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Two Key States on Brink of Certifying Election Results; Trump Team Attempts to Distance from Controversial Lawyer; Biden to Nominate Tony Blinken as Secretary of State; AstraZeneca Vaccine 70 Percent Effective Against Coronavirus; Trump Campaign Files Appeal After Judge Rejects Pennsylvania Case; Key Michigan Republican Expected to Vote Against Certifying Results; Millions of Americans Take to the Skies for Thanksgiving Despite CDC Warning. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired November 23, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Canvassing Board vote against certifying the results. Here is the undisputable fact this morning. Joe Biden won the state by more than 154,000 votes.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Listen. This is a real test for our nation's democracy today.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: In Pennsylvania, Biden is winning by 80,000 votes there, and in a crushing blow, a federal judge over the weekend dismissed the Trump campaign's effort to invalidate millions of votes in that state. That was the intention in that case, by the way. It prompted Pennsylvania senator, a Republican, Pat Toomey to join a growing, although small, list of Republican lawmakers who are breaking with the president and acknowledging the facts of this election to allow the transition to begin, because as the president wages this war against our nation's democratic system, the nation is still battling a pandemic that is growing worse by the day.

Let's begin with Dianne Gallagher. She is in Michigan.

I mean, Dianne, this is remarkable. I mean, you're basically by law in Michigan asking this canvassing board merely to acknowledge what the votes say and yet there's a question about it.

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Apparently there's a question about it. I mean, this is a pretty mundane procedure, and look, the hope for many here in Michigan is that it remains that way, but at least one of the four members of this Board of Canvassers has indicated that they are not going to vote to certify the election.

Now it's made up of two Democrats and two Republicans. They need three of the members to vote to certify for certification to happen. Now my producer, Dan Shepherd, actually went by the home of the other GOP member. His wife said that he's not going to talk about what he's going to do before that 1:00 p.m. meeting today, so all eyes are on that vote.

Now, here is the key thing here. Technically, all the Board of Canvassers are supposed to do is review and then tally up each of the certified county canvasses. That's it. They're not supposed to be asking questions or even asking for audits. The secretary of State has indicated and said pretty plainly that they can't audit or even recount the election until it is certified, contrary to what the Trump campaign and even the RNC have been asking publicly to happen.

So what we are expecting to happen today is for that vote to take place sometime this afternoon. If they are deadlocked, it could go to the courts next. It would go to the Court of Appeals and then if no decision is made there, it could go all the way up to the Supreme Court. What happens after that, it's a little murky but most election experts here in Michigan don't expect things to get that far.

HARLOW: OK, we're all holding our breath to see what happens, and if it is mundane and normal, if you will. But a follow-up to that, Dianne, is the governor here, Gretchen Whitmer, who's obviously been in the spotlight a lot in the last few months, she's got a lot of power here, right?

GALLAGHER: Yes. She does have a lot of power and we've not seen any indication that she plans to use that yet. Of course, we still have a whole host of hurdles to get through before she may have to do that. But Governor Whitmer could, within her power, remove any of these members of the Board of Canvassers. She appointed them, they were put out by the political parties essentially and the state Senate. And she appointed them. She can also remove them if they refuse to do their duty or anything of that nature.

Again, we haven't gotten quite that far and the hope is from some of the people that we've been speaking to here in elections that they don't have to get to that point but the governor does have the power to do quite a bit and if somebody in the state legislature, if it got that far, tried to alter the way that things worked here, well, it would need her signature as well to go through.

HARLOW: OK.

SCIUTTO: Yes. I mean, we should remind folks the margin in Michigan was not close. 150,000 votes more, nearly 3 percent.

OK, let's look at Pennsylvania today, because it's just a blistering loss for the Trump campaign in their lawsuit there over the weekend. Today now Pennsylvania counties, they've got to certify as well.

GALLAGHER: That's right. And Pennsylvania does things a little differently than they do here in Michigan. Each of the counties is going to do its certification with the exception at least at this point for two of them. Philadelphia and Burks County, Pennsylvania, are withholding because of some pending litigation and so they're expecting that to happen maybe tomorrow or the next day, but Pennsylvania moving ahead with its certification process as well, after the Trump campaign was dealt yet another, as you put it, blistering defeat in the courts there, trying to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania.

HARLOW: Two critical states. Thank you for all the important details this morning, Dianne Gallagher. We appreciate it.

[09:05:03]

Well, the president's legal team is still trying, they're now also some of them trying to distance themselves from controversial attorney Sidney Powell.

SCIUTTO: Yes. I mean, just days after they appeared at the RNC headquarters next to Sidney Powell, we should note.

CNN's Jerry Diamond is at the White House.

So, Jeremy, the Trump camp says she is no longer part of the legal team. I mean, listen, the president tweeted about her. She appeared at the RNC headquarters just a few days ago alongside his lawyers. What changed?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this toothpaste is very difficult to put back in the tube, especially once you've not only appeared alongside her but you've also parroted many of the very same conspiracy theories that she gas alleged.

The Trump campaign suggesting that Sidney Powell was never a member of this legal team despite the fact that she not only appeared alongside Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, the other Trump campaign lawyers here, just a few days ago at the RNC, and the president tweeted about her being a part of this legal team.

There's no question Sidney Powell has been trafficking in a range of deranged conspiracy theories about the 2020 election alleging that both the CIA and the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez were involved in rigging the 2020 election, even bringing in Georgia's Republican Governor Brian Kemp. But like I said, the conspiracy theories that she's pushing aren't all that dissimilar from the ones that we're hearing from Rudy Giuliani and from the president himself, so it's really not clear what it is specifically that she said that causes them to want to distance themselves.

But as this is happening, the Trump campaign is racking up loss after loss in federal and state courts across the country, more than two dozen defeats handed to the Trump campaign in the president's efforts, and he's finding very little remaining pathway to try and plausibly contest this election and that is why you are seeing the president's wall of Republican support beginning to show some cracks.

Not only have we had some Republican lawmakers and governors acknowledge Joe Biden as the president-elect and say it's time to move on with the transition, but even those Republican lawmakers who are still saying the president has a right to pursue these legal challenges, those who aren't referring to Joe Biden as president- elect, even they are saying this transition needs to be allowed to proceed, Joe Biden should be getting these high level national security briefings.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DIAMOND: Over the weekend, we even heard from Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who's a member of House Republican leadership, articulating that very same position.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DIAMOND: Poppy and Jim?

SCIUTTO: I mean, listen, the fact is the legal challenges are basically dead. I mean, this has become a political pressure campaign on canvassing boards, et cetera. Those are the facts. We'll stay on top of them.

Jerry Diamond at the White House, thank you.

HARLOW: President-elect Biden is trying to move forward with his transition, even if President Trump will not. He is set to make a major announcement tomorrow on some key cabinet picks.

SCIUTTO: Yes. We got a sense. CNN's Arlette Saenz is in Wilmington.

So, Arlette, for secretary of State, Tony Blinken, served as assistant secretary of State in the prior administration. Tell us about this pick. I mean, you might call it a relatively main line pick for the president-elect.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim, it really is. And President-elect Joe Biden is making it clear that he wants to go with some seasoned hands when it comes to the foreign policy and diplomatic world, and you're seeing that in this expected announcement of Tony Blinken to become secretary of State.

Blinken served as a deputy secretary of State during the Obama administration and has also been a longtime adviser to Biden on foreign policy issues, even going all the way back to Biden's time in the Senate, and so what you're seeing Biden do is pick someone who has been at his side throughout this campaign, shaping a lot of their foreign policy views, and it's someone who can go out into the world and speak on Biden's behalf as this administration gets started.

And in addition to Blinken's expected nomination, we have also learned that Biden is expected to announce his picks for his National Security adviser and also the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Now starting with that National Security adviser position, the leading contender for that job is Jake Sullivan. This is someone who has also been a longtime adviser on both foreign policy and domestic issues to Biden, and he also served alongside a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her tenure at the State Department.

And as for that position for the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., the leading contender for that job is Linda Thomas-Greenfield. She is someone with decades of experience in the foreign service. She had served as an assistant secretary of State during the Obama administration. She's also a woman of color, which would make good on a promise from Biden to have his top officials be diverse and reflect the country, but bottom line, Biden is simply trying to move forward with his transition, even as the Trump administration puts up roadblocks.

HARLOW: OK, big, big announcement to come. Arlette, thanks so much.

Well, really exciting news this morning on yet another vaccine. This news coming from AstraZeneca and Oxford University.

[09:10:03]

Data showed their COVID vaccine is about 70 percent effective. There's some nuance to that that's important.

SCIUTTO: There is. CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now.

I mean, Elizabeth, big picture here, you have multiple options here it seems when these vaccines are proved. But tell us what we know about this newest one.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, it's definitely for sure good to see these good, early results, and I would emphasize early, early results from AstraZeneca. They don't look as good as the other two that we've heard about in the past few weeks. So let's take a look at these numbers. We boiled it down here.

So what AstraZeneca is showing is that based on results that they've got from their trials in Brazil and the UK, the vaccine is 70 percent effective, and that's based on a study of about 12,000 study participants. Now let's compare it to what Moderna and Pfizer recently announced. Moderna announced 94.5 percent efficacy. Obviously much better with about 30,000 study participants. So that's better, too, the more people indicates a stronger study.

Pfizer, 95 percent effectiveness, with about 44,000 people. So you can see that those two are showing stronger results. Now that doesn't mean that the AstraZeneca vaccine is useless. It could be particularly useful in certain populations, maybe it's good for some people and not as good for other people.

Also, they don't have their results from their U.S. trial yet and that's a big chunk of people. So it will be interesting to see what data they get from their U.S. trial and also even the data we have now from the UK and Brazil, that is still early. There is more to come from AstraZeneca.

SCIUTTO: And we should keep in mind that the flu vaccines we tend to take every season, those are not quite 90 percent, they're often in the 70 percent category, so again like you said, certainly doesn't mean useless.

OK, so let's talk about the timeline. Dr. Fauci and others, they keep talking about spring, most likely, when it will be available to the broad segments of the population. Is that still on line? Could it even move up?

COHEN: That's still what we're hearing. So let's take a look at sort of a combination of what Dr. Fauci told us last week and what Moncef Slaoui who's the head of Operation Warp Speed, what he's told us CNN yesterday. So we put that together into sort of one kind of forecast. And I want to say, just like weather forecasts, these forecasts could be wrong. This is just looking into the future, which is always dicey.

But this is what we know at the moment. So Dr. Fauci says that towards the latter part of December he expects that vaccines will start in high-risk individuals, so that could be health care workers, essential workers like police officers, people who have underlying medical conditions, elderly people. And then Dr. Fauci told me that towards the end of April, he expects the vaccines for everybody else, for low- risk people, people who don't fall into any of those categories, that's when those would begin.

And so Dr. Slaoui said yesterday that he thinks by May we will have immunized 70 percent of the U.S. population. Again, just a forecast. Take it for what it's worth but that's sort of what the outlook is for the future -- Jim, Poppy.

SCIUTTO: Well, it's good news, right? It's good news. We need patience but it's good news.

COHEN: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Elizabeth Cohen, thanks so much.

More than one million travelers have been packing airports over the weekend, despite the CDC warning not to take those big trips this holiday week. Will this make this -- will this make this send the number of cases even higher?

HARLOW: Plus will the president's Hail Mary attempts to hold on to power finally end this week? More of the facts ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

HARLOW: The president's legal team is still fighting to delay the certification of votes in two key states in this election, Pennsylvania. The Trump campaign is appealing still a federal judge's dismissal of their lawsuit over the weekend to invalidate --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

HARLOW: Millions of votes -- and it's amazing, Jim, that they're appealing after the language of that Republican judge.

SCIUTTO: Yes, I mean, the judge made it clear, there is no standing to appeal. He dismissed with prejudice in Michigan. Republican Party there is questing there be a 14-day delay in certifying votes. This is not how the law works there by the way, but Republican lawmakers, some at least, are starting to say it is over. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. FRED UPTON (R-MI): It's just a little bit out of bounds. You've got to -- for the process to work, you've got to have the official certification by the State Board of Canvassers. All that's in play. No one has come up with any evidence of any fraud.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: No evidence of any fraud, that's a Republican lawmaker in the state of Michigan. Joining us now, CNN election analyst and New York University law professor, Richard Pildes. Richard, good to have you on this morning.

RICHARD PILDES, LAW PROFESSOR, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY: Nice to be here.

SCIUTTO: I mean, big picture. Is this even a legal challenge anymore? They've lost all their cases except on a couple of technical issues here and there, I mean, it's effectively become a political pressure campaign on Republican officials in states such as Michigan.

PILDES: Yes, I think that's exactly right. We knew that the courts were not going to overturn the outcome of this election, and that was pretty clear early on, and that was just becoming more clear day-by- day as virtually all of these courts shut down very decisively any of the legal claims. And by the way, I want to point out, there are two federal district judges appointed by President Trump who have rejected these claims very strongly including the one in Pennsylvania.

So, we have shifted or the campaign has shifted I should say, from the courtroom to this political pressure campaign. They're looking for any points of vulnerability in the final steps of the process that they can try to exert tremendous pressure at, particularly if there are key actors who are Republicans, and that's of course what they're trying do in Michigan.

[09:20:00]

And Michigan is really, I think the sort of last stop for them because if certification happens in Michigan, then I think it becomes more obvious to everybody that the whole process is coming to closure, and it's time to move to the next stage.

HARLOW: I'm glad you point out those two Republican judges in Pennsylvania. I mean, the fact that federal Judge Matthew Brann's language, again a Republican, called the Trump team's attempts here a "Frankenstein like monster that has been haphazardly stitched together." And as Jim noted, you know, dismissed with prejudice, it's a huge thing, but what actually happens today among those four people in Michigan, you say is the single most important moment since the race was called for the Vice President-elect Biden.

PILDES: Yes, I think that because it was clear to those of us who are election law experts that these cases in court were not going anywhere. They just weren't good legal claims, and there wasn't strong factual evidence. So, the more vulnerable point in the system is the certification boards especially if there are Republican appointees in charge.

So to contrast Michigan with Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, it's the Democratic Secretary of State who is going to certify, so the Trump campaign obviously has no play in Pennsylvania. They've already lost in Georgia. They've effectively lost in Arizona, because the biggest county there, the one Phoenix that's in Maricopa, they've certified.

So Michigan is I think the last major pressure point, and if this board goes ahead and does what it should obviously do, which is certify, then I think even this sort of play is coming to an end. On the other hand, if this board doesn't certify, if they say, you know, we need to delay for two weeks to get a fuller audit of the system, and that may be what some of the Republicans on that board will do, that will then generate, you know, tremendous uncertainty and agony and turmoil, it will create --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

PILDES: A sense that this is still an open matter, it will provide momentum to the Trump campaign's efforts, even though Michigan will ultimately certify, I don't think there's any question about that. But a delay at this point is politically consequential.

SCIUTTO: Yes, I mean, and that is according to folks who have spoken to Giuliani and others, the explicit strategy here, delay, create questions regardless of the overcome. Just very quickly, this has opened up a path, has it not? In future elections, for a candidate of any party to pressure these officials who have an effect a procedural role to overturn votes. How concerned should people watching be?

PILDES: Well, I think we are concerned about this. You know, these officials for many decades have performed an incredibly professional way and maybe they still will, but we do see the vulnerability at these points in the system, and it's absolutely going to be a critical task going forward to shore up those points of vulnerability --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

PILDES: To be politically exploited, you know, as attempts currently are being made to do.

SCIUTTO: Yes --

HARLOW: Well, it's hugely important, especially today as you know, professor, thank you for being here. We appreciate it.

SCIUTTO: Thank you. Thank you.

HARLOW: The CDC is warning and has warned since last week, you know, Americans not to travel or go anywhere for Thanksgiving. I don't think people are listening. It has not stopped huge surges of people at our nation's airports.

SCIUTTO: Yes, those crowds is just worrisome to see. Plus, we are moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Dow looks set to rise to start the shortened holiday trading week and ahead of the holiday shopping season. Guitar Center; the biggest musical instrument retailer in the United States just became the most recent company to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. According to a new Gallup Poll, more than a quarter of Americans say they will spend less on holiday gifts this year compared to last year, and that can be devastating for retailers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:25:00]

HARLOW: A lot of people are traveling, a lot of people are flying. More than 2 million Americans pass through security checkpoints at our airports across the country. Just this weekend, this comes, Jim, despite the CDC saying just --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

HARLOW: Before the weekend, do not travel, skip your big trips.

SCIUTTO: Yes, folks just don't seem to be listening or at least some. CNN's Adrienne Broaddus is live at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, one of the busiest of course in the country. Adrienne, as you stand there, what are you seeing?

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, compared to what we saw over the weekend, the security checkpoint line is short, but as more and more people jump in line, it's hard to maintain social distance.

I've seen families traveling, some telling me they're going to see their grandparents because they miss them. The U.S. is gaining this reputation for breaking records. In the month of November, more than 3.1 million new cases reported, and despite the warning from the CDC, despite warnings from top doctors, people are doing what they want to do.

More than 2 million people passing through TSA screenings at airports across the country, and many travelers I spoke with today told me they crave a hug from their parents and close relatives.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALLISON CILKE, PURDUE UNIVERSITY STUDENT: Definitely hug them. I mean, I haven't in so long. So, it would be nice to, you know, see my family and touch them again.

DEVON LOWE, FLYING TO VISIT FAMILY: I only see them once a year, so it's like one of my main things I look forward to every year. So it's the one thing that I can get out of this year that will make my life a little better.