Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Trump Signs Stimulus and Government Spending Bill, Averting Shutdown; Officials Identify Nashville Bomber, Focus Turns to Motive; December is the Deadliest Month in U.S. Since Pandemic Began. Aired 7- 7:30a ET

Aired December 28, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day. John Berman is off. Jim Sciutto is here with me. Great to have you here.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEW DAY: So good to be with here you again.

CAMEROTA: We have a lot of news this morning. Because, breaking overnight, President Trump finally signed a coronavirus relief package and government spending bill into law. But this came after days of dragging his feet and playing golf. President Trump did not sign this until after 7:00 P.M. on Sunday. And that means that millions of unemployed Americans will have their benefits lapse. If he had signed it by midnight on Saturday, those Americans would have had the money.

The president is still demanding an increase in direct payments. Democrats say they will try to pass that today. It's not clear what President Trump got out of all of this.

This morning, the New York Post is blasting the president's efforts to try to overturn the election results, with this scathing front page editorial calling on the president to, quote, stop the insanity, and declaring, quote, you lost.

SCIUTTO: The Post has always been with him. That's a big change.

We are also learning new details about the suicide bombing, that's right, suicide bombing here on America soil, in Nashville. Look at that moment, police releasing new surveillance video of the moment of the blast on Christmas morning. Officials have now identified the man who they say detonated a bomb inside an R.V. parked downtown, an American suicide bomber. They're now focusing on why he did this.

Joining us now to discuss it all, Margaret Talev, CNN Political Analyst and Politics and White House Editor for Axios, and CNN Political Analyst, Toluse Olorunnipa, he's a White House Reporter for The Washington Post.

CAMEROTA: Thank you, Jim, I'll take it.

Margaret, let's start with what happened last night. So, after 7:00 P.M., the president finally signed this coronavirus relief package and government spending bill. Had he signed it at midnight, by midnight, on Saturday night, instead of out waiting until Sunday, millions of Americans would not have their benefits lapse.

But because he waited a few more hours, they will. And that means that something like 12 million Americans won't be able to pay for groceries or won't be able to pay their rent. Why? Why did he do that?

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. Alisyn, basically, all of Washington is scratching their heads asking this question this morning, including top Republican leaders. It is correct, if you are an American who is waiting for that $600 per person to arrive this week as the treasury secretary, President Trump's treasury secretary told you would, it's not going to happen most likely this week, it's going to be delayed. If you are expecting that extra $300 expansion in unemployment benefits, that is -- you're probably going to miss the first week of it. That is going to be delayed. And it is because of the president's delay on this.

And in the end, it doesn't change what package people got. It doesn't make you anymore like to get $2,000. None of that is going to change as a result of the president holding back on this.

Another interesting detail, my colleague, Mike Allen, reporting this morning that this deal, the president's decision to go ahead and sign it was actually cemented yesterday afternoon in a phone call with Mnuchin, with House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy. So we didn't hear that he would sign it for sure until last night. But he'd actually made that decision hours earlier. So what you had was this -- a very public campaign to try goad and embarrass the president into signing it.

And then a private campaign that actually was probably for effective in terms of convincing him, you're the leader, the country, we can't do without you, you've fought a good fight, you've helped frame the conversation for the things you care about. That is what it took to get it done. And even then, we all had to wait several hours to hear of the decision and that extra time delay, you know, has probably made a difference in people's ability to get the relief. And if you really need the $600, that day mattered.

SCIUTTO: As do millions of Americans, perhaps many watching right now.

Toluse, as so often happens here, it's about ego management of the president. His friends kind of cajoling, pushing a little bit, Mr. President, you did so well here, to finally get him to act. Of course, the other looming deadline, January 6th, where Congress, as a moment where the president's allies could challenge the results of this election, as that's happening, you have the president losing one of his closest allies. That is the New York Post. Look at the cover of the New York Post this morning, Rupert Murdoch owned, stop the insanity, telling him to stop this unfounded challenge on the election.

[07:05:05] Can his allies cajole, ego-massage him into abandoning this battle?

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: They are really running out of room. They have been trying to coddle him in the last seven weeks since his election loss, essentially saying, the president has every right to go to court, he has every right to challenge these results. We believe the president, we stand with the president, while at the same time moving forward with preparing for a Joe Biden presidency. So it has been an effort to coddle and cajole the president and really try to trick him into believing that they are on his side and they believe that he can continue this fight to remain in office.

I think the New York Post is one of many organizations and outlets that are starting to kind of break away from that and essentially tell the president, listen, you need to face up to reality. You lost this election, you're going to be leaving office in just under a month and you need to do what's best for the country instead of lashing out against the country that you're supposed to be leaving, because you're throwing a tantrum over your election loss and essentially trying to say that you lost because of fraud.

So I do think the president is going to realize that, as January 6th comes closer, as January 20th comes closer, that a lot of these Republicans that have been coddling him and have been indulging him over his baseless claims of election fraud are going to be kind of tiptoeing away from him silently as they move forward with certifying Joe Biden's win and preparing for a new era, preparing for Joe Biden to be the president, President Trump to be a former president, to be not in power, not in office, and that's going to be the new reality come January 20th.

And a lot of these Republicans are starting to realize that and they are going to act accordingly. They cannot continue to coddle a president and not pretend as if they have their own political lives to think about and their own political future, and future that includes Joe Biden as president and President Trump as a former president.

CAMEROTA: Wow, how brave, 23 days left. However many days after the election, Margaret, that his, you know, Republican enablers have decided that maybe now, it's time to begin slowly tiptoeing away. I guess, when you lose, you know, the New York Post, that sends a shiver down the spine of others.

I mean, 63,000 Americans have died this month from COVID-19 while President Trump plays golf. And as we pointed out, those benefits will lapse. Yes, they'll be retroactive for the people who are unemployed, but if you can't buy groceries this week, it doesn't matter.

And so, I mean, it's just the split screen of him being warm in Florida, playing golf, while all of this other, as the New York Post calls it, insanity is unfolding, has just been really, you know, disturbing to watch. And then, of course, in terms of what he's going to do next, the National Defense Authorization Act, he vetoed it. You know, Republicans may have enough votes to override it. What's going to happen in these 23 days? TALEV: Yes. They're leaving him no choice but to override him, which will be another rebuke of him. But they have to do this. Otherwise, national security is jeopardized, programs that he cares about, like the Space Force are jeopardized. And this all comes as Republicans are looking at a couple of other deadlines and dates. One is the Georgia runoffs, those two special elections to literally determine who controls the Senate. So there's that. And the other, of course, is Joe Biden's inauguration day.

But if you are watching the president on Twitter, which is a pretty good way to tap into how he's feeling moment to moment and what he wants to broadcast to people, then you know that yesterday, for at least second time, maybe the third time, he's thrown out the idea that he wants to call all Trump supporters to Washington, to the nation's capital ahead of that January 6th date when Vice President Mike Pence and the Congress have to accept the Electoral College results.

This is yet another deadline that Republicans in Congress are very -- just don't want to happen. They don't want the president to try to stage some sort of official or unofficial rally or march to try to challenge and contest a legitimate election win by the president's opponent. And that is another date that we're facing down.

So I think part of the reason that you're starting to see this pushback is because these Republicans are like, oh, my goodness, what is going to happen in the next, whatever, 23days, like there has to be a transition of power.

SCIUTTO: Listen, and the last time you had those groups in D.C., there was violence. There were violent clashes with police, et cetera. There's a security risk.

TALEV: And there's a pandemic. And so it's not safe, even if you're outside to have thousands of people in the same shared space not wearing masks, protesting for something that can't happen, that is not going to happen.

SCIUTTO: Right. Toluse, President-elect Biden, who will be president in 23 days, is giving an important speech this afternoon on national security.

[07:10:01]

Of course, this country just had a suicide bomber strike in the streets of America. The president hasn't commented on it. Do we expect the president-elect to comment on this and what else to focus on today from this?

OLORUNNIPA: Yes, I do believe he will comment on this bombing. We have seen President-elect Joe Biden really rush into the void every time President Trump has been silent. President trump was silent when it came to what he was going to do about the coronavirus relief bill. He did not make any public comments for several days. We saw Joe Biden put out a very blistering statement on Saturday, essentially attacking the president, saying that he was going to leave, that he had been involved in abdication of responsibility that was going to lead to danger for the country.

So I would expect another situation like that, where President Trump being silent about this bombing attack in Nashville over several days, Christmas day, the day after Christmas, all the way through the weekend, saying nothing, making no public comments at all. I believe that Joe Biden is going to try to show the country that he can be a leader and he take sort of a position of leadership to speak to the country.

He says that he has been briefed about this. He's being briefed by his national security leaders. And that's what's going to happen before he comes out and speaks. And I imagine he'll speak about that issue as well as other issues facing the country right before he takes office, he's going to inherit a country that is facing a number of challenges, including when it comes to national security and I believe that's what he's going to talk about when he speaks today.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Toluse and Margaret, thank you both very much for all of that analysis.

Okay. Also, developing overnight, authorities have identified the man who blew himself up inside an R.V. on Christmas morning in Downtown Nashville, but his motive is still unclear. This is the new surveillance video from the moment that that motor home blew up. You can see that it damaged dozens of buildings and also knocked out AT&T service in the area.

CNN's Natasha Chen is live in Nashville with the latest. What is the latest at this hour, Natasha?

NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, investigators are still working at the scene, several blocks away from us. But yesterday in this spot, investigators named Anthony Quinn Warner as the suspect. The U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee said he was here when the bomb went off and died in the explosion.

This is a relatively fast process to get him identified. They used fragments of the R.V. and the blast to get a vehicle identification number, to trace back to the owner. They also found human tissue that was quickly processed at Quantico along with other DNA samples from Warner's family.

As you just mentioned, police released late last night that new video of the blast, that orange glow and those harrowing moments. And you also see an officer in that video walking away from it in the seconds right before. That's Officer James Wells. Here is what he said about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES WELL, METRO NASHVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT: You watch the video, you can see that moment of clarity for me, when I heard the guy say, go and check on the time (ph). And so I was peeking around, looking like this and this. No, do around and go check on the time (ph). And so I turn around and start walking in the opposite direction and then three seconds later, boom. So I'm not going to shy away from that, because that's what saved my life. That's what got me to see my kids and my wife on Christmas.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHEN: Law enforcement say Warner was not on their radar prior to this incident. They're still looking into a motive here, going into his history, talking to people who might have come into contact with him, who knew him. The type of explosives used are still under investigation, as well.

In the meantime, Governor Bill Lee has asked for federal aid related this disaster, but we have not yet heard from President Trump on that, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Okay. Natasha, thank you very much.

So, how will investigators figure out the bomber's motive? We look at the clues with a former top FBI official, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. This morning, we are seeing this new video of the Christmas morning suicide bombing in Downtown Nashville, the very moment that this went off. Authorities have now identified the bomber as 63-year-old Anthony Warner, the only person killed, thankfully, in the blast, but dozens of buildings sustained significant damage. The question, of course, now, how did he do it and why did he do it?

Joining us now, is CNN Senior Law Enforcement Analyst, Andrew McCabe. He is the former deputy director of the FBI. Andrew, good to have you on this morning.

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Good morning.

SCIUTTO: So, first, big picture, if we can, this is an American citizen, an apparent suicide bomber on U.S. soil. Tell us the significance of that.

MCCABE: It's extraordinarily rare, Jim, extraordinarily rare. We have seen many, you know, numerous people who are motivated by international terrorism or domestic terrorist ideology, try to detonate devices here in the United States. Many of those, the FBI has been able to foil. But very few of them include someone who is willing to kill themselves in the course of that act.

SCIUTTO: I spent time with New York Police Department counterterror folks a couple of years ago. And they have enormous alarm bells set up. If you buy acetone, like something you can make a bomb out of at a hardware store, I mean, alarm bells go off. This was an enormous and apparently sophisticated explosive device. How much of a security miss here that he was able to construct this and set it off entirely under law enforcement radar?

MCCABE: Well, we'll find out as we get more about this particular scenario. But it is true that law enforcement, at the state and local and federal level maintain what they refer to as tripwires. So that's communications into the industries that prepare the precursors and the materials that could be used to assemble explosive devices. But it is not a perfect system. Explosives, like TNT and military-grade explosives are very highly regulated, but precursors are not.

[07:20:01]

And as we know, there's a lot of information out on the internet these days to instruct people on how to assemble devices if they wish to do that. So it is far from a perfect science, trying to be aware of every person who purchases stuff that they could use to hurt people.

SCIUTTO: Sure, listen, fertilizer bombs, right, go back to Oklahoma City. Basic materials can create giant devices here.

Okay, let's talk about motive, and it is too early. They have not assigned a motive here. But based on the clues that we have so far, for instance, parking this bomb in front of an AT&T transmission facility, do we have a sense of what the possibilities are as to what motivated this?

MCCABE: Well, sure, there's all kinds of possibilities, and that's exactly what the investigators are looking for now as they course through all of the material in his home, his internet usage, people who he's in contact with on email and phone and things of that nature to see if he's left behind any writings or indications of what his belief system may have been.

But I agree with you, Jim. I think that the odds that this is simply a suicide are very small. It's very, very rare to assemble a device of this size and to deploy it on a public street, where you know, clearly, this individual knew he could wreak great havoc and cause loss of life. It's hard to imagine anyone going through that level of planning and execution without having something to say.

Now, we do know in the history of bombings in this country, you can look to someone like Theodore Kaszynski, right? So Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, very dedicated to an anti-technology philosophy, which he was advancing through his bombings over the course of 20 years. You could be in a situation like that, just simply looking at the AT&T building as a potential target. But we're far from making -- drawing that conclusion yet. We have a lot of investigation to do.

SCIUTTO: You know, and again, it is early here. But in the span of a few weeks, we've seen the danger of domestic groups or individuals. You had the plot to kidnap and harm the Michigan governor, quite a sophisticated plot there. They were thankfully caught in advance. You have this.

I mean, this country spent years focused on international terror groups and organizations, Islamist terror, which remains a very severe threat, but the FBI has been sounding the alarm for some time about the danger of domestic terrorism, that kind of violence. What have we learned about the severity of that threat? MCCABE: Well, we should know by now that the severity of the domestic terrorism threat is equal to or greater than the threat we currently face from international terrorism. The FBI director has said exactly that under oath on the Hill recently. The end -- you know, you have to put this against the backdrop of an incredibly divided society. We become more polarized in our political speech every day.

And also, you have to factor in that these groups, particularly the racially focused groups and the more hard core right-wing groups, who have always existed in the kind of backwaters, as a fringe ideology in this country, are now experiencing a renewed approval or acknowledgement from the absolutely highest levels of our government, including the president of the United States. That is a volatile mixture that our law enforcement folks are going to need a very close eye on.

SCIUTTO: No question, and, again, it appeared no assignment of motive in this Nashville attack yet, therefore, not called terrorism without that, but, again, watching the big picture. Andrew McCabe, great to have you on.

MCCABE: Thanks, Jim. Good to be here.

SCIUTTO: Well, the deadliest month yet in this pandemic. What could Americans do now to turn around the outbreak that, frankly, is raging out of control? We're going to discuss, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:25:00]

CAMEROTA: The coronavirus death toll in December is horrible. Nearly 65,000 deaths reported this month alone, more than 5.5 million coronavirus cases this month. Both are record breaking since the pandemic began.

Joining us now, CNN Medical Analyst, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, he's a Professor of Medicine at George Washington University. Dr. Reiner, great to see you, as always.

65,000 deaths this month, and yet, do you still think that January, next month, will be worse?

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Well, I think it depends on how much of a surge we get from the Christmas and New Year's holiday. We saw a spike after Thanksgiving and then, really disappointingly, over the last week, about a million travelers passed through airports every day. So I think we're going to see a spike.

And it's really frustrating, because if you look at the data over the last ten days, it actually started to show some signs of life. Places like the Midwest, with unmistakable drops -- a drop in number of cases, even the northeast, U.S. positivity rate had dropped from about 12 percent down to about 10 percent, those are really tangible signs of a slowing of the crisis. And now there almost certainly will be another spike. SCIUTTO: Dr. Reiner, so we'll take the bad news with the good news, right? The vaccine is rolling out. So far, 1.9 million people vaccinated. The Warp Speed -- Operation Warp Speed goal had been 20 million by the end of the year. But Dr. Fauci saying, he still thinks that goal is attainable because in part because he says, it's possible more people have been vaccinated than that 1.9 million and just kind of records catching up.

And I'm just curious, big picture, how do you rate the rollout of the vaccine so far? Is it going according to plan?

REINER: I think it's been slower than we wanted.

[07:30:00]

I think we've been surprised about how much vaccine hesitancy there is, even in some of the folks who work in medical centers.