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Pfizer Says Its Vaccine May Be More Than 90 Percent Effective; Biden Says Pandemic is His Top Priority; Trump Appointee Blocks Funding, Staffing of Biden Transition Team; Some Top Republicans Defend Trump's Election Claims; U.S. Surpasses 10 Million Cases of COVID-19; Trump Fires Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired November 10, 2020 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us here in the United States and all around the world. You are watching CNN NEWSROOM, and I'm Rosemary Church.

Just ahead, Pfizer CEO says early results show its coronavirus vaccine could be a game changer. Still some medical experts and world leaders are urging caution.

Plus, Joe Biden is still 71 days away from being sworn in as president, but he's already taking action to try to contain the coronavirus. We'll have the details.

And Attorney General Bill Barr urges federal prosecutors to look into unfounded voter fraud claims. How this latest move by the Trump administration could signal a top transition ahead.

Good to have you with us. Well, on the day the U.S. passed 10 million confirmed cases of COVID-19, a leading vaccine maker has announced a potential breakthrough in the fight against the virus. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer says its experimental drug appears to be more than 90 percent effective at preventing a COVID infection. This according to early data from a study of 43,000 volunteers. Pfizer's CEO says the results have exceeded expectations, but more research is still needed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALBERT BOURLA, PFIZER CEO: 90 percent is a game changer. 90 percent, now we are hoping to have a tool in your war against this pandemic that will be significantly effective. How long the protection will last is something that we don't know right now, but it's part of the objective of the study.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: U.S. President-elect Joe Biden welcomed Pfizer's announcement but said Americans still need to wear masks to slow down the pandemic. His remarks came as he unveiled his new coronavirus task force and spoke about his plans to contain the virus when he takes office. But the transition of power has been rough so far with President

Donald Trump still refusing to accept the results from last week's election. And now his appointed Attorney General is telling prosecutors to look into allegations of voting irregularities. While potential legal battles unfold, CNN's Jeff Zeleny has more on the challenges facing President-elect Joe Biden as he transitions to the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: A mask is not a political statement. But it is a good way to start pulling the country together.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President-elect Joe Biden setting a new tone on coronavirus making clear it will be the top priority of his new administration.

BIDEN: I won't be president until January 20th. But my message today is to everyone is this -- it doesn't matter who you voted for. We can save tens of thousands of lives if everyone would just wear a mask for the next few months. Not Democrat or Republican lives, American lives.

ZELENY: Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris moving swiftly in their transition to power, announcing a coronavirus advisory board as the U.S. surpasses 10 million cases. Despite promising news about a vaccine, Biden delivering a grim warning.

BIDEN: We are still facing a very dark winter.

ZELENY: The 13-member board is led by three co-chairs including Dr. Vivek Murthy, a surgeon general from the Obama administration. It also involves some of the nation's top experts including Dr. Rick Bright, a former Trump administration vaccine scientists and whistleblower who accused the White House of interfering in efforts to fight the virus.

It's a fresh start even as President Trump has yet to concede political reality and the outcome of the election.

BIDEN: Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end here and now.

ZELENY: Words of congratulations pouring in from around the world, including a call today from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but silence or defiance from most Republicans.

With the notable exception of former President George W. Bush who called Biden and Harris over the weekend and made clear the results should be accepted saying, the American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair. Its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear.

[04:05:00] We must come together for the sake of our families and neighbors and for our nation and its future. The refusal by the Trump administration to acknowledge the President's defeat has real consequences. A Trump appointee who leads the General Services Administration is refusing to sign a letter allowing the transition team to begin its work saying --

An ascertainment has not yet been made about the election.

Biden has instructed his aids to give the President and Republicans a bit more time, CNN has learned, before taking more aggressive steps.

BIDEN: This election is over. It's time to put aside the partisanship and the rhetoric that design to demonize one another.

ZELENY (on camera): But for all the calls of unity from President- elect Biden it is an open question if Republicans are listening to them. There is a resistance inside the administration that is surprising even some allies of Mr. Biden. I'm told they are going to start increasing their fight to make this case publicly, that it is time to move on with the transition of government. As for Mr. Biden's part, he will be talking about the affordable care agent on Tuesday in Wilmington, pushing forward with the transition of government, even as most Republicans still have not congratulated him.

Jeff Zeleny, CNN, Wilmington, Delaware.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: And CNN's senior political analyst Ron Brownstein joins me now from Los Angeles. Good to have you with us.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hi, Rosemary.

CHURCH: So, Ron, let's start with a tweet you posted Monday night when you said this.

The post-election temperature changed radically today from Trump's personal peak to a party wide effort, blessed by Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, of course, to find any pretext to try to overturn the results with the help of Barr's weaponized Justice Department. However implausible, are Democrats ready for this fight?

So Ron, that is a truly alarming tweet, I have to say. How likely is it that these various efforts by Republicans could come anywhere near overturning the result of this election given they have offered absolutely no evidence to support their claims of voter fraud.

BROWNSTEIN: No evidence to support the claims as you point out. Look at what happened in the past 24 hours. We've gotten kind of an image of President Trump alone, stewing in the White House. You know, kind of yelling at the pictures on the wall, to Republicans Attorney General trying to intervene, Republican Senators in Georgia calling for the Republican Secretary of State there. Senator Mitch McConnell blessing this effort on the Senate floor. Bill Barr basically enlisting the Justice Department to try to find any kind of pretext of fraud. You can say that, you know, the odds are high that the courts will

stand firm and dismiss these baseless accusations, but there are a lot of Republican justices that Donald Trump has put on the court, and I don't think you can feel, you know, a zero chance anymore that they will find some pretext, not to overturn the lead but to cloud it enough that they can convince their Republican legislators in some of these states to try to send their own slates of electors.

And you know, Jeff Zeleny's piece where Joe Biden said, well, I want to give them time to kind of work through this. I think this is going to be a very good test of whether he recognizes how different the partisan landscape is just since he left office since 2016, how much more venomous, and really how ultimately he may have to fight a lot harder on this front than they have so far.

CHURCH: Yes, and you can't forget that 71 million Americans voted for Donald Trump, so he feels he's got some strength behind him. So, how much of Mitch McConnell's fighting words were about protecting his own role as majority leader in the Senate rather than perhaps caring about what happens to Donald Trump in the end.

BROWNSTEIN: Well, I think it is largely about preserving his own role. I mean certainly, they hope these charges, these baseless charges will help them fire up the base for the big fight that's coming in Georgia, early January, two runoff elections. Democrats win both, they control the Senate, they split, or Republicans win both. Republicans still control the Senate.

But it's really to me, it's sort of, you know, the correlation damage here, that Mitch McConnell is willing to accept. This is just an extraordinarily dangerous course for Republicans to be taking in terms of our democracy because as they know, they are seeding a narrative that this election was stolen, with no evidence that anything like the margin could be affected by any kind of missteps anywhere, and yet they are providing fuel in the fire.

CHURCH: And our thanks there to CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein.

For all the political wrangling comes as infection rates have soared to record highs across the country, the U.S. has surpassed 10 million cases of the virus, and over the past week, it has averaged about 100,000 new infections per day.

[04:10:00]

But as CNN's Athena Jones reports, Pfizer's vaccine announcement is offering some hope.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALBERT BOURLA, PFIZER CEO: It's a very important day for humanity.

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It could be the coronavirus vaccine the world has been waiting for, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announcing an early analysis shows its vaccine candidate is more than 90 percent effective.

BOURLA: It is extraordinary, but it's coming at a time that the world needs it the most.

JONES: The company saying it expects to seek Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA as soon as next week and is on track to produce up to 50 million doses this year and more than a billion next year, saying it will be free for Americans.

Dr. Anthony Fauci telling CNN by text -- it's extraordinarily good news, while others express cautious optimism.

DR. JAY VARKEY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE, EMORY UNIVERSITY: If, in deep dive of that data, that really shows like 90 percent efficacy, that'd be phenomenal, because, again, the FDA has been clear that even a vaccine that had 50 percent efficacy would actually help move the ball.

JONES: The promising news coming as the country reaches another grim milestone, 10 million COVID cases, more than 237,000 lives lost, 43 states now seeing a surge. Sunday was the fifth day in a row the U.S. topped 100,000 new cases in a single day.

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Many of our hospitals, particularly across the Mountain West, to the Midwest, the Upper Midwest are already getting overwhelmed.

JONES: Hospitalizations setting records in 19 states, with 30 states hitting their peak seven-day average for new cases on Sunday, including Indiana, where Notre Dame fans, ignoring social distancing guidelines, rushed the football field after the team's upset victory over Clemson on Saturday.

The university's president, who was himself diagnosed with COVID-19 after visiting the White House without a mask, announcing new measures, including putting students' registration on hold if they refuse to submit to COVID testing.

Meanwhile, new concerns in New York City, once the epicenter of the crisis, where the positivity rate, while still low, is rising once again.

BILL DE BLASIO (D), MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY, NY: And that is dangerous. So, we have one last chance to stop a second wave.

JONES (on camera): Mayor de Blasio says if New York hits a full blown second wave, it will mean more restrictions and even having to shut down parts of the economy again. The city's health department is providing more tools to help people track infection rates. Releasing new data showing the percent of people who tested positive for COVID- 19 by zip code for the most recent seven days of available data.

Athena Jones, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE) CHURCH: Well, Dr. Ravina Kullar is an infectious disease expert and epidemiologist. She is with us now from Los Angeles. Thank you so much for being with us. And for all that you do.

DR. RAVINA KULLAR, INFECTIOUS DISEASE EXPERT & EPIDEMIOLOGIST: Thank you, Rosemary, for having me on.

CHURCH: So, we are seeing U.S. COVID cases surpassed 10 million with daily cases hitting record highs, but now comes this positive news about Pfizer vaccine being more than 90 percent effective. I'd be interested to get response to all of that.

KULLAR: Definitely. So here in the United States as you stated we're at around over 10 million cases. I mean we're surpassing any other country, 110,000 cases per day, which is about over one case per second. So, I think the entire world, especially the United States needs a glimmer of hope in this grim outlook that we currently have.

So, this Pfizer vaccine showing about a 90 percent efficacy is just that potential glimmer of hope that we have been looking for. And as a healthcare provider that's been involved in vaccine research for quite some time, I can state that these results look quite promising thus far, but there are still some unanswered questions.

So, just taking a step back at looking at these results there were about 44,000 people that were entered into this trial and out of these 44,000, there were 94 cases that ended up developing the source COV2 virus. And so out of those individuals that were less than 10 percent of those that ended up receiving the vaccine. And there were over 90 percent that ended up receiving placebo.

So that's quite promising to see that most of those individuals that ended up getting COVID-19 were those that received the placebo versus the vaccine.

CHURCH: Right. So, what do you think this means in terms of when people will actually have access to the vaccine and in a meaningful way, of course?

KULLAR: I think it's going to be sometime. You know, this is an interim analysis. So, I think they are very important questions to be answered. So, this study looked at two different doses given 21 days apart and then analyzed seven days after and so it is a total of 28 days.

[04:15:00]

How long is someone immune from this virus? We still don't know that picture from just these interim results. We don't know whether those individuals which are elderly, will respond just as well as those which are younger. We know from previous vaccines that elderly individuals do not respond as well and those are the ones which are most vulnerable. So, there are very many unanswered questions here and we still don't know much about the safety.

Vaccines can have some very adverse events which are affiliated with it, especially with the SARS COV2 vaccine where early on in the phase one trials were shown to have individuals have fatigue, chills and many other adverse events affiliated with it.

So, it's this what's seen also with this vaccine.

CHURCH: Our thanks to Dr. Ravina Kullar for that insight.

And still to come, President Trump fires his Defense Secretary on Twitter. Details on that and who's replacing Mark Esper.

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[04:20:00]

CHURCH: President Trump has kept a low profile over the last few days but is still making consequential decisions. On Monday, he fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Twitter. Our Barbara Starr has the latest on Esper's replacement.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Christopher Miller, a former special operations soldier and President Trump's counterterrorism chief is now the new acting Secretary of Defense. He arrived at the Pentagon a short time after President Trump announced that he was replacing Defense Secretary Mark Esper, firing him.

The President saying that by tweet, Esper getting that notice from a phone call from White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows just a few moments before the President's tweet went out. The two of them had been on the out since June when Esper publicly, essentially came out against the President saying that he could not support any idea of putting active duty U.S. military forces on the streets when they were trying to quell protesters. He did not believe that that was necessary.

But now, Esper of course, deferring to the President's decision and saying in his resignation letter in part, I serve the country in deference to the Constitution, so I accept your decision to replace me.

For his part, Miller as acting faces a lot of uncertainty about what Trump may decide to do in the days before the inauguration in January. The pandemic still front and center at the Pentagon. U.S. military medical personnel now redeploying to some city hospitals in Texas to help out overworked medical staff there and the President still holding open the possibility that he wants to bring all U.S. troops home from Afghanistan by Christmas. Something that U.S. military commanders say is just simply too soon to contemplate.

Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Joining me now is CNN military analyst, Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. He served as the commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and the 7th Army. Always an honor and a pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome.

LT. GENERAL MARK HERTLING, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Great to be with you, Rosemary.

CHURCH: So what was your response to the firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper in a presidential tweet Monday?

HERTLING: Truthfully, Rosemary, not unexpected. We've been seeing the rumor last week of Secretary Esper carrying around a letter of resignation. He was asked about it and hedged his answer. We know that the President has been upset with Mr. Esper ever since the incident last summer when Mr. Esper had a press conference and said he was prohibitively against using active duty military forces in riot control procedures, or even implications of the Insurrection Act or martial law.

So, you could sense this was coming. I think the President did not want to do it before the election. I think he felt that it might have hurt his additional -- provide and additional hurt to his chances, so he waited until today. But it's troubling. Even though many of us saw it coming, it's extremely troubling knowing that we're about in the transition period where the Secretary of Defense becomes very important as a key member of the cabinet to transition to the administration. That's what is disturbing to me because it reigns more chaos into an already dysfunctional situation.

CHURCH: Yes, and let's talk about that because as you mentioned, there were discussions at the White House prior to the election about firing Mark Esper due to his apparent insufficient loyalty. So, let's talk about the impact a firing like this has during a lame duck presidential period on the Defense Department and on U.S. and global security and how destabilizing could this potentially be.

HERTLING: Just from the shop keeping, the transition of power, you know, the Secretary of Defense, not many people understand what that individual does. But you're talking about running one of America's biggest bureaucracies with millions of people and a huge budget. The fact that he is literally signing deployment orders to move forces around the globe. He is the approval authority for that. The overwatch of contingency plans, what we call war plans, things that might have to be applied in case of a crisis. The caring and feeding of the force, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines.

[04:25:00]

All of those things are critically important. And during a transition, the individual that sits in that key spot in the cabinet has to turn that over to the person in the next administration, and it's really nice to have someone that has a little bit of experience versus someone like a Mr. Miller that's coming in with 2 1/2 months left to go before the end of the administration.

CHURCH: And just very quickly, how concerned are you about who else might be terminated by a very frustrated President who clearly lost this election, and he's not ready to go and what impact does this all have on a peaceful transition of power. You pretty much covered that. HERTLING: Yes, well, I said the other day during a forum I attended

with security experts that during any kind of a crisis situation or any kind of a transition, you're worried about four things. First of all, you're worried about intelligence, and what kind of feed you're getting from all over the world. Secondly, your defensive posture in a global situation. Third, your internal security, and fourth, your homeland security.

So, we're talking about, number one, the Secretary of Defense, the FBI chief, the CIA director, and potentially the homeland security director. We have seen rumors tonight after Mr. Esper was fired chaotically on a tweet, then the President now has his eye on people like Director Wray, and perhaps even CIA Director Haspel. So, I'm very concerned, because those are the four areas of government during a transition period that you want to keep the nation secure. That's troubling when you think about the potential repercussions of that.

CHURCH: Yes, and about 70 more days of that period to work through. Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, many thanks for your analysis. Appreciate it.

HERTLING: Always a pleasure, thank you, Rosemary.

CHURCH: Well, extremely encouraging news about a coronavirus vaccine sent stocks soaring on Monday. But how are investors reacting now. We will check on the markets. Back in just a moment.

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