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Trump Fires DHS Cyber Chief Who Called Election Secure; Pfizer Says, Final Analysis Shows Vaccine Is 95 Percent Effective And Safe. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired November 18, 2020 - 13:00   ET

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

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: That full House, we'll vote on that in January. But Nancy Pelosi will be back as speaker.

Thanks for your time today. I hope to see you soon. Brianna Keilar picks up our coverage right now.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Hi there, I'm Brianna Keilar, and I want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world.

The president has fired his top election security official. It's a continuation of purge and the scorched earth policy he's implemented since losing the White House to President-elect Biden. Chris Krebs gone in a tweet apparently for doing his job and telling the truth. He had recently released a statement saying, the election was safe and secure. Quote, no evidence that any votes voting deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.

Well, that flies in the face of the president's false claim that the election was rigged and dominated by widespread voter fraud that actually was not. Some Republicans derided Trump's firing Krebs. But mostly, they just stood by silently, as they hope the president come round to reality that he lost the election.

In Michigan, a couple of Republican election officials decided they were going to try to block the outcome, refusing at first to certify the vote in Wayne County, which is the Detroit area. Why Wayne county? Well, because it went heavily for Joe Biden. Wayne County gave Joe Biden Michigan. And facing considerable public pressure to let the voters be heard, those election officials ultimately relented.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOCELYN BENSON (D), MICHIGAN SECRETAR OF STATE: A lot of this is just really a strategy to erode public confidence in what was a very well- run and secure election and we see this as a battlefront not just in Michigan but, as you've mentioned, around the country.

And so it's also important we call it out for what it is. I mean, these efforts are not going to be successful. The people have spoken. The election has occurred.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Then there's America's mayor turned pathetic punch line, Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal attorney, was in court yesterday arguing a case for the first time in almost 30 years, and it showed. As Giuliani represented the Trump campaign in a courtroom in Pennsylvania, the federal judge asked him if he was alleging fraud. He said, quote, no, your honor.

We are not admitting fraud. Then he falsely alleged the election process was fraudulent, which led to the judge responding, perhaps not surprisingly, so you are alleging a fraud. Now, that judge noting that Giuliani would need some evidence to bring a case, not just suspicion.

During Giuliani's presentation, he namedropped Mickey Mouse and John F. Kennedy and he tried to link a Pennsylvania to a bogus nationwide conspiracy to deny votes to Donald Trump, again, without presenting a shred of evidence. Some observers noted that the former mayor seemed rusty, that he didn't remember basic legal terms when questioned by the judge.

The judge asked Giuliani what type of scrutiny the court should apply in the case. And there are a handful of ways to respond to that question with pretty boilerplate legal jargon. Giuliani's answer, the normal kind of scrutiny is not one of them.

That's unwelcome news for President Trump whose post-election purge began with the firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper, whose loyalty Trump has questioned and who didn't agree with the president pulling on some U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, an announcement that was made by Esper's replacement on Monday.

And now, the president has fired America's top election security official, Chris Krebs. Krebs did not back up Trump's unfounded claims that voting machines dumped millions of Trump votes. In fact, he refuted them quite publicly. Krebs was with a blunt end of a presidential tweet last night. The president announcing Krebs dismissal on a social media platform, just like he did with Mark Esper, former Homeland Security Director Kirstjen Nielsen and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, to name a few.

Joining me now is Rhode Island Congressman Jim Langevin. He is a Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. He is co-founder of the Congressional Cyber Security Caucus.

And I know, for you and many others, the writing here was on the wall. You said last week, Congressman, that it wouldn't surprise you if Trump fired Chris Krebs. What does this signify to you?

REP. JIM LANGEVIN (D-RI): Well, it really is a big disappoint. I think that Chris Krebs has done an outstanding job at CISA, he and his team, certainly in securing U.S. elections but also doing his best to protect the nations and, really, the.gov cyber security infrastructure. So I am deeply disappointed that he was let go basically because he did his job and he, as he stated just yesterday, we had the most secure U.S. elections in U.S. history.

KEILAR: Do you think the CIA director, Gina Haspel, and FBI Director Chris Wray will be next? LANGEVIN: Unfortunately, it just seems that the president has a political hit list and he's just going down the line and letting good people go.

[13:05:00]

Certainly, in Chris Krebs' case, a person of the highest integrity, who did his job effectively and was not involved in politics either way. He was doing his job effectively to protect the country and to protect the U.S. elections and then was let go for speaking truth to power.

And it seems like those who speak truth to power and are serving for the right reasons are the ones that are being let go. It's really disturbing and it's not the American way. It's not how a U.S. president should be operating.

KEILAR: What does this mean for safety of Americans, this purge that we're witnessing?

LANGEVIN: Well, it certainly is destabilizing. And at a time right now where there is so much going on, certainly, right now, combating coronavirus and government and people are on edge trying to hold things together until we get a vaccine and can get through this crisis right now.

What we really need is calm and stability. And, unfortunately, President Trump is providing anything but calm and stability. It's really unsettling to see what's going on.

As far as I'm concerned, Joe Biden can't get in office soon enough. And I certainly send my congratulations out to the next president of the United States. But the American people have spoken and we can't have President Biden on the job soon enough as far as I'm concerned.

KEILAR: What are your concerns in the interim though here when it comes to vulnerabilities that American adversaries can exploit right now before a new administration takes over?

LANGEVIN: Well, that's just it. Enemies and adversaries are always looking for ways to get an advantage over us. And one of the problems, of course, with cyber security, and Chris Krebs understands this as well as anyone, is that cyber security and cyber effects and operations are in what's called the area, gray zone conflict.

So, below the threshold of armed conflict where an enemy and adversary can do things that weaken us and it may not cross that red line, per se, but it is damaging enough that it weakens U.S. national security and puts us at risk.

So we need the very best people right now on the job doing the job, all hands on deck and making sure that in a timely transition that an enemy and adversary can't be operating in that gray zone or looking for ways to take advantage and weaken America.

KEILAR: Congressman, thanks for being here. We really appreciate you coming on the show.

LANGEVIN: Thank you.

KEILAR: In Wayne county, Michigan, where Detroit area voters delivered the state for Joe Biden, Republican members of the canvassing board have dropped their attempt to block the certification of the votes that would have made Joe Biden's victory in Michigan official. Why? Well, in short, they faced a ton of opposition.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REV. WENDELL ANTHONY, PRESIDENT, DETROIT BRANCH NAACP: When you look at the nation, you look at the cities of Philadelphia, look at the city of Atlanta, look at the city of Detroit, Michigan, you look at black cities, you have extracted a black city out of a county and said the only one that's at fault (ph), at issue is the city of Detroit, where 80 percent of the people who reside here are African-Americans. Shame on you, shame on you for leading to this level of corruption. You have disavowed your right to even sit in the seat that you occupy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: I'm joined now by CNN Contributor and Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law, Steve Vladeck.

Steve, I wonder, look, they gave up this effort, but what did it mean that they attempted this in the first place?

STEVE VLADECK, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I mean, Brianna, I think it's just another sign of all of the ways in which we are seeing the normalization of anti-democratic behavior. I mean, you have two Republican county canvassers saying, we're going to block certification only of Detroit, not of the entire county, even though there is no evidence of fraud, even though there is no evidence of anything other than the normal, marginal discrepancies we see in any large election.

And I think that's what's so alarming to me. It's not that any of this is going to change the bottom line here. Joe Biden is going to be sworn in on January 20th. It's what happened the next time we have an even closer election, say, an election that comes down to one state, look at what we're now seeing all across the country as somehow appropriate behavior by local officials?

KEILAR: Well, so what needs to be done to then? I mean, they did give up. But if they hadn't, and if, in the future, something like this proceeds farther than this did, what needs to be in place?

VLADECK: Yes. I mean, it's a tough question, Brianna. And I think it's a conversation we ought to be having at the national level. I think there are two different tracks here. One is the legal track about whether Congress, as it has the power to do, should be imposing more uniform rules for certifying the results of at least federal elections, elections for federal officers for the presidency.

[13:10:11] But, Brianna, the other is a political conversation about whether, you know, when an entire political party has basically adopted a creed where even if we don't agree with the president about the allegations of fraud and widespread misconduct, we're not going to actually distance ourselves from that. I don't know how we reverse that. I don't know how we talk people off that ledge.

And I think, you know, these two things are related. It's why when the president keeps bringing these lawsuits, whether in Pennsylvania or Michigan or Georgia, and the lawsuits go nowhere as all the lawyers expect them to. He is still talking about how this is somehow proof that the result was rigged. I don't know how we convince the 52 percent of Republicans in a Reuters poll who believe the election really was stolen, that it wasn't since there's no evidence support of that claim.

KEILAR: So I wonder -- I know that you're following Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal attorney, as he is leading his post-election legal fight. And he was in a Pennsylvania court yesterday. He made several unsubstantiated claims. But even he admitted he wasn't alleging voter fraud. The cases just don't seem to have much merit. But what are they doing? Yes?

VLADECK: I mean, it's a combination of a lack of merit. And I think even where there are claims that have some teeth, not a real impact. I mean, if the bottom line, if the best thing the Trump campaign has won in court so far is a rule observers in Philadelphia had to be six feet from counters as opposed to ten feet. That's not going to close the margins we're seeing.

And what it really drives home is that this litigation is not actually a good-faith effort to try to reverse theses electoral results in court. It's rather trying to perpetuate this political narrative that all of these sinister forces are somehow lined up against the president as opposed to just the simple and increasing ineluctable fact that he lost.

KEILAR: It's a device.

VLADECK: It's a device. It's a rhetorical device. I think it's a fundraising device. And I think the real question is who is going to be the folks to stand up and say, no, this is inappropriate behavior, even by members of my party.

I mean, this dovetails with your prior segment about the firing of Chris Krebs. Chris Krebs, a Trump administration appointee who had the courage to stand up and say, this is what actually happened on Election Day. Election Day went well. There were no election security problems. And he lost his job for it. There are too few Chris Krebs in our country right now, especially among the leadership of the Republican political party.

KEILAR: So I want to ask you about that. How damaging is it to the election system that you have a DHS official who is fired, or is there a flipside to look at this? He stood up and he spoke the truth. VLADECK: Yes. Brianna, I think it's a tough call. I mean, the reality is I always looked at someone like Chris Krebs as a canary in the coal mine, where having him in that job, having someone in whom we have faith to be a straight shooter was a good sign that like nothing truly nefarious or malicious was going on.

On one hand it's great to see folks like that who are willing to risk their careers in this case to tell the truth. On the other hand, the more the president just fires those folks and suffers no political ramifications for doing so, I think the harder it's going to find similarly minded folks to take those jobs in the future, the less we can hope that the president is actually being meaningfully checked and constrained from within.

And just to tie these threats together, the more that I think that leads to this cycle where this anti-democratic behavior, even by local Republican officials, becomes increasingly tolerated at the national level. It's not going to change the bottom line this time around but what about next time?

KEILAR: Steve, thank you for your insight. We certainly need it.

VLADECK: Thanks, Brianna, great to be with you.

KEILAR: COVID cases and deaths are rising in all 50 states forcing governors to rule out a slew of restrictions in the absence of federal mandates.

And Pfizer offers new hope with their vaccine showing 95 percent effectiveness and no safety concerns.

Plus, Republicans are publicly taking the president's side in fighting the election results. So why is GOP Senator Lindsey Graham fist bumping Vice President-elect Kamala Harris or is that just for show?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:15:00]

KEILAR: On the deadliest day of the pandemic since May, we are getting some good news on the vaccine front. Pfizer today releasing promising trial results and they say they are just days away from filing for emergency use authorization.

Now, this vaccine won't come soon enough. For thousands upon thousands of Americans who will die before a first dose can even be administered to the public. The United States recorded 1,707 COVID deaths on Tuesday alone. This is one person dying every 50 seconds. We have been averaging 1,100 deaths a day for the last week. We're going to know -- we certainly know that the daily death toll will continue to soar after this.

The sea of orange on this map here, it shows more than 40 states are experiencing a rising trend of new infections. There are more infections in the last week than we saw in the week before. For the third day straight, the country hit a new high of hospitalizations. At this moment, there are nearly 77,000 people who are in the hospital battling COVID.

And new details from a White House task force report is tying Halloween and related activities to the outbreak in Missouri and small in-person gatherings to the one in Washington.

[13:20:00]

Now, Thanksgiving is just a week away, and as deaths mount, hospitals are overwhelmed.

President Trump is actually hindering the nation's recovery by refusing to allow the transition of the president-elect's team to access key information specifically for vaccine distribution. Just listen to Rick Bright, who was ousted from his government position as vaccine chief and then resigned citing the Trump administration's disregard for scientific expertise. Bright is now an adviser to President-elect Biden.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. RICK BRIGHT, MEMBER, BIDEN'S COVID-19 ADVISORY BOARD: We haven't had any official contact between the transition team coming in and the current administration. It is really setting us back.

We don't want to have to step back, rewrite a plan, fix the communication gap or do anything. We want to keep running as quickly and efficiently as possible to make sure Americans can get the vaccine so they become available.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now to specifics on Pfizer's vaccine candidate. The company announcing via a news release that its vaccine is 95 percent effective with no serious safety concerns. Of the 170 trial participants who came down with COVID, 10 got severely sick. And of those, only one was taking the vaccine. The others were taking a placebo. Pfizer says it could file for emergency use authorization within days.

Let's talk about all of this now with Dr. Leana Wen, she is the former health commissioner for Baltimore. Doctor, what stood out to you in these results?

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Well, first of all, Brianna, I thought that these were incredibly promising. They're actually beyond my wildest expectations. The FDA said that they would green light an emergency use authorization if across the 50th percentile for efficacy. The most effective vaccine that we have, the measles vaccine, is 97 percent effective. And so to have something 95 percent effective is really incredible.

Also, they found that this vaccine appears to be effective in reducing severe disease, not just all disease, but also ideally preventing people from getting hospitalized and maybe even dying. And another result that was important was that it appears to be effective in older individuals who often have trouble mounting an immune response to various vaccines. It's 94 percent effective, they said, for older individuals.

So we do need to wait for the final results to come out. Of course, we need to wait for the FDA to approve this vaccine, but, so far, very promising, which means that all of us have to hang in there this winter until we can get to the spring to get the vaccine. And that's why we keep on having to do masking, physical distancing. We can make it through this winter.

KEILAR: So what we're waiting for now is -- look, the stuff we know is kind of top line stuff. It's press release stuff, right? They are giving us the top line on how effective it is. Now, we do know something about severity in people who did get the vaccine. But there's still a lot of information that doctors like yourself want to see and they are not going to see that until this big data packet goes to FDA or sometime after that when that becomes available for you to see.

What can change in between there? Could something change to take what seems like really good news to then raise some red flags about these vaccines?

WEN: In theory, yes, because there is going to continue to be a surveillance of the individuals who got the vaccines and the placebo, right? So we're still going to be following these individuals to see who is going to get COVID-19, are there any serious side effects that are not reported yet but may be reported. Although it is important to note that Pfizer says that they have also crossed the two-month threshold for looking at safety data, because most of these serious side effects come up in that 60-day period.

So, things could come up. Although, now, we also have to look at the challenges and distribution, because I am really worried about how we're literally going to manufacture hundreds of millions of doses. And because this vaccine requires two doses, how are we going to get two different doses into hundreds of millions of Americans.

KEILAR: Yes, two doses and one of the vaccines require considerable refrigeration, right? So that's also perhaps a limiting factor.

The FDA just approved an at-home test for coronavirus, so you can get results at home. Do you have any concerns about accuracy, about this practice of getting results at home, which has been certainly a complaint of rapid result testing, some of the accuracy issues?

WEN: So, in general, I think that at-home testing is exactly where we should be going. It's not great to have people who are symptomatic have to go into various doctor's offices and test inside exposing other people around them. Also, there is a long delay if you have to go somewhere. The test results have to be shipped to a lab to be processed, then you get it back. That's a delay that could be eliminated if you could get results done at home immediately after you take the test.

[13:25:02]

This test is the PCR test. The one that was just approved is a PCR test. So it's not an antigen test. It looks it's nearly as accurate as other PCR test that you sent into the lab.

My concern though is that even if this test ends up being as effective as we think that it is so far, it's still not going to be made and distributed in mass quantities until the company says early spring of 20 21. So it's going to take time. And also have to make sure that whatever results come out are still reported to public health authorities to do contact tracing and so that we know where the hot spots are. You can't just have at-home tests and people know their own result but it's not known to the general public.

KEILAR: No, it's a very good point. Dr. Wen, thank you so much.

WEN: Thank you.

KEILAR: And just in, despite a resurge of pandemic and a president who refuses to accept the results of national election, President Trump is moving forward with annual turkey pardon at the White House.

Plus, CNN speaks to a Georgia voter that the Trump campaign falsely accused of casting her ballot in the name of a dead woman.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:30:00]