Biden urges America to mask up for 100 days as coronavirus surges

The President-elect revealed the galvanizing, altruistic, first national rallying call of his administration in an exclusive CNN interview on Thursday with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, previewing a sharp change of direction when he succeeds President Donald Trump.

"Just 100 days to mask, not forever.

Ever since President Franklin Roosevelt took office in the dark days of the Great Depression in 1933, the first 100 days have marked the apex of a new US leader's power and often the most prolific period for policy wins.

During the interview Thursday, Biden referenced the steep challenges Roosevelt confronted when he was first elected, noting that the current circumstances are "not unlike what happened in 1932."

"There was a fundamental change, not only taking place here in the United States, but around the world," Biden told Tapper.

There's genuine, genuine anxiety."

FDR told Americans in his first inaugural address that "the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself," steeling a demoralized citizenry to hold firm amid a banking crisis that threatened to destroy an already devastated economy.

Biden will take office amid the most extreme domestic circumstances of any president since Roosevelt, with sickness and death rampant and millions of Americans unemployed, hungry or at risk of losing their homes.

Like his Democratic forbear, he will use the iconic opening moments of his term to summon an exhausted people to unite, in common cause -- with the help of new vaccines -- this time to beat the virus and save the economy.

That's the really complicated piece," Biden said, noting that governors and mayors told him they need far more financial assistance to get the vaccine delivered, which he described as "an incredibly expensive proposition."

"That's why we're continuing to hope that the Senate does something and responds to the immediate need to provide dollars.

They're scared to death."

Biden's diametrically different Covid strategy, particularly his call for Americans to mask up in the first 100 days, is already being welcomed by medical experts who are watching in horror as daily Covid deaths soar over 2,500 per day even before the feared escalation in infections following Thanksgiving travel.

"President-elect Biden, and his leadership and listening to scientists, believe that if we all wore our masks for 100 days, we would have a significant reduction in the transmission of the virus," said Rick Bright, a former Trump administration vaccine expert who resigned after warning the administration ignored warnings about the early spread of Covid-19.

"The science shows that wearing a face mask reduces the spread.

Biden says Harris will be a full partner

While Biden and Harris had differences on an array of issues when she was running for president -- from their health care plans to her desire to see the Justice Department prosecute Trump after he leaves office -- she and Biden showed their policy alignment during the interview, which also offered some clues into her role and portfolio as vice president.

"We are full partners in this process," Harris said.

"So on every issue that impacts the American people, I will be a full partner to the President-elect and the President."

She mirrored Biden's position, for example, on how the administration would treat any potential investigations into Trump's conduct after he leaves office, even though it is different than the tone she used toward Trump during her campaign.

Biden told Tapper that his Justice Department will operate independently, and that he would not direct them on how or who to investigate: "I'm not going to be saying go prosecute A, B or C -- I'm not going to be telling them," Biden said.

And we are going to assume, and I say this as a former attorney general elected in California -- and I ran the second largest Department of Justice in the United States -- that any decision coming out of the Justice Department, in particular the United States Department of Justice, should be based on facts, it should be based on the law, it should not be influenced by politics, period," Harris told Tapper.

When Tapper asked Harris what her portfolio would be as vice president -- whether she would head a Covid-19 task force, for example, as Vice President Mike Pence has -- Biden interrupted to say he would answer the question.

He said he planned to enlist Harris on whatever the most urgent need was at a given moment, much as he did for President Barack Obama as vice president.

"Whatever the most urgent need is that I'm not able to attend to, I have confidence in turning to her," Biden said, noting that was dissimilar from former Vice President Al Gore's approach, which was to handle an entire issue portfolio like the environment.