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Trump Claims Election Fraud with No Evidence; Biden Cements Victory with Electoral College Count of 306; U.S. Breaks New Daily Coronavirus Case Record Again; France's COVID-19 Hospital Admissions Drop; SpaceX-NASA Send Four to ISS. Aired 3-3:30a ET
Aired November 14, 2020 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello and welcome everyone, live from Studio 7 at the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Michael Holmes and we appreciate your company.
Coming up here on CNN NEWSROOM, President Trump making his first public comments since his election loss, updating the progress of the COVID vaccine but still refusing to acknowledge Joe Biden as the next U.S. president.
The number of virus cases going in the wrong direction in the U.S. and Europe, where several countries are under lockdown.
But is it working to curb the second wave?
And it was supposed to show that cruise ship travel is once again safe. But the situation on board the Sea Dream, anything but.
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HOLMES: And we begin with a nation in transition, even if the sitting U.S. president still won't acknowledge that fact. Friday's final protections leave little room for doubt and President-Elect Joe Biden's team is vowing to forge a Head. With Georgia flipping blue, for Biden and North Carolina going to Trump, Biden can now claim 306 electoral votes. Now you would think that would mean something to Mr. Trump, since it's the exact same number he won against Hillary Clinton back in 2016. We did hear from the president Friday but he didn't answer the main question on everyone's mind.
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QUESTION: When will you accept that you lost the election, sir?
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HOLMES: CNN's Jim Acosta now with more on the chaotic state of the White House.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Welcome to the White House Twilight Zone, where President Trump is still publicly clinging to an alternate reality, the one where he can still win the 2020 election.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This administration will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully, the -- whatever happens in the future -- who knows which administration it will be? I guess time will tell.
ACOSTA: But in the real world, it's a different story, as CNN projects Joe Biden has won Arizona and Georgia, with Mr. Trump clinching North Carolina.
That gives Biden a big 306-electoral vote victory, as the popular vote margin shows the President-Elect to head by more than five million ballots.
GERALDO RIVERA, FOX NEWS: I got no impression that he was plotting the overthrow of the elected government.
ACOSTA: Still, some of the president's friends like FOX's Geraldo Rivera are sounding like hostage negotiators, trying to talk Mr. Trump into surrendering to defeat.
RIVERA: Every impression he gave me, Harris, was that, if the process went against him and he was satisfied that every vote, legitimate vote, had been counted and every illegitimate vote had been thrown out, that he would follow the edict of the Constitution and surrender the office.
ACOSTA: The problem is the president still has a team of dead enders enabling him.
White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who is doubling as a campaign adviser, is spinning the fantasy that Mr. Trump is marching toward a second term.
KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I think the president will attend his own inauguration. He would have to be there, in fact.
ACOSTA: The president's top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, sounds stuck in an upside-down world too.
PETER NAVARRO, DIRECTOR, WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF TRADE AND MANUFACTURING POLICY: We're moving forward here at the White House new assumption that there will be a second Trump term. We think he won that election. And any speculation about what Joe Biden might do, I think, is moot at this point.
ACOSTA: They're taking their cues from Mr. Trump, who's tying himself into a pretzel claiming he's been cheated, tweeting, "Now they're saying what a wonderful job the Trump administration did in making 2020 the most secure election ever. Actually, this is true, except for what the Democrats did. Rigged election." Not so, according to the president's own Cybersecurity Agency, which stated: "The November 3 election was the most secure in American history. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised."
And while McEnany insists Mr. Trump will fight it out in the courts...
MCENANY: Read through some of these affidavits. I now have three binders.
SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: Wait. Hold that up. Let me up. Hold that up. Can I see it?
MCENANY: Well, I have three binders. These are court filings and affidavits. But they're startling, Sean.
ACOSTA: His campaign has dropped a legal challenge in Arizona and his lawyers have bailed on a case in Pennsylvania. Despite those developments, advisers say the president may never can see the race, a contest he once said he couldn't handle losing.
TRUMP: He is the worst candidate ever to run in the history of a presidential election, really.
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TRUMP: At least, if you lost, you could say, hey, you lost to a good candidate. How the hell do you lose to a guy like this?
ACOSTA: One White House adviser comparing him to the 1991 Detroit Pistons, who famously refused to fake shake hands with the Chicago Bulls, who won the NBA championship that year. The advisor said the president can do the same thing when it comes to the election: leave the stage without conceding defeat -- Jim Acosta, CNN, the White House.
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HOLMES: Now despite the president's refusal to concede or cooperate, President-Elect Biden and his transition team are plowing forward. CNN's Jessica Dean reports from Biden's base in Delaware.
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JEN PSAKI, BIDEN TRANSITION ADVISER: We're charging ahead with the transition.
JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): During a virtual briefing, Biden's transition team offering assurances the transition process is moving ahead, even as they continue to wait for the General Services Administration to trigger the official transition process.
PSAKI: 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. DEAN: With official access to federal agencies blocked, CNN has learned Biden's transition team is back-channeling with governors, the private sector and the medical community to prepare its COVID-19 response.
Biden's newly named chief of staff, Ron Klain, said in his first interview since getting the job that Biden will issue a national mask mandate on his first day in office and install a White House COVID coordinator.
RON KLAIN, INCOMING WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: And he will have a COVID coordinator who works in the White House who has direct access to him and will be briefing him daily.
DEAN: When it comes to Republican outreach, Klain says Biden has spoken to some GOP governors and senators, but not Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who so far has refused to acknowledge Biden as President-Elect.
KLAIN: There will be a time and a place for Joe Biden and Senator McConnell to talk.
DEAN: In a new interview, former President Barack Obama expressed his disappointment in Republicans for not pushing back against President Trump's false allegations of election fraud or his refusal to concede.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There's damage to this, because what happens is that the peaceful transfer of power, the notion that any of us who attain an elected office, whether it's dogcatcher or president, are servants of the people. It's a temporary job. We're not above the rules. We're not above the law. That's the essence of our democracy.
DEAN: CNN has also learned that members of Biden's transition team are reaching out to former Pentagon officials who worked under former Defense Secretary James Mattis. Remember, they're not allowed to contact the current Pentagon officials right now. Certainly all former officials were there looking for information, trying to get the lay of the land inside the Pentagon -- Jessica Dean, CNN, Wilmington, Delaware.
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HOLMES: I want to bring in CNN senior political analyst, Ron Brownstein, also, senior editor at "The Atlantic."
Good to see you my friend. One of my favorite sayings of yours is the Republicans. When Trump breaks a window, congressional Republicans sweep up the glass and stay silent.
What is your read on the Republican Party bowing before Trump's wins as this all goes on, questioning the results that few others question?
What damage is being done?
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: It's astonishingly destructive on two levels. Obviously, the most immediate level, is we are seeing a systematic effort to undermine the legitimacy of the election. The president, obviously, cannot reverse the result.
But he sure can convince many people he was stabbed in the back and there was something untoward about this result and that would allow him to nurture the grievance for four years, as if the election was stolen.
The Republicans in Congress are doing astonishingly little to push back on that and are abetting it, much like Kayleigh McEnany. That would be bad enough.
But think about what is happening and not happening. While the president nurses these grievances and these fantasies, he is AWOL. He has deserted his position, at a time of enormous, threat to Americans.
We are seeing case loads on coronavirus that would be unimaginable a month ago. He is, essentially, throwing up his hands and saying, I won't do anything to protect the country. And congressional Republicans are not any putting pressure on him.
It's just an extraordinary moment of a dereliction of duty, to the country, both by the president and those who enable him.
HOLMES: They are just scared.
I did want to talk about Joe Biden and going forward after he is inaugurated. He has this reputation as a deal maker.
But how can he bring Republicans into the, tent on things like health, care gun control, immigration and so on?
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HOLMES: Will any deals he make with the Republicans forward the agenda of the grassroots Democrats?
What they actually want?
BROWNSTEIN: It's going to be very hard. One of the things that happened in American politics over the last generation is that there are fewer bridge builders in Congress. Bridge builders who are elected by a constituency, who go one way for president and another for Congress.
There used to be senators and Republicans, elected on the coast and states that normally voted Democratic for president and then Southern Democrats who are elected in places that were normally Republican. They had an inherent incentive to find a way through, this to make a deal between parties, because if the issues are polarized along partisan lines, they are out of luck at hoe.
Right now, there are 20 states voted, both, times against Donald Trump, now that all results are in. Democrats hold 39 of 40 Senate seats, each one, except Susan Collins. 25 states voted both times for him. Republicans hold 47, of their 50 Senate seats. Those 47 Republicans are not looking for deals with Joe Biden. He may
have an opportunity on COVID, in particular, because the need is great. But on many issues, maybe on infrastructure, on climate, on health care, on immigration, everything you mentioned, deals will be few and far between, unless they win those two Senate seats.
If they have the majority, after Georgia Republicans may make a deal, paradoxically. If they have the capacity to stop him completely, that's probably the way they go.
HOLMES: It could be, with Mitch, if he's on the driver seat, the party of no all over again, that brings me to the point I wanted to ask about. There was a record popular vote for Joe Biden but an underperformance down-ticket.
The Senate seats you talk about, some were thought winnable, we're not. And seats were lost in the House. It is a delicate balance going forward. I mean, try to get compromise to get things done. That said, that will not make the progressive wing happy and they aren't.
How to walk that line within his own party?
BROWNSTEIN: Look, it is hard to come out of this election and feel for Democrats to argue that they have a real mandate for an aggressive progressive agenda. We saw an asymmetric consolidation and the basic story, that we talked about many times, was that metro America consolidated behind Biden, to an extraordinary extent.
He ends up winning 91 of the 100 largest counties in America, 49 of the top 50. The counties he won account for 70 percent of our total economic output.
Trump dominated the non metro counties, generally smaller, generally less economically productive.
The difference was, Republicans also dominated those counties, up and down the ballot; where in big metro counties, there were a fair number of people what they call the Romney Republicans, in the suburbs, who split their ticket between voting for Biden, because they couldn't abide Trump, but voted Republican for House or Senate or both because they didn't trust the Democrats.
That is what really cost them, I think, in the battle for Congress, they're looking at a precarious majority. I think they will have to look at things that broadly unify their caucus and then try to peel off a few Republicans in the Senate if they can, on a few issues like infrastructure, with COVID relief and maybe Medicare to negotiate for prescription drugs.
But a lot of things of Joe Biden ran, on even a 50-50 Senate, even if they have majority, will be tough to push through.
HOLMES: Exactly. Anything progressive less likely.
I did want to ask you, Trump grew the Republican vote, including among minorities. Do you think he still wants to retain effective control of the party
going forward for power reasons or a potential to monetize control?
Or do you think he will leave politics?
BROWNSTEIN: I think he will dangle the possibility of running until the last hour that it is plausible. Mario Cuomo, New York governor, famously, in 1991, had a plane waiting on the runway on the last day you could file in New Hampshire.
I think Donald Trump will go down to that final hour himself, because it's a way to not only monetize and keep himself in the public eye but to exert control over the Republican Party and to prevent them from moving away from his direction.
That could be very much a mixed blessing. Don't forget, he did grow the vote. But about 80 million people will vote against him as well. It is quite clear that Trumpism does not represent a majority of the country, even though it has a powerful following. It'll be hard for Republicans to move away from his direction if he runs again until the very last hour.
HOLMES: As you point out, correctly, shifting demographics are everything. Ron Brownstein, always a pleasure, thank you so much.
BROWNSTEIN: Thank you for having me.
HOLMES: Now the U.S. hitting coronavirus milestones that health experts desperately wanted to avoid. But they say there is still time to turn things around. We'll talk about that and the latest hopes for a vaccine when we come back.
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HOLMES: The coronavirus numbers in the United States are rapidly going in the wrong direction. The country smashing another record on Friday, more than 184,000 new infections, by far the most recorded in a single day.
Think about this: it was 20 percent higher than just the day before, which was a record. And it is the fifth time this week the U.S. has broken the record. Now with cases, deaths and hospitalizations rising all across the nation, health care workers say they're getting overwhelmed and running out of resources. Erica Hill with more.
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DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: As cases were growing this fall, people were saying, well, the death rate is low and hospitalizations aren't really growing. Well, now we're there. And we were predictably there.
ERICA HILL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Records being set and shattered at a frightening pace, as the virus rages across the country.
DR. ALEX GARZA, ST. LOUIS METROPOLITAN PANDEMIC TASK FORCE: Our health care heroes have fought valiantly day after day. But we have no reserves.
HILL: More than 67,000 Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 on Thursday, topping the previous day's high again, as the country added a record 153,000 new cases and the daily average of new cases jumped 32 percent in just one week.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Our baseline of infections all along has never gone down to a level that would allow you to be easily controllable when you get cases that soar up. HILL: An influential model now predicts we could see 2,200 COVID-19 deaths a day by mid-January and 439,000 lives lost by March 1.
Yet, even in some of the hardest-hit areas, there is resistance and denial.
DR. PAUL CASEY, BELLIN HOSPITAL: People come in and some of them refuse to wear masks. They create quite a scene at the registration desk, to the point that we have had to call the police.
HILL: In South Dakota, the mayor of Sioux Falls, who once implored residents to wear a dang mask, vetoing a proposed mandate.
MAYOR PAUL TENHAKEN (R-SD), SIOUX FALLS: My official vote on this is a no. And that item fails 5-4.
HILL: The nation's largest indoor water park just opened outside of Austin, one day after Texas reached a total of one million coronavirus cases.
DR. CELINE GOUNDER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Every single American citizen needs to step up and take personal responsibility.
HILL: New York limiting gatherings, cutting back hours for gyms at restaurants starting today.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is going to hurt.
HILL: Mayor Bill de Blasio warning, schools could close as soon as Monday if the city's seven-day average positivity rate hits 3 percent.
MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D-NY), NEW YORK CITY: There's still a chance to do something to avert that.
HILL: Chicago's new stay-at-home advisory goes into effect Monday morning, California, Oregon and Washington urging travelers to avoid nonessential visits.
Michigan offering this:
DR. JONEIGH KHALDUN, MICHIGAN CHIEF MEDICAL EXECUTIVE: The winter holidays simply cannot be the same this year, as Dr. Fauci reminds us to mask up everywhere.
FAUCI: But if you're indoors and gathering with people, even if it's a relatively small group, to the extent possible, keep the mask on even if you are indoors.
HILL: Here in New York, Governor Cuomo announced he is meeting with his counterparts from the six neighboring northeast states over the weekend to discuss coordinating possible new restrictions and measures noting, while New York state's positivity is among the lowest in the nation, it is, of course, rising everywhere and new measures will likely be needed -- in New York, I'm Erica Hill, CNN.
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HOLMES: Now we saw Dr. Celine Gounder there in Erica's report. She is a member of the president-elect's COVID-19 advisory board and I asked her earlier, what we can expect in the months ahead on the vaccine front?
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GOUNDER: The Pfizer vaccine is exciting, it seems to be effective. But there are a number of other vaccines in the pipeline, some, also quite close to completing phase 3 clinical trials; namely, Moderna, J&N and AstraZeneca vaccines.
There are a whole host of others that are in the pipeline after that. We will have a number of different vaccines at our disposal, some for certain populations, certain, settings, certain geographies.
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GOUNDER: Others for other settings. So I think we will be targeting each, depending on what the characteristics are of the vaccine and the population we are trying to reach.
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HOLMES: Turning our attention now to, Europe where health officials in France say that COVID hospital admissions fell sharply on Friday. But the prime minister says, do not expect to see the country's partial lockdown lifted early. Let's go to Melissa Bell, she is standing by live, in Paris.
Let's start there with the latest in France.
MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Michael, we heard from the prime minister on Thursday, who said there had been this slight tapering off in terms of infection rates and that was something positive but it was simply premature to announce an easing of the partial lockdown in place here. What we've seen since, then and these are the figures from yesterday,
quite a dramatic falls, both the number of people entering hospital for COVID-19 and the number of people entering ICU, very sharp falls continue to what we saw the last few weeks.
What happened here in France, about a month ago, they put in place a system of curfews in a number of French cities, those hardest hit, Michael, those restrictions were not enough. They had to move on to the system of partial lockdown.
What we understand as this will be a place for the next few weeks but as these figures continued to be on the trajectory they are now, that, is improving sharply, as a result of the partial lockdown, we will be looking at the easing over those restrictions, no, doubt beyond the first.
That'll be extremely welcome in an economy that is hard hit by both lockdowns.
HOLMES: Absolutely. I can imagine.
Briefly, what about the rest of Europe?
BELL: Similar story. There are countries that have been hardest hit and with unfairly tight restrictions and I'm thinking here Spain, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, for instance, those countries are all, have, over the last few weeks, seen an improvement in their infection rates.
For the time being, Germany, for instance, keeps its partial lockdown and place but should these tendencies be confirmed, it will turn out the restrictions were brought in early enough and tightly enough.
Of course, the question will be, how do we get back to life as normal without repeating the areas of the first wave. Remember, Europe went back to life as, usual and the second wave hit harder even than the first.
Clearly, for the time being, it appears that the second wave that Europe had such trouble being brought under control and is now starting to see some progress at, least in its figures.
HOLMES: Melissa, good to have, you thank you so much.
Melissa Bell in Paris.
We are going to take a quick break, when we come, back one cruise ship was hoping to lead by example and show it was possible to keep coronavirus at bay. But the number of passengers who tested positive keeps going up. What it's like being on, board when we come back.
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(MUSIC PLAYING) HOLMES: Sea Dream I was supposed to show the world that the cruise industry could pick up again, even without a coronavirus vaccine. But despite all of the safety protocols, the virus managed to sneak its way on board.
Masks were not initially required but now, the number of passengers who tested positive has gone up to 7, as CNN Patrick Oppmann reports.
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PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Months after the pandemic altered the operations of cruise lines around the globe.
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OPPMANN (voice-over): The sailing of the Sea Dream I was meant to show that cruises were again open for business in the Caribbean. Passengers were promised luxury.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You'll be greeted on board with champagne, cold towels, hors d'oeuvres and big smiles.
OPPMANN (voice-over): And safety: passengers say they were supposed to self isolate and have two negative COVID tests before setting sail.
BEN HEWITT, CRUISE WITH BEN AND DAVID: We had to have two tests before we left; one, 72 hours before, which was a full PCR test and then, at the port, again, we had oxygen level tests, temperature checks a few times as well as another PCR rapid test by the ship's doctor. So we were in full hope that this was going to be a really safe cruise.
OPPMANN (voice-over): Passengers initially were not required to wear masks. As they say, they were told by the, crew that the ship was a COVID free bubble. Then, a few days into sailing, guests were told to wear masks but not what prompted that change.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let's go take a look.
OPPMANN (voice-over): Several of the guests were cruise industry journalists and bloggers there to cover this new, reimagined way of cruising during the pandemic. With only 53 passengers and 66 crew, passengers said, they felt safe.
HEWITT: Here we the main lounge and there was so much seating so people can stay far apart and keep social distance.
OPPMANN (voice-over): But that illusion of safety burst on Wednesday, when the ship's captain announced there was one positive case of COVID aboard the ship and that all passengers had to isolate in their cabins.
GENE SLOAN, THE POINTS GUY: I was probably overconfident. I did not expect this to happen. I looked at what had been planned, you know, I looked at the testing and the social distancing, whatever there was. I was nobody's going to get sick on the ship. OPPMANN (voice-over): Soon the number of cases grew to seven people
who tested positive. Passengers were still enjoying the fine dining but said the food now had to be served under the room doors.
On Friday, passengers said the captain told them everyone who had had two recent negative tests would be able to disembark the ship in Barbados and fly home.
HEWITT: So it is just so disappointing that this has happened because everybody had their hopes up high and we cannot see anything more that they could have done. It's just such a horrible virus, it just gets everywhere, even with the constant testing.
OPPMANN (voice-over): Not only was this maiden cruise cut short but the future of the industry, now, more than ever, is in doubt -- Patrick Oppmann, CNN.
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HOLMES: After weeks of delay, the SpaceX Crew Dragon is ready to launch this weekend. But there may be a coronavirus related hiccup there as well. In a combined project between SpaceX and NASA, the mission to the International Space Station was supposed to launch Saturday night.
But high winds prompted a one day postponement and, now there may be another cause for delay. SpaceX's Elon Musk, tweeting Friday, he took four tests for COVID-19 and two came back positive, raising concerns about Sunday's launch.
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JIM BRIDENSTINE, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: I talked to Elon two days ago, before this news came to be. We are looking to SpaceX to do any contact tracing that is appropriate and then, of course, if there are changes that need to be made, we will look at those. But it's very early right now to know if any changes are necessary at this point.
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HOLMES: Now if Sunday's launch goes as planned, four astronauts will ride to the ISS in a capsule named Resilience, atop the Falcon 9 rocket. It will be the first fully operational mission for SpaceX, kicking off what NASA hopes will be many routine trips to the space station.
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BRIDENSTINE: The whole goal here is to commercialize our activities in low Earth orbit. NASA wants to be one customer, of many customers, in a very robust commercial marketplace for human space flight in low Earth orbit.
But we don't just want to be one of many customers; we also want to have numerous providers that are competing against each other on cost, on innovation and on safety, ultimately, bringing more access to space than ever before.
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HOLMES: The four astronauts include three from NASA and one from Japan's space agency. Their six months mission would involve research, completing maintenance, repairs and other work on the ISS.
Fingers crossed.
I'm Michael Holmes, appreciate you spending part of your day with, me Kim Brunhuber will be here in about 30 minutes with more of CNN NEWSROOM and terribly well dressed. "AFRICAN VOICES" is up next.
