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Pro-Trump Protests; COVID-19 Hospitalizations Set A New Record Across The U.S.; Georgia Recount; Senate Runoffs In Georgia To Determine Senate Majority; Cautious Optimism In Europe As Infections Begin To Drop; Company Produces Plastic Alternative To Combat Climate Change; "Stop The Steal" Movement Spreading Far And Fast Online. Aired 11a-12p ET
Aired November 14, 2020 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[11:00:21]
ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. And thanks for joining us on this Saturday. I'm Erica Hill in for Fredericka Whitfield.
We begin this hour with a nation suffering, facing two gripping crises. There's the coronavirus pandemic, which as you know, is raging now across the country at frightening new levels we have not yet seen.
And there's also a White House actively resisting President-Elect Joe Biden's transition.
Let's begin with the coronavirus where the U.S. is shattering records daily. On Friday alone more than 184,000 new cases. It is a stunning surge, and yet it's consistent with the trend we've been warned about.
Five straight days now of record breaking new cases, new highs at hospitals as well as many reach critical capacity and staff is stretched thin.
President-elect Joe Biden is making the pandemic his top priority. One of his advisers calling the coronavirus a national security threat.
Yet despite that very real threat the current White House is refusing to cooperate, still refusing to concede the election refusing to allow the Biden transition team access to daily security briefings or classified information -- information that could be vital in helping to stop the spread of the disease.
Today Biden meets with his transition advisers to go over their next steps which include speaking with former Pentagon officials who worked under former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in the hopes of gathering crucial information.
Our reporters are covering all of the latest developments unfolding across the country.
We begin our coverage with CNN's Polo Sandoval and the alarming rise in COVID cases. So Polo, set the stage for us this morning. Where are we right now?
POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well Erica, let's start the update here in New York for example and what is being considered by local officials as a critical weekend depending on whether or not that rolling seven-day average when it comes to infections exceeds 3 percent. And that could potentially prompt authorities to reclose, at least on a temporary basis, reclose schools here in New York.
It would obviously be a significant step back. This morning a slight improvement in that number but nonetheless, the weekend certainly not over. When you expect to take a step back and look at the rest of the country you see the highest number of COVID infections just yesterday and it certainly speaks to that point that many officials are saying is that this third wave is bigger and it is broader.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SANDOVAL: More than 244,000 people have now died from the virus in the U.S. Friday reporting more than 184,000 new cases.
President Trump held a briefing late Friday in the White House Rose Garden to discuss a COVID-19 vaccine.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: My administration reached an agreement with Pfizer to provide $1.95 billion to support the mass manufacturing and distribution of 100 million doses with the option to purchase a total of 600 million doses shortly thereafter. Our investment will make it possible for the vaccine to be provided by Pfizer free of charge.
SANDOVAL: The president said the COVID vaccine will be available to the general population as soon as April.
TRUMP: We will work to secure an emergency use authorization which should be coming down extremely soon. And my administration will then coordinate the distribution of the vaccine. And it will be approved -- I think, again -- it will be approved very, very quickly we hope.
SANDOVAL: Pfizer is proud to be one of the various vaccine manufacturers participating in Operation Warp Speed as a supplier of a potential COVID-19 vaccine, the company said. Eventual coronavirus vaccines will be distributed across the states and territories based on population, a top Operation Warp Speed official said on Friday.
Since Monday the U.S. added more than half a million new COVID-19 cases since hitting 10 million at the start of the week. At this rate the number should pass 11 million in the next four days. The fastest additional of another 100,000 cases Johns Hopkins data shows, the U.S. currently has more patients hospitalized with COVID-19 than ever before according to COVID tracking projects.
Seven day average for current hospitalizations is up 20 percent from last week.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We can turn this around. It is not futile. SANDOVAL: Wearing a mask could help protect you not just those around
you from coronavirus transmission. That's the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance that was released this week.
The statement was an update to previous guidance suggesting that the main benefit of mask wearing was to help prevent infected people from spreading the virus.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[11:04:49]
SANDOVAL: And it was just yesterday during that White House Rose Garden event that the president actually threatened to not distribute a COVID-19 vaccine here in New York state saying that it would potentially not be distributed directly to residents here in this state.
However, Erica, you have to look back to September and that's actually when the governor of New York established its independent task force that would further vet any kind of COVID vaccine that would be approved by the FDA.
To that threat, local officials here at the state level, any of the city basically are saying that they would pursue legal action if that happens. But of course, that lingering question, would the president still be president when that vaccine is distributed?
HILL: All right. It remains to be seen with the timing. You're right. Polo, thank you.
Turning now to President-Elect Joe Biden's transition. Today he meets with his advisers in Delaware and that's where we find CNN's Jason Carroll this morning. So Jason, what more do we know about today's meeting?
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I can tell you just a short while ago cameras caught up with the president-elect as he was out getting some bike exercise with his wife Jill Biden and someone shouted out are you any closer to making any cabinet decisions, and Biden shouted back yes, but he didn't elaborate beyond that.
But we can tell you that the president-elect will be meeting with his transition advisers over the weekend. They're going to be going over their cabinet choices. We're hearing that they've got names for all of the key positions including treasury, defense and health.
And we're also told that the president-elect is taking a very deliberate approach to all of this. He knows that whatever names he puts forth is going to kind an incredible amount of intense scrutiny from Republican senators.
In terms of transition, though, yesterday on a press call his team was asked about what's going on with transition efforts given all of the roadblocks that the Trump administration is putting up there. You mentioned before the president-elect still not getting those intelligence briefings. The General Services Administration still not signing that paperwork to allow them to get the access to funds and to resources that they need.
So they were asked about this standoff, where they stand when it comes to where they are and where the GSA is at this point.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEN PSAKI, BIDEN TRANSITION TEAM: We're not interested in having a food fight with the GSA administrator or anyone really. We just want to get access to intelligence information, to threat assessments, to the ongoing work on COVID so that we can prepare to govern.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARROLL: So clearly, Erica, the roadblocks are there. So the Biden team taking some creative approaches to getting around that. For example, with their COVID-19 response they're working directly with state governors and local leaders on the ground.
And in another way, another example when it comes to transition, the Biden team has been working behind the scenes reaching out to former employees from the Department of Defense who worked under former Secretary James Mattis just trying to get a sense of the inner workings of the Defense Department.
So again, the roadblocks are definitely there. The Biden team was prepared for this. They're doing what they can to move forward with transition efforts, Erica.
HILL: Jason Carroll with the latest for us this morning. Jason, thank you.
In his first public appearance since his defeat President Trump did not mention a word about the election results.
For more let's bring in now Sarah Westwood who is at the White House.
Sarah, the president refusing to concede the election as we know. And as we're learning more, of course, this administration not doing anything to help the Biden team with the transition.
SARAH WESTWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Erica. They're certainly not rushing to help the Biden team prepare to take over and govern. And that's a process that would ordinarily be well under way at this point in a normal year.
But right now federal agencies are really left twiddling their thumbs effectively. They're being put in an awkward position because they haven't gotten that sign-off to begin having contacts with the Biden transition team and begin this enormously complicated and extensive process of handing over the reins of power to an incoming administration. And there's really no sign that this situation is changing anytime soon. In fact multiple Trump cabinet members have even suggested that there might not be a Biden administration at this point.
Now, we're a week from today ago that was when the race was projected Biden as the winner. Trump has really remained out of sight since that day. And that changed on Friday when he did attend that Rose Garden event. It was the first time we've heard even a fleeting acknowledgement from Trump about the prospect of him not getting a second term.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: This administration will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully whatever happens in the future who knows which administration it will be. I guess time will tell, but I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WESTWOOD: Now, pressure is mounting on the president to concede this race. His former White House chief of staff John Kelly is among a growing number of Republicans who have cited the national security implications of refusing to begin the transition, Erica.
HILL: Sarah Westwood with the latest from the White House. Sarah thank you.
[11:09:50]
HILL: Also in Washington today pro-Trump groups gathering in the nation's capital to protest the results of the election. Our Sara Sidner is out there watching these rallies and joins us now.
So Sara, what are you seeing so far. Who's there?
SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm going to let you get your own view of what's going on here. Come with me. Albert is taking the pictures here for me.
What you're seeing are hundreds of people probably about 2,500 people out here or so. So far no more than 5,000 but they're calling it the Million MAGA march. There's also another group calling it the Stop the Steal march.
They are referring the Stop the Steal march because they feel like the election has been stolen, although that is just simply not true nor proven.
Even someone that President Trump appointed to an election security official, a senior official has said that it is baseless, this idea that there is major fraud in the election. But you can see there are hundreds and hundreds of people who have gathered here today to support Donald Trump.
Now, we've talked to several different groups. I spoke with the Proud Boys. We know we've seen them here by the dozens. There's also the militant group, the Oath Keepers that is here. We've also seen someone from the white supremacist group, America First. The leader of that group is also here.
So you have a conglomerate of people from all different walks of life. Some from the far right, some from the extreme and some from the mainstream. We're expecting to hear from congress people -- Republican congress people who have decided to come and speak at this rally.
The rally is supposed to get started, the march is supposed to get started in about 45 minutes, but I want to show you some video now. We ran across the Freedom Plaza and right into President Trump himself showed up today here.
He was in his motorcade, and basically he drove around the plaza, and we managed to catch up with him and get some pictures of him along with the hundreds of people who ran to try to get pictures with him. He was waiting from his car.
He had promised on Twitter that he might come by, and indeed the president did come by. That really got the crowd going, but so far it has been peaceful. People are here chanting U.S.A. They are here basically to support Donald Trump.
Some of them believe that the election was stolen. There is no evidence of that. Some of them are here saying, look, we don't necessarily think this is all fraud, but we want the president to know that we stand by him and they'd like to see him stay for another four years.
HILL: Sara Sidner, live in Washington this morning. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Well, they may like to see the president stay but the reality is the president was defeated and we're hearing increasingly dejected. The president showing no signs of conceding, leaving the U.S. handling of the pandemic in question.
Up next just how the coronavirus crisis is now threatening national security.
Plus the battle for Georgia. Democrats zero in on two seats headed to a runoff as the president gets his demand for a recount of the presidential election. Some of those numbers are now in, and we'll go through them live just
ahead.
[11:13:00]
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HILL: There are two major news stories this morning. The coronavirus pandemic which continues to surge setting alarming new records on a daily basis. And the president still refusing to admit he lost the election which is making the transition to a new administration a difficult task for the incoming president. Joining me now to discuss the transition and the pandemic because they are connected, David Swerdlick, an assistant editor for "The Washington Post" and a CNN political commentator, and Dr. Jayne Morgan, the clinical director for the Piedmont Health Care COVID Task Force and we should note also the mother of CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez.
Great to have you both with us this morning.
And Doctor, I want to begin with you. As we looked at this alarming sort of -- I mean the fact that we are not only setting these record highs but breaking them on a daily basis. 184,514 new cases yesterday. What does that tell you about what's ahead in the weeks and the months?
DR. JAYNE MORGAN, CLINICAL DIRECTOR, PIEDMONT HEALTH CARE COVID TASK FORCE: Yes, certainly thank you for having me.
We're concerned about this surge, and as we look into the top half really of the country as colder temperatures set in and people begin to move indoors, we're seeing a spread more rapidly in these areas. I think we see South Dakota now, North Dakota and Montana being the top three places where we're having COVID cases. And South Dakota, North Dakota, Arkansas as well as Montana rounding out the top five with regard to the number of deaths.
So very concerning as it's starting to spread certainly across the nation. Instead of having hot spots we have this marginal spread going across and it makes it difficult to allocate resources as well.
HILL: And those resources -- I do want to drill down on that a little bit more in just a moment.
When we look at, though, you know, taking this 30,000 foot view, David. As we look at the impact of this lack of, you know, transition, right, that the current administration is refusing to play ball and to help the incoming administration, what is the impact of that when it comes to addressing the reality of this virus, which as we just heard from Dr. Morgan is not just contained to hot spots anymore which were bad enough. It's literally everywhere.
DAVID SWERDLICK, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Right. Good morning, Erica and Happy Diwali. I think that's exactly it.
[11:19:41]
SWERDLICK: Every day that the current administration delays with these false voter fraud allegations, there's been no finding of systemic voter fraud, and delays the transition. Both the assistance with the Biden team in getting ramped up on issues or whether it's the president's daily brief or whether it's just conditioning the public to understand that we have a peaceful transfer of power and that the coronavirus pandemic doesn't care if you voted for Trump or Biden.
That is making it harder for the incoming administration to deal with a pandemic that as you said and as Dr. Morgan said is now not just isolated. It's all over the country and it's ramping up. And by Thanksgiving we're going to have a quarter of a million American deaths and we don't see an end anytime soon.
HILL: And the concern is we move forward, right. And as we see these alarming numbers day after day, not just the new cases but in hospitalizations, as we see deaths start to tick up, Dr. Morgan, as you pointed out when there were hot spots I remember here in New York at the very beginning Governor Cuomo saying listen, if you help us now we'll help you later.
And we saw some of that. But the reality is that everybody needs help at once. Where should the focus be, do you think, for the Biden transition team as they're working to wrap their heads around this?
Do they need to focus on hospitals, and I'm not just talking about PPE, I'm talking about staffing as well. Do they need to focus on testing? What should those priorities be?
DR. MORGAN: Yes. I think certainly the priority needs to be on testing as well as you brought up because we need to understand where asymptomatic transmission is occurring because that's where we're getting the greatest amount of spread that's being unchecked.
We certainly need to have some understanding of the fatigue that physicians, nurses and other health care providers on the front lines are going through and managing with this ongoing onslaught that really doesn't seem to have any viable end in sight.
How long will we continue to manage this? We have fires burning now across the nation as opposed to hot spots, and so resources are not able to be moved around.
And so I think a lot of these are some of the areas that are really going to have to focus and drill down onto make certain that every American (INAUDIBLE) standardized and top level care when you enter our medical systems.
HILL: When we look at what's to come there's a lot of focus, David, on a vaccine. Everybody wants a vaccine. I feel pretty confident in saying that. What we heard from the president though threatening to withhold it, you know, going back to this political rivalry with Governor Cuomo here in New York, threatening to withhold the vaccine from the state.
Looking at all of that play out the reality is what kind of power does the president have if he's still in power at that point?
SWERDLICK: Well, there's two things going on there, Erica. And you touched on both of them. One is that President Trump now over four years we've seen a pattern where he likes to if not be vindictive at least telegraph that he might be vindictive against certain people that he doesn't like that I think is behind what he said yesterday about Governor Cuomo and the state of New York and possible vaccine availability.
But the reality is that by the time a vaccine comes online it will be past noon on January 20th which is inauguration day and then it will be up to the Biden-Harris administration. They will both have the power and the responsibility and the burden and they'll be the ones judged on this, not former president Donald Trump at that point.
HILL: Doctor, as we look ahead to the holidays we have heard over and over again from experts and also from elected officials. Thanksgiving cannot be what you are used to seeing this year.
I mean just put that if you could from your own perspective. What should we be doing this year not just on Thanksgiving but in the days leading up to it and then moving onto Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's, all of it? What's the reality for Americans and what would keep us safest?
DR. MORGAN: Yes. That's such a great question and the reality is that the holidays this year are going to look very different. And we do need to stay within our pods, which means the people that you are living within your homes, which is very difficult, because you have elderly relatives who also have been isolated, but in order to keep them safe we have to try to ensure that we're not introducing people into different areas.
We certainly need to have a mask. We certainly need to wash our hands. We certainly need to monitor our social distancing.
But we have complicated family dynamics. We have children returning home from college. Ideally those students need to mitigate their behaviors 10 to 14 days prior to returning to their home environment. Whatever those college behaviors have been they need to be dampened 10 to 14 days ahead of time.
[11:24:52]
DR. MORGAN: We have divorced parents where children are traveling to court orders regarding who they're spending the holidays with which means potentially they're going from one household to the next. So it's very, very complicated.
I think what we need to keep in mind is if you can have your thanksgiving celebration outdoors that's best. There's great ventilation. Have it earlier in the day where there's the most sunlight such that you can be the warmest, maintain social distancing, keep your mask on at all times. Try not to serve out of the same dishes which is very common at Thanksgiving and try to keep your gathering very small, ideally only the people with whom you have been living to date, which is going to be painful.
Which is actually the antithesis of what Thanksgiving is about. So this will be a different holiday.
HILL: Different but then hopefully if we can follow those measures, we'll have a lot to be thankful for next year when we can hopefully be together again.
Dr. Jayne Morgan, David Swerdlick -- appreciate it. Thank you both this morning. SWERDLICK: Thanks, Erica.
A quick programming note for you. CNN brings you the story of Joe Biden and his long journey to becoming president-elect. Don't miss "FIGHT FOR THE WHITE HOUSE: JOE BIDEN'S LONG JOURNEY" starting tonight 10:00 Eastern, right here on CNN.
[11:26:09]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HILL: About 20 percent of the nearly five million ballots cast in the presidential election in Georgia have now been recounted. This as the Carter Center announces it will monitor the ongoing hand recount and as President Trump and top Republicans were to undermine confidence in the election with baseless claims of voter fraud.
CNN Senior National Correspondent, Kyung Lah is in Georgia following how those claims are impacting two key Senate races.
We want to begin with CNN's Amara Walker who's also there, she's in Atlanta.
So first give us a sense where does the recount stand now? Almost 20 percent -- that seems like a pretty swift pace.
AMARA WALKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's moving along, Erica. Like you said these numbers are coming from the secretary of state Brad Raffensperger. So that would make 1.1 million ballots that have been hand counted out of the five million that were cast during the presidential election.
So the secretary of state says, yes, things are moving along smoothly, I should say, actually although he did admit that there were some mistakes that were made by some counties including one that hand sorted the ballots but then decided to use a machine to have these ballots counted. So those ballots will have to be recounted, and they're going have to start all over again.
Here in Fulton County, the largest county in the state of Georgia, the hand counting began at 7:00 this morning. And the elections director Richard Barron just spoke a few hours ago. He said, look, things are on track. We should be able to meet our goal by finishing all of this recount up of 528,000 ballots by Monday.
And it looks like they do have the manpower of more than 300 people on the floor right now doing just that. Look, Erica, the overarching objective especially for state election officials is about boosting and building voter confidence especially after President Trump and his campaign have repeatedly tried to undermine the integrity of this election.
State election officials say that they're confident on the other side of this that it will show that these machines that counted the votes are indeed accurate. But back to Trump spreading baseless claims as you mentioned of widespread voter fraud, we have not seen that here in Georgia. But they've made claims that four dead people here in Georgia voted. And we know at least in two of these cases that is absolutely not true. In fact, one of those individuals spoke with our affiliate WXIA, and it turns out she is indeed very much alive.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president of the United States was accusing you of voter fraud essentially.
AGNES BLALOCK, WRONGLY ACCUSED OF VOTING DEAD: I know it. And I knew it wasn't fraud.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who did you vote for? You don't have to share that.
BLALOCK: I voted for the Democrats, for Biden.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I see. And so --
BLALOCK: I guess I voted against the other one really.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALKER: So the voter was Mr. James Blalock, he is indeed dead. He did not vote in this election but who did vote as you saw there was Mrs. James Blalock and she has been voting under that name for some time now.
Erica, back to you.
HOLMES: Amara Walker with the latest for us. Thank you.
Well, both parties as we know are now pouring major resources into Georgia for the two senate runoff races there hoping to tilt the balance of power in the senate. So Kyung, what more are you learning about those efforts this morning?
KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're learning this morning that the RNC is actually going to be pouring even more money into this beyond what we have already learned $20 million from the RNC.
They're sending 600 staffers to the state of Georgia. That is the pledge from the Republicans. The Biden campaign has said that they will also send resources down here. Although those exact numbers we don't quite know yet.
All of this underscoring the high stakes of these Georgia senate runoffs.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SEN. DAVID PERDUE (R-GA): This is it. I win, she wins. She wins, I win. LAH: Their first joint runoff campaign rally. The two Republican
senators from Georgia are defending their jobs hoping to secure their futures and control of the U.S. Senate.
SEN. KELLY LOEFFLER (R-GA): Make no mistake we are the firewall not just for the U.S. Senate but the future of our country.
LAH: Underscoring the national scale of this fight, Florida Senator Rick Scott.
SENATOR RICK SCOTT (R-FL): You saw what Chuck Schumer said, right? He said first we're going to take Georgia and then we're going to change the country. Not in Georgia. Not today.
[11:34:58]
LAH: The political world has turned to Georgia. So has much of its money. Total ad spending and reservations from all four campaigns and outside groups already tops $55 million through the end of December. Of that about 47 million is from the Republican side. Democrats behind early as they try to flip the Senate seats blue.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Vote Perdue to stop them.
LAH: Incumbent Senator David Perdue's first ads focused on keeping the Senate majority.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You heard him. Chuck Schumer is trying to use Georgia to take the Senate majority and radically change America.
LAH: Fellow incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler's ads echoed that theme. But she also released an onslaught of negative ads against her opponent Reverend Raphael Warnock.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Raphael Warnock, a radical's radical.
REV. RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D), GEORGIA SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: We stand up.
LAH: Warnock is defending himself in his ads.
WARNOCK: When people have no vision they revert to division.
LAH: And in television interviews.
WARNOCKS: She knows that she is misrepresenting who I am and what I represent and so I'm going to stay focused on Georgia families.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We hate leaders who bring us together.
LAH: But one area of common ground in this campaign, how high the stakes are.
JON OSSOFF (D), GEORGIA SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: Joe and Kamala, they will not be able to govern. They will not be able to lead us. They will not be able to contain this virus and rebuild this economy unless we win these two U.S. Senate races here in Georgia. (END VIDEOTAPE)
LAH: It's expected to get a bit more crowded here in Georgia. When you think about the National Party's Vice President Mike Pence has tweeted that he will be here next week. As far as the Democrats Andrew Yang, the former Democratic presidential candidate says he too will be heading to Georgia, Erica.
HILL: Lots going on in Georgia, that is for sure.
Kyung Lah, thank you.
This just into CNN, the U.S. Army has identified the five American soldiers killed in a helicopter crash in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula this week. They are -- and you'll see them there on your screen -- Capt. Seth Vandekamp from Katy, Texas; Chief Warrant Officer Dallas Garza from Fayetteville, North Carolina; (INAUDIBLE) Gabor from Marlborough, Massachusetts; Robert McKeith (ph) from Painesville, Ohio and also Jeremy Sherman from Watseka, Illinois.
Now they were all serving in Egypt as part of a multinational peacekeeping force. President Trump has yet to comment on that crash.
Up next, cautious optimism overseas. Europe seeing the rate of new positive cases decrease. And so what are they doing right in fighting this pandemic?
[11:37:34]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HILL: There is a sense of cautious optimism right now in Europe's fight against COVID-19 as new lockdowns appear to be working. France has been one of the hardest hit countries in the world, but it has seen a sharp drop in new cases and hospitalizations since a nationwide lockdown there began two weeks ago.
CNN's Melissa Bell joins us now live from Paris. So Melissa, what exactly are we seeing when it comes to these numbers in France and even more broadly across the continent?
MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think several of these countries that have partial lockdowns here in Belgium, Germany and France we've seen over the course of the last week, a slight improvement in the infection rates.
What changed here in France is that on Friday we saw a really sharp drop in both hospitalizations and entries into ICUs, so extremely encouraging. But in all three countries, governments have been clear the partial lockdowns will stay in place until these (INAUDIBLE) can be confirmed and they're sure that they've managed to bring the second wave under control.
HILL: Nobody wants to move too quickly, understandably.
Separately U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in France now. We know he's set to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron this week. What else can we expect out of this visit?
BELL: Well, we're expecting a wreath laying ceremony, Erica, for those recent victims of French terrorism both down in Nice and in the French suburbs. These last few weeks, he'll be received, of course, as you mentioned by Emmanuel Macron and by the French Foreign Affairs minister on Monday.
Now he was also on French television yesterday about the meeting. You'll remember that French leader Emmanuel Macron were among the first to welcome President-Elect Joe Biden, to congratulate him on his victory.
Jean-Yves le Drian, who's the counterpart of Mike Pompeo said, look, he's my counterpart for the time being and as such I receive him when he comes to Paris.
One sticking point, however, we can expect to hear about, Erica, and that is that on Monday French officials and the French government are going to make it clear to Mike Pompeo that they are opposed to any suggestion of a rushed and unilateral withdrawal from either Afghanistan or Iraq before January 20th.
HILL: Melissa bell with the latest from Paris for us. Melissa, thank you.
Just ahead Trump supporters are rallying now across the country protesting Joe Biden's clear victory in the election for president, and that movement it turns out is spreading like wildfire.
But first, a mission ahead -- tackling the world's biggest problems. One California company has developed a new alternative to plastic to help fight climate change. CNN's Rachel Crane reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RACHEL CRANE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Plastic. It's essential to our daily lives, but it's threatening our planet, polluting our oceans and releasing harmful emissions.
Its entire life cycle annually emits the same amount of greenhouse gases as nearly 184 million cars.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're in a bad condition right now. We have to go in the other direction.
CRANE: For New Light Technologies that meant figuring out how to reduce carbon emissions and plastic pollution at the same time. The company found a solution in the ocean.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we found early on is that there are natural microorganisms in the ocean that consume greenhouse gas as their food source.
CRANE: After being fed the organisms naturally produce a biopolymer that can be made into a safe plastic alternative. The company calls it AirCarbon. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have this powder that we can then melt and form in all kinds of parts.
[11:44:54]
CRANE: It can be molded into pretty much anything you'd make with plastic like sunglasses or straws. But because it's natural, AirCarbon degrades in the ocean in about a year. Plastic can take hundreds of years.
What do you think it's going to take for AirCarbon to make a dent?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This straw as an example reduces the amount of carbon in the air by 30 grams. Imagine companies that are using hundreds of millions of straws a year, we're talking about tens of thousands of tons of CO2 that would otherwise be in the air now destroyed or sequestered.
CRANE: New Light says the product's made and its first commercial plant will take the CO2 equivalent of 6,000 cars per year off the road, a small start.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Imagine if all the products that we made when we made them like growing (INAUDIBLE) actually improved the world. I think that's what the world needs to start to look towards.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[11:45:44]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HILL: As you've been watching the results of the 2020 election slowly play out, you've probably heard the words "Stop the Steal" by now. That's the refrain used by President Trump and some of his supporters to claim that President-Elect Biden somehow robbed Trump of the White House.
Turns out though this isn't a new movement. It's just never had this kind of following.
CNN's Drew Griffin investigates.
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DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: It's an Internet battle cry. Stop the Steal has swept across inboxes, Facebook pages and Twitter like an out-of-control virus.
CROWD: Stop the Steal.
GRIFFIN: The claims that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump are all false, but the truth means little to people inundated with lies.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I believe that they tried to steal the election. GRIFFIN: Stop the Steal may appear as a grassroots uprising, but it
started more than four years ago. The brainchild of a political dirty trick artist and convicted liar who has pushed disinformation schemes for years -- Roger Stone.
ROGER STONE, TRUMP SUPPORTER: Stop the Steal is posting much of this material.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is insurmountable, compelling, overcoming evidence of fraud.
BENJAMIN DECKER, FOUNDER AND CEO, MEMETICA: Stop the Steal is actually a coordinated effort that has been revived twice by Roger Stone and allied political operatives in an attempt to gaslight the entire integrity of our voting and election process.
GRIFFIN: Ben Decker who conducts digital investigations says far from a grassroots campaign, Stop the Steal is a business.
In 2016 Roger Stone's PAC launched StoptheSteal.org which was asking for $10,000 donations purportedly back then to help uncover evidence of vote fraud against Donald Trump.
Stone told CNN the group was a nonprofit created to ensure the integrity of the vote.
CROWD: Stop the Steal.
GRIFFIN: Stop the Steal re-emerged briefly in the 2018 midterms. Then in the run up to 2020, the Stop the Steal campaign rebooted by a group of people orbiting Roger Stone. The cast of characters include Ali Alexander, a Roger Stone wannabe.
ALI ALEXANDER: Actually just got a message from Roger Stone.
GRIFFIN: he began hashtagging #stopthesteal weeks before election day and launched a Stop the Steal Web site.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm one of the co-founders.
GRIFFIN: Amy Kramer, a Tea Party activist who in 2016 formed the group "Women Vote Trump" with Roger Stone's ex-wife. Kramer was behind a Stop the Steal Facebook group along with two people who worked on Steve Bannon's discredited Rebuild The Wall fund. It was taken down by Facebook.
Also shut down? A cluster of pages affiliated with Bannon that coordinated posts, according to Facebook, using inauthentic behavior tactics to artificially boost how many people saw their content.
In all, the pages had 2.5 million followers before they were shuttered.
DECKER: Stop the Steal is a highly coordinated, partisan political operation.
GRIFFIN: This week Stone even took his message to the most notorious conspiracy theorist of all, Alex Jones.
STONE: A hoax is being perpetrated on the American people.
GRIFFIN: On Twitter, researchers at Clemson University saw the #StoptheSteal mentioned in nearly TWO million tweets. The tweets, the Facebook posts filled with unsubstantiated and false evidence of widespread voter fraud quickly caught the attention of disinformation researches like Ciaran O'Connor.
CIARAN O'CONNOR, ANALYST, INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC DIALOGUE: It only took a day and a half before Facebook took the group down. But by then it was already too late.
GRIFFIN: copycat sites now number in the dozens and the false information initially spread by a few is only multiplying.
Drew Griffin, CNN, Atlanta.
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HILL: Much more ahead but first, this year's "CNN HEROES: AN ALL-STAR TRIBUTE" will be a little different. A special celebration of the heroic efforts of the many women, men and children from around the globe who when faced with two simultaneous crises of COVID-19 and racial injustice stood up to do more to help others.
Here is one of this year's most inspiring moments.
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ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Before we never noticed the shift change. We didn't see the nurses, the doctors and hospital workers head home. We didn't notice the first responders leaving their stations after a long day.
[11:54:50]
COOPER: But now we do. At 7:00 p.m. in New York, at 8:00 p.m. in Los Angeles, in France, in Italy and all around the world, the deafening applause and humble salutes. We stop to say thank you.
On sidewalks, windows and balconies, masked and alone in homes, people join together to give thanks to those incredible heroes who spend their days attending to the sick, helping families say good-bye, holding back their own pain to keep saving countless lives.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To everybody, thank you.
[11:55:42]
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