Joe Biden & Kamala Harris Speak Out As A Ticket Later Today
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, their first appearance together as running mates is just hours from now.</s>LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: The race for a vaccine is on. Russia's phase three trial starts today. Why is Putin already claiming victory? Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is EARLY START. I'm Laura Jarrett.</s>ROMANS: Good morning, Laura. I'm Christine Romans. It's Wednesday, August 12th. It is 5:00 a.m. in New York. And it's 83 days until the election. In just hours, we will hear for the first time from Joe Biden and his newly picked running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris. The 55- year-old former state attorney general competed against Biden for the Democratic nomination dropping out last December. In an email yesterday afternoon, Biden called Harris the best person to help me take this fight to Trump and Mike Pence and then to lead this nation. He told supporters: I first met Kamala through my son Beau. They were both attorney generals at the same time. He had enormous respect for her and her work. I thought a lot about that as I made that decision. There's no one's opinion I valued more than Beau's. And I'm proud to have Kamala standing with me on this. CNN's Arlette Saenz has more from Biden's hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.</s>ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christine and Laura. Well, the Democratic ticket is set as Joe Biden selected California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. Biden informed Harris of his decision over a zoom call from his Delaware home on Tuesday. Now, Biden and Harris had faced off against each other in the Democratic presidential primary, including that heated debate moment over school busing. But ultimately, Biden said he doesn't hold grudges and decided to go with an experienced campaigner as his partner on the Democratic ticket. Now, Harris is one of only three women to make it to the vice presidential slot for a major party, following Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and Sarah Palin back in 2008. But she's also making history of her own as first women of color to be vice presidential nominee for a major party. Harris is the daughter of immigrants, her mother from India, her father from Jamaica. So, this is quite the historic ticket as Biden had faced some pressure to select a woman of color as his running mate. Now, Biden and Harris will appear together for the first time as the Democratic ticket here in Wilmington, Delaware. They are delivering remarks later in the day on Wednesday, and following that, they will hold a grassroots virtual fundraiser with their supporters as they are trying to energize Democrats and supporters heading in to the November election -- Laura and Christine.</s>JARRETT: Arlette, thank you so much for that. It didn't take long for President Trump to offer his assessment of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden's running mate.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's a little surprised that he picked her. I've been watching her for a longtime and I was a little surprised. She was extraordinarily nasty to Kavanaugh and I won't forget that. So, she did very poorly in the primaries and now she's chosen. Let's see how that all works out.</s>JARRETT: The president also described Senator Harris as the meanest and, quote, most horrible person but struggled to come up with a more consistent or coherent line of attack against her. More now from CNN's Kaitlan Collins.</s>KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Laura and Christine. It wasn't long after Joe Biden had announced his pick that the president came out to the briefing room yesterday and of asked what he thought about him picking Senator Kamala Harris as his vice president. The president seemed to do something that often he did not do in 2016, which is he struggled to land any kind of line of attack against Senator Harris. He talked about her record on fracking. He mentioned how she grilled Justice Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing. He said, he believed she was, quote, disrespectful to Joe Biden that time, of course, when they got into that heated dispute on the debate stage. So, other than that, the president really did not have one line of attack against Senator Harris and appeared to be reading off his bullet point list while he was sitting there in the briefing room and instead, you know, later asked on other questions on other topics circled back to Harris, naming off just multiple things. And, really, this is what we're been hearing -- what we've been hearing from campaign advisors that actually the president said she was his, quote, number one draft pick. She actually is the one they wanted the least out of several of the candidate that Joe Biden was interviewing because they are not sure how to attack her. You can see that in the first statement they put out yesterday where they were saying, essentially portraying her as this overzealous prosecutor back in -- during her days as a prosecutor, but now also arguing she's anti-police and trying to make this argument that they tried to make with Joe Biden. So, where that ends up it is still to be determined. But right off the bat, they did not have a successful line of attack against Kamala Harris. And, of course, one of the biggest sticking points of that is that Donald Trump has donated to her campaigns in the past, so as Ivanka Trump, so has the treasury secretary. And that's a question at the briefing yesterday, we tried to ask the president but he did not answer.</s>ROMANS: All right. Kaitlan, thank you so much for that. CNN special live coverage of the 2020 Democratic National Convention next week. We'll have all the biggest moments, the most important speeches and insight on what it all means for Joe Biden and the future of the Democratic Party. Watch starting Monday night at 8:00 Eastern.</s>JARRETT: We turn to our other big story this morning, the coronavirus. Florida and Georgia reporting their highest single day death tolls since the pandemic started. More than 1,300 Americans died on Tuesday and scientists are seeing some disturbing new trends. We get more now from CNN's Athena Jones.</s>ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christine and Laura. New startling statistics about COVID-19 among children and the elderly. COVID cases among children jumped 90 percent over the last four weeks according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children's Hospital Association, soaring 137 percent in the state of Florida alone. The Florida Department of Health says the total number of children hospitalized due to COVID has more than doubled. The new data on COVID in children adding to concerns surrounding COVID cases as schools in Mississippi, Georgia and Indiana, as COVID deaths among children are fast approaching the yearly death toll from the flu. Dr. Anthony Fauci pushing for the kind of simple but effective measures some state and local leaders continue to resist.</s>DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I feel that universal wearing of masks is one of five or six things that are very important in preventing the upsurge of infection and in turning around the infections that we are seeing surging.</s>JONES: That upsurge in cases being led by the South while new cases are growing fastest in Hawaii. And even as new cases are holding steady in most states, deaths nationwide average 1,000 a day for the past four weeks now. Meanwhile, a new report by the American Healthcare Association and the National Center for Assisted Living says community spread is to blame for an alarming spike in nursing homes. A 58 percent jump from mid- June to mid-July -- Christine, Laura.</s>ROMANS: All right. Athena, thank you so much for that. OK. With no stimulus deal on Capitol Hill there are big questions about President Trump's end run around Congress on unemployment benefits. On Tuesday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow affirmed the administration has backed off the $100 weekly state unemployment contribution required in the president's executive order. Instead, states can count their existing benefits in a match envisioned by the White House.</s>LARRY KUDLOW, WHITE HOUSE ECONOMIC ADVISER: Any state who has already been given at least 100 bucks in benefits now qualifies. OK. They don't have to engaging cost shares. If they choose to they can add. So we will put in to all those states who qualify which I think will be 50 states $300 of federal benefits. So, that equals $700 per person, per week.</s>ROMANS: Three hundred dollars. Kudlow calls that $300 a good, generous compromise. But be clear here, $300 is less than Democrats proposed in their stimulus package and less than the enhanced benefits that people had for four months. It is half of what people had over those four months. Second round of stimulus checks won't be coming any time soon even with bipartisan support for direct payments. These negotiations have stalled. It's not clear what the payments would look like. The Republicans proposed to keep the parameters largely the same as the first-round ever checks to Americans. Democrats want to send out, Laura. bigger checks. Bottom line here, we're heading into the second week where this important aid this shock absorber for people who have been thrown out of work over the sum certificate gone and with the White House proposing here is half of what people had before.</s>JARRETT: And people just want to know, when is their money coming?</s>ROMANS: Exactly.</s>JARRETT: Put aside all of this jumble rhetoric. All right. President Trump and President Putin both in the race for a coronavirus vaccine. But the Russian leader is taking the bigger risk. We have the latest, next.