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President Trump Issues Further Pardons Including Former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort; President Trump Indicates He May Veto Economic Relief Bill Passed by Congress; Nearly 120,000 Americans Hospitalized with Coronavirus; Trump Leaves Town Without Signing Or Vetoing Stimulus Bill. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired December 24, 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]

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: But that effort is likely to fail, so now Republicans need to make a choice. Are they going to back the president, or are they going to back the bill they already backed?

All of this as unemployment benefits are set to expire in two days. Take a look at what is expiring in just the next several days, that pause on student loan payments, paid family leave, eviction protections, all expiring next week. Do you know what else could happen? Government could shut down at midnight on Monday. And as we're watching all of that in Washington, the reality of the coronavirus -- another 3,359 deaths reported just yesterday.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us now, Scott Jennings, CNN political commentator, former special assistant to President George W. Bush and columnist for "USA Today," and Bakari Sellers, CNN political commentator and author of "My Vanishing Country" which looks good under any Christmas tree.

(LAUGHTER)

Gentlemen, I want to start with the pardons this morning. Scott, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, neither of whom cooperated with the Mueller probe. The president celebrated, in fact, for their lack of cooperation, and now he pardons them. What message does that send this morning? And frankly how is this landing with Republicans in general? We heard Ben Sasse say it is rotten to the core.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, well, first of all, merry Christmas to you all, and to Bakari, good to see you as well. Look, Republicans, I think, generally view the Mueller report as a witch-hunt, just like the president has called it. And so I think on these particular pardons you're going to see more forgiving attitudes out of Republicans because they think the origination of all of this was not right to begin with.

Now, obviously opinions will vary across the political spectrum on that. Look, these guys didn't cooperate. Manafort did things beyond the Mueller report that got him convicted, too. So they knew a guy. And the one thing that makes me uncomfortable about pardons in general is that it's the one part of our government that operates based on the principle of, he knew a guy. That's fine if you want to obtain better baseball tickets. OK, fine. But in this particular case the levers of government, the most ultimate power you can have in our government, the overturning of a decision by a complete other branch, rests on the principle of they knew a guy. Same for Kushner, by the way. He knew a guy, his son, who knows the president.

And what makes them different than anybody else who committed similar crimes who will continue to sit in jail or continue to have their records blemished by a conviction? They didn't know a guy. That's the only difference. And as someone who thinks government shouldn't operate on the principle of he knew a guy, it makes me uncomfortable.

HILL: I'm glad they knew a guy isn't a drinking game right now, Scott Jennings, because --

(LAUGHTER)

HILL: But I do like where you're going with it, all right.

Bakari, as we look at this, it's true, right, that is a lot of what pardons will boil down to is if you know the guy or not. And I know that you have talked about it, you understand that the political nature of them. But I think what a lot of people are taking issue with this morning is the pardons that we have seen from this president that go far beyond the political, specifically what we're seeing related to Blackwater.

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN COMMENTATOR: Yes, and I guess even with Blackwater they knew a guy, right? If we're going to continue the drinking Bloody Mary games this morning. But the fact is, it's quite simple. The Manafort, Kushner, Stone pardons, it's hypocritical for the president and his colleagues to talk about the rule of law but then pardon people who abuse it. But at the end of the day that's within his pardon power.

You're right, though, these pardons of flat out murderers, individuals who savagely murdered people, who didn't believe in the sanctity or dignity of life, who murdered children, they literally blew the brains out of children, who were found guilty and prosecuted under this president's Department of Justice, who were sentenced for their murders, to pardon them, I just, we can go down the path and back and forth. I really believe that the Manafort pardon is a little bit beyond the pale, I get the rest of them, whatever. We can talk about the Russia probe being a witch-hunt, although there were 34 convictions or indictments from that. But there is no excuse. I don't know any Republican who can stand by and say that these four gentlemen who savagely murdered individuals, who were found guilty by a jury of their peers, who blew the brains of children just because they knew a guy deserve to be pardoned. I think that's patently absurd, and I think that this is the type of corruption, callousness, and cowardice that Donald Trump represents in the Republican Party.

BERMAN: Scott, we've chewed over the pardons quite a bit this morning. I think the issue for us this morning as we have 27 days left is what's next? Maggie Haberman who covers this White House more closely than anybody says this is just an appetizer, guys. Don't think for a second that this is the end. This is just the beginning. So what does that mean, Scott, and for whom?

[08:05:08]

JENNINGS: Yes, great question. I don't know. If I had all the answers, I guess, we would be having a different conversation. The one thing that I've realized over the last few days is that the president at this point is largely unstaffed. His message on the stimulus payments and the COVID relief and the end of the year spending bill, he's basically saying Mnuchin no longer speaks for me. I interpret it as Meadows no longer speaks for me. He's saying my staff doesn't speak for me, only I speak for myself.

So you have an unstaffed president in some ways, and yet still cloaked in all the power that the office provides for the next several weeks. And there are a number of things he could do. Public statements are one, but obviously, with the pardons, he has enormous power to do other things, issue orders and so on and so forth. So I don't really know. I do think that for the president's congressional allies, anyone in Congress really, at this point talking to anybody on his staff seems useless, because they just negotiated this entire spending bill, and now he's saying he's not for it, and so how can you believe anything they say that doesn't come directly from the president himself?

HILL: Look, we've known this for four years, though, haven't we? The president has said people don't speak for him. He wants to say what he wants to say when he wants to say it. That being said, he was quiet when he left yesterday for Mar-a-Lago. And so now he has put everything in jeopardy for millions of Americans, right? So we are looking at the big question of what's next is an entirely different question when we look at the country hanging in the balance now with these benefits expiring. Pay raises for service members. So Bakari, looking at that, I just wonder, if you are a Democrat in Washington right now -- Nancy Pelosi jumped on that $2,000, right, as she should have, but you're staring down now a big uncertainty, too.

SELLERS: Yes, but on this Christmas Eve I've got to say I'm disappointed with Democrats and Republicans alike. You just have to throw the talking points out the window because this Congress is pretty worthless. Every -- we go down, and I think Scott would agree, that every major issue we have to get to the brink of a deadline before they act. And no one puts the American people first. I mean, $600? This would have been a total of $1,800 over an 18-month period, and we're supposed to clap for you?

The pay raises that our military people deserve should not be tied to bases named after the confederacy. Are we really -- does Donald Trump and the Republican Party want to die on the hill of the Confederacy? I don't know if people know this, but like the Confederates, they lost the war. And so when we have to have these deadlines, and when we just give people just a little bit to survive and to live, when you think about this Christmas holiday you just can't really be excited about either party. I wish that both would get their act together and go big -- $2,000,

yes, we need to get that done. Democrats asked for that a long time ago. There was a bill sponsored by Kamala Harris and others to do $2,000 a long time ago. But now all of a sudden, the president wants to act like he wasn't in the room. And like Steve Mnuchin was right there, he was literally right there in the room. So all of this gamesmanship is patently absurd when people are struggling just to put gifts under a tree for this holiday season. And I wish Nancy and Steve and Donald and even Mitch would all get their acts together and stop waiting on deadlines and actually do their job.

JENNINGS: What Bakari is saying sounds a lot like what Donald Trump is saying, and is what you would say if you were thinking about running in the future. One thing that dawned on me this morning is this is Trump the president speaking about these bills, but it may also be Trump the future party leader, Trump the future candidate. One of the most popular things you can do when you run for president is to use Congress as a punching bag. It's a time-honored tradition for presidential candidates to attack Congress. That's what, essentially, Trump is doing now. So I actually wonder if he's thinking less about what's right in front of him right here but more about what's happening in the future, which is if I'm going to run again, I'm going to turn Congress into the punching bag that I did when I ran last time, which was a pretty successful tactic.

BERMAN: The one twist on this, though, and it's not a twist because this isn't a game, is that there are millions of people depending on what's going on right now. There are people who are unemployed who need that extension, who need that next check. There are people in the military who were counting on that pay raise.

And to an extent Republicans and Democrats did get together. You shouldn't wait for the deadline. If my kids are watching don't wait for deadlines like this. It's dumb. But they did come together with veto-proof majorities on both things.

[08:10:00]

And the president watched and didn't weigh in for months and months and months and months and only after the fact is, and is now blowing it up, and people will be suffering. And Scott, just on the point of this 27 days for Republicans, how nervous are Republicans now about what the president might do over these next 27 days in general? And will you start to see more Republicans standing up and saying, we're done. We're tapping out here when it comes to Donald Trump?

JENNINGS: Well, to what end? You could have every Republican come out and criticize him, but it wouldn't necessarily alter his actions. What they are going to do, I suspect, Bakari brought up the Confederate base issues and conflated those issues, they're going to override his veto, I think, on the National Defense Authorization, and they are going to do that bill, and Republicans and Democrats are going to join together and do that. And then they can't really do anything in the next 20 days to affect pardons. And so I think that's one issue.

And then the other issue is the political issue, and that is how are they going to treat him moving forward not just in the next 20 days but over the next four years as he seeks to continue to set the agenda for the Republican Party. And there are going to be a lot of Republicans who are going to see it his way. And you're going to see that, I'm sure, manifest itself in the U.S. House on January 6th when several of them vote to not accept the Electoral College. So you're going to have essentially a split in the party about how to treat him moving forward, and nobody really knows how it's going to play out.

I can tell you in the short term, though, there do appear to be to me solid bipartisan majorities that exist to uphold the current spending bill that was just passed and to uphold the National Defense Authorization Act, which I assume they're going to override next week. So I think you're already seeing some legislative push back, but that's a lot different than the political machinations that will go on over the next several months.

HILL: And really underscores Bakari's point, too, that the losers in all of this are the American people.

BERMAN: Listen, merry Christmas to both of you. Thanks so much for being with us this morning. I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful holiday with your families, your beautiful families, I might add.

SELLERS: Thank you. Merry Christmas.

JENNINGS: Merry Christmas.

HILL: Merry Christmas.

Nearly 120,000 Americans this morning are waking up on this Christmas Eve in the hospital. They're there for coronavirus. Millions of people still traveling, heading to airports this week despite pleas from health officials. Just ahead, a doctor weighs in.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Airports across the country seeing thousands of travelers despite health officials urging people to stay home with coronavirus cases surging. CNN's Amara Walker live at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. Amara, what are you seeing?

AMARA WALKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, John. It's relatively busy here at Atlanta International Airport, although it's definitely not crowded inside.

[08:15:02]

I spoke with an employee who's been here for about ten years and she told me that compared to the normal holiday season where there is no pandemic, we are seeing very light traveler traffic. In fact, Atlanta International Airport is expecting a 40 percent decrease in travel this year compared to the same time last year.

But there is reason to be concerned and that's because the TSA says that we are seeing record-breaking pandemic travel. In a six-day period since Friday up until yesterday, more than 6 million passengers have been screened at our nation's airports, that is the most we've seen during the course of this pandemic. In fact, yesterday's numbers are the highest we've seen over this time period of six days, 1.2 -- nearly 1.2 million passengers being screened.

Now, I spoke with a handful of travelers and they told me, look, we know the risks involved with the coronavirus and the surge that we saw after Thanksgiving. We had to make some very difficult decisions. One woman who arrived here from Ohio told me that she hasn't seen her sister in over a year and to her, the reward is worth the risk.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAREN CASEY, HOLIDAY TRAVELER: I know with the COVID you can't live in a box, you still have to live. You have to be safe. And I just feel like you've just got to be safe and you can't live your life scared. I just feel like that. I mean, it's never going to go away and, you know, sometimes being in the House, being depressed by yourself, it can make you go crazy. So you still have to live life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALKER: And that woman telling me that she will take the precautions now that she is here to see her sister, she will try to wear her mask as often as she can. The airport here is expecting its busiest day to be on the Sunday after Christmas with 156,000 passengers expected to pass through, but all in all this is obviously concerning to health officials, including Dr. Fauci who said that he is concerned about yet another surge superimposed on this surge.

Erica, back to you.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Amara, thank you.

Well, joining us now, Dr. Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. He's also co- director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital.

Dr. Hotez, good morning to you.

You know, we just heard from Amara Walker there about the travel that we're seeing through Atlanta and what the TSA is reporting in terms of folks going through security over the last several days. I'm just curious your thoughts when you hear those numbers.

DR. PETER HOTEZ, DEAN, NATIONAL SCHOOL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE AT BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Yeah, it's tough. When you actually look at what we're facing right now as a country, Erica, 250,000 new cases a day, what that really means is 1 million new cases a day and of course the deaths around 3,000 deaths per day, it's just absolutely heartbreaking.

What it means practically speaking, if you are going to a big airport like the Atlanta airport, which is massive, of course, one of the biggest transportation hubs in the world, it means that a significant number of people you're seeing as you walk through the airport are actually infected with COVID. And that's what it means when you have a million new cases a day, that significant numbers of people are walking around on a daily basis with COVID-19 infection, and you have to treat basically everybody you walk into -- you interact with as though they might have COVID. It's that screaming high a level of transmission.

That million number comes from the fact that usually there's a four to one estimate the actual cases to the actual cases.

BERMAN: You know, Chris Murray, who runs the IHME model. That model is now projecting I think 567,000 deaths by April 1st, an increase of 6,000 over the last time they ran their projections.

But to your point, he says that with vaccinations, if we do a good job with vaccinations over the next several months, we might save 40,000, 45,000 lives. If we do a better job with mask wearing he says, it's like 54,000 lives saved.

So in the short term -- in the long term the vaccine is what's going to be the thing that gets us through this for the most part, but in the short term just wearing a mask, that's going to save lives, Dr. Hotez.

HOTEZ: Well, you know, as a nation we have to figure out how to walk and chew gum at the same time and we just haven't figured that out. We have to get people to wear masks, we have to -- too many people are defiant of masks. We have to keep putting the pressure on social distancing and we have to vaccinate the American people. If we don't do these things, the deaths will just continue to mount.

And to give you a sense of that number, John, 640,000 are the number of people who lost their lives from the 1918 flu pandemic, that pandemic of historic proportions. We're getting there, except we're getting there at a much faster time frame. That -- the 1918 flu pandemic lasted around three, four years, we are going to do that all in the course of a year. It's almost unspeakable what's happening right now.

[08:20:01]

HILL: It really is. We're now averaging more than -- well, nearly 2,700 deaths being reported a day, just yesterday more than 3,300 reported. When we look at that, too, I mean -- and, John, I know you say this all the time, too, it's so important to remember that each one of those numbers is a person, right, who is connected to friends and family.

And this is a person who is not there for whatever holiday they may have celebrated at this time of year. What are we seeing in terms of those deaths? Initially, it really was older people. We know some 40 percent were residents of long-term care facilities.

What does it look like now on Christmas Eve?

HOTEZ: So, two parts to that. One is right now COVID-19 is the single leading cause of death in the United States on a daily basis, that's how tragic this is.

And second, you know, there is this narrative out there that it's individuals over the age of 65 -- 35 percent of the deaths, especially among the Hispanic, African-American, Native-American community are under the age of 65. So what we're talking about is we're losing a generation of mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters. That's what this is about, and we're at a point where almost every American will know someone who has gotten seriously ill from COVID-19 and the impact on our homeland security is going to be long term.

So this is not only a public health crisis, this is a full on homeland security crisis as big as anything the country has ever faced.

BERMAN: We had been told that 20 million Americans would receive the vaccine by the end of the year, would actually get it in their arms by the end of the year. It really doesn't look like we're anywhere on track to be at that place. It will take the first week or two of January to get there.

There's a difference between vaccines allocated and vaccines administered. Now, the fact that we have a vaccine at all is incredibly encouraging and impressive and miraculous in its own way.

But are people getting them quickly enough in your mind? And if not, what's the hold up?

HOTEZ: Well, one of the hold ups is the fact that the first vaccine rolled out the Pfizer vaccine is also the most logistically complicated because of the deep freezer requirements and the unpacking, the inventory, making certain you preserve that freezer chain all the way through. So that clearly adds complexity. So you can argue, well, if we get it right now and get everything in place, the other vaccines won't seen as onerous in terms of delivering. So I think that's one point.

The other, though, is, you know, if nothing else COVID-19 has revealed that we have deep flaws and holes in our health systems. You know, our health systems have degenerated, especially in terms of public health infrastructure, where -- you know, where we have become a series of hospital chains together with something called CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreens and Amazon pharmacy, and it's very tough for a system that's constructed in that way to handle something as complex as delivering millions and millions of doses of vaccines over a short period of time.

I think in time, we'll get it right, but there's going to be a lot of missteps in the beginning until we can start putting in the sandbags to help make this happen.

HILL: And that access, too, is a major issue in so many areas of the country as we just saw in that excellent report from our colleague Omar Jimenez.

Quickly, before we let you go, we're learning that these state reports that were coming out from the coronavirus task force, they are not going to be automatically sent to states anymore. States will now need to go them. I have to admit I read that and I had to read it twice because I thought this makes no sense.

HOTEZ: Well, there's nothing about the White House coronavirus task force that makes any sense in this current -- this current administration. The only hope is that now with the new regime coming in that we're going to fix a lot of those issues and hopefully politicize it less and hopefully we can move more of it to the Centers for Disease Control and let the CDC do what it's set up to do and hopefully they can right their internal issues as well.

But, you know, enough about this nonsense. We just -- we have to look towards the future at this point.

BERMAN: Dr. Peter Hotez, thank you so much for being with us this morning. Thank you for all the work you've done with us and for the American people all year. We hope you have a wonderful holiday.

HOTEZ: John, Erica, thank you for giving me a voice this year. It means everything to me and wish you all the best for a happy, healthy holiday.

HILL: You, too. Your voice is so important and it's really appreciated. Dr. Hotez, thank you.

HOTEZ: Thank you.

BERMAN: So, President Trump throwing stimulus checks for struggling Americans in doubt as he pardons allies. What can Congress do about this now? Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:01]

BERMAN: All right. Breaking overnight, President Trump issued 26 new pardons, among those pardoned long-time allies Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, they, of course, refused to cooperate with the special counsel's investigation into Russian connections with the Trump campaign. The president also pardoned his son-in-law Jared Kushner's father.

Joining me now is Democratic Congressman Raul Ruiz, the chair-elect of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Congratulations for that. We're going to talk a little bit about that coming up.

First, just your reaction to these pardons that we've seen over the last two days.

REP. RAUL RUIZ (D-CA): It's a -- it's corruption to the first degree. I mean, he is -- he's really building a loyalist base. He's sending his signal as an autocrat to people that if they follow him blindly, that he will protect them as long as he is in power.

Therefore, in the future, we should expect an act two with the same cast of corrupt characters supporting the ex-President Donald Trump in any political bid that he may want in the future.

BERMAN: I want to talk about something now that has a direct impact on millions of Americans. I'm not suggesting that pardons don't, but I think for millions of Americans, they want to know, are they going to get the money that they were promised if they're unemployed right now? Are they going to get that extension of unemployment benefits? Are they going to get the stimulus checks that they were told were coming their way, the PPP loans?

The president has suggested that maybe he'll veto this bipartisan $900 billion stimulus deal. Where does it stand? Where do you think things stand this morning?

Do you have any idea what's going to happen now?

RUIZ: Well, I disagree with any vetoes during a moment when the American people are struggling. They are on the verge of being evicted. They are on the verge of losing their jobs, losing their businesses. They are food insecure during the holidays. They can't make end meet -- ends meet.

However, if it's to augment the stimulus check, then I fully embrace the $2,000 per person in -- for extra cash in the American.