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Trump Honors Veterans At Arlington National Cemetery; Georgia's Republican Secretary Of State Orders Full By-Hand Count Of Ballots In The State; CNN: Trump Met With Team Yesterday On Legal Strategy Offered No Signs He Plans To Concede Election; Four States Pushing Stay-At-Home Efforts This Week; CDC: Masks Protect Wearers & Those Around Them From COVID-19. Aired 12-12.30p ET

Aired November 11, 2020 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: The president sticking to tradition on a remarkable moment at a time he refuses to acknowledge the election results and move to a smooth transition to the next administration.

The President-Elect Joe Biden attending a veteran's event of his own last hour, Korean War Memorial in Philadelphia, also issuing a statement telling veterans he'll be a Commander-in-Chief who respects their service and their sacrifice.

President Trump and his team remain defiant on the election even though the vote counts and the facts backed up by election officials, both parties tell us there's zero evidence of major fraud and that the president lost. Joe Biden is the President-Elect. And ten weeks from today, he will inherit a divided nation and a spiraling pandemic, the numbers are depressing.

The United States breaking more records both for total daily cases and for hospitalizations. 45 states report new infections on the rise. The pandemic is a life and death example of why a smooth transition of power is essential. But smooth is not what we are getting so far.

President Trump's supporters saying the election is not over, saying they are prepared for a second Trump Administration, his campaign filing a lawsuit in Michigan. Get this, president lost Michigan by nearly 150,000 votes. The president-elect says everybody relax, he's trying to choose his words carefully.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT ELECT: 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. I don't see a need for legal action quite frankly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That the president-elect, he is speaking, he says he's calm, things will be fine. Republicans will come around. If they do, it will be because the math is simple, and the math is overwhelming. Joe Biden has a lead in Pennsylvania as they count the late mail-in ballots it has grown modestly, it is 47,603 votes right now, 49.7 to 49 percent, yes, that's close, but we could go back in time.

It is a bigger lead for Joe Biden now than Donald Trump had when he defeated Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania four years ago. It's not just Pennsylvania. They continue to count votes out in Arizona. This is one place where team Trump has some reason to be at least more optimistic.

Joe Biden is still in the lead by 12,000 votes, but that lead was 17,000 votes the other day. It has come down a little bit as they continue to count legally cast ballots in Arizona. That's what happens after any election, especially in a pandemic election, when so many ballots were cast by mail, it takes a little while to count them.

Georgia is another state in the news. Republicans screaming at the Republican Secretary of State saying somehow something has gone wrong. What's their complaint? Their complaint is that Joe Biden is leading. His lead is 14,112 votes in the State of Georgia.

And again, since we projected Joe Biden as the President-Elect on Saturday, some votes come in. Occasionally the president goes up two or three or maybe a dozen, but overall Joe Biden's lead has grown in the State of Georgia in recent days as they continue to count ballots.

Let's go straight to Georgia and CNN's Dianne Gallagher. Dianne, the Secretary of State came out today describing what would come next, he is under a lot of heat from fellow Republicans. So far he has been standing his ground, saying, we're doing this right, we're counting legally cast ballots. And yes, because it's so close there will be some form of a recount, right?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And let's call it a recount in essence here. The Secretary of State, a Republican, has said that the Trump Campaigns request and pressure from members of his own party played no role in this. But this is what's happening. The State of Georgia was going to do what they call a risk limiting audit after the election anyway before statewide certification.

The Secretary of State announced that that statewide race that would be audited was going to be the presidential race because of exactly what you said. Those margins are so slim. Those roughly 14,000 votes that separate Joe Biden from Donald Trump.

Now, the Secretary of State called it a recount, re-canvas and audit all at once. And he called it a hand count - by hand recount, but in actuality he says that the workers are going to be separating ballots, all of them in the state, and then rescanning them. I want you to take a listen to how he described what's going to happen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, (R-GA) SECRETARY OF STATE: With the margin being so close, it will require a full by hand recount in each county. This will help build confidence. It will be an audit, a recount and a re- canvas all at once. It will be a heavy lift, but we will work with the counties to get this done in time for a state certification. (END VIDEO CLIP)

GALLAGHER: And again, that's in just a little while here, John, on November 20th. Here is the thing; the language they have been using is a little confusing. Some of it's not super clear. He has another meeting essentially in just a little while here to talk about more details on this.

Those counties are trying to get to work as soon as they complete their county certification to begin this heavy lift, as he called it. But each one of those ballots has to be rescanned now. And so, it's something that is sort of a hybrid maybe between an audit and a recount, but we're not looking at exactly what President Trump's campaign was demanding here, although I'm sure the words sound really nice to the president right now.

[12:05:00]

KING: Let them do their work, as they have so far done their work, counting ballots. And so far it's important to know Joe Biden remains in a lead in Georgia. Diane Gallagher, grateful for the reporting and the hustle from Atlanta. CNN's Kaitlan Collins is at the White House for us, Jeff Zeleny joins us as well. He's keeping an eye on the Biden campaign in Wilmington, Delaware.

Jeff Zeleny, I'm going to pretend this is a normal day and I'm going to start with you. Joe Biden is the President-Elect. And so, he has to build his team right now. This is the conversation we would normally be having after an election in which the results are convincing and, sorry, irrefutable. Joe Biden is the President-Elect.

So we saw him today deciding to pay homage to America's veterans, his late son Beau was among them. He's trying to project this image of everything is normal, working on building his team for example, his cabinet and other jobs and the administration at a time when it is just not anything like normal.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: He is, John. And we saw him in Philadelphia just a short time ago. It was that split screen image, new Commander-in-Chief and the outgoing Commander-in- Chief. But there is as Mr. Biden said yesterday, in his first news conference, since the election there's one president at a time. And that is a guiding force, I am told, behind all his thinking on the transition.

Yes, they have teams in place. They announced yesterday these agency review teams. What that means are really several dozen people across the agencies of federal government to start looking at the potential hires here. There are some 4,000 political appointed positions throughout the government. So now they are essentially taking resumes.

The help wanted sign is open. No question about it. But for the president-elect's part, he is intentionally taking a calm and cool approach. He knows he won the election. He has no questions about that. But we saw him and even smiling at the question of will Republicans come around. He said they will. They will and then got a big grin on their face.

But behind the scenes I am told, there's not worry yet, at least on his part, at this reluctance from Republicans to accept this. We'll see if that changes as these weeks go forward here. He said, yes, he would like the presidential daily brief. He would like access to intelligence information. But there's one president at a time, so he said he can't act on this now.

So it's not a major imposition at this point. What he is doing is relishing in the fact that world leaders are calling him right here in Wilmington. And that is something he likes a lot as a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as a former vice president who traveled around the world.

So he is enjoying that. But John, we'll see how long these cooler temperatures prevail. But that's the tone he's trying to set publicly to make sure that he is not viewed as being upset by any of this. Some Democrats are upset that he, at least, for all we can tell is not, John.

KING: And so, Kaitlan, this is Veterans' Day, and for those watching around the world, it is the day of national federal holiday in the United States where we pay tribute to Americans who put on the uniform, defended their country, past and present and future even.

And it's normally a day after a presidential election especially the transfer of power, that America makes a statement to the world, the current president goes as Commander-in-Chief pays tribute to America's veterans.

And we saw the president-elect going to an event on his own that is supposed to send a signal of wow, America has peaceful transitions of power. We haven't seen the president in several days. But we do see on his tweets that he remains defiant saying, I'm not giving up.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, he does. And speaking of the message that is sent to world leaders, look at what the Secretary of State is saying, denying reality by saying that there's going to be a second Trump Administration when right now we know that is not the case.

It's about to be a Biden Administration. And so, we're seeing this overall as the president, his first public appearance in six days, with two exceptions of the president going to the golf course this week.

And of course that was not an event where press was allowed. And what we actually saw the president in front of our cameras. And so, this is the president coming out. He did what he was supposed to do, this traditional event where the president comes out with the vice president. But of course something that I noticed while we were standing there, I just went to the president to Arlington National Cemetery is, you're looking around and you're looking at who is there.

General Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Kellogg, Vice President's National Security Adviser and there we have the Acting Defense Secretary who, of course, has only been on the job since Monday, since President Trump abruptly fired his Defense Secretary, something that was his first major act since losing the election.

But John, what we're seeing from the president behind the scenes, although he's not saying a lot publicly is he's continuing to sow doubt about the outcome of this election. And he is attacking Republican officials, the City Commissioner of Philadelphia today after he not only was talking about these fantastical ideas about whether or not there is widespread fraud.

But, John, he did what the president and his allies are demanding these officials do, they're circulating lists of people that are dead that they say voted in this election. He looked at that list, he said.

[12:10:00]

COLLINS: They took time out of vote counting and going through what they are dealing with to actually look through that list and he said not a single person on one of those list that was circulating claiming to be someone who is dead who has voted had voted since they died in the election in Philadelphia.

And so, the president moments later attacks him. So you see this vicious cycle that we're stuck in here with the president and it doesn't look like it's ending any time soon.

KING: Even if they had, the numbers are just overwhelming. They put out a statement say the Trump Campaign saying four people Georgia, four dead people voted. Even if that's true and in most cases these are mix-up or turns out not to be true. But even if that was true, it's a 14,000 vote lead, four people is not going to make much of a difference.

But apparently math is not strength of the Trump Campaign. Kaitlan, let me stick with you, because Republicans at Washington largely standing by the president, because they want to pick up those two Senate seats in Georgia, they want to keep them in the runoff in January.

They fear defying the president and losing his support. But around the country you're starting to see cracks from the people I will say have day jobs, people who actually have to speak to their citizens like Governors. Let's start, this is Asa Hutchinson, the Governor of Arkansas who once served here in Washington says, if Joe Biden is the president, fine by me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ASA HUTCHINSON (R-AR): I think he's doing the right thing in trying to prepare for the eventuality. He would certainly be easy to work with. I worked with him when he was the United States Senate. I was Head of the DEA. I worked with him when I was in congress. So it's a good relationship there.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: That's actually normal from one Governor. Here is another Governor who is not a Trumpy of course. Charlie Baker, my home state of Massachusetts saying, Mr. President, get over it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. CHARLIE BAKER (R-MA): I'm dismayed to hear the baseless claims coming from the president, from his team, and from many other elected Republican officials in Washington. I've been a Republican for 40 years. This latest move to employ the Department of Justice in all of this is so wildly inappropriate. And stalling an orderly transition process, especially at a time like this, is equally unacceptable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: In a normal world, Kaitlan, leaders listen to qualified talented people in their organization. And by organization here, I mean Republican Party. I'm going to suspect that President Trump won't listen here.

COLLINS: I think my favorite comment from the state official was the Montana Secretary of State who told the president it was time to tip his hat, bite his lip, and congratulate Joe Biden. And so, as we're seeing more of that across the nation, not just from these officials here in Washington, what we are seeing is a Republican Party on edge, because they are not sure how to navigate this.

Privately they are incredibly dismissive of what the president is saying. So you see some of them are trying to choose their words very carefully, publicly. People like the Attorney General Bill Barr all the way to the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Because they also are very concerned about what's happening in Georgia.

But also, John, what's coming up in four years. If the president is going to end all of this by saying he's running for re-election in four years, even if he doesn't actually do it, it is going to have everyone in his party who wants to run for president that year on edge.

But also those who know that is the president came out against them in the next four years, they could be very well in danger of losing their election. So the president still holds a lot of political power.

And we're going to see just how much he'll embarrasses some of these officials by making them back up his baseless claims until he's ready to change his mind and concede the election to Joe Biden. And by then I'm sure then all of these claims that they are pushing about fraudulent votes are going to go away and disappear.

KING: He has every right to try to continue to lead the party as an ex-president, but the math is the math. Kaitlan Collins at the White House, grateful for the reporting. Jeff Zeleny in Wilmington as well. Up next for us, there are alarming new Coronavirus numbers including from Texas. Texas now the first state to surpass one million cases.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [12:15:00]

KING: The Coronavirus numbers are simply depressing. More and more states now reporting record high case numbers and hospitalizations, the death count also starting to head up. Let's look at the trends and they are not good. 45 states, 45 of the 50 states, orange and red. That means more new infections this week compared to last week.

45 states including you see the deep red 15, 15 of those 40 reporting at least 50 percent more new infections this week compared to last week. The trend line heading dangerously in the wrong direction. These states are setting records, five states record new cases just yesterday, Ohio, Illinois, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, those five states with a new record yesterday.

Other states experiencing this as well as we go through this fall peak. Several states, four of them, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Nevada are trying to push new stay-at-home restrictions this week, different variations of them. But Governors in those states saying it is critical as the case count goes back up. The people essentially rewind to the spring, state at home if you can.

If you look at the trend line here, you almost don't need me to say anything. That red line going straight up, straight up. The first hill back in the spring, the summer surge that we thought was horrific, that was here, around 60, 70,000 cases. Yesterday 136,325 cases in the United States.

If you come up here to look at the death trend, this line sadly, sadly, everyone is sad trending up again as well above 1,000, 1,415 Americans died of the Coronavirus just yesterday, when you have those more cases and more hospitalizations which we can show you here. Hospitalizations now passing.

Again, the first peak back in the spring when nobody knew the novel Coronavirus, hospitalizations way up. More cases and we just hit about the same point back in the summer surge. Now, 61,964 Americans hospitalized yesterday and all the experts will tell you that line are going up and in some places causing dangerous stress on hospital systems.

Texas passing one million cases, the first state to do that, it will not be the last. You see California just behind it, Florida as well. New York and Illinois down to just over half million cases. The red of the deaths down here.

[12:20:00]

KING: It's just a horrific period you see Texas going up above, which is why Texas has a problem right now statewide, El Paso particularly hard hit. Listen here to a member of the state's task force telling Texans we're at a crisis point.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. OGECHIKA ALOZIE, TEXAS MEDICAL ASSOCIATION CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE: The community sort of focuses reduces their mobility. And we get a hold of this crisis, we have the resources amongst the health care system here, I think that's what gets us through the winter. Hopefully the community will rally around like we did after August 3rd last year and really form the nexus of what should be El Paso strong.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Let's bring in now CNN Medical Analyst, Dr. Seema Yasmin the Former CDC Disease Detective. Dr. Yasmin, thank you for your time. The numbers are troubling. I had these front pages made mostly to show election results, but I just want to hold this one up. Because as we show election results what do we also see, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, cases hitting high.

No matter where you are in America. What needs to be done at this moment when you see that case trajectory, the hospitalization trajectory and sadly behind it now the death trajectory heading straight up.

DR. SEEMA YASMIN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: We need what we've needed from the beginning, John. We need a robust pandemic response. And I'm so concerned that we're not going to see that, at least until Inauguration Day. And in the meantime things will continue to worsen. Right now we are on track to hit one million new cases per week every week by the end of this year.

And I want to explain what that really means to the health care system. What does that mean for your local hospital? Because right now about 60,000 Americans are hospitalized with COVID-19, double the number from late September. In public health a metric that we look at, John, is when 5 percent of your hospital beds are filled by COVID-19 patients, you start to worry.

When you get to 10 percent of your beds filled with COVID patients, you start to in enact your surge strategies and you start to think about not delivering your regular standard of care, but delivering a crisis standard of care. And right now thinking - remember that 10 percent mark, 10 percent of beds filled by COVID-19 patients that apply to 18 states.

And if you look at North Dakota and South Dakota, it's not 10 percent of their beds; it's closer to 25 percent. So when we've been hopeful over the last few months saying to people, look, the COVID death rate is going down a bit. Look, your chance of surviving COVID are increasing that was great news.

And it wasn't because we had a cure; it wasn't because we had a deluge of proven medicines, that hasn't happened. Those pieces of progress happened because of good old-fashioned clinical medicine of us noticing who needs ventilation, who doesn't, who needs to be put on their tummy to increase oxygenation to their lungs.

All of that progress strong goes out the window if you can't get people into the hospital beds they need. And because we're seeing so many different hot spots, it makes it harder, even impossible, John, for some hospitals to say, look, we're overwhelmed, we're over capacity. Can we shuffle some patients to you; can we share some of your resources?

That just does not happen. And yesterday as we saw 1400 Americans die from COVID-19, we expect that to double, maybe even triple by Inauguration Day, so they were mourning 370,000 Americans who would have died by that date.

And I want us to make sure we are not normalizing this, because we are not becoming numb to it, because we're looking at these numbers every day. 1400 Americans dying of COVID a day is like three or four plane loads full of Americans crashing and dying. This is unsustainable.

KING: It's unsustainable. It is depressing every day to go through the numbers. And no one should - we can be numbed by them without giving up on them. How significant is this new CDC guidance on masks?

The new studies demonstrate cloth mask materials can also reduce wearer's exposure to infectious droplets through filtration including filtration of fine droplets. Essentially they are saying a mask helps you both ways. It helps protect you from somebody else, but it also - explain that. Why or is it significant?

YASMIN: It's really important, John, because we want our policies to be based on the best available evidence. What CDC is doing here is pulling all these studies, evidence from different countries and saying, look, that was building evidence, mounting evidence that wearing a mask not only protects you but protects others.

We've been saying it from the beginning, but it's still important to have that data. And it gives me hope because it reminds me that even in the midst of this crisis there is a thing that we can all do, a pretty simple thing to get a cloth mask, make sure it doesn't have a valve, make sure you're wearing it properly and you're taking it off properly.

That action plus physical distancing plus good hand hygiene plus avoiding the gatherings can make a dent in this pandemic. Unfortunately what we've seen is the politicization of a small piece of fabric. We've seen the masks become very polarized when actually it's just a good public health action that can save.

[12:25:00]

YASMIN: And we've seen models, and you and I have discussed these models John, wearing a mask if all of us do it can save tens of thousands of lives in the U.S.

KING: Right, tens of thousands. And if it saved just one, it would be worth doing but tens of thousands is the right number.

YASMIN: Yes.

KING: Dr. Yasmin, grateful for your time as always. Thank you.

YASMIN: Thank you.

KING: Coming up the vote counting continues in Pennsylvania even as the president continues to say there's fraud, without proof.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:30:00]