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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Biden Outlines Plan to Turn the Page on Trump, Pandemic; Trump Out of Legal Options to Subvert Election Loss to Biden; U.S. Begins Vaccinations As Virus Deaths Cross 300K; U.S. Scrambles to Understand Scope of Suspected Russian Hack; Ravens Rally to Beat Browns in Monday Night Thriller. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired December 15, 2020 - 05:00   ET

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


[05:00:18]

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States, and around the world. This is EARLY START. I'm Laura Jarrett.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Christine Romans. It is Tuesday, December 15th. It is 5:00 a.m. exactly in New York.

And we begin with two rays of hope during one of the bleakest times in modern American history. Vaccinations are now underway across the country to end the pandemic that has now killed 300,000 Americans, and a new leader whose victory has been made official by the Electoral College offering a vision for unifying the country.

President-elect Biden in an emotional speech last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT: Getting this pandemic under control and getting the nation vaccinated against this virus, delivering immediate economic health so badly needed by so many Americans who are hurting today, and then building our economy back better than it ever was. And in doing so, we need to work together to give each other a chance to lower the temperature and most of all, we need to stand in solidarity, as fellow Americans.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: CNN's MJ Lee has more from Wilmington, Delaware.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MJ LEE, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: The Electoral College here in the United States officially voting on Monday to declare Joe Biden the president-elect. And Biden really seizing that moment to deliver what was really a remarkable speech, talking about how American democracy had been tested this career in ways that we had never seen before, but he also said that even despite the pandemic, even despite some abuses of power that we have seen in this country, that the American Democratic system, could not be extinguished. And it was very clear that the former vice president wanted to send a clear message to the sitting president, President Trump, essentially saying it is time for us to turn the page and move on.

Here's what he said.

BIDEN: This battle, for the soul of America, democracy prevailed. We the people voted. Faith in our institutions held. The integrity of our elections remains intact. And now, it's time to turn the page as we have done throughout our history, to unite, to heal.

LEE: Now, of course so much of turning the page will have to do with how the president-elect deals with the COVID-19 pandemic, something that he talked about in this speech as well. And getting the economy back on track, dealing with the vaccine distribution, and also a big part of the challenge for him going forward will simply be about politics.

And this is why we are going to see him travel on Tuesday to Atlanta, Georgia, where he is going to be campaigning for the two Democratic candidates who are going to be in Senate runoff races, the outcome of those races will determine so much of what he can do politically and legislatively with members of Congress come next year.

Back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JARRETT: MJ, thank you so much.

President-elect's speech was the most direct defense yet of his victory and his most forceful condemnation of President Trump's assault on American democracy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: This legal maneuver was an effort by elected officials and one group to try to get the Supreme Court to wipe out the votes of more than 20 million Americans in other states and to hand the presidency to a candidate who lost the Electoral College, lost the popular vote, and lost each and every one of the states whose votes they were trying to reverse. It's a position so extreme we've never seen it before. A position that refused to respect the will of the people, refused to respect the rule of law, and refused to honor our institution.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JARRETT: The president-elect also condemned attacks on state and local election officials, who are pressured by the president and his supporters to throw out legally cast ballots.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: It is my sincere hope we never again see anyone subjected to the kinds of threats and abuses we saw in this election. It's simply unconscionable. We owe these public servants a debt of gratitude. They didn't seek the spotlight. You know, that our democracy survive because of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Still, no sign that President Trump will help his supporters accept this reality of his election defeat.

Just minutes after the Electoral College formalized the Biden victory, the president tried to deploy a distraction, revealing his Attorney General Bill Barr has resigned.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins has more.

[05:05:00]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christine and Laura.

This is a process that President Trump has tried to subvert every step of the way since he lost this election to Joe Biden, but you saw yesterday as the Electoral College did affirm Biden's win, he gave a short speech afterward talking about it, and talking about what has gone on with the president and his Republican allies desperate effort to try to overturn the results of this election by taking matters like what you saw last week like the Supreme Court and that swift rejection of the lawsuit that the attorney general of Texas was trying to make.

But despite by the fact that we've seen the Electoral College affirmed Biden's win, we are still told by sources that the president does not expect to concede this election, at least certainly not anytime soon, and he has said publicly as well that he plans to continue to fight it, and claims there are more legal steps his team can take, even though if you speak with people close to the president's campaign, and close to the legal team, they just believe they're running out of options after the Supreme Court rejection, and they're not sure where they're going to go next.

One tactic, the president may try to pursue over the next few weeks, as we wait for the end of his presidency, and for Joe Biden to be inaugurated is a distraction technique. And that was in part what you saw yesterday as the last states were certifying their notes. President decided to announce that Attorney General Bill Barr is resigning in the next few da. His last day at the White House will be December 23rd. He said in a resignation he gave to the president.

If you looked at the tweet from the president announcing this and look at Bill Barr's letter, you would think it's an amicable departure between these two individuals. But it is certainly anything but that. And sources we spoke to in recent weeks said the relationship between president and once one of his favorite cabinet members had deteriorated so greatly after Bill Barr under cut the president's claims about voter fraud and then even more so over the weekend after it was revealed that Barr did work to follow DOJ protocol by stopping that Biden investigation from becoming public, something the president criticized him over and said he should have done the opposite. That is not what the president mentioned in his tweet, announcing that

Bill Barr will be stepping down and his deputy, Jeffrey Rosen, will be taking over as the attorney general just for a few more weeks.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JARRETT: Kaitlan, thank you so much.

The first doses of the coronavirus vaccine have now been delivered to all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Yet thousands of Americans are still dying from COVID-19 every single day. The national death toll has now surpassed 300,000. Hospitalizations hit another record high overnight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JEROME ADAMS, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: My message to America is the finish line is in sight. The last couple of miles are the hardest but we've got to keep running, because even if you aren't worried about COVID, your loved one who's in labor may not have a hospital bed. Your loved one who's having a heart attack or gets in a car accident may not have a bed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JARRETT: Health care workers on the front lines of the pandemic were among the first to get their shots yesterday. But it will be several more months before most Americans can get one.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I had been saying by my calculation, sometime by the end of March, the beginning of April, that the normal healthy man and woman in the street who has no underlying conditions would likely get it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JARRETT: CNN's Sara Sidner has more on the first Americans to get the vaccine.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This moment could not come soon enough. ICU nurse, Sandra Lindsay is one of the first people in the United States to get the COVID-19 vaccine outside of a clinical trial.

So was emergency medicine doctor, Yves Duroseau.

DR. YVES DUROSEAU, CHAIR OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE, LENNOX HILL HOSPITAL: It felt great. Didn't feel any different than any vaccination I received in the past.

SIDNER: Workers loaded boxes of Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine unto trucks by forklifts, for shipping to medical facilities and hospitals around the country, a historic day that arrived in record time.

CNN was there the moment University of Michigan Medical Center staff got the vaccine.

A box, filled with dry ice and 390 vials. Each vial has 5 doses inside. Once thawed and mixed with salient, it was administered to health care workers who have exhausted themselves taking care of coronavirus patients while themselves in danger.

MARK SCHLISSEL, PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: The really important thing is that we can now see the horizon. We can see how this is going to end.

SIDNER: From Michigan Medicine to Tampa General Hospital in Florida, something to cheer about finally. After a year of devastating loss, more than 300,000 COVID deaths in America. To medical staff at Ohio State University --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Three, 2, 1, vaccinate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's momentous. I feel honored to receive it, humbled to receive. It is a really wonderful day.

SIDNER: The complex task of figuring out how to store and ship the vaccine has been underway for months.

[05:10:03]

The vaccine needs to be kept at ultra cold temperatures. UPS and FedEx are helping to deliver the vaccine nationwide using a complex package designed by Pfizer called a thermal shipper. Now, after so many months of uncertainty, there's renewed hope this vaccine can start us down what's to be a long road to recovery.

DR. LENA NAPOLITANO, DIRECTOR OF SURGICAL INTENSIVE CARE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: We are exposed to it every minute of every day. So, I can't tell you how much this means to me. I feel like a won a million dollar lottery getting this vaccine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER (on camera): You can hear in Dr. Napolitano's voice, the exhaustion that she is experiencing, but also the immense gratitude and joy for being able to be one of the first to get this vaccine. At the end of the day, she and the other health care workers who got this, all five of them are saying, look, we can help save patients as we always have but this will us save ourselves and our families.

Sara Sidner, CNN, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: Just amazing.

All right. The emergency on Main Street is real. More COVID relief is needed, and lawmakers have been going around and around for months with no new help. And now, a vow urgency from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, pushing for a deal before the holidays, writing in a statement, we hope our Democrat counter parts share our sense of urgency.

Well, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke again on Monday, but months long battle lines proving hard to cross. Pelosi's office said the GOP demands of liability protection remain an obstacle. Republicans in the bipartisan group said they will only accept state and local aid if it's paired with liability protections.

Now, Democrats face a crucial decision, give up money for states and cities to get a slimmed down deal, or make a last ditch attempt for a bigger plan. Democrats already rejected a bigger proposal before the election. Of course, Republicans wouldn't even take up the Democratic measure that was passed way back in May. In May.

Now, something needs to be done now. Americans are facing hunger as they choose between paying bills and putting food on the table. The grace period for student loans expires at the end year. Unemployment claims are rising again, yet protections for renters disappear in just weeks, which could lead to a wave of evictions.

Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and people are really hurting here.

JARRETT: January is going to be tough if they don't do something soon. You bang the drum on this every day but it's going to be a really serious situation pretty soon.

ROMANS: It will be.

JARRETT: Well, a Republican congressman now says he's quitting the party. More on why, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:16:57]

JARRETT: Welcome back.

U.S. intelligence officials are now investigating a suspected Russian- linked hack targeting multiple federal agencies, including the Departments of Homeland Security, Agriculture, and the Department of Commerce.

CNN has learned the cyber unit at DHS is one of at least three agencies compromised in the data breach. Now, the exact scope and scale of this hack is not fully understood yet, but it's already clear that this is one of the most significant breaches of the U.S. government in years.

ROMANS: A Republican congressman from Michigan tells CNN he is so disgusted with President Trump's efforts to over turn a free and fair election. He is leaving the party.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PAUL MITCHELL (R-MI): This party has to stand up for democracy first, for our Constitution first, and not political considerations, not just a candidate, not simply for raw political power. And that's what I feel is going on, and I've had enough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Congressman Paul Mitchell said he's afraid the House Republican leadership's participation in the Trump conspiracy theories could cause long-term damage to our democracy. Mitchell says he's changing his party affiliation to independent. He is retiring at the end of the season.

JARRETT: Well, it's already been called the game of the year in the NFL. More from the Monday night thriller in your "Bleacher Report", next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:22:42]

ROMANS: All right. Welcome back.

The Ravens and Browns playing the game of the year on Monday Night Football.

Andy Scholes has this morning's "Bleacher Report".

Good morning, Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, good morning, Christine.

You know, this was as good as it gets. The Ravens and Browns combining to score 89 points, third most in Monday night football history. You know, that's with Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson having to leave this game with cramps but when the Ravens back up was injured with two minutes left in the game, Jackson reemerges from the locker room, and on 4th and five, Jackson rolls out, hit Marquis Brown for a 44 yard touchdown, Ravens retake the lead, 42-35.

Baker Mayfield not done. He would lead the Browns down the field, get it over to Kareem Hunt, and he would get to the pylon for the touchdown. Tied again at 42 with a minute left. That was plenty of time for Jackson to get the Ravens in field goal position, and Justin Tucker, arguably the best kicker ever, nails the 55 yarder to win it. Ravens tack on a safety in the final second to win an absolute thriller, 47-42.

All right. It's official the Cleveland Indians will be changing their name, but it won't happen immediately. The team's owner Paul Dolan says while they look for a new team name, they will continue to use the Indian's name. In a statement about the change, Dolan said hearing firsthand the stories and experiences of Native American people, we gained a deep understanding of how tribal communities feel about the team name and the detrimental effects it has on them.

Meantime, Native American groups applaud the change. In a statement, the leader of the change, the mascot campaign said by finally acting, Cleveland's team is moving the team and professional sports forward down a new path of inclusivity and mutual respect.

All right. Florida Gators basketball star Keyontae Johnson remains in critical but stable condition three days after collapsing on the court during a game at Florida State. The school says he's following simple commands and is undergoing further tests. He spent two days at a Tallahassee Hospital before being transferred to Gainesville via helicopter. Johnson was named the SEC's preseason player of the year.

[05:25:01]

All right. Finally, Washington is pulling out of the Pac-12 title game. The conference saying positive COVID-19 cases and contact tracing puts the Huskies' roster under the required 53-man limit. And that means Oregon will now play USC for the Pac-12 title in L.A. on Friday.

And, Laura, one week from today, the NBA season will officially tip off. Last night, Zion Williamson, 26 points in his preseason debut. Lots of people coming back in the NBA. Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, should be an exciting week of Christmas games for us from the NBA.

JARRETT: Great to have it back on.

All right. Andy, thanks so much, appreciate it.

Restaurants hoping to survive after new shut down orders in New York City. We have a closer look for you next.

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