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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Trump Touts Vaccine & Economy, Says No More Lockdowns. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired November 13, 2020 - 16:30   ET

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

[16:30:02]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And it's about time that they can have those golden years.

Again, this process is starting right away. Millions of doses will soon be going out the door. They are already waiting for that final approval.

As soon as April, the vaccine will be available to the entire general population with the exception of places like New York state where, for political reasons, the governor decided, they say -- and, you know, I don't think it's good politically. I think it's very bad from a health standpoint, but he wants to take his time on the vaccine. He doesn't trust where the vaccine is coming from.

These are coming from the greatest companies anywhere in the world, greatest labs in the world, but he doesn't trust the fact that it's this White House, this administration. So, we won't be delivering it to New York until we have authorization to do so and that pains me to say that. This is a very successful, amazing vaccine at 90 percent and more.

But -- so the governor, Governor Cuomo, will have to let us know when he is ready for it. Otherwise, we can't be delivering it to a state that won't be giving it to its people immediately.

And I know many -- I know the people of New York very well. I know they want it. So the governor will let us know when he is ready.

He's had some very bad editorials recently about this statement and what's happened with respect to nursing homes and his handling of nursing homes, and I hope he doesn't handle this as badly as he's handled the nursing homes. But we're ready to provide it as soon as they let us know that they'll actually use it. And again, it's a very safe and a great vaccine.

Already, we have among the lowest case fatality rates our country, anywhere in the world, the entire world, and we have performed significantly better than our peer countries.

As far as therapeutics are concerned, my administration also made critical investments in therapies that have helped reduce the mortality rate by 85 percent. That's to me one of the most exciting things. It's incredible, some of the antibody vaccines and others that have come out and have really helped people, 85 percent.

Last month, the FDA approved remdesivir and we've secured enough remdesivir to treat 850,000 patients.

My administration finalized an agreement with Eli Lilly to purchase the first doses of their antibody therapy which shows amazing results. This treatment will be available completely free of cost to patients. 5,000 units have already been shipped and many more going out the door as we speak. We also reached an agreement with AstraZeneca for the large-scale manufacturing of their antibody treatment, which is excellent. We expect to issue emergency use authorizations for a number of additional treatments in the near future.

Tremendous promise but remember the 85 percent number. That's an incredible, incredible number. But we have some tremendously promising drugs online and ready to come out. We have ensured that our frontline workers have all of the tools they need.

My administration has invoked the Defense Production Act and related authorities over 100 times and have made a historic investment into our industrial base. All states that requested PPE from the federal government have received the PPE almost immediately upon request.

Every American who needed a ventilator has had access to a ventilator. Think of that. Very complicated piece of equipment, very expensive. And we haven't had one person in this whole country that has requested or needed a ventilator that hasn't had it. Every single request has been immediately filled.

So, that was something. That was a great job. And now, we're helping the rest of the world with ventilators because it's a very hard thing. We're producing thousands of -- thousands of ventilators a month.

The federal government has 22,000 beds immediately available for states and jurisdictions that need additional capacity. But we think that it's going to start going down possibly very quickly. We'll see what happens but with the vaccine, you'll see numbers going down within a matter of months and they'll go down very rapidly.

As we continue to combat the virus, our economy is rebounding far beyond any expectations. I see the stock market is up almost 400 points today again, and it's ready to break the all-time record. Our jobs records are incredible. The job numbers are incredible.

And the last six months, we've created over 13 million jobs and slashed the unemployment rate by more than half. Last quarter, we witnessed the fastest economic growth ever recorded in the history of our country, 33.1 percent. It's a number that is more than double our highest that was in 1952 and we more than doubled it.

The United States experienced the smallest economic contraction and the most rapid economic recovery of any major Western nation.

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We went down less and went up more, which is quite a combination of facts.

While healthy Americans have gone back to work and to school, we continue to spare no expense to protect the elderly and the vulnerable. According to some estimates, a national lockdown cost $50 billion a day and hundreds of thousands of jobs every single day.

Ideally, we won't go to a lockdown -- I will not go. This administration will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully, the whatever happens in the future, who knows, which administration will be, I guess time will tell, but I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown.

There won't be necessity. Lockdowns cost lives and they cost a lot of problems to cure. You cannot be -- you got to remember, cannot be worse than the problem, itself. And I've said it many times.

And when you look at what happens during a lockdown, I just say it very loudly. It's horrible what happens with drugs, alcohol, depression, loss of jobs, business closures. It's a terrible thing.

So, this administration will not go -- under any circumstances, will not go to a lockdown but we'd be very vigilant and very careful. We understand the disease. It's a complicated disease but we understand it very well.

We ask all Americans to remain vigilant, especially as the weather gets colder and it becomes more difficult to go outside and to have outside gatherings.

And with that, I want to ask some very talented people to come up and say a few words. General Perna and Dr. Slaoui have been incredible.

The general is really getting started right now, but he's really -- what we don't know and what people don't know. He started putting this all together six months ago and you're going to see some real action.

So, General, maybe you'll start it off? And then, Doctor, you'll go right after that.

Thank you very much.

Then we're going to finish it off with Mike Pence. Okay?

Thank you. Please. Thank you. Sure.

DR. MONCEF SLAOUI, SCIENTIFIC HEAD, OPERATION WARP SPEED: Thank you, Mr. President.

Hi, everybody.

So Operation Warp Speed's mission is to enable and accelerate the development of vaccines and therapeutic to have control the COVID-19 pandemic and save lives. On May 15th, almost six months ago to the day, we stated the goal of the operation which was to have vaccines and therapeutics available and approved for using the U.S. population by the end of the year 2020. We said then that while very challenging, the goal was credible and,

therefore, was worth trying with the best -- our best to achieve it. Today, we're almost six months later, and I think we can say significant progress has been made and while we are not there yet, we are close to the objective.

Let me share with you some facts. If I look at the vaccine side, we selected the portfolio of six vaccines using three different platform technologies and we elected to have two vaccines from each platform technology.

First platform is what's called Messenger RNA, and two vaccines using that platform were in the portfolio, one by Pfizer and one by Moderna.

The second platform is using what's called live viral vectors, and we have one from J&J and one from AstraZeneca in partnership with Oxford University.

And the third platform was the recombinant protein platform with one vaccine from the biotech company here in the U.S. called Novavax, and another one from a partnership between Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline.

These vaccines are now, six vaccines, are all in the clinical development stages and four of them are in phase three trials. And of the four that are in phase three trials, two have effectively completed enrolment in the phase three trial.

One of the two has announced on Monday to, I think, thrilling information that they had 90 percent efficacy. That was the Pfizer vaccine, demonstrating that vaccination is possible against COVID-19, that the kind of choices we have made in terms of the antigens selected was effective and made us optimistic that other vaccine may also be effective.

On this Wednesday, the same week, just this Wednesday, Moderna, the other vaccine company with a vaccine using similar technology, Messenger RNA, announces they have achieved the number of cases in their trial to allow for first interim analysis.

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And I would expect that shortly, probably next week, we may hear what I hope to be another very good information regarding an efficacious vaccine.

The two other vaccines that are in phase three trial are using the live vector platform, the J&J vaccine and the AstraZeneca vaccine have recruited a few thousands subjects in their trials.

I would like to take this opportunity to invite as many Americans as possible who would like to volunteer to participate in these clinical trials, as that's the only way we are able to achieve a demonstration of the safety and the efficacy of these vaccines.

The last two vaccines, the protein -- recombinant protein vaccines are planned to start their phase three trials within the next few weeks. And while we are developing this vaccine, we haven't looked at only the development, of course, in partnership with the companies that are the sponsors for the vaccine. And we also invested very significantly in the manufacturing of these vaccines, in such a way as to when we have the clinical efficacy demonstration with these vaccines, we would also have vaccine doses to be able to immunize the U.S. population.

So, the two vaccines that are completing their phase three trial are likely to be filing their files with the FDA for potentially emergency use authorization within the next few weeks. And, hopefully, if approved, they could be used for immunization in the U.S. population in the month of December.

And we have -- we planned to have enough vaccine doses available for use in the U.S. population to immunize about 20 million individuals in the month of December and another 25 million to 30 million per month on an ongoing basis from thereon. And as of the month of February or March, if we have more vaccines approved, such as a live vector vaccine, we may be able to immunize a larger number of Americans on an ongoing basis per month.

Operation Warp Speed didn't only focus on vaccines. We also looked at therapeutics, and we have worked with a number of companies developing monoclonal antibodies, in particular that are able to neutralize the virus.

As Mr. President said, we have announced partnerships with Eli Lilly, with Regeneron and with AstraZeneca. And on Monday, Eli Lilly's monoclonal antibody was granted an emergency use authorization to treat patients that are infected and at risk of hospitalization. The Regeneron monoclonal antibodies have been also filed for emergency use authorization, which is currently under review and potentially, you know, reaching approval within the next few weeks.

Finally, AstraZeneca just in the last few days has received the green light to start two large phase three trials with their monoclonal antibodies supported by Operation Warp Speed to prevent the acquisition of COVID-19 disease in very frail subjects or in very high risk subjects as a protective alternative to the vaccine.

So, potentially, two vaccines and two therapeutics may be granted an emergency use authorization before the end of this year. I think it's a remarkable achievement within a period of six to seven months.

It is important to note that this progress has been achieved without any political interference. I said it many times. And at every step has been and is being judged by independent expert bodies, whether it's when the FDA grants the green light to go into clinical trials or whether when the data safety monitoring boards review the safety of the studies on an ongoing basis and sometimes put them on hold, as I'm sure you have witnessed with the AstraZeneca vaccine, for instance.

And these same data safety monitoring boards are the independent boards of experts that analyze the safety of the vaccines and the safety of the vaccines and tell the companies whether they should progress with the filing of an emergency use authorization or not. So, it's not the companies. It's not Operation Warp Speed. It's not

the U.S. government. It is independent experts that assess the safety and the efficacy of the vaccines that are being tested.

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And when the FDA will review these vaccines and these therapeutics, they will also have the advice, public advice, from boards, one of them is called VRBPAC, is the advisory board to the FDA for vaccine reviews on -- after review of the data transparently and available to everybody to look into before the FDA then makes its decision to either authorize a vaccine or not authorize it.

On that basis, I personally feel very comfortable to say that the vaccines and therapeutics that we have developed and accelerate will be judged independently, and if approved, should be used by all in the population. Because I believe vaccination is likely to be the cornerstone among all the other measures that we have the take to help us really control this pandemic.

I will now pass to my co-leader, General Perna, who will tell you about the support that the operation has provided to manufacturing of the vaccine and also to their distribution.

Thank you very much.

GEN. GUSTAVE PERNA, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, OPERATION WARP SPEED: Mr. President, thank you for allowing me to continue service and our great nation as a co-leader with Dr. Moncef Slaoui on this mission.

Let me start by emphasizing for me, what is Operation Warp Speed about? It is about saving lives. It is a herculean task that the president put us on many months ago. And as Dr. Slaoui just laid out, we are making steady process and we are ready to execute.

Through the whole of American approach, we have leveraged the best of nation and federal government, local, states, industry and academia to expand the capacity and capability to achieve our mission. It has been powerful. We have capitalized on the best contracting, logistics, and planning experts --

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: All right. You have been listening to President Trump and officials who have been working on the successful Operation Warp Speed. They were speaking in the Rose Garden. The president discussing how a coronavirus vaccine will soon be approved and available to most Americans as soon as April. Obviously, we all hope that is true.

He did not concede his election loss, saying, quote, time will tell which administration will be in control come January.

The news flash, of course, is that the Biden/Harris administration will be in control in January, whether or not President Trump wants to acknowledge that reality.

But let's discuss this important vaccine news. Sanjay, let me bring you back. I'm sorry for cutting you off before.

You just heard outgoing President Trump touting Operation Warp Speed, taking credit for the work they've done with Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine.

As you and I have discussed many times, this is -- especially, you know, there have been a ton of failures of the Trump administration to address this pandemic. This is one of the successes.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, this is one of the bright spots. And you know, I think Moncef Slaoui, who is the scientific adviser for Operation Warp Speed, basically laid it out. He said, you know, they brought me in six months ago.

By the end of year, it is likely -- and we have to say that -- we don't know for sure that these are going to actually get authorized, but it's looking likely that there will be two vaccines authorized by the end of the year. I don't know if you caught that, Pfizer's and Moderna's. Both, he thinks.

And also two monoclonal antibody therapy he says authorized by the end of the year. One of them has already been authorized, the Eli Lilly one.

You know, that is worth celebrating. I mean, the context for this is that is vaccines can take decades sometimes to make, and even after the application goes in for emergency use authorization, that can take months. In December of 2019, an Ebola vaccine was authorized. That application went in six months earlier and that was considered record turnaround at the time.

Point is, that things moved very quickly here, and it is quite notable, the pace of medical innovation.

TAPPER: And he -- Dr. Slaoui said something about needing volunteers. What was he -- what was he requesting exactly?

GUPTA: Well, he's pointing out that there's -- we talk about the Moderna and Pfizer trials, but there's four other vaccine trials that are ongoing, two of them are in the process of now recruiting patients for the phase three trials. So, they have, I think he said they had a few thousand. As you know typically, you're talking about tens of thousands of patients in these trials. The Pfizer one had to get 43,000 patients.

So they need people to volunteer for these trials. They need people who represent the demographics of people who are most likely to be affected by this disease. So people with preexisting conditions, people who are elderly.

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So, it's important to get that sort of participation so these trials move along faster.

TAPPER: And, Sanjay, outgoing President Trump also said that his administration is going to prioritize the elderly and high-risk individuals when they begin to distribute the vaccine.

Is that standard?

GUPTA: Yeah. I mean, what we've heard -- it was a little different than what we've heard, which is that the health care workers are also going to be prioritized.

Think of it like this -- they are at risk obviously because they take care of COVID patients, but, you know, when you talk about hospital systems around the country, what makes them vulnerable or overwhelmed is if you get a lot of health-care workers who get sick and they're out. That makes it more challenging to take care of patients. So, health-care workers at the top of the list as well to basically create a greater likelihood that hospital systems can stay stable and you're not losing human sort of capital resources within these capital systems.

But yes, elderly people, people with preexisting conditions. I was just writing down the math. Some 20 million people he says, by the end of the year, this is Moncef Slaoui, and then 25 million a month or so, 25 million to 30 million a month or so in terms of who could be vaccinated after that.

TAPPER: And we know the Pfizer vaccine, I believe, it's two doses and needs to be kept in below freezing temperatures. Do we know about the other vaccine? Is it AstraZeneca? I forget about the name of the pharmaceutical company.

Moderna -- do we know about in terms of how many doses and how difficult it will be to distribute and inoculate people?

GUPTA: Yeah, it's pretty similar, what we call these cold storage challenges. Not quite as cold as Pfizer. But I think the way to look at it as someone explained it to me is do the conventional distribution routes of cold storage for refrigeration, will they work or not for this product?

For example, Johnson and Johnson, which is further down the line, they have -- they're trialing a one-shot normal cold storage vaccine. If that were to get authorized and approved, that would be much easier to distribute around the world in the United States, because existing distribution channels using that sort of cold storage exist.

For Moderna, for Pfizer, these are going to be brand-new challenges for cold storage because it's never been done before. By the way, Pfizer is sort of -- they're not using the typical distribution channels. They've decided to sort of go this on their own. That part of it, Moderna, my understanding is.

TAPPER: Gloria Borger, and Jeff Zeleny is also with us.

Gloria, the outgoing president made a point to say this administration will not go into lockdown, but who knows what will happen in the future? This is the closest he's publicly gotten to recognizing that Joe Biden is the president-elect and will be taking office in January 20th. Not there yet. I'm not giving him any credit for being within the

realm of the solar system instead to have planet earth, but it was the closest thing we've heard.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: It is. It was a really telling slip of the tongue because it's clear that this is what he's thinking. I mean, today was an important day. Joe Biden got to 306 which was the number that he was at four years ago.

It's hard for him not to acknowledge this. He is probably not ready to acknowledge it publicly because he hasn't figured out how he is going to his mike drop. I'm not -- we are not privy to how he is going to do it at this point. Is he going to wait until November 20th when Georgia is officially certified, you know, the recount? We just don't know.

But I thought that was really telling, Jake, because what he was saying I'm going to let down but whatever administration -- I mean, who knows. Well, that is more than we have heard from him.

TAPPER: Yeah.

BORGER: Because we have not heard anything from him, of course.

TAPPER: Still not cause for celebration.

BORGER: No.

TAPPER: But at least something to acknowledge.

BORGER: Reality? A little reality, maybe.

TAPPER: A little bit.

BORGER: Maybe.

TAPPER: Jeff, this is the first time we are hearing from the outing president since Joe Biden was declared the president-elect. He did not mention Joe Biden.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: He did not mention Joe Biden. I think in his demeanor he looked like a different person, quite frankly. His hair looked different. His demeanor looked different.

We will see how he continues throughout the news conference here, but he did not mention Joe Biden and Joe Biden has been moving forward with his transition. Actually, just moments before he came out, the Biden transition team put out a statement calling on this administration to talk about masks, calling on this administration to act with urgency and we haven't seen them do. And we did not hear the president do anything like that.

It was just talking about vaccines. He sounded as though this crisis is on the verge of being over and that is simply not what the facts are showing. From a strictly political matter here, we did not see any acknowledgment of the reality that we are told that he has realized and we know that Republicans virtually all of them, with the exception of perhaps some who are on his payroll still have acknowledged the reality that Joe Biden has reached a 306 and he is going to be the president on January 20th at noon. We'll see if President Trump is there or not.

We just aren't sure of that but he did not really -- I didn't think, go as far as some Republicans in this town were hoping he would.

TAPPER: Yeah. And we should note, retired Marine General John Kelly who served as President Trump's chief of staff has given an interview to "Politico" in which he says that outgoing President Trump should acknowledge and allow to begin the transition process.

If we hear outgoing President Trump saying, you know, that it could -- who knows what is going to happen, it might be worthwhile for the sake of national security, at least according to Kelly, to begin that process.

Let me bring in Sara Murray right now who is investigating the vaccine distribution challenges. What have you learned? What was your response to what we just heard?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, look, this is not going to be an easy challenge for any state. And we heard from these officials that the supply initially is going to be really limited and so, states are trying to prepare for this, right?

And one of the things that they can't get an answer to right now from this administration is how many doses of this vaccine are they going to be getting potentially, you know, as soon as December? There's a big difference between if you're getting 10,000 doses delivered to your state versus if you're getting 5 million. And right now, they are not getting a lot of clarity on that from the Trump administration that's making it harder for to plan where they want to distribute the vaccine, how they're going to distribute the vaccine within their own state. You know, a lot of this is going to be going to health care workers, the frontline workers initially.

You know what else is interesting, you hear the president out there in his sort of diatribe against New York when he's talking about this vaccine, you know, he's not going to be the one who's sitting in the Oval Office when it's time to distribute this vaccine to most Americans. So, I don't really think his feelings about New York are going to be particularly relevant when it comes time for this vaccine to be available to, you know, you and I, Jake, and Gloria.

But for this initial phase, I think states are really kind of trying to keep their heads down, stay out of the political fray, and prepare for how to get this first set of doses to these health care workers as quickly as possible. As Sanjay pointed out, there are going to be some really difficulties when it comes to this Pfizer vaccine and the cold storage states are trying to make plans as detailed as they possibly can without knowing how many doses they're going to get.

TAPPER: And, Gloria, President -- outgoing President Trump earlier today put on Twitter, again, one of these deranged tin foil hat conspiracy theories about election software changing the election results. There's no evidence for it.

BORGER: None.

TAPPER: It's been debunked by his own cybersecurity czar, Chris Krebs at the Department of Homeland Security. It's just -- I mean, he is just salting the fields so that people will not accept Joe Biden as president-elect.

BORGER: Yeah. I mean, his own -- his own cybersecurity people are saying this is the most secure election in American history and he is still sending out this disinformation. When you ask the question why, it has to be because he doesn't care about the democracy or the country or the future of his own Republican Party but it is about himself, and how he can possibly accept this loss, and the only way that he can possibly do it is say it was rigged and then move on and say, guess what, I'll be back again in 2024. That is how I think he might do it.

TAPPER: It's so disgraceful, though.

BORGER: It is.

TAPPER: And what I wonder is, I know that there remain patriots in the Trump administration --

BORGER: Of course.

TAPPER: -- in the Trump White House. People who have been trying to contain this president, this outgoing president's worse impulses and I just wonder at what point do they just leave?

BORGER: Well, I think there are going to be some people who are going to be with him until the bitter end. Kayleigh McEnany is one I think of who said today that he would, you know, attend his own inauguration. Of course --

TAPPER: Yeah, but I'm asking about the patriots. I'm not asking about the sycophants.

BORGER: Yeah, right. Well, you know, a lot of them have left, Jake, a lot of them have left, and the people that are left are his family and his devotees and people who figure that either they will stick with him for their own political good because he did get 71 million or 72 million votes and that ain't beans.

TAPPER: Yeah.

BORGER: And it's their own political future they are thinking about, not the country.

TAPPER: And let me just -- Gloria, thank you so much and thanks, everyone.

Let me just remind the American people -- we don't need outgoing President Trump to concede. It's not required. It doesn't matter. President-elect Joe Biden will take the office on January 20th and that will be the end of that. It's just the question how much of a sore loser the outgoing president wants to behave like.

Be sure to tune in to CNN's "STATE OF THE UNION" this Sunday morning. My guests include Dr. Anthony Fauci, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, and Democratic Georgia Senate candidate, Reverend Raphael Warnock. That's at 9:00 a.m. and noon Eastern on Sunday.

I'll see you then.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now.