Transcripts For FOXNEWSW FOX News Sunday With Chris Wallace

President trumps refusal to accept the results of the election as his legal team fights on. Does the president have a case . Well ask former independent counsel ken starr and harvard or law professor lawrence tribe. Plus, president obama settles scores in his new book. Well ask our sunday panel about the former president s thoughts on the rise of donald trump. And our power player of the week, remembering game show legend alex trebek and the fun we had on jeopardy. Do you dumb it down for celeb fews . Celebrities . All right now on fox news sunday. Chris and hello again from fox news in washington. The coronavirus is coming back with a vengeance. With every state in the nation now reporting increases, president elect biden has urged President Trump to do more to confront the crisis, calling the federal response woefully lacking. On friday mr. Trump broke his recent silence on the a pandemic to promote progress on a vaccine. But he still refuses to concede the election or coordinate with the biden team. In a moment well speak with the cochair of the Biden Coronavirus Task force, former Surgeon General vivek kmurthee. Jacqui heinrich is tracking the president elect in delaware, but lets start with the thousands of Trump Supporters in the streets of washington this weekend. David spunt has that story. Reporter good morning. Just this morning when referring to president elect joe biden, President Trump tweeted, quote he won before falsely claiming the election was rigged. Still no formal concession from President Trump, and the trump faithful will not give up. On his way to the links saturday morning, the president drove through a crowd from across the country who came to the Nations Capital to show their forth. Thousands marched from Freedom Plaza near the white house to the steps of the supreme court, an outlet to voice frustration from the Election Results. This is the United States of america were free, and youre not taking it from us. Reporter demonstrations continued into the night as farright and farleft groups clashed. After a week hiatus from public remarks, on friday the president announced a vaccine would be available to the majority of americans by april but much sooner for those in need. The vaccine will be distributed to frontline workers, the elderly and highrisk americans immediately. Well be very a matter of weeks, get out very, very much ahead of schedule. Reporter the announcement comes as the Washington Post reports at least 130 secret Service Agents assigned to the president have contracted covid19 or are quarantining as a result of exposure. On saturday President Trump took another crack at a covid relief bill as infections rise nationwide and his time in the white house appears near an end. The Trump Campaign continues to file legal challenges, though none have made a difference 2007 it comes to the election outcome. Chris . Chris david spunt reporting from the white house. David, thank you. Now lets bring in Jacqui Heinrich in wilmington. Reporter chris, president elect joe biden has more than four decades worth of friends in washington lining up for jobs in his incoming administration, and the jockeying has begun. But more than a week after his projected win, the General Services Administration Still hasnt unlocked access to funds, agencies and information needed to reach full speed. Are you any closer to making a cabinet decision . Yes. Reporter expectations are rising for president elect biden to announce his secretary of state, and sources tell fox news former National Security adviser susan rice is being pushed by former president barack obama. Rice, already vetted as a member of bidens vp short list, brings institutional knowledges and clearances that could blunt the impact of the late transition, but she warned of growing peril in a saturday oped writing no incoming team can counter what it cant see coming. Rice may face a confirmation hurdle in the senate. It has competition in tony blinken and william byrd, also senator chris coons whos actively vying for the job. But team biden is also toe tapping about lack of information for coronavirus especially with testing and Vaccine Distribution plans, and theyre considering legal action if things dont change soon. Were not interested in having a food fight with the gsa administrator or anyone really. Reporter bidens Transition Team says they are on schedule, chipping away at nearly 4,000 appointed roles to fill, but this week theyre opening some applications to everyday americans. Chris. Chris jacqui, thank you. And joining us now, dr. Vivek murthee, cochair of the biden transition covid task force. Doctor, the latest numbers on the covid surge are deep lu alarming. Deeply alarming. More than 184,000 new cases just on friday. Thats up 76 over the past two weeks. More than 68,000 people now in hospitals and more than 1400 deaths friday. Question whats going on . Whats causing this really troubling surge . Well, chris, youre right that we are in an alarming phase of this pandemic, and these are staggering numbers that we never really thought with we would see in terms of cases and hospitalizations, not to mention the overall death toll. But whats happening is a couple of things. One is we never really got our caseload down to a level that was truly manageable in the spring, and we didnt actually have the testing and Contact Tracing to prevent subsequent rises in infection. But now in particular with winter, as people move indoors,es this is actually the perfect setup for the virus because its easier to spread indoors than outdoors. But theres one last component which is really important which is pandemic fatigue. People are tired. Weve been at this now for many months, and i get that. Part of that fatigue means people are letting others into their bubble, theyre getting together for inperson dinner parties, for game night. Public Health Departments are tracing more and more cases back to these kinds of gatherings, so you see the explosive spread that we have. Chris so what is the Trump Administration doing wrong at this point given that a lot of this just seems to be baked into the cake, and what specifically, and i mean specifically, will the Biden Administration do better . Well, there are a few things for us to think about in terms of addressing the current surge. One thing i really want to emphasize is when you get to numbers that are this bad, the most immediate thing that we can do to reduce the spread is actually lies in our behavior and the choices that we make. It turns out that wearing masks, keeping our distance from others, washing our hands, these seem almost too simple, but theyre very powerful in actually reducing the spread. President elect biden has talked about in terms of his plan which he wants to do differently, which he wants to start from day one is really a plan that focuses on expanding our Testing Capacity so that we can do better surveillance and diagnostic testing, also increase our Contact Tracing force so that we can contain infection once we find it. He wants to increase the production of ppe or protective equipments for our health care workers, so they all have masks and gloves when they need it. He wants to put really clear guidance together so that schools and businesses, but also faith organizations, sports leagues and families know how to operate safely. Chris, though you should just say one i should just say one more important thing is none of this is going to be possible if we dont rebuild public trust. When you do the way you do that is by communicating honestly, by leading with science and scientists in the face of this pandemic and, ultimately, by delivering results. Chris is the delay in the transition because President Trumps is contesting the election, is that delay hurting the ability of the Biden Administration to take over on january 20th in dealing with the covid pandemic . Well, its very important, chris, for the transition to be able to talk to existing administration, and the reason is that there are thousands and thousands of career civil servants, political appointees who have been working very hard on this pandemic for many months now. They have plans that are in process, they have data thats collected that the public doesnt always have access to. And to be able to see that data, see those plans is whats going to help us put together the best possible product in the end. So those dialogue ares are critical. Theyre you want to get them started as soon as possible, and theres a lot of work for us to do now still even though we dont have access to the department, but were going to need that as soon as possible to make this all work well. Chris one of the big questions, of course, is whether the countrys going to have to engage in another lockdown. One of your colleagues on the biden covid e task force talked this week about a possible 46 Week National lockdown, and President Trump responded to that. Take a look. We can pay people to lose their jobs, we can pay small business, we can take care of city, state and county governments. This administration will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully the, whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration itll be. I guess time will tell, but i can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown. Chris now, president elect biden says hes not thinking of a National Lockdown. One of your colleagues on the Task Force Said youre thinking not of an on off switch, but more of a dimmer. Having said that, the governor of new mexico just issued a two week stayathome measure, the governor of oregon is talking about a partial twoweek lockdown. Can you honestly say if things get bad enough, arent we going to need a National Lockdown . Well, thats a measure of last resort, chris. And im glad you raised this, because the way we think about lockdowns is different now than it was in the spring. In the spring when we didnt know a lot about covid, we responded in a sense with an on off switch. We just shut things down because, you know, we didnt know exactly how this was spreading and where it was spreading. We learned a lot more since then that tells us that the better way to think about these safety restrictions is more the dial that we turn up and down depending on severity, and thats really the key here, is applying these restrictions judiciously and precisely. If you look at new york city, for example, theyre applying not broad restrictions everywhere, but looking at specific zip codes to see where the outbreak is severe. What we need, chris, and the reason that you see so much variation in what states are doing is that we dont have a National Alert system guided by the best possible evidence that can help states and localities determine when to dial up and down these restrictions. And we also dont have adequate resources for them to put these restrictions in place. Schools, for example, which still dont have resources to expand class sizes, hire more teachers and improve ventilation. If we just lock down the entire country without targeting our efforts, we are going to exacerbate the pandemic fatigue people are feeling, we are going to hurt jobs and the economy, we are going to shut down schools and hurt the education of our children. So weve got to approach this with a precision of a scalpel rather than the blunt force of an axe. Chris then there is the issue of the vaccine which seems to be making remarkable progress. President trump talked on friday about getting it out as quickly as possible starting perhaps even in december. But then he talked about Governor Cuomo of who has said that he wants to check any vaccine the Trump Administration delivers. Take a look. He doesnt the fact that its this white house, this administration. So we wont be delivering it to new york until we have authorization to do so. Chris what do you think of President Trumps statements singling out new york for a delay in the vaccine, and how does the biden transition, Administration Plan to deal, one, with getting out the vaccine and also dealing with the issue of peoples concern about the safety, the reliability of actually getting vaccinated . Well, crust, youre chris, youre bringing up one of the most challenging parts of this Pandemic Response which is how to deliver that vaccine. You know, we vaccinated americans for many years, you know, in our country, but the campaign were going to have to build to vaccinate enough people to create herd immunity in america will be the most ambitious vaccination campaign, i believe, in our countrys history. And doing that requires people to trust that the vaccine is safe and that its i factive. Unfortunately, with know from recent polls that a significant number of people are worried that the process of developing the vaccine and proving it may have been politicized. So now the onus is on us to be as transparent as possible in helping them understand what the science does say, having experts review the data, making that data readily available so that even people outside the government can review it. Thats what were going to have to do. And ultimately, the way we allocate this vaccine has to be determined based on need. And that and that alone, we cant afford to let politics creep in to decisions we make around the vaccine because otherwise were going to put lives as stake. Chris dr. Murthy, thank you, and well, of course, be tracking the work of your task force. Thank you so much, chris. Its really good to be with you today. Chris up next, well discuss President Trumps legal fight to contest the 2020 election with two leading experts on constitutional law. Does the president have a case . Ok everyone, our mission is to provide complete, balanced nutrition for strength and energy. 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Professor tribe, before we get into specific causes, what do you think of President Trumps cases, what do you think of President Trumps overall effort to litigate the election and to hold up the transition in the meantime . I think his overall effort is dangerous even though we know its going to fail. The republicans themselves know that President Trumps claims that bidens votes were fraudulent are without merit. Because if those claims were true, then those republicans too would have been elected fraudulently or mistakenly because they were the same ballots. Now, if we know that trump is going to lose in the courts and we do why should we care . The reason we should care is that he is undermining democracy because there are millions of people who will believe him even though there is nothing in his arguments and no evidence to back them. Chris let me bring in judge starr. A department of Homeland Security committee of federal, state and local officials issued a statement this week, i want to put some of it up on the screen. They called the election the most secure in American History and said there is no evidence that any Voting System deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised. Judge, what do you think of the president s effort to hold up the transition while he litigates the election vote counts . Its a very important process, and what we just heard from the distinguished professor tribe, i think, gives new meaning to rhetorical hyperbole. Our system is designed to check. Lets check