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New Day

Dr. Fauci Says, New Cases and Hospitalizations are Plateauing, Deaths High; Biden Tackles Economic Crisis with New Executive Orders; Fight Over Filibuster Stalls Power-Sharing Agreement in Senate. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired January 22, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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


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[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day.

Breaking news, moments ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci told us right here on New Day, he is confident that the Biden administration can vaccinate 100 million Americans in the next hundred days. He wants to do even better than that. He thinks we can and will do even better than that.

But at the same time, Dr. Fauci admits, he needs to find answers about the disappointing rollout of the vaccine. He says he doesn't quite understand yet why these vaccines that have been shipped haven't all been administered. He's trying still to figure that out.

In the meantime, he made some news about these variants that are spreading across the world.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, CHIEF MEDICAL ADVISER ON CORONAVIRUS TO PRESIDENT BIDEN: We are seeing a plateau in the number of cases. As we do that, that doesn't mean that all of a sudden everything is going to even off, because we're still going to have a lot of hospitalizations even though they tend to be plateauing and coming down. And we'll still have a lot of deaths.

What we're hoping is that as we come to the end of January, we'll start to see that plateau and things will go down. But as Dr. Osterholm said, and we all realized, there's a possibility that with the variants here, we may have a dominance of those strains that tend to transmit more efficiently. The best thing you can do about that is to continue to uniformly adhere to the public health recommendations that we've spoken about time and again, from the wearing of masks to the washing of hands, to avoiding congregant settings.

That's the kind of thing that prevents surges, regardless of what the type of virus, the mutant of virus of what have you is there. That together with an increase in the rollout of vaccines is the thing that we should be concentrating on. (END VIDEOTAPE)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: Okay. We have much more of that in a moment. But we also have breaking news overnight, the Biden administration rolling out new executive orders to try to fix the economic crisis. President Biden is pushing for things like a $15 minimum wage for federal workers in this $1.9 trillion stimulus package.

But this morning, lawmakers have yet to even agree on the rules that will govern the Senate.

BERMAN: All right. I want to get the latest on coronavirus and what Dr. Fauci just told us. Joining us know is CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, I was very interested in where we are today, right? With hospitalizations going down, with Dr. Fauci very pleased with. I mean, he's optimistic that maybe we have plateaued. But I wanted to dig into the concerns about these new variants and whether or not that means we could see a new wave in the United States. He didn't rule that out, but I don't think he seems to think it's a giant cause of alarm this morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, that's what I took away from it, as well. I mean, I think that these variants are something we certainly have to pay attention to and there's a couple of them out there. One way to think about it, and I was speaking to some people who really study viral dynamics, even last night, these are obviously -- this U.K. variant, for example, much more transmissible. So what does that mean? There are several things that you have to pay attention to. One is, if something is more transmissible, it can become the dominant strain.

In fact, we saw that before. The Italian strain, for example, in the spring of last year was the dominant strain. That started to actually become -- or the more transmissible strain, that started to become the dominant strain.

According to some projections, this U.K. strain, for example, could double in terms of its overall proportion every week. So if it's 1 percent this week, 2 percent next week, 4 percent the week after, and by March, it could become the dominant strain in this country.

The second thing is like, what does it mean for overall the virus in this country, I mean, the numbers of overall new cases have been coming down a little bit. You want to follow that trend a little bit more carefully. Deaths, as we know, these tragic deaths typically follow four weeks after the number of cases. So, they're still going up. But if cases continue to go down, deaths by sort of end of February should start to come down, as well. We will see.

And then the final point is, do these variants, are they going to continue to respond to the current vaccines and so far the answer seems to be yes. But we're not tracking these variants nearly enough in this country. We would be getting ahead of the curve if we did that. But right now, we're only sequencing about 0.3 percent of the virus that's out there. We need to be doing much, much more than that to see how widespread the variants are and if there's any new variants, as well.

[07:00:01]

CAMEROTA: Sanjay, I was very interested to hear Dr. Fauci talk about the confusion about vaccines. Some states say they have vaccines sitting on the shelves. Some places, like New York City's mayor, says they are about to run out of vaccines. What's the problem? Why aren't we -- why isn't this streamlined? And he's been candid about his own confusion about some of this, as well, and he says we need to get on the ground to see what's happening.

Obviously, there needs to be a point person or some sort of, you know, task force to figure this out. This seems like something that kind of needs to happen like this morning.

GUPTA: Yes, I totally agree, Alisyn. And we're talking about arguably the most precious commodities on the planet right now. It still baffles my mind that there was back and forth on, do we have reserve doses or not? Some people say, look, are we making too big a deal about that? But, you know, if we're talking about 5, 10 million doses out of 40 million doses and we're not exactly sure if they've been held back or not or where they are, that's a problem when you're dealing with something as precious as vaccines in the middle of a pandemic.

Let me show you a couple of things in terms of where we are right now and the percentage of people who have actually been vaccinated and the percentage of people who have received both their doses. It's about 4.5 percent of the country, roughly, have received a dose of vaccine, 0.6 percent have received both doses, so less than a percent of the country right now fully immunized from vaccines.

But I think the larger point, Alisyn, the one you're making is, right now, people are watching. They're thinking, look, I really want a vaccine. I don't even know sort of where to get it or when to get it. In fact, if you look at it, 60 percent of people right now, I believe in the country, this is according to Kaiser Family Foundation, saying they're not sure when exactly to get the vaccine. 55 percent say they don't know where to get it. This is a problem. I mean, everyone talks about this is as sort of the way out, and it's a problem.

Now, it is true, some states are going to be different than other states. Some states have more long-term care facilities, for example. Those residents were first in line to get vaccinated. Other places are going to have more health care workers. But it has been very uneven. I think that that's been the worry from the start. And Dr. Fauci is the only sort of bridge, really, between the last administration and this administration with this issue.

The fact that we had two vaccines authorized, the fact that they got to the states from Operation Warp Speed, great. I think a lot of people didn't think that was going to happen. But after that, is sort of when it fell apart. States all handled this very differently. BERMAN: A couple more things, one on the 100 million vaccinations in a hundred days. Dr. Fauci said he would like to see more than that. Clearly, at this point, given that we vaccinated a million people yesterday, you just do the math, if we don't get to 100 million in a hundred days, it means that there's been backsliding. It means at this point that something went wrong. So he made clear, yes, it's a goal. Let's not make it a thing that it's maybe not the highest goal, but he would like to see us do better than that.

And then there was this other moment, Sanjay, in the discussion. He clearly, and he said to the American people yesterday, he felt liberated. Speaking to the press yesterday in the Biden administration, compared to the Trump administration, he talked at the podium yesterday in the White House about what it felt like to be restrained and the lack of facts, in some ways, during the Trump administration. And I asked him about what the impact of that might have been. So, listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Did the lack of candor, did the lack of facts in some cases over the last year cost lives?

FAUCI: You know, it very likely did, particularly when you're in the situation of almost being in a crisis with the number of cases and hospitalizations and deaths that we had. When you start talking about things that make no sense medically and no sense scientifically, that clearly is not helpful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: And we also said he didn't want that to be a sound bite, to be fair to Dr. Fauci, but when Dr. Anthony Fauci says he thinks that the lack of candor cost lives over the past year, it's pretty significant, Sanjay.

GUPTA: It really is. And I think there's -- first of all, if he's saying it, because he's -- you know, he's measured in how he responds to these things. If he's saying it, it's absolutely true because, you know, it's a tough thing to sort of acknowledge. But you go back and look at the fact that we were spending so much time on therapies that did not work and could be harmful, like hydroxychloroquine. It's not just that hydroxychloroquine was harmful, it was, to people who had COVID, but it took our eyes off the ball on other potential things.

The idea that herd immunity was a strategy that was pursued by the previous administration, a strategy that if it continued to sort of roll out, would cost, you know, hundreds of thousands, maybe a million more lives. Even the things like the bleach, which got so much attention, those were harmful sort of things, because they, A, hurt people, even people died because of it, but also it took our attention away from things that could actually matter.

[07:10:05]

And I think that that's what he was responding to. I mean, I've got to tell you, just as a medical reporter, and I talked to Dr. Fauci all the time and many others, as well, it felt like we were stutter stepping almost the entire year last year, just step, stutter step, back and forth, spending all my time making all of these notes, just constantly fact-checking every single thing that we heard coming out. We couldn't move the knowledge fund forward because we constantly had to check to see if what we were just told was even true. So that made it really challenging.

And just a quick word on the hundred million shots in a hundred days. I mean, you know, it's interesting, and I'm a little surprised at how much the White House has sort of bristled at this idea that maybe that's undertargeting, because I thought it was great the way you asked the question. Will we be backsliding if we don't continue to meet these goals?

We're in a crisis situation, as everyone has stated. But it's not just the amount of vaccination out there that is going to be necessary, it's the speed now at which those vaccines get out there, because we're racing not only against the virus but the variants of this virus. And variants more likely occur as the virus spreads more and more. So the vaccine can slow that down. So it's got to be the speed of vaccination as well as the total number.

BERMAN: Sanjay, thank you. We look forward to talking to you more about this over the course of the next couple of hours. Don't go far.

Breaking news, the Biden administration releasing its plan to deal with the economic crisis caused by coronavirus. CNN's Jeremy Diamond live at the White House. this is the day two message, Jeremy.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: yes, no doubt. The day one message, full day one, yesterday, was focused on the health crisis facing America, the coronavirus pandemic. And you saw President Biden sign about ten executive orders and actions to address that health crisis, including a new mask mandate, as it relates to interstate travel.

Today, you're going to see the administration focus on the consequences of that health crisis, which is the economic crisis that this country has faced, with millions of people still out of work, millions also in food insecurity. And so that's where President Biden will begin today, with an executive order focused on food insecurity and helping to expand benefits to Americans who are facing those trouble getting food on the table.

You're going to see an increase in food stamps as a result of one of these executive orders, 15 to 20 percent increase in those food stamps, also known as SNAP benefits. And you're also going to see an increase in money to families whose children normally get school meals. That is another part of this executive order.

Then the second executive order that President Biden intends to sign today is going to focus on laying the groundwork for a $15 minimum wage for federal employees and contractors. So that's not something that's going to kick in right away, but this executive order will set in motion a plan to do that in President Biden's first 100 days.

And the executive order will also revoke several federal -- several moves by President Trump to revoke federal protections. So you're going to see some of those protections for civil service employees restored, making it harder once again to fire them, and also restore their collective bargaining powers.

But the bottom line here, John, is that ultimately, while President Biden is going to takesome executive actions today, what they are also going to focus on, and I'm sure this is what you'll hear from President Biden this afternoon, is the need for that $1.9 trillion economic relief package that he is pushing to get through Congress.

Brian Deese, the White House's top economic adviser, made very clear in a call yesterday with reporters that these executive actions are not a substitute for that $1.9 trillion package, but instead, a critical lifeline to hold Americans over. John?

BERMAN: Jeremy, thank you very much. Keep us posted over the next several minutes.

Intense negotiations already in the Senate. The one key bargaining chip that could hold up major issues, including impeachment, next.

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[07:15:00]

CAMEROTA: This morning, the Senate is still trying to figure out how to divide up their powers in a 50/50 split and that's putting issues on hold like impeachment, cabinet confirmations and some major legislation.

Joining us now is CNN Political Analyst Rachael Bade, she is the co- author of the Politico Playbook, and CNN Political Commentator Errol Louis, he is the Political Anchor for Spectrum News.

And, Errol, you are a master tea leaf reader of the machinations on Capitol Hill. What are you watching for today?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, what we're going to have to see is whether or not Chuck Schumer really wants to give power to the grim reaper, Mitch McConnell, who proudly used that title for his ability to kill Democratic hopes and legislation. The question is going to really be whether or not the child gets strangled in the crib, so to speak. If you make it so that Mitch McConnell and the Republican minority in the Senate can stop legislation by requiring a 60 percent vote on every piece of meaningful legislation, in effect, the Biden administration's agenda comes to a grinding halt. It's the single most important fight that Chuck Schumer is going to have as majority leader and we'll have to see how he maneuvers through it to make sure that he's got a chance at enacting some kind of a Democratic agenda.

BERMAN: Rachael, it seems as we are now on day two of the Biden presidency, the Biden administration, there are two just giant major questions and issues that hang over everything else. Number one, the response to the pandemic, what can the new White House do to make the numbers better, get more people vaccinated, and then a connected, separate issue is how much bipartisanship can Joe Biden really get? How much of the unity that he talks so much about, like 36 hours ago, how much of it is achievable and realistic?

[07:20:00]

When will you know? What are you watching for over the next few days that will tell you which way that's headed?

RACHAEL BADE, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I mean, we're seeing a pretty clear indication right now. I mean, up on the Hill yesterday, we heard from a lot of Republicans who were saying that this COVID relief package, something that you think would get a lot of bipartisan support, is a non-starter for them. A lot of Republicans are saying, they just passed $900 billion worth of stimulus and help around the holidays and they think this package is too big.

So I think Biden is really going to face a sort of critical test in the next couple of days. Does he want to sort of lower his ambitions to try to keep that bipartisan status or thing he was aiming for, does he want to try for that, or does he want everything that he has proposed in his coronavirus package, the minimum wage increase, the $1,400 stimulus checks, is he willing to say, okay, I'm not going to be working with Republicans perhaps as much as I wanted, but I'm going to get these things that I think the country really needs right now.

CAMEROTA: And, Errol, you think that President Biden can draw a lesson from his time in the Obama White House and, what, do the opposite of what Obama did?

LOUIS: Well, absolutely. One of the great lessons of the Obama/Biden administration was that when they needed stimulus, when the country was flat on its back economically from the mortgage implosion, they pushed and they pushed and they pushed and they held for political reasons to a lower number than what their own economists told them was needed to revive the economy. And it all worked out in the end, but it took much longer for the recovery than it should have.

And many of those same economist are part of the Biden team. I'm sure they're going to tell them the same thing all over again. He himself knows after rescuing the auto industry and bringing the economy back took longer than it should have. That's the great lesson of that episode, it's the lesson, frankly, of the first part of this pandemic.

When you give people enough money that they can survive and they can pay for goods and keep the economy going, it is a much, much, much better solution than to be stingy about it for purely political reasons because of this abstraction called the national debt. It just doesn't make sense. And that will be another one of these early fights that Joe Biden is going to have to wage.

BERMAN: Rachael, I want to play you some sound from Dr. Anthony Fauci. We just spoke to him moments ago. And it's about something that's become oddly an issue in the last two days, whether or not the goal of vaccinating or getting vaccines to 100 million people in the first hundred days of the administration, whether or not that's too low of a gold. So just listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAUCI: You know, I mean, obviously, you want to do as best as you possibly can. I would like it to be a lot more. The goal was set, but you don't want to get fixated on, was that an undershoot or an overshoot. You go for 100 million over a hundred days. If we do better than that, which I personally think we likely will, then great. I just don't want to get fixated because I saw yesterday, there was that back and forth between that. We're going to go for it, for as much as you possibly can.

When you set a goal, if you do better than the goal, that's terrific, I hope we do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Now, the reason I'm bringing this up to you, Rachael, in a political discussion is because, you know, there's probably a reason why the incoming Biden administration set that goal. You don't want to set a goal that's not achievable at this point. And when he was pressed on it yesterday, President Biden said, oh, come on, man, give me a break. You told me I couldn't achieve that before. But you pick a number you can reach at this point.

And it's interesting that some of the pushback on the Republican side now, Steve Scalise is out there saying, you should be saying 200 million.

BADE: Yes. I mean, it's pretty obvious that the Biden administration is trying to sort of set expectations, if not, lower them a little bit. They want to be able to say that they achieved something significant in terms of the pandemic.

I mean, yesterday, one of the top story lines in the morning was, you know, the administration saying they came in and there was no plan from the Trump administration about how to address the pandemic. And I think the point they were trying to make was that, look, we are really starting from scratch. Again, sort of a moment to try to tamper expectations and say, look, we're dealing with something, you know, that the former administration hasn't helped us with at all.

We heard something very similar from Cedric Richmond yesterday at Playbook, we did an interview with him and he also was sort of really reluctant to sort of articulate certain goals that would identify what success looks like within a hundred days. And I think this is purely, of course, sort of political in that Biden doesn't want to say or doesn't want to be seen to have failed or fallen down on the job to sort of stall momentum. It's a political thing.

CAMEROTA: Errol, how about what's upcoming with the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump? It's interesting, some of the lawmakers who were attacked during the insurrection felt very strongly one way, that day, and now seem to be feeling differently. [07:25:00]

Here is Congressman Kevin McCarthy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): The president bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters.

REPORTER: Do you believe that president, former President Trump, provoked?

MCCARTHY: I don't believe he provoked, if you listen to what he said at the rally.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Will the real Kevin McCarthy please stand up? But, Errol, what does this mean for the trial?

LOUIS: Well, every day that passes between January 6th and the actual impeachment trial, which is going to be the main accountability mechanism other than criminal prosecution, for those who incited this riot, it's going to be harder and harder for people to put aside all of what they have to do right now. We are in the middle of a national emergency, and go back to that day and remember the fear and remember the danger and try to make sure it never happens again. More mundane considerations start to creep in. And that's what you heard from the very mundane Mr. McCarthy, just talking about the politics of the moment, as opposed to the institution that he is sworn to defend.

Those who want to really get back to politics as usual, yes, you're going to see them downplay it, try to shift blame, try to act as if it was the fault of the Capitol police. Or, gee, why weren't they more ready for this attack that we organized? It's going to be a very messy discussion. Hopefully, it will be the impeachment trial that really sets all of this straight about all of what happened and the inspectors general, there are four of them that are looking into what happened, we'll get a full accounting of this. You're not going to get it from the politicians, Alisyn.

BERMAN: You know, when Kevin McCarthy pulls off the latex mask, it's Kevin McCarthy underneath. It turns out, it's still Kevin McCarthy.

CAMEROTA: Thank you both very much, Rachael and Errol, for all of this.

We do want to take a moment to remember some of the more than 410,000 Americans lost to coronavirus.

Trevor Preston was a corrections officer in Texas for more than 16 years. Known as a mama bear, colleagues remember her as a prime example of a public servant for her community. She was just 57 years old.

San Diego grandfather Ruben Valdez died after a 75th birthday party. 18 family members, including Ruben, later tested positive for coronavirus. Don Ruben, as he was known, was a beloved retired construction worker who cared for his community. He volunteered to clean up local parks.

Lieutenant John Reynolds served 25 years as a police officer in Garden Grove, California. He worked his way up from the patrol division, working as a gang officer, a SWAT team member, undercover detective and head of the Youth Services Unit. Garden Grove's mayor praised him as deeply loved by the entire community and a hero. Reynolds was 59 years old.

We'll be right back.

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