Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Countries Ban or Restrict Travel from U.K. as New Strain of Coronavirus Detected There; President-Elect Joe Biden Receives Coronavirus Vaccine; Anxiety Rising at Pentagon Over What Trump Will Do Next. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired December 22, 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]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The final step here is to get it on President Donald Trump's desk. That is the final signature.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All indications are that Donald Trump has decided to walk away from his day job of running the country.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There are other things that he should be doing, and instead he is entertaining conspiracy theories.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. Erica Hill with us this morning. Alisyn is off.

Breaking overnight, Congress did something, which is an incredible headline in this day and age. They passed a $900 billion emergency relief bill which President Trump is expected to sign within days. Stimulus checks to millions of Americans could be sent out by next week according to the Treasury Secretary.

Also breaking this morning, the CEO of BioNTech says he is confident that Pfizer's vaccine will protect against the new coronavirus variant. The White House this morning discussing requiring travelers from the United Kingdom to present proof of a negative coronavirus test before arriving in the United States. Dozens of other countries have banned or restricted travel from the U.K. This is what Dr. It Anthony Fauci said about this just moments ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Travel bans are really rather draconian things to do. That's not really in the cards right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if the requirement of testing is something that is being actively considered right now. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: This morning hospitals are just overwhelmed in the United States. More than 150,000 people now hospitalized, that is a record high.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Meantime, there is growing anxiety at the Pentagon over what President Trump will do next as he continues his push to overturn the election. Attorney Sidney Powell, who of course was dumped from Trump's legal team after pushing conspiracy theories, one after another, is spotted at the White House again on Monday. If you are keeping track, this is the third time she has been there in four days. A group of House conservatives also meeting with President Trump and Vice President Pence on Monday to strategize about overturning the will of the voters.

BERMAN: We're going to start with the pandemic. Joining me now is Michael Osterholm, President-elect Biden's coronavirus task force adviser and the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Minnesota. Professor Osterholm, thanks so much for being with us.

DR. MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, DIRECTOR OF INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: This new variant, or newish variant emerging in the United Kingdom, what are the biggest questions you have with this in the areas of biggest concern?

OSTERHOLM: Well, first of all, the good news is that the U.K. government has really gotten on top of this issue. They've been sharing very openly information about this with the rest of the world, and I congratulate them for that.

Unfortunately, this is a real challenge to us in terms of several things. Number one, does this virus really transmit that much more easily than other virus strains within the coronavirus family. And right now, it appears that it does, which, of course, if that means that the virus spreads around the world, all these places we already have major challenges with transmission are only going to see the problem worsen.

The second thing of course we have to understand, does it have an impact on the vaccines? We sure hope it doesn't. The sense is it probably does not, but hope is not a strategy. We need the data to say does it really have an impact on the vaccines. And then we have to understand our testing approaching. There may be some challenges to how well some of our current tests will work against this very strain.

GUPTA: One of the questions we have asked repeatedly is, is it here already? Is it in the United States already? And the CDC posted some information that just came to light overnight, it says the U.K. coronavirus variant has not been identified through sequencing efforts in the United States, but only about 51,000 of 17 million U.S. cases have been sequenced so far, so less than one half of one percent there. So how much do we know, or how could we know whether it's here? OSTERHOLM: The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as you

just noted, and I think that's the challenge. The U.S.'s program for sequencing these virus strains has actually been far under what we need. We need much better testing right now.

The second thing is, remember, this has all emerged within the last couple of weeks. And so the testing of only the strains with really in the last two to three weeks would probably have given us the idea of how much of this is coming in from the U.K. or, for that matter, anywhere else.

Let's just be really clear right now. Nothing will stop this virus from transmitting country to country. Our job is to slow it down. Right now, as you know, our hospitals are overwhelmed in many locations. Imagine adding on 20 percent or 30 percent increased caseloads on top of what we already are experiencing because we have a virus that transmits much more easily. So we really need to develop a national response, and we are looking forward to the CDC and the White House giving us all in public health an update on what are they going to do about this. How are they going to respond? What can we do to slow down transmission in the United States? This variant or the variant from South Africa or wherever these new variant viruses show up.

[08:05:09]

BERMAN: So slow it down. The question, then, is how, right? And you heard Dr. Fauci say that a travel ban isn't where he is at least. He thinks that's draconian right now. There is the option of trying to pretest people, require a negative test for people coming to the United States. Jay Inslee, governor of Washington state, is requiring a 14 day quarantine for people coming in from the United Kingdom. Which measures do you think are appropriate?

OSTERHOLM: I think everything has to be on the table right now. And again, I don't represent what the Biden-Harris transition team is going to make a decision on, but I will say that the current administration needs to come up with a plan right now for what they're going to do. It's absolutely true, travel bans do not stop viruses from still crossing political borders. But they can slow down the transmission. What we're trying to do is buy time to what I would call flatten the curve, meaning we don't want a large bolus of cases over the next three to eight weeks from this strain. What can we do to slow it down?

Testing one time before you come into the country is a snapshot at that moment. As we tell people right here in the United States when they travel, one test does not mean you are negative. So even that is inadequate. And really the only thing is to do a 14-day quarantine once someone arrives here from one of these countries. The challenge with that, who is going to do it? Right now our local and state public health departments are overwhelmed just doing what they're trying to do, and of course we want them to concentrate on vaccination programs right now. I don't see who within the federal, state, or local governments right now have that bandwidth to do the kind of quarantine that we would need. So we have to put all these options on the table, none of them are

going to be easy, none of them are going to be absolutely the perfect answer, but this new development of variants with this virus is a very, very critical point in our response to this entire pandemic.

BERMAN: I have to tell you, you say the same thing that Dr. Hotez told us earlier to the CDC and the administration, just tell us something. Give us a plan here. We need an announcement today on this. Can't wait any longer.

Professor Osterholm, I want to show you a statistic which I know you probably won't like, which is the number of people who have been traveling over the last few days. We've hit a million people three out of the last five days in the airways, and I know you've been asking people to really stay close to home, stay with your nuclear family over Christmas. With the virus spreading, with the cases where they are and hospitalizations, is doing today the same thing that you would have done three weeks ago as safe? Or how does it change what is safe in your activities?

OSTERHOLM: Well, when the virus level in the community goes up, the risk of the very same behavior that might not have put you at that same increased risk a month ago does now. For example, if I'm in a room which only one out of 100 individuals might be infected, I have one chance of becoming infected in that setting. But what if there are 10 people in that room? And what happens when the virus activity goes up in a community, that now is there. None of them know they're infected but yet they're breathing the virus out into the air that I'm about to breathe in. This is why I keep saying don't swap air. Stop swapping it.

So you're right. Right now we actually have a perfect storm. We have increased level of virus in our communities, we have people who are more likely to be more exposed because of the travel and the holiday season, and now on top of it we have this situation with these variant viruses that says if these start to spread around the world, which I am convinced they will, we're even going to see more transmission occur. So this is why we can't waste a day in getting vaccine to people right now. We've got to get this out. That's the one thing that is the light at the end of the tunnel.

BERMAN: The same activity that you're doing today is riskier than it would have been one week or two weeks ago. Professor Osterholm, thanks so much for being with us and helping us understand what's going on here. We wish you a very merry Christmas.

OSTERHOLM: You, too. Thanks, John.

BERMAN: Erica?

HILL: President-elect Joe Biden received his first dose of the coronavirus vaccine at a Delaware hospital.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT-ELECT: This is great hope. I'm doing this to demonstrate that people should be prepared when it's available to take the vaccine. There's nothing to worry about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Joining us now, Tabe Mase, the nurse practitioner who gave the president-elect his shot. Great to have you with us this morning. This was not the first dose of vaccine that you gave, but giving one to the president-elect, was it any different for you?

TABE MASE, NURSE PRACTITIONER, CHRISTIANACARE: Thank you so much, erica, for having me. It wasn't much different. I was just humbled that the president chose our organization, Christianacare to come and get his vaccine. So it was exciting.

[08:09:57]

HILL: Humbled and exciting. You, actually, as I understand it, you administered your facility's first vaccine on Friday, and that was for a respiratory therapist. And at that moment, too, you said it was humbling. I wonder in the days since as you're reflecting upon that moment and what the vaccine means for your facility given what has happened over the last several months.

MASE: Erica, in the past several months, we have all been just focused on fighting COVID-19 virus, our health care workers, from the physicians all the way to environmental services, as a director of employee health I have seen firsthand just how stressful it has been to our caregivers. And so for me when we heard that the vaccine had been approved, that it got the emergency use authorization and that we got it at ChristianaCare, it was just -- it was exciting. I just couldn't wait because it means that we have another tooling in toolbox. Masking, handwashing, social distancing. So I am looking forward to brighter days our caregivers are going to get, and all of the caregivers.

HILL: Absolutely looking forward to those brighter days. What's your message to the greater community? Because so much of what happens outside ChristianaCare will impact what happens inside your walls and how your frontline workers have to address it.

MASE: Our community and our neighbors at ChristianaCare, we serve our neighbors with love and excellence, and so for all our neighbors out there both in Delaware and around the world, and all frontline workers inside and outside of health care, I just want to say that this vaccine is safe. The president-elect got the vaccine. I got it myself, and we have been vaccinating our frontline workers and we intend to continue. So I am just looking forward to people stepping up, rolling up their sleeve, and getting it. It is safe.

HILL: Tabe Mase, thank you for joining us this morning, and thank you for all that you and your colleagues are doing there as well.

MASE: Thank you.

HILL: House conservatives strategizing with President Trump and Vice President Pence in another long shot bid to overturn the election. Could this one work? That's next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: New this morning, growing anxiety at the Pentagon over what President Trump will do in his final days in office. Some senior military officers even trying to steer clear of the White House rather than risk being in Trump's orbit.

Joining us now, Ron Brownstein, CNN's senior political analyst and senior editor at "The Atlantic," and --

HILL: -- officers even trying to steer clear of the White House rather than risk being in Trump's orbit.

[08:15:05]

Joining us now, Ron Brownstein, CNN's senior political analyst and senior editor at "The Atlantic", and Elizabeth Neumann, former Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention.

Good to have both of you this morning.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning.

HILL: I just want to talk about this reporting that we have from Barbara Starr. We don't know what he might do is the essence of it one officer told her. We are in strange times. They are actually according to Barbara making lists of everything they can think of the president might do. They're worried about firing, forced resignations, of more Pentagon officials, including top military officers.

Elizabeth, as we look at that, in some ways I guess it's not surprising, but I think that the picture that it paints should stop you in your tracks.

ELIZABETH NEUMANN, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR COUNTERTERORRISM AND THREAT PREVENTION: Absolutely. I mean, it's just an unconscionable that we're talking about the president of the United States and the military having to be fearful of him.

But sadly, this is who Trump is and he has been this way for the last four years. For those of us that weren't familiar with him by now we should be familiar with the fact that he doesn't understand the Constitution, he is incompetent in being able to carry out his duties and his priorities are not what's best for the country, but what's best for him.

So, I find it interesting that you have White House officials now sounding the alarm, but the person that he is and the way that he has operated it hasn't changed. So, maybe there are just less people there to constrain him now and maybe that's what they're really concerned about.

I do have the utmost confidence in our military, though, and I can appreciate that it's very disconcerting that they are being put in this position, but you already have a number of senior leaders at the Pentagon that have very clearly stated we have no role in the election process, there is no purpose for martial law in the current state of affairs.

So I feel fairly confident that things will remain stable as -- with regards to the military involvement, but it doesn't help the American public or our stance in the world to see that our democracy is being tainted.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The fact that they are having the discussion at all just tells you everything, Ron.

BROWNSTEIN: Right. Right. And, John, you don't get here in a day and you don't get here by yourself. The fact that we are even having these discussions in the Pentagon much less the spectacle of martial law being discussed in the Oval Office, the same place where Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan worked. It doesn't happen simply in a single stroke.

I mean, the fact is that President Trump from the moment of taking office has pushed against the boundaries of the rule of law over and over again. Openly extorting the government of Ukraine, and that's to manufacture dirt on his opponent, weaponizing the Postal Service, trying to tilt the census, everything that has happened since the election to try to undermine the result.

Each step along the way his own party has failed to constrain him. In fact, has done more to abet and enable him and I think he is quite confidently taken the measure that he can keep going further and further and they will not put any kind of brakes on him. And that is how you get to the point where even if these boundaries hold at this -- you know, at this kind of ultimate moment of undermining the democracy the fact that we have gotten this far I think is the bigger story and one that is very chilling for where American politics may be going in the years ahead.

HILL: Yeah, it's an excellent point, right, that we all need to regularly stop and take stock of where we're at and remind ourselves nothing about this is normal. Nothing about it is okay. You know, Elizabeth, to your point, the president doesn't understand the constitution and to Ron's point, amassing these Republicans to help him essentially do his bidding.

I mean, let's look at this meeting that happened yesterday at the White House. Republican lawmakers, but also the fact that now Vice President Pence is in on those meetings. There's this reporting from Jonathan Swan at "Axios" that part of the reason is that the president is a little fed up with Mike Pence and is a little worried that Mike Pence might actually do his job on January 6th when the Electoral College folks are officially counted -- well, you know, they counted, you know, announced, Elizabeth.

How much do you think that could be playing into what we are seeing? That the president wants to make sure Mike Pence is with him until the bitter end?

NEUMANN: You know, Mike Pence has to sleep in the bed he made, so I don't feel too sorry for him. He has had multiple opportunities to come forward and speak the truth and he continues to try to look the other way and dance around the issues. So I don't feel sorry for him.

I do -- I do kind of wonder if this latest gambit is an attempt by some of the advisers to channel his energy into something, you know -- I will use the term mildly constructive as opposed to, you know, discussing military coups and martial law.

[08:20:15]

You know, I still think it is a disservice to our country, it's damaging to our country.

It riles up and radicalizes his base. And I do and I have spoken about my concerns about potential for violent coming out of violent extremist groups, but I suppose this is a better option than having him entertain military coups in the Oval Office.

BERMAN: The bar is so low. I mean, it's beyond low. The bar is like, you know, in the molten core of the earth if that's the bar at this point.

BROWNSTEIN: You're right.

BERMAN: Ron Brownstein, let me read you what Jonathan Swan's reporting is on Mike Pence because I really do find this fascinating. He reports that Pence's role on January 6th has begun to loom large in Trump's mind for people who discuss the matter with him. Trump reviewed pence performing his constitutional duty invalidating the election result as the ultimate betrayal.

Just to be clear, what Pence's constitutional role is on January 6th is to read the votes out loud. Literally, to read -- to read out loud is his constitutional role. He will say Joe Biden has 306 electoral votes and that alone is enough right now to set Donald Trump off and apparently enough to get Mike Pence inside the Oval Office with this conspiratorial meeting yesterday.

You know, I don't want to ask you to predict the future here but what evidence do we have that Mike Pence would ever stand up to the president? I mean, what kind of way are you anticipating he will "dear leader' this constitutional duty?

BROWNSTEIN: Yeah. Well, first of all, I mean, it is indicative of the fact that virtually everyone who works as I think Elizabeth certainly knows better than I, everyone who works for Donald Trump sooner or later faces a moment where he is asking them to do something that they know they absolutely should not do. That is the nature of his interaction with other human beings since it's all transactional for him.

And Mike Pence has found a way to, you know, stand by all of these actions, as I said, like most of the Republican Party, have allowed Trump to steer them further and further and further into these unprecedented waters. You know, as I like to say, every time he breaks a window, the Republicans in Congress obediently sweep up the glass. Certainly no one has done that more diligently than Mike Pence who now faces kind of this ultimate choice.

I assume he has no choice but to fulfill his constitutional duty, perhaps raging at it and abetting this Trump fantasy that is convinced three quarters of Republican voters that the election was stolen even though his, quote, evidence to that effect have been laughed out of courts across the country.

John, the real issue is going forward. From this point forward, are the kind of activities that the president has undertaken since the election now the norm for Republicans? Is it expected that state officials will enable and support these kinds of efforts to undermine an election? What is the new baseline that he is establishing through the silence of Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy and everyone else about the tactics that he has employed.

HILL: There is that political baseline but there is another baseline which I think is really frightening and, Elizabeth, I know you have spoken out a lot about this, but it's that radicalization and these fringe groups that really do see in the actions of the president a license to move forward.

NEUMANN: That's right, Erica. It's very concerning that we're seeing large groups of people in our country be deceived by the media that they are consuming, deceived by the president and in the process of feeding on lies, they are going through a radicalization experience. People can be radicalized and that's perfectly legal in this country, the government can't police thought, but the concern that I have is a small percentage of that could be recruited into violent extremism. And that there are estimates that we heard about 75,000 to 100,000 violent white supremacists -- sorry, white supremacists, extremists in our country, and some portion of them would be prone to violence.

In Germany where they do better statistics, it's about half that are interested in committing acts of rye lens. It's important to understand the ideology here. The ideology behind a white supremacist it usually leads one to the conclusion that you must overthrow the U.S. government so that you can establish a white nation state for the preservation of your race. And so, they are intentionally or inherently anti-government in their mindset.

So, if you have 75,000 to 100,000 people in this country that already have that bent and then you add to it a pretty significant number, maybe millions of people in the country that now believe that their government -- that there has been this massive fraud, that their voice is no longer heard, that things have been stolen from them, they become much more susceptible from recruitment tactics from these hard core violent extremists.

[08:25:16]

And that's what I'm concerned about. We are setting ourselves up for probably a generational fight now with violent extremism in our country.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWNSTEIN: Could I just add real quick, to Elizabeth's point, look at where they are -- look who they are accusing of fraud, big diverse cities -- Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit and so forth. Not the suburbs where Donald Trump declined even more. If you look at where the litigation or his own rhetoric, they are basically saying this election was stolen by cities with large black populations which feeds directly into the kind of radicalization she's talking about.

BERMAN: Thinly veiled to be sure, these undertones.

Ron Brownstein, Elizabeth Neumann, thanks so much for being with us this morning.

So this morning, doctors and nurses in the fight of their lives.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you okay?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. It's the worst I have ever seen. I've been a nurse for 40 years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: We have an inside look at the coronavirus front lines next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: This morning, more people are sick in the hospital with coronavirus in the United States than ever before. ICU beds are in short supply in some states, I mean, really, in California really short supply. Medical professionals being pushed to the brink.

CNN's Sara Sidner has been on the front lines, really behind the front lines in southern California to get a really remarkable look at the story.

Why don't you tell us what you've learned, Sara?

[08:30:00]