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Biden Says, I will Ask Americans to Wear Masks for First 100 Days; Biden Says, I Haven't Made a Single Decision Without Harris' Input. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired December 04, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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


ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: What Biden's leadership will look like in 2021, especially on the pandemic. President-elect Biden tells CNN his first plan will be to ask all Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days of his presidency. Masks will also be mandatory in federal buildings. He is already calling on Congress to pass a compromised relief package before January 20th. So we'll bring you all the highlights of this exclusive interview throughout our program.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: All right. Break overnight, the U.S. recorded the worst day of the coronavirus pandemic so far, setting records with every major metric. 2,879 new deaths reported in the U.S. yesterday. And to give you a sense of what that means, it's a thousand more deaths than all the Americans who died in Hurricane Katrina. It's like having a Katrina and a half every single day.

More than 100,000 Americans are hospitalized this morning, that also a record. More than 217,000 new cases, that's a record.

A key model now forecast that the death toll in the U.S. will double by April to more than half a million people. And to give you a sense of that number, the city of Atlanta has a population of about 500,000. So, imagine Atlanta wiped off the face of the earth. That's what the pandemic is projected to do by April.

So now, this is what the president-elect and vice president-elect have had to say about all of this as part of Jake Tapper's exclusive interview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. is entering the dark winter that you warned about with the highest death rate. We just reached a new horrible milestone of new cases. On a policy level, what's going to be different starting on January 20th when you take office when it comes to dealing with the pandemic?

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: There're going to be a couple of things. Number one, it's going to be important we set out national standards and let the -- look, we met with governors, Democrat and Republican, as well as 50 Democrat and Republican mayors. They said they need guidance. They need guidance. And they're going to need a fair amount of money. It's one thing for us to talk about being able to get help out there, but it's not getting there. We're having these hospital stays are overwhelming hospitals right now. There's a need for more financial assistance. There's more financial assistance needed as well when the vaccine comes forward. There's need for planning. And so, now, the administration has been cooperating with us of late, letting them know what their plans are for the COVID virus, for how they're going to deliver on the vaccine. But there's not any help getting out there.

TAPPER: Madam Vice President-elect, Pfizer and Moderna have applied for emergency use authorization for the vaccines. Are you confident that, if and when the FDA does give that approval, it will be safe and effective and will you take it?

KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT: Of course, I will. And -- but we also want to make sure that the American people know that we are committed, the president-elect and I talk about this all the time, that the people who need it most are going to be a priority. We've talked a lot about the need to take care of our frontline workers, as the president-elect was talking about.

TAPPER: Obviously, those frontline workers are important, but you are too, sir. And you will be the oldest president ever inaugurated. Do you plan to get vaccinated before inauguration day and will you do it in public the way that Presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton have suggested they're willing to do?

BIDEN: I would be happy to do that. When Dr. Fauci says, we have a vaccine that is safe, that's the moment in which I will stand before the public and say, look, part of what has to happen, Jake, and you know as well as I do, people have lost faith in the ability for the vaccine to work. Already, the numbers are really staggeringly low. And it matters what a president and vice president do.

And so I think that my three predecessors have set the model as to what should be done, saying, once it's declared to be safe, and then I think when Barack said, once Fauci says it's clear, that's my measure, then, obviously, we take it. And it's important to communicate to the American people, it's safe, it's safe to do this.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Speaking of Fauci, have you spoken with him yet? If so, have you asked him to stay on?

BIDEN: Yes and yes. I asked him to stay on in the exact same role he's had for the past several presidents and asked him to be chief medical adviser for me as well and be part of the COVID team. And so what has to be done so we have to make it clear to the American people that the vaccine is safe when that is determined. And number two, you have to make sure, as he points out, you don't have to close down the economy, like a lot of folks are talking about now, if, in fact, you have clear guidance.

We talked about masking. It is important that we, in fact, the president and the vice president, we set the pattern by wearing masks.

[07:05:01]

But beyond that, where the federal government has authority, I'm going to issue a standing order that in federal buildings, you have to be masked, and in transportation, interstate transportation, you must be masked, in airplanes and buses, et cetera.

And so it's a matter of -- and I think my inclination, Jake, is on the first day I'm inaugurated, to say, I'm going to ask the public for 100 days to mask, just 100 days to mask. Not forever, 100 days. And I think we'll see a significant reduction if that occurs with vaccinations and masking, to drive down the numbers considerably, considerably.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Okay, joining us now, we have CNN Political Analysts, David Gregory and Maggie Haberman. Maggie is a White House Correspondent for The New York Times.

David Gregory, did you hear that? Did you hear the sound of that? It's hard to recognize anymore to our ears. That was a plan. That was the sound of a plan. It has a beginning and an end. It has shared sacrifice, an ask of Americans. I mean, honestly, it's been so long since we've heard of a plan on coronavirus, I'm just wondering what your take on that is.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. I mean, I've been sitting with this as well, the idea of a kind of return to normal business, which we've been away from for so long, to look at an administration, an incoming administration that has a plan that's facing a crisis just as Joe Biden did when he was vice president to President Obama in a financial crisis, that they had a plan, they had coordination, that they were asking for the public's health.

And we know from back then during the financial crisis and we know in this acute crisis how difficult it's going to be for the Biden/Harris team to come in under these circumstances during this winter.

And I think the mask piece alone is obviously so important, because it uses the bully pulpit to say, this can help. Let's all do it. And it puts more pressure on, you know, flight attendants. I've been on flights where not everybody is wearing a mask, not wearing it properly. And they're fed up. On the flights I'm on, they're not going to go around and enforce it to every person. Maybe some of this (INAUDIBLE) of a president saying, look, we've got to do this, and having the backup of health officials, who are going to see far more frequently, I think, with a new administration, can make a difference.

BERMAN: Yes. And what struck me is that, first, when you first heard that sentence, and we had not heard that before, so this was something new, this was something that broke as part of Jake's interview. It seems so simple. But then I sat back, Maggie, for a second and thought, wait a second, here, this is so vastly different. Imagine starting on January 20th, when you have a president and the scientists, and he said Dr. Anthony Fauci will be there in an even bigger role, who come out every day and say the same thing and ask Americans to do something all together.

I don't know if it will work, but I do knows it is so different.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right. Look, John, we don't know if it will work, but we know that it hasn't been tried before. And we know he is not treating this as some kind of a restriction on people's personal freedom. He's also making clear the limits of a national mandate (INAUDIBLE) what he can do. But he is framing what he can do in terms of federal buildings as a requirement, but then the rest is asking the public to take part.

And as you say, this has been absent from the conversation over the last year. I can think of literally one time where the president really made clear to the public, and it was at the end of March when he was extending the guidelines, the restrictions related to controlling the virus for a couple of weeks. And he talked about that the country was going to go through a lot of pain. We never heard that again. It could have all been very, very different.

And so I think that Biden is sort easing the public into its own transition from how the Trump team has treated this and how the next president has treated it, to how he is the next president, will.

CAMEROTA: David, we're not exactly sure what January 20th will look like in the inauguration. It seems hard to believe, given what we know about, President Trump that he would go to the inauguration. He hasn't signaled that he will. So, Jake Tapper asked Joe Biden about this. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: President Trump has not said if he's going to attend your inauguration yet. Do you think it's important that he's there? You're laughing.

BIDEN: I think it would -- important only in one sense, not in a personal sense. Important in a sense that we are able to demonstrate at the end of this chaos that he's created that there is peaceful transfer of power with the competing parties standing there, shaking hands and moving on. I think that's an important -- what I worry about, Jake, more than the impact on the domestic politics, I really worry about the image we're presenting to the rest of the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: David, John and I have been talking all morning about the mood, okay, the temperature coming down.

[07:10:00]

With every question with Joe Biden, it's this sort of steady answer. It's not personal, it's not -- he doesn't take the bait, not that Jake was baiting him, but there would have been a way to may say something snarky there. He doesn't engage in that.

GREGORY: No. And, I mean, we're all going to have to kind of deprogram, right, from the past five years of, you know, not covering a nasty tweet or some nasty rejoinder from the president. But I totally agree with the president-elect. And it has nothing to do with whether Trump is going to somehow get over his grievances or act like a mature president in that role. It's about how the rest of the world sees us. It's about the strength of our institution and it's about the passage of power.

And, you know, President Obama in his memoir writes pretty extensively and interestingly about how Trump and Sarah Palin before him understood that they could violate certain norms of public behavior, of political behavior, and it simply didn't matter anymore, particularly with the fractured media environment and a different political temperature. I think we want to try to stop that descent.

And the idea of a former president just not showing up means that grievances can continue to be nursed in the body politic, and that they're never transcended, and we want to show some of that pageantry. That's a way to arrest that slide where, no, there are things that matter. I don't have high hopes for Trump being able to do that but I hope there will be some people who prevail upon him who say, hey, for the sake of, if you want a political future, if you want to be listened to, symbols like this matter.

BERMAN: Joe Biden clearly and consistently has behaved in a different way than Twitter wants him to, I think, than some of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party wants him to. This is just who he is and how he operates.

Maggie, though, his behavior, and this is something Toluse Olorunnipa and Jeff Zeleny talked about last hour, he is behaving like a man who knows that he won the election. And part of me thinks that there's nothing that would bug Donald Trump more if he watched this interview, and we know he watched a lot of cable news, so he probably got some of it. There's nothing that would bug him more than seeing that.

What's our current reporting on what Donald Trump plans to do on inauguration day and how he plans to react to the president-elect over the next 47 days?

HABERMAN: Everyone I've spoken to, John, says they do not expect President Trump to go to the inauguration and, again, we will see what happens. He likes to keep people guessing about his own behavior. So if sees a commodity in that, I think you will see him tease out the possibility that maybe he'll go.

Most people think it's very unlikely whether he's actually even going to still be in Washington is another open question. There are some people who are hoping he will go down to -- people in his own group who are hoping he will go to Mar-a-Lago in Florida for the holidays, not come back. Other advisers I've talked to do not see that as likely.

But the current president is doing everything he can to try to suggest that the incoming president is not legitimate. And by going to the inauguration, as David correctly said, that would send the signal about the transfer of power. I do not expect Donald Trump to suddenly decide that this is the moment to care about norms. I think, if anything, what we have seen from Election Day, John, is he's going in the other direction.

And he is lashing out. He is -- after the first couple of days, everyone around him said that he seemed to understand that he had lost. He just wanted to play out the string. That attitude is gone. He has dug in. So we'll see where it goes in January.

CAMEROTA: Okay. David, Maggie, thank you both very much. And stick around. We have many more questions, because coming up, more from CNN's exclusive interview with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, their response to the criticism from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party that says that the cabinet is not diverse enough and more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

BERMAN: New this morning, President-elect Joe Biden responding really for the first time publicly to pressure to appoint more minorities and progressives to top positions in his cabinet. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in this exclusive interview with Jake tapper also talk about how they will work together.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: What's been the biggest surprise about working with her? I know you knew her before through Beau.

BIDEN: Well, look, there hadn't been any surprise, because we had a discussion about this beforehand. We are simpatico on our philosophy of government and simpatico on how we want to approach these issues that we're facing. And so I don't have -- and when we disagree, it will be just like -- so far, it's been just like when Barack and I did. It's in private and we've discussed at length our views on foreign policy, on domestic policy, on intelligence.

And the great thing is, she has a background in the Senate, on intelligence, the intelligence committee, she has a background on the Senate of a whole range of things that are going to be pertinent to what we have to do.

TAPPER: I don't have to tell you, Mr. President-elect, that the NAACP is suggesting that they are disappointed so far that there haven't been more black Americans named to high-profile positions, present company excepted, and that Jim Clyburn said, he's watching your cabinet picks and, quote, I can think of at least ten black folks that qualify for every single one.

One position that you have yet to announce is attorney general. Do you think given George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, the social justice issues, the justice -- criminal justice reform issues, that a black attorney general would be the right direction?

BIDEN: Look, I'm going to be announcing the remaining 50 members of the cabinet. The first eight members are the most diverse cabinet anyone in American history has ever announced. There are three white men, there are -- excuse me, there are three men, there are five women, there are five people of color, three white people.

[07:20:01]

I mean, this is going to be an incredibly diverse -- I am going to keep my commitment that the administration both in the White House and outside in the cabinet is going to look like the country.

TAPPER: Last month, Senator Bernie Sanders told the Associated Press it would be, quote, enormously insulting if your cabinet, the Biden/Harris cabinet, ignored progressive voices. Who would you point to now as a leading progressive voice in the cabinet?

HARRIS: Well, we're not done yet, Jake. So we're not even halfway there. So I think that we should have this conversation when we're done.

BIDEN: What I think people are saying is -- a lot of people are saying, am I going to pick some very, very prominent and well-known progressive who sits in the House or the Senate right now? As close as everything is in terms of the House and the Senate, they are tough decisions to make. To pull somebody I'm going to badly need out of the Senate, and we now don't re-elect or have an appointment of somebody who is a Democrat.

And so, it is -- I think people are going to see not only at the cabinet level, but the sub-cabinet level, there's already people we have appointed and we'll appoint many more. But it is not -- again, I understand the push.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Back with us, David Gregory and Maggie Haberman.

Maggie, that was a very interesting discussion. There are two sort of separate issues there. There's political diversity in terms of progressive versus moderate Democrats, but also the issue of racial diversity. And the push is real. The NAACP now is concerned that they don't believe the cabinet is as racially diverse as they were hoping. We've heard from Hispanic members of Congress, the Hispanic caucus who also feels the same way. So there is that feeling out there and the vice president-elect and the president-elect, in a different part of the interview, acknowledges that he knows. He knows that there are people, but he's saying, wait. Is that answer enough?

HABERMAN: Look, it's the answer for right now, and they're going to continue pressing on and appointing new people and we will see what those additional faces look like as they come into the Biden administration. But it is true that this is a concern he is going to have to deal with.

There had always been predictions that there was going to be a debate between politically the left of Biden's party and the Biden administration, after the glue that had kind of held the wings together, which was wanting Donald Trump to be gone was no longer necessary. Trump has been voted out. The election is over.

You are still seeing Republicans destroy each other, because the president refuses to accept those results. And I think that has given Biden and Harris a little bit of cover in public, at least to buy some time. But I do think that they're going to face increasing pressure to make appointments that will satisfy folks.

CAMEROTA: Yes. But, I mean, David, you heard a little bit of him saying, no good deed goes unpunished. I mean, he didn't say that. Obviously, he's not expressing any sort of resentment or anything, but he is trying to point out that it already, as it stands, is the most diverse cabinet in history.

GREGORY: Right. So, there's a hint of defensiveness there already. Look, we know that progressive politics, the future of the Democratic Party, and that internal schism, which is not even on hold. You know, I think that there were a lot of progressive who is went for Biden because they wanted to tradition away from Trump. But that internal fight is still there. And the role of identity politics in the Democratic Party are major pressure points, because then beyond that, there's, who's the right fit?

I mean, I think about the secretary of defense job and Michele Flournoy, who's extensively experienced, who was thought to be a top pick in the Obama administration, was seen as being passed over and she even had the support of Senator Lindsey Graham at the time. And that's not happening yet here. So that would be a truly groundbreaking choice defense. So, you know, there's people are watching and looking at that very carefully as well.

So, yes, these are big areas of pressure for him because I think he's got a more restive base than we're used to seeing certainly over the past four years with Donald Trump and the unique relationship he had with his own base of support.

BERMAN: I think one thing that he declared about as clearly as you're going to get is he's not going to appoint a senator, period, at this point, because he thinks it's too close and it raises too many problems in keeping control or at least having representation of the Senate. That much is clear now.

Maggie, it's interesting to watch the personal interplay between the two. And what you see in President-elect Biden, who is a guy who was sitting in the other chair for eight years, and I think really comes at it from that place. What do you see?

HABERMAN: I think that's right. Look, I think that they clearly seem to have a good rapport, they seem to have that good relationship. I do think that they like and respect each other. Look, as you and I both know that there are always adversarial pressure points between the office of the president and the office of the vice president. We are a ways away right now from seeing that.

[07:25:00]

So far, they have seemed pretty at ease in each other's companies. They have said they're on the same page on policy. They seem content with each other's staffing choices. And this seems to be where it's going.

The thing I am struck by, John, over and over again with Joe Biden, is that he is a different kind of politician in the sense that the things that make other politicians insecure, and I don't mean Donald Trump who has his own insecurities, but just typical politicians have insecurities in certain ways other politicians might be very upset about how Donald Trump is acting. Joe Biden is clearly not that person.

There are benefits to having not just run as many times as Joe Biden did before this over a span of decades, but having served as the vice president. And I do think you see that in how they deal with each other.

CAMEROTA: One more thing that I want to say, though I'm going to figure out a way to say this delicately, is that it is also the triumph of old people. I mean, Joe Biden is 78. He just said that he -- that Anthony Fauci is going to be his top medical adviser for the next four years. Fauci is 79. I think he's about to turn 80 this month. Janet Yellen is 74. In the recent -- I mean, it was -- it feels like yesterday that older people were put out to pasture, you know? We thought they had an expiration date of some kind. And they are sort of showing how vital and important their vast resource of, you know, expertise is still.

David, you're the gray-haired person on this panel.

GREGORY: Yes. Now, I was just wondering if that was the delicate way of putting it, how the indelicate way was. Now, look -- but I think it's a good point. I mean, in a couple of those that you mentioned, they are vital voices in their areas of expertise and they're going to be used. But I think that kind of goes to the previous point of the role of Kamala Harris.

You know, here's somebody in Joe Biden, as Maggie said, who has -- yes, he's got different strengths and weaknesses, he's also wanted to be president in a long time and he's been in Washington for so long, and now, finally, he's got the keys to the car. I think he's got some views and he's got some ways of doing things that he wants to see done.

But he also understands that there's a generational break here, that he can be so well served by Kamala Harris in that role, as somebody who can provide advice and who can be a liaison on the Hill to different parts of the Democratic Party, because she herself may be a big part of the future of the Democratic Party.

So, the thing to watch is, what is that interplay like? Biden wanted to be the last person in the room to speak to the president on a major decision. Do they have relationship? That's something that I would be curious to see as we move forward.

BERMAN: I think the way Maggie frames it, that Joe Biden has different insecurities or not the same insecurities that we're used to seeing in politicians I think is so true. It's not saying he doesn't have them, it's just this different set, and the governing is going to be interesting to watch.

One other interesting thing, and we'll get a chance to talk to Jake about this, is we still don't know what Vice President-elect Harris will be in charge of. We think they have a great working relationship in their partner but he hasn't said yet she is going to run this, that or the other thing. And that's something we have seen in past administrations, though not at all. And we'll talk to Jake about how she responded to that.

Maggie, David, thanks so much for being with us.

CAMEROTA: Thanks, guys.

Jake Tapper will join us in our next hour to talk about his exclusive sit-down interview. We have many questions for him.

All right, so the United States smashing every coronavirus record overnight. What can Americans do today to turn this around? Dr. Sanjay Gupta answers our questions, next.

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[07:30:00]