possibility they were sick with COVID-19.

HUANG: The spy (ph) in Wuhan was very unusual, like compared to previous years. And so that would raise a red flag.

SCHAFFNER: It was very, very sizable. It's clear that the Chinese virologist can make precise diagnoses of influenza. But in retrospect, you have to wonder, was there some COVID in there mascaraing as influenza?

WALSH: The documents also show the flu outbreak was biggest that first week in December, not in Wuhan but in two other cities nearby in Hubei, all valuable information in the hunt for where the disease came from.

Chinese officials have said the outbreak began here, the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan in mid-December. And despite western accusations that it has limited its cooperation with the WHO in investigation into the virus' origins, China has insisted it has been as transparent as possible over the coronavirus. For some time, in order to shift the blame, she said, some U.S. politicians have constantly used the pandemic and other issues as a pretext to smear and demonize China and sow lies and misinformation about China. This will, of course, seriously mislead citizens of the United States and some other western countries, understating of the truth of China's fight against the epidemic.

China's foreign ministry and health officials in Beijing and Wuhan have not responded to our requests for comment.

This disease has killed nearly 1.5 million people, about a fifth of known deaths in America. These documents are rare, clear, an open window into what China knew all along, trying to appear in control, while a local outbreak turned into a global pandemic.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: And Nick Paton Walsh joins us again now.

Nick, just terrific reporting.

Put this in perspective for all of us. Why is this evidence so important?

WALSH: Well, look, let's face it, most people suspected that China probably hadn't given us the full picture. But as time went by, the authoritarian system in China is governed by essentially brushed aside all that debate you saw in democracies about masks or no masks. They put in a serious clamp down, efficient measures, and said, look, we've got control of this. Our system is the best.

What these documents show is that internally, while they were initially dealing with this, they made mistakes, miscounted, misdiagnosed, misinformed the world about what they were really seeing for lots of reasons, possibly involving chaos, possibly involving their own internal, political motivations. But they were not transparent. And so, subsequently, the rest of the world didn't learn from their experience as much as it could have.

At the same time, John, what's important is the World Health Organization right now are trying to get an investigation underway in Wuhan as to how the virus began, its origins. That's vital for us to get an answer to because unless we know where this came from, we can't stop it from happening again. It could occur possibly worse at some point in our lifetime. Imagine that. So this is a vital element of information which should, frankly, be shared more widely so scientists can pour over it and there has to be, you'd think, more.

John.

BERMAN: Well, we can't depend on transparency from the Chinese, which is why it's so important, Nick, to have your reporting. Thank you so much for that.

Third time is no charm for the Baltimore Ravens and Pittsburgh Steelers. Their game postponed again. So what does this tell us about how and whether the NFL should be playing at all during this pandemic? The "Bleacher Report" is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:58:07]

CAMEROTA: So, the Baltimore Ravens' coronavirus outbreak has led to their game with the Steelers being postponed a third time. Andy Scholes has more in the "Bleacher Report."

Hi, Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Alisyn.

So the Ravens and Steelers are now going to play tomorrow afternoon at 3:40 Eastern. This is the first NFL game this season that's had to be postponed three different times because of COVID. The Ravens actually had another player test positive yesterday. They've now had 22 players test positive or been identified as a highs risk, close contact over the past nine days.

Here's a look at the updated NFL schedule. So Ravens-Steelers going to play tomorrow afternoon. The Steelers game next week with Washington now been moved to Monday at 5:00 eastern. And next week Ravens-Cowboys game, that had already been moved to Monday, as been moved back to Tuesday night.

The 49ers, meanwhile, re going to play their next two home games in Arizona. The team was forced to find an alternative site to play after Santa Clara County banned all contact sports for three weeks.

Monday night football, you had the Eagles hosting the Seahawks. Seattle wide receiver DK Metcalf, the big guy who's dominate in this one, he had 10 catches for a career high 177 yards. But, oh, boy, there was a bad beat at the end of this game. The Seahawks were 6.5 point favorites. They were up 14 with 20 seconds left. The Eagles complete the Hail Mary for the touchdown. And then, for some reason, they decided to go to two and they converted. Philly still loses the game 23 to 17, but by a miracle they covered the spread.

So, John and Alisyn, you know, it wasn't a very close game, but I can imagine many people very emotional and maybe some TVs got broken last night because of the end of that one.

BERMAN: Screams in Vegas. That's bizarre. Go for two at the end.

SCHOLES: Why go for two?

BERMAN: I've never seen that.

SCHOLES: I have no -- yes, your -- you --

CAMEROTA: And what religion did they convert to?

[07:00:01]

BERMAN: Exactly.

CAMEROTA: Anyway.

BERMAN: Exactly.

We'll take this up later, Andy, I appreciate it.

SCHOLES: All right.

CAMEROTA: Thanks, Andy.

NEW DAY continues right now.

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