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Two Key States on Brink of Certifying Election Results; AstraZeneca Says, Vaccine 70 Percent Effective in Preventing Coronavirus; Trump Campaign Files Appeal After Judge Rejects Pennsylvania Case. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired November 23, 2020 - 10:00   ET

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

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POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour, good morning, everyone, I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

Here is the disturbing reality. Three weeks out from an election he lost, the president is doing everything he can to cling to power, to overturn the results of the election. It's possible though that could end today. Two key states could go a long way in squashing his unfounded attempt to undermine this election. Michigan and Pennsylvania on the verge of certifying Joe Biden's victory as the president's strategy of muddying, well, really the waters with unproven claims of election fraud comes to a head in Michigan.

Will two Republicans on the state's four-person canvassing board vote against, this is despite the facts, doing their job of certifying the results? A reminder, this wasn't close. Biden won Michigan by more than 154,000 votes.

HARLOW: That's right. And some more Republicans are speaking out about this. At least more Republican lawmakers are calling for Joe Biden's transition to get under way. This follows a major defeat in court for the president's legal team in Pennsylvania.

And as the coronavirus pandemic grows more dire each day, that's really at the crux of why this transition is so critically important, it is prompting the president's own Operation Warp Speed vaccine czar to say now is the time to share information with Biden's transition.

We're following all of this, this hour more on Pennsylvania's vote in just a minute, but let's begin with our Dianne Gallagher in the state of Michigan.

Four votes today in Michigan is what it comes down to.

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's the way it's supposed to come down to things here in Michigan. It's set to happen at 1:00 P.M. Now, look, again, this is typically a mundane procedural vote, this board of canvassers. What they're being brought in to do is basically just math. They need to tally up all of the already certified canvasses from each of the counties in Michigan to come up with those statewide results.

But there's been a wrench thrown into things, as tends to happen in 2020, as one of the two Republicans on that four-person board has indicated to people that he plans not to vote to certify.

Now, the requirement for certification is at least three votes. And you have to have at least one vote from each member of those two parties. So, right now, all eyes are on that other Republican board member.

Now, my producer, Dan Shepherd, went to that other GOP member's home, his wife said that he's not going to talk about what he's going to do before the meeting today.

There is concern here in Michigan that if perhaps he also voted not to certify, what would happen with a 2-2 deadlock, procedurally, it would go to the courts, most likely. You would see the lawsuits starting to be filed, a court of appeals. And, technically, the judge could then force them to certify since that is their only duty.

Now, that Republican who was indicated he's not going to certify, Jim, Poppy, here is the thing. He said he wants there to be more time for an investigation. It echoes what we've heard from the Trump campaign and even the RNC. But the secretary of state here in Michigan says that, look, the only way we can do those investigations, an audit, a recount, is if you certify the election. That's just the way the law works here.

SCIUTTO: Okay. Another stop gap here belongs to the governor, Gretchen Whitmer. Is that right? Could she reappoint or replace rather one of these board members?

GALLAGHER: She could, yes. I mean, she appointed them, she could replace them as well if they chose not to carry out their duties. Everyone we've spoken to who was an expert in election law in Michigan says that if that was the case, that would be much further down the road though, most likely.

SCIUTTO: All right, Dianne Gallagher, we know you're going to be there. Let us know what happens at 1:00.

Joining us now to discuss, Jeff Mason, White House Correspondent for Reuters.

Jeff, tell us what's happening here in reality. I mean, you hear these questions about whether the president even believes these challenges have merit here. Has this become largely an effort to muddy the waters of this election as opposed to block it or does the president still hold out hope that he can overturn the results?

JEFF MASON, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, REUTERS: Well, it's hard to answer that question. It's probably a combination of both. Certainly, the president is not ready to concede and it doesn't look like he's going to be ready to concede any time soon. So, he continues to believe that there should be legal challenges that should continue and that's what he's encouraging his team to do. And, honestly, that's what many people around him are still encouraging him to hold out for.

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There is -- depending on who you talk to at the White House, there are certainly some people who understand the reality of the situation, but a lot of those people are not the ones who are speaking into the president's ear.

HARLOW: There have been some analysts who say, Jeff, and I wonder what you think about this, that Republicans need the president 100 percent behind their two Senate candidates in Georgia until and through January 5th. And that that may be a big reason contributing to the lack of a majority of Republicans in Congress saying, these are the facts, let's move on with this transition. What do you think?

MASON: Well, I think that's a good point. And yet you don't see the president right now speaking about Georgia, he didn't go to Georgia. It was Vice President Mike Pence who last week went on Friday to Georgia and campaigned with those two Republican senators. And, in fact, it was Mike Pence who, last week also, led a coronavirus task force meeting, went to see a rocket takeoff in Florida, went to a dignified transfer. So there's a definite contrast, shall we say, between the president and the vice president right now. But Georgia is clearly at the top of many Republicans' minds.

SCIUTTO: To be clear, the president has golfed four times in the last week. But he has not taken any questions from reporters, is that correct?

MASON: That is correct, yes. He's made some appearances, you're right, that he has been golfing. He also spoke last week about the vaccine development but he has not taken questions from the press since before the election, since Election Day.

HARLOW: Trevor Potter, Republican who ran the federal election commission, said this to The New York Times, quote, what Trump is doing is creating a road map for destabilization and chaos in the future years. What he is saying explicitly is if the party doesn't like the election results, they have the right to change it by gaming the system. Just remind our viewers how big this is for the institution that you're standing in front of way beyond 2020, way beyond this election.

MASON: Well, indeed, and I think that's a great point. And I don't think we can underplay how unprecedented this is. And I think part of -- what will be interesting to watch going forward is at what point Republicans and his party start to abandon him for that very reason, because this could be done again if it's somebody else in office, although certainly with the criticism that he's received from many Democrats, it's hard to imagine that party doing that.

But you don't know, and that he is, in many ways, charting his own course and perhaps setting a precedent but not one founded in history and not one supported by many, many people. HARLOW: Jeff Mason, good to have you, thank you for being with us this morning.

MASON: You too, thank you.

HARLOW: All right, on the medical front, big news this morning out of AstraZeneca and Oxford University that now put us, Jim, at three potentially quite effective COVID vaccines.

SCIUTTO: CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now. Elizabeth Cohen, So, AstraZeneca says their vaccine is 70 percent effective, so lower than the others we've seen so far but still not a bad number. But it does have the advantage, it does not need to be kept in a freezer and that makes a difference for distribution, does it not?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It does have that advantage. And so let's get to the storage in a second and talk first about efficacy data.

So, you remember sort of back last summer, Jim and Poppy, we were talking about how the Food and Drug Administration just wanted something that was more than 50 percent effective. They would settle for 50 percent effective. Well, this is 70 percent, so that obviously is much better, but, as you noted, Jim, not as good as the other two that brought out their data in the past few weeks. Let's look at what those exact numbers are.

So, AstraZeneca announcing that their vaccine is 70 percent effective. That's based on trials in Brazil and the U.K. And that's based on about 12,000 study participants. Moderna's is 94.5 percent effective and that's based on about 30,000 study participants, so it's a much larger group. Pfizer is 95 percent effective, and that's based on about 44,000 study participants, also a much larger group.

Now, I will note that the AstraZeneca data, like all of this, is early. But AstraZeneca's is particularly early because they have not finished, they haven't gotten data yet from their U.S. trial. That is still going on. So, once they get that data, we could see that number change. Jim, Poppy?

HARLOW: Elizabeth, we heard from the vaccine czar for the Trump administration, Dr. Moncef Slaoui, to Jake Tapper yesterday, he thinks, according to their numbers now, end of May is when we could have enough people immunized in this country to hit herd immunity. That's not that far. I mean, does that mean that normal-ish life like in June, July?

COHEN: You know, I would hate to put a date on that. I actually asked Dr. Fauci that last week and he really hesitated to put a date on that, so I certainly wouldn't want to put a date on that.

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But let's look at what Dr. Fauci and Dr. Slaoui have both said and put it together in a forecast with the caveat that like weather forecasts this could be wrong. It could end up being better than this, it could end up taking longer than this. But this is sort of their rough outlook.

Dr. Fauci thinks that towards the latter half of December, we're going to start vaccinating high risk people, that's health care workers, the elderly people with underlying immune conditions, essential workers, et cetera. And then towards the end of April, that's when we'll start vaccinate everybody else, people who are considered low-risk. And Dr. Slaoui says that he thinks that by May, we will have immunized 70 percent of the U.S. population, obviously a big chunk. But, to be clear, vaccinating the whole country is going to take a while.

I want to get back to a question that you guys asked about, the storage and handling requirements for AstraZeneca, because I said I'd get back to it and I didn't, so I will now.

So, AstraZeneca, that vaccine only needs to be refrigerated, that is good news. That's easy. Every pharmacist, every doctors' office, practically, has a refrigerator, that is no big deal. That's in contrast to Moderna and Pfizer.

Moderna's needs to be kept in the but the kind freezer where you keep your ice cream, no big deal. I'm not recommending putting a vaccine next to ice cream, but that kind of freezer is in doctor's offices, it is in pharmacies.

It is Pfizer's that is different. Pfizer needs to be kept at these ultra low temperatures, minus 103 degrees Fahrenheit, if you can imagine how cold that is, and pharmacists and doctor's offices do not tend to have those kinds of freezers,

But AstraZeneca, for sure, has an advantage in this area.

SCIUTTO: Makes a bit difference. Elizabeth Cohen, thanks so much.

Let's speak now to Dr. Carlos del Rio. He is the Executive Associate Dean of Emory University School of Medicine at Grady Health System in Atlanta. Dr. del Rio, always good to have you on.

So, the vaccine czar, as he's known, he says 70 percent of the country vaccinated by May, as we were just discussing. Do you find that realistic?

DR. CARLOS DEL RIO, EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE DEAN, EMORY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: I think it's possible, but it's going to be really hard. I mean, vaccinating 260 million individuals is not a small feat. I think we now need to realize that this is going to be a massive public health undertaking to vaccinate that amount of individuals in that short period of time.

You have to also remember that everyone of these vaccines we've talked to so far requires two doses. So you've got to get one dose and then come back a month later for your second dose. So, the logistics are actually also quite complicated.

Having said that, Jim, we put a man on the moon, we can do this. SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Oh, for sure we can do it. And maybe it's this sort of sputnik moment that this country needs to bring us together that we can do this and faster than we've ever done before.

Can you speak, Doctor, to the Americans, the four in ten Americans who still don't feel like a vaccine is safe. I'm not among them, Jim is not among them. We believe the science. But for those who do, I think it's important that we heard Dr. Slaoui remind everyone yesterday that usually all the bad stuff that might happen after you get a vaccine happens within 40 days, right? And these trials are more than 60 days lag time.

DEL RIO: That is correct. And I would say -- I'll start by saying that I'm one of the investigators in the Moderna vaccine study. But I can tell you that every single one of these clinical trials, these phase three trials, are about efficacy and but they're also about safety. And I will say, safety is our number one priority.

As investigators, believe me, we will take every single side effect seriously, a person complains of pain, a person complains of headache, something happens. And you saw what happened both with the AstraZeneca and with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, when there was a side effect that people are concerned about, what we call serious side effect, the trials were put on hold, right? People said just hold the trial and stop enrolling until we investigate this further and make sure there's no.

So, I would say that the trial infrastructure is geared, is done in such way that there's so many safeguards to prevent -- to pick up side effects and prevent serious adverse events that I feel confident.

Now, that doesn't mean that you'll follow individuals two, three, four years out and you'll find out that the immunity wanes. Yes, that's a possibility. That's why we follow people two years out to see if they need another dose of vaccine or not.

But at this point in time, my big concern actually was not safety with this vaccine. To be honest with you, my biggest concern to start with was efficacy. As Elizabeth said, the FDA was looking for 60 percent efficacy, and now we're over 70, 80, 90 percent efficacy. So, in fact, efficacy has pretty much blown it out of the park.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Very quickly, if we can, before we go, because a lot of decisions are being made before that vaccine comes out, including closing schools. We've seen it in New York. We've seen it Kentucky going back to all remote. Is that an overreaction?

DEL RIO: I think right now, we need to control -- we have too much virus in the community, there is too much transmission. And the reality is vaccines are not going to help to stop that. There's going to be too many people sick, too many deaths if we don't stop it.

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So we need to do whatever we need to do at the community level.

But I will say that, before I would close schools, I would close bars. Quite frankly, that's what we need to do.

HARLOW: Yes, amen, amen. Dr. del Rio, thank you very much.

DEL RIO: Happy to be with you.

HARLOW: Yes, you as well.

Two of these vaccines include groundbreaking technology based off our own genetic code that's never been approved in a vaccine before. It's fascinating. We'll have more on that ahead.

SCIUTTO: And despite loss after loss, the Trump campaign is going back to court, yet one more effort to overturn the results of the election.

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SCIUTTO: The Trump campaign lost another big legal case in Pennsylvania over the weekend, a big one. That's still not stopping the efforts to overturn the election results, Joe Biden's win. President Trump's lawyers have yet to show the courts any instances of widespread election fraud. In fact, they've said so themselves in transcripts.

And now, more Republicans, at least a handful, are speaking out against the president's legal charade.

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FMR. GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ): The legal team has been a national embarrassment, Sidney Powell accusing Governor Brian Kemp of a crime on television yet being unwilling to go on T.V. and defend and layout the evidence that she supposedly has. This is outrageous conduct by any lawyer and notice, George, they won't do it inside the courtroom. They allege fraud outside the courtroom but when they go inside the courtroom, they don't plead fraud and they don't argue fraud.

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SCIUTTO: Well, how do we know that? We know that from the transcripts. We also know it from attorneys, like Mark Aronchick, who argued against Giuliani in court. He was there, as Giuliani granted this was not an allegation of fraud.

Mr. Aronchick, thanks so much for joining us again this morning.

MARK ARONCHICK, ARGUED AGAINST RUDY GIULIANI IN PENNSYLVANIA COURT: Hi, Jim, happy to be there.

SCIUTTO: All right, I'm going to quote from the judge's opinion. I don't typically read entire judge's opinions but this was one was quite a read. Just a brief quote here, it said, in part, this court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence.

You've had a lot of years in the law and in the courtroom. How rarely do judges -- and this, by the way, a Republican appointed judge -- dismiss cases in such strong terms?

ARONCHICK: It's not common. And I really am very, very proud of what this judge did. you know, it's important to tell Pennsylvanians, Americans, frankly, citizens all over the world, that our democracy actually works, that we have an independent judiciary and we follow the rule of law. And this judge said so in bell-ringing terms.

The part I liked -- I liked what you read but the part I really liked was when we referred to their complaint as a stitched together Frankenstein monster and basically said there's just no there there and we're not going to let this go on. Two voters making a complaint about whether their votes were properly counted or not is not enough to disqualify over 6 million Pennsylvania voters who went to the polls, did their duty, American citizens, stood for something and this judge said, you're not going to come to court and invalidate that.

SCIUTTO: And listen, Rudy Giuliani said in court this was not a fraud case when he was pressed. That said he made, as you've told me, and the court records show, outrageous claims about widespread fraud. I just wonder, having argued head-to-head with him in that courtroom, is it your impression he believes those arguments or that this is part not so much of a legal fight at this point, as a political one?

ARONCHICK: You know, I really don't know because it was so peculiar. He was so fervent in the courtroom about this widespread conspiracy, many states, cities, and was -- with such conviction, but then when pressed, seemed to retreat and say, this isn't about fraud. And I just can't figure out what he was doing. I really can't psychoanalyze this one.

SCIUTTO: Yes, I hear you.

So, in courts, the Trump campaign's record is lousy. The couple that they have won have been very technical issues on a small number of ballots here. So, the courts have held out here.

I wonder, as a matter of law, because there are other laws here, I mean, for instance do state canvassing boards, right, have to recognize the results of the election. We're going to see that happen in Michigan later today. Are there holes in the law that we've discovered here, right, that provide avenues for politicians to just sort of dispute the results of elections they don't like?

ARONCHICK: Yes, Jim, that's a great question, and my answer is, no, there are not. What there are are independent courts, rule of law, lawyers who are willing to defend, as I did, the patriots who were there counting these votes and making this election work pursuant to the law. And we have a very good legal system that has been shown now to stop these kinds of baseless claims one after another after another.

In Pennsylvania, they filed yesterday, Sunday, an appeal from Judge Brann's decision, an appeal.

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But that's not -- I don't believe that they have anything more to say than they tried to say in front of Judge Brann, and I don't think it's going to be successful.

SCIUTTO: So, what happens with that appeal at this point when you have such a dismissive court decision from the judge here, I mean, with prejudice, right, and saying it was without basis? So, does that quickly get wrapped up?

ARONCHICK: Well, Mr. Giuliani's team is asking for it to be quickly handled. And I think that if it is quickly handled, I really hope very much that Judge Brann's opinion is affirmed. And I have every reason to think, in my view, that it should and will be.

I would suspect that we're going to be done with this kind of litigation shortly. We have a December 8th date where Electoral College votes have to be certified and that's just two weeks away.

SCIUTTO: Mark Aronchick, thanks so much for giving us a view from inside the courtroom.

ARONCHICK: Jim, thank you.

HARLOW: It's fascinating.

All right, on the health front, drug makers hoping that an entirely new type of vaccine will help end this pandemic. Coming up, how this medical breakthrough turns our bodies into virus-fighting machines.

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