Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Biden's Transition Team Is Hoping To Get Some Early Intel In The Coronavirus Data; Millions of Americans Traveling for Thanksgiving Despite CDC Warning; FDA Panel to Meet Next Month to Authorize First Vaccines; Markets React Positively to Biden Picking Yellen As Treasury Secretary. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired November 24, 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: Hello, everyone, I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto. This morning the transition is under way, it's a fact from the outgoing Trump administration to the incoming Biden administration. Yet the president remains in denial. While he might of triggered the formal transition transfer process the president says he is still not conceding. And after weeks of delays President Elect Biden, however not wasting any time setting the tone, choosing key players for his incoming administration and that's what it is.

Today Biden announcing cabinet picks for national security and foreign policy.

HARLOW: Yes, some big names for some big jobs. Many are Obama era veterans with years of public service. And many, you show know (ph), are history making. Part of Biden's promise to make his cabinet represent a diverse America. Just as important; the Biden team is set to get key briefings finally on critical issues facing the country. This as sadly a key model now projects a stunning 20 million coronavirus cases in the United States by inauguration day.

Think about that. We're at 12 million plus now. They're saying 20 million by January 20. We're following all of this from the White House to the president elect's house. Let's begin with our Arlette Saenz. She is in Delaware on the next steps for the Biden team. Good morning, Arlette.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Jim and Poppy. Well President Elect Joe Biden and his officially now have that green light for the transition process to begin after the GSA Administrator, Emily Murphy, sent that letter to the transition team last night. And what this does is it opens up a host of transition resources that Biden and his team can now access.

From everything from millions of dollars of funding for the operations to I.T. help and also office space. But there's also critical components of the transition process that can now get underway. Such - excuse me - such as the agency review teams who can actually start going in and talking to the Trump administration officials as they're trying to get a look under the hood of what is going on at these agencies and departments while they're crafting their own plans.

One thing the Biden transition team is hoping to get some early access to is the coronavirus data. And a look at what the Trump administration has been planning for this pandemic as well as for the distribution of a vaccine. That is something Biden and his team has really been pressing on for the past few weeks as they want to get access to that information while they are crafting their own plan.

Another key critical area to keep an eye on is the intelligence briefings and when President Elect Joe Biden might start receiving those briefings as he is trying to prepare for the national security threats that could be posed against this country. But even as Biden, over the course of the past few weeks, has been plowing ahead with his transition resources - transition planning, this now opens up more resources for this team to get to work.

SCIUTTO: No question. Also allows the security clearance process to begin, essential to get into those positions. Arlette Saenz, thanks, very much. All right for more now from the White House, CNN's Jeremy Diamond is there. So, Jeremy, the formal process has begun but the president this morning still sharing a whole host of disinformation, lies frankly about the election. So really no sign that he'll conceded. Continue to attack the result. Is that what you're hearing?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jim. The misinformation, the conspiracy theories; all of that is going to continue from the president as he digs in his heels. Despite allowing this transition to move forward, we're certainly not standing in the way of it. The president making very clear in a Tweet last night and in more tweets this morning that he quote "will never concede".

That - those are the words of the president as of now. What we do know is that it took quite a bit to get the president to at least accept this transition, to allow this transition to move forward. For weeks now the president has been hunkered down at the White House but he has also watched as one legal challenge after the next has failed. And then yesterday, my colleague, Jim Acosta, was told that the president huddled with some of his top advisors including the White House Chief of Staff, the White House counsel and one of his personal attorneys, Jay Sekulow.

And the president was then essentially encourage and ultimately convinced to allow this transition to move forward. But that's not stopping the president from refusing to concede still. And part of the reason why may be that the president is using this moment, using the doubts that he has been sowing among his base to continue to fund raise.

More than 346 fund raising emails that the president's campaign has sent out to this supporters. Fund raising not just for legal funds and in fact primarily not for legal funds, primarily for his own political action committee - political action committee called Save America that will help fund the president's future political endeavors as he continues to tease out the possibility that he will run again in 2024.

And also making clear that he wants to continue to maintain some influence over the Republican Party going forward. Jim. Poppy.

[09:05:00]

HARLOW: OK. Jeremy Diamond, thank you for the reporting at the White House this morning. Let's talk more about all the headlines this morning. We're thrilled to have CNN Senior Political Commentator, David Axelrod on. Axe, I hope you've gotten some rest since the election and thank you for getting up.

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Since the - so - oh is the election over. I didn't - I don't know. I've been --

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: Yes, right. Right. Well at least your 24 hours a day on cable television are over for a little bit. We'll give you a little bit of rest. But I'd like to start on the historic nature of some of Joe Biden's and president elect's picks. I mean when you look at Avril Haines, the first woman to lead the intel community; Alejandro Mayorkas, the first Latino to head DHS. Notable given the moves of DHS under this administration. Janet Yellen, first woman to be treasury secretary.

Yes, some are pointing to this as is this Obama 2.0? But I mean I'd be remiss not to know how history making those names and those positions are.

AXELROD: Absolutely. Look, Biden is following through on the pledge that he made as a candidate. He promised the most diverse cabinet in history. He's delivering that. Janet Yellen, the first treasury security of the United States in the history of the republic. You know Avril Haines over as the DNI. That's historic, as well. But I think we shouldn't lose in the - and Mayorkas is the new DHS Secretary, we should point out is a Cuban American immigrant; also historic and symbolically important.

But we shouldn't lose in the historic nature of these picks the fact that as a group they're very coherent, the reflect Biden's governing philosophy and they are manifestly experienced and competent and in that sense, distinct from some of the appointments that we've seen under the current administration. In terms of the coherence, as a group on the national security side, they favor robust diplomacy, they believe in strong alliances. This is a big shift in our foreign policy. It's one that Biden has foreshadowed throughout his campaign.

On the economics side, Yellen, broadly respected. Also has emphasized what Biden did. A focus on jobs and wages and not just controlling inflation which is not the problem right now.

HARLOW: Right.

AXELROD: So it's very much in-line with what he promised. He's delivering on the things that he said he would.

SCIUTTO: David, is the outgoing president's hold over the republican party going forward guaranteed? I wonder, just to play devil's advocate for a moment, because the fact is a majority of the country saw through him at the end of the day, right? In fact he underperformed the republicans in this election. He's about to lose by more 6 million votes in the popular vote. Is it guaranteed or is there going to be a battle underway for sort of the heart and soul and leadership of the republican party going forward?

AXELROD: Well I there'll be a battle. But he starts off with the upper hand, Jim. You're right that he lost. He also got 74 million votes which is the second most votes any candidate for president has ever gotten. And he's - there was a poll this morning, "Morning Consult" had a poll that said 52 percent of republicans favored him to be the nominee again in 2024. Which I'm sure was music to his ears in a season of bad news for him.

And so I think he's going to continue to be there in a way that we haven't seen former presidents play. And that's going to be troubling not just for republicans who want a change of direction but for Biden. Because I think Trump is going to move his show down the street and tray and lead the resistance from news max or whatever he - wherever he hangs his hat. And that is going to create more turmoil for the country and within the republican party and ultimately for Biden, as well.

So he may be leaving the White House but he's not leaving the scene.

HARLOW: That's for sure. David, I wonder what you think about Bernie Sanders? He was talking to the "Associated Press" a few days ago about what the Biden cabinet might look like. And I should note this is before some of the picks we've gotten in the last 48 hours. But here's what he said. He said "It would be enormously insulting if Biden puts together a team of rivals which might included republicans and conservative democrats but which ignore the progressive community. That would be very, very unfortunate."

Noting that Janet Yellen is a pretty progressive pick, you do have more (inaudible) like Avril Haines, et cetera. I wonder what your reaction is to that. Given that in your White House, Former President Obama enjoyed, like Lincoln a team of rivals.

AXELROD: Yes. Well, first of all, I think Senator Sanders is probably referring mostly to the economic picks. You point out Janet Yellen. Yes, I was interested to see that her appointment met with favor both on Wall Street and from Elizabeth Warren.

[09:10:00]

AXELROD: Which is quite a trick in today's - in today's politics. But on the national security side I think that, again Biden picked a group that reflected his world view. And there's a lot of repair work to be done. Repairs in terms of our alliances in the world and also within the diplomatic core, the intelligence community. The fact that he picked people who had deep roots in those communities. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the new U.N. Ambassador, 35 years in the

foreign service. The foreign service has been devastated by this administration. The intelligence community; devastated by this administration. Avril Haines was the Deputy Director of the CIA. So what you see is Biden trying to repair what is broken here. And less focused on the team of rivals that are on a repair team to fix what has been broken.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Also know members of family announced his members of this cabinet are senior advisors, a difference there. David Axelrod.

AXELROD: Yes, good to see you guys.

SCIUTTO: Thanks, so much, as always.

HARLOW: Thanks, David.

SCIUTTO: Well democrats are welcoming the news of these cabinet selections. Republicans have been notably silent so far.

HARLOW: Sunlen Serfaty joins us on Capital Hill, this morning. Good morning to you, Sunlen. We know these positions are not a guarantee. They have to be confirmed by the Senate. Any significance to the silence right now?

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well the silence certainly is significant, Poppy. And I think that silence across the board from republicans, that we're seeing, notable this week to whole myriad of topics. Not only on the cabinet positions, the nominations for President Elect Biden's cabinet position. But as they plot out the next steps and try to pick up the pieces and plan out their response of course to the big news of the GSA ascertainment. And that notably has been where we've seen huge silence from republicans here on Capital Hill.

And we've really seen this strategy from them across the board. Really try to stay out of the weeds on this, try to look the other way, not comment, stay silent. Of course with a keen eye on the Georgia senate run-off races that will decide the balance of power in the Senate. They of course do not want anything to really tip the balance towards the democrats, really irritate Trump supporters. They need those voters to get out for the Georgia run-off elections.

So they're trying to essentially twist themselves to stay out of any sort of drama involving the cabinet and involving this ascertainment. Now democrats however are welcoming this news. A notable statement from Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer last night who said quote "This is probably the closest thing to a concession that President Trump could issue. Let us all now; democrats and republicans, the Trump administration and the incoming Biden administration united together. The nation faces multiple crises that demand an orderly transition."

And again notably we have not heard from Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, since last night's news. Nor the Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, in the House. Of course they are out of town for Thanksgiving holiday. But we, of course, will be pushing for more as we see those reactions potentially trickle in.

SCIUTTO: Sunlen Serfaty, good to have you on the Hill. Thanks, very much. Well Dr. Anthony Fauci warned a holiday travel surge could get this country into deeper trouble in the pandemic. But that is not stopping millions from hitting the roads and the skies. And President Elect Biden is setting the stage for a new foreign policy strategy. President Trump's Former National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, he will join us to talk about what's going to change, what may not change.

HARLOW: And while many people are lucky enough to gather around the Thanksgiving table many, many others are without food to eat, at all. We're live in New Jersey this hour where as many as 50,000 meals are being given away today.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

SCIUTTO: Well this week millions of Americans are ignoring public health warnings to stay home for the Thanksgiving holiday. Airports across the country packed more than they've been in a long time with passengers.

HARLOW: That's right. Our Ryan Young joins us from Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson International Airport. I think the busiest in the country. Is it really busy even thought the CDC says don't go anywhere?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, look it's been busy all morning long. At 6 a.m. people were crushing in here. Social distancing sort of goes away when you get closer to the line behind us. You're talking about more than 1 million people are expected to come through here before Sunday. Just talking about astronomical numbers. You know you can talk about the fatigue of the pandemic. Well we're kind of seeing it now because people said they want to go home for the holidays.

But you look here at the airport, you see the woman standing over there, she actually has mask in her hand to hand out to folks because of course there are some people who don't generally wear a mask, so they have that here. They have hand sanitation stations all throughout this airport. But we've seen travelers out and about despite what Dr. Fauci had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY & INFECTIOUS DISEASES: When you leave a location, you have to go to an airport or wherever it is, a train station, et cetera, the possibility of exposing yourself and then going home to your home community for, you know, a wonderful traditional Thanksgiving holiday might actually unfortunately be a source of an even amplification of the surge.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: Look, we know 2020 has been tough for a lot of people. A lot of folks say they just want to go home. We talked to one person who said they've decided they had a family emergency, and they felt like they had to go home. It's one of these things we are seeing testing centers all throughout the city sort of exploding because people are getting tested before going to see their family.

[09:20:00]

But we know you don't live in a bubble once you get tested, so even if you get tested today, by the time you get home --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

YOUNG: You could already be facing COVID. So, a lot of questions about how this is going to impact people after this holiday.

HARLOW: Ryan, for sure, so many questions, people need to be deciding, is it really worth it for their loved ones. Thank you. The FDA has asked their vaccine advisory committee to meet twice in the next month, this signals that a COVID vaccine could be very close, just weeks away for some essential and front-line workers, but for desperate healthcare workers across the country, it cannot come soon enough. Just listen to this doctor from Minneapolis just this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHIRLEE XIE, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF HOSPITAL MEDICINE AT HENNEPIN HEALTHCARE: I think for us as healthcare workers, when we see the numbers of the thousands of people in Minnesota that are getting tested positive every day, it's really -- it's terrifying because we can find physical space, you know, we can make rooms, we have made rooms, we can get ventilators, we can get equipment, but we can't create doctors and we can't create nurses to take care of patients. I think we're all just really scared of what's to come because the hospitals are already full.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: We're joined now by Michael Osterholm, in addition to his position at the University of Minnesota, he is a member of President- elect Biden's COVID-19 Advisory Board. Michael, always good to have you on.

MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH & POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: Thank you, it's good to be with you.

SCIUTTO: So you have advocated for the need for a national lockdown, perhaps as long as four to six weeks. The Biden team has said that's not on the table. I wonder in your discussions, have they told you explicitly that, that is a non-starter?

OSTERHOLM: Well, first of all, as I've clarified on multiple occasions over the past several weeks, I did not recommend that to the Biden group. I wrote an op-ed piece in the "New York Times" back in August indicating that if we were going to try to really knock this down, we're going to have to have a national approach for which we also had to have financial support. We needed to be able to take care of the small businesses, the individuals who are not allowed to work anymore in order to make this work. That's not even on the table right now.

So what we're seeing is in fact, all 50 governors and the mayors coming up with their own approach, and at this point, I don't see a national approach actually working without the kind of national support for financial considerations.

HARLOW: Yes, that's a really good point, right, if you're going to lock down, you've got to support people financially or else you have a whole other crisis. So, you just heard from that doctor, Michael, and she is at HCMC, that's the main hospital in downtown Minneapolis, and she is in tears.

I mean, this is -- this is a tragedy and she's feeling it every day, and then you couple that with a headline of the "Star Tribune" yesterday, we can pull it up so people can see it, and it reflects what's happening across your state. No beds anywhere. You warned last week of people in your words literally dying in chairs in hospital waiting rooms. Is what is happening in Minnesota a flashing red light for so many other states in the weeks to come?

OSTERHOLM: This morning, we have over 88,000 people in this country hospitalized with COVID. That number is growing rapidly. Every place is like Minnesota and Minnesota is like every place. That's what we have to understand right now, is that people have to take this seriously. And I have to tell you, I think many of us in this business who are pretty hardened public health officials have cried more tears collectively over the past weeks, talking to, working with, trying to support our frontline healthcare workers who have been heroes.

Who at this point are trying to pull as many 16-hour shifts a week --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

OSTERHOLM: As they can because we're so short staffed. The public has to understand that. There may be beds, there may be rooms, but there won't be the doctors and nurses to take care of you. And then we're going to see the death rate go up substantially. Please take this seriously. Don't swap air at this point. That's the key message we can get across.

SCIUTTO: I want to talk about schools for a moment, this story out of northern Virginia, just a measure of the impact of school closures, 83 percent increase in the number of Fs, failures for students there. We've seen school systems in New York, Kentucky go to all remote. I wonder, based on the data that you've seen, is that a necessary step or could that be an overreaction in some places based on what we know about spread among young people?

OSTERHOLM: You know, more than anything we want to keep our schools open. We know how important education is to our kids. We also know that you can't have a very effective workforce if you have to stay home with your kids because they can't be in school.

And so everyone agrees that that's important. What we have to do also, though, is look at the information and we've got to stop talking about schools. If we look at high school students versus grade school students, we see big differences in what the risk is for the disease.

And right now, it looks like you can probably provide a relatively safe environment for grade school kids, the ones that most need to be in school in terms of the kind of issues around learning, around socialization, mental health support. So, I think every community needs to look at how they can keep their grade schools open in particular. High schools, it's a little bit different, we're seeing lots of outbreaks. Right here in the state of Minnesota, we had many outbreaks of disease in high school students, particularly around organized events like sports.

[09:25:00]

So, at this point, we need a finer discussion of education, trying to emphasize the importance of our grade school kids, understanding what it's doing to our high school kids and then trying to blend that program to work.

SCIUTTO: Yes, Dr. Fauci, I mean, reflecting that has often said there is no one size fits all for a lot of these decisions. Michael Osterholm, always good to have you to break through --

OSTERHOLM: Thank you --

SCIUTTO: It all.

OSTERHOLM: Thanks a lot.

SCIUTTO: What President-elect Biden's foreign policy team tells us about his strategy moving forward. We're going to speak to President Trump's former National Security adviser H.R. McMaster next.

HARLOW: We're also moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Futures all pointing higher this morning, the markets are reacting positively to the news about president-elect's transition finally being able to officially begin.

Investors already boosted with positive news on the progress being made on multiple COVID-19 vaccines, and now there is less political uncertainty, the market likes that. Also Janet Yellen, the president- elect's pick for Treasury Secretary could be a reason that futures are in positive territory, she is a familiar name to investors, i.e., they know what they're getting. We'll keep a close eye on Wall Street.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)