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NYT: Manhattan D.A. Interviews Deutsche Bank & Broker Employees in Trump Probe; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to Meet on Next Steps for Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine; Model of Projected Deaths Due to Coronavirus Lowered in Light of Recent Vaccine Data. Aired 8- 8:30a ET

Aired December 11, 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]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And this indicates that President Trump still faces the potential threat of criminal charges once he leaves office.

But we begin with the pandemic. Joining us now is Dr. Jose Romero. He is the chair of the CDC's advisory committee on immunization practices which will meet today to discuss the vaccine's next steps. Dr. Romero, it's great to have you to let us know what will happen. So what will the CDC do, and when do you think Americans can be vaccinated?

DR. JOSE ROMERO, CHAIR, CDC ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON IMMUNIZATION PRACTICES: Thank you. Good morning. So the ACIP will meet today to discuss the vaccine and other issues. This will be a half-day meeting, and then we will meet again on Sunday. And on Sunday if there is an EUA officially posted for the Pfizer vaccine, we will have the vote from the ACIP regarding its use.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So what happens is that the FDA will officially grant emergency use authorization, then the very next day the CDC basically will decide whether or not to go for it, and then by the next day people could start getting the shots in their arms.

A lot of data, a lot of information presented over the last 24 hours, and I know you were watching it very carefully with a keen eye. What open questions -- and, again, this won't keep you from approving this and getting it in people's arms on Monday or Tuesday, but what questions still remain for you about the Pfizer vaccine as far as who should be receiving it?

ROMERO: Yes, I think that the area that I'm interested in the most is that group of individuals 16 to 18 years of age. I want to hear more about it. I want to look at the numbers of individuals enrolled and make sure that the data is robust enough to make a recommendation across the board. And we'll have a chance to discuss that with them today.

CAMEROTA: Because right now the Pfizer vaccine is not recommended for children under 16, but you're saying that it's that age gap between 16 and 18. And how will you get answers on that if they haven't been part of clinical trials?

ROMERO: We'll have to see what they can tell us. I think they have bridging data, they have other pieces of information that we haven't seen yet. We'd like to be able to talk with them about it. But again, it will wait until we have the actual meeting with them and be able to ask these questions directly.

BERMAN: And again, just because it's unknown doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Sometimes these open questions are the most important and they will be answered in a favorable way. You just need more data. It's so early in this process, this is so unprecedented compared to what we have seen before. And in some ways it is a triumph of science.

So, too, is some maybe adverse news overnight in a bit of an ironic way. We learned from GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi that they have had a bit of setback with the development of their vaccine. They are not getting the immune response that they were hoping for among older patients, and they are going to go back to the drawing board. This is one of several vaccines that the U.S. government to an extend had been counting on and had already pre ordered 100 million doses. Why is it important that it isn't getting the immune response they had been hoping for from older patients?

ROMERO: Well, we've been concerned all along that the vaccines would not work as well in that older group. We know that older individuals don't mount an immune response and don't get protection as well as younger individuals. So we want to know, we want to make sure that it covers that age group. The mortality, the morbidity is highest in those individuals 65 and over. So the vaccine, we would like to see vaccines that work very well in that group.

Now, that doesn't mean that the vaccine would not be licensed. It may be very beneficial for those younger. And so if we have sort of a menu of vaccines that we can recommend across the age spectrum, that's a benefit to the American public.

CAMEROTA: So if, as you just described, the advisory committee that you sit on does meet on Sunday and votes on Sunday and does move ahead with the Pfizer vaccine, what day can Americans first be vaccinated?

ROMERO: I think it will depend on when the vaccine arrives in each state. So we're scheduled -- we in Arkansas are scheduled to receive vaccines sometime in the first part of the week of next week. So as soon as we have the vaccine, we will move forward to immunizing those individuals that are in phase or tier one, 1-A.

BERMAN: So the IHME model, which is the projection that the government has been relying on and a lot of people have been looking at, is projecting a horrifying number of deaths by April, more than 500,000. But there's been an adjustment in their projections where they now believe because of the data that they're seeing from Pfizer that the vaccine will have a larger impact on mortality by then than they had anticipated. They had been projecting it would save about 11,000 lives by April. Now they're saying more than 20,000 approaching 30,000.

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What does that tell you? What do you think that they are seeing that they find encouraging enough to suggest that more lives might be saved more quickly?

ROMERO: Well, I think it's primarily the efficacy data, the data that shows that it has 95 percent efficacy. But those numbers are predicated on the fact that people accept the vaccine. And so it's very important that those individuals, both health care workers, long- term care facility residents, accept the vaccine and take it. Without doing so those projections won't come true.

CAMEROTA: Dr. Jose Romero, thank you very much for all of the information. Obviously, we will be watching very closely this weekend.

BERMAN: Joining us now, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, you've been in the middle of this watching every twist and turn over the last 24 hours, and it's historic to say the least. Just remind people what we just saw, where we are this morning, and where we might be on Monday.

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, what we saw yesterday was nine hours of meeting of these various people coming together looking at all this data that the FDA scientists had been preparing for them, and basically coming to the majority conclusion that they would recommend that this vaccine be authorized for emergency use.

The FDA almost always follows toes recommendations, and frankly, I was a little surprised it didn't happen last night. I think it's going to happen probably anytime now. And then as soon as that emergency use authorization is granted, some of the process that Dr. Romero was talking about begins, planes, trains, all the transportation of this vaccine begins mostly from Kalamazoo, Michigan, to all of these places around the country, and then that meeting on Sunday, Dr. Romero was talking about, it's the final meeting that actually makes the formal recommendation. You've got it authorized, but now the CDC is saying we are recommending it for these people, and possibly recommending other people don't take it or they take it with certain caveats. As he was just saying, for example, the 16 and 17 year-olds that's going to be a point of discussion.

It's very interesting. I looked at the data carefully, he was referring to this, but there was 103 participants that were 16 or 17 years old in the trial out of the 44,000. So a very small number. So do they look and say, look, it's just insufficient data? Or do they say, they're going to be lower down on the list any way in terms of when they get the vaccine, we will continue to collect more data on them. And by the way, is a 16-year-old that different biologically than an 18-year-old? Can we bridge the data from adults and apply it to the younger people?

A lot of considerations here. I find the process fascinating. We're getting to see this sort of unfold real time, but all of it leads to this very, very strong likelihood at this point, which is amazing really in terms of the scientific rigor, that in a couple of days, early next week, we'll start seeing these vaccines actually being implemented.

CAMEROTA: It is amazing. It has been a marvel to watch how all of this has come together. The less good news of course is the Sanofi GlaxoSmithKline vaccine and the news that they have to put on the brakes because something has gone wrong, I guess, in their clinical trials. So the 100 million doses that the U.S. invested in they say will not be ready until early -- well, late next year, late 2021. So what went wrong? Does this one use the same MRNA technology that we've heard about?

GUPTA: No, it doesn't. It uses a much more sort of gold standard approach to vaccines. And when you are talking about GSK and Sanofi, these are some of the biggest vaccine makers in the world. So that's an interesting side story, because if you had to hedge your bets and you are in the summer or the spring and saying which of these companies is able to actually be able to do this, well, GSK has done a bunch of vaccines, tons of them, and Moncef Slaoui, who is the head of Operation Warp Speed, that's where he came from, GSK. So you would have thought that that's the place where they're going to hedge a lot of their bets.

And they did. They bought 100 million doses. But it just goes to show you how fast medical technology is changing, and these MRNA vaccines, which most people hadn't even heard of before last year, the work on those started during SARS, but most people hadn't heard of these this year at all, they are the ones that are first and, so far at least, the most effective.

So I was surprised by that. Basically, you give an antigen and you want to have the body create an immune response. The antigen that they were giving just wasn't creating enough of an immune response in people who are older, which, by the way, they define as 50 or older, so not that old I will say.

BERMAN: Oh, man.

GUPTA: Yes, right. But it wasn't generating the response that they wanted. Maybe it's effective in younger people. We'll see.

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BERMAN: I've got some time. Not much.

CAMEROTA: I have a lot of time before I get there.

GUPTA: I'm way past that.

BERMAN: Sanjay, I talked about the IHME model, and I think I read the data correctly that they're still projecting a horrifying number of deaths by April, but they think the vaccine may save more lives by then than they had earlier projected. Is that the right reading of the new data? And what do you see in it?

GUPTA: Yes, this was very interesting. Chris Murray, who is with IHME, he was talking about this last night, and what he basically is pointing to is if you look each more carefully at this Pfizer data, we know that the 95 percent number after two doses. But there is that three-week period where you're in between the first dose and the second dose.

It's a very hard period to assess because it's just three weeks. How much of -- if the question is how much of an impact does just one dose have, the official answer is, around 52 percent. But it's a hard number to project. When you look at the actual charts you actually see infection rates start to come pretty significantly down after that first dose. And when they included that into the model, the efficacy of just the first dose alone, that's what brought those IHME models, the numbers down. Not a lot, it didn't bring it down a lot, but I think this is going to be really interesting to follow.

And a point of contention I can tell you within the scientific community. You've got x number of doses, huge demand obviously all over the country. Do you give everybody a first dose and then wait for second doses to be manufactured? Or do you give half of the doses and keep half in the refrigerator for the second dose? I know that Dr. Offit and Dr. Fauci very much feel like you should split it, half and half, that way you absolutely get to the 95 percent efficacy for a certain number of people. There are other people who say, no, we are in the middle of a pandemic, it does offer significant benefit just to give that first dose. Why wouldn't you just inoculate as many people as possible with the first dose right away? I think that's going to be a point of debate even among the CDC this weekend.

CAMEROTA: Really interesting. Sanjay, thank you very much for all the information.

GUPTA: You got it. Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Breaking news. "The New York Times" has new reporting on the Manhattan District Attorney's Office investigation into President Trump's finances. New details on interviews that they recently completed for a criminal probe. That's next.

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAMEROTA: Breaking news right now, "The New York Times" is reporting that the Manhattan district attorney's office has recently interviewed employees of President Trump's lender, Deutsche Bank, and the latest indication that the president is still facing the potential threat of criminal charges once he leaves office.

CNN's John Harwood is live at the White House with the breaking details for us.

So what do we know this morning, John?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: What we know, Alisyn, is a little bit more about why the president appears to be so unsettled and unwilling to accept his election defeat because as a private citizen, he is going to be a lot more vulnerable to what Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is doing. Cyrus Vance recently "The New York Times" is reporting, has interviewed employees of Deutsche Bank, the president's banker, Aon, his insurance brokerage, as part of a criminal investigation of the Trump Organization.

We don't know a lot of detail about this, but we've gotten outlines of what it may be about from Michael Cohen in his public testimony in which he has said before Congress that President Trump had a pattern of lying about the value of his assets, inflating them, in order to either get good publicity or impress lenders, but lying on the down side, deflating them, for the purpose of avoiding taxes and this appears to be what Cy Vance is investigating.

Cy Vance, remember, a state and local prosecution is beyond the reach of a presidential pardon. So even if the president decides that he is going to pardon himself before leaving office, which is a legally dubious step, never been tried, he could not pardon himself from a state charge. This is in addition to the civil investigation that's under way by the New York Attorney General Letitia James.

And all of this, again, we do know not if Cy Vance is ultimately going to bring charges but I think this is one reason why all the talk about Trump potentially running in 2024 has gotten a little ahead of itself. Set aside the fact that he is an overweight 74-year-old man, there is also a chance that he could be facing criminal prosecution after he leaves office and it is not beyond the realm of possibility that he could end up in jail.

BERMAN: So he's got that going for him this morning is what you're saying.

John Harwood, thank you very much for that reporting.

It is interesting. It gives you an insight into his state of mind as he prepares to leave office on January 20th.

Joining us now, CNN senior political commentator David Axelrod and CNN political analyst, Toluse Olorunnipa, White House reporter for "The Washington Post."

David Axelrod, I want to start with you because I think your blood pressure runs lower than most of ours when it comes to all of the developments that we're seeing. One of the things you consistently said about President Trump is are we really surprised he is doing this out in public, trying to overturn the results of the election, he told us a all along he was going to do this. So, you personally are not surprised by this.

I'm not saying it doesn't bother you, you are not surprised. You say you are surprised, though, you say you are surprised, though, that these 106 members of Congress have signed on to this legally vacuous lawsuit this morning, trying to overturn the results of the election and literally undermine democracy.

Why does that surprise you? DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Look, I'm not

terribly surprised by that because they have been -- they have been following his lead for four years. I thought it was really interesting that Mike Johnson, the congressman from Louisiana, sent an email out to his colleagues saying the president is anxiously awaiting the list of who joins. And they still are in fear of him and more than that, John, in fear of the base that he has stirred.

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Remember, you know, large majorities, over 70 percent of Republicans now say they think there was something fraudulent about the election and they want -- they want to be on the record as saying they did everything they could to fight this unjust result.

So, yeah, I mean, the length of the list is surprising to me. The fact that there are those who are on it does not -- and I must say I expect that there will be some theatrics on the floor of the house when the results of the -- when the -- you know, the electoral results are presented and we've already heard from Jim Jordan and others that they want to make some sort of fight on the floor of the House over this. This is all theatrics to support the president's claims.

CAMEROTA: Yeah. What about that, what about this next plan? So when this lawsuit that they have signed on to and this amicus brief goes nowhere as expected, what about that plan that some -- that at least one Republican in the House and one in the Senate are signaling that they could try to stop the Electoral College count or certification?

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah, this is as Axelrod said this is all theatrics and a performance of loyalty to Trump. Now, it does have some measure of impact on the process, but ultimately, Joe Biden will be sworn in on January 20th. This is all sort of Republicans trying to show how loyal they are to the president so that down the road if they need an endorsement, the president has this list of people that he is looking at and he will be able to say these people stood with me, these people decided to try to subvert democracy to keep me in office.

So, I do -- I do expect at least one senator, at least one House member to try to gum up the works and try to slow down the process of certifying these results in Congress. It won't ultimately work, it will just sort of slow down the process and make it a longer process, it will make it a more complex process, but at the end of the day, the process will go forward, this is just sort of a performative approach by these Republican trying to show that they are loyal to the president, that he has their allegiance and if they need him down the road which he does have sway over the huge Republican base, that they will be able to count on him.

So, I do expect at least one Republican in both chambers of Congress to try to gum up the works, but ultimately they will have no ability to stop this freight train of Joe Biden administration coming through and likely to be sworn in on January 20th.

BERMAN: Yeah, just so people know, January 6th --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Go ahead, David.

AXELROD: I just want to say despite my low blood pressure, I do have grave concerns about the impact on our democracy because you're setting a precedent here. You know, Democrats control the House so you're not going to see the House slow down -- you know, you're going to see the House do what Congress has always done which is accept the verdict of the Electoral College.

But now, we're introducing these uncertainties that somehow all -- everything is fungible, everything is challengeable. If you don't like the result you can wage these extra constitutional fights, and that is -- that is frightening in the long term and damaging to our country.

So let us not be casual about that.

BERMAN: No. I agree 100 percent. Just because it won't work, and it work, I mean, it factually won't, it will slow down the process on January 6th by a few hours but it's not going to keep Joe Biden from being the president of the United States. It just won't happen.

Toluse, I want to ask you about something happened overnight, which was there was a federal execution of a 40-year-old man named Brandon Bernard who was involved with a murder some years ago. The details of this case perhaps not as unusual this morning as the fact that it was an execution during a lame duck presidency, which we have never seen before, and the fact there have been nine federal executions now since July after a period of, what, 17 years in which there wasn't a single federal execution and we know that the president intends to allow for more federal executions in the next three weeks.

What's going on here? Why the rush to have the federal government do something in some cases it's never done before and at a rate it certainly never has before?

OLORUNNIPA: This is exactly what President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr want to do in these final weeks. This is the legacy that they want to have in their final weeks in office. There is no one really clamoring for this when it comes to sort of bipartisan, you know, support for this kind of approach.

As we mentioned, we had gone 17 years without a federal execution, we have not had federal -- in between during the lame duck period of a presidency, but it really clearly shows the result of the fact that, you know, elections have consequences and the fact that President Trump is going to be president until January 20th means that he can push through policies that are unpopular, policies that, you know, raise moral and ethical questions.

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But he has the power to do it just like he has the power to issue pardons up until January 20th. I would expect him to go ahead with these executions, a handful that

are left between now and January 20th. We can't forget the racial impact of the vast majority of these people being executed are black males and that is something that even as President Trump said that he was more criminal justice reform, he has not shown any qualms about pushing forward these executions even though there is a disparate racial impact. So, I would expect the executions to go forward despite the fact there is bipartisan push back against them.

CAMEROTA: I mean, I just find the juxtaposition, David, of the flurry of pardons for President Trump's convicted friends and then this spree of executions for convicted criminals who are not President Trump's friends to be strange. And why does he want to be -- why does he want to be known as having the most executions?

I mean, I know that he claimed at one time law and order, but there were all sorts of people, people who he had sided with a few weeks ago, high-profile people from Kim Kardashian to Ken Starr to Alan Dershowitz who pointed out that new evidence came out about this guy.

He was 18 years old during the commission of this murder. He wasn't the gunman. Apparently, he wasn't even one of the leaders of it.

It's a horrible crime, by the way, horrible crime. These two youth ministers were brutally murdered, OK?

AXELROD: Yes.

CAMEROTA: But the new information is what all of these high-profile people thought should have been relevant in the original conviction of this guy.

AXELROD: Yeah, and, in fact, Dershowitz and Ken Starr together tried to enter the case on Thursday night on behalf of this -- of Brandon Bernard and were unable to stop this from moving forward.

Look, you say why does -- it doesn't seem strange to me because Donald Trump lives in the land, thrives off of wedge issues, and there's no wedgier issue than this, than the death penalty.

So he sees there is a political advantage with his base to be pushing these forward and he wants to -- he wants to engage on this issue. I wish he would be spending as much time thinking about trying to keep Americans alive in this pandemic as he is playing wedge politics on these issues.

This man who was quite young when the crime was committed deserved to exhaust all of his legal remedies. He was remorseful, he acknowledged his role, but his role was perhaps less than deserving of the death penalty. But Donald Trump doesn't care about that. He wants a fight over the death penalty, he thinks that's an issue that works on his -- in his favor with his base.

And let me just make one completely unrelated point on this if I can on the John Harwood piece on the investigation, one of the reasons I think that Trump has intimated that he will run for president again in 2024 is that if he is indicted he wants to be able to turn to his base and say they're trying to stop me and they're trying to stop you from getting back that which was stolen from us, which is the power in the White House.

So, I mean, I think in every case you have to look at this through the prism of how does it work in Trump's mind for his politics and in this case on the death penalty, he thinks death penalty politics works in his favor with his base.

BERMAN: David Axelrod, Toluse Olorunnipa, irreversible, we will say that when we are talking about executions.

AXELROD: Yeah.

BERMAN: Irreversible.

Thanks so much for being with us.

Coronavirus cases spiraling out of control, hospitalizations and deaths hitting new records. So, what does this mean for whatever plans you might still have for Christmas?

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