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Trump Leaves Town after Vetoing Defense Bill, Upending Stimulus and Pardoning Allies; 3,359 Americans Died Yesterday, Nearly 120,000 Hospitalized; Giuliani Told to Preserve Records, Dominion Lawyers Warn Legal Action Imminent. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired December 24, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Against playoff teams from last season, you've got to be happy this morning.

[07:00:03]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Oh, I am. I am.

ERICA HILL, CNN NEW DAY: Like an early Christmas gift for John Berman.

BERMAN: Merry Christmas, Coy, good to see you.

WIRE: You too.

BERMAN: New Day continues right now.

Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day. Alisyn is off. Erica Hill with me on this Christmas Eve morn, did I get that right?

HILL: Merry Christmas Eve?

BERMAN: Morn?

HILL: Morn? Like they're in the morning.

BERMAN: I don't know. I feel like if you say it's eve, it implies it's evening.

HILL: It feels like September morn.

BERMAN: No, but thank you.

HILL: Back to the breaking news.

BERMAN: So what happens now? What is next in this 27-day political acid trip that kicks off this morning in Mar-a-Lago? This is no game here. This is life for millions of Americans. If you are unemployed this morning, we can't tell you if you're going to get that next relief check. If you're a service member, that pay raise, maybe not. But if you lied to the Mueller investigation or you're related to Jared Kushner, things have never been better. Overnight, President Trump pardoned his longtime allies, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, who did not cooperate with the Mueller probe. He also pardoned Jared Kushner's father. Republican Senator Ben Sasse summed it up in one sentence. He said, this is rotten to the core.

HILL: The president, meantime, left Washington without signing or vetoing the stimulus bill. So, today, House Democrats are going to try to pass legislation that will give Americans the $2,000 stimulus checks that President Trump abruptly insisted on this week. That, though, is likely to fail.

And so Republicans are now forced to choose between backing the president or backing a bill that they already backed/

All of this as unemployment benefits expire in two days, just look at what is expiring in the coming days. A pause on student loan payments, paid family leave, eviction protections, all of that expiring next week. And, oh, by the way, the government could shut down at midnight on Monday.

As we're dealing with all of this, let's not forget that the coronavirus is here and it has not gone anywhere. Another 3,359 deaths in this country reported just yesterday.

BERMAN: All right, joining us now, CNN Law Enforcement -- Senior Law Enforcement Analyst, former Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe. Andy, thank you so much for being with us.

This latest but certainly not last, we should say, round of pardons, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Charles Kushner, which we'll get to in a moment. Let's stick with Manafort and Stone. What is the message that that sends this morning?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, John, the message that it send is if you are loyal to this president, if you help him obstruct justice, if you lie to prosecutors and lie to Congress and lie to the courts and judges and juries in an effort to cover his crimes, then he will pay you off with a pardon and give you the basically get out of jail free card at the end of the day.

It's a remarkable -- it's a remarkable act of corruption I don't think we've ever seen before. You have a president who is actively engaged in undermining the system of justice that he is supposed to protect and defend. It's remarkably disgusting.

HILL: It's also that he is supposed to protect and defend. He likes to say he's the law and order president. Obviously, his action show otherwise. But the pardons, we know, were dangled, right? And this is the president delivering on that promise.

MCCABE: That's absolutely right. It's detailed in the Mueller report, the messages and communications from the president's lawyers to the lawyers for these then-defendants. These pardons are essentially the culmination of those acts of obstruction of justice. What was seen and referred to in the Mueller report has now been completed. The pardons were dangled and now they've been delivered in return for protection of the president.

I don't even know how to describe it. It's so obviously corrupt, it really kind of shocks the conscience.

BERMAN: And there's a tweet trail here, as it were. The president was praising Paul Manafort for not cooperating, not the way that Michael Cohen did. He went out of his way to say, you know, Paul Manafort is not talking. He is not helping the investigation, but Michael Cohen is.

And it's worth noting here, and there's one of the tweets right there, it's worth noting here, Andy, that if Donald Trump just wanted to erase the Mueller investigation altogether, he'd pardon Rick Gates, he'd pardon Michael Cohen, but he's not. He's not. Why? Because those people cooperated with the Mueller team.

MCCABE: That's right. The man who's responsible for ensuring that the laws are faithfully executed is rewarding people who obstruct justice, who lie and who cheat and continuing to punish those who admitted their mistakes and then worked with prosecutors.

[07:05:10]

I think the pardon of the Blackwater guards is another perfect example of that, John. You don't see a pardon for the guard who actually agreed to participate with the government, who provided evidence against the other four, who was also convicted of a significant crime. He still sits in jail today while the other four who were convicted by a jury of their peers walk free, having committed war crimes.

HILL: I just want to follow up on Blackwater for a minute, because, correct me if I'm wrong, but you worked on that case. And so we look at the message, there was so much talk, right, about the message that was sent at the time to the rest of the world about justice and justice here in the United States and what's it mean for all of those who were directly affected in Iraq. And that message this morning is far different.

MCCABE: Erica, it's excruciating, having had the privilege to supervise the men and women who were working on that prosecution in one of its iterations, right? It began in 2009 and wasn't really completed until 2018. To see the work that went into that and knowing that the background is, of course, at that time, that we, the United States government, was trying to convince the Iraqi government to establish a system of rule of law, a free and fair system of criminal justice, to hold people accountable.

And we held up this prosecution as an example of how that should work. We convinced over 70 Iraqi citizens to come to this country, participate in the trial, put themselves at risk by testifying and staying here for months and months and months while that took place. And now, what message have we sent them?

I think, pretty loudly and clearly, we're telling Iraq and the rest of the world that what we say and what we do as a nation are very different, that we don't hold ourselves to the same lofty standards that we advise others to adopt. And that is -- that's crushing to us as a nation in terms of what we believe in and to the example we have tried to show to the rest of the world.

BERMAN: So some people might be wondering about Jared Kushner's father, Charles Kushner, what he did. And I just want to explain it using the words and sound of Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey, and former U.S. attorney, because Governor Christie sums it up better than anyone can. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FMR. GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE (R-NJ): I just think that it was so obvious he had to be prosecuted. I mean, if a guy hires a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law and videotapes it and then sends the videotape to his sister to attempt to intimidate her from testifying before a grand jury, do I really need any more justification than that? I mean, it's one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was U.S. attorney. And I was U.S. attorney in New Jersey, Margaret, so we had someloathsome and disgusting crime going on there.

But I just laid out the facts. And any objective person the facts know, confronted with those facts, I had a moral and ethical obligation to bring that prosecution.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: I really, genuinely don't think there's anything to add there, Andy. So let me just ask you, given what we've seen so far, Maggie Haberman was noting overnight, this is just the appetizer here. Donald Trump, the president, is not done with pardons. So, what do you think we'll see over the next 27 days?

MCCABE: Well, you're absolutely right, John. We are at the very beginning of this siege on justice and mercy, of course, the things that are supposed to generate or be considered when delivering a pardon. There's really no limit to where I think this president will try to go, certainly for his friends and associates who is face any sort of criminal concerns whatsoever.

So you think about Steve Bannon in that category, think about Rudy Giuliani, his own attorney in that category, but friends and family, folks who were simply associates and supporters of the administration could be walking away with essentially get out of jail free cards for anything and everything they've done for the last four years.

We are at the very beginning of this story and it's just kind of -- it's frightening to think of what we're going to see along the way.

BERMAN: Andy McCabe, we appreciate you being with us this morning. I hope you have a very Merry Christmas.

MCCABE: Thanks, John, you too.

HILL: Today, House Democrats will attempt to satisfy President Trump's demand for $2,000 relief checks by passing a bill by unanimous consent. But the reality is that effort is likely to fail. CNN's Phil Mattingly joining us now with more. So, Phil, where do things stand this morning?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, great question. Look, I think everybody -- no.

[07:10:00]

And I think this kind of underscores, again, the absurdity of this moment right now. The president now, more than almost 46 hours ago, puts out a video on Twitter with nothing else other than posting a 4.5 minute video that's riddled with things that are either out of context, conflating multiple pieces of legislation together, or making very clear that he had never been briefed on the coronavirus relief package that his team was in the room for negotiating. And since that point in time, we've heard nothing about what happens next.

Now, inside the room, and I guess you can say, a conference call between House Republicans yesterday, Kevin McCarthy, the Republican leader, told his colleagues that he had spoken to the president and that president was not, quote, committed to vetoing the bill. What actually happens next though remains an open question.

Now, today, as you noted, you will see House Democrats try to offer unanimous consent request to give the president the $2,000 in direct payments that he asked for. That will be objected too by Republicans, I'm told. And Republicans will come back with their own unanimous consent request to strip out the state and foreign operations piece of the funding piece of this entire piece of this entire package. That will also fail.

But I think kind of keeping in line, guys, with the absurdity here, that we're having like floor histrionics about procedural items, trying to take pieces out of a package that the vast majority, including more than 125, 130 of the Republicans in the United States House voted for, just kind of lets you know where we're at at this moment.

BERMAN: Yes. Phil, I think your reaction right at the beginning there said everything. So, just to be clear, no one understands more about how Congress works or is supposed to work than you. No one is better sourced than you. So put this all in perspective for us in the sense of how upset are Republicans now on Capitol Hill about the situation the president has put them in? And even more important than the president or them is what's at jeopardy for millions of Americans this morning?

MATTINGLY: Yes. I'll start with the latter first, because I think this is extremely important. You have two unemployment programs, federal unemployment programs put in during the pandemic that currently help somewhere between 12 and 13 million people, that expire on December 26th. That's two days away.

Obviously, you have people that are really hurting, who were affected by the lockdowns, affected by the pandemic, particularly places like service industries, restaurants. There's $284 billion in small business money that was supposed to get kicked out the door in the course of the next 10 to 12 days. Direct payments, maybe not as high as the president wanted, but $600, those were supposed to go out at the start of next week.

And another piece, I think, that really hasn't gotten a lot of attention here is there is food stamp, an increase of 15 percent in food stamps in this bill as well, which is significant at the time when you see huge lines in front of food banks all over the country. So the stakes are enormous, given what's going on in the U.S. economy right now, again, maybe not for everybody but certainly for folks that have been hit really hard.

When it comes to Republicans, and you guys have seen this over the course of the last four years. The president has blow-ups like this on legislative items. Most Republicans just kind of keep their head down and hope that either someone will get in ear and kind of bring him along or perhaps he'll cool off and get focused on something else and start to sign it.

But, John, you hit on a key point. There is just extreme frustration right now, one, that there's only 28 days left and everybody is going through this again, two, that this took eight months to get to this point with a lot of people on both sides, with the political dynamics aside, good faith efforts trying to reach some kind of an agreement. And now the president, again, whose team with us in the room the entire time, is trying to pull the plug and short circuit that agreement.

But I think there's also the dynamics of the Republican Party here. Everybody is watching what's happening right now and recognizing the reality, if they hadn't been before, that the president is never going to leave the stage. The president is very much going to be a part of this party going forward. And how members -- however many in the House, however many in the Senate, react to what the president does when he's no longer in the Oval Office versus what their leadership wants to do, it is a conundrum that no one has figured out the answer to yet and it has been viscerally underscored over the course of the last couple days.

BERMAN: It's a mess. It's a huge mess but it's no gain because there are millions of Americans who stand to suffer a lot because of this.

Phil Mattingly, thank you for your reporting. Keep us posted over the next minutes and hours here, because we just don't know where this is going.

HILL: The president's schedule, we're told, includes, quote, many meetings and calls today. Who knows if there actually is a call or a meeting? Maybe, just maybe, something could move forward. But I'm not holding my breath on that one. Phil, thank you, as always.

Coronavirus hospitalizations at an all-time high. Health officials pleading with Americans not to travel this holiday. Let's be honest, it's now Christmas Eve. So what happens at this point? We'll speak with a doctor on the frontlines of this crisis.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

HILL: So this morning, as we look at hospitalizations in this country, nearly 120,000 Americans will spend Christmas Eve in the hospital. Another 3,359 deaths were reported just yesterday from coronavirus. And despite those figures, the TSA says millions of Americans are still traveling for the holiday, ignoring those pleas from health officials to stay home.

So what is that translating to in the hospitals? Joining us now, Dr. Andrew Pastewski, he is the Medical Director of the Intensive Care Unit at Jackson South Medical Center in South Florida. Good to have you with us this morning.

So you're seeing, in your words, surge three. What does that mean, surge three?

DR. ANDREW PASTEWSKI, ICUE MEDICAL DIRECTOR, JACKSON SOUTH MEDICAL CENTER: So we've learned from each surge as we go forward, and surge two felt out of control just because of the number of patients we had. But what we really had back then were a bunch of patients who weren't that sick. We just didn't know that we could take them out of isolation. We didn't know we could send them to nursing homes and they would be safe. So they just sat there taking up beds.

Now we know different. Now we know patients are no longer infectious after ten days, 20 when they've been in the ICU. And we're allowed to take them out of isolation and put them in another part of the hospital, which allows us to keep the isolation units to a minimum with the number of patients.

But just in the last week, we've seen the patients that need isolation double from around 30 to 60.

[07:20:02]

And that's all directly related to Thanksgiving and we're not seeing a slowdown and we've had to move from one area to the next area to the next, and we continue to have to prepare to move. And with the upcoming holidays, we are very scared about what we're about to see.

HILL: It's also the fact that, what I've heard from other doctors and folks on the frontlines, is that this is an extended holiday period. Thanksgiving was a day, maybe a long weekend. For a lot of people, it's Christmas all the way into and through New Year's. And as you look at what could be coming, and you say you're scared about what you're about to see, how do you prepare for that, not just in terms of beds, but for your staff, as well? You guys are exhausted.

PASTEWSKI: Yes, there's no question that COVID fatigue is a real thing with the hospital staff, as well as with the general population. It's very difficult to figure out how to prepare for this. We have an end in sight, which is what makes this so much more difficult. We see the end. We have the vaccine, frontline workers at Jackson started vaccinating its nursing home residents. So we have an end in sight and we have the ability, through proper distancing, staying home, wearing masks, to cross this finish line at a sprint instead of limping in with another 100,000 deaths. I just don't think we're going to do that. And that's very frustrating for those of us who really just need this to end, because we want to go back to just taking heart attacks and strokes.

HILL: I mean, I don't blame you. I can't imagine what it has been like for you all these months. And to know that you're staring down so much more of this to come, because, you know, as someone said on this program the other day, we're failing each other. We're just simply not taking care of each other.

PASTEWSKI: Yes, I agree. I see -- I try not -- I try to put on my blinders when it comes to what other people are doing, because when we see a patient, we don't ask them, were you wearing a mask, did you go to a party, we don't get to know these things. But when you see people not wearing their masks and going to parties, it's frustrating for us, because, you know, we're dying too, and we don't want to.

HILL: When we talk about the vaccine, as you said, the vaccine is there at Jackson Health, which is excellent news. There was a lot of hope and there still is a lot of hope, right, that should come with this vaccine. It is a scientific marvel that it was developed so quickly, it's now being deployed. We were told there could be 20 million vaccinations by the end of the year. Now it's more 20 million doses allocated. We'll see if maybe those shots are in arms a few weeks later. How are you feeling about the pace of vaccinations?

PASTEWSKI: Well, like you said, this is a medical miracle, to have a vaccine this quickly is probably -- we knew it all along, there is no way to treat viruses. There's no miracle pill, no matter what the other doctors claim with hydroxychloroquine, there's never been a miracle pill for viruses. The best virus that we can treat is hepatitis C, and that requires three months of therapy.

The only thing that has ever worked against viruses are vaccines. So to have a vaccine available, and to have two or maybe even three this quickly, it's a medical miracle. I get that it's going to take time to get to the population. I hope the population is smart enough to take it, because we really only get over this in 2021 if everybody wears their masks while they get the vaccine, and everybody gets the vaccine, so we can get good herd -- sorry, herd immunity so that we can get this over with and get the masks off at the end of this year. It will take time to give this to everybody, but it will happen and we can move on to some sort of normalcy.

HILL: What's your message? You know, it's Christmas Eve, it's not the only holiday, obviously, happening this month and in the coming days. There's a lot that people want to celebrate and they want to find joy somewhere. What's your message to Americans this morning based on what you see and what you hope to see in the coming year?

PASTEWSKI: Christmas should not be fun this year, okay? This should be part of the negative 2020 that we've had. We should see the hope of New Year's, 2021, that the vaccine is here. We are getting it. Let's stay diligent, get the vaccine, and move forward to a 2021 where we don't have to wear masks and we can all be safe and start to return to a normal life. It just requires a little more work, a little more mask wearing, a little more staying at home, not seeing the older people, and we'll get there.

[07:25:00]

And it will be one of America's great triumphs to have gotten over this period, which is one of America's worst periods.

HILL: Dr. Andrew Pastewski, I appreciate you joining us this morning. Thank you for what you and your team are doing every day. Happy holidays and I'm with you on that. Happy New Year. Let's focus on what can come in the New Year. Thank you.

PASTEWSKI: Thank you, Erica.

HILL: One voting machine company just put Rudy Giuliani and others on notice. They're ready to sue those who spread false stories about election fraud. The CEO of Dominion Voting Systems is with us, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Developing this morning, attorneys for Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems formally warning White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani that they should preserve all records they have related to the company, because legal action is imminent.

The president and his attorneys and supporters have baselessly alleged that the company's machines were manipulated to change votes from Trump to President-elect Joe Biden.

Joining us now is John Poulos, CEO of Dominion Voting System. John, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

The letter your company sent to Rudy Giuliani specifically notes that legal action.