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New Day

Coronavirus Cases Rising in States Across U.S.; President Trump Invites Republican State Lawmakers from Michigan to White House; President Trump Not Yet Conceded Presidential Race to President-Elect Joe Biden; CDC Warns Against Thanksgiving Travel As Cases Spike; Dr. Birx Urges Americans Increase Vigilance as Cases Spike. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired November 20, 2020 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Really should shock you. It's an historical aberration, as is the fact that the U.S. reported 2,015 new COVID deaths overnight. That's the most in a single day since May. We're back. We're back at this historic, horrific level. Sanjay Gupta has an exclusive interview with Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Deborah Birx, who worries what's next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. DEBORAH BIRX, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR: When you look at what's happening now, the rate of rise is dramatically different. So this is faster, it's broader, and what worries me, it could be longer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: More of her sit-down with Sanjay in just a moment.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: The post-election chaos brought on by President Trump drags on. There is new CNN reporting that the president knows he lost, and his refusal to concede is political payback for whatever Democrats did that angered him in the past four years.

So he has invited Republicans from Michigan, state lawmakers, to the White House today, possibly to try to convince them to overturn President-elect Biden's sizeable victory in Michigan and appoint pro- Trump electors. The Michigan secretary of state just told us in just the last hour that one of the invited lawmakers, the state house speaker, has not yet decided this morning if he will make that trip to the White House.

Moments from now, Georgia's secretary of state is expected to confirm that Joe Biden won there. That follows a statewide audit. We will, we're told, see the outgoing president today for the first time in more than a week, while the incoming president, Joe Biden, presses ahead with the transition, putting together his cabinet. BERMAN: Joining us now, CNN political commentator Van Jones, and CNN

global affairs analyst Susan Glasser. So we know what the president is now trying to do. The president is trying to overturn the results of the election. We know that because his attorney has told us that, has said that's exactly what they're trying to do now. And we know more than that, Van. We know where the president and his attorneys are trying to overturn the election, because Rudy Giuliani told us where. Listen to what he said at this thing he did yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUDY GIULIANI, ATTORNEY FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP: These ballots were cast basically in Detroit that Biden won 80-20. So you see it changes the result of the election in Michigan, if you take out Wayne County.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Oh, if you take out Wayne County, Van. So we know they're trying to overturn the results of the election. We know they're trying to take out the votes of Wayne County. They want to recount in Milwaukee. They're challenging votes in Philadelphia. They all have something in common, don't they, Van?

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, these are all majority black cities. And this is disgraceful behavior. And it's clear this is not something that they just thought up. The president's strategy apparently was not to win through winning votes of the American people. It was crazies, the courts, and Congress. Why is he having these crazy rallies where he's not talking about anything but Hunter Biden, Biden and all that weird stuff? Because he's trying to boost his turnout among extreme elements, which he was able to do. Then the idea is you go to court, you try to create as much chaos was possible, you get some of these state officials to say there's too much going on here. I'm not going to certify the elections. And then the whole thing lands in Congress. And the way the House of Representatives would handle that, Trump would be likely to win for reasons we could talk about.

But this is why from the very beginning he was talking about mail-in ballots and trying to lay out this case for fraud. Unfortunately, when they got to the courts, it all fell apart. There's nothing there. And so instead of going with their initial disgraceful strategy, they're going with a new disgraceful strategy, just strongarming people in their own party to ignore the vote count and the courts and just give this thing to Donald Trump.

CAMEROTA: Susan, it also seems at the end of this week that we now have more clarity. President Trump is not going to come to his senses, as some Republicans had hoped. This isn't a cooling off period where the president can work through the five stages of grief as some Republicans have suggested. It appears that this is where he will be, in this same head space, still fighting it for the next 61 days, until the inauguration. And I know you had wondered, coup or con. And what is the answer to that today?

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: I think initially people wanted to sort of give Trump the benefit of the doubt, at least his own party did. I think he's just once again exposed them for fools, frankly. You heard a lot, right, Alisyn. This is just the process playing out. He's allowed to resort to whatever legal remedies are available to him.

[08:05:03]

But as his court cases have collapsed, to directly appeal and pressure Republican lawmakers and state and local officials to essentially overturn the will of the voters, once again, Republicans have been signed up for something they claim they weren't signing up for. And I think when you hear a few people speaking out like Mitt Romney, it really underscores the cowardice of the rest of the Republican Party leadership, that they would go along with the most extraordinary post- election behavior by any American president ever, period.

BERMAN: Mitt Romney says it's difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American president. Now that's one Republican senator. Ben Sasse has put out a statement also. That leaves more than 50 others who have remained silent.

And Van, Alisyn and I disagree on this. I don't think it's going to work. I think it's not going to work. I think Joe Biden will be inaugurated January 20th. But I think what we do agree on is whether it works or not may not be the major issue here. This leaves a mark. This affects America.

JONES: Yes. Yes, well, listen, I think that this can be stopped. There's a group, ChooseDemocracy.us that has a lot of resources. People concerned about this, usually you don't have to fight in these extra innings in an election. Most presidents or contenders have enough grace and dignity and respect for democracy, they concede once they've lost the vote. But we do have these extra innings in our Constitution. I did a Ted Talk about it, if people want to look that up, that explains these extra innings and different ways that somebody who has no principles, no morals, no decency and no character can try to monkey with. And that's what's going on.

But you have to convince three state legislatures to do something that they've never done before, or haven't done since the 1800s. That's not likely to happen. But what it does do, is it's going to create tens of millions of people who do not believe that Biden was duly elected. Now we had on the left some bitter enders who never accepted Donald Trump. But Hillary Clinton wasn't out there whipping them up every day. This is a completely different scenario where you have people who are not accepting an election not because they read something on the Internet but because of the president of the United States is telling them not to, and he's strongarming members of their own party. This is an unprecedented level of disgraceful, dangerous conduct on the part of the chief executive of the United States of America.

CAMEROTA: And Susan, the reason that I'm not as sanguine as John is and can't say with complete, utter confidence of what's going to happen on January 20th is because I just know that Donald Trump, even before he was president, always had another trick up his sleeve. That's sort of how he has always operated. And so if these court cases are being laughed out by judges, OK, the next trick is trying to persuade these local lawmakers in Michigan. OK, we'll see. We'll see today if we go along with it. If that doesn't work, then we know last week he was talked out of a military strike on Iran's nuclear facility. I just think 60 days is a long time.

GLASSER: Alisyn, it sounds like your conversation with John is a lot like my conversation with my husband these last few weeks, because I'm with you. And my view is that Trump is the ultimate survivor, and that's keeping the balls in the air. And the fact that it's a low percentage, very low percentage scenario does not mean it's a no percentage scenario from his point of view, as long as he's still going. It's not that you're going to have the institutions collapsing. It takes perhaps a lucky shot with one or two bad actors. You get a couple state legislators here to flip. You get a couple of local board of canvassers there to flip.

I think you're right, that the two scenarios I'm most worried about would be are we going to get involved in some kind of an overseas conflict with Iran or elsewhere, perhaps this incident at Baghdad, what if Americans had been killed there and there was a response, and suddenly we're escalating in the Middle East. That's one thing that scares me. The other thing is, Trump all along has seemed to want to bring people out into the streets of the United States in part to then have an excuse to crack down and to impose his vision of, quote- unquote, law and order. And so destabilizing events here inside the United States, those are two major risk factors that won't go away.

But I'll tell you, December 14th, that's when the Electoral College is supposed to meet and set the votes for the election. That's a date that I have very, very much in mind these days.

BERMAN: Peter Baker is smarter and better looking, so that's a difference in the conversation you're having.

CAMEROTA: Than you.

BERMAN: Than me, exactly, the conversations you're having.

Van, I want to play what the President-elect, how the President-elect Joe Biden is now handling this, because he's being asked about it at every news conference. They clearly have to at least address it in some way. And this is what he said yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[08:10:12]

Let me choose my words here. I think they're witnessing incredible irresponsibility, incredibly damaging messages being sent to the rest of the world about how democracy functions, and I think it is -- well, I don't know his motive, but I just think it's totally irresponsible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So Van, there are those who say this isn't enough, that the Biden transition team has to be doing more to fight back. What do you think of the messaging that's trying to send?

JONES: Look, I think that he won the election, and he's putting together his transition. I think it's important for him not to try to enflame things and whip things up. That's one of the reasons people voted for him is to have somebody who has a steadier hand.

But regular people, listen, I understand all the talk before and Trump is the master of this and the master of that. This guy got thumped. He got whooped. He got destroyed in a landslide, a humiliating embarrassment. You've got to go back two generations to find a president more repudiated in terms of the popular vote. And he's clinging and scratching and trying to find a way out.

But our institutions are relatively strong. And if people want to do something about it rather than just sit here and be upset, ChooseDemocracy.us has information about how you can make sure your state legislatures simply obey the will of the people and certify the vote. This should be a rubber stamp situation for all these elected officials, it's a rubber stamp thing. The vote is clear, the courts have said there's no fraud. We need to move on.

And rather than being afraid and building him up as this big, all- powerful wizard, he's a loser. He is a loser. And we need to make sure that our elected representatives hear that from the American people this week and next week, until December 14th, and then we move on.

BERMAN: You make a good point about Joe Biden. He spent the last 18 months doing the opposite of what Twitter is telling him to do, and he won the election every step of the way like that. So this is what he's choosing to do now. Van, Susan, thank you both very much.

CAMEROTA: Coming up, CNN's exclusive interview with White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, what she says Americans need to know today about family gatherings on Thanksgiving. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to join us with that next.

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[08:16:15]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Coronavirus cases in the U.S. reached another daily high with more than 187,000 new infections. Here is the map. Almost every state is in the orange or red, meaning moving in the very wrong direction and those ones that you see in the beige, they are just holding steady at a high plateau.

Also, more than 2,000 Americans reported dead yesterday. That's the highest since May. The CDC and the head of the White House coronavirus task force are warning against traveling for Thanksgiving.

Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta has more now from his exclusive sit-down with Dr. Deborah Birx.

So what did she tell you, Sanjay? DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know,

she talked a lot about what's been going on with her over the last several months. You know, we haven't really heard from her since July 8th, not in a big setting, before yesterday.

But also, you know, how did we get to this position here? There was these differing messages. She sort of went on the road because she felt like Dr. Scott Atlas was giving the president bad information, and she wanted to go out there and try and collect the information herself and see what was going on, and that's really what she's been doing. What is the role of her personal responsibility and what does it mean for schools and things going forward?

Here's what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. DEBORAH BIRX, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE COORDINATOR: When you look at what's happening now, the rate of rise is dramatically different, and the number of states and the number of counties in the United States that have what we -- what we consider a red zone, because of their characteristics, is now well over half of the country. So, this is faster. It's broader, and what worries me, it could be longer.

And I think it's on all of us right now to make sure that it's not longer. I'm making the personal sacrifices not to infect my parents and my pregnant daughter, and there's a lot of people out there who know how to protect one another, and we just need to make sure we're all doing that.

GUPTA: You saw the news about New York City public schools. Because of the 3 percent positivity rate, they're going to shut down. Good decision?

BIRX: You know, Europe was willing to sacrifice restaurants and bars to maintain their schools. We ask college students to sacrifice their college experience, and even the universities that were open, it was a different experience, but we ask them to change their behaviors, to wear a mask, to physically distance.

We have 18 to 22-year-olds doing the right thing, and we're not willing to tell people that they really can't gather in public spaces or even indoors with their mask off with people that could have the virus, because that's how it spreads, and you can't tell.

And I think when this is all over, we need to look at our choices and really understand in a different way what choices is best for every American at the time.

GUPTA: Some of this is happening real time.

BIRX: Yes.

GUPTA: There will be time to reflect but you know, the New York City public schools, based on their surveillance testing, has about a 0.17 percent positivity rate. Why would you shut down schools when they are 0.17 and the city is 3 percent and keep restaurants and bars and other places like that open, even at limited capacity?

BIRX: I think the thing that confuses Americans and I've heard this in the Rocky Mountain states, when we tell people that these masks prevent transmission, they're not perfect, but when we tell them they prevent transmission, and then we close the spaces where people are 100 percent masked, and leave open the spaces where the people are unmasked, which we know is a transmission area, that's confusing to the American people.

[08:20:07]

I understand why it's confusing. They're like, OK, you said masks work, and I'm doing, I'm here and these spaces are safe and you're closing my space and leaving open the spaces where people are unmasked. And I think that's very -- I worry about that, because then it gives people the option to say -- well, bars and restaurants are open, then I can have 20 people over for Thanksgiving.

And so, I don't like it to be any number. I like it to be -- keep it to your immediate household, because you know, if you say it can be ten, and it's eight people from four different families, then that probably is not the same degree of safe as ten people from your immediate household.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So here we are, Sanjay. Here we are with 2,000 new deaths reported again today for the first time since May. Here we are, what Dr. Deborah Birx said at the end of the interview dove tails with the CDC guidance, which is don't travel for Thanksgiving. Don't meet with people outside your household, your immediate family, the people who live in your house.

You just heard it just so clearly from Deborah Birx there, and the CDC as well.

GUPTA: Yes, and I wish -- you know, I wish the CDC had said it this earlier. So many people made their plans for the holidays and maybe they were sort of the telegraphing of the message was out there earlier but now it's clear. I -- there was two things that struck me about this last portion of the interview. One is that we've learned a lot about this virus clearly. Nobody knew everything about this in the beginning and fact that household gatherings are a significant source of spread. We had indications of that from what we saw in California in the late summer, but now it's become clear.

Whether you're a bunch of family members thinking you're getting together for the holidays or packed bar, the virus doesn't care. It just likes people close together so it can jump person to person and it does that really well in indoor sort of settings.

The other thing is about schools, and you know, I was skeptical of schools opening in the middle of a pandemic. I mean, that just didn't make sense to me, but you've got to give credit, schools have largely done a pretty good job. I think it's because the rules are enforced in many of these schools pretty well. Sometimes they don't have the space to do it, but a 0.17 percent positivity rate in New York City public schools, I would not have predicted that. I don't think most people would have, so why do you shut down schools versus at least limiting occupancy in restaurants and bars?

Again, I bring this up not because it's a rear view mirror issue but because a lot of places, communities, families are making decisions going forward. So, you know, I'd love to see my parents for the thanksgiving holidays, if that's what we typically do, we cook together all day, we're in the kitchen, snuggle up close, watch a movie.

We're not going to do that this year. We're not canceling Thanksgiving this year. It's going to be different and there is a hope and a promise, really a promise that we'll do it next year.

CAMEROTA: Sanjay, I thought it was interesting to hear her framing about that dissonance between restaurants staying open, schools shutting down and it's masks. I hadn't framed it that way before.

So schools, it's been working. There hasn't been much community spread because they are forced to wear masks. At restaurants and small family gatherings in your home, you're not. So, you know, just -- look, I know you don't want to look backwards but I have a hard time not doing so, because wouldn't that message have been great nationally from the podium at the White House?

GUPTA: It really, really would have, and it's heartbreaking because they look at the numbers on the right side of the screen and it breaks my heart and so many families and I talked to the families.

But yes, Alisyn, I don't like to look backwards. I guess make it's my personality. I think that the idea that masks work so well should be a message that people really fully understand now, because lives can be saved.

I mean, in the Northwell hospital system up where you guys are, they took care of some 70,000 COVID patients in the spring, one of the systems that took care of the most patients, and their infection rate among health care workers inside, in hospitals, taking care of COVID patients was actually lower than the general population. Why? Because of masks.

Schools, why is it so much lower? Because of masks. Why is it so much higher in restaurants and bars? Because you got take your mask off to eat.

Again, I think fundamentally, hopefully I think people understand that point. I hope they do, but it's still very much a message they can apply going forward. You got to be really careful the next few months. Hope is on the way but the next few months are going to be critical.

BERMAN: Well, again, hope is on the way. It's an interesting day. Bleak day with the 2,000 new deaths reported, historic in that sense. But historic also, Sanjay, in that today is the day Pfizer is going to apply for emergency use authorization for its vaccine.

[08:25:03]

Talk to us about what that means.

GUPTA: I mean, I -- I'm -- it's remarkable. It really is, and, I mean, you know that I've been, it's been a sober year in terms of, you know, how we've assessed this pandemic but this is really good news. We've only heard this data from the company so far, so I have no reason to doubt it, but it's got to be verified. But what it means is that they've shown the vaccine is effective. We've seen 95 percent in terms of preventing COVID, but also seems to be safe. They got two months' worth of safety data, that was the marker by which they're now applying for this emergency use authorization.

There will be another vaccine committee that will review the data and then it will go to the CDC, if it all goes well, to determine, along with one of their committees, how it should be distributed, who should get it first. It's likely to be health care workers, and then there may be more than one vaccine over the next few weeks that gets this emergency use authorization.

So, you know, within the next several months, there could be a lot of vaccine available, but by the end of this year, even before Christmas, we could see some of the first people actually getting vaccinated for this for a disease that we didn't recognize at the beginning of this year.

So it's really pretty remarkable. It's going to take time for the general public to benefit from it, to get to that level of herd immunity, a term that so many people now understand, but looks like we're going to get there.

CAMEROTA: Sanjay, thank you very much. A great place to end the week on.

GUPTA: Yes.

BERMAN: So, two months from today, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president of the United States, but if there's one thing that we've seen just crystal clear, getting there is not going to be a cake walk at this point. President Trump is trying to overturn the results of the election. What does that do to the country, to the fabric of the nation?

Carl Bernstein joins us next.

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