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Biden Warns Transition Delay Can Impact Vaccine Distribution; Georgia Secretary Of State Says He Doesn't Believe Audit Will Change That Biden Won The State; White House Task Force Will Hold Briefing This Afternoon; House GOP Leader: Biden Will Have A Hard Time If 70 Percent Of Republicans Think He Cheated To Win; CNN: Trump Officials Quietly Reaching Out To Biden Transition Team. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired November 19, 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]

CLEMENCIA VEGA, NEW YORK CITY RESIDENT: And I need to feed them.

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: And that's why you are here today and thank you Clemencia. This is just one story Kate of the many stories of Americans waiting in line here in Brooklyn, but also around the country. Kate?

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Thank you for highlighting it, Vanessa. Thank you so much. Thank you all so much for joining us. I am Kate Bolduan. Dana Bash picks up our coverage right now.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Hello to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I am Dana Bash in Washington with big developments this hour. Georgia will soon finish its statewide audit of the 2020 election. That means the Secretary of State there will certify the official results showing Joe Biden's victory in a state that hasn't gone for a Democrat for president in nearly three decades.

The president promises his lawyers, the current president, that is, will try to claim in a press conference that they still can win, but that defies the facts. The facts are as follows. Joe Biden is the President-Elect. The current president's stubborn denials are the source of a transition delay that now totals 12 days.

And team Biden is warning that every one of those days of lost time will force them to play unnecessary catch-up that could cost lives, since it's putting the incoming administration behind on what matters most right now, a way out of the pandemic. And the numbers today are just awful.

170,000 plus new cases on Wednesday. That is the second highest total of the entire crisis. The daily average of new cases is at a new high, 161,000 per day. More infections mean more people are sick and sadly more deaths. 1,848 Americans lost their lives yesterday to the virus. That is the worst day since early May.

The president's pandemic management was already checkered, and his presence at briefings and in interviews was a constant source of disinformation. But now the president is absent, the man who mocked Joe Biden for hunkering down at home during the pandemic is now in his own bunker.

Today is the 12th day since the election with no public appearances on his schedule, and the president does plan to do some of the traditional White House photo ops, he is going to have a Turkey pardon, he plans a Christmas tree unveiling, but he is leaving it to the Governors to tell people that their holidays can't go on as normal this year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. PHIL MURPHY (D-NJ): Stay with their immediate family, and don't go outside your bubble, then make sure that's a small number. Single digits. And please, God, that's behavior we need right now, not just for next Thursday, John, but for the next couple of months. Vaccines are coming but they are not here yet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Much more on the virus in a few minutes. But first, we're going to go to Georgia where we expect to see soon the results of a hand recount that is been going on there. I want to get straight to CNN's Amara Walker. And Amara, what is the Secretary of State there saying about the results?

AMARA WALKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, he has maintained that he is confident that the results of this hand recount are going to be basically the same as the original tally affirmed, the winner of the state which is indeed Joe Biden. Any minute now, Dana, we'll be seeing the full results of the statewide audit.

What we are expecting to see from the Secretary of State's office is essentially a breakdown, county by county, the hand recount results versus the original tally. What we already know is that 70 percent of the counties in Georgia have report of virtually seeing no discrepancies.

There's been a lot of attention though on these thousands of uncounted ballots that was found, about 5800 uncounted ballots discovered during the audit in four different counties. Here is what happened. In three of these counties, basically the ballots were scanned onto a memory card, but the very last step of actually uploading these memory cards did not happen. That was apparently human error.

And the state election officials are being saying it is human error, not the computer's fault. There's no sign of widespread fraud. And Floyd County, there are about 2500 votes that were not counted. State election officials are saying that, that was just gross incompetence.

Basically, there was a box of ballots off to the side, no one ever saw it, and no one ever opened the box. Those ballots were never scanned. But despite it all, the Georgia Secretary of State is confident he has been saying that the audit will not change the overall outcome. Here he is talking to Jake Tapper yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BRAD RAFFENSPERGER (R) GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: We have not seen any widespread voter fraud. The president has picked up some votes in a few of the counties that made some clerical errors. Wasn't the machines? But at the end of the day, he started with 14,000, he is about 12,000 now. We are finishing up, waiting for a few more counties to get back to us in the large counties. But I don't believe at the end of the day it will change the total results.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: So you still think that Joe Biden, President- Elect Biden will be the winner of Georgia?

RAFFENSPERGER: Yes, I believe that's the way - more.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:05:00]

WALKER: And the Secretary of State's office says that it is working under the assumption that President Trump will request a recount, and he will have to do so by Tuesday. Dana?

BASH: That's right. After the results in Georgia are certified, he has a two-day window to request a recount. Thank you so much for that reporting, we're going to keep in touch, and see if we get the results of that audit during this hour. We expect it might happen.

And as for the president, he is waging an election fight across states, not just in Georgia, but his campaign dropped one of its key lawsuits today. I want to get straight to Kaitlan Collins about that. Kaitlan tell us what happened in Michigan today.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, as we are seeing the president's legal challenges really start to fall apart in court, they're getting crazier and it seems more desperate by the moment.

Because what you're seeing with this is that the campaign is dropping its lawsuit, saying that the board has not certified the election results in Wayne County, even though they have certified the election results in Wayne County.

The reason they're saying that is because of course you saw the drama that played out earlier this week, where there were those two Republican election officials in Michigan who refused to certify the results of the race, and that led to the president praising them for having great courage. But for the people who had voted in Detroit and other areas in that county, there was a lot of backlash.

And so, eventually they relented, they reversed their moves, and they ended up certifying those election results. And now they're trying to rescind their votes, and they filed an affidavit saying as much, even though legally they cannot rescind their votes to certify the results.

We're seeing this drama play out in Michigan where the Trump Campaign is lying and trying to say the results have not been certified, even though they have. And of course, that comes on the heels of them withdrawing their lawsuit on that basis. And so, you're seeing that.

We are expecting to get a press conference from the president's legal team which is now being led by Rudy Giuliani and a few others any moment now. So, we'll see what it is they're going to try to do next. But of course, this comes after yesterday in Wisconsin. They asked for a recount in two of those counties.

And I would expect them to start to make some other allegations, of course. Because as Amara was just noting, this is coming as Georgia is expected to announce its recount which election officials have said will affirm Joe Biden's win.

But it's basically just the president still dragging this out, and refusing to concede the race to Joe Biden, but also continuing to try to delay the certification of these votes, because that's really their last-ditch effort to try to delay this.

BASH: Absolutely. Kaitlan, the Senator from Utah, Mitt Romney was one of the first to come out and acknowledge that Joe Biden is the President-Elect. And he was the last Republican to have to concede the presidency that he wouldn't win in a race that happened in 2012. He talked to David Axelrod on his podcast this morning. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): I'm more concerned about the actions the president is taking that relate to, for instance, the firing of Chris Krebs, for us to pull our troops out obviously puts our remaining troops in some danger. The consequences of what's happening during this lame duck period, I think are potentially more severe than the consequences associated with a late transition process.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Mitt, just translate into little bit less diplomatic speak. He is worried that what the president is doing out of sight is really dangerous for the country right now.

COLLINS: Yes, you're hearing that concern, you're hearing it from other Republican officials as well who pushed back on the president's announcement that they're withdrawing troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. That's something that came out this week that the president, the Press Secretary, and the Acting Pentagon Secretary did not take questions on, we should note.

But also, you're seeing the president fire officials who are just simply pushing back, and contradicting the lies that he is spreading about what happened in this election, when he talks about fraud, and says it was stolen from him.

But also, we're being told by sources that the president has a lot else that he wants to get done in the next two months. So, they're not expecting it to be quiet. And we should note, we haven't seen a lot of the president, but he is still been making big decisions behind closed doors. There are questions on other people that he might fire. And a sign of this, Dana is that, he cancelled his scheduled trip to Mar-a-Lago next week for Thanksgiving where he has gone every year that he has been in office to instead stay back here. But of course, this comes as I think one of the questions that Mitt Romney was talking about in that podcast was what is happening when it comes to the pandemic.

And the president has seemed largely detached from it, though I should note, we were just told by the vice president's office that there's going to be a briefing today, press briefing with the members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force who are meeting today with the vice president. Dana, that's the first one of those we've had in months.

BASH: Yes.

COLLINS: And so, it's not clear if the president, himself, though, is going to attend.

BASH: I was just going to tell you that. But of course, Kaitlan, you're so talented, that you can actually read an email and talk on television at the same time. Why I am not surprised?

[12:10:00]

BASH: But in all seriousness, that is big news and welcome news for people who are watching these numbers spike, and wondering where is the federal government? Where is the task force? And we're actually going to see and hear from them today. And that is a really big development. Kaitlan, thank you so much for that.

And on this note, I want to bring in a member of the Biden COVID Advisory Board, Dr. Celine Gounder. Thank you so much for joining me. Dr. Gounder, first, just your response to the fact that we are going to see and hear the current administrations, COVID Task Force today, what do you want to hear from them?

DR. CELINE GOUNDER, MEMBER, PRES-ELECT BIDEN'S CORONAVIRUS ADVISORY BOARD: Well, first of all, Dana, I'm just relieved to hear that they're not going to be - during all of this. I think big picture, we're all on the same team as Americans, we all need to come together and work together.

I think the sooner the GSA can move forward with ascertainment and we can really get into the same room with members of the current Coronavirus Task Force, the better. Because there's a lot of work to be done.

BASH: Yes, that's an understatement. And I want you to listen to what Dr. Anthony Fauci said about the impact of this delay in the transition process.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: There has not been any form of discussions with the Biden people on this. That kind of thing makes it easier to just go from one to the other. So yes, I would wish that we would be able to do that that would be helpful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Dr. Gounder, you are a member of the Biden COVID Advisory Board. Do you see the impact of this delay from the inside? Can you describe it?

GOUNDER: Well, we're simply not able to have conversations with folks on the current White House Coronavirus Task Force or in other agencies under this administration. And they really are, some of them are political appointees, but some of them are just career bureaucrats, and scientists who have been working in the trenches who have crucial information that we really need to be briefed on now.

It's sort of like trying to jump from one moving train to another seamlessly. That's a serious Indiana Jones kind of move we're being asked to make.

BASH: Wow! That is really, really stark. You are a doctor at the top of your profession and that it is a pretty small community. And that includes people both on the Biden Task Force like you and on the current administration's task force, the people who are actually doing the job. Have you had back channel conversations with any of them?

GOUNDER: I have not. I have not. We're really not supposed to be back channeling. We're supposed to be having formal conversations after ascertainment. Obviously, I have many colleagues in academia and industry, and so on who I can speak to for their opinions and their input. But we cannot get information from people inside the administration until the GSA moves forward with ascertainment.

BASH: Your colleague, Rick Bright, who worked in the Trump White House and is now working with you, said just bluntly that people are going to die because of the transition being stalled right now, everything you just described. Do you share that opinion?

GOUNDER: I do, because every day that you delay things like scaling up testing, that you delay all of the logistics of scaling up vaccine manufacturing and delivery and getting people vaccinated, every day of delay will translate into more deaths.

BASH: I want to ask you about Dr. Deborah Birx, who is of course the chief of the current White House Coronavirus Task Force. There was a piece that was published in "POLITICO" this week, and the headline was it's complicated. And it was about the Biden team which you are on weighing whether or not to keep Deborah Birx once Joe Biden takes office. Do you see her in the next administration?

GOUNDER: Well, it is not really my decision or the decision of members of--

BASH: Do you think she should be - what would you - if they had come to you and said the former vice president, president-elect came to you and said should she be on the team, what would your answer be?

GOUNDER: Well, I think she holds really crucial information. It's some of the information I'm talking about that we need that we cannot get without ascertainment. This is the kind of information; she understands some of these operational details. For example, supply chain details. Where are ventilators? Have they had the quality control, are they functional?

That was one of the problems we had earlier in the year, finding out many of the ventilators in the stockpile didn't work. Where is our personal protective equipment and so on? So she really is central in terms of the knowledge and the expertise that she holds.

BASH: Yes, she is. Thank you so much. Dr. Celine Gounder, for all of your insight and for everything that you're doing, appreciates it.

GOUNDER: My pleasure.

[12:15:00]

BASH: And up next, could there be some cracks in the wall around the White House. What CNN has learned about Trump officials who have quietly reached out to the Biden transition team?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)'

BASH: With January 20th Inauguration Day fast approaching, President Trump is still stalling President-Elect Biden's transition process by refusing to concede the election. But CNN has learned that some former and current Trump Administration officials are quietly reaching out to members of the Biden/Harris transition team to offer assistance.

A current administration official tells CNN the contact is "Nothing that would get us in trouble. Just an offer to be of help they know what we mean and what we can and can't do or say". Joining me now is CNN National Security Correspondent and a Co-Author of that reporting. CNN's Vivian Salama and National Political Correspondent for The New York Times" Jonathan Martin

[12:20:00]

BASH: Hey, guys, thanks so much for joining me. Vivian, I want to start with you on your great reporting. Talk about this quiet outreach. How far can they really go in giving the information to the Biden transition team that they need to keep the country afloat, particularly when it comes to the pandemic?

VIVIAN SALAMA, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Dana, this is an issue that we have been talking about now constantly. Obviously, there are legal constraints to how much the Trump Administration officials can say because of the fact that we haven't had ascertainment yet. The general services administration has not formally recognized Joe Biden as President-Elect.

Until that happens, they can't access classified information. But what these officials are saying is that, we are two weeks in, and there's so much that can be done in the meantime. And they haven't gotten the green light. So, they go and they reach out to their counterparts. They know these people, D.C. is a kind of city where you see a lot of

the same people, and especially if you're a subject matter expert, you know people on the other side of the aisle who are possibly going to be working for the next administration.

And so, a lot of outreach starting to take place. People are saying, you know, what? This is a matter of national security, there are so much that we can discuss that doesn't have to be classified. Talking about personnel, budgets. Some of the policy issues that on the surface level they can talk about. So much can be discussed.

And in the meantime, while they're still waiting for President Trump to concede, and give the green light to an official transition, there is something they can be doing. And that's what's starting to happen now, Dana.

BASH: People who are putting country over party. It's important reporting that you have there. Jonathan, over to you. You interviewed the newly reelected House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy and you asked him doesn't Biden cool the country's political temperatures at least at first.

And what McCarthy said to you was it depends how it turns out. If you have 70 percent of Republicans who thought he cheated, he is still going to have a hard time moving forward. So Jonathan, my question for you is, at any point did he acknowledge even in some kind of code, that the reason 70 percent of people think that Joe Biden cheated is because people like him are not calling Biden President-elect and conservative leaders, including the president are claiming that.

JONATHAN MARTIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: This won't surprise you, no. Shocker there. I do think Dana; it gets interesting when the states start certifying. Georgia has to certify by tomorrow, Michigan and Pennsylvania on Monday.

What does the world look like? And more specifically, what do Governors and members of congress who are on the GOP side, what do they say when their own state, when battleground state certify the results.

And the results are the results that Joe Biden won. I think that's going to be the test here in the next two weeks is does that give them any kind of a peg to acknowledge what is reality.

BASH: It's so true. And listen, I mean, talking about Kevin McCarthy, I mean, he is obviously hearing from Republicans that they don't believe it is reality. But the reason those Republicans are hearing that is, because they're paying attention to a conservative media and others who are telling them false information. That's a discussion for another day, but a very important one.

MARTIN: Yes.

BASH: But some Republicans have called Joe Biden President-Elect. And so, they are moving towards it, and I think that was the point you were made. I am hearing that those date, those certification dates are really key. The question is why they should believe these Republicans that even if they say OK, we're done, that the president will go along with it.

MARTIN: Well, he might not. And he might sort of keep indulging the affection that he didn't lose the election. And that's where it's going to - dicey for people like Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell if you have states certify the results. If the electors then in December obviously make clear that Biden has won and the president, the outgoing president still will not admit it.

That's where it could get challenging. And especially, Dana, for Mitch McConnell, because he needs President Trump to be an ally in Georgia to capture those two seats that are right now going to decide who controls the majority in a sense. McConnell really has to walk on eggshells here through January 5th when the Georgia runoff is taking place, because he needs Trump and the Trump voters more to the point in Georgia to be energized for that runoff.

BASH: It is all about Georgia and it is all about power. Vivian, you are covering national security, obviously cover political appointees who are now Republicans or Republican appointees.

[12:25:00]

BASH: But also, so many career diplomats and others who are trying to kind of navigate this, the best way they can. What more are you hearing behind the scenes from them?

SALAMA: Well, certainly at the National Security Council, which is essentially an extension of the White House, a lot of officials are going to be staying on. They have been serving Robert O'Brien, the current National Security Adviser, and they will be serving whoever Joe Biden chooses as his National Security Adviser.

And so, there's a lot of confusion, a lot of suggestion that maybe they should stop doing certain work, because policies are going to change inevitably under a Joe Biden Presidency. But they keep on getting push back from the leadership, obviously President Trump wanting to carry out whatever he can before he leaves office in January.

And so, officials constantly being told we do not have results yet and you have to keep on working as though nothing happened. And so, that's the official line. Behind the scenes, though, officials including Robert O'Brien, I am told by sources and others are acknowledging that Joe Biden is going to be the next president.

And so, a lot of confusion and a lot of mixed messaging when it comes to the policies and whether or not certain things should be carried out in haste or just put on pause for now, Dana.

BASH: So much mixed messaging which maybe mattered less in earlier times. But now we're talking such a basic, which is the peaceful and successful transition of power that is put on hold. Vivian and Jonathan always love having your excellent reporting and hearing what you are seeing and what you are writing in your notebooks. Thanks so much, guys. And up next, we have some breaking news from the CDC. New guidelines about thanksgiving travel you're going to want to watch. Stay tuned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)