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Joe Biden Names Longtime Aide Ron Klain as his Chief of Staff; State Department Preventing Biden from Accessing Messages from Foreign Leaders; Biden Moves Forward with Transition Without Help from Trump Admin; Biden Moves Forward with Transition Without Help from Trump Administration; U.S. Breaks Record Again for New COVID Cases and Hospitalizations; Head of Federal Vaccine Group Says FDA Might not Make Decision About Pfizer's COVID-19 Vaccine Until Christmas. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired November 12, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:57]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Very good Thursday morning to you, I'm Jim Sciutto.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Poppy Harlow.

President-elect Joe Biden is pushing this transition forward despite a flurry of roadblocks courtesy of President Trump. From the administration preventing access to messages from world leaders, to holding back crucial intel briefings, Biden is for now shaking it off and making plans and lining up his staff.

First up, big position, long-time aid Ron Klain being named overnight the chief of staff for Biden. He's one of the president-elect's most trusted advisers. He also helped lead the Obama administration's response to the Ebola crisis in 2014. That experience coordinating public health resources is key.

SCIUTTO: Because while the president has gone from downplaying the virus to now seemingly ignoring it entirely, the nation is reporting record high cases and crucially hospitalizations as well. ICU beds are filling up in many areas, hospitals and their staff strained, experts are warning of a very hard, a very difficult and dangerous few weeks ahead.

Let's begin with CNN's MJ Lee. She's in Delaware following the president-elect's camp.

MJ, what more do we know about Ron Klain, his past and his role, his planned role in the administration?

MJ LEE, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, guys. So no concession yet from President Trump, but, as you said, the transition efforts here in Wilmington continue and last night Biden announcing that Ron Klain is going to serve as his chief of staff in the White House. This is a longtime and trusted aide to the former vice president for a number of decades.

He was his chief of staff when Biden was vice president under Obama and, as you mentioned, he was critically the Ebola czar under President Obama, leading those efforts when the administration was facing those issues and recently notably has been a vocal critic of President Trump and his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

So clearly a skill that is going to come into play as Biden has made very clear this is going to be a top priority for him as soon as he takes office. As far as cabinet appointments we are told that those are probably going to take longer, probably waiting until after Thanksgiving.

Now, I should note one thing that Biden is not getting yet are these Presidential Daily Briefings, these classified briefings that usually president-elects would be getting at this time. He can't have access to them until President Trump officially concedes and the GSA certifies that Biden is the winner, and this has interestingly prompted Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma to essentially say, look, if he is still not getting these briefings by the end of the week, I'm going to intervene.

He didn't necessarily specify how he is going to intervene, but he essentially said, look, it is important that Biden be prepared for the job, it is important for the sake of national security. I will note, though, he also said it is important that he be prepared in case he wins this election. He of course didn't come straight out and say Biden did, in fact, win this election -- guys.

HARLOW: Yes. That's an important note as well. MJ, thanks for the reporting, very much.

Let's get to our Kylie Atwood. She joins us this morning at the State Department.

Good morning, Kylie. The State Department is still blocking President- elect Biden from getting messages from world leaders. Why?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, Jim and Poppy, this is pretty extraordinary. Traditionally the State Department Operations Center sets up phone calls for the president- elect with world leaders, they provide translation when necessary.

That is not happening right now. So just to be really clear about what is happening, it means world leaders who believe that they should be reaching out to the State Department to get in touch with the president-elect are doing so, but their messages are not being responded to.

They're not being received by President-elect Joe Biden. Essentially he has a mailbox full of messages here at the State Department that he cannot access. And of course, that is because President Trump hasn't recognized the victory of Joe Biden and the GSA also hasn't officially recognized that he won the presidential election, but I am told that the Biden team would of course prefer to be using these State Department resources. [09:05:08]

It is an undue burden for them to have to set up these phone calls without State Department support. And we should note that the Biden team has tons of folks on them who are, you know, part of former government officials, they can do these things, he has had more than half a dozen phone calls with world leaders, but he isn't using the State Department resources and these foreign leaders are having to navigate a very unfamiliar maze just to get in touch with the president-elect of the United States.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Sometimes it might be better just to tweet those congratulations, right? Can't be held up at the State Department.

(LAUGHTER)

SCIUTTO: Kylie Atwood, thanks very much.

Joining us now is CNN political analyst Alex Burns, national political correspondent for the "New York Times," and Sabrina Siddiqui, CNN political analyst and national politics reporter for the "Wall Street Journal." Two pretty good newspapers.

Thanks to both of you this morning.

Alex, you know, it's a measure of the times, right, that for a sitting Republican lawmaker to recognize the fact of Joe Biden's election here based on the electoral count, et cetera, is somehow an outlier, right, a courageous outlier. Is there a time limit on the silence from the vast majority of Republican lawmakers here or are they simply waiting for the president to decide that he's ready to accept this?

ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, if they're waiting on the president, Jim, they could be waiting a really long time. I do think there is a time limit on how long we can persist in this space where most Republicans are not saying they believe the election was stolen. Most Republicans are not saying they believe Joe Biden won the election. They're saying count every vote and let this litigation play out.

But at some point, and at some point soon, the litigation will be played out and as your network and my paper have reported extensively there is no expectation that the president is going to make significant headway at limiting or certainly not reversing the outcome of this election, which is a Joe Biden victory. And when we get to that point it's a real moment of truth for these Republican senators, governors, members of the House who have been using this fig leaf of litigation to avoid stating what we all know to be true, which is that Biden won this thing.

HARLOW: Well, Sabrina, I mean, maybe he'll listen to the ultimate Republican who even challenged the own network he was working for, FOX News' Decision Desk, in calling the race for Obama in 2012, Karl Rove, who writes in your paper this morning, quote, "The president's efforts are unlikely to move a single state from Mr. Biden's column and certainly they are not enough to change the final outcome to win. Mr. Trump must prove systemic fraud with illegal votes in the tens of thousands. There is no evidence of that so far."

How big is it to have Karl Rove not just think that and say it, but write it?

SABRINA SIDDIQUI, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think it's certainly significant and you have heard many Republicans who are not members of Congress, whether they are former lawmakers, we obviously even heard from former president George W. Bush and now Karl Rove about the need to allow for a transition of power. And just talking about the fact that there really is no legal path ahead for the president.

But so far it's quite clear that he is going to press forward, and I think it is very much because, to Alex's point, he's not facing any notable pressure from Republicans in Congress who actually hold the power to perhaps try and force his hand. It's very telling that he has the backing of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell as well as House minority leader Kevin McCarthy.

And so they're sort of equivocating, where on the one hand they are not actually giving into the president's claims that there has been some kind of widespread fraud, but they're still pointing to his right to challenge what he sees as irregularities which still leaves some doubt in the mind of the American public about the integrity of this election.

It's really hard to overstate the impact of doing so at a time when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo himself said the world is watching. Now it was ironic for him to say that the world is watching at the same time that he said that there would be a smooth transition of power to a second Trump administration. And in addition to just creating this cloud over the election in the eyes of the American public, they also are really undermining the ability for the United States to weigh in on the democratic process in other countries.

And so I think, look, the Biden transition team is moving forward, but it's just hard to overstate what the impact of all of this will be with respect to the integrity of American elections and also the ability to advocate for democracy overseas.

SCIUTTO: I mean, listen, disinformation works. Right? A big portion of this country believes that the president's lie in effect that the election was stolen. It matters.

Alex Burns, forgive me for looking ahead for a moment because there is a lot between now and then, but there's already things bubbling up out of the White House about the president's desire to run again in 2024 and to in effect soak up the political oxygen between now and then, whether that be a television network or control over the RNC via his son Donald Trump Jr., et cetera.

[09:10:15]

If you're Pence or Nikki Haley or Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, who imagined yourself running in 2024, what's your reaction now to see this? BURNS: I think it's a pretty daunting reality to confront if you're

hoping to run as a Republican in 2024. That whether or not President Trump runs in four years the fact that he is dangling that out there is going to freeze a lot of money that could go to other candidates. It is going to draw a lot of media attention and the attention in early states that could be going to other candidates.

It may be a little bit less scary for Mike Pence but he is so well known but yes, if you are, you know, a Senator Scott, a Senator Tom Cotton, and nobody really out in the country -- you know, there's a very small community of people who truly know who you are, the notion of President Trump being out there and blocking out the sun is definitely daunting.

I think it's daunting for the Republican Party as a whole, though, even beyond the 2024 hopefuls because, you know, so much of what we're talking about right now is this expectation in the party that if you humor President Trump for a little while longer, if you avoid getting crossfires with him just between now and the next inauguration, then you can move on and do the things that as Republicans you would have liked to do supposedly all along without President Trump directing you otherwise. I think it's pretty clear that that's not going to be the case.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Well.

HARLOW: Thank you both, Alex Burns, Sabrina Siddiqui. We appreciate it this morning.

Joining me now for some insight on what is going on at the agency that helps all of this move forward or should be helping it move forward, the General Services Administration, is former GSA administrator Denise Roth. Of course she was in charge during the Obama-Trump transition.

So good to have you. Thanks for the time.

DENISE ROTH, FORMER GSA ADMINISTRATOR: Good morning. Thank you for having me, Poppy.

HARLOW: Two very quick straightforward questions for you so our viewers understand. One, does the GSA have to wait for the other person, the president, to concede to act? And secondly, will any other government agencies cooperate with the transition without this green light from the GSA?

ROTH: The GSA does not have to wait for concessions. It's directed for the administrator to call the -- to base the ascertainment on either reasonable judgment as well as the results that they're seeing from the states. So waiting for concession is not necessary. And the truth of the matter, as the lead agency responsible for the transition the other agencies won't move. At this moment the agencies are waiting for the direction that says the transition is in play and it's time to move forward.

HARLOW: So is the GSA administrator -- is she acting in a way that you think is appropriate?

ROTH: I think what is the biggest risk at this moment if you were to ask why this moment matters, it's the fact that you want the presidential transition to go as smoothly as possible. You want the incoming presidential administration to understand what's happening today on the ground and what are the implications.

There is a great deal at stake at this moment in terms of how we're responding to the pandemic certainly. We're facing a point in our country's history that we haven't faced in centuries and we have to be able to get this right.

HARLOW: Yes.

ROTH: That smooth transition is crucial.

HARLOW: So to be fair, I mean, here is the justification of waiting from a spokesperson at the GSA. They say this needs to occur so that regardless of any outcome, whichever way it goes, people can be ready for an actual task.

That is what -- that is what Oklahoma Senator James Lankford said which I think is notable being a Republican. But the GSA is saying look, they're pointing to 2000 and "Bush V. Gore" and they're saying that they will abide by and fulfill all requirements under the law and adhere to prior precedent established by the Clinton administration in 2000. They keep saying this is just like 2000. Is it?

ROTH: I think the converse of what's happening here is we are at a moment where we're not seeing it be the case that the Trump administration's legal maneuvers so far have been successful and we do have a circumstance in which the elections have been called at least by the states.

So at this moment the real question is, is there harm in waiting? And the answer is yes. We need to ensure that if there is the presidential transition is going to happen, that it happens as quickly as possible, and that we're taking the steps to prepare the incoming administration.

That's the moment that the administration that GSA could focus on right now and I think it's imperative that they do.

HARLOW: Can I just read the quote from Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma who of course is on the oversight committee? He says he's going to intervene if Biden doesn't get these Presidential Daily Briefings by the end of the week. That would be tomorrow. Does he have any power when it comes to the GSA to force their hand?

[09:15:00]

ROTH: Well, the GSA administrators directions comes from federal law. And so Congress would actually have to take action. But at this stage, the GSA administrator could take those steps based on reasonable judgment if she deemed it so. At this moment, that has not happened. And I think that is the challenge point, and if there's anything to point to after this, is really looking at the Presidential Transition Act in the future for how we should really deal with these moments.

HARLOW: Do you worry this could become a precedent for the future, delay like this?

ROTH: It's definitely not something that we want to see continue into the future, and I think the precedent so far has been to look at what has been the reasonable expectations of the outcomes, where have we seen the votes come through, is there ability to overcome those votes?

If the answers to those are no, it is time to move forward and ensure the transition happens. I think the most important thing is having a smooth transition so that we as a country and our leadership is prepared, and that's the part that's missing, and what we're not focused on enough.

HARLOW: We so appreciate your insight, given that you had this job not that long ago. Denise Roth, thanks so much.

ROTH: Thank you for having me.

HARLOW: All right. Well, still to come, take a look at this. This is a chart of new daily coronavirus cases, higher than they have ever been in the United States, and the message from the White House this morning, there is no message.

SCIUTTO: Yes, talk about a second wave, it's even bigger. Plus, the congratulations pouring in from around the world to President-elect Biden, though some leaders still not reaching out. What could that signal for his presidency?

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[09:20:00]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. Well, sad news, the U.S. has just topped its record once again for the most new coronavirus infections in a single day, marking nine consecutive days of more than 100,000 new infections. More Americans are now hospitalized with the coronavirus than ever before, pushing hospitals all across the country to the brink. They're just having trouble keeping up.

HARLOW: Let's bring in Dr. Richard Besser, he is the former acting director of the CDC, also the president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Good morning to you, and given how dire the situation is now, worse than even the worst that we had in the Spring, Michael Osterholm of course, a leading voice on this out of the University of Minnesota, he has said that we really should be considering once again a statewide six to eight-week lockdown.

And I get that, that's controversial, and he has laid out importantly with the Minnesota Federal Reserve chairman, why it doesn't have to cripple the economy, right? That it can actually help the economy in the long run. My question to you is, can you do that effectively if every state doesn't do it?

RICHARD BESSER, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, CDC: Well, you know, this is a very dangerous situation, and what we do right now across the nation, what we do in each state will determine who lives and dies this Winter.

A vaccine is not going to be what comes to the rescue this Winter. The question about statewide or city-wide or national lockdowns is really controversial. I think we've learned a lot over the past ten months about what activities are the most dangerous and what are not. And I think that there are ways to move forward without calling for that broad lockdown.

For many people, calling for a broad lockdown is saying, you're not going to get to go to work, you're not going to be able to earn an income and put food on the table and pay your rent. Congress hasn't stepped up to provide the resources people need. And I think going with it's a lockdown or we have to accept the trajectory we're currently on is really a false choice.

SCIUTTO: OK, so, Dr. Besser, I mean, a problem you have, right, is that a large portion of Americans say they will not cooperate with some sort of version of a nationwide lockdown. According to a Gallup poll, just 49 percent of Americans would be very likely to comply, a third of people say they would be unlikely to comply with lockdown orders at all. So, you say there are options short of a nationwide lockdown, even a short-term one. So, how does a President-elect Biden, when he takes over handle that? What's the best path forward?

BESSER: Well, you know, I'm encouraged by the messaging I'm hearing coming out of the president-elect's team, and that's that we're going to be guided by the best public health science, we're going to be led by public health, there's going to be transparency around what's going on, we're going to try and do this as a unified nation. But the president-elect doesn't come into office until the end of January, and over the next 70 days --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

BESSER: There are tens of thousands of people who could lose their lives from COVID, and that could be prevented. It could be prevented by Congress putting back in place mortgage foreclosure bans, moratorium, moratorium on evictions, putting dollars in people's pockets.

Those are things that could save lives right now. Coming together, we're seeing red states and blue state governors that are -- that are requiring now masks and CDC data that came out this week shows masks not only protect other people from you if you happen to have this and don't have symptoms, but they could reduce your own chances of getting COVID by up to 70 percent.

SCIUTTO: Yes --

BESSER: And if we can see that message coming forward from political leaders at the federal level, that could lead to some behavior change. You know, I worry that there's this pandemic fatigue that set in that is preventing people from seeing easy things that could be done that could save lives. [09:25:00]

HARLOW: Thirty seconds left. We just got news minutes ago that the FDA may take until Christmas to issue a decision on Pfizer's vaccine and whether or not to approve it. Really? That long? I mean, why would it take that long?

BESSER: Well, you know, the data that's come in so far is looking seven days after your second dose of vaccine. They need to look at 28 days and see what the protection is at that point, and they need at least two months of safety data. So, you can have a vaccine that's approved, but no one wants it because they don't trust the process. We have to let the process go forward and let the experts determine when --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

BESSER: It's -- when we're ready.

SCIUTTO: And that adds to the confidence, right, of people taking it. Dr. Richard Besser, always --

BESSER: Exactly.

SCIUTTO: Good to have you on.

BESSER: Thanks so much.

SCIUTTO: Well, President-elect Biden is moving forward with talks with world leaders despite the Trump administration blocking the vice president -- the president-elect from even receiving those messages and getting the resources he would typically get. We're going to speak to a former State Department official about the protocol here and why it's important.

HARLOW: We are also moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street this morning. The Dow pointing about 200 points lower today on news that America's jobs recovery is really slowing down. We learned this morning another 709,000 Americans just filed for unemployment for the first time last week, 6.8 million remain on long-term unemployment. Investors also watching a bit of a surge in oil prices. That rally as major oil producers are slashing their production forecasts.

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