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CNN RIGHT NOW

Trump Fires Defense Secretary Esper Effective Immediately; Biden Lays Out COVID Plan after Announcing Advisory Board; Pfizer Says, Early Analysis Shows Trial Vaccine More Than 90 Percent Effective. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired November 09, 2020 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:07]

JOHN KING, CNN INSIDE POLITICS: I appreciate your time today. Brianna Keilar picks up our coverage in this breaking news story right now.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN RIGHT NOW: Hello, Brianna Keilar. And I want to welcome viewers in the United States and around the world.

We continue with the breaking news 48 hours after the election was called for Joe Biden, President Trump has just fired his defense secretary.

I want to go to CNN's Kaitlan Collins at the White House. Kaitlan, can you give us the latest on this?

KAITLAN COLLIN, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Brianna. The president just let us know by Twitter that he has terminated Mark Esper and is instead going to put an acting defense secretary in his place. That's the director of the National Counterterrorism Center that's going to be serving in that position.

And this is a role that Esper likely would only have for about two more months, but it was clear that the president had been wanting to fire Esper for some time. And, Brianna, he came incredibly close over this summer to doing it, and had to have some interventions from Esper allies to convince him not to fire the defense secretary while he was campaigning to be reelected.

And so they had assured the president he could wait until after the election and then he would have this chance, and now the president has taken it. And it's notable that it actually took this long for the president to do so. Of course, he has been a little preoccupied over the last few days with trying to contest the outcome of the election.

But the president and his defense secretary had a relationship that completely deteriorated since about May. They had been on terrible footing to where the president was furious with Esper on so many occasions. He, at one point, in a press conference, remember, referred to him as Yesper, saying that he was a yes man, who say yes to everything. And it was very clear that the writing was on the wall that Mark Esper did not have long to go.

And last week, our colleagues at the Pentagon reported that Esper had actually prepared a resignation letter in case he needed to turn it in this week, because they wanted to make it as smooth of a transition as possible, so he knew this was coming. But instead of letting Esper turn in that resignation letter, it appears the president has just flat out terminated him.

And we'll have to wait to get details because, remember, the last time the president fired a defense secretary with Mattis when he resigned in protest, excuse me, the president and his aides tried to frame it as a retirement was happening when actually we found out shortly thereafter that Mattis was resigning in protest over the president's decisions when it came to troop withdrawals.

So we'll have to wait to see what are the details here with Esper and how exactly this went down. But the other thing is, Brianna, he might just be the first one that's on the chopping block, because we know the president has been very unhappy with the attorney general, Bill Barr, because he didn't feel like he prosecuted enough of his political opponents or prosecuted any of his political opponents to the degree that the president wanted, but also the FBI director, Chris Wray, who typically would serve a ten-year term. The president has also wanted to fire him as well.

So, really, what the president is saying with this tweet firing Esper is that this is not going to be a quiet transition that you've seen with past presidents in this lame duck period, when someone else is replacing them, it can also be a pretty sleepy period. Donald Trump, clearly, is not going to be, Brianna.

KEILAR: No, clearly not. Kaitlan, thank you so much.

I want to go over to Barbara Starr at the Pentagon. And to that point, Barbara, this is supposed to be about transition. Normally, at this point in time, it is about moving things as smoothly as possible, especially we're talking about a change in party here, and that is not what this is doing. Tell us what the effect of firing Mark Esper, what is the effect going to be on the country on national security?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, there's no way around it. To some large extent, it throws the system into turmoil at the moment because this really is, at least right this minute, a shockwave through the Pentagon. Everybody knew Esper was on the outs with the president. But there was a sense, if you will, that he could make it through to the end of the administration.

I mean, just a minute ago, I was out in the hallway. I stopped the first military officer that I saw in the hallway that I knew. I asked him, have you heard, he said, what? They didn't even know. And so I gave him the news. And his response not suitable for the air waves, because it was that much of a surprise.

So where are we now? Esper will go. We will find out exactly how all of this transpired. But there are a number of things at the Pentagon now that are exceptionally critical. You still have troops in Afghanistan. The president says he wants them home by Christmas. Military commanders have told the president that's too optimistic, there's still a high level of violence, U.S. troops need to stay in Afghanistan. Will that be a decision, a recommendation from commanders in the field that the president let's stand?

The same thing about troops in Syria, troops in Iraq and a number of Special Forces arrayed across Africa, what will happen with the troops? Is the president simply going to issue some edict, he wants everybody to come home?

[13:05:00]

That would throw things into significant disarray because the U.S. military wants to have an enduring presence overseas, extend U.S. influence with allies and keep a sharp watch on adversaries. So this will be an issue.

Mark Esper was actually scheduled to travel to Europe next week to talk about troop withdrawals from Germany and a revised U.S. military presence in Europe. Don't know if that will now happen with the new acting secretary of defense, may not. And that will be an issue because the president wants a troop reduction in Germany. U.S. commanders have mixed view on that.

When Congress comes back and really gets to work on the defense spending bill, one of the first things on the agenda, and Mr. Trump may be headed for a significant loss here, will be that legislation part of the spending bill to rename military bases that are currently named after confederate generals.

Congress with bipartisan support wants to rename those bases, the president does not. He may be headed, by all accounts, for a significant loss on that in December. There is just no way around it. It throws everything into a bit of turmoil, not to say that the new acting secretary is not a perfectly competent person, doesn't know the issues, can't get involved very quickly, but it throws things into turmoil.

And, once again, potentially, you know, left on the hot seat here is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley. He is the president's chief military adviser. He is broadly seen as someone who tries to deal with Trump, who tries to find a way to convince the president to do the right thing on military decisions. Some people say he is an ally of Trump. Most people say he is non-partisan as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

But Milley is the guy left behind. Milley is now the guy that the president will ultimately turn to for military advice. And will he be able to convince the president, you know, not to have a period of turmoil in national security for the 70-plus odd days ahead of us until inauguration. Brianna?

KEILAR: Yes. It's hard to imagine -- I want to bring Kaitlan back into this -- for someone like Mark Milley to look at a decision like this and say, oh, that is the right thing for the country that I am sworn to protect. And, Kaitlan, one of the things you mentioned was this might not just be a one-off thing, that there are other folks who are on the chopping block here.

So what's going on here? The president clearly, at this point in time, and I'm sure you should be aware of this, at this point in time, in a lame duck presidency, this is where the lame duck president sort of fades into the background, their power is certainly diminished at this point in time and eyes start to focus on the transition of the new administration coming in. It seems like the president, with his kind of typical attention-seeking behavior, is having a really difficult time with that.

COLLINS: Yes. Donald Trump does not like to not be in the headlines. That's something that aides have said he is going to struggle with since it has been declared that Joe Biden is the winner. But also, Brianna, he doesn't like not being in charge and not feeling like things are within his control. Because this is a president who thinks he can will things into happening, and we have seen that take place even with the election.

He was surprised and astonished that Joe Biden could potentially beat him. He kept talking to aides about that, saying, could this person really beat me, and could I really be down with suburban women voters, something that he talked about at rallies.

And so the president tried to will himself into being reelected, even though the writing had been on the wall for months was that his poll numbers had been dropping. And so this is something he can't control. He can control who's in his cabinet and Mark Esper was at the top of the list, so was the FBI director, so was the attorney general.

Though I should note, we have not laid eyes on Bill Barr in quite some time. No one really knows what the attorney general has been up to. And the FBI director has also been keeping his head down in recent days.

So, that's the question. Is the president going to continue this purge, to this revenge purge basically to get back at people who he didn't like what they have been doing for the last several months? And he would have fired them earlier if he had not been up for reelection.

And he was basically told by aides, if you fire these people, it's going to be bad for you, it's going to affect your reelection chances, and the president didn't get reelected anyway. So now, I think he is taking his anger out on people like Mark Esper, who knew that this was coming likely. But as Barbara noted, still the fact that it happened today was a bit of a surprise.

So the question is why Esper now and who is next.

KEILAR: And, look, Joe Biden did win, right? So I want to bring in the CNN Political Analyst Carl Bernstein to talk about how this will affect Joe Biden, because that's really the question now, Carl. This is a nation in transition to a new president, to a new administration.

[13:10:02]

So, how is this, and if we see other firings by the president, how is this going to affect the country and Joe Biden's administration?

CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: What this is indicative of is how dangerous a period this transition is because the president of the United States is in rage, he is unpredictable, he is dealing with the most powerful instruments that the president commands, which is to say our defense establishment, which, remember what it was that Esper did that most enraged the president was, Esper said he would not allow the dispatch of troops to put down Black Lives Matter protests and to be used in protest situations. That's what really enraged Trump about Esper, was the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak.

We don't know what he's going to do next in terms of the FBI Director Wray, who is also in the likelihood going to fire. Gina Haspel, the head of the CIA, who he also doesn't like. Meanwhile, there are funds being held up for the transition, the GSA, the government agency that controls the funds for having an orderly transition, those funds are not forthcoming because the president hasn't let them go so far.

And meanwhile, he continues to refuse to accept the will of the people and he continues to undermine confidence in our most basic electoral system, the very basis of American democracy, he has not yet accepted his defeat. He is still encouraging those who followed him to contest this election.

So we are in a precipice situation, really dangerous, with an enraged Donald Trump.

KEILAR: But it will end eventually, right? That's what we know. I mean, when you think about this being a dangerous situation, this transition period, you could also think of a situation where had President Trump won reelection, it would also have been a time of complete turmoil.

Well, this will come to an end here in a couple of months, Carl. So I wonder what your prognosis is for the country, weathering this, charging ahead for allies around the country, taking a look and knowing things are just going to be just kind of, I guess, tumultuous around here for a little while. But in this period, do you think that the country can weather it or do you think that is this something that really does open up vulnerability?

BERNSTEIN: Well, one, we still see the president as willing to provoke constitutional crisis. He is not willing to avert constitutional crisis, and that includes how he is conducting the transition and it also includes giving the signals to his followers that he does not want to go gentleman in the night, and he still wants to contest the election.

The good news here is that everybody I talk to says that McConnell in the Senate and a good number of Republican senators are prepared to step up and publicly say that this president has got to undergo and deal with an orderly transition and they will not allow him to undermine the electoral process any further because that's what he's set out to do, to throw this whole election process into doubt. He is going to continue to do that. But there needs to be, and McConnell was prepared to do it from everything that I hear, there are 20 Republican senators, I think it is well known up there on the Hill, 20 or so Republican senators absolutely despise Donald Trump. They're happy to see him lose, as long as the Republicans hold onto the majority in the Senate. They too are going to start insisting that the president accede to the will of the American people.

So if he is going to go, and he is starting to recognize it, according to other people at the White House, but can he continue to throw monkey wrenches that really screw up the wheels of government and the wheels of democracy and make it much more difficult for Joe Biden to move ahead as quickly and as authoritatively and as expeditiously as Biden would like, and to try to delay and impede people who didn't vote for Biden to perhaps embracing his presidency, Trump is still insisting on being the disrupter, not the uniter, and to continue to conduct a presidency by rage and anger.

KEILAR: Indeed. All right, Carl --

BERNSTEIN: And the (INAUDIBLE).

KEILAR: Yes. Carl, thank you so much.

We're going to have more on this in a moment.

Also, we have some breaking news in the pandemic. Pfizer says its vaccine is more than 90 percent effective. We'll talk about what that means in terms of distribution.

Plus, the case numbers across America are rising at an alarming pace.

[13:15:03]

And Republicans sure felt different about the media calling a presidential race in the past? We'll roll the tape.

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KEILAR: America has elected a new president and President-elect Joe Biden is establishing his future administration's top priority, which is tackling the coronavirus pandemic that the Trump administration has failed to even attempt to contain, Biden meeting with his COVID advisory panel and pushing for more PPE and free testing nationwide.

Another big headline on coronavirus, Pfizer announcing its vaccine candidate is more than 90 percent effective, which is sending the stock market soaring to record heights.

[13:20:05]

It is a bright spot in this darkest hour of the pandemic.

The U.S. now experiencing for the first time an average of more than 100,000 cases a day. Here was the president-elect moments ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: Projections still indicate we could lose 200,000 more lives in the coming months before a vaccine can be made widely available. So you can't forego the important work that needs to be done between now and then.

This election is over. It's time to put aside the partisanship.

A mask remains the most potent weapon against the virus. Today's news does not change that urgent reality. I won't be president until January 20th. But my message today to everyone is this. It doesn't matter who you voted for, whether you stood where you stood before Election Day, it doesn't matter your party, your point of view. We can save tens of thousands of lives if everyone would just wear a mask for the next few months, not Democrat or Republican lives, American lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: As Joe Biden sets his plans to fight the pandemic, President Trump continues to fight fact and results of the election, feeding unfounded claims that the election was stolen from him and preventing the Biden transition team from some critical funding.

I want to go now to CNN's Jeff Zeleny, who is in Wilmington, Delaware, covering the Biden transition team. And, Jeff, tell us about this advisory panel and how the president-elect said he is going to expand this.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, the president-elect certainly making clear what his top priority here is, and that's coronavirus, and continuing some of those same themes we heard him deliver in his victory speech here Saturday evening, going forward, by saying, look, the election is over.

So, holding that meeting with the advisory board members, he is making a case that he is really putting sharp focus on this.

But one question is what would he do with Dr. Anthony Fauci? Would he bring him into this? Now, we know right now that Dr. Fauci is saying he is not commenting at all on this transition. He is a government employee. So anything like that would have to happen after the president-elect takes office. But that, of course, is something that we all have our eye on.

But it is clear that Joe Biden making that statement, masks are not political. That is going to be a central theme of what we hear the next two and a half months or so, very different from the message we've heard from the White House.

So the Biden campaign is making clear -- Biden transition, I should say, is making clear that coronavirus is its top priority, even as they start building out the rest of the potential government transition, this is the central focus.

We have not usually seen something like this in terms of doing this first. Usually, it is a chief of staff first or the secretary of state nominee, but this is the central focus. And I am told we're not going to hear other names of potential transition until later this week and this month, Brianna.

KEILAR: All right. Jeff, we will be awaiting that, as we always do every four years. Thank you so much, Jeff Zeleny.

Then the most promising news on coronavirus today is that early analysis of Pfizer's vaccine shows that it is more than 90 percent effective. This comes as the five highest days of new cases since the pandemic began have all happened here in just the past five days, almost 106,000 new cases reported yesterday. There are 43 states seeing increases in new cases. There are zero states that are reporting decreases in cases.

I want to bring in Elizabeth Cohen. She is our CNN Senior Medical Correspondent here with more details. And, Elizabeth, the CEO of Pfizer is cautiously optimistic but called this news, quote, an important day for humanity. So that's not exactly --

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's big. No, yes, that doesn't sound like cautious optimism. But you can understand his enthusiasm. There are four COVID vaccine trials in the United States. This is the first one for which there are any results. And even though they are interim results, not the final results, still, they do have some very, very strong data here.

Let's take a listen to what the CEO of Pfizer, Dr. Albert Bourla, told our colleague, Sanjay Gupta, this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ALBERT BOURLA, CEO, PFIZER: I think that, likely, based on impact, that would be the greatest medical advance in the last 100 years, if you think about it, right? And it is extraordinary but it's coming at a time the world needs it the most. Right now, only the U.S. will have 100,000 victims of COVID every day, 1,000 deaths every day. I can't count how many people are losing their jobs every day. So it's a very important day for humanity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: So, let's take a look at the actual numbers behind this, as he called it, a big day for humanity. Let's take a look at these numbers.

[13:25:00]

So, Pfizer had 43,000 or a bit more than participants in its study. Half of those folks got a vaccine and half of them got a placebo. Then it was a waiting game. They waited several months. 94 of those 43,000 people became sick with COVID. Nobody knew though had they gotten the vaccine or the placebo. Then the study was unblended for those 94 participants. What they found was that only 10 percent of those 94 people had received the vaccine. 90 percent of them received the placebo.

So what that tells us is that if you have a run-in with the virus, you get vaccinated and have a run in with the virus, you have 90 percent chance of not getting sick. Brianna?

KEILAR: Yes, that's amazing. And we've heard experts, Elizabeth, over and over say, it is not the vaccine, it is vaccination, right? So this is a great step. But what happens next with vaccination?

COHEN: Yes. This is actually tough. This is not going to be an easy road. Let's take look at those steps.

So, first of all, they need to get FDA authorization. That may prove to be the easiest part. Then it is a very complex distribution. This vaccine has to be kept at minus 103 degrees Fahrenheit, like pretty much constantly until shortly before you give it. That is tough. There is no vaccine like that or even close to that in the United States. Also, it might turn out to be a yearly shot. Also, you have to get two doses, so you have to come in once and then come in again. And then you have to convince the public to get it.

And, Brianna, past few months, you and I discussed this quite a bit, poll after poll shows the same results, that many, many Americans don't trust this vaccine, they don't want to get this vaccine, even if it is over 90 percent effective, it is 0 percent effective if people don't get it. Brianna?

KEILAR: We'll see over time if that changes. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you so much, live for us from Atlanta.

Dr. Leana Wen is an Emergency Room Physician at George Washington University, she's also a CNN Medical Analyst.

And, Doctor, Pfizer made a point to clarify to CNN that the vaccine is more than 90 percent effective. Explain that to us.

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Yes. So based on the data that we have so far, it looks like the vaccine is 90 percent effective or a little more than 90 percent effective at preventing infection.

I'm concerned though that that's the endpoint that they're measuring, whereas I think what most of us care about is the endpoint of preventing severe infection, preventing somebody from getting very ill, from being hospitalized from dying. And we just don't have those data yet. I don't think most of us care if we have the sniffles or if we just test positive for COVID-19, but if we get severely ill.

And then, as Elizabeth was just saying too, there is a long road between actually getting the vaccine approved and getting it distributed to hundreds of millions of Americans. And so we really have to keep up our guard in the meantime, make sure that we keep wearing masks, practicing six foot distance, washing hands because this is not a magic bullet.

KEILAR: So -- and, yes, that's right. Distribution is going to be something -- we're not going to get it right away. Everyone is not going to get it right away.

So there were 94 trial participants who did fall ill. We know that 10 percent of them had received the vaccine, others took a placebo. Is this, to you, similar to the flu vaccine where it is still possible to get the flu or we know that, look, some people will get the shot but they are going to get the flu, but you're your symptoms will be less severe or that seems like that magic bit of information you're still waiting on?

WEN: That's exactly right. So, we don't have that information yet. What we do know is that if you get the vaccine, it appears that you have a much lower likelihood of getting infected with COVID-19. But we don't know whether getting this vaccine prevents you from severe illness. And we also don't know whether this vaccination will reduce risk of your transmitting COVID-19 to others.

And so I think we all eagerly await those results and I hope that they will be made public, not just in the form of press release but actually having those data be publicly available, peer-reviewed in scientific journals will also be really important too.

KEILAR: That's right, so that doctors can read this data, not just shareholders, right? It's very important.

Dr. Leana Wen, thank you so much for that.

We do have some more on our breaking news. President Trump has fired his defense secretary just 48 hours after officially losing the election. We will have new details about what that means for the country here in these key transition months after this.

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