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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Moderna Says Vaccine 94.5 Percent Effective; Biden Warns of Dangers in Transition Delay. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired November 16, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:00]

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: He has got to leave the stage, but he still wants to be the star. How does he do it?

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: You're so right.

Gloria, thank you.

BORGER: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Thanks to everyone for talking to me after listening to the president-elect.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thanks for being here.

"THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" starts right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

And we begin today with breaking news.

Just moments ago, president-elect Joe Biden just finished speaking about coronavirus and the state of the economy, the president-elect calling for a cooperation between his incoming administration and the outgoing Trump administration, which is still refusing to accept the reality of Mr. Trump's loss.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT: More people may die.

The sooner we have access to the administration's distribution plan, the sooner this transition would be smoothly moved forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: More people may die. President-elect Biden says it's a stark warning, as outgoing President Trump is still spreading the lie that he won the election, the election that he lost significantly, and the Trump administration continuing to prevent the Biden/Harris transition team from officially being recognized. President-elect Biden calling President Trump's refusal to concede embarrassing for the United States.

And, as CNN's Jeff Zeleny reports for us now, Biden is also laying out his plans for how he will try to get Republicans on board if President Trump never concedes.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BIDEN: More people may die if we don't coordinate.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President-elect Joe Biden raising his voice today, saying it's critical for his incoming administration to urgently start its transition.

BIDEN: We're going into a very dark winter. Things are going to get much tougher before they get easier. It's going to be difficult, but it can be done.

ZELENY: Along with rapidly rising cases of coronavirus, the economic headwinds are among the monumental challenges he in vice president- elect Kamala Harris will inherit in just 65 days. Biden and Harris are trying to show they're moving ahead, receiving a briefing today from the nation's top labor leaders and the CEOs of General Motors, Microsoft and other companies.

BIDEN: It was really encouraging, quite frankly, to get people, business and labor, together, agreeing on the way forward, which I'm convinced the American people will rally to do when they hear what we have in mind.

ZELENY: Yet their transition to power is still being complicated by President Trump and his administration's refusal to acknowledge the outcome of the election.

Biden's team is fighting for access and sounding the alarm about being shut out of planning for the critical distribution of COVID vaccines.

BIDEN: If we have to wait until January 20 to start that planning, it puts us behind over a month, month-and-a-half. And so it's important that it be done, that there be coordination now.

ZELENY: On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci telling Jake it's in the best interest of the nation for the collaboration to start now.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: Of course it would be better if we could start working with them.

ZELENY: But that cannot happen until the General Services Administration, led by a Trump appointee, recognizes Biden's victory

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar refusing today to acknowledge a Biden transition is even under way.

ALEX AZAR, U.S. HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: Once GSA determines that there is, if there is, a transition to do, we will ensure that it's cooperative and professional. That determination hasn't been made.

ZELENY: The tension underscores the broader challenges facing Biden. He campaigned on a pledge to unite the country, a goal Trump is making more difficult by the day.

Former President Barack Obama, who invited Trump to the White House four years ago as president-elect, has strong words for him now.

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A president is a public servant. They are temporary occupants of the office, by design. And when your time is up, then it is your job to put the country first and think beyond your own ego and your own interests and your own disappointments.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZELENY: So, president-elect Biden, Jake, clearly raising his voice here, trying to increase the pressure on the Trump administration to get them access, his health teams access to this vaccine plan.

But he also said this: "I still find it more embarrassing for the country than debilitating" -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Jeff Zeleny with the Biden/Harris transition team, thanks so much.

While most Republican officeholders have yet to acknowledge reality and that President Trump was defeated and President Joe Biden -- and president-elect Joe Biden is the president-elect, two former national security advisers to President Trump say that his claims of a rigged election are just plain wrong.

And, as CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports, even the current national security adviser today also seemed to be moving closer to acknowledging the reality of outgoing President Trump's loss.

[16:05:05]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Trump is attempting to cling to power by blocking Joe Biden's transition to the White House, while pushing conspiracy theories about the election that his own administration has debunked.

This weekend, he acknowledged Joe Biden's win for the first time, tweeting that "He won," followed by a series of lies, before hours later tweeting, "I concede nothing" and falsely claiming that he won the election.

President-elect Biden's incoming team is dismissing the current president's mixed messages.

RON KLAIN, INCOMING WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: Donald Trump's Twitter feed doesn't make Joe Biden president or not president. The American people did that.

COLLINS: But, as Trump is continuing to deny reality, his national security adviser, Robert O'Brien, became one of the few senior officials to move closer to publicly accepting it.

ROBERT O'BRIEN, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: If the Biden/Harris ticket is determined to be the winner, and it's -- obviously, things look that way now -- we will have a very professional transition from the National Security Council.

COLLINS: Both of Trump's former national security advisers are also criticizing his refusal to accept Biden's win.

JOHN BOLTON, FORMER U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: What I worry about, I worry about the effect on the country for delegitimizing our institutions by eroding public confidence in the electoral process.

H.R. MCMASTER, FORMER U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: What the president says and this tweet is just wrong. It's regrettable. It's counterproductive.

COLLINS: Maryland's Republican Governor Larry Hogan said Trump's baseless claims are losing any credibility they had and it's time for him to concede.

GOV. LARRY HOGAN (R-MD): More and more Republicans every day are coming out, saying, look, we -- we're in the middle of two twin crises. This COVID-19 is spreading all across the country. Hospitals are overflowing. People are dying. And our economy is collapsing.

And the president is tweeting all day and night about beating Joe Biden.

COLLINS: Trump is doing more damage than just denying Biden validation. He's also withholding access to intelligence briefings and pandemic information.

Today, the health and human services secretary, Alex Azar, noted there has been no contact between his team and Biden's.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: Why isn't it appropriate now?

AZAR: George, GSA has to make a determination that a transition is in effect. That determination hasn't been made. My focus here is on vaccines.

COLLINS: Azar says he's waiting on General Services Administration to sign off on the transition, while Dr. Anthony Fauci said he's concerned one hasn't started yet.

FAUCI: It's almost like passing a baton in a race. You don't want to stop and then give it to somebody. You want to just essentially keep going. And that's what transition is. So, it certainly would make things more smoothly if we could do that.

COLLINS: As Trump holds up the transition, Fauci says he has not attended a Coronavirus Task Force meeting in months.

FAUCI: The last time the president was physically at a task force meeting was several months ago.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: And, Jake, as we are in the closing days of the Trump administration, we are now learning the president is expected to issue a formal troop drawdown for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course, that comes, something that the president has promised for several years now. But, in the last two months of his time in the White House, we are told that the Pentagon has informed commanders to be ready to draw those troops down by the hundreds. Of course, it would not bring those troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan to zero, as the president promised.

But, Jake, this is important because, of course, it not only comes to the closing days, but also amid disagreement at the Pentagon about whether the conditions are right to draw troops down by this many in these two areas.

And, of course, it comes as the president has recently purged the leadership at the Pentagon as well.

TAPPER: That's right.

Secretary Esper, who was fired, said the conditions had not been met, even though he too wanted to withdraw U.S. forces. And a lot of people think that's the reason that President Trump fired him.

Kaitlan Collins, thanks so much.

Let's discuss this.

Abby, president-elect Biden is making the argument that lives could be lost if there is not more coordination, or any, really, between the administration. At what point does the Biden transition team -- I mean, look, let's just be honest here. Republican officeholders are just, with a handful of exceptions, just sitting back and letting this happen, even though it's obvious that it's not good for the country.

At what point might the Biden transition team might need to get more aggressive? And what options do they have?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I do think that there are a couple of big milestones coming up, especially in the month of December, as these states start certifying their results. And it'll be a key moment for the GSA to decide whether they will stand by those certified election results in the 50 states and what is -- and what the result of the Electoral College ends up being.

I do think that, to some extent, the -- both the Republicans and the Biden campaign are waiting for that to happen before sort of hitting the kind of eject button the situation. If, though, that there are a bunch of political appointees within

these agencies who still don't want to go forward, I think that's the point at which the Biden campaign really needs to look at their legal options, because, as we get into late December, early January, that's when this is going to really start to matter.

[16:10:08]

It's not going to be possible for an incoming administration to effectively administer a response to this crisis without cooperation. So, it really does have to happen before we get to January 20.

TAPPER: Right.

And, Ron, let's be honest. Outgoing President Trump is not exactly filling that leadership role when it comes to the coronavirus vaccine and -- I mean, the coronavirus.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: No. That's right.

TAPPER: He has some success when it comes to Operation Warp Speed and the vaccine, but it's still spreading like crazy.

Dr. Fauci told me yesterday that President Trump hasn't attended a task force meeting in months, several months, he said. He said it's obvious, Fauci, that it would be better if he could start working with the Biden/Harris transition team.

Just bluntly put, President Trump, outgoing President Trump, at least publicly, is doing more to fight the results of a free and fair election than he's doing to fight this pandemic.

BROWNSTEIN: That's absolutely right, Jake. And that's what makes the Republican acquiescence to this even more remarkable, because not only is the president delegitimizing our institutions with these baseless claims and trying to create a kind of stab-in-the-back mythology that he can nurture for four years, saying the election was stolen from you, the real Americans.

But, in the process, he is the equivalent of a captain of a ship who has gone AWOL under fire. I mean, he's sort of retreated to his cabin, plotting his own survival, and kind of leaving the crew to deal with an attack. I mean, we are looking at the widest spread of the virus to date, and the president is completely AWOL, off the field of battle.

You know, Simon Schama, the great historian, who I don't think tweets very often, tweeted today that history will look at this period for Donald Trump like one of the emperors of Rome who kind of fiddled while Rome burned. I mean, it's just an extraordinary moment that makes the silence of the Republicans even more just remarkable and ominous, in terms of how they may approach a Biden presidency, particularly with Trump still looming as a possible 2024 candidate.

TAPPER: And, Abby, Congressman Justin Amash is a former Republican who left the party. He tweeted -- quote -- "What the president is doing is not healthy. He has the right to pursue legal challenges, even futile ones, but he is hurting himself and the country with his absurd proclamations. Republicans in Congress need to intercede" -- unquote.

Why won't they? Why aren't Republican lawmakers interceding?

PHILLIP: Because they need President Trump, I think it's really as simple as that.

They need this president to keep his base engaged and active, so that this base can show up for them in January in Georgia, but even longer than that, next year, and then the year after that, as many of them come up for reelection.

I think Republicans realize that they don't really have the keys to the store right now. President Trump might be leaving, but he's still the guy in charge of the Republican Party and the Republican base. And he's the only one who really has the power to bring them out in the numbers that they need.

That is why we are not seeing them speaking up about this. It is a reflection of how much power Trump has within his party. And I think, for people to look away from that, yes, he is the outgoing president, it would be a huge mistake, because this is not someone who is walking off the stage, whether he is president or not. He is leaving with full control over his party.

And turnout in this election for Republicans was what they needed it to be in order for them to get back into power, or just to have a fighting chance in Washington. And they need President Trump to do that again in the years to come.

TAPPER: I mean, yes, but at a guy like Illinois Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger. He was reelected. He was a Trump critic. He's one of the first to acknowledge that Joe Biden is the president- elect.

And yet President Trump is out there trying to wield this power. He -- Ohio Governor Mike DeWine acknowledged me on "STATE OF THE UNION" yesterday that Joe Biden's the president-elect, and President Trump today took notice of that, and he tweeted -- quote -- "Who will be running for governor of the great state of Ohio? Will be hotly contested," Ron.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

PHILLIP: Right.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

No, look, they could choose to pursue a different path. I mean, this is a choice they are making. Abby is absolutely right. I mean, Trump has transformed the Republican coalition up and down the ballot. They're not members of the House or the Senate who really have different independent coalitions of their own. Everywhere, you're seeing Republicans retreat in suburban areas and grow stronger in rural areas. They're all kind of on the same boat that Trump is the captain of. But

there's no guarantee. I mean, that doesn't mean that they are locked into this position. I mean, acknowledging reality, particularly at a moment when the costs of the president doing this, as we said, are not only his corrosive effects on kind of the democracy and our institutions, but the very tangible problem that he has walked away from a virus that is adding a million cases a week and back to over killing 1,000 Americans a day.

This is a choice they are making. They are making the choice to follow him down this road. And, again, I talked to one Democratic senator today who says, they can even say president-elect Biden. How are they going to behave once he is actually in office? Will they feel that they can work with him on anything?

[16:15:10]

A lot comes down to what Mitch McConnell does. And does he get a pass for, in effect, prioritizing the party's potential 2022/2024 interest over the immediate economic and health needs of the country?

TAPPER: All right, Ron Brownstein, Abby Phillip, thanks to both of your.

Extraordinary news on a second coronavirus vaccine, so effective that it's shocking some in the medical community. When could it be available to you? Stay with us.

And breaking today, President Trump's plans for Iraq and Afghanistan, with new yes-men in place at the Pentagon to pull it off.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:20:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AZAR: Here we are 10 months from the date when this virus hit our shore, and we have got a second 90-percent-plus effective vaccine for the American people. This is really a historic day.

FAUCI: The data are striking, Savannah. They're really quite impressive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: In our health lead, universal praise from the medical community over Moderna's coronavirus vaccine, which, according to the pharmaceutical company's early results, is 94.5 percent effective.

This makes it the second vaccine in the U.S. to have a stunningly high success rate, as the U.S. faces an explosive number of new coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.

Now governors across the country are ratcheting up restrictions ahead of Thanksgiving, as CNN's Nick Watt reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. TAL ZAKS, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, MODERNA: One of the greatest moment of my life and my career.

NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Because Moderna just reported early results showing its vaccine is 94.5 percent effective.

ZAKS: I think by the end of the year, hopefully, we could start to vaccinate people.

WATT: No safety red flags so far. And, unlike Pfizer's offering, this doesn't need tricky deep subzero storage.

FAUCI: This is a really strong step forward to where we want to be. We project that, by the end of December, that there will be doses of vaccines available for individuals in the higher-risk category from both companies, we hope.

WATT: And we need a vaccine badly, because more than one million new infections were logged in the United States in just the past week.

DR. MICHAEL MINA, HARVARD UNIVERSITY T.H. CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: If bombs were getting dropped in the United States and killing 1,000 people every single day, we would be actively engaged in defending ourselves, and not just sitting around until the next product comes on the market.

WATT: But in South Dakota, both COVID and COVID denial are rampant, even among those dying of this disease.

JODI DOERING, REGISTERED E.R. NURSE: And their last dying words are, this can be happening, it's not real. And when they should be spending time FaceTiming their families, they're filled with anger and hatred.

WATT: The entire country is a hot zone, two former FDA commissioners just wrote in "The Wall Street Journal." It's now up to governors to slow the spread.

Kind of always has been, but with a lame-duck Trump gumming up a transition, it's now more than ever. So, Michigan just closed movie theaters, indoor bars and restaurants, also in person classes at high schools and colleges, and the president's preferred coronavirus whisperer reacted: "The only way this stops is if people rise up."

Now Dr. Scott Atlas claims he was talking about voting. But, remember, there was just a plot to kidnap Michigan's governor, and most experts believe COVID restrictions are actually sorely needed.

FAUCI: I don't want to say anything against Dr. Atlas as a person, but I totally disagree with the stand he takes. I just do, period.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATT: Now, here in California, we are in the middle of a staggering surge right now.

And the governor says he's just pulled the emergency brake. From tomorrow, 94 percent of Californians are going to be living under the most restrictive COVID tier, everyone here in L.A., in San Francisco, in Santa Barbara, in San Diego.

As the governor puts it: "We are now moving backward, not forward" -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right, sober news.

Nick Watt, thank you so much.

I want to bring in CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

And, Sanjay, before we get to the good news about the vaccines. I have been getting a lot of calls and texts conveying -- there's no other word for it -- panic in the states from front-line health care workers, who say that the public is not sufficiently preparing for this pandemic exploding, that there's a lack of leadership from President Trump.

What are you hearing?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Jake, there's a total disconnect right now.

I was in the hospital most of the day today. And I'm in the hospital. And I'm reporting on this. Those are the two things I have been doing over the last several months. And when you go to the hospital, I mean, there is this sense of, we are preparing for what is going to be an awful period of time over the next few months.

I mean, literally, it feels like you're sort of on war footing a bit, trying to get all the PPE in place, recognizing that there may be a need for surge capacity, all of that stuff.

And, at the same time, you're hearing about these gatherings that are taking place, people still not wearing masks. We tell people that they shouldn't even be with their families for Thanksgiving. And yet there's -- there's all these other events that are happening that are clearly leading to the spread of the virus.

So, there is a sense of panic. And it's interesting. There is this -- I notice this tendency to sort of represent this maybe in a bit of a dispassionate way. And maybe I have been guilty of that to some extent as well.

[16:25:00]

But there's no time for that anymore. People have to be passionate about this. The health care workers have to tell the stories.

Professor John Lowe is -- he's with the Biocontainment Unit at the University of Nebraska. And he was tweeting over the weekend and just asking health care workers to share their stories. If you get a chance, go read some of these stories, I mean, health care workers talking about the fact that, while someone is prone, literally upside down on the bed, that prone position, and they realize that it's not working, the patient is still having trouble breathing, they bring in an iPad to basically have these conversations with their loved ones, knowing that it may be the last one they have.

I mean, Jake, I don't -- I'm not a hyperbolic guy. I don't want to sound dramatic. That is happening right now.

TAPPER: Yes.

GUPTA: And as bad as it is, people think, over the next few weeks, it's going to get worse.

So there are some things to look forward to on the horizon in terms of vaccine and stuff like that. That's not going to come in time, Jake, for what's happening in hospitals right now, what's happening in these hospitals in these rural areas. They don't have enough beds.

TAPPER: Yes.

GUPTA: They don't have enough people, resources.

And if large swathes of staff gets sick, I mean, it's going to get really challenging.

TAPPER: And we heard from that nurse from South Dakota earlier today on CNN, talking about the denial that patients are in. They're dying of COVID, and they still won't accept that fact, because they have been lied to by figures in the media and politics who have been denying that this crisis is as serious as it is.

But let us turn to the good news, because it is good that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. What is your reaction to this second vaccine, this one from Moderna?

GUPTA: This is -- it's really good news, Jake.

I mean, we didn't know whether this type of vaccine was going to work. This is a brand-new type of vaccine. It's a genetic vaccine. There's been a lot of hope and promise. I have been talking to some of these researchers at NIH since the very beginning, and they have always been bullish about this.

But, for me, as a reporter, and I think a lot of scientists, we wanted to see the proof. And I got to tell you, even for the Moderna guys, and even for the Pfizer folks last week, until they got the call from this independent entity that says, yes, not only is it working, but it's working really well, over 90 percent effective, that's -- it's extraordinarily good news.

I do want to tell you, Jake, the way it works, you get thousands of people who get the vaccine, thousands who get the placebo. More people that were in the placebo group were the ones who actually had these symptoms, 90, for example, in the placebo group vs. five in the vaccinated group. That's where they're making -- that's where they say this big

difference is.

A couple of unanswered questions still, Jake. How well does this vaccine actually prevent people from getting infected? We know that it seems to prevent people from getting sick, very, very important. But how well does it keep people from getting infected, because that's also what's going to bring down the pandemic?

And, also, how well does it decrease the likelihood you will transmit the virus? So, if you get a vaccine, are you going to be less likely to transmit the virus if you do get the virus? So, these are still unanswered questions. It may pan out in the data that we will see.

We're going to look at the data very closely to answer those questions.

TAPPER: So, Sanjay, how is the Moderna vaccine different from Pfizer's, which is also more than 90 percent effective?

GUPTA: They're very similar. I mean, they were sort of going hand in glove, these messenger RNA vaccines.

Again, no vaccine like this has ever been done before. The biggest difference -- and it's an important one -- I think, is really going to be in terms of the ease of distribution. And that has to do with the cold storage that we have been talking about.

The Pfizer vaccine has to be placed at such a cold temperature that the existing infrastructure really can't support it. You would have to build more infrastructure to do it, which they are doing. And then, after you thaw the vaccine -- you have got to thaw it, obviously, before you give it, it lasts five days in the refrigerator.

That's a short time when you're trying to plan millions of doses being given. Moderna also needs to be in cold storage, but then they have these -- they have the 30-day thaw time in the refrigerator, which is a lot more time, and most freezers that exist in these large hospitals and pharmacies and things can keep the vaccine, the Moderna vaccine, at that temperature.

So, the existing sort of supply chain in terms of the cold storage is there. So, that's going to make it an advantage, I think, for the Moderna one.

TAPPER: And we should take a note as we -- a moment, as we always have when discussing vaccine and Operation Warp Speed, that this is, give -- putting aside all of the failures of the Trump administration when it comes to the coronavirus -- and there are lots -- this is an unmitigated success.

And we should acknowledge that. The Moderna vaccine was done with funds from Operation Warp Speed. And the Pfizer one has funding when it comes to the distribution and manufacture. And I just think it's important that people working so hard, Moncef Slaoui, and the others, get credit for this. And President Trump was the one who OKed it. GUPTA: Yes, no doubt.

I mean, the pace of medical innovation has been forever changed. I mean, three months -- January 11, is when they got the sequence of this virus. By March 16, two months later, shots were going into arms as part of these clinical trials.

[16:30:00]