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Malls See Smaller Black Friday Crowds; Top Iran Nuclear Scientist Killed; President Trump's Mixed Messages on Leaving White House; U.S. COVID-19 Hospitalizations Hit Record High. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired November 27, 2020 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:11]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: You are watching CNN on this Friday, hour three for me today. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being here.

Today is Black Friday. And whether you have done your shopping or you are even contemplating stepping out, just keep these numbers in mind. More than 90,000 Americans are in the hospital today, the 17th consecutive day of a record high.

As for the president, he spent the day golfing and is later expected to travel to Camp David, where his adult children spent Thanksgiving. Thursday also happened to be the president's first time taking questions from reporters since losing the election.

And while he was certainly asked about the pandemic, he didn't provide Americans with the information and transparency they so desperately deserve right now. Instead, this president flippantly told the American people on Thanksgiving that a COVID vaccine would be delivered next week.

But let's be clear. The FDA has not even given emergency use authorization to any vaccine candidate. And the president then showed where his true priorities lie, ensuring his successor, president-elect Joe Biden, does not receive credit for a vaccine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Don't let him take credit for the vaccines, because the vaccines were me. And I pushed people harder than they have ever been pushed before.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: CNN's Nick Watt has more on where the vaccine stands in the face of surging cases and hospitalizations.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Americans were urged not to travel for the holiday. Millions did anyway, DR. CELINE GOUNDER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: We already have this massive

surge across the country. And it's sort of like pouring gasoline on that.

WATT: That massive surge in numbers, Thanksgiving Day, more than 90,000 Americans in the hospital with COVID-19, yet another all-time high. On average, more than 1,500 deaths are now reported every day, and more than 100,000 new cases logged every day for 24 days straight.

Here's how it works. When case counts rise, a couple weeks later, the death toll follows. So, a couple of weeks from now?

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: You do the math, and that's 3,000 to 4,000 deaths per day.

WATT: Those daily case counts and death tolls will dip the next few days. Don't be fooled. Some states aren't reporting over the holiday, the world, this country not in a good place, as we wait for a vaccine.

TRUMP: The vaccines are being delivered. Literally, it'll start next week and the week after.

WATT: Umm, very unlikely. The FDA hasn't even authorized a vaccine yet. Their advisory committee meets December 10. A decision could take days, even weeks, so likely late December best case for first shots in arms.

The president is playing politics still, even in defeat.

DR. SYRA MADAD, NYC HEALTH AND HOSPITALS: The political theater absolutely has to stop. People are much more reluctant and hesitant, even health care workers. I'm in a health care setting. And health care workers are also hesitant, even though they're going to be the first priority group, because of all of this politicization of everything that's been going on.

WATT: The U.S. is closing in on 13 million confirmed COVID-19 infections, but a new CDC study suggests that, between February and the end of September, as many as 53 million Americans might have been infected, 16 percent of the population.

Sounds like a lot, but, say those CDC researchers, this indicates that 84 percent of the U.S. population has not yet been infected, and thus most of the country remains at risk.

So, Black Friday 2020, the trampling injury risk may be down, the infection risk way up.

DAMIEN GNECCO, SHOPPER: From the terms who I voted for, I'm pretty concerned, but I figured, the earlier you go, the less crowd you're going to have to face. And I don't know about you, but I think I'm right.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATT: So, we have seen spikes in cases after holidays in the past, July 4, for example.

So, what can we all do to try and stop that happening after Thanksgiving? Well, Vermont has published some guidance. They say, if you were traveling or you held a multi-household gathering, you should get tested now and again in seven days. And if you had one of those big gatherings, you shouldn't send your kids to school next week.

But, Brooke, it is going to be a couple of weeks before we know whether Thanksgiving really did pour gasoline on the surge that we're already suffering -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: That's exactly right. We will in a couple of weeks, as we're about to be upon the next holiday.

Nick Watt, thank you for the broad look there.

Joining me to discuss, Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security.

[15:05:03]

Dr. Adalja, nice to have you back on. Welcome.

DR. AMESH ADALJA, INFECTIOUS DISEASES SOCIETY OF AMERICA: Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: Let's start with vaccine.

The president is saying that a vaccine will be ready next week or the week after. But, as we have the reporting from the scientists, the FDA has not even issued an emergency authorization yet. They have got their meeting December 10.

So, realistically, when do you think the first doses will be available?

ADALJA: In the best-case scenario, if everything goes perfectly, based on when the FDA committee is meeting, likely late December. And that's going to be for health care workers. And it's probably going to be a small amount of vaccine available.

So, it's not something that we're going to see, I think, in the next couple of weeks or so, because of the FDA process and how much data needs to be sifted through to be able to issue, like you said, an emergency use authorization.

BALDWIN: And given that what you outlined in December would be the early -- would be the first doses, especially given all the challenges distributing millions of doses of the vaccine, when do you think the majority of Americans would actually have access to it?

ADALJA: Probably mid-2021, if everything goes perfectly.

Remember, this is going to be a major logistical challenge, especially if the first vaccine is the Pfizer vaccine, which requires that extreme cold chain that we have to make sure that we keep intact, minus-70, minus-80 degrees centigrade. And that's a lot of planning. That includes freezer farms and suitcase freezers, lots of different moving parts that have to be put into place so that we actually turn this vaccine into a vaccination.

BALDWIN: I want to ask you. I was just watching, obviously, Nick Watt's piece, and you saw that shopper at the very end masked in what seemed like more of an empty shopping mall.

And it is Black Friday, and people will be shopping. And that is a good thing for the economy. At the same time, we're in the midst of this pandemic. What advice do you have for all of us to stay safe and shop?

ADALJA: You just have to remember that any activity that you do, the virus is going to be there alongside you. So, it's commonsense precautions, wearing a mask, trying to avoid the most crowded and congregated places, washing your hands a lot.

All of that's going to -- is going to minimize the risk that you have. The risk is never going to be zero until we have a vaccine. But it is something that you can -- you still -- when you do it, you still have to kind of take the care and realize that we're living in a pandemic.

And the actions that you take have a direct impact on whether you acquire this or transmit this virus. And it also has an impact on your community hospital and the doctors and nurses like me who have to take care of people once they get sick.

So, that -- it's just about being really careful and trying to reduce the harm that this virus is causing.

BALDWIN: Dr. Adalja, there is this new CDC study that says, from February through September, only one out of eight COVID cases in the U.S. was recognized and reported, one in eight.

So, what does that tell you about the level of testing that's needed going forward and just the accuracy of numbers of how many people have actually been sick?

ADALJA: Many of us in this field have said from the very beginning that it was a gross underestimate, the number of confirmed cases.

And we knew that a virus like this that spreads efficiently through the respiratory route, for which there's no population immunity, was going to kind of have that H1N1 experience. And H1N1 infected 20 percent of the population within a year in 2009.

So, we knew that this was a gross underestimate and that we were miscounting. And even my own patients that I remember taking care of early on in the pandemic, when the testing was so constrained, when there was really strict testing criteria, I knew that those are COVID patients that I couldn't count because they couldn't get a test.

So, we know that this really is a much higher burden than what we have seen reported in the official statistics. BALDWIN: As I'm thinking about this big picture -- and Nick was

reporting on this and I know you have talked about this -- we won't get an accurate assessment of the numbers after Thanksgiving for another couple of weeks.

And, at that point, we will be deep into December, on the cusp of other holidays, and then into wintertime. What is your advice to all of us just to mitigate any potential spread, as the numbers will rise, within our households and our communities?

ADALJA: Like I said earlier, you have to remember that we're in a pandemic, and our actions do make a big difference.

So, if you can try and limit your contacts, if you were at a big Thanksgiving gathering, where you saw that there wasn't social distancing, where multiple households were mixing, try and limit your contacts or quarantine yourself if possible. Get a test maybe seven days after to try and determine whether or not you were exposed during that time period.

Continue to wear a mask. Continue to wash your hands a lot. Try to stay six feet apart from people. Just behave as if you're in a pandemic. And, unfortunately, many people haven't been doing that throughout this pandemic. And that's why we're in the situation that we're in.

But it is going to be dark days ahead after what we saw on Thanksgiving. This happened after the Canadian Thanksgiving about a month ago in Canada. So, this is something we all anticipate is only going to get worse as we move towards Christmas.

BALDWIN: Dr. Amesh Adalja, thank you so much for your expertise. We will talk again, I have a feeling. Thank you.

Want to move on to some breaking news, yet another rejection for President Trump's legal team in its failing effort to prove this election was rigged, an appeals court ruling the campaign's claims in Pennsylvania -- quote -- "have no merits." We have got those details coming in for you ahead.

And, still, the president continues use to play games and be coy about whether he will ever admit that he lost.

[15:10:05]

And Iran today confirming that its top nuclear scientist has been assassinated after being attacked with gunfire and an explosion.

You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: We're back. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

No merit, never claims fraud, those are the words of a three-judge panel on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals who issued an opinion today that thoroughly rejects the Trump campaign's efforts to revive its voter fraud lawsuit in Pennsylvania.

The court rejected the Trump lawyers' motion to uncertify the vote. The opinion includes a straightforward dismantling of the Trump's -- Trump team's central claim -- quote -- "Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here" -- end quote.

[15:15:12]

The court rejection is unlikely to sway this president. Instead, look to the president's morning tweet as to get a sense of his current frame of mind. To borrow from U2, he is stuck in a moment, and now he can't get out of it.

The president made a Thanksgiving promise, albeit a hesitant one, to uphold American democracy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: If the Electoral College does elect president-elect Joe Biden, are you not going to leave this building?

TRUMP: Just so you -- certainly, I will. Certainly, I will. And you know that.

But I think that there will be a lot of things happening between now and the 20th of January, a lot of things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Well, today, he is saying something very different, that Joe Biden can only enter the White House if he provides evidence his 80 million votes are not fraudulent.

Let's start there.

Ryan Lizza is chief Washington correspondent for Politico and a CNN senior political analyst, and I imagine a U2 fan as well, so you appreciated the reference.

(LAUGHTER)

BALDWIN: Ryan, good to see you. Thanks for being on with me.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: And I guess the first question is, why? Why does the president keep prolonging this? Why does the president keep asserting fiction as reality? Why does the president want to undo his commitment to transfer power?

RYAN LIZZA, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, I mean, there's only one reason, that all of this -- he -- like a lot of issues, he has -- he retreats a little bit, and -- but his -- the main thrust of what he's been saying since election night is the same. And it is all about the fact that he lost, he knows he lost, but he

wants to leave office with a -- by discrediting Joe Biden's win, and if he -- especially if he wants to run for president again in 2024, by casting a shadow of doubt over the election.

And I think, unfortunately, a lot of his supporters do have doubts, because he's thrown out so many claims, all of which have been discredited, that he has succeeded in getting a lot of his people to believe that something went wrong, that there was something fraudulent.

And he doesn't want to be defined as a loser. And so he needs some handy excuse, just almost psychologically, and I think also for -- in the eyes of history or at least into the historians who are on the right with him, that this was somehow illegitimate.

That's what this is all about. And I don't think that's shocking, Brooke. I think what's shocking is how many people in our political culture have been willing to enable this.

BALDWIN: Go along with it, yes.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Yes, exactly.

The president, Ryan Lizza, also announced he will go to Georgia. He will hold a rally in Georgia to help drive the turnout for those two Senate races there.

But he is also telling Republican voters that Georgia's entire system is fraudulent. So, my question to you is, are Republicans in the state worried that the president might actually depress turnout?

LIZZA: Yes, look, this -- we saw this in the November 3 election, where he spent so much time trashing mail-in balloting that, in a lot of states, especially the states where Republicans have good mail-in balloting programs, they were really worried about this.

Arizona, for example, which has done mail-in balloting since the '90s, I was there right before the election, and the Republicans there were freaking out about the mixed messages. He lost that state, of course.

So, absolutely. Why -- if you're a Republican Trump supporter, and you're being told that these elections are fraudulent, why bother? So, he's had to correct that. He tweeted that, oh, it's OK. We have got to prove them wrong. Go to the polls.

It's going to be a very interesting race, because, right now, all of these Senate races have correlated pretty nicely with the presidential races. That is, the party that's winning the president in these states are also winning the Senate seats.

And so Georgia could be -- it could end up being the one exception, but if it goes with the winner, has a shot here -- the Democrats have a shot here, having proved in a presidential election that they can pick it off.

BALDWIN: Ryan Lizza, thank you very much.

LIZZA: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Thank you.

Iran is vowing revenge today after its top nuclear scientist is assassinated after being attacked with an explosion in the midst of gunfire. What the U.S. has to say about all this -- next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:24:34]

BALDWIN: Iranian officials say a scientist known as the mastermind of his country's nuclear program has been killed. Iranian state TV reports he was assassinated outside of Tehran.

This is all coming on the heels of all the recent reporting that Iran has greatly expanded its production of enriched uranium.

CNN national correspondent, security correspondent, Vivian Salama is with me now.

And, obviously, the U.S. is very closely monitoring the news coming out of Iran. What are you hearing?

VIVIAN SALAMA, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is not a household name here in the United States, but he is someone that U.S. officials have had their eyes on for quite some time.

[15:25:08]

The Iranian government today saying that Fakhrizadeh was killed in an assassination in a vehicle just east of Tehran. They say that it was explosives combined with gunfire that led to his death today.

And Iran is blatantly blaming Israel for these alleged attacks and calling it an act of terror. Now, Israel so far not saying anything, but officials that I spoke with, both in government and experts on the matter, say that this attack does bear a lot of the hallmarks of an Israeli attack, just based on its sophistication alone.

Now, U.S. officials themselves are being quite cagey about it, due to the sensitive nature, Iran obviously seeing this as a provocation, and the U.S. saying they're not going to dip their toe in any of this, especially in a lame-duck period, where President Trump has less than two months to go.

Now, Brooke, as with many things in life, there's always politics at play. Just like you said, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the main watchdog for nuclear issues, said just this month that Iran has now 12 times the amount of enriched uranium that is permitted under the 2015 nuclear accord. Now, of course, President Trump withdrew the U.S. from that nuclear

accord. And Israel and the E.U. and the Trump administration both say that, in fact, that nuclear cord empowers Iran and makes them more emboldened to pursue these nuclear pursuits.

But a lot of their critics say that, actually, withdrawing from the nuclear accord is what emboldened Iran in the first place. And Vice President -- president-elect Joe Biden saying that he intends to pursue nuclear talks with Iran once again.

And so experts I spoke to, looking at what happened today, saying that, you know what, Israel is taking its shots now while it still can, because it probably cannot get away with something like this once Biden comes into office -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Vivian, thank you so much. We will be following your reporting, as still so many questions on this remain.

Also today, with COVID-19 surging to record levels across the U.S., many brick-and-mortar retailers are bracing for a grim Black Friday of sales, as the pandemic forces so many shoppers to stay home, buy online.

CNN business correspondent Alison Kosik has more from a mall in New York -- Alison.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Brooke.

I think, if a picture tells the whole story of how Black Friday is going, I think this is it. I'm at the second biggest mall in the New York City metro area. And, normally, on a Black Friday, you would not be able to see this hallway. Of course, here, it is pretty darn empty. Same with the escalator. It's been practically empty all day.

But you know what? For Black Friday, Black Friday has kind of been waning over the past few years, not -- even before the pandemic. A lot of stores have pushed customers to shop online. They have been offering Black Friday deals over the span of a week.

And so retailers really have their work cut out for them, especially with the coronavirus pandemic accelerating that trend. Many retailers have been pushing customers even more so to go online, and not just for one week, but over the span of a few months, October, November and December, to do their holiday shopping online just to keep the crowds away.

But, just in case, retailers wanted to be ready for those crowds. They have those safety protocols in place, here at this Abercrombie & Fitch, the stickers on the floor keeping customers six feet apart, and then, of course, limiting the number of people inside the store once they're in there, this one limiting to 65.

Strangely enough, even with all of the troubles in the economy and the millions of Americans who are struggling, the National Retail Federation is optimistic about holiday shopping will turn out this year, saying sales may wind up being 3 to 5 percent higher than last year -- Brooke.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Alison, thank you for showing us around the mall and just how empty it is.

For more on the traditional kickoff to the holiday buying season, let's bring in CNN business correspondent Vanessa Yurkevich.

And, Vanessa, I mean, it's crazy, the dichotomy. The stock market is soaring, but when you talk to folks in America, they're not feeling that. I know you have been talking to people running local food banks. What are they sharing with you?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Brooke.

Wall Street and Main Street have really been on completely different pages for much of this pandemic. You're seeing the stock market hitting record highs, as you're seeing these long, long lines of Americans waiting for food.

The stock market is sort of future-looking. So, investors are trading on the new administration coming in, hopes of the vaccine. But there are millions of Americans that are sitting at home unemployed right now, and they're not trading in the stock market. So they're not reaping those benefits.

We are hearing from Feeding America, the largest hunger relief group in the United States, that 50 million Americans are going to be food- insecure this year.

Listen to what the CEO of Feeding America said the need is going to be.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLAIRE BABINEAUX-FONTENOT, CEO, FEEDING AMERICA: Unfortunately, the need continues. We also have an estimate that, over the course of the next 12 months, that the gap between what we have and what our neighbors are going to need is about eight billion meals.

We know we can do this, but we're going to need help.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

YURKEVICH: And you just hear that number, eight billion meals that are going to be needed.