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2,804 Reported Dead from COVID, the Most in Single Day of Pandemic; Biden Taps Ex-Obama Official as Coronavirus Coordinator. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired December 03, 2020 - 13:00   ET

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

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[13:00:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I am Brianna Keilar, and I want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world.

We are a nation in free fall, in a crisis of historic proportions. Nearly 3,000 Americans reported dead in one day, the most since the coronavirus began. This is equal to those who lost their lives on 9/11 and it is happening day after day. Hospitals and frontline workers, they're keeping this country afloat, saving lives. They're witnessing the suffering firsthand, day after day, while leaders in both the Trump administration and Congress failed to pass a much needed rescue package.

These are just some of the stories of Americans that we have lost from people they leave behind.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LIZANNE JENNINGS, LOST HUSBAND AND MOTHER TO COVID WITHIN THREE DAYS: This is so wrong. Sometimes I am grieving for my husband and then I realize my mom is gone, then I'm grieving for my mom, and I just think, oh, I'm going to tell Dennis, and then Dennis is gone. And so the two people that would have been so supportive are gone. They're both gone.

They started giving him morphine, Ativan, and I turned him over, I rubbed his back, I said, I love you. He said I love you. And I said you're going to go now, okay, you can finally be at peace. And he said -- and he took his last breath about 30 minutes later. And I bathed him and I cut his hair and I put clothes on him. And then I left him. There was nothing else -- I couldn't save either one of them.

LASTASSIJA WHITE, LOST FIVE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER TO COVID: That night was the toughest thing I ever been through.

QUINCY DRONE, LOST-FIVE-YEAR OLD DAUGHTER TO COVID: I mean, you bring your child into the world, I can remember the day Lastassija pushed Tagan out. And as parents, you never expect to see your daughter in a coffin. You never expect to see your daughter in the emergency room with her eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, dead. We just -- we're young parents and we just -- I mean, no one can prepare for it, but we just -- but we weren't prepared for this in our hearts.

MINERVA MORALES, LOST 39-YEAR-OLD SONE TO COVID: He went to work, that was the last time we saw him, that's last time his children saw him. We gathered in front of the hospital in the parking lot every evening at 9:00 P.M. And we would pray that he could come home.

FRANCISCO MORALES, LOST 39-YEAR-OLD SONE TO COVID: I always have a positive nature where he is going to be fine, he is just fighting this thing off, he is fighting it, he will be fine. He never recovered.

DR. SHANNON TAPIA, GERIATRICIAN: I don't want to say it's been harder for us than it has for everybody else, but the truth is. It has. It's not the same. And it is not the same when you feel responsible for people's -- whether it be their life or quality of life because you care.

ALLISON BOERNER, CHARGE E.R. NURSE, CENTURA-PARKER ADVENTIST HOSPITAL: There has been a lot of tears shed in E.R. rooms during COVID because we are treating that person dying 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.

FRANCESCA MCCALL, RAISING 12 CHILDRE AFTER SISTER DIED FROM COVID: (INAUDIBLE) to say I live or die. And I told her, we talked to her, we just saw her, I told her she didn't have to worry, because I would make sure to take care of her kids because I knew she would have did it for me.

DR. JOSEPH VARON, CHIEF OF STAFF, UNITED MEMORIAL MEDICAL CENTER: At some point inside my COVID unit, I see this elderly patient is out of his bed and trying to get out of the room and he is crying. So I get close to him, and I tell him, why are you crying, and the man says, I want to be with my wife. So I just grab him. I hold him. I did not know that I was being photographed at the time. And he was just crying. And, eventually, he felt better and he stopped crying.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: We saw this coming. We knew the rise in deaths was coming. It always follows two other key metrics, new infections and hospitalizations. And the United States broke the 200,000 barrier for new cases in one day on Wednesday. It's just the second time that cases have gone that high in a day. The other was actually last Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

The U.S. set a new record Wednesday for hospitalizations, topping the 100,000 mark for the first time. 16 states and Puerto Rico setting records on Wednesday for hospitalizations, California is one of those states. Hospitals there are running out of room. And Governor Newsom says that if the climb continues at this rate, his state will run out of ICU beds by mid-December.

[13:05:05]

So that means no more beds for patients in the most danger by Christmas.

Our Stephanie Elam is taking a closer look at the dire situation in Los Angeles County. Stephanie?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, Los Angeles County hitting a record number of hospitalizations yet again. This number now above 2,400 people hospitalized with the coronavirus, this as they also say that they have just about 120 ICU beds that are available. This is a county of about 10 million people. And that is terrifying to health officials here.

This is why they're saying we could run out of hospital beds by Christmas, and also why the mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, says that it is time to cancel everything and stay home. Brianna?

KEILAR: Stephanie Elam, thank you for that report.

Joining me, Dr. Mark Morocco. He is an emergency room physician at the Reagan UCLA Emergency Medical Center in Los Angeles. Doctor, thank you for joining us and talking to us about what you're seeing.

Just tell us what's happening on the ground where you are and how stretched your hospital is.

DR. MARK MOROCCO, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN, REAGAN UCLA EMERGENCY MEDICAL CENTER: Well, thanks, Brianna.

The first thing I would say to everybody out there listening to all of us is don't panic. Thank you to those people who we give permission to hear those stories that you just ran. This is what we are dealing with every day.

As you said, all across Los Angeles County, my hospital, everyone that I talk to, everybody has had record numbers of hospitalizations, and everyone's emergency department and ICUs are beginning to fill up with increasing numbers, and staff is really on a heightened DEFCON level, if you want to think of it that way. We really are at war.

And so in terms of resources, we are well resourced here, but if you look at the diversity across Los Angeles County and across the country, emergency rooms and hospitals, there's a great diversity in the resource and sort of the line of supplies and the line of troops, if you want to put it that way, the people who are going to staff those E.R.s, the nurses, the respiratory therapists, the doctors, people that staff the ICUs and the wards and the rehab facilities after people survive, if they do, those can be stretched very thin.

And so I think you said in the very beginning of the hour, this is a time for a national conversation. This is a Darwinian event that we still have some control over. And I would reach out directly to President Trump to say this is an opportunity for you to be the president you always said you could be for the next six weeks, and to bring this country together with the president-elect, President-elect Biden, and to get a unified message so that people can understand.

But what I am telling my friends is, all the things we told you, masks and hand washing, social distancing, do that. But this may be six-week or eight-week period when you just want to keep your family and yourself out of harm and shelter if you can and get through this.

We can knock the top off this curve and help in some ways. But in some ways, this has gotten out of control. We still have some control, we don't want people to panic. We want them to do what is right for them and their family, and that, in turn, will help us and every hospital in this country.

KEILAR: I mean, that's very good advice. And you said this is -- it's war footing. And we talk on this show sometimes about how when you are talking about the military, it is a disproportionate -- it's a small number of Americans who are shouldering that burden. It is the same case in this war against coronavirus. And I think listening to some of the doctors and nurses and the folks who are working with people who are dying or close to dying, you get a sense of what that burden is that they're shouldering. How are they doing? How are they handling this?

MOROCCO: Well, you know, to mix the metaphors, we're just coming out of a half time break in a long football game, and so the most important part is ahead of us. But our team members are very tired.

I know lots and lots of folks that I work with, people that I am in contact with, both here and Los Angeles and across the country where they're frankly showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, but they are still in their jobs, they're still doing what they're going to do, and they're going to do them every day that they can until they either can't get out of bed or they just can't stand it anymore, and that's a danger we're going to have to face, but the same way military folks take their oath seriously, so do we in medicine.

KEILAR: You wrote in a recent op-ed something that I think really exemplifies what's happening right now. You said the fire burns all around us and we are dry grass from sea to shining sea. There are a lot of people who so far haven't been affected by this, even as they look at what's going on, they hear the stories, but they're the dry grass in a way. I wonder what it is like for you seeing even as so many doctors and nurses are putting their all into this that there are a lot of people ignoring restrictions, that they are tired of this, so they're getting complacent.

[13:10:01]

MOROCCO: Well, I understand that. We're tired too. Every human being I know wants this to be over. We are so done with it. But I say to my friends, the virus -- like me, the virus doesn't care whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, whether you live in the Midwest or you live on the coast. You come to our E.R., we give you a 100 percent. It doesn't matter what you believe politically.

And I think this really comes down again to a question of messaging and appeal to those folks who are in power now and the folks who are in the Congress who can -- you know, you talk about war footing, and defense budgets are often incredible deficit expenditures that you spend not because you have the money or want to but because you need to do it now to win the war.

And so the people that run businesses, that people that have jobs who are worried about never being able to pay their rent and their kids, what are they going to do, this is where the government can spend money in ways that can help people on both sides of the political spectrum right now. And so they need to help us. We are going to take care of our own.

The post-traumatic issues that some of my nurses, for instance, have been talking about for months, that stuff is going to continue for years, the same way that you see the effects on soldiers in the military who come back for years. We're going to be dealing with this going forward.

But right now, we have a task and everybody can contribute, do not panic. You can help do this. Whether you believe it is a hoax or not, please protect your family. If you are doing the right thing, please continue to do it. Stay away from the hospitals unless you're really sick, because we are going to be taking care of people. And we want to make sure that if you become one of those sick people, we have a bed to take care of you in.

KEILAR: Doctor, thank you for being a messenger on this. Thank you for coming on.

MOROCCO: My pleasure, Brianna. You be well and be safe. And everybody out there, hang in there, we're going to get through this.

KEILAR: All right. Dr. Mark Morocco, thank you.

Just a short time from now, President-elect Joe Biden is set to meet with Dr. Anthony Fauci. Hear what they will discuss.

Plus, CNN has learned that President Trump erupted at Attorney General Bill Barr during a contentious White House meeting. So what is Barr's fate.

And are Trump allies sabotaging the Senate runoffs in Georgia?

This is CNN's special live coverage.

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[13:15:00]

KEILAR: CNN has learned that Dr. Anthony Fauci will meet virtually with Joe Biden's transition team this afternoon. The pandemic, front and center, when the president-elect takes office in just 48 days.

Coronavirus cases are exploding nationwide and deaths just reached an all-time high, as did the number of Americans who are hospitalized. There is no time to waste right now.

CNN's M.J. lee is following the Biden transition for us. And, M.J., what can we expect from this Fauci/Biden meeting today?

M.J. LEE, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, first, we have some breaking news about somebody who is going to be appointed to a very important role under Joe Biden, Jeff Zients, a top economic adviser under President Obama, is expected to be named the COVID-19 coordinator for future President Biden, also will be referred to as the COVID czar.

You can't emphasize enough how important and critical this role is going to be. Zients will essentially be the person who is speaking to the future president every day on all things related to COVID-19, coordinating with the different agencies and folks in the administration that are involved. So, again, CNN can confirm what Politico first reported that Jeff Zients will be named COVID czar under Joe Biden.

This announcement, we are told, is expected in the next few days, probably, possibly early next week, although this is news that could break over the weekend formally as well.

But back to what you were saying about what we are expecting for today, Dr. Anthony Fauci is expected to meet with the Biden transition team virtually. Obviously, this is somebody who has had initial conversations with some of the Biden folks, including incoming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain.

The contrast here is interesting, because, as you know, Brianna, Fauci has, at times, been quite critical of the Trump administration's handling of this virus, whereas Biden himself has emphasized over and over again that he wants to be listening to the scientists and the experts as he tries to get a handle on this virus.

And, of course, timing is noteworthy as well, because the COVID-19 pandemic literally is in the worst shape it has ever been since this really became an issue earlier this year. So that is what is on the schedule for the transition team today.

I will also just quickly note, we have been doing so much reporting on this, there is just such a fury of lobbying that we are seeing from different constituency groups, civil rights groups, advocacy groups and elected officials pushing Biden to appoint certain people to his future administration, whether it is the Congressional Hispanic Caucus asking him to appoint certain people to the role of HHS secretary, Xavier Becerra or Tom Perez as his attorney general picks.

And this is not unusual, I think we should be clear about that, for any incoming new administration, they are going to receive a lot of incoming lobbying because different people want to see different constituency groups reflected in a future government. But this is going to be a real test for Joe Biden because he himself has so forcefully said so many times that he would like the future government to look like America. Brianna?

KEILAR: All right. M.J., thank you so much, M.J. Lee following the transition from Wilmington.

[13:20:03]

And we do want to make a programming note here that the president- elect and vice president-elect are going to join Jake Tapper for their first joint interview since they won the White House. And you can watch that tonight at 9:00 Eastern right here on CNN.

So right now at the White House, President Trump is laser-focused on his made up reality. He and Attorney General William Barr had a, quote, contentious meeting this week, CNN has learned, after Barr told the Associated Press he has not seen evidence of the widespread voter fraud that the president alleges has happened and that could change the outcome of the election.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins is live for us from the White House. Tell us about this meeting, Kaitlan. What happened?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, it is so interesting to hear M.J. talking about Biden's staffing choices, we're still talking about staffing choices here at the White House, even though the president only has seven weeks left in office.

Because, basically, the thinking inside the White House is there is a chance Donald Trump could fire his Attorney General, Bill Barr, because he is that angry at him right now. And he had been furious with him before the election over the fact that there had been no report produced on that prosecutor that Barr tapped to investigate the beginning of the Russia investigation.

But, of course, this week, what the president is so furious with Bill Barr about is his comments undercutting the president's claims, his baseless claims, that there was widespread voter fraud. When Bill Barr said that the Justice Department has uncovered no evidence of that, and the president is incredibly unhappy, basically saying that Bill Barr hasn't actually looked into this yet and investigated this yet, even though Barr said not only the Justice Department has looked into it, so has Department of Homeland Security as well.

And so this has raised questions because the president has now been privately talking about whether or not he is going to fire the attorney general. And he was just asked a few moments ago in the Oval Office, as he was giving Lou Holtz the Medal of Freedom, if he has confidence in Barr. And listen to the way he paused when the reporter asked him that question.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Do you still have confidence in Bill Barr?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Ask me that in a number of weeks from now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: A number of weeks? There's only seven weeks left in the Donald Trump presidency. So, whether or not something like that happens, it still is to be determined. There are a lot of people telling the president he shouldn't fire Barr, that, of course, that there will be a ton of political blowback if he does. And he is still stung by the fallout from when he fired James Comey as the FBI director at the beginning of his administration.

So it is still to be determined what's going to happen there, but you can see the president's anger with people who are not towing his line, who are not playing into this charade that he has been putting on about voter fraud and potential outcome of the election. And he continues to insist that he believes there's going to be some change and that it is not going to be Joe Biden as the winner. Though, of course, we know they're preparing for the transition like that to happen, Brianna.

KEILAR: So we can tell, Kaitlan, he has, and, look, even maybe before the election, kind of given up on governing, especially when it comes to the crises that are really facing the nation right now. How is he spending his time? What is he focusing on right now?

COLLINS: If you talk to people who are around the president who speak with him often, they describe a president who is more unpredictable than he has been in his entire presidency. And for Donald Trump, that is saying a lot. They just say he has been so consumed by this election loss that, for almost a month now, that has been his singular focus. And he's been staying in the Oval Office later than he normally does, but he hasn't been appearing in front of cameras that often. Today was a rare appearance that we actually saw the president and got to ask him questions.

And so instead of focusing on the pandemic and holding events on that, he is basically singularly focused on what's happening with this. And he has been having lunches with the vice president, secretary of state. He had this meeting with Bill Barr at the White House on Tuesday, even though yesterday, the press secretary couldn't say whether or not they had actually spoken. We are told that they did. And it was basically the president complaining about what Bill Barr had said about the election.

So, you can see that all of his meetings and basically all of his time and his phone calls is being consumed by this one thing, and it is his obsession with this election and his belief, his conviction that he actually won, even though, of course, we know that he didn't, and the question is how much longer is he going to publicly maintain this.

KEILAR: Kaitlan, we shall see. It seems like some time yet. Kaitlan Collins live for us from the White House, thank you.

Next, we're going to roll tape on how Republican senators didn't, quote, wait for the process to play out in 2016 when Trump won.

Plus, and a mayor in Texas hops on a private jet, he takes a trip with his family while telling people to do the exact opposite? Now hear how he is responding.

And we're getting word that the president is praising QANON conspiracists behind the scenes, the group that believe celebrities and Democrats lead a pedophile ring and drink the blood of children. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:25:00]

KEILAR: Cash is flying in Georgia. More than $320 million have been spent so far in the state Senate runoffs as control of the Senate hangs in the balance. The president plans to hold a rally in Georgia Saturday on behalf of GOP incumbent Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.

[13:30:01]

But he has been trolling Georgia's Republican governor and Republican secretary of state ever since Biden won Georgia last month.