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U.K. Approves Pfizer Vaccine, will Begin Rolling out Doses Next Week; CNN Reports, Trump has Discussed Pardoning Giuliani, Three Eldest Children and Jared Kushner; L.A. County Shatters Records in Worst Day of Pandemic. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired December 02, 2020 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: The U.K. has just approved Pfizer's corona vaccine for emergency use. Hundreds could begin receiving that vaccine as soon as next week and the United States maybe just days away from approving it as well.

In an exclusive interview with CNN, the CEO of BioNTech says a significant portion of the 50 million doses they have produced will go here to the U.S.

Let's begin with CNN's Fred Pleitgen. He just interviewed the BioNTech CEO, fascinating interview. What more did he say?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi there, Jim. Well, first of all, obviously, they were absolutely ecstatic about the fact that they got that emergency use approval in the United Kingdom. They said it was a huge step for them. And, quite frankly, as you just said, they said that all of this is going to happen very, very quickly now.

As we speak right now, they're getting ready to ship those doses to the United Kingdom. And then, as you say, by the beginning of next week, people are going to start getting jabs in their arms.

He also says that he believes that with this breakthrough that they've received now, with some of the approvals that they think that they're going to get in the coming days, in the coming weeks, this could be, he said, the beginning of the end of the coronavirus pandemic.

Let's listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UGUR SAHIN, CEO, BIONTECH: We believe that it is really the start of the end of the pandemic, if we can he sure now a bold rollout of our vaccine.

I personally believe there's a number of companies now reaching, reaching, reaching the approval in the next few months. We might be able to deliver a sufficient number of doses until end of summer 2021 to reach 60 percent to 70 percent coverage, which could give us the ability to have a normal winter in 2021.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PLEITGEN: So that's Ugur Sahin, the CEO of BioNTech. And, of course, I also spoke to him about what's going to happen in the U.S., what the next stages there are, Jim. And he did say that he believes that once the FDA looks at the data, they think that they're going to get approval very quickly, a couple of days after that key meeting on the 10th or 11th of December, that they could get an emergency use authorization in the United States. Then distribution there will begin very quickly as well.

And one more thing that I thought was actually very, very important is the Pfizer vaccine is the one that needs to be stored and shipped at around minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit, very difficult to ship right now. He says they're already working on a formulation to try and ship it at better temperatures or easier temperatures to make sure that it's more easy also to get it into rural regions of the United States, for instance, as well.

And I asked him when is all of that going to make a difference? When can we get back to normal life potentially? He says if their vaccine gets approved the way they hope, if other vaccine gets approved as well, he thinks the end of summer 2021 is when life will start going back to normal, Jim?

SCIUTTO: Yes, and a different version that would not require that level of refrigeration, I mean, that would be quite a development. Jim Pleitgen, thanks very much.

Well, back here in the U.S., yesterday was the second deadliest day of this entire pandemic. CNN's Brynn Gingras following the latest.

And, Brynn, it's a reminder, yes, with this good vaccine news, it's coming, we're still in a period, bad period that's getting worse.

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Jim. I mean, if you are experiencing COVID fatigue, these numbers help you snap out of it. Like you just said, yesterday recorded the second highest number of deaths since this pandemic started, nearly 2,600 deaths recorded on Tuesday. What beat that record was back on April, a date that really only had six more deaths than what we're seeing just on Tuesday.

And, of course, we're also seeing hospitalizations across this country at its highest that we've ever seen in this pandemic, nearly 100,000. That's double what we saw in November and triple what we saw in October. And, of course, when we see more hospitalizations, it's a signal that we're likely going to see more deaths.

Models are actually showing we can see double the amount of deaths in December that we saw in November. To break that down for you even more, Jim, in November, we saw 51 people die every single hour. Those are some sobering, sobering numbers.

Of course, the White House coronavirus task force is telling states, take precautions, wear masks, social distancing, shut down businesses that don't need to be open in order to keep these numbers at bay. There are many states across this country that are having their worst day ever scenarios when it comes to some of the metrics in regards to the coronavirus.

And this, of course, Jim, as a reminder, we're still seeing the fallout of all of that travel that we saw and all of the gatherings that we saw over the Thanksgiving holiday. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Yes. Listen, with all of the good news even, we still can't get ahead of ourselves until serious risk. Brynn Gingras, thanks very much.

We're joined by Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips, she's Chief Clinical Officer at Providence Health System, and Dr. Nirav Shah, Director at the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Thanks to both of you. Always good to have you on.

Dr. Shah, I wonder if I could begin with you.

[10:05:00]

This approval in the U.K., which like the U.S., have very stringent standards of approving vaccines, I imagine a good sign for U.S. approval.

DR. NIRAV SHAH, DIRECTOR, MAINE CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: It is encouraging. It otters well that based on the strength of the U.K.'s approval, our colleagues and regulatory colleagues here in the United States at the U.S. FDA will perhaps follow the same pathway. Of course, it's impossible to pre-judge the outcome before there's an outcome, but it is encouraging that our experts across the Atlantic saw the same set of data and found it to be sufficient to grant this emergency authorization.

SCIUTTO: Okay. So that seems to be where the momentum is, approval for this vaccine, perhaps others, and as soon as this month. Your hospital, Dr. Compton-Phillips, Providence Health System, huge one, deep into the planning process for distribution. Tell us where that stands and where the country stands, right, on getting this out to tens of millions of people.

DR. AMY COMPTON-PHILLIPS, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Yes. Well, you have to start with the first step and you're exactly right. This is a really complex thing to distribute. You mentioned the cold chain that we have to have. This ultra-cold temperature means that we have to start with really large locations that have these super-cold freezers.

So, right now, what we're doing, as you know, there is a phase 1a, the jumpstart population that we're going to start vaccines here in the U.S. and that's health care workers and likely people that live in nursing homes. We can do those via mass immunization events. We can't use mass immunization events for every person in the U.S.

And so as we get more vaccine and as we get vaccines that can tolerate a slightly lower temperature, it will be easier to do the distribution everywhere.

SCIUTTO: Okay. Dr. Shah, this country has not done -- still not doing a great job of testing, administering testing on a broad scale and nationally. Given that experience, should we be more confident that it could do vaccination better on this scale?

SHAH: Jim, I think there are reasons to be more confident with respect to vaccination, particularly the mass vaccine model that we're talking about here today. Testing indeed was a new phenomenon, and although but we fumbled it in the United States. When it comes as mass vaccination, this is something that, as a country and as a public system, we do have a good measure, more experience with, as recently as 2011, with respect to mass vaccine for another large infectious disease.

I think where we're going here now is that we have better understanding of what is on the table, the vaccine, who it needs to be given to, owing to the CDC's expert group yesterday, when that might happen. Now, it's really up to the states and health care systems to accomplish the how. For that, of course, more resources are going to be needed.

SCIUTTO: Yes, no question. Okay, Dr. Compton-Phillips, when I look at these categories, we had Sanjay Gupta on yesterday just laying out the number of people in the various high-risk categories they're talking about getting this first, 21 million health care workers. Of course, you begin with health care workers but that's a big number, right, with variants inside that group as to how many people are actually frontline workers. Then you look at people with pre-existing condition, kind of the next line, I mean, that's like 100 million people.

Should we be confident that there's going to be a smart and effective delineation of who's at the front of the line within these groups?

COMPTON-PHILLIPS: Well, I can tell you that states, health care systems, even places like CVS and drugstore chains have been working for the past couple months trying to figure exactly those details out. How are we going to get started? How are we going to make sure people that -- health care workers, for example, people that work with COVID patients are at the front of the line and not every single health care worker, because we're not going to have 21 million doses on day one.

So we've had to be thinking about how are we going to pace this out and make sure we have some kind of logic to ensure those at the highest risk get the vaccine first.

SCIUTTO: Okay. And, Dr. Shah, is there an embarrassment of riches perhaps at some point here where you have multiple options, right, perhaps approval, emergency approval by the end of this month of two vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna possible. Is there one that's necessarily better than another, or are they, in your view, equally good?

SHAH: Let us hope that in the not-too-distant future that we have choices of that nature. That would be a great position to be in. The devil there will be in the details. We are still awaiting as a country and as a public health system the really refined, granular analysis that career scientists at the FDA will be doing with the data to understand whether a certain vaccine works preferentially better in one group versus another group. That will help us refine our overarching plans even more.

We generally have a sense of where we're going. I see this as sort of a relay race. And in any relay race, we at the state level are ready to take the baton. But, again, in any relay race, you've got to start running before that baton is passed to you.

[10:10:00]

We may find as we go through that there are some groups that fair better with certain vaccines and we can make those refined course adjustments as those data come out.

SCIUTTO: Well, you're right, it's a good problem to have. Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips, Dr. Nirav Shah, thanks so much to both of you.

SHAH: Thank you, Jim.

COMPTON-PHILLIPS: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, be sure to tune in Friday night for a new CNN coronavirus town hall. With vaccines available, get your questions answered about them. Join Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta for that town hall. It airs at 9:00 on CNN.

And CNN has learned President Trump has been discussing preemptively pardoning his children, his son-in-law, Rudy Guliani, his personal lawyer. Can he do this? Why? What does it all mean? What are they protecting themselves from?

Plus, time is running out to pass a new stimulus deal that would help millions of Americans who are on the edge of a benefit cliff.

And more on the devastating toll this pandemic is taking on frontline health care workers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There has been a lot of tears shed in E.R. rooms during COVID because we are treating that person dyeing like our loved one dying because they don't have anyone else. And they need that grace and they need that human touch and they need someone to be there when they're taking their last breath.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:15:00]

SCIUTTO: Well, they counted again in Georgia and Biden won Georgia again. This just in to CNN, Georgia's Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, gave an update on that state's second recount of votes in the presidential election.

Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER (R-GA), SECRETARY OF STATE: Now, on to the recount. We have had about 110 counties that have finished their work and are continuing conversations with the counties. We anticipate all of them will make our midnight deadline. We'll be putting up the reporting site at 2:00 P.M. today. We have seen no substantial changes to the results from any counties so far. And that's what we expected. And I think that's what most other people have also.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: So a Republican election official defending the results of an election. Well, there was another blow to the president's claims of widespread fraud. He and Vice President Pence will be in Georgia this week ahead of critical Senate runoffs as President Trump's days left in office grow shorter, his potential pardon list grows longer. Sources say preemptive pardons for his own children, his son-in-law, his personal lawyer have been discussed by this president.

CNN's John Harwood is at the White House. John, listen, in the deluge of the unusual over the last four years, we should note this is not normal, right? It's not normal to have family members working for you in a close capacity but to be discussing preemptive pardons for them, what can you tell us about these discussions?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It's not normal and, of course, it's not normal to have a president with so many people close to him who have been engaging in or been investigated for potential criminal behavior. We don't know what exactly President Trump or his children or Rudy Giuliani, all of the details about what they might have been engaged in that make the president and people around him think they need the protection of a pardon. There's -- they are speculating that the Biden administration may go after them, don't know exactly what for.

We do know that Robert Mueller found that President Trump had engaged in action that met the definition of obstruction of justice but felt he could not charge a sitting president. We know that Donald Trump Jr. was involved in some of the exchanges with Russia, don't know exactly what Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and others may have been engaged in. Rudy Giuliani was involved in trying to get dirt from the Ukraine as the president was and he was, of course, impeached for that.

Now, the challenges several weeks left in his presidency, he could issue pardons theoretically for himself or others, but that would not shield his family members from the state investigations that are under way in New York, from the state attorney general Manhattan district attorney, that may be where the real exposure lies for them. But, of course, the president may be focused on getting whatever protection he can.

SCIUTTO: John, first of the Christmas parties last night, the president mentioned, in his words, another four years. Was he talking about beginning January 2021 or looking ahead to 2024?

HARWOOD: I think this is all part of the president's effort not to recognize that he was beaten by Joe Biden to suggest that I still may be here for another four years. But if not, I will be here four years from now, suggesting that, yes, I will run and beat him next time since the election was stolen from me this time. It's not true. He did lose to Joe Biden, but he's having troubling acknowledging that in any public way or around his own supporters.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And, listen, he's getting covered by most sitting Republican lawmakers, we should note that as well. John Harwood at the White House, thanks very much.

Today, we are awaiting the president's response to his attorney general, Bill Barr. Bill Barr publicly stating that the Justice Department found no evidence to support the president and his lawyers' baseless claims of widespread election fraud.

With me now is a longtime Republican election lawyer, Ben Ginsberg. Mr. Ginsberg, always good to have you on.

BEN GINSBERG, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Jim. Good to be here.

SCIUTTO: You have said that Trump may or may not know it but that this is checkmate, Barr's announcement here. The trouble is the president continues to share these baseless claims publicly.

[10:20:00]

What damage is he doing and what damage are the Republicans who are standing behind as he does this?

GINSBERG: Well, there's certainly damage to the system if people don't believe the election results and the president is doing his best to stop people from believing that. There are also damages to the election officials in the different states who are doing their job to certify the elections. And you heard that yesterday from Gabriel Sterling down in Georgia. And that does harm to individuals. So you got both harm to the system and harm to individuals who were doing their job.

SCIUTTO: The Republicans keep punting, many of them, and say, well, let the legal process play out, the president has lost in court. Now, they're saying, let's wait until December 14th when electors are chosen. But the fact is that the president may not -- it doesn't look like he's going to recognize that either. And given it seems to be political fear that is keeping Republicans from contradicting the president on that, where is that going to leave us after December 14th? I mean, are we still going to have a large portion of this Republican Party not recognizing results of this election?

GINSBERG: Well, you know, they're not really going to have that luxury, because on January 6th, the slate of electors is open before the Congress and the members of the House and the Senate are going to have to vote at that point. Now, significantly, that's the day after the Georgia special election. And I think there is something to the theory that Republicans wanting to retain a majority in the Senate are holding their punches on President Trump for now just because the electoral politics in Georgia are getting so difficult.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Well, we'll see. I wonder, do you think that Bill Barr's job is in danger now? I mean, there's only six, seven weeks left in this but we know how the president treats even his most loyal acolytes when they get on the wrong side of it.

GINSBERG: Yes. I mean, I'm not sure it matters with 50 days left. I mean, why make Bill Barr into more of a martyr? And it's certainly true that his statement yesterday had a great impact just because he was such a sort of enabler of the election fraud theory, pre-election.

SCIUTTO: Yes, no question.

All right, let's talk about pardons. I mean, we're bracing -- this country bracing itself for the likelihood the president uses this pardon power quite liberally on members of his family, perhaps himself. First, on his family here, I mean, is there any, legally, preemptive pardons, they stand up?

GINSBERG: Well, there's nothing to stop a president of a United States from pardoning whoever he wants to, with the possible exception of himself. Usually, in the pardon document itself, you have to spell out what the person is being pardoned from. So those will be interesting documents to read.

SCIUTTO: Don't you legally, if you accept a pardon, somehow grant legal liability or guilt, or is that not part of the deal as it were?

GINSBERG: Well, you get to -- you get to escape from legal liability, but you are, in effect, saying there's something I need to be pardoned from. And so that is absolutely true.

And, you know, Jim, it may be interesting to bring in the pardons, both the pardons for his family and the pardon investigation by the Department of Justice, along with the 2024 candidacy. If you're a candidate for president, it gives Donald Trump the ability to say, if anyone comes after him, whether it's federal or state, it's a political prosecution. I am the leading candidate in 2024 and my enemies are continuing to witch hunt and trying to come after me.

SCIUTTO: Legally would a self-pardon -- a self presidential pardon allow him if he were to run in 2024 to do whatever he wants, to break the law?

GINSBERG: Well, that's why self-pardons of a president have never been done and are unlikely to stand up. One of the principles of the law is that no person should be the judge of their own case. And so if the president pardons himself, he's violated that basic principle, never been litigated before but on shaky, shaky grounds.

SCIUTTO: Let's hope it is, right? Let's hope it is. Ben Ginsberg, always good to hear from you.

GINSBERG: Thanks, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Well, Los Angeles County has its worst single-day of the pandemic, hospitalizations hitting peaks there, daily new infections reach record highs. We're going to take you there live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:25:00]

SCIUTTO: There's been a devastating surge of coronavirus cases in Los Angeles County. Officials there calling Tuesday the county's worst day of the pandemic yet.

CNN's Stephanie Elam, she's in Los Angeles. Stephanie, tell us where and how we're seeing this spike.

[10:30:00]

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes.