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CDC Says School Can Reopen If Precautions Are Taken; Biden to Sign Executive Orders Today to Combat Climate Crisis; Impeachment Managers Consider Using Video to Bolster Case. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired January 27, 2021 - 07:30   ET

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

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[07:32:34]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDY SLAVITT, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE ADVISER FOR COVID RESPONSE: Teachers are an enormous high priority. That's one of the many reasons why we're going to get vaccines pumped out into the states and into the doctor's office as quickly as we can.

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ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the Biden administration wants to vaccinate teachers before other people so children can go back into the classrooms. The CDC now says it is safe to reopen schools with mask wearing and social distancing.

Joining us now is Dr. Paul Offit, he's the director of the Vaccine Education Center of the Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and a member of the FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee.

Dr. Offit, great to have you here.

So, the research over the past year reveals that schools are not super spreaders. They are, in fact, some of the research suggests, safer than being out in the community. But the devil is in the details. And that is that what we hear from some superintendents is that some very large public schools don't have the room for, say, plastic barriers and social distancing that some smaller schools do.

So, now, what?

DR. PAUL OFFIT, DIRECTOR, VACCINE EDUCATION CENTER, CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA: Right, Alisyn, in Philadelphia, a number of parochial schools are open and are seeing children and opened safely. And, you know, we do need to get back to school. The virtual learning is not the same as on-site learning for many in the public school system, this is the only decent place they get during the day and the school system is often the place where you can pick up on child abuse. And so, I think we need a way to make it through so we can safely reopen those public school. The teachers are the ones that are at greatest risk, much more so than the children. But I don't think we have to wait for vaccination. I think we have to be able to provide a mechanism whereby we can get those kids back into a public school setting where it can be done safely. It may require more money for those schools, but I definitely think we need to do it.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I think that's the thing and that's what these studies really highlight, this is something we can do and we know how to do it. What this shows among other things is that masks work. If there's any clearer example of the facts that masks work, I don't know what it is. These kids are wearing masks in school in Wisconsin and so are the teachers and it's not spreading, basically.

But the issue is, can you replicate? Or how can you make it so we can replicate this Wisconsin model across the rest of the country? How do you make classrooms more safe, Doctor?

OFFIT: Right. I mean, so you -- if possible, you try to have smaller classroom sizes, so-called, you know, pods. It's the teachers that move from one class to the other, so you don't have these crowded hallways.

[07:35:02]

You know, you try and separate the desks as much as possible. You don't eat in a cafeteria, so you're not all sitting together with your masks off. So, there are a number of strategies that can be done. This was done in Denmark a while ago successfully. And they put out a missive explaining how they did it. And basically, that's the missive on which the CDC based its guidelines.

So, we can do it. I think we can do it. And we have to do it.

CAMEROTA: I mean, teacher's unions, as you know, are fighting it because they don't want to understandably expose their teachers to some deadly risk. And they say they don't have the money to do the things that -- to retrofit in the way that you're talking about.

OFFIT: Again, as John said, we're not helpless here. I think with masking and social distancing, this is a virus that's spread by small droplets. If you stand six feet away to the degree that you can and you mask, you are -- you have a dramatically decreased risk of getting this virus. So I just think we need to move forward here. I agree with teachers that they are essential workers so they need to get back to work.

BERMAN: The other way of asking the question that a lot of people are phrasing it like this now, Doctor, is why can't we just open all of our schools now? Why doesn't this indicate that we should just have open schools?

OFFIT: Again, I think there are some schools, it's much more difficult to do that. We need to get together and find a way, where are those larger public schools, where you have more difficulty eating at your desk, or more difficulty with a smaller classroom. We have to find a way to do that. But I have to believe this is doable and the teachers can work with us to do that, with the superintendents to do that.

CAMEROTA: Do you think that the new variants play any role in the calculation of when to open schools?

OFFIT: No. I mean, the variants -- we do worry about the variants, because we -- the most important thing you want to make sure is the variants don't escape vaccine-induced immunity. And you're going to know that's a problem when you see people in this country who received two doses of the Moderna vaccine or received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, that nonetheless are hospitalized with COVID-19, with one of these variant strains.

When you see that happen, then you know it's a problem. Right now for the moment, it's a theoretical problem. We know with some variants, like the South African variant, when you look at serum from people who have been immunized twice with this vaccine, there's a lesser ability to neutralize that virus.

But less doesn't necessarily mean it's not good enough. And we're not going to find out until we see how it plays out in the real world. Get ready for a second generation vaccine with these variants, if that is a problem. But for right now, it's not a problem.

BERMAN: Yeah, it's a theoretical problem, but the way to keep it a theoretical problem is to wear masks and get vaccinated! That much we know.

CAMEROTA: John feels strongly about this.

BERMAN: I know, it's true. It's like crystal clear now. It's just so blatantly obvious.

Dr. Offit, thanks so much for being with us. Appreciate it.

OFFIT: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: President Biden taking on climate change today. We have details on what he wants to do, next.

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[07:41:32]

BERMAN: New this morning, President Biden will sign a number of executive actions today focused on climate change. It includes a pause on new oil and gas leases on federal lands.

CNN chief climate correspondent Bill Weir joins us now.

And, Bill, this is the fulfillment of some of the president's campaign promises.

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: The most ambitious promises ever by any American president, John. And you often wonder, what if we can see climate changing, planet-cooking pollution. How would we think about this issue?

Well, we got hold of a camera that does just that and what better time to show it off than this morning when more of that sweeping action is expected.

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WEIR (voice-over): During a 2020 filled with broken record-breaking fire, drought, massive swarms of locusts, and so many hurricanes they ran out of name, Joe Biden promised to help avoid planet-cooking, climate-changing fossil fuel suicide.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The cry for survival comes from the planet itself.

WEIR: And within hours of his oath, he signed an executive order for every agency in government to be guided by best science while undoing many of the results of Donald Trump's fossil fuel fetish.

The first target listed involves places like the Permian basin of Texas, where a certain kind of heat-trapping pollution belches unchecked and invisible.

Unless you have a special infrared camera like this, which can turn a Texas bluebird sky into this. And this is methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. If CO2 is a blanket of average thickness, methane is a blanket as thick as LeBron James is as tall.

The gas does lose its potency much faster than CO2, but the volume is staggering. Along with all the active oil and gas production, the U.S. has millions of abandoned wells leaking methane.

Biden's strategy to stop this may become clearer with Wednesday's second batch of climate orders, when he's also expected to halt any new drilling and fracking on federal land and water. And since he also rejoined the Paris accord, the whole world is watching.

JOHN KERRY, U.S. SPECIAL PRESIDENTIAL ENVOY FOR CLIMATE: We come back, I want you to know with humility, in the absence of the last four years, and we'll do everything in our power to make up for it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am so happy to hear John Kerry say this, because we need the U.S. to be back at the center of the action.

WEIR: Not so happy, Republicans like Ted Cruz, who's already turned Trump's line about representing Pittsburgh, not Paris, into a bumper sticker. But the evenly divided Senate also has a Democrat.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN (D-WV): I'm Joe Manchin --

WEIR: Who once shot a literal hole through his own party's climate plan.

MANCHIN: I sued EPA and I'll take dead aim at the cap and trade bill, because it's bad for West Virginia. WEIR: In a statement, the senator from coal country now says the

Paris Accord must be improved so all countries are held to the same standard and that every resource must be used in the cleanest way possible.

Who do you think is a bigger obstacle to the goals of real climate action? Is it Republicans like Ted Cruz or is it a coal state Democrat like Joe Manchin?

VARSHINI PRAKASH, CO-FOUNDER, SUNRISE MOVEMENT: It's hard to substantiate, you know, which one is more or less of a threat.

WEIR: The Sunrise Movement had twice as many members arrested for their 2018 Capitol Hill protests than the mob on the day of the incursion.

[07:45:02]

And their cofounder vows to keep the pressure on everyone, including the man she helped get elected.

PRAKASH: I think the key here is that Joe Biden cannot litigate these issues behind closed doors with obstructionist Republicans. He cannot immediately moderate or temper his vision. There's this false sense that just taking a policy and moderating it or making it milk toast will make it apply to a broader swath of people. But that's simply not true.

WEIR: And for Biden, this test is timed and every day, this invisible problem goes unsolved, the results get a lot more visible.

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WEIR (on camera): And to avoid congressional obstruction, Joe Biden does have one tool in the box. That is declaring climate a national emergency, much the way Donald Trump used border security to free up money to build that wall. He's not expected to go that far. Chuck Schumer is urging him to do that. But today he will declare it as a national security threat, something the Pentagon has been saying, Alisyn, only since about 2014.

CAMEROTA: Bill, I don't know how much that cool new camera cost, but it was worth it to see that horrible --

WEIR: It's amazing, right?

CAMEROTA: Yeah, amazing, amazing to see that horribly disturbing image of what it captures. Thank you very much for bringing us all of your reporting, as always.

WEIR: You bet.

CAMEROTA: Republicans who objected to counting electoral votes on January 6th, they're finding out that some consequences hurt more than others.

John Avlon has our reality check.

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JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: If you want to find out what's really going on, follow the money. That's why the decision by some major corporate donors to stop supporting the 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the election is still sending shockwaves through Washington.

This is the kind of consequence members of Congress pay attention to. Because cutting off their money matters more to some of them than the ethics or civics of their decisions.

CNN reporters Fredreka Schouten and Sergio Hernandez analyzed data from the Center for Responsive Politics and found that political action committees associated with roughly 280 companies contributed $21 million to Republicans who objected to counting the Electoral College votes, five of those members hauled in more than a half million dollars from these corporate PACs before the attack, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, party whip Steve Scalise, and Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.

Smaller corporate donations also flowed to congressmen who have been linked to the Stop the Steal movement, in Trump's attempt to overturn the election, including Representative Scott Perry, Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks and Paul Gosar, in addition to Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley.

No one thought they were giving money to people who supported sedition, said JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. Turns out some of them were.

CNN reached out to see which companies decided to take a stand, and which decided to remain silent. A hundred and twenty companies have decided to pause or end political donations in some form since the attack, 12 said they would continue political donations as normal. They apparently see all of this as an extension of politics as usual. It's not.

But the real accountability comes from the 33 companies that are specifically suspending donations to the seditious 147, either through the 2020 cycle or indefinitely. These companies include AT&T, CNN's parent, Comcast, Amazon, Walmart, General Electric, Alphabet, and Verizon. This should have an impact. It's probably the only form of punishment they'll care about other than getting rejected by voters. And most represent safe seats without competitive general elections.

Remember, this all happened because the incentive structure in our politics is so screwed up that 147 Republicans thought it would be easier to go along with Trump's big lie rather than do what's right. But sometimes, money talks when other attempts at reason fail.

Just look at how quick many right-wing media organizations retracted their repeated, but baseless claims of voter fraud when threats of lawsuits came calling. The stark reality of extremism has caused big business to rethink its approach to politics. For example, the chamber of commerce is supporting President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill. That's a big deal. But there's always the possibility that some of these companies are just waiting for the heat to pass. They're betting on forgetting.

And already, we're seeing desperate attempts from some politicians to turn the page and resist accountability. You'll hear some conservatives explain they're experiencing cancel culture because of the freeze on their donations.

Don't buy it. This isn't punishing political speech. This is about defending democracy. And that's your reality check.

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[07:52:59]

BERMAN: So, CNN has learned that House impeachment managers are preparing to use what we're told is visceral evidence of the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Video posted to social media released by the national security forum Just Security which shows rioters echoing the former president's call to action.

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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: We're going to walk down to the capitol.

Yeah, we're going to walk down to the capitol.

CROWD: Yeah!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Invade the capitol building.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's take the capitol!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take the capitol!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take the capitol!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take the capitol!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take the capitol!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take the capitol right now!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Joining me now is Alberto Gonzales. He's the former attorney general of the United States under President George W. Bush.

Counselor, I'm glad you're here. I need a good lawyer this morning, and I need a lawyer for this reason. I need you to explain to me why the founding fathers would have created a constitution that allows a president of the United States to commit treason or high crimes and misdemeanors in the final weeks or months of his or her presidency. Why would the Founders have written the constitution like that?

ALBERTO GONZALES, FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL UNDER GEORGE W. BUSH: I'm not sure that they did, John. I think that -- first of all, I think it is appropriate for members of the Senate to ask the question, is this constitutional to have a trial of a president who is no longer in office?

There are a lot of smart people that have been looking at this question, and I think on balance, you can make arguments both ways. I think on balance from my perspective, I think it is constitutional to assess whether or not this president has committed high crime or misdemeanor.

But, you know, at the end of the day, I think the Senate is going to answer this question by and large. This is the kind of political question that courts are loathed to be involved with. So whatever the Senate decides here is going to establish a very strong precedent that. you know, I think that courts will respect and, obviously, future senates will respect as well going forward.

[07:55:10]

BERMAN: There is a precedent which has to do with the secretary of war under Andrew Johnson and there was an impeachment and a trial after he resigned.

And the congressional research acknowledges like you do that there's no definitive answer but the balance of scholarly research says there can be an impeachment and a trial.

The reason I phrased that question to you is it just doesn't work in my head that the Founding Fathers would have wanted a president to be able to operate with impunity in the final weeks or months of the administration. It doesn't compute. There's no reason in my mind they would want that.

Let me move on, attorney general, because -- go ahead.

GONZALES: Let's have one comment. Some people may view the very act of impeachment itself by the House as a sufficient punishment, particularly historical second impeachment. But be that as it is, go ahead with your question.

BERMAN: You know, I was going to say, one of the things you told Alisyn a couple of weeks ago you felt was essential in this country was accountability for the insurrection on January 6th and then an acknowledgment by the president that he had been lying in his claims of the election. You said that's essential to heal the nation. That was two weeks ago.

How much progress have we made in those two weeks on those two things that you deemed essential?

GONZALES: Well, I think the very act of the impeachment and now the trial I think is part of getting to the truth. And what flows from that, once we know what is the real truth, there's acceptance of the truth by most people, most Americans, then you have accountability.

And again, the trial is part of that process as well. But I stand by that, John, fervently. I'm very disappointed in people who question what the truth is here.

If Republicans, particularly Republican officials, Republican lawmakers, have evidence that the election was stolen, let's see it. We all deserve to see it. And so I'm very disappointed in Republican lawmakers who continue to maintain this position.

I'm also disappointed in President Trump. Again, he's had ample opportunity to present the evidence. That has not occurred. And you have to question, you know, what's going on here.

Obviously, the evidence is not there, and, therefore, I think there should be an acknowledgment that the election was not stolen and either that he was not being truthful with the American people or that he was given false information by his aides, but that's all very, very important in order to heal this country.

BERMAN: You think if you were a sitting U.S. senator, you'd vote to convict?

GONZALES: Well, you know, this is going to be a question of how I'm going to assess the information provided to me. Some senators are going to apply criminal law standard. There are no rules here. Some senators are going to apply their own personal judgment, rely upon their conscience. Some will be affected by politics.

And so it just depends on how each respective senator is going to view his or her obligation under the Constitution. From my perspective as a lawyer, yes, I would -- I would be guided by my experience in the criminal justice system but I also would have an acknowledgment that our criminal justice system is sometimes not perfect in achieving justice.

So I might apply different standards with respect to impeachment trial.

BERMAN: I do want to ask you one final thing. The Oregon Republican Party passed a resolution calling the invasion of the U.S. capitol a false flag, saying it was fake somehow to make Donald Trump looked about. And that's a state party passing that resolution.

I've heard you talk about this before. You were elected, finally, for a second, just before you ended up joining the Bush administration statewide in Texas. Do you think that you could be elected right now as a Republican or win a Republican primary right now in the state of Texas?

GONZALES: You know, John, I would worry about that, quite frankly. And I sometimes have wondered to myself whether someone like George W. Bush could be elected statewide, if he had a different last name. Based solely upon his principles and his policies, could someone like George W. Bush be elected in Texas?

I would like to think he would, irrespective of what his last name is. But, yes, I do worry about that.

BERMAN: Alberto Gonzales, we appreciate you being with us this morning. I appreciate your legal advice. Always need a good lawyer early in the morning.

GONZALES: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: NEW DAY continues right now.

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

BERMAN: All right. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY.

And the government's top scientists are about to hold their first coronavirus briefing of the Biden administration. Really, what most people want to know, when can I get vaccinated? Where can I get vaccinated? Is there enough vaccine for me? Will there be enough vaccine for me when my turn comes up?

These are simple questions, but there are few clear answers or have been.