Cases monday. The average number of daily new cases, 172,000 plus, highest number of the pandemic. Uncontrolled spread is now a fact of everyday american life. Dr. Anthony fauci warns going home will amplify the surge. The holiday week mission according to the surgeon general, keep grandma safe. The consequences of not doing that are quite plain. Look at the numbers. The u. S. Now averaging 1500 covid19 deaths a day. But every single one of those numbers is a person with a family to lose. I took care of a woman who after over a month in the icu was recovering from covid, and that should be a win. But we were trying to call her family every day to give them an update, we couldnt get a hold of anyone. One day we found out because her husband died of covid and her daughter died of covid, although she was in the hospital. So how did you tell somebody that . How did you tell somebody their family has died. More on the virus ahead. We begin with a transition wait now over. The biden transition can formally start after getting approval from the General Services administration. The acknowledgment is about nuts and bolts but also big priorities. The biden team gets office space, they get federal money, and federal resources to vet their people. They also get access now to covid19 data. This is crucially important with the surge and also theyll get information about how to distribute a vaccine. A big rollout for the Biden Campaign slated for next hour. We have cnns jeff zeleny in wilmington, delaware for us. Jeff, so what is going to come next in the transition . Reporter nia, no question this is one of the biggest moments we have seen yet in the transition. It is three weeks after election day, but were going to see the introduction of the Foreign Policy team as well as National Security team, their names are well known. Theyre rolling these out slowly for a reason. They want people to sit and savor on it. It is changing of the guard, no question. Not many new faces, more old faces from the Obama Administration, even the clinton administration, and that is one of the points, trying to show stability. Secretary of state nominee tony blinken, we hear from him for the first time. The nominee to lead department of Homeland Security, the nations intelligence community, the u. S. Ambassador to the united nations, the National Security adviser, and john kerry, he is going to be climate czar, a member of the president s cabinet and National Security council. Those are the first people introduced today. Nia, what it means, this is going to set the tone Going Forward. Most of these nominees are likely to be confirmed, at least thats the sense now. We do not know how successful theyll be with their Mission Going forward of changing americas policies with the world, changing domestic policy as well. We do know this is part of the president elects plan to try to return washington to an era of normalcy, if you will. Traditional sense, not necessarily a democrat or republican, obviously the democratic establishment, but pretrump era. One challenge is as the transition gets under way, cooperation between members of the Trump Administration and Incoming Biden Administration is an open question. Letter of ascertainment came last night. Yes, they have to give them funding. Beyond that, not much is required. Nia, even in normal senses, transitions are usually rocky. Once the biden team gets into the agencies to see whats in there, we do expect some road blocks still to be put up. This is a big development, three weeks after election day. Well see big announcements in the next hour. Thanks so much for reporting on the developments, jeff. And listen, if you go to twitter, you will find a clear snapshot of the president s mindset, willing to concede nothing, continuing to pursue a baseless fraud Conspiracy Theory about the election. We have Cnns Kaitlan Collins at the white house for us. Kaitlan, the president s public position is that the election was a hoax. We all know that that is an outright lie. So why did he actually move forward with the transition to the Biden Administration . Reporter well, it is not clear the president is the one that made that decision because while he tried to frame it that way on twitter, saying he recommended to emily murphy, gsa administrator, make the move, she said in the letter she acted independently, chalked up the decision to Supreme Court losses youve seen happen in the last several days for the trump team. That continues to happen as you see certification of votes in places like pennsylvania, something that the Trump Campaign sought to delay, also in michigan as theyre pursuing that as well. Youre continuing to see legal challenges that the president has relied on and his team relied on as an excuse for why the transition was not taking place continue to fail really all over the place. The question is Going Forward how does the president treat this. Some see it as closest you can get to concession from President Trump, but he says it is not a sign he is conceding, he says he is going to continue pursuing little challenges, though that path is dwindling and dwindling a lot. The question is how much further does he continue pushing this because youre starting to see republicans say the transition should start. Were waiting to see does this mean joe biden starts to get the president ial daily brief and all of the other factors that come with immersing yourself, taking over the federal government. So far, the president is tweeting about gsa, saying it does not meanest conceding. He says gsa transitions do not determine who is the president. We know thats true, but we have seen what the will of the American People is. They decided joe biden will be the next president. Nia, we will see President Trump today for the turkey pardon. It will be one of the rare times weve seen the president in the last three weeks since the election, but whether or not he will comment on this is still to be determined. Well see what happens at the turkey pardon. People are thinking of other people that may be pardoned by the president , not so much worried about the turkeys who the names i think are corn and cob. Thanks so much for that report from the white house. Joining me now, White House Reporter for the washington post, and we have laura barone lopez. Thanks for joining us. I want you to listen to one of the president s conservative media allies, what he has to say about the president s legal team that they promised a lot but delivered very little. You call a gigantic press conference like that, one that lasts an hour. And you announce massive bomb shells, then you better have some bomb shells. They promised blockbuster stuff and then nothing happened. And thats just not, well, it is not good. So does your reporting show the appetite for drawn out legal battle is disappearing because the Trump Legal Team has been solidly beaten over and over again in court . You heard rush talk about all of the promises they made as well as the president made about evidence and none of that evidence has materialized. The courtroom was where they were supposed to win back the election. Instead they lost multiple times in multiple states, not only lost, they lost in spectacular fashion with judges smacking them down and essentially saying their ideas and allegations are really just hard to believe, hard to believe they made cases in the court of law. Now that youre seeing conservative media move on, start to acknowledge the president is not going to have a second term, there are very few places left where the president is having the support that he had maybe in the first couple days after the election where there was a lot of Energy Around the idea that the election was being stolen from him, even though that was pretty baseless. Now theres sort of a defeatist attitude. He continues to want to fight and show supporters that he is fighting and that he is going to continue to fight to have a second term, but i think a lot of the people around him are starting to come to the realization that it is over, in the next two months he is not going to be the president , and theyre all trying to figure out ways to get him to come to that realization, not have him continue to put up fights that are losing battles. We have seen him losing in court, losing in the court of public opinion, members of the media, some big supporters are starting to say what theyre alleging in terms of fraud they say happened, they dont have evidence to back it up. All of it is conspiratorial and baseless and it is clear at this point they wont have the big bombshell they have been promising the past three weeks. And one of trumps attorneys, ellis, tweeted all the Media Chatter of biden picking his cabinet is like fantasy football, meaningless in the real game. Do you get the sense the president never plans to concede . Jenna ellis was on a Different Network yesterday, saying that President Trump actually won in a landslide. Theres a real possibility that the president never says the words that he is conceding or that he conceded to biden. Just leaves the white house come january, end of january, because whether or not jenna ellis wants to accept reality, the reality is that biden is going to enter the white house at the end of january and that President Trump is going to have to leave and be a one term president. Yes. Trump and his allies can continue to say that he won in a landslide, but those arent the facts. And we have increasingly said, a number of republicans havent strongly rebuked President Trump but said theres no evidence here and the country needs to move on. They have been slowly acknowledging bidens election as the president. And lets stick with the biden transition. So far a lot of members have been washington establishment. Those are folks he picked so far to fill out his cabinet. I want you to listen to jim clyburn, what he had to say about progressives, they should be happy with the likely treasury secretary pick. Miss yellen would not be satisfactory to the progressives . I would think they hit the jackpot when he named her to be the first woman to be treasurer. I dont know that this is status quo, this is picking up, building on what we got away from four years ago. Laura, is it your sense that progressive democrats are going to be happy hearing the Biden Administration, theyre essentially picking up and building on what the Obama Administration did . I imagine you want the Biden Administration to go further than obama did in his administration. Yeah. A lot of what i heard from progressives is thatme are thes ideal draft picks . No. It would have been ended up being Elizabeth Warren at treasury, not janet yellen. Is someone they can live with . Yes. A lot of appointments rolled out in the last day are people that progressives say that they think they can work with, that they can live with. They arent going to be angry and corner the Biden Administration about them, but they arent officials that progressives are in love with. And so the progressive wing has kind of scattered themselves a bit in the arguments they have been picking with the Biden Transition Team. You know, they love their dream candidate for interior secretary, would be deb holland. Theyre still trying to push for their candidates there, trying to push for sanders in a place like labor which could also potentially be a possibility. Thats even someone clyburn told cnn he could get behind because he thinks it would help with appeasing the basin terms of appointments to bidens cabinet. These arent candidates theyre in love with but picking fights elsewhere and ones that progressives can live with. Any thoughts on how the cabinet is shaping up so far, maybe some of the battles that lie ahead . I wouldnt be surprised if joe biden picks some specific members that the progressive wing of the Democratic Caucus wants, specifically in specific places. I wouldnt be surprised if he picked former or current republicans to join his cabinet. Biden talked about having a broad coalition, he picked some people that are establishment, some establishment democrats. I wouldnt be surprised if as he talks about level of diversity in the cabinet that he focuses on ideological diversity, considers conservative or moderate republicans as well as left leaning democrats and progressives to join the cabinet to try to have a level of diversity he thinks will be helpful to him when he becomes president. Fascinating to watch. Bernie sanders potentially at labor, could he get through the senate, maybe, we dont know. Seems like he is campaigning for the job, to have jim clyburn weigh in favorably is good for him as well. We thank you very much. Up next, what the medical professionals want you to know about possible covid19 vaccines. First a warning from the u. S. Surgeon general. We need to be very cognizant of the severity of the moment. A quarter of all coronavirus cases this year occurred in the last month. 40 states seeing cases go up. Those cases are turning into hospitalizations and deaths. You may not be able to go in, get your heart attack treated. I heard hospitals not able to provide care for pregnant women because theyre filled with covid beds, so thats the reality. We wait for the ultimate weapon against coronavirus, a vaccine, an update this morning from operation warp speed on a potential time line for rolling one out. We believe we can distribute vaccine to all 64 jurisdictions within 24 hours of fda authorization. Then we Hope Administration can begin as soon as the product arrives. One of the private sector partners, cvs health, said they expect to be vaccinating residents of nursing homes, one of the top priority groups, within 48 hours after fda authorization. Joining me now, paul offett, a member of the vaccine Advisory Committee. Thanks so much for being here. So we know the committee that youre on is going to review the Pfizer Vaccine december 10th, moderna on december 17th. Can you walk us through what the process is going to look like and how quickly a decision may actually come down . Typically what will happen is we will get data to review before we meet. Well go through all of the data, then we will meet and have a discussion for about nine or ten hours. Then at the end of that discussion, we go to whether or not we think the vaccine should be approved, for which groups it can reasonably be approved, given data would support that. That will happen december 10th. Then within 24 to 48 hours, the Advisory Committee for immunization practice, the committee that advises the cdc will also meet and independently review data. If they agree this should be approved for various groups, then in theory the vaccine can roll off shelves into the arms of the american public. Thats the other layer of the process, cdc Advisory Committee on immunization practice is meeting to discuss whether to recommend any of the covid19 vaccines that the fda might authorize. I want you to listen to what one physician told the committee yesterday about reassuring patients about potential side effects. As a practicing physician, i have got to make sure my patients will come back for a second dose, so i think we have a good head start, hearing what the vaccine efficacies are, but we really need to make patients aware of that this is not going to be a walk in the park. Theyre going to know they had a vaccine. Theyre probably not going to feel wonderful, but have to come back for a second dose. Doctor, do you agree that this will be a challenge and that this could weigh on the committees views on one vaccine over another . I dont think so. I think the immune system, our immune system needs a better Public Relations team. When you get a vaccine, youre being inoculated with foreign substance that should make immune response which is good. When you make immune response, uh you can have pain, muscle fatigue, fever. That means the immune response is working for you, should feel good about that. Shouldnt be any difficulty coming back for the second shot, knowing youre now in better position to fight off this awful virus which has killed more than 250,000 people, can cause a lot of long term effects. Need a better Public Relations team for the immune system. A new poll is out that shows 51 of adults would get the vaccine when it is available, but that number goes up to 70 when they feel the vaccine has been proven safe by Public Health officials. You need 70 of the population to get vaccinated for it to be effective. How do you get to those numbers if youve got americans reluctant in the first rollout of the vaccine . Well, i think what will happen is essential workers and variety of other groups will start to get the vaccine. Hundreds of thousands of doses will be given, millions of doses will be given. Assuming the safety portfolio remains, then people i think will feel better and better that it doesnt cause uncommon side effects, we will know based on data generated so far, doesnt cause a rare side effect. People will be more and more comfortable. Youre right. Most people that get the vaccine are healthy young people. What theyre worried about is safety. As we get more doses out there, i think people will feel more comfortable about safety. Thank you for your work. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you