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ER Nurse First to Be Vaccinated in New Jersey; Trump Turns on McConnell; Harris Discusses Pandemic Plan, Masks and Vaccine; Ex- Officer Accused of Pulling Gun During Voter Fraud Event. Aired 9:30- 10a

Aired December 16, 2020 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

MARITZA BENIQUEZ, EMERGENCY ROOM NURSE AT UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL, NEWARK, NEW JERSEY: And the message is never give up, right? We are stronger than -- that what we think at times, right, than what people or situations make us feel.

But we have a power within us that there's -- there's nothing that we can't do short of flying, you know, growing wings and flying, that if you put your mind to it you can't do. And so, you know, being able to not just do for me, but lead by example, because I want my, you know, my Latinas to know that anything -- we can do just -- hello? Did I -- (INAUDIBLE).

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: We're here.

BENIQUEZ: I lost the picture here for a second. So we can do just about anything if we put our mind to it and, you know, and -- and support, community support, because it takes a village. It really does, you know? It took the love and support of my friends and my family to help me get through that hurdle so that I can go ahead and go back to school and fulfill what I wanted to do my whole -- my whole life. But, yes, we can do it. We can do anything.

HARLOW: Your -- it's -- it's such -- it's such an important message.

And I think particularly emphasized by the fact that the CDC data showed that Hispanics across this country have been hospitalized at four times the rate of their white counterparts from COVID.

BENIQUEZ: Yes.

HARLOW: They have died at 2.6 times the rate.

BENIQUEZ: Very true.

HARLOW: So your message to them, which, feel free to give in Spanish, as you did yesterday, if you'd like, for anyone who is listening.

BENIQUEZ: Yes. The message is this, is that we've -- we've lost enough. You know, we've lost too much. And so, you know, there's always going to be those anti-vacs people, you know, and people that just don't believe in vaccinations.

But if we go back to that same, archaic way of thinking, we'd still be living in a world of polio, the devastating effects of polio and smallpox and so many other things that -- that have cost so much, right? And so this -- this thing -- well, this COVID -- this -- it doesn't really -- it doesn't care whether you are a Latina or you're a black or you're Caucasian or you're Asian-American.

It doesn't care. It wants to live. But it just so happens that I think, you know, there's -- there's a bunch of issues that are involved with the fact that, you know, the black and Latino community are suffering at a greater, you know, greater risk, right, or that we have worse outcomes and that has to do -- this is a very long conversation. It has to do with everything we have from socioeconomic status, to underlying medical conditions.

But we need to come together and I know, because I am witness to what we can do if we come together, and don't let fear cloud your judgment. You know, I have a family and my family, to me, comes first. It comes before -- it comes before me. And so when I did this or when I do this, I don't just do it for me, I do it for my family, I do it for my community, because they are important to me.

And I am important to them. So don't let -- don't be afraid. I am fine. I woke up with -- my arm was a little sore this morning, right? But, you know, it's expected.

And, again, we cannot afford to lose one more person. We cannot afford to lose, you know -- I -- I think about the kids that are sitting at home. I think about, you know, they're not in school. I think about the small businesses that have been affected. I think about -- it's -- I mean this has affected every portion of our lives and it's time to put an end and get back to some form of normalcy.

HARLOW: Maritza -- Nurse Maritza Beniquez, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Happy birthday. Thanks again.

BENIQUEZ: You're welcome.

HARLOW: And good luck.

BENIQUEZ: You're welcome. Thank you. Bye.

HARLOW: Bye.

BENIQUEZ: Bye.

HARLOW: Jim.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: So nice to see smiles and hope when it comes to this.

HARLOW: I know. SCIUTTO: I just think if -- I mean think of how -- and, still, the danger is still out there, but think of how much tragedy we've covered with that and you've seen that change just a little bit.

HARLOW: Yes. Totally. Totally.

SCIUTTO: Well, a staunch Trump ally faces the fallout after going against the president's false claims of a stolen election. What Mitch McConnell said and his warning to fellow Republicans. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:39:05]

HARLOW: All right, so this has become sort of a familiar pattern or refrain. Congratulate the president-elect, face the music from the president. And, this morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is doing just that, facing the music, or should I say the tweet.

SCIUTTO: Yes. and from a whole host of right wing media figures.

John Harwood is at the White House.

John, McConnell, of course, has been a staunch ally of this president at every turn. He simply acknowledged the truth yesterday after the Electoral College met. And the president, very quickly, turned on him.

Consequences?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I think actually the consequences were fairly limited here. When you consider, Jim, the extent of the pathologies of President Trump and the Republican Party, this was about as good of an outcome as you could have hoped for.

Mitch McConnell, after the Electoral College voted, put an end to the fantasy football that people have been playing with the election within his party, declared Joe Biden the president-elect, congratulated him and Kamala Harris, asked his Republican colleagues not to engage in shenanigans on January 6th when the Congress is due to certify the results of the Electoral College.

[09:40:13]

He gave the White House a heads up in advance that he was going to do this. He bathed his congratulations for Joe Biden in a large cocoon of praise for Donald Trump. And the reaction from President Trump on Twitter was fairly muted. And now we seem to be on the verge of a COVID relief deal, which is badly needed and much belated.

So, yes, it is a low bar, but when you consider what's going on in the Republican Party, we -- we have had a case in Texas yesterday where a Republican donor paid a couple hundred thousand dollars to a former police official who is now in jail because he had tailed an air conditioning repairman in the belief that the guy had ballots in his truck when he actually had air conditioning equipment. When you consider that that kind of stuff is going on around election fraud, you have to say that Mitch McConnell came out of this on the other side in not a bad condition.

SCIUTTO: Listen, and far more death threats to officials, Republicans and Democrats, than I think our viewers are probably aware. It is a real risk. Law enforcement is taking it seriously.

John Harwood, thanks very much.

HARWOOD: You bet.

Also responding to McConnell is vice president-elect, Senator Kamala Harris.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT FOR THE UNITED STATES: I applaud Mitch McConnell for talking to Joe Biden today. You know, it would have been better if it were earlier, but it happened, and that's what's most important. And so let's move forward. Let's move forward. And where we can find common purpose and common ground, let's do that. Let that be our priority.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Let's go to Jessica Dean.

Good morning to you, Jess.

The vice president-elect also spoke a lot about the pandemic in that interview that aired this morning. And, today, we could learn more about when she and the president-elect might get vaccinated.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we're learning that it is coming soon. We had Rick Bright, whose a member of their COVID-19 advisory board, on our air this morning and he confirmed also what the transition has been telling us, which is that Joe Biden will be getting this vaccine very soon, that they're working through the logistics of it.

We heard from the president-elect himself yesterday on his way down to Georgia, he confirmed again he is going to be getting it and he's going to be getting it publicly and he will notify the media before he gets it.

So, again, Rick Bright saying that he doesn't want to jump in line or anything, but we also have Dr. Fauci saying that he wants Biden and Kamala Harris vaccinated as soon as possible for security reasons. We did hear the vice president-elect talk more about their COVID plans and the vaccine in that interview earlier today.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT FOR THE UNITED STATES: For the first 100 days, let's everybody just wear a mask and see -- and see the outcomes there because, of course, the scientists and the public health officials tell us they'll be really great outcomes if everyone does wear a mask when they're in public. It is about getting through the pandemic, around making sure that everyone has access to the vaccine and that they take it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But how do you go about doing that when you know there's so much mistrust, especially in the community of color.

HARRIS: That means by listening to the people, it means about remembering history and why people feel the way they do and then also reminding folks, this vaccine is just about one thing and one thing only, saving lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: And Biden has promised 100 million vaccines in his first 100 days.

Of course, Poppy and Jim, that relies on Congress continues to fund the distribution plan and the distribution plan itself working as they want it to.

Poppy and Jim.

SCIUTTO: And if they make this deal they're talking about this morning. There is money for that.

The Biden team also filling out its cabinet. Former mayor, and former presidential candidate, former governor, and I think former vice presidential candidate in the mix.

DEAN: Yes, that's exactly right. Some familiar faces starting with Pete Buttigieg, a former 2020 presidential candidate himself, who Biden has tapped to be his secretary of transportation nominee. Buttigieg will be introduced at an event later today here in Wilmington. Also former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm we're told is poised to be tapped as his energy secretary.

She, of course, also a long-time adviser to Biden, who's helped him out on debate prep and other things over the years. And then we have Gina McCarthy as the White House climate czar, the former EPA director heading up a newly formed domestic climate policy office through the White House, guys, so she'll join John Kerry, who will be looking at it from an international standpoint. She'll be looking at it domestically. But, again, some familiar faces there, Jim and Poppy.

HARLOW: OK, Jess, thank you for the reporting.

Still to come for us, when rhetoric meets reality.

[09:45:01]

You heard John Harwood mention this. We're going to explain to you what happened. A former police captain charged after investigators say he pointed a gun at someone he thought to be a voter fraud mastermind. It's a vigilante investigation gone very wrong. The details, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: OK, the Operation Warp Speed briefing on the vaccine and distribution is underway right now. We're going to hear from -- or are hearing from the HHS Secretary Azar. Let's listen in.

ALEX AZAR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: Great. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining this Operation Warp Speed update today.

[09:50:02]

We continue to have good news to report. As of today, shipments of vaccine will have been delivered to every delivery site identified by public health jurisdictions for our first wave of shipments. I hope that every American has been as heartened as so many of us at HHS and DOD have been to see heroic health care workers and venerable Americans getting vaccinated this week.

I had the chance to see this work firsthand myself at two sites, at George Washington University Hospital and this morning at Med Star Georgetown University Hospital. What I took away from those visits is this, while Operation Warp Speed's delivery of vaccines on this timeframe is extraordinary, administering these vaccines can feel quite ordinary. At GW they were administering vaccines just like they do any other vaccines, but with all the appropriate social distancing precautions.

At Georgetown this morning, the director of pharmacy, Jeff Cox, showed me the Pfizer packaging that he had received, showed me the GPS tracking and the cold chain storage tracking devices that connect directly into General Perna's command center where every single Pfizer box is tracked and monitored on temperature control and excursions. And he showed me their cold storage facilities. Showed -- and he walked me through the very simple thawing, mixing and extraction process. And he said, other than that this is COVID, this is pretty standard. This is what we do.

And that's been the message from virtually every partner that we are working with in this endeavor. Every hospital, FedEx, UPS, McKesson, CVS, Walgreens, this is what we do.

We have a great deal of work in the coming months to get a vaccine to every American who wants one, but we are confident in our approach to using the health care providers and institutions, like hospitals and pharmacies, that do such a good job of providing tens of millions of vaccines to Americans every year.

For next week, we have allocated another approximately 2 million doses of Pfizer's vaccine for jurisdictions to use. And if Moderna's vaccine is authorized by the FDA in the coming days, we have allocated nearly 5.9 million doses of that product.

As many of you know, on Tuesday, the FDA released the analysis that we used to brief its independent advisory committee meeting tomorrow. The agency concluded that the vaccine is 94.5 percent effective in reducing the incidence of COVID-19 among the treated group, which far exceeds the standard FDA has set forth for an Emergency Use Authorization. And they concluded that the vaccine is safe.

If and when the Moderna vaccine is authorized, it will have gone through the same rigorous procedures that the Pfizer vaccine did, and that every OWS vaccine receiving emergency authorization will go through. That includes clinical trials, much larger than many trial -- many vaccine trials, an independent data safety and monitoring board that oversees those trials. The drug companies --

SCIUTTO: We've been listening to the HHS Secretary Azar there. Says almost 6 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, 2 million of the Pfizer vaccine by next week. Remarkably fast progress on the vaccine. Good news all around.

HARLOW: Yes. It is great news.

OK, we'll monitor this for other news. We'll bring it to you. A quickly break. We're back on the other side.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:57:51]

HARLOW: Now to a very scary, very disturbing story out of Texas. A former Houston Police captain is charged with running a man off the road and pointing a gun at his head. Why? Because investigators say he wrongly believed that the victim was the mastermind of a massive voter fraud.

SCIUTTO: This is where unfounded talk of a stolen election gets you.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Mark Aguirre had been hired -- hired by a private form to investigate alleged voter fraud and authorities say he'd followed the victim for days, imagine that, believing he had fraudulent ballots, hundreds of them, in his truck. It turns out the victim was just an air conditioner repairman, no ballots. It was false.

CNN security correspondent Josh Campbell is following this story.

And, Josh, I don't have to tell you, given your experience in the FBI, the seriousness of plots like this based on nothing but with real potential for violence.

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. Those of us who track national security threats have been warning for months that these claims of voter fraud, these baseless claims of mass fraud, are not happening in a vacuum and that there is a potential for violence. And that appears to have happened in Houston, Texas, just before the election.

Authorities arrested this former police captain, Mark Aguirre. He is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. They say that he was part of this group called Liberty Center, that was trying to probe mass voter fraud in the Houston area. They say that the man had started surveillance on another unidentified man thinking he was this mastermind. He followed him, crashed his SUV into the back of the man's truck, ordered him to the ground at gunpoint and put his knee on the unidentified man's back.

As you mentioned, this former police captain thought that inside that truck were 750,000 fraudulent ballots. Of course, this man ended up being an innocent air conditioner repairman. There were no ballots inside that vehicle.

Now, the attorney for this former police captain says that what prosecutors are alleging didn't happen. They're saying that this is not in line with what the prosecutors laid out in their charges.

Take a listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TERRY YATES, ATTORNEY FOR MARK ANTHONY AGUIRRE: He was working and investigating voter fraud.

[10:00:00]

There was an accident. He -- they were surveilling a vehicle. There was an accident. And then a member of the car got out and rushed towards him and that's where the confrontation took place.