Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

COVID-19 Cases Rise in Florida and Los Angeles; Seven States Certify Election Results Today; NFL Increasingly Hampered by COVID-19 Cases. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired November 30, 2020 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: CNN's Rosa Flores reports that mayors across the state are asking Governor Ron DeSantis for help, but they're not getting any. Rosa joins us now from outside a testing center in Miami Beach.

Rosa, why aren't the mayors getting what they want and what's the governor saying?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, Jim, what the mayors are asking for is, they want their power back so that they can impose mitigation measures to stop the spread of this virus. They're also asking for better contact tracing in this state, and also to secure funding for testing.

Take a look behind me, because this is a testing site here at Miami Beach, and this is the Monday after Thanksgiving. And you can see that this line of cars rolls around the corner, and if you look through the trees you'll also see that there's a separate line for people on foot that are also getting tested.

Here's the reality in this state right now. The hospitalizations have increased by 30 percent in the past two weeks here in Miami-Dade County, where I am. That number is 29 percent during the same time period. The ventilator use is up 33 percent.

That's why mayors here in this community are very concerned, that's why they have been reaching out to the governor's office, asking him to do more. They're also asking him for a mask mandate statewide.

Now, I should add that these mayors have not heard back. They've been trying to contact the governor since November 18th. CNN has reached out to the governor's office as well, and Jim, we have not heard back either.

SCIUTTO: The governor's not answering questions from Florida city mayors?

FLORES: You're absolutely right. I've been in contact with both Mayor Dan Gelber and also City of Miami Mayor Frances Suarez, they've been trying to contact him by phone. Mayor Dan Gelber sent the governor a letter, dated November 18th; he's still not heard back. And of course their worry is the positivity rate in Miami-Dade County

right now continues to increase. The two-week average was eight percent. Yesterday, Jim, it was 10 percent, the highest that they've seen in the past two weeks. That's the big concern.

And the line that you see behind me, these people in their cars, they're here to get tested most likely are feeling some sort of symptom, and that is what mayors are worried about --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

FLORES: -- that these numbers are going to continue to skyrocket, especially now that Florida is about to hit 1 million cases.

SCIUTTO: Yes, simple questions, you might think they deserve answers. Rosa Flores, thanks very much. We're going to have Mayor Gelber, by the way, on this broadcast tomorrow.

Now to the West Coast, CNN's Stephanie Elam is in Los Angeles where new restrictions go into effect today for the entire county there. Stephanie, so what's in the new order? What are they banning now?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right, we've got a new stay-at- home order going into effect today, Jim, that will basically say that everyone needs to just hang out with their own household. No longer will there be any kind of gatherings that are allowed in the county.

Also, let's just take a look at what else is restricted here. They're saying that playgrounds and card rooms will be closed. They're also saying that maximum occupancy for essential businesses will be reduced to 30 percent.

Nonessential, down to 20 percent -- that's like libraries and personal care -- and outdoor operations, their maximum will be cut down to 50 percent. So think about the people who are doing -- operating their gyms outside and zoos, things like that.

Also worth noting that here in Los Angeles County, the bed capacity is now at about 75 percent. And that is really quite large and worth noting.

Also worth noting is that just last week, according to the Los Angeles County health officials, 840 health care workers were some of those new cases that were reported. They're like, it doesn't matter if we have beds if we don't have the health care workers that are there to tend to the people in these beds. They're saying that it is a double jeopardy here because these workers are dealing with it at work, and then also the widespread virus out in the world. Because the positivity rate in L.A. County, now above eight percent.

Also worth noting that of hospitalizations, the majority that we are seeing by county is here in Los Angeles County, more than 2,100 people are in the hospital. That's noteworthy because as California is concerned as a whole, we are seeing hospitalizations at a record number, above 7,400 people who are in the hospital right now. We also saw nine counties pull back in restrictions, in this tiered system that we have here in California. So 99 percent of the people in California are now in the most restrictive tier -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Wow, remarkable. Stephanie Elam in L.A., thanks very much.

[10:34:41]

Well, the president is spinning (ph) lies again about voter fraud as more states are moving, despite all that, to certify the results of the election, those are both Republican and Democrat-led states. Coming up, his latest courtroom losses.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Well, certification of the 2020 election is moving forward. This, despite President Trump's continued unfounded claims of fraud. Seven states, including the battleground of Arizona, will certify those results today. This as the president's legal team racked up more losses over the weekend. CNN's John Harwood and Kristen Holmes join me now.

So, John, the president, he just continues to push lies and falsehoods without proof. I wonder, is there anyone in that building behind you who is telling the president to give it up? Or has this become the way he's going to leave (ph) this election?

[10:40:09]

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think, Jim, the people who've been telling him to give it up are the people he has pushed away, and the people who are encouraging these delusions and crazy theories are the ones he continues to listen to because he thinks it's in his interest.

Of course, he's creating a cause for future elections, raising money, extracting money from members of his base in the name of a legal defense fund that also goes to his political action committee. But he has not been able to show fraud because he doesn't have any evidence, as court after court has affirmed.

Most recently on Friday, a federal appeals court judge appointed by President Trump said asserting election fraud does not make it so. That became the latest in a string of defeats. As you mentioned, seven states certifying today including the relatively close battleground state of Arizona that he lost, so the curtain is coming down on this crazy act, but it's not entirely down yet.

The "Washington Post" quoted one close adviser to the president over the weekend, saying that since the election he's been like Mad King George, muttering, "I won, I won." The question is whether he actually believes this or whether he is lying for constructive purposes for his own future. It's really hard to tell the difference between the two, and of course it's possible, if you repeat a lie enough times, maybe you come to believe it. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a lie in the first place -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: No question, and the data, the court findings continue to affirm it was a lie.

Big loss, Kristen, for the president in a string of losses this weekend, in Pennsylvania, where the court -- and with a Trump appointee writing the decision -- dismissed the president's charges out of hand.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jim. And we need to note that this is all because of what you said, there's not a shred of proof here. And that's not an opinion, that is what we are hearing from judge after judge including conservative, Republican judges there who say that if you're going to bring a charge against our electoral process, against our democracy, you'd better have the evidence to back it up and they just simply don't.

So let's go through some of the losses that we saw over the weekend the last couple of days. The big one, as you mentioned, Pennsylvania Supreme Court, dismissing a lawsuit brought by Republicans including a Republican congressman, where they were trying to essentially invalidate all of the absentee votes.

A unanimous decision by the supreme court to dismiss this case, saying this was brought much too late, that these procedures were established a year ago. And I will note, Jim, the procedures were established by a Republican legislature. So a big loss there.

Now in Wisconsin, that recount that was demanded by the Trump campaign is complete. It shows once again that Biden won, and in fact actually netted some votes for Biden.

And so that brings us to where we stand right now, which is the Trump campaign, Republicans altogether, more than 30 courtroom losses or withdrawals here.

So the big question is, what exactly is next for this legal strategy? Trump had said publicly, as had members of his legal team, that they wanted this to go to the Supreme Court. Of course, the president thinking this might go in his favor because of the fact that it is a more conservative-leaning court at this time.

But how would it even get there at this point? You're seeing, once again, judge after judge dismiss these cases saying there is no evidence for this to move forward at all.

SCIUTTO: So, John, we're now in this weird world, bizarro world where the president is going to go to Georgia to help push for Republican candidates in those runoff races, having claimed that Georgia elections are all fraudulent even though the state is administered, run, secretary of state, Republican; governor, a Republican who support the president. How is he, how are Republicans threading that needle?

HARWOOD: Well, it's a very difficult needle to thread, Jim. And as you suggest, this is an illustration of how President Trump's actions are entirely self-seeking and self-interested as opposed to being part of the broader purposes of the team or the political party that he is on. In a runoff election, you need to unify your party and turn out the

base. And what the president's doing is attacking what he called the hapless governor, Brian Kemp of Georgia, in a tweet today. He's been attacking the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who has certified the results and declined to echo his claims of election fraud.

The more disunity you have within the Republican Party, the more difficult it is to get that vote to turn out on January the 5th. Now, Republicans don't feel like they can do anything about it because Trump's got a grip on their base. And if the president more actively tries to submarine these candidates, no question that he could do so.

He's going to go there in a few days, so is Vice President Pence. But it's not entirely clear that he's going to help them. The more he is churning up these waters, the more he is putting pressure on those Republican senators to echo these false claims, the more difficult it's going to be for Republicans to hold both those seats and keep Mitch McConnell the majority leader.

[10:45:14]

SCIUTTO: Well, so few sitting national Republican lawmakers have been willing to counteract -- to contradict the lies, which is remarkable. John Harwood at the White House, Kristen Holmes, thanks very much to both of you.

Well, you can watch Reverend Raphael Warnock and Senator Kelly Loeffler face off in a Georgia Senate debate. That debate in Georgia airs Sunday night, 7:00 Eastern, right here on CNN.

Well, COVID is wreaking havoc on the NFL, an outbreak on the Ravens forces Tuesday night football -- Tuesday night. The 49ers, they don't have a home stadium. And the Denver Broncos played without a quarterback. That's not all.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:18]

SCIUTTO: Well like the rest of the country, the NFL is taking a major hit from this pandemic as it heads into the home stretch of the regular season. This week, the Steelers-Ravens game was moved twice. This after multiple Ravens players tested positive including the reigning league MVP, Lamar Jackson. That game will now, we think, be played tomorrow.

The San Francisco 49ers, they're looking for a new home for games and practice after Santa Clara County, where they're based, put a three- week ban on all contact sports.

And the Denver Broncos were forces to start a practice squad wide receiver at quarterback. Why? Because all of the team's quarterbacks, all four of them, were ruled out because of COVID protocols, they didn't pay attention to the rules. Bomani Jones joins me now to discuss, he's the host of the ESPN

podcast "The Right Time with Bomani Jones." Bomani, thanks so much for joining us this morning.

BOMANI JONES, ESPN HOST, "THE RIGHT TIME WITH BOMANI JONES" PODCAST: Thanks for having me.

SCIUTTO: So big picture for a moment here, I wonder, you have other leagues like the NBA who went the bubble path, right? Keep everybody in one place, protect them, kind of keep them inside a protective bubble. NFL said no, we're going to do it our own way. Are we seeing that that was flawed from the beginning now?

JONES: Well, I mean, it was obviously flawed. And I think that it was a little bit easier mechanically for the NBA to be able to pull it off, given the stage in the season that they were in and everything else. But with the NFL, yes, we knew that if they were going to have people who were basically going into the wild -- which is basically what the world is now in the era of COVID-19, there was going to be a likelihood that guys were going to contract this.

The best that you could hope for is that you had as much diligence as possible around team facilities and so the transmission would be stopped once they got to work. But as long as guys were going to go home and they had kids and they had other people in their houses who did work and everything else, then these kinds of things were always going to be a possibility.

Like, I don't view it so much as a failure for the NFL whenever somebody tests positive or they have to reschedule the game, that's something that probably should have been foreseen once they decided how to do this.

But I can appreciate, on the NFL side and the side of the players who had to agree to a bubble if that was what they were going to do, that it wasn't just so simple as to say, OK, well, let's just throw everybody in one place.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

JONES: That's 53 (ph) guys plus all the coaches plus everybody else. Like logistically that was going to be difficult for them to pull off for a 17-week season.

SCIUTTO: It's worked largely up to this point, but then you see things like the Denver quarterback situation. I mean, they had to go down fifth in their depth chart, right? To get a practice team wide receiver to play quarterback, although he had played in college.

I wonder if we're getting to the point where the credibility of these results is called into question, right? Because that is quite a handicap for an NFL team to play with.

JONES: Yes, I think that that is a fair point about the credibility of the results. Luckily for the NFL, they have a fan base that just seems to want football, right? Like this is a topic of discussion that we're going to have right now about it, I think it also probably helps that it was the Denver Broncos, a team that we're not looking at in the playoff picture, so people weren't going to dig as deep into it as it related to them as they would for some other people.

But yes in general, you could make the argument that yes, this call (ph) into the credibility of the results. The counterargument that the NFL can make, though? People get hurt all the time in this league --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

JONES: -- for all kinds of various reasons, like this is a war of attrition generally in terms of who winds up winning a championship, who goes to the playoffs and everything else.

So, yes, people are going to have some questions about what these results are going to be for a couple of days. A (ph) week goes in the NFL, and people just completely forgot whatever happened before.

SCIUTTO: Yes, yes. Well listen, I'm a Giants fan, I'm watching my quarterback very closely right now.

I guess big picture for folks watching at home, there are so many people in this country paying an extremely heavy price for this outbreak. I mean, people have lost their lives, they've lost loved ones, they've lost their jobs. Do we need the NFL right now?

JONES: Oh, we do not need the NFL right now. I think the NFL needs to play games. I think the part that the NFL can't be sincere about -- and this is really across the board with all of these sports -- is their money comes from the television contract, the television contracts are only satisfied if you actually produce episodes of television.

So when I look around at the way that the NFL handles everything, what seems to dictate the decisions really is television. How do we get these games on TV? What slots are these games going to be in and is it worth watching for people on TV. But no matter what we've seen this in college, we've seen this in large part with the NBA. Job number one is to get these games onto television because that's where everybody's money comes from.

Now, as much as we can say, do we need the NFL? I'll tell you who definitely thinks we need the NFL, the NFL players who don't get paid if these games don't get --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

JONES: -- played. I think that that's a big part of this too. As much as the Broncos feel they were at a competitive disadvantage because they went out there without a quarterback, if that game could not simply be postponed but ultimately had to be cancelled, those dudes would not eat. In which case --

[10:55:04]

SCIUTTO: Yes. JONES: -- they would have all volunteered to play quarterback, I

don't care what number they were (ph) --

SCIUTTO: Yes, yes.

JONES: -- number 75 would have been that quarterback if necessary.

SCIUTTO: Yes, yes, I hear you, I hear you, that money's not guaranteed.

By the way, I sent my resume in, they didn't respond. Maybe next week. Bomani Jones, good to have you on, thanks very much.

JONES: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: And thanks to you for joining us today. I'm Jim Sciutto, NEWSROOM with Kate Bolduan will start right after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)