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Postmaster General To Announce Overhaul Plans In Coming Months; Trump Campaign Eliminates Voter Fraud Hotline After Flooded With Prank Calls; Trump Refusing To Concede, Looking At Options For Future; California Becomes Second State To Surpass 1 Million Cases; Biden Team Seeks Coronavirus Backchannels As Transition Blocked. Aired 12-12.30p ET

Aired November 13, 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, INSIDE POLITICS: DeJoy says these coming changes necessary considering the $9 billion in losses USPS suffered this past year.

But as CNN previously reported, virtually all of those losses in the budget problem stem from a 2006 law that forces the postal service to prefund its pensions for 75 years. It is unclear what impact a Biden Administration might have on DeJoy's plans.

And hello to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I am John king in Washington. Thank you for sharing this day with us. Joe Biden's presidential win looks even more impressive today. We now project him as the winner in Arizona, a state last carried by a Democrat for president a generation ago.

But President Trump and many people paid with your tax dollars continue to ignore the results and the voice of the majority of American voters. Trump's sons Don Jr. and Eric also in the fight on club. But our reporters do say Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are torn, worried the president could damage his prospects for a 2024 come back if he keeps making reckless claims of voter fraud.

There's a rare thing on the president's schedule today, a meeting to discuss the Coronavirus crisis scheduled for this hour. The topic is Operation Warp Speed, the vaccine effort even more critical now as the United States keeps setting records for new cases. Another record yesterday, the third straight day.

Just yesterday a member of President-Elect Joe Biden's Coronavirus Advisory Board floated the idea of a 4 to 6 week national lockdown. Today, others on team Biden pushing back on that notion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. VIVEK MURTHY, CO-CHAIR, BIDEN CORONAVIRUS ADVISORY BOARD: Right now, the way we should be thinking about this is more like a series of restrictions that we dial up or down depending on how a bad spread is taking place in a specific region. We're not in a place where we're saying shut the whole country down. We've got to be more targeted.

SYMONE SANDERS, SENIOR ADVISER, BIDEN CAMPAIGN: To be clear, Jim, President-Elect Biden, it is his intention to shut down this virus, not the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The Coronavirus crisis, though, is obvious. Look at the numbers there. New model pointing to an expected increase in Coronavirus deaths increasing the number to over 430,000 by March 1st, if new measures to stop the spread are not implemented. A warning echoed by another medical expert just last hour.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JONATHAN REINER, PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE, GOERGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: What we know with certainty is that we are seeing exponential growth of the virus right now, as you said 153,000 cases yesterday. And it is going to continue to rise until we do something differently.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: More on the Coronavirus numbers in just a few moments. But first, new numbers that make it even more clear that Joe Biden is the President-Elect will be the next President of the United States. Overnight, CNN, let me move this map here, overnight, CNN projecting that Joe Biden will win the state of Arizona, an impressive win, not since 1996 has a Democrat carried the State of Arizona.

Joe Biden's lead, 11,434. Yes, that's very close. 49.4 to 49.1, but still an impressive win as the ballots are finished counting there. As you come out, look at this map, here's what is most significant about it. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the blue wall, right, the three states that made Donald Trump the President of the United States back in Democratic hands.

Not called yet because there's a recount, Joe Biden leads in the State of Georgia. Not since 1992 had a Democrat carried that state in the race for president. Then you add in Arizona. Not since 1996 had a Democrat carried that state for president. If you then look at what that means and you come out here, Joe Biden is on the path, Georgia still has to be finished, but Joe Biden is on a path, 273 electoral votes, 290 electoral votes.

And if he holds Georgia, 306 electoral votes. That is the same total President Trump received four years ago. 306 is the potential for Joe Biden. We expect we haven't called North Carolina yet, we expect that one to stay in President Trump's hands.

306 electoral votes, meaning as the president now alleges fraud, without any evidence so far, he would not have to flip one state t change the election, not two states, at least three states, depending on the size of those states and the number of Electoral College votes.

At least three states, something that is absolutely unlikely, almost impossible. And listen here; this is the president's trade adviser, Peter Navarro, paid with U.S. taxpayer's money saying the president wins.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER NAVARRO, WHITE HOUSE TRADE ADVISER: We are moving forward here at the White House under the assumption that there will be a second Trump term. If you look statistically at what happened, clearly the president won this election, was leading on Election Day. And then after Election Day somehow in these key battleground states, they got just enough votes to catch up to the president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Let's bring in our Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash. Yes, that's interesting. That's the most polite word I can find for that one. At what point do the sycophants decide that they're undermining themselves, and they are boss, the president, and this little thing we call a democracy by saying things like that.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean it would be nice to know the answer to that question. The problem is as you well know, John that the sycophants as you call them they are living in an alternate universe.

[12:05:00]

BASH: An alternate reality, one where the media that they watch and listen to are telling the people who support this alternate reality that it is actually happening, meaning that they're saying that what is going on right now is a result of fraud, is a result of a rigged system which there is absolutely no evidence of whatsoever.

And so, what the people who I am talking to and I am sure you are as well are saying is, what they need to do is wait for this to be exhausted in the courts by judges who will kind of be the final arbiters.

But given what we just heard from somebody who was very influential in the White House as you said at the beginning of the program, paid by taxpayers, it's unclear how and when that point will ever come and it's getting to the point beyond kind of ridiculous. It's getting really to the point of dangerous.

KING: Right. And so everyone, you're reporting, everybody here at CNN, people are good organizations, we are trying to figure out what is the president's strategy, does he have a strategy here. This is how Maggie Haberman puts it in "The New York Times" today.

"There is no grand strategy at play, according to interviews with a half-dozen advisors and people close to the president, Mr. Trump is simply trying to survive from one news cycle to the next, seeing how far he can push his case against his defeat and ensure they continue support of this Republican base. By dominating the story of his exit from the White house, he hopes to keep his millions of supporters energized and engaged for whatever comes next".

OK. I get that the president may want to plan a comeback or launch some media enterprise or both. I get that. But lying to your own supporters? That's a good path?

BASH: I mean we have seen it many times over the past four years, that pattern. Here's what a source that is close to the president said to me, which is similar. He knows he is not going to win, but he also knows he holds the cards right now because he won 72 million votes and founded a movement.

That is the president's head space. And so, he needs to figure out how to harness that. And right now he believes harnessing that is by telling them that everything that you saw in the election isn't just and that they should stick with him. And as we've talked about so many times, not all of the 72 or not maybe even close to 73 million people who voted for him believe that, but a lot do.

KING: He could make the case we came up short this time. But we do have a great movement, we do have a lot of people, and we're going to keep building it. You could make that case and move on.

BASH: We might hear that eventually. But we don't expect to hear that at least until the Georgia recount is finished which is November 20th.

KING: But to that point last hour, we had a little of the back and forth that is the Trump presidency. Geraldo Rivera tweeting out that he just had a phone call with his friend, the president. And he said the president says, "He is a realist" and will do, "The right thing."

But he wants to see what states do in terms of certification. He started committed to fighting for every vote and if he loses, talking more about all that he accomplished. That get to your point about we built the movement, we did these things at some point.

But within moments of that tweet from Geraldo Rivera, the president tweeted out about this new report that says the election was safe and secure, and then he adds at the end rigged election. So you can get whiplash trying to keep track of all this.

BASH: Yes, with the tweet you just put on the screen, with a disclaimer by Twitter that the things that you're reading in that tweet aren't necessarily true, which we have seen so many times over the past week, two weeks when it comes to the president's tweets.

What was interesting about Geraldo Rivera's tweet, a couple of things? Number one, that he felt compelled to make public a private conversation. He is trying to send a signal, whether the president wanted that or not. That was obviously a strategic move by somebody who talks to the president who is trying to move things along. And in this case, that was Geraldo Rivera.

The other part of his tweet though was he made an analogy to a boxing match and that he is a prize fighter who wants to wait until the bell rings. The big difference is that most prize fighters don't stop before the bell rings and turn to the ref and say - doesn't say that this whole thing is rigged and it's not real and it's fake and so on and so forth.

That is the danger in what the president is doing. If he fought until the bell rings, that is fine. That is what any fighter should do in any arena, but that's not what he's doing. He is eroding the trust in the system even more than he did over the past five years.

KING: And so, let's move now to the president-elect who actually should be getting more attention maybe than we give him because of this controversy the current president keeps stirring up.

[12:10:00]

KING: "The Washington Post" reported yesterday that Hillary Clinton was somehow being considered for the possibility of Ambassador to the United Nations. She was the Secretary of State, she was the First Lady.

Susan Rice who is a Biden Adviser, served who has served with Hillary Clinton in the prior administration, this is ridiculous and an insult to Hillary Clinton. Stop, please. A lot of names get floated in transitions, but this one doesn't seem to be real to me. Is it?

BASH: We don't know. We don't know. But what we do know is, you know this, because you've covered many, many transitions, that there are trial balloons. And this could be one of them. This could be somebody who doesn't know. But what is interesting is how many women are being floated for the top cabinet positions, whether it is Secretary of State or Treasury or go down the line.

And whether or not in addition to a female Vice President, Joe Biden will kind of put women at the top of the cabinet ladder, will be really, really interesting to see. We know he has a lot of boxes to check.

And I don't mean that in a pejorative way, he has a lot of ways that he has to make people happy from the progressive side, too, the promise to reach across the aisle, and potentially put a Republican in the cabinet. But the fact that so many women are on the list is really interesting.

KING: And one other powerful woman, trail blazer in a own right, Condoleezza Rice, the Former Secretary of State, Former National Security Adviser telling this to Peggy Noonan in "The Wall Street Journal," saying essentially that this is overblown, this controversy about giving the President-elect intelligence briefings.

Senator Harris has served on the Intelligence Committee, there's not much that will surprise her. Joe Biden has been vice president for eight years. The idea that we are endangering national security is, I think overblown.

That is a somewhat different take than you get for many of the people on team Biden, who maybe because they just think its tradition and it should happen as opposed to its absolutely necessary for him to get the information it should happen?

BASH: And it's a different take from what we are hearing from elected Republicans who are always reluctant to do anything to make President Trump mad. And that even includes Lindsey Graham to James Lankford, to others who are actually on the intelligence committee.

It seems as though those elected officials are using national security as cover to try to push the president along to facing the reality that Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States.

KING: And that the president needs so many nudges, whether it's from Geraldo Rivera or republican senators, the bell has rung. The bell has rung. Dana Bash, appreciate the reporting and the insights. Up next for us, California, another second state in the United States to reach a very unwelcome milestone over one million Coronavirus cases.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

KING: California was the first state to issue a lockdown order, now the second state to surpass one million Coronavirus cases. Let's take a look at the national trends and then focus in on California. 44 states, 44 states in orange and red, meaning more new Coronavirus infections this week compared to the data last week.

And as you can see the dark red, 16 states reporting 50 percent or more new infections this week compared to last week. 50 percent or more. Five states holding steady, just one going down. This is the problem and it's a problem across America.

Some states obviously in much worse shape than others. But this is the weekly average of positivity rates. 27 percent in Alabama, 28 percent in Missouri, 46 percent in Kansas. 56 percent in South Dakota. You see the darker the colors, the higher the positivity rate. That means more new infections today and the more likelihood those infected people are spreading this in their communities.

California now joining Texas among the states, two states now with more than one million total Coronavirus infections over the course of this pandemic. Florida is third. New York and Illinois are rounding it out. California cases, you see the trend lines.

Remember early on, California had high during the summer surge of course, came back down. Now starting to trend back up again. That is of concern to state officials. The positivity rate in California, the seven day moving average you see down here now back above 4 percent. The trend line heading up that way.

And if you look at it this way, the positivity rate yesterday in California, 5.8 percent, better than 10.1 percent, that is the national average, but still trending back up. If you looked at the other map, if you look at it in terms of the seven day average, it's 4 percent.

But as of yesterday, up to 5.8 percent so what can California do to keep it from going higher. Joining us is California's Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly. Sir, thank you very much for your time today.

Every state is going through this. If you look at some of the metrics, positivity rate on average, California is doing pretty well. If you look at yesterday's number, it tells you you're starting to go back up. What needs to be done to shove it back down?

DR. MARK GHALY, CALIFORNIA HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: Yes John, thanks for having me. Certainly what we need to continue to do and we've done it with Californians the entire time is, follow some simple practices. We've had a mask order for many, many months. And we hope and expect that Californians continue to use those not just when they're out and about.

But now as we enter the holiday season, consider using it even when you haven't seen many of those loved ones that are important to you. We know that makes a huge difference to reduce the spread. Limit our mixing; continuing to do the things we know when you feel sick to stay home. Those are going to be the tools that we have to continue to use, keeping our guard up this entire time to get those numbers down.

KING: Obviously nation's most populous state, so people look and if they see even the seeds of an issue or problem, they get nervous. This is Dr. Ashish Jha who is the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health saying things are obviously horrible re COVID, our seven day moving average of infections now 130,000, 11.2 percent positivity, 60,000 hospitalizations.

Two of our largest states are still keeping things under control, New York and California. And if they lose control, things will get much worse.

[12:20:00]

KING: So that was a tribute there, it's a tribute in part to what California has done in recent months. You just know the numbers. Nation's most populous state that, if this spirals there, there's a domino effect on the rest of the country, right?

GHALY: Certainly. We are all interconnected; we've learned that through many months of addressing this pandemic. The things we do here in California are going to be important for California, but really around the nation. And you know, now is the moment that we continue to keep that guard up, make sure we are doing the things that we know can help us bring these numbers down.

KING: And I want you to listen here to Dr. Fauci who has been very concerned - was concerned late in the campaign, he didn't think he was getting much attention at the White House. But the issue he says is that, now that you have these positivity rates so high that it just gets almost impossible to slow the community spread. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: There is community spread right now which means that there are people in society who are infecting others. They don't have symptoms; they don't know they're infected. We need to pour more testing into the community to get a feel and identify who in the community is spreading the infection.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I have no great scientific expertise. So one of the things I get frustrated at when I hear 8 or 9 months into this, pour more testing into the community. Why are we still behind the curve here, in the case of California, is that the biggest thing you need to do, more testing to have better eyes on this if you will?

GHALY: Certainly, and I mean, California has been a believer of testing from the beginning. Our Governor has really pushed hard for us to do more testing. We recently opened up a state lab that's going to bring up to another 150,000 PCR tests a day to our state.

We not only look to test those who are symptomatic, but really working hard to identify those who are asymptomatic, presymptomatic for exactly the reason Dr. Fauci is mentioning, the power in case finding is critical.

Our ability to let people know the information when they're infected, so they cannot just protect themselves and take precautions, but protect their family and communities. We believe in testing, we believe in finding cases. That's the tool that's going to empower us with the information, but it's not enough.

We've got to keep doing the simple things that in California, we talk about at the state and the county level every day about keeping your mask on, making sure that you keep your distance, and do the things we know, and have seen work in not just California but in other parts of the nation and the globe.

KING: Dr. Mark Ghaly, grateful for your time and your insights. So, best of luck in the challenging days ahead.

GHALY: Thank you.

KING: Thank you. Still ahead for us, President-Elect Biden's transition team resource for using back channels to work around its block to access to critical Coronavirus data.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

KING: President-Elect Joe Biden's transition team now seeking back channels with Governors, the private sector and the medical community as it prepares its Coronavirus response, that from sources close to the transition telling CNN, then of course that because the Trump administration refuses to cooperate.

CNN's Kristen Holmes is following those developments. So the White House won't cooperate, and this is an end round, is that the right way to put it?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John essentially. Remember this until the administration actually signs off on the election which is the ascertainment that we have been talking about for several days now, the Biden team is not allowed to talk to any of the agencies across the government.

Now when we're talking about Coronavirus response, that means they aren't allowed to talk to health and human services or CDC or the FDA. And what that means, they aren't allowed access to critical information and data sets that they need in order to be prepared on day one.

Now when I talk to medical experts about this, they actually say it's not just the preparedness that they're concerned about, it's that vaccine distribution plan. This is a nationwide rollout, it is a big deal.

And the Biden team will have to take over for the Trump Administration. In order to do that, and again from medical experts who have done this before, they say it needs to be absolutely seamless, so that it doesn't affect hundreds of millions of Americans.

Now as we noted, the Biden team is doing everything they can without this access to try and work around this, they're talking to private sector, they're talking to distributors, they're talking to the medical community as a whole as well as governors about what they need and what that response should look like.

Taking a listen to one of the members of Biden's Coronavirus task force, which they put together as well, another work another here talking about all of the experience they have.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. CELINE GOUNER, MEMBER, PRESIDENT-ELECT BIDEN'S CORONAVIRUS ADVISORY BOARD: The Biden Harris team has very seasoned people, people who have been in federal government in the case of President-Elect Biden over 40 years, his Chief of Staff, Ron Klain has served under two vice presidents, was the White House Ebola Czar.

He will be working with state leaders, government officials, and public health leaders throughout the country and communicating with them what we're thinking, what we're planning so that they can sort of get a head start.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: So look, again, they are clearly working around these road blocks, but the more medical experts you talk to, the more they tell you that they still need access to this data. It is incredibly important, they need to be on the same page as the Trump Administration and know what they're getting into, so that they can best respond, particularly as we see now as this virus continues to rage across the country, John.