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West Wing Flooded with Pardon Requests; Weekly Jobless Claims Out; Laid Off Workers Face Hunger; CDC Forecast for COVID-19. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired December 17, 2020 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:30:00]

JOHN BERMAN, ANNA: Ringing off the hook, Axe, inside the White House with people talking and asking for pardons or clemency.

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, well, I mean, in fairness, there's nothing else going on, really. Just a pandemic, a massive hack by a country overseas on our computers and our government.

No, listen, this is thoroughly predictable. This is thoroughly -- he is looking for a vaccine for corruption investigations and that is what these pardons would be.

And, you know, look, we were talking about this before the election. I said there was -- there was going to be a pardon palooza at the end of this administration. And I -- and it's coming. And, you know, one of the things -- these two issues that we've raised here, I wonder whether that wasn't on Bill Barr's mind when he took off -- announced his resignation, I guess he hasn't taken off yet, because he knew it was coming and as much water as he carried for the president, maybe he thought he, you know, he would absent himself from this.

This is going to be something I suspect that we've never seen before. Prophylactic pardons for all of your family and friends and collaborators. Really extraordinary.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And, apparently, Abby, there's a flurry of phone calls coming in directly to the White House, to Jared Kushner, to the president directly, trying to score one of these pardons. Obviously, there's a process for this, but it sounds like they're circumventing that and not going through it.

One more bit that I just want you to comment on. The president, at times it sounds like, suggests he's not going to leave the White House. At times it sounds like he is going to Mar-a-Lago. Hard to know. But the CNN reporting is quoting a Trump adviser who says he's throwing an f-ing temper tantrum. He's going to leave, he's just lashing out.

Your thoughts on any of all of this. ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's an open question how

the president might decide to leave the White House. I think most people around the president believe that he will leave. I mean perhaps he's mulling or voicing the possibility that he might not. You know, it wouldn't be surprising to me if that came up in conversations because he tends to, in chats with -- late night chats with his friends say a lot of things that he doesn't ultimately end up doing.

But I think most people around him believe that he will leave. The question is how. Will he go to Mar-a-Lago and stay there? Will he leave on the day of the inauguration, even if he may not participate in the inauguration activities in Washington?

Will he choose to have that last ride on Marine One, you know, around the National Mall heading to his final ride on a U.S. Air Force plane back to Florida, to where he's living? These are all questions that are facing him and I don't think there are any clear answers to it.

But, you know, the people around the president know he's going to leave because they're leaving. You know, the White House communications director, Alyssa Farah, she's leaving. There are a number of other officials looking for jobs, getting other jobs, walking out the door. So everybody around the president already knows what's happening. I think the expectation is that President Trump also sees these tea leaves and no matter what he says to his friends late at night, at the end of the day, his lease at the White House is up on January 20th.

AXELROD: Yes. Guys, this is crazy talk. He is leaving. It's just a question of whether he leaves on his own or whether he's escorted out of the building, but he is leaving. He lost. He is no longer president on January 20th. The White House is for the president of the United States. And as of noon on January 20th, that will be Joe Biden. He is leaving. And so all -- we shouldn't even entertain this in his -- you know, his -- whatever goes on between his left ear and his right ear is up to him, but we don't have to dignify it. He is leaving.

BERMAN: The Constitution says so.

PHILLIP: Yes.

AXELROD: Exactly.

BERMAN: David, your new episode of "The Axe Files," they're all such interesting conversations. This one really jumps out.

You spoke to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and you talked about her view of House leadership, specifically House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and whether she will vote for Nancy Pelosi to be the next speaker.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): I am prepared to vote for her as -- as an option. And I think what's important, though, is that we don't just, you know, give our votes away. I want to make sure that we're able to secure advances that either for the progressive movement or commitments to make sure, whether it's a vote, whether it is, you know, commitments on -- on certain issues early and often, that that -- the support that my constituents entrust with me is -- you know, is translated into material progress.

[08:35:05]

But that being said, you know, I think, when people talk about the politics of the House, and I'm sure you're well -- well aware, this isn't just a personality contest, this is an extremely, extremely difficult job that requires wrangling an entire caucus, some of which have members who, you know, are very conservative.

You can make the most progressive person ever speaker of the House, it's -- it's still going to yield very difficult challenges because you're still managing a caucus with very conservative members.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Interesting, David.

AXELROD: Yes, I think she was -- I -- the way I read that was, yes, I'm going to vote for her and I want to assure my progressive followers that we're going to get the best deal we can get. But, this is a hell of a tough job. Pelosi does it pretty well. It's not like someone's going to do it better. I mean that's how I read it.

But it's interesting to hear her navigate that and it -- and what it portends, which is Pelosi's going to have to deal with this progressive block in a narrowed-down house on many, many issues and there are going to be a lot of negotiations moving forward, I think.

BERMAN: David Axelrod, Abby Phillip, our thanks to both of you.

AXELROD: Thanks.

BERMAN: All right, we do have breaking news.

New unemployment figures. Those details just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:40:28]

BERMAN: All right, we do have breaking news. The weekly jobless claims just released.

Christine Romans here with that.

Not good, Romans.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: No, it's not good, John. And 885,000 first time jobless claims in the week. You can look at the

trend there. Four of the last five weeks this number has risen. This is now the highest level of first-time claims since September. It is a sign that the job market is slowing down again here as the virus is resurging around the country.

When we look into some of these numbers, we know that 5.5 million people are continuing to receive claims, down a little bit, but that is a very high number historically. When you add in all the programs, another 400 and some thousand on pandemic unemployment insurance, all together the number on the right of your screen, John, 20.6 million people are receiving some sort of jobless benefit, a standing army of unemployed people in this country right now.

The trend going in the wrong direction. Economists and policymakers very concerned about a dark winter here with light at the end of the tunnel, of course, because of vaccines. That's going to happen the second quarter, maybe second half of the year. Right now, a job crisis that is worsening, John.

BERMAN: A job crisis that is worsening. Washington needs to get out of its own way and get this relief to people and soon.

ROMANS: Yes.

BERMAN: All right, Christine Romans, thanks very much.

CAMEROTA: And, John, among the Americans who are out of work are thousands of employees at Disney Amusement Parks. The company is in the midst of shedding a huge amount of its workforce. At, of course, this particularly bad time, during the holidays and just as the federal government is shutting down a program that supplies food banks.

CNN's Natasha Chen has our story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NATASHA CHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We've seen people line up for food donations throughout this pandemic, but what you're seeing here is particularly bad timing. Thousands of theme park workers have been laid off. And as they're losing their paycheck, one critical food donation resource is suddenly disappearing just when they need it most.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You want to show your favorite ornament?

CHEN (voice over): Amanda Johnson and her husband made a living creating magic, but their fairytale ended when they were furloughed from the Walt Disney World Resort. Months later, even after Florida parks reopened, Johnson was laid off, one of 32,000 U.S. Disney employees expected to lose their jobs by March.

AMANDA JOHNSON, LAID OFF FROM DISNEY WORLD: I feel like I'm drowning here and it's just the worst thing. People come here to have a good time and we're all suffering. CHEN: One of their three children has autism and epilepsy.

JOHNSON: Thinking about like one hospital visit would almost like bankrupt you.

CHEN: She says she's making food deliveries just to be able to give the kids a Christmas and soon they'll be hard pressed to pay the mortgage.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What do you want for Christmas?

CHEN: Former employees of Disney, Universal, Sea World and others are on both sides of this line receiving donations and volunteering, too.

NICK CATURANO, SHOP STEWARD, UNITE HERE 737: We're focused on the members and we started out feeding 200 families and it ballooned into 2,000.

CHEN: These artists who used to perform for theme park guests are now entertaining each other. And cheering up is a necessity when these boxes represent less than 10 percent of the food that used to be available, according to the Society of St. Andrew. Farmers they work with had funding from the federal Farm to Families programs to get fresh food into boxes and delivered to food banks, but that money ran out sooner than expected.

BARBARA SAYLES, FLORIDA REGIONAL DIRECTOR, SOCIETY OF ST. ANDREW: What keeps me up at night is that child that will go to bed hungry.

CHEN: In an area whose lifeblood is tourism, the trickle-down effect on other jobs is apparent as motels are now filled not with out-of- towners but with the unemployed, like Jose Cruz, who lost his job at Home Depot.

JOSE CRUZ, FORMER SUBCONTRACTOR, HOME DEPOT: The majority of the people do work in these theme parks and if they're not buying appliances and they're not buying things from Home Depot, then I don't have a job to deliver anything to these people.

CHEN: Theme parks may be suffering, but the success of Disney's streaming service, Disney Plus, has sent Disney's stock to it's all- time high.

Meanwhile, for park employees --

JOHNSON: That's where my Disney journey ends for now.

CHEN: The echo (ph) Disney CEO Bob Chapek's optimism around the vaccine, hoping guests and work will one day return like magic.

Natasha Chen, CNN, Orlando, Florida.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Our thanks to Natasha for that really important story.

All right, breaking news, a chilling new forecast from the CDC. How bad will the pandemic get in just the coming weeks?

[08:45:03]

Dr. Sanjay Gupta returns after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Breaking news. The CDC just increased its ensemble forecast and now projects up to 83,000 more deaths over just the next three weeks. That averages up to about nearly 4,000 deaths a day in the United States from coronavirus.

Joining us now, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

The CDC forecast, this is staggering, really, just the numbers alone. We're talking maybe up to 4,000 deaths a day for the next three weeks.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they make these forecasts. They sort of react more quickly to the data.

[08:50:00]

The CDC forecast doesn't go out as long as some of the other models that we've seen. But, yes, I mean, you know, the last couple times now that they have readjusted their ensemble forecast the numbers have gone up. And so, you know, we've sort of have been worried, as we talked about last hour, that the numbers of people who were dying on a daily basis was not going to peak or -- and then plateau anytime soon and now the CDC, as they look at this data, they're sort of -- they're worried about the same thing, obviously.

And then we don't even know, beyond, you know, three weeks from now what the forecast is going to look like. We know that the IHME model sort of puts the peak at the end of January, early February time frame. So it's not the news we want to hear, you know, obviously, first thing in the morning, but it's still something that, you know, we can -- we can do something about and something we've been talking about for months now.

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh, Sanjay, it's just -- it's actually impossible for your brain to think about that level of loss. Of course the good news is the vaccine, one of them is here, one seems to be right around the corner. So people have questions for you about the vaccines. So let me get to those.

Mary Lou wants to know, will we have a choice about which vaccine we get before we get it? Let's say you're pregnant or have an autoimmune disease. And can you choose to get one of the messenger RNA ones or will they likely not be available after the health care workers and the long term care patients are inoculated?

GUPTA: Yes. Well, this -- I get this question a lot and, you know, in the beginning, in the beginning days, which are now, there's not going to be a lot of choice because the demand is so much higher than the supply. What we do know, so if you talk about the mRNA vaccine specifically,

that the first dose, these are the first ones approved, and the first doses are going to people within these particular groups, people who are in long term care facilities, certain health care workers, things like that.

But even if you do the math and you account for that, there should be 100 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, 200 million doses of the Moderna vaccine. So that's 150 million people. So there will be doses for people outside of these specific groups, you know, in the -- in the later months, you know, I'm talking early -- mid spring. So there may be some choices available by then. We don't know for sure. It's -- the choices really aren't there now, obviously. There's just one vaccine that's been authorized.

And then, at the end of January, there may be two more vaccines possibly that also get authorized from Johnson & Johnson and from AstraZeneca Oxford. So we will see. So keep your fingers crossed on choices.

And then, obviously, it may depend. Talk to your health care person about what might be best for you at that time.

BERMAN: So, Sanjay, Christine from Michigan writes, how will I know which phase I fall into? Who decides? Will I be notified when I am eligible to receive the vaccination and how will I get that notification?

GUPTA: Yes. So that's going to be handled by the states in terms of notification. It may come from doctors' offices. It may come from the department of public health in the state basically saying here's where we are, here's what the vaccine availability is and here's who's in line to get it.

I do want to show you this graphic from the Centers for Disease Control in terms of sort of how they're looking at this. We know that it's a Venn diagram and you can see roughly who's considered highest risk and how many people are in these various categories.

It's important because right now it's, again, long term care facility residents, health care workers, that's about 20, 25 million people right there. After that other essential workers, besides health care workers, are sort of next in line, followed by people who are over 65 and those with certain medical conditions. You start doing the math, you know, it's a significant number of people.

You know, a couple -- 250 million people who just fall into these higher risk categories. But after long term care facilities, which it's possible we have most of the people in these facilities immunized by the end of the year, it's these other groups are going to start falling in line, followed by other essential workers.

So look for advisories from the Department of Public Health. We'll continue reporting on it here. And your doctor's office may get some more information for people individually as well. CAMEROTA: OK, last question from Lynne in New York. Very confused. I

currently have antibodies for the virus. I am 67 years old, female. I take methotrexate for rheumatoid arthritis. Will my antibodies protect me? Will the vaccine be a two-dose done deal and I'm vaccinated for life?

GUPTA: OK. So there's a couple of questions in there.

With regard to this first question, which is something that, you know, a lot of people are sort of considering right now, you've got obviously 16, almost 17 million people who have been confirmed to have the infection, depending on when they got that infection, they'd likely have antibodies. The antibodies are what the vaccine induces as well in the body.

[08:55:01]

So, what should you do? Well, what the -- what we're hearing from the FDA and people who are involved with actually administering these vaccines is that we don't know for certain how long the protection lasts from a natural infection. And to be clear, we don't know how long the protection lasts from the vaccine either. But the idea is that the vaccine should give you stronger and longer protection.

Again, we've got to prove that out, but that is the case. Unless you start screening everybody for antibodies, it would be hard to know who shouldn't get it at this point based on previous infection. So they're just recommending, get the vaccination when it is your turn.

BERMAN: All right, Sanjay, thanks very much, as always. So many questions and I know more will be coming. Thanks so much for being with us.

GUPTA: You got it. Thank you.

BERMAN: I just want to give you one look at some of the things we're seeing outside. Some of the remarkable pictures of the weather.

CAMEROTA: What does it look like? Oh, my gosh, look how pretty. Boston.

BERMAN: That's Boston. That's outside where it counts. Boston right there. Lovely pictures.

That is New York City. Snow hitting the northeast. Stay warm, everybody. Stay dry.

Our coverage continues after this.

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