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Bidens Get Vaccinated Today; Heated Meeting About the Election; Trump Downplays Hack; California Hospitals Stretched to Limits by COVID Cases. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired December 21, 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]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Now, he's getting the vaccine also as Congress moves to vote on this massive COVID relief bill. And he did release a statement late last night applauding them for their bipartisan effort to get this put together. But as we've heard him say before, he called it a down payment and said there is much more work to come.

I want to read you part of it. Listen to what he said. He said, quote, we cannot do this alone. Immediately starting in the new year, Congress will need to get to work on support for our COVID-19 plan, for support to struggling families and investments in jobs and economic recovery. There will be no time to waste.

We know Biden and his team are looking for state and local funding. They're looking possibly for an infrastructure bill. There is a lot that they're going to want to get through and, of course, that's all contingent on them getting the support they need in the House and the Senate.

And, Poppy, Joe Biden has long said that he believes he can get bipartisan support for what he wants to get through Congress. Time will tell on that.

Poppy.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Right, because he's not going to have a Senate either way Georgia goes it looks much different and he's going to have a narrower Democratic majority in the House, so it's going to be an uphill challenge on that for sure.

DEAN: Right.

HARLOW: Jess, thank you for the reporting.

Well, are you ready to say good-bye to 2020? I am. So long 2020, hello 2021. With Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen, ring in the new year with them live from Times Square on New Year's Eve starting at 8:00 Eastern right here on CNN. Ahead for us, U.S. government officials are linking Russia to a huge cyberattack on federal agencies and private businesses this morning. No surprise here, Russia is denying it and the president is downplaying it with his first comments on it over the weekend. What we know and the impact this breach could have is next.

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[09:36:09]

HARLOW: Well, this morning, growing desperation apparently inside the White House. As the end of President Trump's presidency nears, outrage over an idea apparently brought up in a meeting on Friday to try to overflow the election results, including by potentially invoking marshal law. That idea reportedly leading to a screaming match in the Oval Office.

John Harwood joins me now.

You cannot make this stuff up. What happened?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the president is surrounding himself with 30 days left in his presidency, having been defeated by Joe Biden, having -- being psychologically unable to accept that defeat, to accept the brand of a loser.

He is hold up in the White House, not doing his job, spinning out lies about how he really won the election and it was stolen from him and bringing crazy people in to talk about crazy ideas like declaring marshal law, something that Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, a felon, who was then pardoned by the president for lying to the FBI, talked about on television, talked about making Sidney Powell a crazy lawyer who is so crazy that she was renounced by others in the Trump legal orbit for the nutty things she was saying about post-election conspiracies, seizing voting machines from states, all this stuff is absolutely lunatic stuff.

And it is sad to say but the reason that is getting talked about in the White House is that the president himself is a kook and he cannot handle his situation. And we're all going to have to live with it for 30 days while he either simply fulminates about this stuff and does nothing about it, or actually tries to do something, in which case he'll be stopped. But, nevertheless, it's continued trauma for the country.

HARLOW: It's stunning. I mean I didn't think I could be surprised, but I am -- I am surprised that that actually was brought up.

John Harwood at the White House, thank you for the reporting.

And all of this, by the way, folks, comes from the White House and it happens against the backdrop of the biggest hack of the U.S. government in U.S. private companies in years. It's believed to have been carried out by Russia.

David Sanger is here, national security correspondent for "The New York Times," the leading voice really on all of this.

David, I'm so glad you could join.

I guess the update to this, as you write in your piece this morning, is that even the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has said, and I quote, we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians, and yet the president throwing cold water on that over the weekend with a -- sort of a wild, crazy tweet with a bunch of lies in it, but also saying, you know, well maybe it was China.

Can you set the record straight for the American people in terms of at least what we know?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, everything we know, Poppy, and thanks for having me back on, is that it was Russia, that the China allegation here, while China certainly spies on the United States and uses cyber means to do so, and have done so in the past, that wasn't what was involved here.

This was a hack into the supply chain and software used by the federal government and corporations, very broadly. The dimensions of it still are not fully understood. Rep. Adam Schiff, of course, heads the House Intelligence Committee suggested over the weekend that we still don't know whether they got into classifies systems. Right now we only know about unclassified systems.

And so when you think to what we just heard from our colleague John there, I -- on a day when the president of the United States might be gathering the National Security Council and saying, well, let's understand the dimensions of this Russia hack and what dangers it puts the American economy and the American government in, he was instead sitting around talking about seizing voting machines.

[09:40:05]

HARLOW: Right.

SANGER: How about trying to figure out what's happened to the software that is going into his own government on his watch?

HARLOW: Yes. You -- right. And you write in your piece this morning, quote, Mr. Biden will inherit a government so laced with electronic tunnels, bored by Russian intelligence, that it may be months, years even, before he can trust the systems that run much of Washington. That is a big statement, David. And I think made bigger by the fact that Chris Krebs, who used to run CISA before he was fired, pointed out to Jake Tapper yesterday, he said this was likely carried out by their intelligence arm, SVR.

But the point he made that I want you to weigh in on is he said, well, they don't usually work with the GRU or the FSB, the other arms in Russia. So you don't have to worry about that. It's mainly about finding about intel about future diplomatic efforts, et cetera.

Can we be sure of that? I mean why wouldn't the three arms work together beyond their competitive nature? SANGER: Well, Chris was pointing out a very good point, which is that

the Russian intelligence arms do not play well together.

HARLOW: Right.

SANGER: And that plays for our advantage.

You'll remember in the 2016 election, it was the SVR, the same group that was the first to break into the Democratic National Committee, but it was the GRU the next year when they broke in that made everything public.

So one hopes this is just an intelligence operation. And, if so, it's bad enough, and we need to understand it. What we're trying to make sure is that it doesn't go further than that, and that they haven't planted basically small time bombs here that could be set off elsewhere.

HARLOW: Right. OK.

So let's talk about what the incoming Biden administration needs to be ready for, because finally Mitt Romney is getting the credit he deserves for calling Russia the number one geopolitical foe back in the election in 2012. Obama mocked him then in a debate, saying the '80s called they need their foreign policy back. Madeleine Albright now says that he deserves an apology. And then, then vice president, but now incoming President Biden said this in 2012 on CBS.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT FOR THE UNITED STATES (April 1, 2012): He acts like he thinks the Cold War is still on. Russia is still our major adversary. I don't know where he's been.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: So what would you say to President-elect Biden as he comes in vis-a-vis Russia?

SANGER: Well, it's pretty clear that Biden has substantially revised his view of Russia. He said repeatedly, including during the campaign, that Putin didn't want him to be president, which is probably right, and that he's going to come after him. And that's because the 2016 election turned the entire Democratic Party into Russia hoax magically after all of those events you described in 2012. Mitt Romney certainly does deserve an apology for that.

But let's remember, what Russia is trying to do is be a disruptor, and they were trying to disrupt the election. They are now trying to disrupt the government.

I thought the most interesting thing to come out of the Biden camp this weekend was the comments made I think on CBS by President-elect Biden's chief of -- future chief of staff on, Ron Klain, that Biden will go after the actual making of the hack and to disable the capabilities. That suggests a big escalation with the Russians. I think he's going to find that a lot harder to do than to talk about, because escalating with a nuclear power is dangerous stuff.

HARLOW: Yes, that's a great point and how do you do it? I mean sanctions have already been so ramped up. The question is, OK, how do you counter?

And I think I'd be remiss not to point out that the -- as you talk about and report about in your piece again this morning, the U.S. has a number of times carried out huge -- huge hacks like this, and including on supply chains, whether you're looking at Iran and the centrifuges and the missile program or North Korea.

I guess what makes this different, it seems notable that this has also been, you know, gotten into thousands of private companies, including more than 400 of the -- of the Fortune 500 companies in this country.

SANGER: Poppy, you've gotten right at the key element. The U.S. has certainly done supply chain hacks before. And we have to come out and acknowledge that. As you point out, the operation against Iran's nuclear centrifuges was a supply chain hack. There was one in China against Huawei, the maker of telecommunications gear. I could go on with the list.

What made this different was its indiscriminate nature. It got into a piece of software so widely used that it would be akin to getting into those updates that go into your -- your iPhone, right, overnight. So the fear here is that it has created an insecurity that is broad across government and industry, which may be exactly what the Russians had in mind.

[09:45:03]

HARLOW: David Sanger, thank you very much, as always.

SANGER: Great to be with you. Happy holidays.

HARLOW: You, too, David.

Even as vaccines roll out across the country, COVID hospitalizations are way up once again this morning. So much so that a doctor in Los Angeles says their hospitals are having trouble caring for everyone in need. She joins me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Welcome back.

Well, hospitals across the state of California are under intense strain this morning because of the COVID surge there. The state sees daily record highs in hospitalizations and deaths day after day after day.

[09:50:06]

In Los Angeles County alone, 13,000 new COVID infections were reported just yesterday. That's in one county. Much of the state is under essentially a lockdown. California's governor and the mayor of Los Angeles both quarantining due to potential exposure. That is the state of California right now.

Joining us to talk about this is Dr. Christina Ghaly. She's director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

Good morning to you, Dr. Ghaly.

You are not mincing words. You said, our hospitals are in crisis. What does that look like on the ground in L.A. right now?

DR. CHRISTINA GHALY, DIRECTOR, LOS ANGELES COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES: Hi. Good morning.

Our hospitals are full. Over half of -- about half of the patients in the intensive care units have COVID in Los Angeles county, and about a third of all of the hospital beds in Los Angeles County are filled with patients with COVID. And when you have numbers that high, it puts a lot of strain on the overall hospital system and it doesn't leave a lot of room to care for patients who come in with non-COVID needs.

And that's the concern right now is just that there's not sufficient beds to continue caring for all of the parents that are coming in with COVID, and those numbers keep going up while we're still needing to provide care for patients who have other conditions and injuries.

HARLOW: Are you having to turn people away? Are you at the point of rationing care?

GHALY: No, we're not. We're not. And I hope never to get there. Obviously, that's a situation no one wants to be in and we're not there in Los Angeles County and we're not there in California.

But the hospitals are under stress. And, as you mentioned, there were 13,000 cases reported yesterday. Every day last week there were over 10,000 cases reported in Los Angeles County. With those numbers, we're going to still see the hospitalizations continue to increase for the next week or so. And the concern right now is that if people don't follow all the guidelines for the public health orders and have Christmas or holiday gatherings that we're going to see another surge two to three weeks after Christmas.

HARLOW: Right. And that is getting to what Mayor Garcetti, who, as I mentioned, is under quarantine now as well because of potential exposure. He's talking about a potential third spike, maybe not until late January. And he said, if it keeps soaring the next three to four weeks, we will have nothing left to meet this moment.

That's something that I think is hard for people to get their head around in America, in the richest country on earth, where we all know what needs to be done to prevent the spread, that -- that, you know, a state and a city like L.A. may not be able to meet the moment.

GHALY: Yes, it's heartbreaking really to see where we're at, at this point in the pandemic. We're so close to the end. I mean, at the very same time that we're battling this surge in Los Angeles County, we're also vaccinating thousands of our workforce members. We've already vaccinated about 2,000. We'll vaccinate 12,000 of our hospital systems workforce members by the end of the calendar year.

But, at the same time, as close as we are to getting through this pandemic, we're seeing those numbers continue to go up. And every day that puts more and more stress on the hospital systems, on the nurses, respiratory therapists, physicians, all of the staff that have worked so hard over the last nine months.

HARLOW: I have to ask you about this really disturbing reporting into CNN that some wealthy folks in southern California have been calling up their doctors' offices and hospitals and offering donations, some up to $25,000 to a charity, to the hospital, to get moved up in line to get a vaccine.

Have you heard that?

GHALY: Yes, it is --

HARLOW: Is it happening? And what's your reaction?

GHALY: I have. I have heard that. I've heard several stories about people doing pretty much everything they can to try to move up in line to the vaccine. And it's sad.

I know that people want it. I think it's good that there's confidence that the vaccine works. But we need to preserve the vaccine's supply, especially since there's not enough right now for everyone, for the people that are at highest risk.

And right now those highest risk individuals that are getting the vaccine are those dedicated front line health care workers and then also the people that are at highest risks in our skilled nursing facilities and congregate living facilities who have such high risk of bad outcomes if they were to get infected. And the risk of infection, given how widespread the virus is right now, is so, so high.

HARLOW: Let's just end on, finally, are you concerned about this new variant being reported in the United Kingdom just in terms of having a potentially increased transmissibility?

GHALY: Yes, any -- any new strain, any new variant of the virus is always a reason to have concern. Viruses do often mutate. They change a lot.

And while we know a lot about this virus, any time a new strain comes up, scientists really need to dig in and try to learn again about this particular strain.

As you mentioned, it's thought to be more transmissible, can lead to super spreader events.

[09:55:04]

But at this point in time, we don't necessarily believe it's more virulent. So it's not likely to cause more serious infections or more serious outcomes in people if they are infected. And at this point we also believe that the vaccine is probably still effective against the virus.

Now, those things are still things that scientists will be looking into. But even just the fact that it's capable of causing more infections is potentially very dangerous for us at this point in the pandemic because of, again, how widespread all of those infections are. Right now, in Los Angeles County, one in 64 people are infected and actively infecting others. That's a lot of people.

HARLOW: What a number. OK, Dr. Ghaly, thank you for being here, for all you guys are doing on the front lines of this.

GHALY: Thank you. Thank you.

HARLOW: Well, the first doses of the Moderna vaccine will be administered in the U.S. today. That is good news. The bad news, what we just mentioned is this new variant of COVID in the U.K. It has health officials worried there. We'll take you to London, next.

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