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Biden Downplays Transition Delay Due to Trump's Refusal to Concede; Growing Alarm as Trump Denies Election Defeat; Trump Elevates Loyalists in Pentagon Amid Leadership Shake-ups; U.S. Seeing Record Number of COVID-19 Cases and Hospitalizations; Four Senior Pentagon Officials Fired or Resigned in Just Over 24 Hours; Diplomats Alarmed Over Pompeo's Claim of Second Trump Administration; U.S. Seeing Record Number of COVID-19 Cases and Hospitalizations. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired November 11, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:41]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Well, good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

This morning the Biden transition team led by President-elect Biden is pushing forward with its plans, including plans to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. This despite growing alarm over the president's campaign of delays, shake-ups and denials over the facts of this election.

Next hour we will see him for the first time in several days in an official capacity as he heads to Arlington National Cemetery for a wreath laying honoring our nation's veterans on this Veterans Day. But while those veterans fought to protect our democracy, the president and his administration, the fact is, fighting to undermine it.

HARLOW: That's right. And while this fight in Washington persists so does the dire situation in our nation's hospitals. There are now a record number of COVID-19 patients in our hospitals and a record number of COVID-19 infections this morning. It has gotten so bad in some states leaders are asking their residents to stay at home all over again.

We're covering all the angles this morning, the shake-ups, the transition, the national security impact and of course this health crisis. Let's begin our reporting with our MJ Lee who is following President-elect Biden's camp in Delaware.

Good morning, MJ.

MJ LEE, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy. While this race was called on Saturday but still no concession from President Trump, well, here in Wilmington, Delaware, Biden is continuing on with his transition efforts. Earlier this week we saw him announce his COVID advisory council. Yesterday he gave a press conference and talked about the future of health care. Today he is going to be meeting with transition advisers as well.

And yesterday what we saw was Biden trying to project a sense of calm and what CNN is being told is that this reflects the mindset of his advisers as well, basically that they feel like they shouldn't be too aggressive right now because that could backfire. But we also heard Biden using some pointed words towards the president and his refusal to concede. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT: Well, I just think it's an embarrassment, quite frankly. The only thing that -- how can I say this tactfully? I think it will not help the president's legacy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: This week Biden has also taken some phone calls with foreign leaders who have congratulated him on his victory, so quite the contrast from international leaders versus some Republican leaders here in the country.

I will just quickly note there are real ramifications to President Trump not officially conceding. Biden does not have access to transition funding. He can't get the Presidential Daily Briefings. He was asked about both of these things yesterday and he essentially said, look, it would be nice to have access to those things, but it is not necessary because I'm not president quite yet -- guys.

SCIUTTO: And we should remind folks the Obama administration gave that access to President Trump when he was elected.

MJ Lee, thanks very much.

HARLOW: On day one. Right?

SCIUTTO: On day one.

HARLOW: I think on day one. Yes.

SCIUTTO: MJ Lee, thanks so much. We know you're going to be on top of it.

Let's bring in CNN White House correspondent, John Harwood.

John, so we'll see the president in the next hour, this for Veterans Day, a wreath laying. Do we expect him to continue to propagate these myths about the election outcome?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: He's doing it this morning, he sent out an absurd tweet a few minutes ago saying, Jim, that the "Washington Post" had done some sort of illegal suppression poll in the state of Wisconsin.

Look, the president has been hunkered down in the White House mostly watching television, reacting to television, not by any outward sense doing the job of president in this deadly pandemic except for firing a bunch of people who had stood up to him, like Mark Esper, the former Defense secretary.

The president is obviously struggling psychologically to accept his defeat. While he is doing so he is forcing the entire Republican Party to acquiesce in this charade, in part because they're trying to motivate their base for a couple of Senate elections in Georgia in January. And the question is going to be how long can the president maintain this position, how long will Republicans stay with him?

[09:05:06]

We've seen foreign leaders move away, even Trump-friendly foreign leaders, Boris Johnson from the U.K., Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel, accepting the reality of the situation. There's zero chance of the president legally because there's no evidence or through recounts reversing this because the size of Joe Biden's margins are way beyond any realistic hope of overturning in a recount.

So the question is, is the president going to actually speak today or is he going to silently participate in this Veterans Day observance? We don't know the answer to that yet. And it's just a question of time before he accepts the reality of the situation and either helps Joe Biden make this transition or resists for a protracted period.

HARLOW: We're going to have to watch and see. John Harwood, thanks for the reporting from the White House this morning.

We turn now to the shakeup inside the Pentagon.

SCIUTTO: Since Monday, four top leaders in the Pentagon are out. In are Trump loyalists including one, a controversial to say the least retired general who once called former President Obama a terrorist. In a senior position now in the Pentagon.

Barbara Starr is at the Pentagon this morning with a detailed look at these changes.

I mean, first of all, really unprecedented to do this, an outgoing president to do this during the transition, but tell us the sweep of these changes and what's the reaction inside the building to this, the level of concern?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, one of the impacts certainly is they have now swept out people who have combined decades of experience in the military, defense and national security. That institutional memory here at the Pentagon now absolutely gone. A lot of unease here I would say because they don't know exactly why the president did it, he's offered no public explanation, and a lot of anxiety because they have no idea what, if anything, President Trump may decide to do next and whether these moves are paving the way for some kind of military orders by the president.

So where do we stand? Let's look at the people involved. Mark Esper, Defense secretary, pushed out, fired unceremoniously by tweet. And now the man who has taken his place is a man named Christopher Miller, a former soldier in special operations until 2014, so very recently out of the military. Expertise in counterterrorism, but that's been his main portfolio for many years. Does not have the breadth and depth of experience that most secretaries of Defense have as they come into office.

Additional replacements, the policy chief, James Anderson, replaced by the person you mentioned, Jim, retired Brigadier General Anthony Tata. Anthony Tata is someone that could not get confirmed to a Senate job so he's now basically filling in for Anderson. He has tweeted in the past about President Obama being a Muslim and a terrorist. He's now the policy chief at the Pentagon.

And moving on, the intelligence chief, a retired admiral named Joseph Kernan who was planning to retire, nonetheless, moved up and left yesterday. He is being replaced by a man named Ezra Cohen-Watnick. This man had been with Michael Flynn in the early days of the National Security Council when Flynn had that job for a short time. He's been in several different jobs. In addition the chief of staff here at the Pentagon has been replaced.

So after Veterans Day when everybody comes back to work tomorrow the big question is what happens next?

SCIUTTO: No question. We'll be watching. We know you will. Barbara Starr, thanks very much.

All right. To what is a growing health crisis in this country. Many state leaders are now calling for people to stay home, to cancel gatherings.

Poppy, it's a remarkable request to be making at this stage.

HARLOW: Yes. But they have to. I mean, it's a decision our family just made ourselves. You have to do it to protect the people that you love and everyone else, and yesterday marked the eighth consecutive day that the U.S. reported more than 100,000 new COVID cases and saw hospitalizations hit a record high.

Let's going to our colleague Adrienne Broaddus. She joins us in Chicago with more.

Good morning, Adrienne.

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Poppy and Jim, and to those of you watching and listening. 45 states saw an increase, but it's not just here in the Midwest that we are seeing an increase, the Midwest is outpacing other parts of the region. Terrible and awful, that's how Illinois's governor described the COVID situation. Illinois among one of the states setting new records, but not just for cases, there's something else we're seeing here in the Midwest, the number of hospitalizations are also going up.

[09:10:01]

Across the nation, there were more than 61,000 people in the hospital with COVID as of yesterday. And guys, that's the most we've seen since the start of the pandemic. Also yesterday I heard from a doctor with the Mayo Clinic. They're concerned about staff shortages. Let me give you an example. In Minnesota and Wisconsin, 1,000 members of the staff are out. And here's why. They either have COVID, someone in their family has COVID so they're at home treating them, or they're quarantining.

And the doctors are concerned, what happens if our health care professionals are sick, who is going to continue to take care of us? And as we've been telling folks throughout the morning, Texas also hit another milestone, surpassing one million cases. If Texas were its own state, or its own country, excuse me, it would be among the top 10.

I wish the news were better but that is the report, Poppy and Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Adrienne, thank you for bringing it to us. It is remarkable that we're still at this place. Thank you so much.

We have a doctor joining us ahead in Texas who says that when people let their guard down in hard-hit El Paso they are seeing an influx to their ICUs.

Also, the president's move to delay and to obstruct the transition. It doesn't just make things harder for the Biden team to get up and running, experts say it makes the nation less safe. We'll talk about it.

SCIUTTO: Yes. This is about you. And more than a week after election day a steady stream of false vote fraud claims. Outright lies. We're going to give you the facts.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. This morning, Pentagon officials are on edge after sweeping an unprecedented changes by the Trump administration during the transition by an outgoing president.

Four senior civilian officials including the Defense Secretary Mark Esper have either been fired or resigned since Monday, and they've been replaced with perceived loyalists to the president, very little experience, all this raising serious questions about national security. Joining me now is Dave Lapan; he's retired Marine colonel, former press secretary for media operations at the DHS. Dave, good to have you on this morning.

DAVID LAPAN, VICE PRESIDENT OF COMMUNICATIONS, BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER: Hey, good morning, Jim, happy Veterans Day, hopefully it's a happy one.

SCIUTTO: Yes, for sure. Thank you. And an honor to our veterans like yourself who are watching. First question, is there any precedent for an outgoing president during transition to make such sweeping changes to the senior Pentagon leadership?

LAPAN: I don't think it is. It's -- again, at the end of an administration, it is somewhat normal for people to leave on their own accord as the transition begins, but the way that these changes are being made and the people that are being installed is what makes it highly unusual and dangerous.

SCIUTTO: The 9/11 Commission noted that the shortened transition between the Clinton-Gore administration, the Bush administration as a result of the recount then risked U.S. national security. I mean, one example that the Bush administration could only fill about half the positions in senior national security roles that were necessary and might have made the country less safe, of course, 9/11 followed. I wonder can you explain to people why it's important for an incoming president, a president-elect, to have this time to prepare?

LAPAN: So, it's a few things. It's the size of the government, it's the smooth operation of a government, it needs to go without a hitch, without any kind of gaps that could be exploited by adversaries, which is why we hear from the 9/11 Commission why it's so important and so potentially dangerous.

You have to have people that get up to speed very quickly, that have security clearances provided. Again, it's a huge undertaking, and the more time you can take to do that in an orderly fashion, the better off it is. It's still going to be a dangerous time, all transitions are, but shortening that period of time makes it even more dangerous in this instance.

SCIUTTO: OK, so let's get at the why? Why President Trump is doing this right now? Our Barbara Starr says that they might be motivated by push-back that the Trump administration got from officials such as Esper about the withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan. David Ignatius' writing in "The Washington Post" today about how these moves might be connected to a Trump administration effort to declassify a whole host of intelligence regarding Russian interference in 2016. You maintain relationships in the Pentagon. Can you make any sense of why President Trump is making these changes now?

LAPAN: Well, the fact that we have to ask those kind of questions, and there's so much speculation about them is concerning as well. Is not knowing the motives, not having a level of transparency, and this administration has squandered any credibility and trust its had over the last four years. So even if these were -- there were rational reasons to explain these, we're not getting those, and the level of --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

LAPAN: Distrust is high already. Just take -- again, it was very clear that the president was unhappy with Mark Esper, his firing comes as no great surprise, but they have a Senate-confirmed deputy secretary who has been in the position --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

LAPAN: More than a year, could have been elevated to the position. They didn't need to make these kind of changes, so it causes people to question what's behind it?

SCIUTTO: Yes, I mean, a bigger picture question about what's the Senate's power here to confirm these, and of course, led by Republicans, but somehow ceding that power. I want to play comments from the Secretary of State yesterday regarding this election, and get your reaction to it. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is the State Department currently preparing to engage with the Biden transition team, and if not, at what point does a delay hamper a smooth transition or pose a risk to national security?

[09:20:00]

MIKE POMPEO, SECRETARY OF STATE, UNITED STATES: There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration. Right, we're ready. The world is watching what's taking place here. We're going to count all the votes, when the process is complete, there will be electors selected. There is a process. The constitution lays it out pretty clearly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Now, he may have been joking there or signaling the president or both. I don't know. Frankly, I don't care. But what impact does that statement, those words from the nation's top diplomat have on the integrity of this election, people's confidence in it, and how does the world react to that?

LAPAN: So, those are the two things that my initial reaction was. One, whether he was joking or not, it's inappropriate, it's not a joking matter so he shouldn't -- shouldn't have been, again, in his position making a joke about something so serious. Two, he didn't answer the question. He was asked about preparing for the transition. He dodged that and made this, you know, again, attack on our democracy and our elections. And as the chief diplomat of the United States, that is very worrisome to our allies and it gives succor to our adversaries as well.

Yes, they're going to take advantage of any opportunity they see where we are confused, where there's gaps, where there's weaknesses.

SCIUTTO: Dave Lapan, on this Veterans Day, thank you for your service and also happy birthday to the Marines as well.

LAPAN: Thank you, Jim.

HARLOW: Well, with me now is Max Stier; President and CEO of Partnership for Public Service, they are a nonpartisan group, and this is what they do, they help presidential transitions happen ideally, smoothly and on time.

Thanks, Max, for being here. Maybe, you could answer the question that Secretary Pompeo did not answer, that's so important about why this matters from a national security standpoint, knowing what we know from the 9/11 Commission report that the 37-day delay, while Bush v. Gore was being decided they found, led to a delay in the national security team being put in place. Why does this matter?

MAX STIER, PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, PARTNERSHIPS FOR PUBLIC SERVICE: So, thank you so much, and I think you covered some great material in just this last segment. And the answer is our government matters.

We live in a very dangerous world, there are external threats represented by the 9/11 example, and there are internal threats like the pandemic and the economic issues we face. And our government is central to addressing them, and it's a very large, complex organization, I would argue probably the most important organization not just on the planet, but probably in history.

HARLOW: Wow.

STIER: And to take charge of it is a big deal, 4,000 political appointments, 4 million people when you count the military, hundreds of operating units, you need time and you need cooperation and information, and transition is all about being ready to govern on day one.

The metaphor for me is that President-elect Biden will be flying the airplane that we're all in, we should all be committed to making sure that he and his crew is ready to go at the very moment in which they take charge because our health and welfare as a nation depends on it.

HARLOW: Yes, for sure, no matter who you voted for. So, a lot is going on --

STIER: Absolutely.

HARLOW: Here, it's not only the president's claims of the GSA not signing the letter to hand over the money and the resources and the information yet to the Biden team. It's Pompeo and the Attorney General Bill Barr basically feeding into this rigged election narrative, it's the president firing all those folks we went through at the top of the show.

And then by the way, by executive order a few weeks ago, didn't get a lot of coverage, but totally re-arranging the classification of 100,000 federal workers, right, that has implications here. You are a former volunteer --

STIER: Yes --

HARLOW: Fireman, and you call all of that together a five-alarm fire.

STIER: Yes, absolutely. It's really quite extraordinary. President Trump is checking out of the hotel soon, and he's trashing the room as he's on his way out. It is not good. He shouldn't do it, it's not a hotel room, it's our government, and it has enormous implications for the ability of our country to deal with big problems. You mentioned a few of them. Now, the fact of the matter is we have an

amazing career civil service, that is really the engine room of our government. They actually are responsible in every agency to put together information for the incoming Biden team. And what we really need is simply a decision by GSA to permit that process to continue. Real quick, I think -- sorry, go ahead.

HARLOW: I was just going to say, on your point about the GSA, which most Americans have no idea what this is, but this is the body that basically --

STIER: Right --

HARLOW: Has to sign some documents, that say, OK, Biden team, here is a few million bucks, here is a bunch of information, here is your access to office space to get ready to do the most important job in the world.

STIER: Yes.

HARLOW: Their explanation, Max, is, well, it can get messy if things change, look at Bush v. Gore in 2000. Why do you think that is not an apt comparison?

[09:25:00]

STIER: Well, for two big reasons. The first is that, in terms of just the -- you know, the state of the election, obviously, people see it quite clearly. There are tens of thousands of votes that would have to be changed in order for the election itself to come out in any different way, very different from what it was like in Florida, you would at least have to change over three states with many votes. And equally important, what's at stake is clearly so much more important with national security interests, the pandemic, economic issues.

President Bush, when he handed off power to President Obama, did, the best that anyone has ever done, he did it because of his experience in 2000. He understood that a handoff of power was fundamental to the new person being able to start right.

The other critical issue here to understand is that the balance of interests are clear here. GSA simply needs to permit a process to continue going forward, they're already working with the Biden team. It's critical that Biden team gets these resources, and that does not diminish President Trump's ability to pursue whatever legal remedies he wants. But by not enabling the Biden team to have access to the agencies, to the personal processing, the money, it does put our national security --

HARLOW: OK --

STIER: At risk. So, to me, it's straightforward.

HARLOW: I appreciate your time this morning and your work and the team's work on this. Max Stier, thanks so much.

STIER: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: These are important conversations. Well, Dr. Anthony Fauci thinks the general public could start getting vaccines as soon as April, but right now, coronavirus cases are surging in this country, increasing hospitalizations are setting records. There's a lot of work we have to do.

HARLOW: For sure, also taking a look at the markets, we are moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Futures pointing higher, investors preparing for a Biden White House and figuring out how to profit from it. Market strategists say solar, other alternative energy companies along with infrastructure, building suppliers and rail-roads could be some of the biggest beneficiaries of the incoming administration.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)