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U.S. Reports Deadliest Day in Pandemic; President Trump Silent as Deadly Pandemic Rages Out of Control; Source: Trump and Barr had a "Contentious" Meeting at the White House This Week; Biden Faces Increasing Pressure to Diversify His Cabinet. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 03, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:34]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Very good Thursday morning to you, I'm Jim Sciutto. Poppy has the week off.

The U.S. seeing the deadliest day yet in this pandemic, and the president is saying and doing nothing about it. More than 2800 Americans were reported dead on Wednesday alone, more than 100,000 COVID patients are now filling hospital beds across the country and the director of the CDC is warning that the next few months could be the most difficult in the history of public health. Not just this pandemic, the history of public health.

The Los Angeles mayor says that city is on track to run out of hospital beds by Christmas. He is telling residents to hunker down, to cancel everything.

The void in leadership from the White House during this, it's just staggering because, as people are dying, the president is obsessing over his false claims, and they are false, that the election was stolen. Now former presidents of both parties are stepping up to fill that leadership void.

Let's begin with CNN's Adrienne Broaddus. She is in Chicago with the latest on the pandemic.

Adrienne, you look at the numbers across the country. I mean, listen, breaking records every day now.

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, these are records the U.S. does not want in its column, Jim, but here we are. Another grim milestone for the U.S. As you mentioned, yesterday the highest number of reported deaths throughout the nation, more than 2,000. Wednesday there were at least 2,804 reported deaths from COVID and that's according to Johns Hopkins University.

Yesterday's reported deaths weren't the only high numbers we saw. It was also the second time since the start of the pandemic that we've seen more than 200,000 reported cases in a day. Over the last 30 days the U.S. has averaged about 100,000 cases per day. And the timeline for cases here in the U.S. is also sobering. There

are projections that we could reach another milestone by the end of the day, at least 14 million cases. Right now more than 100,000 people are in the hospital with COVID-19. Indeed there's great joy when we hear about the prospect of a vaccine, but experts warn before Americans get that critical shot in the arm, the worst is yet to come.

As we end this report here, I do want to share with you former President Obama, Clinton and Bush are offering to get the vaccine on camera to help ease the fear and help build public trust -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Listen, it's a great gesture, right, because there are genuine questions out there. We see it in the polling. Good to see that voice of support.

Adrienne Broaddus, thanks very much.

Let's go to CNN's Joe Johns now at the White House.

So, Joe, former presidents, again, of both parties stepping up because the occupant of the house behind you will not -- is not -- I mean, he's not talking about it at all, continuing to spread lies on the election. Is he doing anything about it?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Totally silent on it. He hasn't addressed it at all. There's no mourning for the victims of this pandemic in the country on this most serious day and, in fact, there's nothing on the president's schedule that's even public. Today the president apparently is going to meet behind closed doors at least so far as we know to give the Medal of Freedom to football coach Lou Holtz.

He's also going to sign a piece of legislation that has to do with artificial intelligence in government, but that's about it. Meanwhile, the one thing from time to time the president has been doing that relates to the pandemic is he's been trying to take full credit for developing vaccines when the fact of the matter is pharmaceutical companies did all the hard work and one of them, one of the very important companies, Pfizer, didn't even participate in the president's program, didn't take government money. So the president certainly can't take full credit for that.

The other thing you have to say is the president, in fact, just yesterday put out this videotape, if you will, a speech of him on social media in which he repeated so many of the lies and conspiracy theories about the election that he's been promoting since the election on Twitter.

[09:05:09]

That's about it. There were no reporters in the room, by the way, when the president gave that speech, Jim.

SCIUTTO: OK. So a vaccine -- approval for a vaccine in this country could be just days away. Lacking national leadership here and national comment from the president, does the government have a plan to get the vaccine rolled out to the public? You know, is that happening separate from the sort of reality distortion field that the president is occupying?

JOHNS: Absolutely. There is a plan and it has a pretty careful timeline. You know, the FDA meets around December 10th for the first of the vaccines, then around December 15th, we see the first shipment of vaccines, another shipment on December 20th. There's also going to be a whole vaccine kit, as you may know, that kit is going to include vaccine identification cards, syringes, needles and the like.

So they're hoping, Jim, to have 20 million doses, doses for 20 million people eventually out there by the end of the year.

SCIUTTO: Well, thank the Lord that effort is happening despite the lack of leadership.

Joe Johns, thanks very much.

Joining us now former Baltimore health commissioner and CNN medical analyst, Dr. Leana Wen.

Doctor, always good to have you on. Thanks very much.

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Good to join you as always.

SCIUTTO: So here we are nearly a year into this pandemic, right. I mean, we know now the first infections in this country going back to last December, and now setting new records of deaths per day, new infections per day, and it looks like it's getting worse. I mean, how did we get here and is it going to be even darker in the weeks to come?

WEN: Well, I'm afraid that it is going to get much worse, Jim. We are living our worst-case scenario right now. We're facing this unsustainable rise in the number of cases topping 200,000 infections in one day. Our hospitals are at the brink of being so overwhelmed that we don't have a functional health care system anymore. And the number of deaths that we're seeing we're soon going to surpass 3,000 deaths a day. We may even surpass 4,000 deaths a day.

I mean, how we got here was a combination of things. We reopened too soon, we didn't follow guidelines, there was mixed messaging, we never had a national coordinated strategy. But I'm so terrified and very anxious about what's going to happen in the weeks ahead because we're not even seeing the effects of the Thanksgiving surge yet, the surge upon a surge that we were all expecting. We're not even going to see those numbers until this weekend, early next week.

And I think at this point it's really important for us to flatten that curve again, hunker down, stay at home, and certainly not have any indoor gatherings. No nonessential travel and no indoor gatherings.

SCIUTTO: Is that happening anywhere, Dr. Wen? I mean, we are again in a situation where we have uneven to say the least responses to this, that you have some state leaders, right, let's set aside the president for a moment, in South Dakota, for instance, saying, hey, we're not going to do mask mandates, et cetera. You've have heard the same from the Florida governor. You have Los Angeles County, though, you know, greatly making restrictions tougher now.

Are some places at least getting this right?

WEN: I think there are some places that are trying. I mean, this piecemeal approach is what we've seen all along and it's harmful. I mean, I can't quite believe that there are still governors that refuse mask wearing mandates when that's something so simple that will save tens of thousands of lives and that actually prevent lockdowns from happening that keep our businesses and schools open.

I think there are some places that are issuing guidelines that make sense, restricting indoor gatherings, for example, trying to keep businesses open, because the last thing that I want is for bars and restaurants to close only for people to be getting together for dinner parties and game nights.

SCIUTTO: We are talking now about a hospital crunch. Right? I mean, we saw hospitalizations, new ones, well, in total 100,000 Americans. In the spring you and I talked about the idea of hospitals being overwhelmed and we saw these field hospitals opening up in Central Park in New York, for instance. It didn't happen in the end in most places. Are you worried now with where the statistics are pointing that we will see hospitals overwhelmed this time around?

WEN: Yes, and what I'm most concerned about is the shortage of health care workers. Two weeks ago there was a report saying that one in five hospitals at that time were facing a shortage, a critical shortage of health care workers. That was two weeks ago. Where we are now is even more dire. And we don't have a relief valve of spare health care workers versus back in March, April, and back in June and July when it was a concentrated level of infection in one part of the country.

[09:10:05]

At least there were health care workers who could come from other parts to be the relief and now we don't have that anymore. And I'm afraid that we are very close to a point of collapse where already we are having rationing of health care because whenever it is that a nurse who normally takes care of 10 patients now takes care of 20, or an ICU doctor or ICUs are no longer staffed with doctors who specialize in intensive care but are pulling from other parts of the hospital, that is by definition rationing of care and patients are already getting less than ideal care.

SCIUTTO: Is there anything the Biden transition can do now, they still got 40 some odd days before the inauguration, given that the president and his administration are refusing to take steps?

WEN: I think there are things that they can do that includes exerting moral authority. President-elect Biden has already given national addresses that call for this patriotic duty, the sense that we are all in this together and I think the more that he can talk in fireside chats, directly appeal to the American people, that would be great because a policy on paper is not going to make an effect if people don't literally follow that guidance. And it can also work with mayors and governors to implement these policies, too.

SCIUTTO: Listen, it's about a shared mission, right, because it's on all of us. It would be nice to hear that leadership today. We'll see how long we have to wait.

Dr. Leana Wen, thanks very much.

WEN: Thank you, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour, a source close to the White House tells CNN to expect a flurry of pardons from President Trump during his waning days in the White House. So who, including the president himself, is on that list?

And President-elect Biden's transition team facing dueling pressure from Republicans and Democrats over cabinet picks. Who might serve in the remaining roles that are unfilled?

Plus, 712,000 Americans filed for first-time unemployment last week. That's down from previous weeks, but, boy, historically it's way high. Millions more face the prospect of losing the benefits they've been receiving. So will Congress finally act?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. We're now learning that President Trump and the Attorney General Bill Barr had a, quote, "contentious and lengthy" meeting at the White House after the attorney general simply told the truth about the president's baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

Trump erupted during the meeting, according to multiple people familiar with his reaction. Trump has been deeply frustrated with Barr for a while, but the "AP" interview where Barr said to date, he had, quote, "not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election, added to Trump's anger."

With me now is CNN's John Harwood. John, of course, Barr has been in lockstep with the president on so many things, but apparently telling the truth here about the lack of fraud set the president off.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Telling the truth is a tough go with this president. Look, we don't know what's going to happen, the president could fire Bill Barr, that's something that people have speculated about, on the other hand it's not clear what that could accomplish if you -- given his track record in the job if President Trump can't get Bill Barr to do his bidding, it's not clear who would do his bidding. Perhaps if he could get one of the nutty lawyers on his election defense team or election legal team, maybe that would make sense, but I don't think he could do that.

Certainly, he has shown with Mark Esper, the Defense Secretary, a willingness to can people who he thinks have defied him, but we're just going to have to wait and see. We saw from the president's 46- minute video yesterday, he's not all there emotionally and psychologically, so we just don't know what he's capable of.

SCIUTTO: And he's lying. He's lying from the White House itself. All right, a source telling CNN to expect a, quote, "flurry of pardons" before President Trump leaves office. Who in addition to the president himself are on this list do we expect?

HARWOOD: Well, in addition to the president, in addition to his adult children who are also -- have some legal exposure, Donald Trump Jr., for example, was caught up in the Russia investigation because he initiated that -- if it's what you say, I love it -- meeting with Russian representatives. But you've got people like Paul Manafort who was his campaign chairman, who knows things, who declined to provide full cooperation to Robert Mueller, he may be protecting the president, Roger Stone is someone whose sentence has been commuted, but now that Mike Flynn got a pardon, he said he wants one, too.

Steve Bannon perhaps, Steve Bannon of course is facing felony charges for fraud for fleecing -- allegedly fleecing donors in a scheme to build the wall. But Steve Bannon was a key figure in the 2016 campaign, he may know things about President Trump, too. So, the one thing you can be sure of is this president places himself first so the pardons that he may offer are likely to be focused around things that would help the president by rewarding people who might have negative information about him.

SCIUTTO: And that's the issue here, right? Not just undermining investigations, but what's the motivation behind it? Self-interest suspected. John Harwood at the White House, thanks very much.

HARWOOD: You bet.

SCIUTTO: Well, Joe Biden is facing pressure from a number of folks on his picks for his administration from Senate Republicans, from more liberal Democrats, as well as the congressional black caucus and the NAACP. With me now is CNN's Jessica Dean from Wilmington, Delaware, with the Biden transition.

[09:20:00]

So, Jessica, you know, the pressure coming from all sides. This happens with every administration, right? They all want to see their folks in there. How is the Biden camp reacting to this?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they will tell you, Jim, that they've already named a number of historic and diverse picks in these cabinet nominations, also to White House staff and across the nominations and appointees that they've announced.

But to your point, they are getting incoming from really all sides. You have Senate Republicans who are publicly warning them to not nominate anyone outside what they call the mainstream, you have more liberal Democrats like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushing for more liberal picks. She said last night she doesn't want anyone with an austere mindset -- an austerity mindset.

Then you have some members of the congressional black caucus who are pushing for more black nominees. We've heard from Congressman Jim Clyburn just last night, he said he knows of a number of black people who would be able to fill the remaining cabinet nominee spots.

We also are hearing from the congressional Hispanic caucus, they have sent a couple of letters to the Biden transition team urging them to nominate a number of people. We do know that the Hispanic caucus, the congressional Hispanic caucus will be meeting today with incoming Chief of Staff Ron Klain as well as some of the key top advisors from the Biden transition team.

We also know from Biden transition officials, there has been outreach to the NAACP, Legal Defense Fund and also to the National Urban League. So some conversations going on there. Back to the congressional Hispanic caucus, though, for just a second, Jim, they had pushed for New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham to be nominated as Health and Human Services Secretary, our reporting indicates that she is the top contender for that job right now, of course, a huge job as the Biden team works to get this pandemic under control.

They really have pushed for her. She served both as her health secretary there in her state, she's been a member of Congress and also a governor. So a lengthy resume there. We'll see how that plays out, Jim.

SCIUTTO: We'll be watching. Jessica Dean, thanks very much. Well, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will join our colleague Jake Tapper for their first joint interview since winning the White House, a CNN special event tonight at 9 O'clock Eastern Time only on CNN.

And this is how bad the coronavirus is getting in California. The mayor of Los Angeles says unless it is essential, simply don't do it. And we are moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street, CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans joins us now with more. Some new job figures out today.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely. Another more than 700,000 people filed for the first-time, Jim, for unemployment benefits in this country, adding that people filing for unemployment benefits under those gig worker programs, you've got a million people for the first time out there looking for a jobless check.

So it shows you the depth of the jobs crisis that we still have here in this country. You can see that stock index futures are barely mixed here right now. I would say searching for direction here, you've got to split screen really, right? You've got stocks near record highs, and you have a lot of pain still happening on main street.

So that Wall Street-main street divide still a big story here. We'll have all for -- have it all for you at the opening bell after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:25:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: It's time to hunker down. It's time to cancel everything. And if it isn't essential, don't do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Quite a warning there, cancel all plans. That is the mayor of Los Angeles, his message as the coronavirus pandemic grows more dire than that state has ever seen before. A statewide stay-at-home order is now under consideration. Stephanie Elam is in Los Angeles with the record hospitalizations there. Stephanie, that's one of the issues, right? I mean, they're worried about hospitals being overwhelmed.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Completely the issue, Jim. And when you take a look at this record number, it's approaching 2,500 here in Los Angeles County of people that are in the hospital, that's up about 85 percent from two weeks ago.

And they're also saying that 24 percent of these people are in the ICU, so that's obviously of concern. And the fact that right now, there's only 122 ICU beds. Remember, we're a county of about 10 million. That is also very concerning and that's why they're concerned that if things continue as they are, we could be without hospital beds by the time we got to Christmas.

And so that's the reason why we've heard the mayor say this. I also had a chance to speak with the Chief Operating Officer of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center here in Los Angeles, Dr. Jeff Smith, to talk a bit about the vaccine. They've been chosen as a vaccine distribution site, but there are still some questions out there. Take a listen to what he told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFF SMITH, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, CEDARS-SINAI MEDICAL CENTER: We're waiting to hear from the state and the county how much we will initially be allocated. I'm so glad allocation will be for our own healthcare workers who are working in the highest risk areas. So, once we receive the shipments directly from the manufacturer, it will go directly into our ultra low temperature freezers, and then it does take a couple of hours to thaw.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ELAM: So, it's worth noting that it does take some time, but it doesn't need to be in that deep freezer for a very long period. It could stay for five days or so in a refrigerator when they're ready to get this vaccine out. It will first go to those essential workers within the hospital, and then also nursing homes, that's the next target, there, that much we do know. But taking look at California overall, a record number of new cases yesterday, that number, 20,759 cases.