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Dr. Anthony Fauci Interviewed on Biden Administration Plans to Administrator Coronavirus Vaccine; CDC States Second Dose of Coronavirus Vaccine May Be Taken Six Weeks after First Dose; Johnson & Johnson to Release Data on Possible New Coronavirus Vaccine; Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) is Interviewed About Seven Senate Dems Calling for Ethics Probe Into Cruz & Hawley Over Insurrection. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 22, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. And moments ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci on NEW DAY telling us he is confident that the Biden administration can vaccinate 100 million Americans in the next 100 days. Dr. Fauci says they will likely do even better than that. But he admits he needs to find answers about the rocky rollout of the vaccines. What's gone wrong? And he also concedes that a lack of candor and facts during the Trump administration likely cost lives. Dr. Fauci in his own words in a moment.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Also breaking overnight, the Biden administration rolled out some new executive orders to help American cope with the economic caused by the pandemic. His main work is pushing for a $1.9 trillion stimulus package, but this morning lawmakers can't even agree on the rules that will govern the Senate. We're going to begin, though, with Dr. Fauci, breaking news about the pandemic and the vaccine roll out right here on NEW DAY.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

BERMAN: New data out this morning. The hospitalization rate has continued to tick down. There is a real discernible downward trend in hospitalizations. That's good news. But Professor Michael Osterholm and others are looking at the new variants we're seeing around the world and in some cases here in the United States, and they are concerned that we could see a new surge, a new wave from these new variants. How real should that fear be this morning?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, CHIEF MEDICAL ADVISER ON CORONAVIRUS TO PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well, you always have to maintain that as a possibility, John. I'm not exactly sure that that's going to happen. We do have variants in this country right now. The U.K. variant is in several states. It has not become dominant. It might. That's the reason why you have to watch it carefully as we go from January into February, and really take a good look. But as Dr. Osterholm said and we all realize, 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 of time and again, from the wearing of masks to the washing of hands to avoiding congregate settings. That's the kind of thing that prevents surges regardless of what the type of virus, the mutant of virus, or what-have-yous there.

BERMAN: So the White House released its new coronavirus strategy yesterday, and they came out with this 21-page summary of it. And the number one thing, the number one goal of the new Biden White House in terms of battling the pandemic is to restore trust with the American people. Why is it necessary to say that?

FAUCI: Well, I think that that was really good making that number one because what we've had, John, there's no secret, we've had a lot of divisiveness. We've had facts that were very, very clear that were questioned. People were not trusting what health officials were saying. There was great divisiveness. Masking became a political issue.

So what the president was saying right from the get-go, let's reset this. Let's everybody get on the same page. Trust each other. Let the science speak. The president made the analogy of a war. Yes, if you look at the numbers, over 400,000 people dead, that's quite comparable to World War II. That's the reason we've really got to restore trust and restore a unified approach.

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

FAUCI: It very likely did. I don't want that, John, to be a soundbite, but I think if you just look at that, you can see that when you're starting to go down paths that are not based on any science at all -- and we've been there before. I don't want to rehash it. That is not helpful at all. And particularly when you're in the situation of almost being in a crisis with the number of cases and hospitalizations and deaths we have, when you start talking about things that make no sense medically and no sense scientifically, that clearly is not helpful.

BERMAN: So the new White House coronavirus coordinator, Jeffrey Zients, told our M.J. Lee, for almost a year now, Americans could not look to the federal government for any strategy. How fair is that?

FAUCI: Well, there was a strategy that we had when I was on the coronavirus task force. It wasn't articulated well, but there was a fractionation of it. There was a strategy that we knew that we were talking about. But the separation of the federal government and the states, I thought, and I had said back then, months and months ago, I thought that was really a lesion. You don't want the federal government to do everything, and you don't want the states to do everything.

[08:05:00] But what we saw a lot of was saying, OK, states, do what you want to

do. And states were doing things that clearly were not the right direction. And that's unfortunate. So the best thing to do is to have a plan, have the federal government interact with the states in a synergistic, cooperative, collaborative way, helping them with resources, and helping them with a plan, at the same time respecting the individual issues that any individual state might have.

BERMAN: The CDC updated it's guidance last night, suggesting you can get your second dose of the vaccine up to six weeks after the first dose.

FAUCI: Right.

BERMAN: You told Chris last night, Chris Cuomo, that you're taking a chance if you do that. Again, the CDC is saying one thing. You are saying another. How -- isn't that confusing to the American people?

FAUCI: John, no. OK, let me explain. The data that is from the clinical trials says if you get a Moderna dose, first dose, you get it 28 days. If you get a Pfizer, you get it 21 days. That's what the clinical trial says. That's the optimal. What the CDC is saying, sometimes the situation is stressed where it's very difficult to be exactly on time. So we're saying you can probably do it six weeks later, namely, two additional weeks.

Quite frankly, immunologically, I don't think that's going to make a big difference. It doesn't coincide with the precise data, but from a practical standpoint, I don't see a big problem with that if the situation on the ground means the stress is such you can't precisely do 28 days or 21 days. There's no disagreement at all between me and the CDC. They are saying practically speaking, if you got to do that, it very likely is not going to make a big difference.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

CAMEROTA: Great interview there. Joining us now to dissect it all is CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, can you just explain that last part there about the second dose, because I am still confused. Why is the CDC veering from, I guess, just the hard science of exactly what date and dose you're supposed to get?

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, no, it is a little confusing. I think what they are responding to is the fact that there's still been a difficult rollout with this vaccine, and there may be certain situations -- and this is a question that I get all the time as well. There may be certain situations where, and we can show you the specific scenarios where people may not be able to get the same dose of the vaccine that they first got for various reasons. One is that it just may not be available. Two is that sometimes people are not clear. They may not remember what first dose they got. You get a card when you get your first dose. You're supposed to hang onto that. But for some reason, if it's unknown, if you get a second dose of a different vaccine in these circumstances, that's acceptable. Or if you were accidentally given a different second dose, it's not going to -- people get really worried about that, understandably. But, Alisyn, I think there's two things going on here. One is this

idea, obviously, of the fact that there's still this rollout issue with the vaccine, and you may run into situations like you just saw on the screen. But the other is the trust. Number one in this new pandemic playbook is restoring trust. If you start to deviate from what the data shows in some way, might that erode trust? Maybe it's OK scientifically, it makes sense. These are both MRNA vaccines. They really should behave the same way. But you don't want to do anything to erode the trust. This came up, you may remember, when there was even discussion about decreasing the dose of the Moderna vaccine because a smaller dose seemed to generate the same antibodies, so why not give less of the vaccine? That will make it spread out more. But they came back and said, no, we're going to stick to the science on this. It will erode the trust if we start to deviate from that.

BERMAN: I'll just say, having watched that when Dr. Fauci said, John, no, I think he spoke for everyone who has ever known me.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Sanjay, there was one other aspect of this which I found very interesting. I talked a lot about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which we are going to get some data from soon. And there's a lot of expectation here because the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a single dose, or can be a single dose. It doesn't require the refrigeration. And what Dr. Fauci -- first of all, he seemed optimistic about it in general, although I don't know that he's seen the data yet on it. None of us have. But he suggested the efficacy rate, he will be happy if the efficacy rate of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is near Moderna and Pfizer, which is way over 90 percent at this point. He says if it's 20 percent less than that, maybe in the 70s, then there would be some concern. What did you hear in his explanation there?

GUPTA: Yes, I heard the same thing. And just to give you more context. Remember, even before the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were authorized, the FDA said, this is back earlier last year, they said they would accept 50 percent potentially efficacy to authorize a vaccine.

[08:10:09]

And then the numbers came out on Moderna and Pfizer and they were much higher, in the 90s. So that has set the bar. I can tell you, I've been doing a lot of reporting about these various vaccines. I talked to the head of the vaccine project for J&J yesterday. You're right, we don't have the data, but the phase one and phase two data look very promising. The vaccine seems to generate a lot of these same antibodies that we're talking about. This is a different type of vaccine. Instead an of MRNA, they are using essentially a human cold virus, and they basically strip out the material inside that cold virus and put in this coronavirus spike protein, and that's how they are -- that's what they are using to deliver the vaccine.

But they're quite optimistic about it. So I think we might even see data on that next week. And the reason next week, and people will remember this, is that that will mark basically two months of safety data. The FDA is requiring two months of safety data. We've been marking the calendar. That two-month period will come next week. So we could see this J&J data fairly quickly. One shot can be stored in a refrigerator for months, doesn't need this cold storage. And there's 100 million doses potentially available from a company that can manufacture a lot of doses. So that's potentially good news.

One other thing I'll add in there is they've been recruiting patients for that trial in South Africa where this variant that we've been talking about has been circulating. So if it's working in that population, that's another piece of news, another nugget to sort of tuck away in terms of how it might work against these new variants.

BERMAN: Sanjay, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

So this morning, seven Senate Democrats want to launch an ethics investigation into two Republican colleagues over their role in inciting the Capitol insurrection. One of the seven Democrats joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:15:33]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Seven Senate Democrats are calling for an ethics investigation into Republican Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz in the aftermath of the capitol insurrection. The seven senators write, quote: By proceeding with their objection to the electors after the violent attacks, Senator Cruz and Hawley lent legitimacy to the mob's cause and made future violence more likely.

Joining us now is Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono, one of the senators who is calling for the ethics probe.

Senator Hirono, good morning.

SEN. MAZIE HIRONO (D-HI): Good morning.

CAMEROTA: So, what do you want to see happen to Senators Hawley and Cruz?

HIRONO: We're asking the Ethics Committee of the Senate to investigate their role in attempting to overturn the results of a free and fair election. In fact, going into the January 6th count, they were very proud of the leadership role they were taking in trying to overturn the free and fair results.

So now we're asking for an investigation into improper conduct by these two senators leading to the insurrection in the capitol and five people dying and many people injured.

CAMEROTA: But do you have information that there was more than the fact that they just challenged and denied the election results? Do you have some sort of information that they were somehow in cahoots with the insurrectionists?

I mean, I know that some of the questions you're asking is, did they encourage the insurrection? Did they coordinate with the organizers of the rally? Did they receive donations from any of the organizers who funded the rally? Do you have any evidence of that?

HIRONO: That is why we're asking for an investigation to ascertain whether those aspects of the inquiry that we pointed out are there. But you have to look at the totality of the circumstances. It's not as though these two senators decided, well, we're going to challenge the vote count. No, it's a totality of the circumstances of months of the president calling the election results in question, putting forth the big lie, capital B, capital L, big lie.

And these two senators were very much in concert with the president in pushing this big lie, frankly, leading to the insurrection and all of the terrible things that happened on January 6th.

CAMEROTA: So from what you do know --

(CROSSTALK)

HIRONO: So, this is not just a one off.

CAMEROTA: OK. From what you do know, I mean, before the investigation, what do you want to see happen to them?

HIRONO: The investigation -- if the Ethics Commission determines that there is evidence that should lead to some kind of consequences, then that's the recommendation they will make, including expulsion.

These two senators have been called on to resign by a number of senators, as well as people in their own community, as well as newspapers in their states. But apparently, they're not about to resign because they're very proud of their role going into January 6th, and they continue to raise money off their posture. It's very clear that they were doing this for their political interests, their own political interests.

CAMEROTA: Last night, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was on with Chris Cuomo, and she basically felt that you should take action sooner, particularly if the Senate trial of Donald Trump were going to be held up.

So, here's what she said last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): Hey, if they want to delay it, let's bring up a vote to expel Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley from the Senate, because if we've got time on our hands, then we should be actually bringing justice to the members of Congress and the members of the Senate who also helped support this insurrection.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: How about that, Senator? Do you want to see a vote to expel? HIRONO: This should follow an investigation. And so, there's a

process. The senator -- we have a responsibility to question the behavior of senators. And the way to do that is through an ethics committee investigation and review. And that's what we're pursuing.

CAMEROTA: What do you think about Senator McConnell's proposed timeline for trial for Donald Trump, what we know, what he's suggesting, January 28th, they would issue a summons to Trump. February 4th, he gets to answer the articles of impeachment. February 11th, he can submit his pretrial brief. February 13th, the House can submit their rebuttal.

[08:20:03]

What do you think of that one?

HIRONO: He's submitting a timeframe for the Democrats to review, and what's that's happening. This is -- we're not interested in delaying the trial of this president and his inciting to insurrection, but at the same time, if we're going to take that kind of time, I want to make sure that President Biden's nominees have hearings and that we can get on with putting them in place so that they can conduct the business of doing things that will actually help people. And that's what President Biden is doing with his proposals right now.

CAMEROTA: I want to ask you about what happened to these thousands of National Guard troops yesterday. They were at the U.S. Capitol to protect lawmakers and the Capitol.

HIRONO: Yes.

CAMEROTA: And they were banished for some reason by someone to this parking garage. Here's the CNN reporting on it. Pictures provided to CNN showed guardsmen sitting or lying down in areas cordoned off with caution tape.

Some appeared to be sleeping by resting against concrete pillars in the garage just a few feet from parked cars. There was one electrical outlet and one bathroom with two stalls for 5,000 troops.

Do you understand who sent them away from the capitol and to this parking garage?

HIRONO: Here they are, the national guardsmen from every state in the country, including 200 from Hawaii. And I had just that day, that afternoon, thanked the Hawaii guardsmen for coming to our aid and to protect all of us.

So this decision, when we found out about it, provoked a lot of outrage. We are making inquiries with the sergeant at arms, the capitol police. Who made this decision? And there is need for accountability because this should never have happened.

And apparently by midnight, they were no longer in the garages, but as I said, this should never have happened. Want to know who made the decision and why. CAMEROTA: Yes. And you haven't gotten any answers on that yet?

HIRONO: So far not. We are making our inquiries.

CAMEROTA: As you know, President Biden is calling for bipartisanship. He says that's his priority. That's his preference. Are you --

HIRONO: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- seeing any change in your colleagues' moods in terms of being open to working together that perhaps you hadn't seen for the past years?

HIRONO: Well, so far, the beginnings are, in my view, not that great because President Biden has put forth his recovery assistance, as we are in the middle of a pandemic and millions of people are suffering. So, already, the Republicans are shooting those proposals down. And he also put forth an immigration proposal that the Republicans are busy shooting down.

And so, yes, we're going to have debates. And the good thing about the Democrats being in charge is that these issues are actually going to be brought to the floor of the Senate for debate, which is what should be happening, and vote -- something that never happened when Mitch McConnell was setting the agenda.

Much of his agenda just consisted of hundreds and hundreds of nominees for judicial positions for life. And so, you know, we're actually going to bring forth for a vote and debate, as I said now, that Democrats are in control, substantive legislation intended to help us recover from this pandemic and also to get control of this pandemic.

CAMEROTA: We only have a couple of seconds. What do you want to see happen with the filibuster?

HIRONO: I am open to filibuster reform because as the Democrats bring forth these kind of substantive legislation, we need to get on with things. We are in the middle of a crisis, economic crisis, health care crisis.

And Mitch McConnell would like to be able to veto through the filibuster every single one of these legislations until he gets what he wants. So that is not a power that we should be handing over to him.

So I am open to filibuster reform so that we can get on with the business of helping the people of our country.

CAMEROTA: Senator Mazie Hirono, thank you very much. We appreciate your time on NEW DAY.

HIRONO: Thank you. Aloha.

CAMEROTA: President Biden wants a bipartisan deal for coronavirus relief. Can he get it? The White House is weighing in this morning. That's next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:24]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: He thinks we can get to a bipartisan package. At the same time, we're not going to take tools off the table because addressing this is what he was elected to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That's White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki moments ago talking for the president's push for a relief package for struggling Americans. He wants $1.9 trillion, and he wants Republicans to sign on. The question is, will they, and how long is he willing to wait to find out?

Joining us now, Natasha Alford, senior correspondent at "TheGrio", and CNN White House correspondent John Harwood.

John, look, the Biden White House now is facing questions about their willingness to negotiate with Republicans or even talk to Republicans.

They are two days in. They're two days in. I get that people want answers and get impatient, but it's not like they've been trying for months and months to no avail.

How much time do you think they're willing to give this?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, some, but I don't think they're going to take the approach that President Obama took, for example, in 2009 to negotiating with Republicans on the health care package. Remember, because we all covered it, John, President Obama tried to lure Republican cooperation over an extended period. Finally discovered that he could not get any on the health care bill and they moved ahead with a Democrats-only package, and that's what they had to do and it put constraints on how they could operate and what was in the final package, but that was the best they could do.

In this case, Joe Biden's personal preference is to negotiate a bipartisan deal. That also would give him more flexibility. If they simply want to add this package to the deficit, which is their approach at the moment, it is easier to do that.