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More Than 4.2 Million Vaccinated In U.S. So Far, Well Short Of 20 Million Promised By Government; Rep. Cheney Says She Opposes Objecting To Electoral College Count; Trump Repeats Multiple Conspiracies In Call With GA Secy Of State. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired January 04, 2021 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:30:15]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: The latest now in the coronavirus crisis. The vaccine rollout here in the United States is behind schedule that as the case count, the hospitalization rate keep going up and up and up. Let's look at the latest numbers. And let's start with that state case trend, the red and orange are bad. That means more new infections now compared to a week ago.

Four states have 50 percent more infections right now than they did a week ago. Thirty-one states, more infections still more infections between 10 and 50 percent more, 15 states holding steady. You see no states in green. No states reporting, fewer infections now, new infections now than a week ago. It's just a bad map. And this is a different way to look at it, the daily case trend.

Remember when we thought this was horrific 50, 60,000 during the summer surge. Well, now the United States averaging more than 213,000 new COVID infections every day, every day. Sunday it was 210,000, the average 213,000 that number creeping up and people expect after the holidays it could go even higher. The death trend sadly also up 2,637 is the daily average right now. Some days are a little higher some days are a little lower.

But 2,600 plus deaths here in the United States from COVID every day, and the deaths will continue to stay high as long as this number stays high. Hospitalizations 33 straight days of over 100,000 people hospitalized across the United States with a coronavirus. So the case count is up, the death count is up, hospitalizations are up. And so the question is when will vaccines help to push this down? And that is a defining question.

You see here the numbers of vaccines being distributed. That's a bit misleading because some states smaller population like the Dakotas compared to a Texas or a California. But overall 13 million plus distributed in the United States, distributed, taken from the warehouse and put out to the hospitals and the clinics. But only 4.2 million vaccines administered right now. What's taking so long? What is the lag time? Why is there a hole? We'll listen to a little then and now from the head of Operation Warp Speed, who acknowledges things are not going as they anticipated.

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MONCEF SLAOUI, CHIEF SCIENTIFIC ADVISER, OPERATION WARP SPEED: In the month of December between the two vaccines of Pfizer and the Moderna vaccine, we expect to have immunized 20 million of our American people and keeping 20 million doses for their second immunization a few weeks later.

I did say that and, you know, that was our hope, we have made 14 million doses. We have delivered 20 million doses. We worked with the states to immunize. We agree that there is a lag. We'll work with the states. We need specific requests for help.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Joining us now is Dr. Celine Gounder. She's a member of the Biden-Harris transition COVID Advisory Board. Dr. Gounder, it is great to see you, Happy New Year. And I hope it gets happier as we go through this process.

When you see the lag and the current administration unable to keep its projection, I know you're waiting for the transition, but from what information you do see, can you understand why the White House is blaming the States? Why are the vaccines not getting from the warehouse into people's arms quickly?

DR. CELINE GOUNDER, FORMER NYC ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER OF HEALTH: John, this is really a complete abdication by the federal government of its responsibility. The federal government is not just UPS and FedEx, it's not just about distributing delivering boxes of vaccines to the states, their job is to provide guidance to the state's, funding to the state's, support so that the states can figure out how to do this correctly.

I mean, just to give you one example, and this doesn't even cost any money, this is something that they could have been doing over the past year is figuring out how are we going to staff all of the vaccination sites. And one of the major obstacles is actually a bureaucratic one, it has to do with what's called scope of work. So for example, all of those dentists and EMTs and veterinarians who might have the skills necessary to be vaccinators, they need to have regulations around scope of work loosened so that they can participate in these vaccination campaigns.

You know, that's not a partisan question, but because the federal government has not been thinking through each step of the way of the process. They haven't been planning and helping the states through that planning.

KING: And so now one of the conversations, and we went through this with the Pfizer vaccine which is difficult from a storage perspective, now with Moderna, there's a conversation, especially now that we're behind, especially now that you see cases soaring, especially in some cases, states dramatically so like California. Do you take the Moderna vaccine and give it 50 percent? Do you

essentially turn 100 doses into 200 doses by splitting it? What is the conversation in your team about the viability of that?

GOUNDER: Yes. There have been a number of conversations. Can you delay the second dose? Can you split the dose of the Moderna vaccine? And the fact is, we simply do not have the scientific data to guide us. Now, it's not to say that we couldn't generate that, that we couldn't do those studies. But until we do those studies, it's really difficult to make recommendations like that.

[12:35:07]

And if there's anything you're going to see as the brand under the new Biden administration, it is to follow the science.

KING: Well, it's a follow the science and I hope, you used the term abdication. And we've talked about this even before you joined the Biden team for months when you were just helping us here at CNN get through all this. How quickly can you flip the switch, if you will, when team Biden takes office in, you know, 16 days? Will we see quicker deliveries, quicker administration that help you say that the states need and the clinics need, will we see that within days, does it take weeks?

GOUNDER: It is going to take some time. Congress has a very important role to play here. We do need a significant infusion of funding to the state and local health departments. These are state and local health departments that have suffered tremendous budget cuts since really the 2008, 2009 recession. We've lost about 50,000 public health workers across the country since that time, so there's a lot of building that needs to be done.

And frankly, it's even beyond that. It's beyond just rebuilding the staffing capacity, its other things like bioinformatics, so the tech systems that we use to track people getting vaccinated, to track the locations of the vaccines. It's also things like billing.

And these are, you know, we're in a country where we're not a single payer system, we literally have thousands of different insurance plans. How do you set up public health departments which have never had to do this to bill all of those individual insurance plans? This is a massive, massive undertaking. So we're going to get to it, but it's going to take some time.

KING: Well, we will continue the conversation and the important remaining days as a transition and then as you get up and running, Dr. Gounder, grateful for your time and insights today and more importantly, grateful for your work every day, thank you.

Up next for us, the father, daughter team now urging Republicans to stop enabling the President's election lies. Dick and Liz Cheney are trying to shape the big votes this week in Congress and they are also trying to shape the debate about a post-Trump Republican makeover.

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KING: The father daughter Cheney duo is rebuking the leader of their own party, the Republican Party, that leader of course, President Trump. Over the weekend, Congresswoman Liz Cheney sent a 21 page memo to fellow House Republicans explaining why she believes objecting to the Electoral College count is unconstitutional and sets in her words an exceptionally dangerous precedent.

And the former Vice President and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, joining the nine other living defense secretaries in a public letter declaring the presidential election is over, writing, the time for questioning the results has passed. That letter was former Secretary and former Vice President Cheney's idea.

Let's bring in CNN's Phil Mattingly live on Capitol Hill. Phil, this is fascinating. I know the father much better than the daughter. He has tried, seen and unseen, in ways seen and unseen, to shape the Republican Party going back to the Ford administration. So there's an arc of history here. But there's also the personal present day politics of the Congresswoman.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And look, I think that you've you watch the Congresswoman over the course of the last four years, she's largely done the same at a time where very few Republicans are willing to say or do anything at all, and that has gotten her rebuke from inside the House Republican conference.

John, it was just July than any closed door conference meeting, several, several Conservative Republicans House Freedom Caucus members attacked Cheney openly in their open mic session, going after her for not being sufficiently loyal to Donald Trump, for not -- for trying to fundraise to oust one of their colleagues for several reasons.

At one point she was attacked for defending Anthony Fauci. And I think the point being here is that not unlike her father, Liz Cheney, is not new to this when it comes to the Trump administration. She's been one of the few particularly given her perch as the number three Republican and House GOP leadership, who has been willing to push back usually on national security issues, but also on issues like this, of precedent.

And I think if you actually read through the 21 page document that she circulated to her colleagues, and keep in mind, 140 plus of those colleagues are already on board with the objection. She knew that before she sent that document out. And kind of the depth and the argument of the dangerous precedent that it might set underscores where she's been, I think, for the last several years, and also how she's positioning herself for what's next.

And I think if you've seen anything over the course of the last 72 hours, maybe four or five days, it's the very, very real rupture inside the Republican Party. And again, Liz Cheney is not new to this. And to your point, Dick Cheney isn't new to it either. But that's starting to form where people are starting to kind of get their legs under them to oppose the precedent or decide, OK, this maybe is one too far. And Cheney has been here. And I think where that leads Liz Cheney, over the course of the next couple years, it's been a subject of fascination over the last several years. But now that more people are joining, more people are on board and she's not just sitting on an island by herself inside the House Republican conference. I think it goes a long way to showing that Liz Cheney is going to be a crucial and central voice for the post-Trump Republican Party even as you see so many Republicans clamor to stay under the Trump Republican Party as it comes to an end.

KING: Right. And one of the questions is who will consistently lead this anti-Trump or opposition to Trump effort? And will Liz Cheney emerge as that person? Listen to this Phil. This is a statement she just gave to our colleague Manu Raju on that phone call, the President had with Georgia Secretary of State, quote, I think it was deeply troubling and I think everybody ought to listen to the full hour of it. I think that it's deeply troubling and I'm just going to leave it at that.

[12:45:01]

She's right. It is deeply troubling. And if you listen to or read the transcript of that call, the President is asking a secretary of state and a state official charged with protecting the sanctity of our democracy to cheat, but to flip the results, to quote unquote, find votes. It is striking again that she's willing to -- she doesn't say a lot there.

But she says enough that she is willing to step forward at a time when this is going to be the challenge of the next three, six months, even the next four years, who is consistently willing to stand up to the President when he lies like this.

MATTINGLY: Yes. I don't think there's any question about it. And look, we're in this bizarre moment. And we frankly, have been here for a number of years now, where stating facts, where stating the reality, as Congresswoman Cheney did related to that call that was recorded and leaked to "The Washington Post" is somehow seen as everybody stopping and saying, whoa.

But I think I can't underscore this enough. You're going to see a number of Republicans try and map out how this goes. You've seen kind of the Trump level Republicans and where they're headed here. Liz Cheney has been out front on the maybe not so much Trump over the course of the last several years. And she will absolutely play a leading role on what comes next for those who are not willing to just get in line with whatever President Trump tweets once he leaves office.

KING: Right. And I urge everybody to read that memo. It not only makes the case about the Constitution, it eviscerates these fraud allegations. It goes state by state by state to the allegations that have been made now they've been tossed by courts. It is a very well written 21 pages. Phil Mattingly grateful for the reporting up on the Hill.

And up next for us, the U.K. becomes first in the world to administer a brand new COVID vaccine.

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[12:50:49]

KING: The U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson says there's no question tougher measures are needed right now to tame a coronavirus case surge, this as the U.K. as a new vaccine to its efforts that are more of the big global developments now from our CNN correspondents around the world.

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MAX FOSTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Max Foster in Oxford, England where the AstraZeneca vaccine was developed. It's also where the first person received it in the world outside trials. He was an 82-year-old dialysis patient.

The British health secretary has described this as a pivotal moment in the pandemic. That's because this vaccine is cheaper than the Pfizer vaccine. It's also easier to store, easier to transport, and crucially easier to get to the care homes which are at the top of the U.K. priority list.

This also comes at a pivotal moment in the British pandemic. Have a look at this graph. It shows the number of people testing positive for coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic. And that chart is virtually gone vertical with the new variants, the fast moving variant of coronavirus.

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Sam Kiley in Jerusalem where the government is both celebrating the fact that it's a world leader in terms of the percentage of the population inoculated against COVID-19 with over 12 percent of Israelis now having had the injection, at least the first round of the injections, at the same time trying to balance that with not being overwhelmed by the rate of infection in the general population, which is running rampant so much across Israel at the moment

But Benjamin Netanyahu and his health minister are both advocating for a nationwide lockdown in the next coming few days, possibly for a week, possibly 10 days, possibly even two weeks in particular, sending children home from school with all of the disruption and the economic problems that that implies. But ultimately, they are trying to make sure that the rate of infection doesn't overwhelm the good work that they've done on vaccination.

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KING: Coming up next, the Georgia Secretary of State calls it rumor whack a mole nonstop misinformation about the 2020 vote, much of it coming directly from the President of the United States.

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[12:57:24] KING: President Trump likes to think he gets to decide what is true no matter what the objective facts and the evidence prove. His weakened phone call with Georgia Secretary of State is a case in point. The President keeps repeating things that courts have tossed out, that's not true. And the President is told maybe it's time to stop believing everything you see on the internet. Listen.

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BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: Mr. President, the problem you have with social media, they can -- people can say anything.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, this isn't social media. This is Trump media. It's not social media.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: CNN's Donie O'Sullivan is an expert tracker of these conspiracy theories. He's in Dalton, Georgia where the President has a rally layout today. Donie, you've been at this for months with these Trump supporters. And it's not -- still not true, but you have a better understanding than most of where the President's fantasies come from.

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: Yes, John, look, I speak to a lot of conspiracy theorists. I speak to a lot of Trump supporters who believe conspiracy theories. And it was pretty shocking. It was surreal last night to listen to that tape. And, you know, anytime I speak to people who really truly believe conspiracy theories, they'll lists out all these grand claims, false anecdotes as evidence for their belief in the conspiracy.

And as soon as somebody presents the facts to them, they will move on to the next anecdote and to another one and to another one. And that's precisely what was happening in the call that we heard last night from the Secretary of State in Georgia tried to fact check Trump. And it's not just Trump, of course it is his supporters. They do many of them still believe that Trump won this election, which of course he didn't.

And we spoke to some supporters here in Dalton, Georgia where Trump is going to rally tonight. Have a listen.

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O'SULLIVAN (on camera): So do you think that Trump will eventually accept that that Biden is the next president?

EILEEN O'BOURG, TRUMP SUPPORTER: No. Because --

SONA SHULER, TRUMP SUPPORTER: Biden is not the next president.

O'BOURG: I'm going to the inauguration for Trump. I've booked it before the election.

O'SULLIVAN: You booked --

O'BOURG: Yes, because I have faith, he's going to be there and he's going to be doing, he's going to be elected.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'SULLIVAN: And it's, look, it's not just a case of everybody being sore losers here and trumping a sore loser, you know, with the online information landscape between Facebook and Twitter and the dark corners of the internet like 8chan and 4chan. And then of course, Trump sympathetic news outlets, Fox News and even further to the right, the likes of OANN and Newsmax, there's this alternative reality, John, that's been able to be created that Trump and his supporters are buying into. John?

KING: Well, you remember, Donie, it was early on that Kellyanne Conway coined the term alternative facts so we're closing in an alternative reality I guess that is what it is, a little jealous. You're in the ground today for that big rally tonight. Be fascinating to see how much of it is about the runoff elections and how much it is about the President and his grievances. Donie O'Sullivan, grateful for the reporting there. We will stay in touch and grateful for your time today.

[13:00:05]

Stay with us, a very busy News Day, Brianna Keilar picks up our coverage right now.