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Health Care Workers Report Dire Shortage of Gloves; Trump Shakes Up Legal Team as Election Lawsuit Losses Mount; Major COVID Outbreak on U.S. Navy Warship as DOD Reports Record Number of New Cases in Military; CDC: Returning College Students & Returning Military Not Considered Part of Household. Aired 1:30-2p ET
Aired November 19, 2020 - 13:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:30:00]
CAROLE RASHID, URGENT CARE NURSE PRACTITIONER: Well, so we haven't gotten to the point where we have run out, so that's what we're trying to, you know, prevent from happening.
The CDC put out some guidance. You know, in any other situation that's not COVID, we wouldn't be doing these things, such as reusing a mask for weeks on end. But that's what we have to do now.
So, yes. For the shortage of gloves, there are some strategies to extend life of gloves, not necessarily reuse them, because you can't take them off, put them back on.
Changing gloves in between each patient. We're you're basically cleaning them, the way you wash your hands.
What we are having to do now just to sort of extend the life of being able to wear the gloves and keep the supply longer is to use hand sanitizer, an alcohol-based hand sanitizer, similar to how we disinfect equipment.
So the gloves are basically becoming a piece of equipment. The life will have to be extended a little bit longer.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Are you surprised -- I want to be clear, you and your husband run your facility together.
Are you surprised? You're doing the ordering. Are you surprised --
RASHID: Yes.
KEILAR: -- that at this point in time you can't get the gloves you need?
RASHID: I mean, yes and no. This has sort of become -- this has been happening a lot with a lot of our supplies. We're getting to the point we may not be able to get enough tests to
provide a test we want to, to patients. And shortages are something we have seen.
Actually, our suppliers, the distributors we order supplies from have been telling me that gloves are going to be tough. There's a shortage coming. It is coming.
We've known this for a couple of months that there's a shortage and they're going to be hard to come by. So they've been limiting numbers we are allowed to order at one time. So that's called they're allocating them. They're on allocation.
We have been ordering the maximum number that we can in anticipation that we won't be able to get them an more. But unfortunately, the needs are going up. The number of cases and infections are going up.
Even in the last week, the demand for testing has gotten more than what we're able to provide. We're expanding even more. So the need is going up and the supplies are going down.
I can't say I am surprised. But still, it is just a little shocking we can't get something as simple as gloves, something that's basic, that we cannot do without.
KEILAR: Yes.
RASHID: And the way it is going, it is a little scary.
KEILAR: Basic and essential.
Carole, we thank you so much for telling us about this. It is so important that we know this.
RASHID: All right. Thanks for having me.
KEILAR: Thank you for coming on.
We're standing by for a White House Coronavirus Task Force briefing. This is the first briefing that has happened in over six months.
Plus, COVID-19 is hitting servicemembers. It is hitting the military hard. They just saw a record number of cases this week.
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[13:37:55]
KEILAR: It has been a bad week for the Trump legal team that's right now holding a press conference that is so bananas we can't even bring it to you because it is just so full of B.S.
It has been a bad week for them and the week isn't over yet. President Trump added new lawyers to the mix in the last few days in a last- ditch attempt to boost his flailing legal efforts.
Last Friday, Team Trump and his allies lost or surrendered legal battles in rapid brutal succession in nine key states on Friday alone.
There were six more lawsuits since Monday, including one today. All of these trying to block election results.
They're losing because judges want -- who would have thunk -- proof of the widespread voter fraud they're alleging and there isn't any.
Baseless lawsuits are a classic move of a Donald Trump on the ropes.
Historically, he has tried to bury his problems in a pile of litigious paperwork.
Like when he failed to pay the contractors who did work on his real estate endeavors, forcing them to take pennies on the dollars for their hard work or bleed more money as he tied them up in court.
In business, Trump did it to screw small businesses out of the money he owed them. Now he's doing it to screw the country out of the election outcome that he chose.
But in this case, reality is getting in the way. The margins in states where the president's lawyers are contesting cases means the Trump legal team mission is a mission impossible.
That's even before you consider the collective lawyering abilities of this crack team that Trump has assembled, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Joseph diGenova, Victoria Toensing and Sidney Powell.
Before holding a new conference staged accidentally in front of a landscaping company next to a sex shop, before starring in "Borat II" before soliciting Ukrainian dirt and pedaling Russian disinformation about Joe and Hunter Biden, before the FBI began investigating him, Rudy Giuliani was once a reputable if, at times, controversial Republican.
He was America's mayor, a steady hand during New York City through the aftermath of 9/11, which earned him the title of "Times'" Person of the Year in 2001.
[13:40:04]
Before that, he was a fearsome prosecutor. To his credit, Giuliani conceives of a downright brilliant legal strategy to try the mafia's board of directors together, all at once, under the RICO Act and it worked. Exactly 34 years ago, November 1986.
But that was 1986. When "Crocodile Dundee" was the top box office hit. Now Giuliani looks and sounds about as lost in the courtroom as Mick Dundee did in New York.
Remember, the Trump campaign wants you to believe its legal effort is about fraud on a massive scale. What Giuliani basically claims is 1.5 million voters shouldn't have been allowed to vote. But he can't even seem to keep his lies straight.
On Tuesday, Giuliani represented the Trump campaign in a courtroom in Pennsylvania in a lawsuit that doesn't actually allege fraud. And Giuliani ranted how Joe Biden's election win was the result of a huge conspiracy.
So the federal judge asked him if he was alleging fraud. Quote, "No, Your Honor, we are not," Giuliani said. But then he ranted on about a, quote, "fraudulent process."
To which the judge responded, "So you are alleging a fraud?" He confused the judge, and really anyone who was paying attention to the court.
Also named off on Mickey Mouse and JFK while forgetting boilerplate legal terms.
Rick Hasen, a CNN election law analyst, reviewed the performance. He called it, quote, "The worst lawyering in an election law case" that he has seen in his life.
Even former chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, raised questions about Rudy's role.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICK MULVANEY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: I'm still a little concerned about use of Rudy Giuliani.
It strikes me that this is the most important lawsuit in the history of the country and they're not using the most well-noted election lawyers. There are folks that do this all of the time. This is a specialty.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Jenna Ellis is one of the other lawyers on board the Trump legal train. She's a frequent guest on FOX, a senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign, and a purveyor of the president's disputed election claims.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JENNA ELLIS, ATTORNEY FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP: So President Trump is fighting for election integrity.
(CROSSTALK)
ELLIS: And we want to make sure that every legal vote to count, not just for this election but for every one after this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Fighting for election integrity, she says. Suspect, considering that President Trump made clear this week he's actually an opponent of election integrity.
He made that clear by firing his top election security official, Chris Krebs, a guy he appointed for saying the election was the most secure election in history.
Another authority who counters Jenna Ellis' claims about Trump's virtuous pursuant, Jenna Ellis.
According to a CNN "KFILE" review of statements she made in 2016 on her official Facebook page and in local radio appearances in Colorado, Ellis repeatedly slammed then-Candidate Trump as an idiot who was boorish and arrogant, and a bully whose words could not be trusted as factually accurate.
She called comments he made about women disgusting, and suggested he was not a real Christian.
Her conversion from casting Trump as devoid of honorable qualities to insisting he is championing moral standards will give you whiplash.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELLIS (voice-over): Why should we rest our highest office in America on a man who fundamentally goes back and forth, and really cannot be trusted to be consistent or accurate in anything he says?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Ellis also said this, quote, "I could spend a full-time job just responding to the ridiculously illogical, inconsistent, and blatantly stupid arguments supporting Trump."
Well, it is now Jenna Ellis' full-time job to push those arguments.
Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, a veteran Washington husband- and-wife legal duo. They are big TV attorneys who were floated as Trump legal team members of 2018.
But sources told CNN there was concern about major conflicts of interest. And members of Trump's legal team at the time opposed their hiring.
They now show up on FOX News and other right-wing media outlets to spread Russian disinformation and conspiracy theories.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOSEPH DIGENOVA, ATTORNEY FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP: There was a brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton. And if she didn't win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime.
Everything that we have seen from these texts and from all of the facts developing shows that the FBI and senior DOJ officials conspired to violate the law and to deny Donald Trump his civil rights.
VICTORIA TOENSING, ATTORNEY FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP: Victoria Nuland and George Soros, her buddy, would go in and tell Ukrainians who should be their prime minister, who they should indict, who they should investigate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: And finally, there's Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor-turned QAnon-friendly conspiracy theorist. These days, she dedicates her time to appearances on FOX Biz, spouting lies about voting machines.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[13:45:03]
SIDNEY POWELL, ATTORNEY TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: We have so much evidence, I feel like it is coming in through a fire hose.
MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX BUSINESS HOST, "MORNINGS WITH MARIA": How will you prove this, Sidney?
POWELL: Well, I've got lots of ways to prove it, Maria. But I'm not going to tell on national TV what all we have. I just can't do that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: She just can't do that, she says, but it is actually because she doesn't have the goods.
The voting software and voting machine conspiracy theories are well debunked.
A group of national, state and private election officials came out Thursday and they said there was no evidence of any voting system being compromised in the 2020 election.
But Powell continued on with media appearances this week, including an interview with super right-wing Newsmax where she said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
POWELL: The math just doesn't add up for anything.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: The math adds up, Sidney. But adds up for Joe Biden. It adds up to 306 electoral votes. And an advantage of almost six million in the popular vote.
But perhaps subtraction is a better way to think of this moment that we are in.
Subtract effective governance in the face of a crisis. Subtract 250,000 American lives. Subtract the dignity of a commander-in-chief acknowledging what that loss means for this country.
And that is the math problem that Trump has never understood. That his fate was tied to fate of Americans, not just his supporters, all Americans, and their decision.
The outcome of this election is clear. No amount of dust that Trump and allies kick up is going to change that.
Ahead, we have some breaking news. The CDC says college students coming home don't count as household members and they need to keep their distance when they come home for holidays.
The same guidance applies for people who have been away on military duty. This, as troops are seeing their highest number of coronavirus cases yet.
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[13:51:24]
KEILAR: This just in. We are learning about a major coronavirus outbreak that is happening aboard a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer.
And this is coming on the heels of a new one-day record of new cases in the military. The Department of Defense reported a record high of 1,314 cases on Tuesday.
I want to bring in CNN Pentagon reporter, Ryan Browne, to talk about this.
So we have seen a big outbreak before. A ship is just a breeding ground for coronavirus. We saw that on the "Roosevelt."
What do we know about this outbreak on this Navy destroyer?
RYAN BROWNE, CNN PENTAGON REPORTER: Brianna, Navy officials telling us that this outbreak is a little bit different and that the ship is in port in Hawaii.
So you're not seeing the same high risk and difficulty that we saw in that case of the "Theodore Roosevelt," the aircraft carrier, which had that outbreak while it was under way at sea, making it that much more difficult to deal.
So in this case, the ship's in port so they are able to isolate the crew, move them ashore much more easily.
We are told about a third of the crew has the coronavirus at present. Of course, that number could go up as they continue testing.
And just days actually -- just the other day, a U.S. Coast Guard vessel had a similar situation. That was actually in operations at sea and they had to come home to port.
So it just shows that there are continued challenges of containing this pandemic aboard these ships, even when they're in port.
And it's something that the Navy has taken a lot of action to combat. But still, they have this serious issue affecting their ships.
KEILAR: I wanted to ask you about something else, which is the CDC is telling people -- we have the holidays upon us. Everybody wants to see the family members.
But the CDC said, if you have college students coming home, those don't count as people in the household. And they also made a distinction, Ryan, about servicemembers who are coming home from military duty.
How's that affecting things? Because you might have some servicemembers with a break around the holidays.
A lot of times when they're coming back from deployments, they are going to quarantine before they do that. Some folks may be living out of state from the families.
How's this impacting how military families are going to be going through the holidays?
BROWNE: It's a unique challenge, Brianna, as you noted. A lot of the time, military members will kind of schedule their leaves in order to try to come home for the holidays.
But in this case, CDC issuing this guidance to say that, if you are going to come home during the Thanksgiving holiday, maintain that distance. You are not a member of the household. You've been away.
And of course, the military has issued a series of restrictions on movement for personnel, quarantine times when they're coming back from overseas theaters.
Certain bases have had their restrictions increase in terms of the number of precautions they have to take when they are moving in out of those regions and off those bases.
So again, a difficult situation for those military members hoping to come home, hoping to kind of return to normal during the holiday break.
The CDC advising that they do not do that, that they maintain distance of more than six feet. That they take these other safeguards even when they are at home. Something that will not make for the homecoming that many of them hoped for.
But is something that they are doing, as the entire population experiences this uptick in cases.
The military, of course, is representative of the population. They're healthier, more fit, under more restrictions that they have to follow, of course.
But a lot -- you're seeing this uptick in cases both within the military as well as the general population.
Of course, the U.S. military has much fewer deaths. Only one active servicemember has died. Several members of the Reserves and Guard have as well.
But compared to the general population, a much healthier group, which has helped them ward off any of those fatalities.
[13:55:03]
But again, these -- it's a situation that the military, of course, is having to deal with. But again, having this impact on the Thanksgiving holiday is something that no one wanted to see -- Brianna?
KEILAR: That's right.
Ryan, live for us from the Pentagon, thank you.
States across the country right now are scrambling to contain the spread of coronavirus. And a day after the pandemic death toll surpassed 250,000, the Coronavirus Task Force is set to brief from the White House for the first time in more than six months.
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