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New Day

House Votes to Increase Stimulus Checks, Override Trump Veto; Biden Accuses Trump Appointees of Obstructing Transition; U.S. Again Sets New Record for Coronavirus Hospitalizations. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired December 29, 2020 - 06:00   ET

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

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE; The House of Representatives voting to increase stimulus checks.

[05:59:21]

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-N): Every Senate Democrat is for it, but unfortunately, we don't have the Republicans on board.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've just been waiting for Congress to make some decisions that would be in the best interests of so many Americans like myself.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: I've encountered roadblocks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have enemies in America. They know we're vulnerable in these transitions.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's effectively scraped off that top layer of leadership. That is the layer that has been corrupted.

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome in our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Tuesday, December 29, 6 a.m. here in New York. John Berman is off today. Jim Sciutto joins me.

Great to have you.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: You're stuck with me all week.

CAMEROTA: That I can handle. It's another pivotal day here, so I'm really happy to have your help.

SCIUTTO: It is. It's good to be here.

CAMEROTA: OK. We begin with big developments in Washington, the House approving a measure to increase coronavirus stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000.

A few dozen Republicans joined Democrats in voting for the increase which President Trump had demanded after he delayed signing the relief bill.

At the same time, a big rebuke from the president in his final weeks in office. More than 100 Republicans joining House Democrats to override the president's veto of the defense spending bill. Now both of those issues are in Mitch McConnell's court.

So one big question this morning: is President Trump losing his grip on the GOP?

SCIUTTO: Big question. Meanwhile, President-elect Joe Biden is blasting President Trump's appointees, accusing them of obstructing the transition of power. Mr. Biden specifically calling out the Defense Department and the budget office as agencies where his team has encountered what he called roadblocks.

The president-elect today will address the worsening coronavirus pandemic. Listen to these numbers. Hospitalizations in the U.S. breaking another record this morning. Forty percent of all ICU beds are now occupied in this country by coronavirus patients. Some hospitals in California now considering having -- having to ration care.

We're going to speak this morning with Dr. Anthony Fauci live in our next hour.

We begin, though, with CNN's Suzanne Malveaux. She is live on Capitol Hill with all the developments in Washington. It's quite an unusual alignment here, right? The outgoing Republican president aligned with Senate Democrats.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Jim.

You're absolutely right. There's a flurry of activity here on Capitol Hill, and it's setting up some pretty rare alliances, some rare agreement here. You've got House Democrats who were voting with President Trump on these $2,000 direct stimulus checks for COVID relief.

You've got House Republicans, however, voting against the president regarding that veto of the military policy bill. And now today, what you will see is a big loyalty test for Republicans now on the Senate side.

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MALVEAUX (voice-over): The House passing two key votes overriding Trump's veto of a defense bill and passing a measure to increase stimulus checks to $2,000 for eligible Americans. The new stimulus receiving overwhelming support among Democrats, and 44 House Republicans voted in favor of this measure, allowing the bill to narrowly pass with a two-thirds majority.

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): I voted for that increase. I think we're in a unique time where people need the money.

MALVEAUX: The fate of the new relief payments is unclear. Trump tweeting his support for a vote overnight: "Give the people $2,000, not $600. They have suffered enough!"

It's putting Senate Republicans in a tight spot.

SEN. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): The same Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans that thought, Well, we have plenty of money for a $2.2 trillion tax cut for wealthy families or large corporations, now seemed to say we can't afford to help these families in need during the worst pandemic in a century. I expect Mitch McConnell to try to fight it.

MALVEAUX: Too leading Republican senators have said they would support it: Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio.

The House also issued a stunning rebuke, overwhelmingly voting to override the president's veto of the Defense Authorization Act. The final vote was 322 to 87 in favor of the override with 109 House Republicans voting against the president.

REP. MAC THORNBERRY (R-TX): It's the exact same bill. Not a comma has changed. The world is watching to see what we will do, whether we can tune out other differences and still come together to support the men and women of the military and American national security.

MALVEAUX: The president initially vetoed the bill over objections to a provision renaming military bases honoring Confederate military leaders and his demand for the removal of legal protections for social media companies.

REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WA): There is literally no reason to veto this bill for the reasons that the president did and certainly no reason for us not to uphold what we did in passing this bill.

MALVEAUX: Senator Bernie Sanders says he will hold up this vote, writing in a tweet, "I'm going to object until we get a vote on legislation to provide a $2,000 direct payment to the working class."

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): We need to get $2,000 out to every working-class individual in this country.

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MALVEAUX: So the Senate will be back today for those key votes. As for Sanders, a source close to the senator says his first priority is getting those checks -- those much-needed checks to Americans who are eligible.

At the same time, he realizes the impact of delaying the vote and what that would mean for the Georgia Senate race, that runoff race for Purdue and Loeffler, which would force them to make a vote on those checks before January 5 -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Well, they sure left a lot of votes to the final hours here. Suzanne Malveaux on the Hill, thanks very much.

President-elect Joe Biden is slamming Trump administration appointees for obstructing the transition of power, as Mr. Biden prepares to assume office in just 22 days.

CNN's Joe Johns is live in Wilmington, Delaware.

And Joe, what's happening here is remarkable, right? I mean, because holding back on key national security issues in the Pentagon, and this is no small thing, given all that the U.S. is facing right now.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: That's absolutely true, Jim, and what we learned from Joe Biden on Monday is that the words he is using to describe the situation becoming increasingly serious.

We learned also that this lack of cooperation that we've been hearing about again and again and again extends not just from the Department of Defense, but also to the Office of Management and Budget.

And now Joe Biden is using words like "obstruction" and "irresponsibility" to describe what's going on in this relationship between the Trump people and the Biden transition. Listen.

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BIDEN: For some agencies, our team's received exemplary cooperation from the career staff in those agencies. From others, most notably the Department of Defense, we've encountered obstruction from the political leadership.

Right now, we just aren't getting all the information that we need for the outgoing -- from the outgoing administration in key national security areas. It's nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility.

JOHNS: So Biden made those remarks after getting a briefing from his agency review teams on the situation involving national security. And one of the things they say they're most concerned about is that enormous cyberattack that has been blamed on Russia that has affected several U.S. federal agencies. So we're going to have to watch to see whether things change in these last 21, 22 days before Biden is expected to take office.

Also important to say today Biden has expected to give remarks on the pandemic and his take, at least up to now.

Back to you, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: We will be diving into all of these issues and why there are so many impediments to the incoming administration.

Joe, thank you very much for the reporting.

Now to the coronavirus. The pandemic continues to rage across the country: 121,000 patients are hospitalized this morning with coronavirus. That's another record. Hospitals in California are stretched so thin one hospital is putting

patients in the gift shop and a chapel. CNN's Stephanie Elam is live in Las Vegas with the latest.

What's the situation there, Stephanie?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

You're talking about that number being above 121,000 people who are currently hospitalized. That's the 27th day in a row that we have seen the hospitalizations above 100,000 here in the United States.

When you take a look overall at the deaths, as well, we, for this month, there are above 66,000 people who have lost their lives to the coronavirus this month. That is a record, showing that this is the deadliest month for the coronavirus here in the United States.

The previous record was back in April when you saw that number run up then. Also, there's now 5.7 million more cases that have been added during this month. That is beating out the old record, which was set here in November for the state.

You've got at least six states that have seen a record number of hospitalizations in the last few days, and when you look at the issue here, when you look at Los Angeles County, in particular, the officials here are saying that a lot of this can be traced back to Halloween.

It was the beginning of November when we started to see the surge come up and that had to do with people gathering around Halloween, that they thought it might be the worst then. But then came Thanksgiving and the surge following that.

So now, the concern is travel, because people have clearly been moving around. It's not like what we saw in March and April, where people were staying home. Despite the stay-at-home orders, we are seeing people are moving around. TSA actually reporting that they had the most people go through their checkpoints on Sunday, the most out of any day since the pandemic began.

So because of that moving, they are concerned that they're going to have a surge upon a surge. Where here in Southern California, in this part of the state, we have zero ICU beds available. Same thing with the San Joaquin Valley. We're expected to see the stay-at-home orders extended here today because of that.

[06:10:00]

And you're talking about hospitals being inundated. You're talking about ambulances having to drive around hospitals, because there is no room for the patients who desperately need more care. This is what's happening here in L.A. County and other parts.

Now, while the governor yesterday, Governor Gavin Newsom, said that the state is starting to level off. In most places around the state, it is not the case in the Southern California region. And so that is why we're expecting to see the stay-at-home order extended.

When you look at the numbers overall, though, they're saying nine to ten people a minute are testing positive for the virus here in L.A. County. And part of the reason why we're seeing this number increase the way that it is, is because the testing has ramped up here, as well.

But obviously, they really hope people start to listen to these warnings here. Because a surge upon a surge, we just don't have the bed capacity for it, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Right. I mean, zero beds available where you are. That is zero capacity. Thank you very much for all of that reporting, Stephanie.

OK. So now it's up to the Senate. Will they also override President Trump's veto of the defense bill? Will they also give Americans more stimulus money? That's next.

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CAMEROTA: All eyes on the Senate this morning after the House passed a measure to increase coronavirus stimulus checks to $2,000. And in the final days of his presidency, President Trump facing his first veto override. What does all this mean?

Joining us now, CNN political commentator Errol Louis. He's the political anchor at Spectrum News.

Also with us, CNN political analyst Margaret Talev. She's the politics and White House editor at Axios.

Great to see both of you.

Guys, I'm no economist. I don't let that stop me from opining this morning on what any of this means. And Errol, $2,000 per a person to the neediest Americans who need to buy groceries, need to pay their rent. This is the money that goes right back into the economy. They don't put this under their mattress.

And so what's Mitch McConnell's problem with it, and is he going to go along with the Republicans and the House who voted for it?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, the problem for Senator McConnell and the Republican majority in the Senate is that they said all along, and they said this for many years, is that we're not supposed to spend the American's people money, even on something as vitally needed as economic relief at the time of a national emergency.

They've made clear that this, in effect, loan against our own future so that we can get the country up on its feet is not something they were going to necessarily go along with. It is a big number. It is a lot of spending. There are those, as well, who believe somehow that giving people in some cases more money than they might have made otherwise, some of the big workers, isn't quite fair or isn't quite right in some way. Or it will take away some incentive for them to go out and look for work, as if that was an issue.

And so they're kind of in a box. They have been upended by the White House. The White House said it was going to be $600 and then, at the last minute, the president is putting it into an area where all of their constituents in every state are going to probably be interested in getting their hands on that $2,000, Alisyn.

SCIUTTO: Margaret, I mean, you have an interesting pairing here, in that you have the outgoing Republican president, and Senate Democrats, and the incoming president-elect, Joe Biden, aligned on this. They all support this increase to $2,000 payments here.

I wonder, and clearly, by delaying this over the weekend, right? By delaying a day, just from Saturday to Sunday, that delayed checks getting in the hands of the neediest right away, but on the issue of increasing to $2,000, did the president have it right?

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: You've got the Sanders, Trump, Marco Rubio coalition in force now.

Look, I mean, this is an example of over the past four years, the sort of bipartisan deal that President Trump could have cut if he and Republicans had had -- he and Democrats, rather, had had a meeting of the minds on any number of issues like gun control or health care, which they didn't.

The question is, in these waning days, is it going to be too late. And the answer is probably, although not definitely. A couple of days ago, it seemed completely out of hand, like no, this wasn't going to happen.

You saw shades in that House Republican vote yesterday of how this could be possible. And it's also true that, if you really need $600 worth of help from the government, you probably need $2,000 worth of help from the government.

The one thing that we've seen consistently in the coronavirus pandemic is that there's just not a whole lot of in the middle. You're either basically like, Hey, what's happening, but you're doing OK. You can work from home. Your kids are safe. Or you're in really dire circumstances and you really, really need assistance. So there is a need for it.

But the way this happened, the way the president has engaged at the last minute, many of these Republicans are locked in. I think the question is whether Leader McConnell is going to even allow this to kind of come up for a full vote.

You're seeing, if you look at Marco Rubio's tweet, you look at some of the Republican senators weighing in, you're seeing them saying, if they could vote for it, they would vote for it.

And I think that's an important caveat to watch. The politics over the override, the timing, the fact that the Congress runs out on January 3, still makes this very, very difficult to pull off. CAMEROTA: Let's talk about the politics of the override of President

Trump's veto. So if I pull up the numbers, 109 Republicans in the House went along with Democrats to override the president on the Defense Authorization Act.

And so what does this mean on a larger point? First of all, what do we think is going to happen in the Senate. And this public rebuke, basically, by Republicans of something that President Trump wanted. What should we read into this?

LOUIS: Well, I think what you should read into it is that the NDAA this year, as it has been for the last 59 years consecutively, is considered must-pass legislation. The Republicans who went along with the Democrats to -- to issue this override are people who have bases in their district. They're people who do not want the black mark on their record of having voted against an increase in pay for the military. I mean, it's just politically untenable.

The president has done this often throughout his administration, which is push people, really, to the breaking point. He has finally reached the breaking point where folks are saying, Like listen, this is almost equivalent to resigning my seat. If I were to vote against, you know, the military base in my district, or against an increase for the folks who put me into office.

And so I think we're going to see a similar dynamic in the Senate. You know, think about the people who want to get reelected, the people who want to aspire to higher officer. He's putting them in an absolutely impossible situation.

And if Mitch McConnell allows an override vote, it's very possible that he'll get it.

SCIUTTO: But Margaret, you know, we shouldn't forget what is in this bill. Because it's not just pay raises for U.S. soldiers. Renaming U.S. military bases named for Confederate generals, a big issue for this president. He opposed it. It's in this bill.

Also, withdrawing U.S. forces, or reducing them in Germany and Afghanistan. Two big issues for the president. There are provisions in this bill that would delay that, put up road blocks.

And then this section 230 thing, which is about immunity for social media sites. Again, a pet issue of this president that, with these overrides, if they happen, would be a rejection of multiple positions, things that this president has pushed for very strongly.

[06:20:09]

TALEV: Right. Well, Jim, you're right.

First of all, this override is on track to happen. The -- even if the process begins today. And we'll all be watching to see what Leader McConnell says when he makes an address later today.

But even if the process begins immediately, it could be Friday before we see this vote. Because now it is bound up with the politics of the $2,000 and the stimulus.

But this override is on track to happen. And it will be read as a rebuke to President Trump on some level, but -- but the alternative is not to have the NDAA. And so these negotiations that have pushed to the end and become veto threats and things about tech companies that have gotten bound into defense authorization bills, you know, it's only a rebuke because that all got packed into this bill.

This is legislation that needs to pass. And it can't be seen as a loyalty test to President Trump versus a loyalty test to national security. Like, that doesn't make any sense.

So Republicans, even the ones who understand the political imperative, you know, in districts, maybe, or their own states of remaining, you know, loyal and perceived loyal to President Trump, are going to need to go along with this override. Like, the override is on track to happen. The question of the stimulus is a different matter but can't be resolved until the override is dealt with. And so we're going to have very long week that trickles all the way, probably, past the New Year into the very last days of Congress.

CAMEROTA: So guys, we are 22 days, right -- is that right -- 22 days --

SCIUTTO: That's right.

CAMEROTA: -- away from the new administration? But not so fast, Congressman Louie Gohmert says, Errol. He is suing Vice President Pence to get Vice President Pence to basically disavow or override the will of the voters in this election.

He wants Vice President Pence to only recognize the Republican electors that voted for President Trump, even -- particularly in the battleground states, where President Trump lost.

LOUIS: Right.

CAMEROTA: This will go before a federal judge, a Trump-appointed judge in Texas. What's going to happen here?

LOUIS: The judge is probably either going to sit on it or laugh it out of court. It is a trip to Crazy Town. If you read through it and try and follow the logic of it, what it basically says is that the purely ceremonial role of the vice president in reading out the results of the Electoral College procedure, somehow imbues him with the right to overturn all of the results of the Electoral College and, in turn, the election that we just had.

There isn't a judge in this country, I think, that is going to allow that to go forward. Because on any kind of an appeal, it will be slapped down. Time is of the essence, and so the judge is going to have to make a quick decision about whether or not to even engage in this foolishness. There's a very good chance that he will decline to do so, regardless of who appointed him. That would be, I think, the most likely outcome of this. It's probably symbolic. It's Louie Gohmert, trying to show some last- minute loyalty to the president about an election that, I think, the whole world now knows Donald Trump has lost.

SCIUTTO: And you should always note, when this happens, every member of Congress, including Louie Gohmert, were elected in this same election that he is now claiming should be overturned. Just a point of fact.

CAMEROTA: All right. Interesting. That's a good context.

Errol, Margaret, thank you very much.

So hospitalizations are hitting a record level across the United States as fears grow about another holiday surge. So we'll show you the drastic measures that are being taken as some hospitals are reaching their limit.

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[06:27:53]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. Well, the United States again set a new record for hospitalizations, a record with more than 121,000 patients in the hospital with coronavirus infections. It comes as health officials are expecting the number of cases and deaths to rise in the coming weeks. Really, the question is by how much?

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

Dr. Hotez, always good to have you on.

DR. PETER HOTEZ, DEAN, NATIONAL SCHOOL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Good morning.

SCIUTTO: So the numbers here, they're off the charts, right? I mean, 168,000 new infections just in 24 hours yesterday. We now have 121,000 people hospitalized in this country.

I just wonder, given that we know that holiday travel, everybody getting together for the holidays, that kind of thing, leads to surges -- we've seen it after past holidays going back several months -- how much worse do you see those numbers getting in the next couple of weeks?

HOTEZ: Yes. I mean, the numbers are just beyond believable. I think Los Angeles County, for instance, reported almost 100,000 cases last week.

If you remember over the summer, we were all horrified when Dr. Fauci said we could reach 100,000 new cases a day nationally. Now, we're talking about 100,000 cases a week just in L.A. County. I just -- it's unbelievable. I mean, the surges and the impact on our ICUs across the country is absolutely devastating. We're hearing stories of hospital staff running out to ambulances to provide emergency care. This is the nightmare scenario we worked so hard to prevent, because we know that's when the mortality rates absolutely skyrocket when you start overwhelming capacities of emergency rooms and ICUs. And that's exactly what's happening as we're speaking right now in Los Angeles and so many other urban areas across the country and many rural areas.

So New Year's Eve, this is not a time to get together with people. It's the nightmare scenario in terms of COVID transmission. It's perfect for the virus. It's -- you know, you're indoors. No one's got a mask on. The music's loud; people are raising their voice and releasing lots of virus and then drinking alcohol and it's -- and then, you know, letting your guard down.