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President Observes Veterans Day at Arlington National Cemetery; Alarm at Pentagon as Trump Removes Senior Officials, Installs Loyalists; No State Showing Downward Trend of COVID-19 Cases. Aired 11:30-12p ET

Aired November 11, 2020 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

JOHN KING, CNN INSIDE POLITICS: The president of the United States making his way off the plaza, Arlington National Cemetery, after the traditional Veterans Day wreath-laying ceremony, always a solemn ceremony.

You saw the president salute the veterans and turn around also, veterans and their families on hand for these ceremonies, as they are ever year. You see the vice president, Mrs. Pence, along with the president, and Mr. Trump now leaving the plaza.

It is a rainy day in Washington but always this is a solemn and very important ceremony.

As we were having the conversation as it began, the president of the United States at Arlington National Cemetery, America's perhaps most hallowed ground.

Now, the president-elect, Joe Biden, was at a ceremony in Philadelphia just moments ago. CNN's Barbara Starr is with us from the Pentagon and Washington Post National Security Reporter Dan Lamothe is with us as well.

Dan, before we pause for the president, we were having this conversation, that is an awkward conversation in many ways, but it is the moment in which we find ourselves, ten weeks today, the president- elect will take office, ten weeks and 30 minutes from now. And, normally, at this time, this is what America shows the world, a peaceful transition of power, a remarkable passing of the torch and the leadership role from one president to the next.

But at the moment, the current president refuses to acknowledge the election results, refuses to open the normal transition process. And so when it comes to matters of war and peace, luckily, the United States is not involved in an active war right now but there are troops in Afghanistan, an uncertain peace process there, there are anti- terrorism operations around the globe.

And, normally, what would happen is if President Trump was about to make a big decision, his team would at least reach out to the Biden team. They don't have to listen to them, they don't have to accept their advice, but, normally, you would have a process. We don't have that process, and that is -- frankly, we talk about the COVID pandemic, another area where there should be open lines of communication and information-sharing. I don't know what the right word is. It's depressing.

The question, I guess, many people have, is it potentially dangerous?

DAN LAMOTHE, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: In the Pentagon, the expectation early on was that perhaps if the transition was going to get strained, maybe national security would be different. Maybe the military would be treated differently. But what we've seen in the last 24 hours is an acknowledgment from the Pentagon as well that there is no communication with the Biden team as of yet.

That, for the moment, doesn't appear to be a problem. But as this continues to play out, it raises the concern, at some point, it very well could be.

KING: And, Barbara, to that point, I guess it is -- in this case, I don't know if it's the right word, but a blessing Joe Biden knows this territory. He has a team around him of people who not only know where the buildings are but many have served in senior roles in the past. Does that make a difference even if the lines of communication at the president's orders right now are not allowed to be opened?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Right. Well, I think it does make a difference, as you say. They are the ones now with decades of experience in national security and military affairs. There's no question about it.

One of the results of what Mr. Trump did by tossing out all these individuals, he tossed out decades of experience. He has now brought in relatively inexperienced, including the acting secretary. He is a person who was in the army until 2014, had expertise in counterterrorism operations, but not the depth and breadth of experience that this country has come to expect in a defense secretary. So, you've basically tossed out the experience here.

What happens next I think very much remains to be seen. General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is counseling patience and stability to commanders around the world and to U.S. military counterparts around the world. Right now, adversaries like Iran and North Korea are being exceptionally quiet. That doesn't mean they're not watching all of this very, very carefully.

But they are keeping their head down. They are staying under the radar. There is a sense that everybody, I think, just wants to get to inauguration day. But that then leaves President-elect Biden with quite a menu of items that he's going to have to deal with that the Trump administration, as you say, John, is not briefing him on.

KING: Hopefully, that situation changes, I will say that. I'll try to be an optimist about it. Barbara Starr, Dan Lamothe, grateful for your reporting, insights, grateful for staying with us through the juggle there of the two events. [11:35:05]

And grateful to all of our veterans, let us say that on this day and set the politics aside for a second. This is a special day. Veterans and their families deserve our tributes and our praise and our deep gratitude.

Still ahead for us, the other trouble and giant issue in our country, coronavirus cases and now hospitalizations accelerating to record levels.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: The United States right now breaking records you simply don't want to break, coronavirus cases, coronavirus hospitalizations on the rise. Let's look at the latest numbers.

And this map, again, it's just depressing, 45 of the 50 states, 45 of the 50 states, that's the orange and the red, reporting more new COVID infections now compared to the data a week ago, 45 states trending in the wrong direction, four holding steady, just one state heading down.

[11:40:007]

All of this red, the deep red, that means at least 50 percent more new infections this week compared to last week. Orange is heading in the wrong direction. Red is heading in the wrong direction at a crisis point.

50-plus there, you see Georgia in green. There are some reporting issues down there with the data, so we show them going down. Let's hope they are. But you see part of the struggle here, and this is -- it's just -- I don't know what to say.

I don't know what to say, the red line now, trend line going straight up. You see the beginning. We went through this in the spring. Summer surge, which was horrific at the time, and now, look, 136,325 new infections reported in the United States yesterday, several days above 120,000. That seems to be the new normal and that is a terrible place to be.

Sadly, with higher cases and higher hospitalizations, the death trend also starting to bend back up after being -- that's never a good number, I say down as if it's a celebration. Still, we're ahead roughly 1,000 Americans dying a day, 1,415. 1,415 Americans reporting dying of coronavirus yesterday, that trend line heading in the wrong direction.

This one as well, hospitalizations, remember, the first peak, second peak, both about 60,000, and now record yesterday, 61,964, excuse me, and that trend line heading up, just like the case count. This tells you everything you need to know. 17 states reporting record hospitalizations just yesterday, on Tuesday.

And if you look at it through the regions here, it's the south and purple up here, it's Midwest in gold, you see it was flat coming back up, the west and the northeast doing better but still in the ballpark of 10,000, for the west, sneaking up, for the northeast. But this is the biggest source of the problem, which is why, listen here, the governor of Illinois says we've been through this before but not at this level. People need to prepare.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. J.B. PRITZKER (D-IL): Across the state, the majority of our regions are seeing far higher rates of hospitalizations for COVID-19 than they ever did last spring. Outside of Cook and Collier Counties, much of Illinois' communities are experiencing the worse surge that they've seen yet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Let's get some important context from Ali Mokdad. He is Professor of Health Metric Sciences at the IHME. Their projections have been used throughout the coronavirus virus.

Ali, I'm looking at your chart. I just want to put up this state map and all of the maps I look at are depressing. And this one depresses me a lot. This is your projection about the strain on ICUs, intensive care units across the United States, 21-plus states, 21-plus states expected to be at a crisis point this month and many others following right up behind them. The blue is January, the gold is December. How bad is this problem right now?

ALI MOKDAD, PROFESSOR OF HEALTH SCIENCES FOR HEALTH METRICS AND EVALUATION: It's depressing, John, to say it. I mean, it's depressing and frustrating. What we're having to do is a lot of pressure on our hospitals. And right now, what we're looking at is the number of ICU beds. We're not keeping in mind that the personnel who are running these ICU beds may also be infected and their family member get infected, and they will not be able to take care of the patients.

So we are heading into a dark winter. We have predicted this and we have been saying it all along. Unfortunately, it's unfolding in front of us and, quite honestly, John, it's depressing.

KING: Well -- and so it's sad but important to have the conversation. I just want to look at the projections going forward. Hospital bed use projections for COVID-19 patients, 56,000 and on November 10th, your February 1st projection is 129,000, more than double where we are now.

A, what would the impact of that be on hospitals, not just for COVID patients but for other people who then need other services who can't get them because hospitals are overwhelmed? And then, I guess, the flipside is, is there anything that can be done to shove that line down, to hopefully prove the projection false by improving behavior?

MOKDAD: John, a very good point. So let me explain one by one. First, what we are not seeing right now is the mean age of infection is increasing, so it means more older people are infected. It means more hospitalization will be required in the future. That's one. The hospitalization we're projecting into December and January right now, if you look at only ICU bed use or hospital bed use only for COVID-19, not for everything else, we've seen 18 states will have a stress on their systems from COVID-19 only.

So, remember, our ICU units do not take care of only COVID-19. We have patients who need ICUs. We have patients who need the hospitals. We have cancer, we have diabetes, we have cardiovascular diseases. So that's going to put a lot of pressure on us.

What can we do? We're asking Americans to be willing to sacrifice a little bit by wearing a mask and staying away from each other.

[11:45:02]

Please do not overwhelm our hospitals. This is a day when we are remembering people who paid with their lives and sacrificed for this country. We're fighting a different war right now.

Can we pull together and fight COVID-19? Can we put together and sacrifice a little bit in order not to overwhelm our hospitals and avoid a disaster ahead?

KING: Ali Mokdad, grateful for your insights. I wish we were having a more optimistic conversation. But I think it's important that we lay this out so people understand their own behavior can help us in these days ahead. Grateful for the insights very much.

Up next for us, there are leadership changes in the Pentagon right now raising national security concerns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:50:00]

KING: The shake-up of the Pentagon's top civilian leadership over these last 48 hours by President Trump is raising national security concerns.

Listen here. The former defense secretary and Republican senator, William Cohen, says these moves not what you expect to see in a functioning democracy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM COHEN, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: He is turning the national security into his personal view of what power really is. And he believes that he has unrestrained, unconditional power and he's going to exercise it. And what he's doing, he is undermining our role in the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania is an Air Force veteran. She joins us now.

Let me start, Congresswoman, by saying thank you on this Veterans Day. The whole country owes you a debt of gratitude, all of those who served, and we appreciate it. When you listen to Secretary Cohen, do you share that? I ask in the context of someone who has been in town a while. There are some turnover -- at the end of any administration, there is turnover, and some go into jobs and its resume padding, frankly. You put somebody and promote somebody a little bit and it helps them in their future careers. That's not what you see here, right?

REP. CHRISSY HOULAHAN (D-PA): No, absolutely not. In addition to being a veteran myself, I also serve on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committee. And we have these conversations amongst our colleagues well before the election, a concern that exactly this might happen that Secretary Esper would be removed and that there would be a game of moving people in and out who are more allied with the Trump administration.

And so this is concerning. It should be alarming. And even normal organizations like corporations, it would be alarming for somebody to take over at the head who didn't necessarily have the ability to do that for a very short period of time.

So I am alarmed. And I think we all should be as Americans in terms of our national security and our vulnerability.

KING: And I think what backs up your point, if you will, is that it's not just a couple of people at the Pentagon. The military speaks for the United States around the world. The deployment of American troops around the world or representatives of the NATO alliance and things like are very important messages to the world from the United States, but so is America's top diplomat, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo.

And you've probably heard this before, and I'm going to ask you to listen to it again. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE POMPEO, SECRETARY OF STATE: There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.

I am very confident we will have a good transition, that we will make sure that whoever is in office on noon on January 20th has all the tools readily available so we don't skip a beat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: What goes through your mind? Look, you're a Democrat, he's a Republican. But he's secretary of state right now. He's supposed to represent all of America. And forgive me to all of the Trump people but the math is pretty clear here. When Secretary Pompeo says there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration and then laughs, they think it is funny. How does the world process that?

HOULAHAN: Well, you know, I think that this is striking because this the nation's most senior person in the state department. His job is diplomacy. His job is to know that words matter. And you cannot joke about things like this in our global standing and in our nation, particularly when it is clear. It is clear what the will of the people has been and we should not be joking around about things like that and he should know better.

KING: The president-elect, Joe Biden, has been saying this will pass. He views this as Trump being Trump, it's typical tantrum and he believes it will pass in a few days when states start certify election results, like yours, the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and that Republicans will come around and embrace him. Do you share that or do you think that's naive?

HOULAHAN: No, I don't think it's naive. We are peaceful people. I believe that we can be patient. I believe that the results will be certified and we will move forward. I just wish the administration would make it easier on the people because it does cause unnecessary unrest and discord where we really can't afford that. And I really appreciate Vice President Biden, now President-elect Biden's calming words, because that's exactly what I expected from him, which was civility and decency that we haven't seen here in a while.

KING: Congresswoman and air Force Veteran Chrissy Houlahan, thank you for your time today. And more importantly, thank you on this Veterans Day for your service.

HOULAHAN: Thank you.

KING: Up next for us, they're continuing to count votes across the battleground states. Joe Biden's lead is solid, yet Trump team keeps raising questions.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:55:00]

KING: Hello to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm John King in Washington. Thank you for sharing your day with us.

President Trump making an appearance, we haven't seen him since Thursday, his first official appearance since then for this big, important tradition, laying a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery to honor American's veterans on this Veterans Day.

[12:00:04]

The president sticking to tradition at a remarkable moment, at a time he refuses to acknowledge the election results.