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Coronavirus Cases Rising in States Across U.S.; Email from Trump Appointed HHS Advisor Indicates Policies Aimed at Herd Immunity for Coronavirus; Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine Vials May Contain More Doses than Previously Thought; Sen. Angus King (I-ME) is Interviewed About a GOP-Led Senate Hearing Elevating Baseless Claims of Election Fraud. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired December 17, 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]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: That is the highest number ever. Nearly a quarter million news cases, that is the highest number ever. And the way we're going, there is every reason to believe these numbers could still get even worse.

In the meantime, a key FDA panel will consider Moderna's application for emergency use authorization of its coronavirus vaccine today. That does mean it could be just days before we do have a second vaccine available.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And the highest profile person yet will get vaccinated tomorrow. Vice President Mike Pence will reportedly get his shot on TV Friday morning. President-elect Biden plans to roll up his sleeve for the shot on TV next week.

This morning we're learning about a disturbing internal push by a Trump appointee to expose children and young adults to coronavirus in an attempt to reach herd immunity, writing, quote, "We want them infected," end quote. At the same time the numbers now show a disturbing spike in the deaths of young people this year. More on that in a minute.

There are also developments on a stimulus deal on the much needed help for Americans with weekly jobless claims set to be released within this hour.

BERMAN: We're going to begin with the pandemic. Joining us now, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. And Sanjay, we talk about record deaths. More than 3,500 reported overnight. I think -- I hope people had a chance to watch Alisyn's interview in the last hour to get a sense of what one death means. One death is a tragedy, and we're talking about record numbers that just keep on growing overnight. And you have the White House Coronavirus Task Force really warning us that it could get even worse, that states are not doing the things that they need to do to stem this tide. What do we need to know this morning?

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that was a really powerful interview, and I'm so glad that you did it because, I think these numbers sometimes -- I know that they are just washing over people at this point. People are developing this compassion fade or this empathy fatigue, and they need to be hearing these stories.

But the numbers are -- they're going up, and exactly as you said, the expectation was once we got to a certain point, a tragic point of eight per million people dying roughly in this country, that all these mitigation measures would go into effect. And if they went into effect the numbers would still go up for a while, but at least they wouldn't go up as high or stay up as high as long. Unfortunately, those mitigation measures are not happening. So all the scenarios that we talk about, we've been very careful on this program not to talk too much about the worst case scenarios, because that's sometimes just causes needless fear.

But we are starting to get into now the situation where we are starting to border on these worst case scenarios, how many people dying per day in some of these scenarios, over 5,000, they say, people could be dying per day by January, and the plateau happening sometime end of January, early February. And we don't know how long that plateau would last.

So it's concerning. The country needs to compensate for this because it's going to be very hard to keep up. And this idea that, what you were talking about with the herd immunity and that being a tacit strategy, we're starting to see the repercussions of that now.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about that a little bit more, Sanjay. So the person we're referring to is a man named Paul Alexander, former HHS senior advisor, who in an email we have seen as of last night suggested that, suggested this. So let me read that for you. "Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle aged with no conditions, et cetera, have zero to little risk. So we use them to develop herd immunity. We want them infected." That was his philosophy, and Scott Atlas also talked about herd immunity.

And it's just not true. It's just not true. And guess what, we have a new data point to prove that it's not true. So also last night we've learned that there appears to have been this inexplicable spike in the deaths of young people this year. There are an average number of deaths every year for different age groups. Not this year. Not 2020. So here is what we now know from JAMA. "July appears to have been the deadliest month among this age group, meaning under 44-years-old, in modern American history. Over the past 20 years an average of 11,000 young American adults under 44 died each July. This year that number swelled to more than 16,000." So can we conclude that that is coronavirus?

GUPTA: I think almost assuredly. When you look at excess deaths, and these are very high excess deaths, 25 to 44-year-olds was the age range there.

[08:05:01]

And just as you said, these are some of the deadliest months for this particular age group in the United States in history. What else happened this year besides coronavirus? They will look deeper into this data, but almost assuredly it's COVID, and almost assuredly it's because even though people like Scott Atlas and others said we are not pursuing herd immunity, the policies and the things that were being recommended basically were herd immunity.

Frankly, it was maddening because you could see it actually happening, and then every time you asked people about it at the senior level, such as Scott Atlas they'd say, no, we're not doing that. Every policy they were recommending was taking us in that direction. So it was a terrible idea.

I read those emails from HHS. They also said things like so the bottom line is if it's more infectious the issue is who cares. This is from a senior person at HHS over the summer. It's really -- we can look in the rearview mirror, and I think sometimes it's important because we are paying the price for some of those strategies.

One thing I wanted to bring up as well because people often ask about Sweden, and they say, well, Sweden adopted herd immunity, and they're doing fine, right? They never really locked down, they're doing fine. A couple things you should know is that Sweden is in a tough place right now. First of all, take a look at this graphic, compare it to neighboring similar countries such as Denmark and Norway. It's a tough spot. It's a small country, 99 percent of their ICU beds are full right now. The health minister said this, quote, we are currently in a serious situation and we need help. They're asking for help, for more resources in terms of manpower, trying to create more bedspace.

I bring this up, again, just so reinforce what we have been saying all along. Herd immunity is a terrible strategy. It is true younger people are less likely to get sick, although they can, and they can die, as you just pointed out, and it's impossible to bubble off the vulnerable people in a society. The elderly, the people with preexisting conditions, you're starting to talk about over 100 million people. You can't do it. And that's what public health officials have said all along. We should not adopt this strategy going forward. We shouldn't have adopted it in the past.

BERMAN: We reported on this JAMA piece earlier in the show, and I'm getting all kinds of hate on Twitter for it because there are people who don't want to believe that young people can die from coronavirus, I think. They're suggesting it's overdose, opioids. And, yes, there's been an increase in that also, that's something that needs to be looked into, and we're going to learn a lot more about that. But people need to know that Rochelle Walensky, who is going to run the CDC, is one of the people who wrote this piece that was just published in JAMA overnight. And the numbers do bear out that there is clearly an increase in deaths among this group 25 to 44-years-old. They are not as likely to die as older people, but there are just so many cases at this point, Sanjay, it puts people at greater risk. I just wanted to make that clear.

I want to ask you about the other story overnight that I read and I think Alisyn read, too, and we were both like, huh, this is something. It has to do with the fact that it turns out that there are more vaccine in each vile of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine than previously thought, and that the people administering it are able to provide more doses than previously thought. Instead of five doses per vile, six, maybe sometimes seven. What exactly -- how did this happen, first of all, and what are the implications?

GUPTA: Yes, I spent a good chunk of the morning talking to pharmacists about this. It's actually a very interesting process. When you're filling these vials, it's called the fill and finish process. You finish the vials, get them ready for delivery, oftentimes there will be a little bit of extra put in just in anticipation of losing a little bit when you draw it up in a syringe, maybe a little bit of spillage, that can even change a little bit of volume as it travels, the air pressure by plane. All these various things that I hadn't really considered.

But it seems to be very true that there's often extra, and a single dose is 0.3 milliliters. So you take out 0.3 milliliters and then you dilute it with saline. So there should be 1.5 milliliters in there for five doses. But again, they often put a little extra in there, and as it turns out the extra that they're putting in is enough to maybe do one or two more doses.

They saw the same thing in the U.K., and they didn't quite know what to do with that, so they were tossing the extra vaccine. Same thing was happening in hospitals here until they got this additional guidance from the FDA that says no, no, you can actually use that, just don't mix it with other bottles because there's no preservatives in these bottles, you don't want to contaminate. But if you have enough to get another 0.3 or even 0.6, you can get the extra doses.

People are also concerned because they say, OK, we gave a certain number of doses now. Now we are expecting the same number of doses three weeks from now for the second dose, what if it doesn't add up?

[08:10:00]

It seems to be not a big concern because it's likely they're going to sort of match these types of doses and we're going to have maybe 120 percent of what we thought. Instead of 100 million doses, we may have 120 million doses.

CAMEROTA: John and I totally understand this concept. It's the concept of a heavy pour, and it's how John makes a cocktail.

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: And it's a lucky accident, basically, on every level is how we see it.

GUPTA: What time in the morning do these heavy pours start for you guys?

BERMAN: You don't always remember, Sanjay. You don't always remember

(LAUGHTER)

GUPTA: Right. CAMEROTA: But that is good news any way you slice it. Sanjay, thank

you very much.

GUPTA: You got it. Thank you.

CAMEROTA: OK, a coronavirus stimulus deal could be announced today on Capitol Hill. What's in it? What's been thrown out of it? We'll ask a key senator who is part of the negotiations next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: We do have some breaking news. You're looking at live pictures of a Spirit Airlines flight that skidded off a taxi way in Baltimore, BWI airport. This was a flight that was coming from Vegas, apparently landed, and during the process of taxiing after it skidded off of there. You can see the plane appears to be in fine condition. You can see the buses now rolling away from the plane, which indicates that the people have been moved off the plane and are being taken away. I'm sure it was not pleasant for them, but it does appear that the situation is under control.

[08:15:02]

Obviously, we have had all kinds of weather in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast contributing to what you're seeing here.

This morning, President Trump's former homeland security adviser is warning the U.S. government is under attack in the wake of a widespread breach by Russian hackers.

Now, instead of focusing on that, the Republican-led Senate Homeland Security Committee spent the day repeating nonsense and lies about election fraud. Here is how it went.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): We're not going to be able to just move on without bringing up these irregularities, examining them and providing an explanation and see where there really are problems so we can correct it moving forward.

Senator Paul?

SEN. GARY PETERS (D-MI): Mr. Chairman, I've got to respond to that. I mean, you're saying I'm putting out misinformation (ph) --

JOHNSON: Try.

PETERS: Well, one, I had nothing to do with this report --

JOHNSON: You lied repeatedly.

PETERS: I did not. JOHNSON: You lied repeatedly in the press that I was spreading

Russian disinformation and that was an outright lie and I told you to stop lying and you continued to do it.

PETERS: Mr. Chairman, this is not about airing your grievances, I don't know what rabbit hole you're running down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Joining us now is independent Senator Angus King. He chaired the Cyberspace Solarium Commission since last March and formed America's cybersecurity doctrine for the 21st century.

Senator King, we just gave you a sense of the tone of that hearing, it's actually the substance that he is of much greater concern. Instead of focusing on this huge apparently Russian hack into all kinds of U.S. government agencies, Senator Ron Johnson and the Republicans there continue to repeat this widely discredited false information about the past election.

What are your concerns about what you saw?

SEN. ANGUS KING (I-ME): Well, let me unpack it a little bit because, you know, John, people are complex. I've got to say, as you mentioned, I've been working for a year and a half with a bipartisan group across the Congress and the government and the private sector on cyber and protecting our country from cyber, and Ron Johnson was an ally in that -- in that fight. And in the defense bill that passed last week are 25 or 26 of our recommendations.

In fact, this little is the most significant piece of cyber legislation I believe that Congress has ever passed and that's why many of us desperately hope the president will either sign it or let it become law without his signature because it's critical to dealing -- the provisions in that bill are critical to protecting us from the kind of hack that we have experienced over the last -- well, it's been six or eight months, we just discovered it in the last few days.

On the other hand, the whole discussion about the election is -- the problem with it is that those who claim that there are irregularities or fraud or whatever it is have never shown any evidence of it. That's the heart of this and, you know, there are millions of people who believe the election was stolen and it was illegitimate. Why do they believe that? Because they're being told it daily, particularly by the president of the United States.

But there have been something like 55 or 60 lawsuits where courts have heard whatever the evidence was and said there's no evidence here. They've thrown the cases out. They've all been thrown out.

So, you know, if Ron Johnson wants to have a hearing to discuss this, that's fine. But don't just keep crying fraud. Let's see the evidence. And so far, we haven't seen it.

And even the Justice Department, Bill Barr, the president's favorite attorney general, said we looked at this, there's no evidence of widespread fraud in this election. Chris Krebs at the DHS, same thing, no evidence of widespread fraud. Republican judges, Republican elected officials across the country, nobody has seen it.

So, it's time for the president and his allies to not -- to move from alleging to proving, and so far, that hasn't happened.

BERMAN: Well, they are not there yet. I mean, they are clearly not there yet.

Tommy Tuberville, who will join you in the Senate to be the new senator from Alabama in a few weeks, he was at a rally yesterday saying, it's impossible what happened. He said it's impossible that Joe Biden won the election. But we're going to get it corrected, he says.

KING: Well, that's ridiculous. I mean, what's the basis of saying that? It's possible because Joe Biden got more votes, 7 million more votes nationwide.

So, you know -- and they've recounted. In Georgia, they recounted three times, they've recounted Democratic candidate -- counties in Michigan, they keep coming up with the same margin, in fact, in a couple of cases, Joe Biden's margin went up.

I mean, this is really dangerous stuff, John. That's the problem.

Our system which we take more granted rests on trust and when you undermine people's trust in elections and you say, okay, the winner won, my guy lost, we move on, we fight the battle another year or two years or four years.

[08:20:03]

When that doesn't happen, the whole system starts to break down. This is a frontal assault on democracy.

BERMAN: Talking about frontal assault on democracy, this hack in the U.S. systems, you are on the Intelligence Committee, what have you been told by the administration that you can tell us about the scope of this hack?

KING: Well, I can't tell you anything that I've learned in a classified setting, I can just tell you, it's -- it's one of the most serious attacks that we have ever seen because it goes directly to some of our most sensitive agencies like the Department of Homeland Security.

This is -- I hate to say this, but this is what we've been predicting. I mean, the report of the commission that Mike Gallagher, Republican congressman from Wisconsin, and I led over the past year and a half, this is -- this is what we've been predicting, that an attack like this or something worse.

And right now, John, what we don't know is what the adversary -- and we are not sure who the adversary is, there's a lot of talk about a particular country but I can't confirm that. Attribution is one of the hard things in this business, but they are in these networks.

So the question now is, what are they going to do? What's their goal? What's their intention?

And stop for a minute and ask yourself what if this were the electric grid? What if this were the airline management of the airways, the towers? What if it were the financial system?

I mean, this is a gigantic risk. It's the most serious external risk that this country faces from a number of different potential adversaries and that's why I want to go back -- we've got to get this defense bill passed because there's so much in it to help us defend ourselves. Ironically, the bill is sitting on the president's desk at the moment of this most recent attack.

BERMAN: As far as we know, he's still threatening to veto it.

Senator Angus King, we've got to let you go. Those candy canes behind you, are they real?

KING: Yeah, they are. I'll send you one. The tree was brought by a member of my staff who took pity on me living by myself here in Washington. He showed up one day with a little tree and the decorations. So it's my hermit Christmas tree.

BERMAN: Well, we hope you have a merry Christmas with your tree and we hope you get to enjoy it virtually or in person with somebody.

So, Senator King, thank you very much for being with us, as always. Merry Christmas.

KING: Thanks, John. Good to be with you.

BERMAN: Alisyn?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Okay. John. We have breaking news right now.

The Pentagon has just confirmed that top U.S. General Mark Milley met with a Taliban delegation in Qatar this week as part of an effort to broker peace in the region.

Last month, the Trump administration announced that the U.S. will withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq by January 15th. Just days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

The United States has been directly fighting the Taliban or supporting Afghan security forces against them since shortly after the 9/11 attacks. We will bring you more on that as soon as we have it.

All right. We're also getting a better idea this morning of how President Trump plans to use his final days in office for his friends and against his perceived enemies. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:27:23]

CAMEROTA: Sources tell CNN that President Trump is pushing to appoint special counsels to investigate any baseless allegations of voter fraud and the allegations surrounding Hunter Biden.

Joining us now to discuss this and more, we have CNN political correspondent Abby Phillip and CNN senior political commentator David Axelrod.

Great to have both of you.

So, Abby, CNN's reporting is that President Trump wants to see the appointment of special counsels for his own sort of, you know, pet issues or projects here and it sounded yesterday as if Senator Lindsey Graham agreed with his logic. So listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): If you believe a special counsel is needed to look at the Trump world regarding Russia how can you say that there is no need for a special counsel regarding Hunter Biden?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Is that a good comparison, Abby?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, for starters, you know, there's been so much misinformation on the Republican side about why the Russia investigation began in the first place, but let's remember that it was the conclusion of the United States intelligence community that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and there were concerns within the FBI about what kind of connections might have existed between the Trump campaign and that effort.

Now, the issue at hand was something of -- I think most people would agree -- urgent national security matters. I mean, it wasn't about targeting a specific individual and their tax activities, but rather looking into something that had implications for the entire country. I think that is the biggest difference.

The issues with Hunter Biden and his taxes, that may or may not bear out into anything, but there's no reason to believe at the moment that this investigation which apparently has been ongoing for quite some time, would not continue to be ongoing. And beyond that, what are the national security implications of Hunter Biden maybe having issues with his taxes? I think that's really the question for people like Lindsey Graham and perhaps the president as well.

BERMAN: So, while the president is focused on Hunter Biden, he is also focused on pardons. There is really interesting new CNN reporting just how much he is focused on this, Axe. Unlike practically any other matter related to his presidency, his clemency powers are a topic Trump seems to enjoy discussing. In all, the president is considering pardons for more than two dozen people in his orbit who he believes were targeted or could be targeted in the future for political ends. The phone apparently ringing off the hook, Axe, inside the White House

with people talking and asking for pardons or clemency.

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yeah. Well, I mean, in fairness, there's nothing else going on, really.